Coyote Waits (3 page)

Leaphorn paused, thinking he shouldn’t pull himself into this. It was not his case, not his business. Interfering was certain to cause offense in a department that wanted the death of a brother officer balanced with a conviction of his killer. He shouldn’t open the door he was about to open. He should simply tell these women he couldn’t help them. Which just happened to be the sad truth. Still, Mary Keeyani was Emma’s kin. And, still, there were some unanswered questions in that Nez business — as much as he knew about it.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “if you have any useful information — any witnesses, anything that would lead to concrete evidence that the FBI wouldn’t listen to — you can tell me. I’ll see to it that the Bureau pays the proper attention. Anything you know.”

“We know he didn’t do it,” Bourebonette said. But the anger was used up now. She attempted a small, wan smile. “All we can tell you is
why
we know he couldn’t have killed the policeman, and that’s nothing more concrete than telling you about the kind of man Ashie Pinto is. Always has been.”

But he did kill a man
, Leaphorn was thinking,
a long time ago. If I remember what I read in that report, he was convicted, years ago, went to prison for killing a man
.

“Are you a relative?” he asked Bourebonette.

“I am a friend,” Bourebonette said.

Leaphorn looked at her over his glasses, waiting for more than that.

“For twenty-five years,” she added. “At least.”

“Ah,” Leaphorn said.

Professor Bourebonette looked impatient, as if it probably wasn’t worth her time to explain. But she decided to.

“My interest is in comparative mythology. The evolution of myth inside cultures. The evolution of myth as cultures meet and intermix. The relationship of a society’s mythology with its economic base. Its environment. Mr. Pinto has been one of my informants. For years.” She paused.

Leaphorn glanced at her. Was she finished? No. She was remembering.

“He wouldn’t kill anyone,” she added. “He has a great sense of humor. A great memory for the funny things. A great memory for everything.” She looked into Leaphorn’s eyes and said it slowly, as if he was the judge. As if he was the jury. Could whiskey not make a killer out of a funny man, just as it did of sad men and angry men?

“He has a great sense of humor,” Bourebonette repeated.

It didn’t prove anything, Leaphorn thought. But it was interesting. It was also interesting that she was telling him this. A long way to come, a lot of time used, a lot of money to be spent if she was serious about hiring an investigator. And a very flimsy explanation of why she was doing it.

And so Leaphorn had asked the Turning Mountain woman and the professor to wait. He called downstairs and asked for the file marked HOMICIDE; DELBERT NEZ.

He had been away when it happened, waiting in a motel room in Phoenix to be called as a witness in a case being tried on appeal in the federal court there. Even so, he remembered a lot of it. He had read about it every day in the Phoenix
Gazette
and the
Arizona Republic
, of course. He had called the Ship Rock subagency station and talked to Captain Largo about it. The Navajo Tribal Police included only about 110 sworn officers, making the murder of any one of them not only memorable but close and personal. He had barely known Delbert Nez and remembered him as a small, quiet, neat young officer. But, like Leaphorn, Nez had worked out of the Window Rock office and Leaphorn had seen him often. Nez had been trying to grow a mustache. That was not an easy task for Navajos, with their lack of facial hair, and his sparse growth had provoked teasing and ribald jokes.

Leaphorn had known the arresting officer much better. Jim Chee. He had run across Chee several times on other investigations. An unusually bright young man. Clever. Some good qualities. But he had what might be a fatal flaw for a policeman. He was an individualist, following the rules if and when they agreed with him. On top of that, he was a romantic. He even wanted to be a medicine man. Leaphorn smiled at the idea. A Tribal Policeman-Shaman. The two professions were utterly incongruous.

Leaphorn found himself wondering if he had been Chee’s first client. After a tough case, in the awful malaise that had followed Emma’s death, he’d hired Chee to do a Blessing Way for him. An impulsive decision — unusual for him. He’d done it partly to give the young man a chance to try his hand as a shaman and partly as a gesture toward Emma’s people. The Yazzies were Bitter Water clansmen and traditionalists. The ceremony would be sort of an unspoken apology for the hurt he must have caused them. He’d left Emma’s mother’s place on the second morning after they’d carried the body out into the canyon — unable to endure the full four days of silent withdrawal among her relatives that tradition required. It had been rude, and he’d regretted it. And so he had called Agnes and told her he’d hired a singer. He asked her to arrange the ceremony. She had gladly done it, not needing a reminder that his own clan, the Slow Talking Dinee, was now scattered and almost extinct, or that there was little left of his own family. He’d been uneasy around Agnes. Agnes had never married and, as Emma’s sister, he would have been expected to marry her under the old tradition.

