Sacred Clowns (10 page)

“Kanitewa told Bluehorse he was calling from the pay phone out in front of the mission. He said he had Bluehorse’s bracelet, he couldn’t wait for his dad to come back from Gallup, and could Bluehorse come and get him. Pick him up, but not at the mission but at that little place by the highway where they rent videotapes. Kanitewa was very excited. It was very important. Don’t let me down, friend. That sort of thing. So Bluehorse borrowed his mother’s pickup truck and drove over to Thoreau and pulled up at the video place. But Kanitewa wasn’t just sitting there waiting for him. So Bluehorse went inside to look for him, and when he came out, Kanitewa was sitting in the cab of his pickup.”

Leaphorn paused, studying Chee.

“You remember what I was saying the other day about putting in the details? Your report reads: ‘When Bluehorse came out Kanitewa was sitting in his pickup.’ But was he crouched down out of sight, or sitting up? That’s an example. If we knew that it would tell us something about how scared the boy was at that point.”

Chee allowed himself to make a minuscule nod. He was not in the mood for a lesson in report writing.

“Kanitewa gives Bluehorse the bracelet,” Leaphorn continued. “That seems to mean that he had to have seen Dorsey. He must have given Dorsey the note from Bluehorse—the receipt for the bracelet. Otherwise Dorsey wouldn’t have turned it loose. Right?”

“I’d think so. As far as we know, Dorsey had never met Kanitewa.”

“Now you need to know some things,” Leaphorn said. “That bracelet was probably in a cabinet in a little storeroom between the shop and Dorsey’s office. That’s where Dorsey kept his supply of silver ingots, and turquoise, and the more valuable stuff the kids were working on. To get it for Kanitewa he’d have to leave the shop, or his office if the boy had found him in his office.”

Leaphorn paused, checked Chee’s expression to determine if he understood the implication of this. Chee understood. It meant Kanitewa would have had an opportunity to steal something. Perhaps something to be taken away, wrapped in a newspaper, and delivered to his uncle, the koshare.

“The cabinet was unlocked when they found Dorsey’s body?” Chee asked. “Is that right?”

“Unlocked,” Leaphorn said, looking thoughtful. “And a lot of stuff that had been in it was missing. The silver and the other stuff found in the box under Ahkeah’s place, all of that came out of the cabinet.”

“All of it?” Chee asked.

“That’s a good question,” Leaphorn said. “I think Toddy was jumping to that conclusion. But I don’t know for sure.”

“It probably doesn’t matter,” Chee said.

“No. But how do we know whether it does or not?”

They thought about that for a moment. For the first time, Chee found himself feeling comfortable with the lieutenant. Leaphorn had swiveled again and seemed to be looking at the map. Now he made a dismissive gesture, and turned back.

“Bluehorse told Kanitewa he didn’t have enough gas to take him all the way to Tano, but he could take him down to the Giant Truck Stop on Interstate 40 and he could get a ride there,” Leaphorn said. “That correct? And Bluehorse didn’t see the package until Kanitewa got out?”

“Right.”

“But it was already wrapped in the newspaper? Whatever it was?”

Chee nodded. “And Bluehorse asked what it was and Kanitewa said he couldn’t tell him. It was religious.”

“Something from Dorsey’s office?” Leaphorn said.

“Probably.”

They thought about that.

The telephone rang. Leaphorn lifted one end of the receiver with a finger to break the connection. “You see any other possibility? You think maybe he brought it with him when he came from his home?”

“He could have,” Chee said. “But I think somehow that whatever it was, it was the object that caused all the excitement. The big excited call to Bluehorse. That ‘can’t wait for dad’ business. All the game playing.”

Leaphorn considered that. The telephone rang again. He picked up the receiver, broke the connection with his forefinger, laid the receiver on the desk. “Yes,” he said. “I think you’re right. And how about chronology now. Was Dorsey alive and well when Kanitewa left him?”

“I’d say yes.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said, nodding. “But when Kanitewa was leaving, he saw somebody coming in. I’m guessing now, but am I right? Maybe Ahkeah. Maybe somebody else.”

“I think you’re right. And they saw him. And he knew it,” Chee said.

Leaphorn considered that, nodded. “So when the boy heard the radio broadcast, when he heard Dorsey had been killed, then everything clicked. He rushed off to warn his uncle about it.”

“Maybe,” Chee said. “At least I can’t think of anything better.”

“So what did the koshare do then? As far as we know, he ignored the warning. Did nothing.”

Chee was remembering the kachina dance, the koshare performance. “He did his duty,” Chee said. “From what little I heard at Tano, and mostly from what Blizzard picked up and passed along, I think he was that kind of a man. Blizzard said everybody he interviewed liked him. He said it was more than just ‘don’t speak bad of the dead,’ more than just the usual everybody being nice you get when somebody gets killed. Blizzard said they really respected him. Admired him. He must have been a good man.”

“The kind they’d call a ‘valuable man,’” Leaphorn said. He stood up, put the telephone receiver back on the hook, looked at the map again. “You know,” he said. “Maybe we’ve got another connection here. This Dorsey was also a valuable man.” He smiled at Chee. “How do you like the idea of a serial killer who hates valuable men?”

