Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] (18 page)

T
HEY DROVE INTO THE FULL BRUNT of the storm halfway between Mancos and Cortez, the wind buffeting the car and driving a blinding sheet of tiny dry snowflakes horizontally past their windshield.

“At least it’s sweeping the pavement clear,” Bernie said, sounding cheerful.

Chee glanced at her. She seemed to be enjoying the adventure. He wasn’t. His ribs hurt, so did the abrasions around his eye, and he was not in the mood for cheer.

“That won’t last long,” he said.

It didn’t. In Cortez, snow was driving over the curbs and the pavement was beginning to pack, and the broadcasts on the emergency channel didn’t sound promising. A last gasp of the Pacific hurricane system was pushing across Baja California into Arizona. There it met the first blast of Arctic air, pressing down the east slope of the Rockies from Canada. Interstate 40 at Flagstaff, where the two fronts had collided, was already closed by snow. So were highways through the Wasatch Range in Utah. Autumn was emphatically over on the Colorado Plateau.

They turned onto U.S. 666 to make the forty-mile run almost due south to Shiprock. With the icy wind pursuing them, the highway emptied of traffic by storm warnings, and speed limits ignored, Bernie outran the Canadian contribution to the storm. The sky lightened now. Far ahead, they could see where the Pacific half of the blizzard had reached the Chuska range. Its cold, wet air met the dry, wanner air on the New Mexico side at the ridgeline. The collision produced a towering wall of white fog, which poured down the slopes like a silent slow-motion Niagara.

“Wow,” Bernie said. “I never saw anything quite like that before.”

“The heavy cold air forces itself under the warmer stuff,” said Chee, unable to avoid a little showing off. “I’ll bet it’s twenty degrees colder at Lukachukai than it is at Red Rock—and they’re less than twenty miles apart.”

They crossed the western corner of the Ute reservation, then roared into New Mexico and across the mesa high above Malpais Arroyo.

“Wow,” Bernie said again. “Look at that.”

Instead Chee glanced at the speedometer and flinched.

“You drive,” he said. “I’ll check the scenery for both of us.” It was worth checking. They looked down into the vast San Juan River basin—dark with storm to the right, dappled with sunlight to the left. Ship Rock stood just at the edge of the shadow line, a grotesque sunlit thumb thrust into the sky, but through some quirk of wind and air pressure, the long bulge of the Hogback formation was already mostly dark with cloud shadow.

“I think we’re going to get home before the snow,” Bernie said.

They almost did. It caught them when Bernie pulled into the parking lot at the station—but the flakes blowing against Chee as he hurried into the building were still small and dry. The Canadian cold front was still dominating the Pacific storm.

“You look terrible,” Jenifer said. “How do you feel?”

“I’d say well below average,” Chee said. “Did Leaphorn call?”

“Indirectly,” Jenifer said, and handed Chee three message slips and an envelope.

It was on top—a call from Sergeant Deke at the Chinle station confirming that Leaphorn had received Chee’s message about Demott leaving his ranch with his rifle. Leaphorn had gone up the canyon to the Nez place and would either bring Nez out with him or stay, depending on the weather, which was terrible.

Chee glanced at the other messages. Routine business. The envelope bore the word “Jim” in Janet’s hand. He tapped it against the back of his hand. Put it down. Called Deke.

“I’ve seen worse,” Deke said. “But it’s a bad one for this time of year. Still above zero but it won’t be for long. Blowing snow. We have Navajo 12 closed at Upper Wheatfields, and 191 between here and Ganado, and 59 north of Red Rock, and—well, hell of a night to be driving. How about there?”

“I think we’re just getting the edge of it,” Chee said. “Did Leaphorn get my message?”

“Yep. He said not to worry.”

“What do you think? Demott’s a rock climber. Is Nez going to be safe enough?”

“Except for maybe frostbite,” Deke said. “Nobody’s going to be climbing those cliffs tonight.”

And so Chee opened the envelope and extracted the note.

“Jim. Sorry I missed you. Going to get a bite to eat and will come by your place—Janet.”

