A Thief of Time (22 page)
Authors: Tony Hillerman
Leaphorn and Chee must battle the feds and a clever killer in a case that will take them from the tribe's Four Corners country all the way south to the Mexican border and the Sonoran Desert.
THE SINISTER PIG
Sergeant Jim Chee is troubled by the nameless corpse discovered just inside his jurisdiction, at the edge of the Jicarilla Apache natural gas field. More troubling still is the FBI's insistence that the Bureau take over the case, calling the unidentified victim's death a “hunting accident.”
But if a hunter was involved, Chee knows the prey was intentionally human. This belief is shared by the legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, who once again is pulled out of retirement by the possibility of serious wrongs being committed against the Navajo nation by the Washington bureaucracy. Yet it is former policewoman Bernadette Manuelito, recently relocated to Customs Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico border, who possibly holds the key to a fiendishly twisted conspiracy of greed, lies, and murderâand whose only hope for survival now rests in the hands of friends too far away for comfort.
“Rivetingâ¦This
Pig
flies!”
People
“An extraordinary display of
sheer plotting craftsmanship.”
New York Times Book Review
In 1956, an airplane crash left the remains of 172 passengers scattered among the majestic cliffs of the Grand Canyonâincluding an arm attached to a briefcase containing a fortune in gems. Half a century later, one of the missing diamonds has reappearedâ¦and the wolves are on the scent.
SKELETON MAN
Former Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is coming out of retirement to help exonerate a slow, simple kid accused of robbing a trading post. Billy Tuve claims he received the diamond he tried to pawn from a mysterious old man in the canyon, and his story has attracted the dangerous attention of strangers to the Navajo landâone more interested in a severed limb than in the fortune it was handcuffed to, another willing to murder to keep lost secrets hidden. But nature herself may prove the deadliest adversary, as Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee follow a puzzleâand a killerâdown into the dark realm of Skeleton Man.
“Top-notchâ¦A yarn well spun.”
New York Daily News
“Bestselling author Tony Hillermanâ¦is back
in top formâ¦One of Hillerman's strongest
mysteries in an exceptional career.”
Santa Fe New Mexican
Retirement has never sat well with former Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Now the ghosts of a still-unsolved case are returning to haunt himâ¦
THE SHAPE SHIFTER
Joe Leaphorn's interest in the case is reawakened by a photograph in a magazine spread of a one-of-a-kind Navajo rugâa priceless work of woven art that was supposedly destroyed in a suspicious fire many years earlier. The rug, commemorating one of the darkest and most terrible chapters in American history, was always said to be cursed, and now the friend who brought it to Leaphorn's attention has mysteriously gone missing.
With newly wedded officers Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito just back from their honeymoon, the legendary ex-lawman is on his own to pick up the threads of a crime he'd once thought impossible to untangle. And they're leading him back into a world of lethal greed, shifting truths, and changing faces, where a cold-blooded killer still resides.
“Hillerman scoresâ¦. Atmospheric and
suspensefulâ¦. With
The Shape Shifter,
Hillerman once again proves himself the
master of Southwest mystery fiction.”
Santa Fe New Mexican
With special thanks to Dan Murphy of the U.S. Park Service for pointing me to the ruins down the San Juan River, to Charley and Susan De-Lorme and the other river lovers of Wild River Expeditions, to Kenneth Tsosie of White Horse Lake, to Ernie Bulow, and to the Tom and Jan Vaughn family of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. All characters in this book are imaginary. True, Drayton and Noi Vaughn actually do make the sixty-mile bus ride to school each morning but they are even classier in real life than the fictitious counterparts found herein.
ACCLAIM
FOR
A CRIME FICTION GIANTâ
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING GRAND MASTER
TONY HILLERMAN
“An amazing writerâ¦. Hillerman's mysteries are a lesson in how to make the form irresistible storytelling.”
Albuquerque Journal
“Hillerman's stories never grow old. Like myths, they keep evolving with the telling.”
New York Times Book Review
“All of Tony Hillerman's Navajo Tribal Police novels have been brilliant.”
USA Today
“What he communicates better than almost any other suspense writer is a different sense of time, a different sense of connection to nature, a different way of being.”
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
“Hillerman transcends the mystery genre.”
Washington Post Book World
“Hillerman's novels are like no others.”
San Diego Union-Tribune
“His Leaphorn/Chee series is one of the most original and influential in modern crime fiction.”
Portland Sunday Oregonian
“We couldn't do better for a true voice of the West.”
Denver Rocky Mountain News
FICTION
The Shape Shifter
Skeleton Man
â¢
The Sinister Pig
The Wailing Wind
â¢
Hunting Badger
The First Eagle
â¢
The Fallen Man
Finding Moon
â¢
Sacred Clowns
Coyote Waits
â¢
Talking God
A Thief of Time
â¢
Skinwalkers
The Ghostway
â¢
The Dark Wind
People of Darkness
â¢
Listening Woman
Dance Hall of the Dead
â¢
The Fly on the Wall
The Blessing Way
â¢
The Mysterious West
The Boy Who Made Dragonfly
(for children)
Buster Mesquite's Cowboy Band
(for children)
NONFICTION
Seldom Disappointed
Hillerman Country
The Great Taos Bank Robbery
Rio Grande
New Mexico
The Spell of New Mexico
Indian Country
Talking Mysteries
(with Ernie Bulow)
Kilroy Was There
A New Omnibus of Crime
Map by Mario Ferro, based on a design by David Lindroth
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A THIEF OF TIME
. Copyright © 1988 by Tony Hillerman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © September 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-198382-5
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