“Bluehorse told us Dorsey’s gay,” Chee said. “Or supposed to be gay. He said he drove the water truck. The one the mission runs to refill water barrels for old people who can’t get around. He took them meals. All that.”

“That’s right. You better read the file on it,” Leaphorn said. He dug it out of the basket on his desk, handed it to Chee. “See if what you know about the Sayesva case connects with anything at Thoreau.”

“Okay.”

“And one more thing. I still want you to find Delmar Kanitewa.”

THE TROUBLE WAS Chee couldn’t find the Kanitewa boy. Neither could Harold Blizzard. Now both the Albuquerque and Gallup offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, each with its own separate and individual federal-reservation homicide case, decided it was important to have a chat with Delmar. Gallup was wondering how on God’s green earth Chee had let him slip away and Albuquerque was asking the same question of Sergeant Blizzard.

Blizzard resented this. “The son-of-a-bitch looks right at me and says, ‘You lust walked into the school and made the telephone call and left him sitting there?’” Blizzard had raised his voice two notches to represent the voice of the agent-in-charge at Albuquerque. “And I say, ‘That’s because there’s no telephone in the patrol car.’ And he says, ‘You didn’t think about taking him into the school with you?’ and I say, ‘If I had known he was going to slip away we wouldn’t be having this stupid conversation.’”

Chee laughed. “Did you really say that?”

They had met at the Gallup police station and decided to leave Blizzard’s car there and take Chee’s pickup to begin another phase of what Blizzard called The Great Delmar Hunt. Now they were jolting down Navajo Road 7028 about fifteen miles west of the Torreon Trading Post, looking for a dirt road which would, if they could only find it, lead them across the south fork of Chico Arroyo and thence to the place of Gray Old Lady Benally, who was some sort of paternal clan relative of Delmar’s. Blizzard was driving, giving Chee a rest. It was early afternoon, and both were tired of driving down bumpy dirt roads, tired of searching for people who weren’t at home, of asking questions of people who didn’t know the answer—and maybe wouldn’t have told them if they did know. Besides, Chee’s back hurt. His lower back, about where the hips connect.

“Well,” Blizzard said. He had been silent so long that Chee had forgotten what they were talking about. “Maybe not exactly those words, but he got the idea.” He gestured out the windshield. “Look at that,” he said. “Those colors. In the clouds and in the sky and in the grass. I think I could get used to this. Nothing much to do out here in the boonies, but lots to look at.”

Chee shifted his thoughts from back pain to landscape. Indeed it was beautiful. The sun was in its autumn mode, low in the southwest, and shadows slanted away from every juniper. They formed zebra stripes where the slopes ran north and a polka-dot pattern where they slanted. The grass was never really green in this land of little rain. Now it was a golden autumn tan with streaks of silver and white where the sickle-shaped seeds of grama were waving, tinted blue here and there by distance and shadow. Miles away, beyond the hills, the vertical slopes of Chivato Mesa formed a wall. Above the mesa stood the serene blue shape of Tsodzil, the Turquoise Mountain which First Man had built as one of the four sacred corner posts of Navajo Country. And over all that, the great, arching, multilayered sky—the thin, translucent fan of ice crystals still glittering in the full sun. Thousands of feet lower, a scattering of puffy gray-white cumulus clouds—outriders of the storm the weatherman had been predicting—marched eastward ahead of the wind.

“It’s beautiful. I’ll give you that,” Blizzard said. “But you need some way to pull it together a lot better. Everything is too damn far apart.”

“You get used to that, too,” Chee said. “Somebody once wrote a book about it. They called it
The Land of Room Enough, and Time
.”

“We’re sure wasting enough of that today,” Blizzard said. “You keeping track of the mileage?”

“The man said it was 16.3 miles from the gas pump at the trading post,” Chee said. “That ought to be it there.”

Up ahead, tracks led from the gravel into the roadside borrow ditch, climbed out of it, crossed a cattle guard between two fence posts, and wandered erratically through the grass toward the horizon, disappearing on down-slopes and reappearing on ridges.

“Not exactly the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” Blizzard said. “And when we get down it, Gray Lady what’s-her-name won’t be home.”

“She’s home,” Chee said. “But it’ll turn out she’s the wrong Mrs. Benally.”

“She won’t be home. I’ll bet you,” Blizzard said. He reached for his billfold.

“You lose,” Chee said. He pointed. “See the old boot stuck on the fence post? The toe’s pointed in. If it’s pointed out, they’re gone to town and you save yourself the drive.”

Blizzard stared at him, impressed. “My God,” he said. “That’s pretty damn clever. Wonder if us Cheyennes figured out anything like that.”

“You’ve really never been to your reservation? Never lived out there with your people at all?”

“Just once,” Blizzard said. “When my dad’s mother died, we went out for the funeral. I think we just stayed couple of days. I remember the night. I was little and about all I could think of was how cold it was in my uncle’s shack. And I remember the other kids didn’t seem friendly.”