Her car wasn’t there when he drove up, which was just as well, he thought. It would give him a little time to get the place a little warmer. He fired up the propane heater, put on the coffee, and gave the place a critical inspection. He rarely did. His trailer was simply where he lived. Sometimes it was hot, sometimes it was cold. But otherwise it was not something he gave any thought to. It looked cramped, crowded, slightly dirty, and altogether dismal. Ah, well, nothing to do about it now. He checked the refrigerator for something to offer her. Nothing much there in the snack line, but he extracted a slab of cheese and pulled a box of crackers and a bowl with a few Oreos in it off the shelf over the stove. Then he sat on the edge of the bunk, slumped, listening to the icy wind buffeting the trailer, too tired to think about what might be about to happen.

Chee must have dozed. He didn’t hear the car coming down the slope, or see the lights. A tapping at the door awakened him, and he found her standing on the step looking up at him.

“It’s freezing,” she said as he ushered her in.

“Hot coffee,” he said. Poured a cup, handed it to her, and offered her the folding chair beside the fold-out table. But she stood a moment, hugging herself and shivering, looking undecided.

“Janet,” he said. “Sit down. Relax.”

“I just need to tell you something,” she said. “I can’t stay. I need to get back to Gallup before the weather gets worse.” But she sat.

“Drink your coffee,” he said. “Warm up.”

She was looking at him over the cup. “You look awful,” she said. “They told me you’d gone up to Mancos. To see the Breedlove widow. You shouldn’t be back at work yet. You should be in bed.”

“I’m all right,” he said. And waited. Would she ask him why he’d gone to Mancos? What he’d learned?

“Why couldn’t somebody else do it?” she said. “Somebody without broken ribs.”

“Just cracked,” Chee said.

She put down her cup. He reached for it. She intercepted his hand, held it.

“Jim,” she said. “I’m going away for a while. I’m taking my accrued leave time, and my vacation, and I’m going home.”

“Home?” Chee said. “For a while. How long is that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I want to get my head together. Look forward and backwards.” She tried to smile but it didn’t come off well. She shrugged. “And just think.”

It occurred to Chee that he hadn’t poured himself any coffee. Oddly, he didn’t want any. It occurred to him that she wasn’t burning her bridges.

“Think?” he said. “About us?”

“Of course.” This time the smile worked a little better.

But her hand was cold. He squeezed it. “I thought we were through that phase.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “You never really stopped thinking about whether we’d be compatible. Whether we really fit.”

“Don’t we?”

“We did in this fantasy I had,” she said, and waved her hands, mocking herself. “Big, good looking guy. Sweet and smart and as far as I could tell you really cared about me. Fun on the Big Rez for a while, then a big job for you in some place interesting. Washington. San Francisco. New York. Boston. And the big job for me. Justice, or maybe a law firm. You and I together. Everything perfect.”

Chee said nothing to that.

“Everything perfect,” she repeated. “The best of both worlds.” She looked at him, trying to hold the grin and not quite making it.

“With twin Porsches in the triple garage,” Chee said. “But when you got to know me, I didn’t fit the fantasy.”

“Almost,” she said. “Maybe you do, really.”

Suddenly Janet’s eyes went damp. She looked away. “Or maybe I change the fantasy.”

He extracted his handkerchief, frowned at it, reached into the storage drawer behind him, extracted paper napkins, and handed them to Janet. She said, “Sorry,” and wiped her eyes.

He wanted to hold her, very close. But he said, “A cold wind does that.”

“So I thought maybe as time goes by everything changes a little. I change and so do you.”

He could think of nothing honest to say to that.

“But after the other evening in Gallup, when you were so angry with me, I began to understand,” she said.

“Remember once a long time ago you asked me about a schoolteacher I used to date? Somebody told you about her. From Wisconsin. Just out of college. Blonde, blue eyes, taught second grade at Crownpoint when I was a brand-new cop and stationed there. Well, it wasn’t that there was anything much wrong with me, but for her kids she wanted the good old American dream. She saw no hope for that in Navajo country. So she went away.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Janet said. “She wasn’t a Navajo.”

“But I am,” he said. “So I thought, what’s the difference? I’m darker. Rarely sunburn. Small hips. Wide shoulders. That’s racial, right? Does that matter? I think not much. So what makes me a Navajo?”