He glanced up at the two women waiting patiently across the desk and then looked back at the report. But he was thinking of Officer Chee, his hair tied in a knot at the back of his head arranging his equipment on the swept earthen floor of the Yazzie hogan. Chee had been nervous, showing Leaphorn where to sit with his back against the west wall of the hogan, spreading a small rug in front of him. Then Chee had extracted from his deerskin
jish
the little leather sack that was his Four Mountain bundle, two pairs of “talking prayersticks,” a snuff can containing flint arrow points, and a half dozen pouches of pollen. He had solemnly formed the shape of footprints on the earth and marked on them with the pollen the symbols of the sunrays on which Leaphorn would walk. Beyond Chee, through the hogan doorway to the east he could see the rugged ramparts of the Carrizo Mountains reflecting the rosy twilight. He had smelled the piñon smoke from the cooking fires of Emma’s kinfolks and of his own friends who had come to join him in this venture into the spirit world of his people.

At that moment he had wished desperately for a way to call it all off. He was a hypocrite. He did not believe that the ritual poetry that Officer Jim Chee would chant, or the dry paintings he would form on the hogan floor, would control the powers and force them to restore Joe Leaphorn to a life with “beauty all around him.” The beauty had gone somewhere up in the canyon rocks with Emma’s body. Gone forever. He wanted only to follow her.

But there had been no way out of it. And on the second dawn, after the long night of chanting, he had sucked in the four great ceremonial breaths of cold morning air feeling different than he had felt for weeks. It had not cured him, but it had started the healing. He could thank Shaman Jim Chee for that, he guessed. Or for part of it. But Officer Jim Chee was another matter. If Officer Chee had done his duty, Delbert Nez might still be alive.

“Shot high in the left chest,” the report said. “Apparently at very close range.”

Leaphorn glanced up at Mary Keeyani and the professor. “Sorry I’m taking so long,” he said.

“There is time enough,” Mary Keeyani said.

Captain Largo had told him that Chee wanted to resign after the homicide. Getting Nez out of the car, Chee had been burned on both hands, one arm, one leg, and the chest. Largo had gone to the hospital at Farmington to see him. Largo was an old friend. He’d told Leaphorn about it.

“He didn’t just offer to resign,” Largo had told Leaphorn. “He insisted on it. He gave me his badge. Said he’d screwed up. That he should have gone to assist Nez when he knew Nez was in pursuit. And of course he should have gone.”

“Why the devil didn’t he go?” Leaphorn had asked. “The silly son-of-a-bitch. What was his excuse?”

“He didn’t offer any excuses,” Largo had said, his voice resenting Leaphorn’s judgmental tone. “But I reminded him that his report showed Nez had been laughing. From what little he heard on the radio Nez wasn’t taking it seriously. Like it was a joke. And I told him he couldn’t resign anyway. He can’t resign until we get Pinto tried.”

Thinking of that conversation now as he turned the page in the report, Leaphorn remembered that Largo had some sort of vague clan kinship link with Officer Chee. At least he’d heard that. Navajo Tribal Police regulations prohibited nepotism in the chain of command. But the rules were just picked up from
biligaana
personnel regulations. The white rules didn’t recognize clan connections.

The next sheet was the report of Sergeant Eldon George. When George arrived he had found Chee sprawled in the front seat of his vehicle, half-unconscious from shock. Pinto was asleep on the back seat, handcuffed. George had attempted to treat Chee’s burns with his first aid kit. Another Navajo Police unit had arrived, and a San Juan County Sheriff’s car, and a New Mexico State Police patrolman and then the ambulance that Chee had called to pick up Nez. Instead, it had taken Officer Chee. Pinto had been transported to the county jail at Aztec and booked on an assault charge — the toughest rap possible for a crime committed on federal trust land until the federals got involved and filed their felony homicide complaint.

Leaphorn glanced up at Mrs. Keeyani. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, lower lip caught between her teeth, watching him.

“I must refresh my memory before I can tell you anything,” he said.

Mrs. Keeyani nodded.

The next page reminded Leaphorn that Ashie Pinto had not made a statement. When apprehended, he had said, according to the report:

“Officer, I have done something shameful.”