“You were a town boy,” Chee said. “They were country kids. Bashful. They figured you’d be stuck-up.” He grinned, trying to imagine this hardassed cop as a boy. “I bet you were, too.”

The dirt track to the Benally place proved to be smoother than the washboard gravel of Route 7028. It led a mile and a half to an expanse of packed dirt on which stood a log hogan with a dirt roof and one of those small frame houses which, before the era of aluminum mobile homes, were hauled around on flatbed oil-company trucks to shelter crews of drilling rigs. It had been painted white once but not much paint had survived the winters. Two standard fifty-five-gallon oil drums stood on a platform beside the door. An empty corral was behind it, with too many poles missing to make it useful, and behind the corral, a brush arbor sagged.

A woman with a shawl over her head leaned in the open doorway, watching while Blizzard parked. To Chee, she looked about eighty, or a little older, with a once-round face now shrunken by the years.

“I hope you are well, Grandmother,” he said in Navajo. He told her his mother’s clan, and his father’s, and that he was a tribal policeman. “And this man beside me is a Cheyenne Indian. His people were part of those who beat General Custer. And we have come to find out if you can help us with a problem.”

Gray Old Lady recited her clans, including being born to the Bitter Water People of Delmar Kanitewa’s father. She invited them in, signaled them to seat themselves on a bench beside the table, and offered them coffee. While the pot heated on the wood stove against the wall, Chee made his pitch. It was the fifth time he’d made it since morning and he hurried through it, making sure the old woman knew they didn’t want to arrest the boy—only to talk to him.

She poured the coffee into two tin cups. The pot held only enough for a half-cup for Chee and Blizzard. None for her. She put it back on the shelf.

“I know the boy,” she said. “My grandson’s son. We called him Sheep Chaser. But I haven’t seen him this year. Not for a long time.”

Chee sipped the coffee. It was strong and stale. Through the doorway into the other room he could see a form lying motionless under a blanket. “Does Sheep Chaser have any good friends around here? Somebody he might be visiting?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “He goes to live with his mother’s people. The Tano People. I don’t know anything about him anymore.”

Which was exactly what Chee had expected to hear. He translated the gist of it to Blizzard. Blizzard nodded and grunted. “Tell her I said thank you very much for all the assistance,” Blizzard said.

“We thank you,” Chee said. He nodded toward the doorway. “Is someone in your family ill?”

She turned and looked into the bedroom. “That is my husband,” she said. “He is so old that he does not know who he is anymore. He has even forgotten how to walk and how to say words.”

“Is there anyone helping you?” Chee said. “Taking care of things?”

“There is the
bilagaana
from the mission at Thoreau,” she said. “He comes in his truck and keeps our water barrel filled and twice a week he brings us food. But this week he hasn’t come.”

Chee felt sick. “Is his name Eric Dorsey?”

Gray Old Lady produced an ancient-sounding chuckle. “We call him our
begadoche.
Our water sprinkler. Because he brings our water. And because he makes us laugh.” The memory of laughter produced a small, toothless smile. “He has this thing, like a duck, and he pretends to make it talk.” But the smile went away and she drew her hands up to her chest, looking worried. “Except this week, he didn’t come.”

“How much water do you have?” Chee asked.

“One barrel is empty,” she said. “The other one, maybe about this much.” She demonstrated six inches of water with her hands. “When he comes he always looks into the barrels, and last week he said he would fill them when he came this time. But he didn’t come.”

Blizzard had said polite words to the old woman in English and was walking back to the car. She kept her eyes on Chee, looking worried.

“Do you think he will come next week?” she said. “If he doesn’t come next week I will have to use less water.”

“I will send someone out here to fill your water barrels, Grandmother,” Chee said. “I will send somebody from the mission at Thoreau or somebody from the tribal office at Crownpoint. And when they come you must tell them that you need help.”

“But the
bilagaana
has helped us,” she said, looking puzzled. “In many ways.” She pointed at the rocking chair. It was beautifully made, with simple lines, and looked new. “He made that for us, at the school I think. He said that chair would be better for my back when I sit beside the bed. And with the duck he would make my husband laugh.”

“Grandmother,” Chee said. “I think the
bilagaana
who helped you is dead.”

She seemed not to hear him. “He brings us food and he fills our water barrels and he took my man in to see the
bilagaana
doctors. And he helped us when my daughter had rugs to sell. He told us the man at the trading post was not paying enough. And he sold them for us and got a lot more money.”

“Grandmother,” Chee said. “Listen to me.”

But she didn’t want to listen. “The trader had been giving us fifty dollars but Begadoche got three hundred dollars once, and once it was more than six hundred. And when I had to sell my necklace and my bracelets because we didn’t have any money he told me the pawn place in Gallup didn’t give us enough, and he knew someone who would pay a lot more because they were old and he got them out of pawn and the man he knew gave us a lot more money.”

Chee held up his hand. “Grandmother. Listen. The
bilagaana
won’t come anymore because he is dead. I will have to send someone else. Do you understand?”

Gray Old Lady Benally understood. She must have understood all along because even while she was talking her cheeks were wet with tears.