“You’re going to say culture,” Janet said. “I studied social anthropology, too.”

“I grew up knowing it’s wrong to have more than you need. It means you’re not taking care of your people. Win three races in a row, you better slow down a little. Let somebody else win. Or somebody gets drunk and runs into your car and tears you all up, you don’t sue him, you want to have a sing for him to cure him of alcoholism.”

“That doesn’t get you admitted into law school,” Janet said. “Or pull you out of poverty.”

“Depends on how you define poverty.”

“It’s defined in the law books,” Janet said. “A family of
x
members with an annual income of under
y
.”

“I met a middle-aged man at a Yeibichai sing a few years ago. He ran an accounting firm in Flagstaff and came out to Burnt Water because his mother had a stroke and they were doing the cure for her. I said something about it looking like he was doing very well. And he said, ‘No, I will be a poor man all my life.’ And I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘Nobody ever taught me any songs.’”

“Ah, Jim,” she said. She rose, took the two steps required to reach the bunk where he was sitting, put her arms carefully around him and kissed him. Then she pressed the undamaged side of his face against her breast.

“I know having a Navajo dad didn’t make me a Navajo,” she said. “My culture is Stanford sorority girl, Maryland cocktail circuit, Mozart, and tickets to the Met. So maybe I have to learn not to think that being ragged, and not having indoor plumbing, and walking miles to see the dentist means poverty. I’m working on it.”

Chee, engulfed in Janet’s sweater, her perfume, her softness, said something like “Ummmm.”

“But I’m not there yet,” she added, and released him.

“I guess I should work on it from the other end, too,” he said. “I could get used to being a lieutenant, trying to work my way up. Trying to put some value on things like—” He let that trail off.

“One thing I want you to know,” she said. “I didn’t use you.”

“You mean—”

“I mean deliberately getting information out of you so I could tell John.”

“I guess I always knew that,” he said. “I was just being jealous. I had the wrong idea about that.”

“I did tell him you’d found Breedlove’s body. He invited Claire and me to the concert. Claire and I go all the way back to high school. And we were remembering old times and, you know, it just came out. It was just something interesting to tell him.”

“Sure,” Chee said. “I understand.”

“I have to go now,” she said. “Before you guys close the highway. But I wanted you to know that. Breedlove had been his project when the widow filed to get the death certified. It looked so peculiar. And finally, now, I guess it’s all over.”

Her tone made that a question.

She was zipping up her jacket, glancing at him.

“Lieutenant Leaphorn gave Mr. Shaw that photograph of the climber’s ledger,” she said.

“Yeah,” Chee said. The wind buffeted the trailer, made its stormy sounds, moved a cold draft against his neck.

“She must have thought that terribly odd—for him to just leave her at the canyon, and then abandon their car, and go back to Ship Rock to climb it like that.”

Chee nodded.

“Surely she must have had some sort of theory. I know I would have had if you’d done something crazy like that to me.”

“She cried a lot,” Chee said. “She could hardly believe it.”

And in a minute Janet was gone. The good bye kiss, the promises to write, the invitation to come and join her. Then holding the car door open for her, commenting on how it always got colder when the snowing stopped, and watching the headlights vanish at the top of the slope.

He sat on the bunk again then, felt the bandages around his eye, and decided the soreness there was abating. He probed the padding over his ribs, flinched, and decided the healing there was slower. He noticed the coffeepot was still on, got up, and unplugged it. He switched on the radio, thinking he would get some weather news. Then switched it off again and sat on the bed.

The telephone rang. Chee stared at it. It rang again. And again. He picked it up.

“Guess what?” It was Officer Bernadette Manuelito.

“What?”

“Begayaye just told me,” she said. “He detoured past Ship Rock today. The cattle were crowded around our loose-fence-post place, eating some fresh hay.”

“Well,” Chee said, and gave himself a moment to make the mental transition from Janet Pete to the Lone Ranger competition. “I’d say this would be a perfect time for Mr. Finch to supplement his income. The cops all away working weather problems, and everybody staying home by the fire.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

“I’ll meet you there a little before daylight. When’s sunup these days?”

“About seven.”

“I’ll meet you at the office at five. Okay?”

“Hey,” Bernie said. “I like it.”