Sounded stilted. Leaphorn considered it. Pinto would have spoken to Chee in Navajo, probably. Chee, probably no better than half-conscious, would have passed along a translation to George. George had jotted it into his notebook, retyped it into his report. What had Pinto actually said?

According to the report, nothing else. He had admitted nothing, denied nothing, remained absolutely silent, refusing to answer any question except to confirm his identity with a nod, declining to call a lawyer, to name anyone who he might wish to be informed of his arrest. When asked to submit to the taking of a blood sample, “Subject Pinto was seen to nod in the affirmative.”

The test showed a blood alcohol level of 0.211. The percentage of alcohol in the blood that made one formally and legally drunk in New Mexico was 0.10.

There followed the Federal Bureau of Investigation report dated eleven days following the arrest. Leaphorn scanned it. Ballistics confirmed that the bullet fired into the chest of Nez had come from the pistol confiscated from Pinto, a .38 caliber revolver. It confirmed that holes in Pinto’s trousers were caused by burns. There was more, including the autopsy. Leaphorn knew what it said. Nez had been alive when the fire suffocated him. Probably unconscious, but alive. Leaphorn sighed, turned to the next page. It summarized a statement taken from Chee at the hospital. He scanned it quickly. Familiar stuff. But wait. He lingered on a paragraph. Reread it.

“Officer Chee said that for several weeks Nez had been interested in apprehending an unidentified subject who had been vandalizing and defacing a basaltic outcrop east of Red Rock and south of Ship Rock. Chee said he believed from what he heard on the radio that Nez had seen this person and expected to apprehend the subject. He said the radio signal was breaking up but that he heard Nez laughing and Nez did not appear to want a backup.”

Leaphorn snorted, an angry sound and unintentionally loud. He glanced up to see if the women had noticed. They had.

He covered his embarrassment with a question. “Did anyone tell you about the circumstances?”

“They said he was, arrested out there where it happened,” Mrs. Keeyani said. “They said he had the gun that killed that policeman.”

“Did they tell you that he hasn’t denied it?” Leaphorn asked. But he was thinking of Jim Chee. Irritated. Nez did not appear to want a backup. Whether he wanted one or not, the rules said Chee should be there. But that was Chee’s reputation. He made his own rules. Smart. Unusually smart. But not a team player. So he was sitting in the trading post at Red Rock drinking coffee while Nez, alone, was dealing with a homicidal drunk armed with a pistol.

“I don’t know what my uncle told them,” Mary Keeyani said. She shook her head. “But I know he didn’t do it. Not Hosteen Pinto. He wouldn’t kill anybody.”

Leaphorn waited, watching her face, giving her a chance to say more. She simply sat, looking down at her hands.

Finally she said: “A long, long time ago, before I was born. . . . He got in a fight then, when he was young, and a man was killed. But he was a wild boy then, and drunk. Now he is an old man. He doesn’t drink now. Not for years.”

It was not something to argue about. Instead Leaphorn said, “He won’t tell them anything at all. That’s what I’m told. Not a word. Not even to his lawyer.”

Mrs. Keeyani looked at her hands. “That wasn’t his gun,” she said. “My uncle had an old .22 rifle. A single-shot rifle. He still has that. It’s in his hogan.”

Leaphorn said nothing. This interested him. That pistol Pinto had was a Ruger, an expensive model and not what you would expect a man like Pinto to own. On the other hand, there could be a thousand explanations of why he did own it.

“Perhaps you didn’t know about this pistol,” Leaphorn said.

Now it was Mrs. Keeyani’s turn to be surprised. “He is my mother’s brother,” she said. “He never got married. His place was there at our grandmother’s place behind Yon Dot Mountain.”

Leaphorn needed no more explanation. If Ashie Pinto had owned an expensive Ruger revolver, his relatives would have known it. He glanced back at the FBI report, looking for the name of the investigating officer. Agent Theodore Rostik. He’d never heard of Rostik, which meant he was a newcomer to the Gallup office — either fresh and green from the FBI Academy, or an older agent exiled as a lost cause. Up-and-comers in the agency were not sent to places like Farmington, or Fargo, or Gallup, or other towns considered Siberian by the Bureau hierarchy. These were the billets for new men without political connections in the agency, or those who had fallen from grace — perhaps having caused bad publicity (the agency’s mortal sin) or shown signs of original thinking. For Leaphorn the point was that Rostik might be unusually stupid, or unusually smart — either of which might cause his exile. But most likely he was simply green.