Sacred Clowns (6 page)

“HIS NAME’S Eugene Ahkeah,” said Lieutenant Toddy. “The family lives out toward Coyote Canyon but he’s got a place in Thoreau. He works out at the Saint Bonaventure Mission. Sort of a handyman job.”

The lieutenant had spread an array of items on his desk top. “When he’s sober,” he added. He handed Streib an inventory sheet. Streib glanced at it and passed it to Leaphorn.

Cardboard grocery carton in which the following items were found:

• Plastic bread wrapper containing two ingots of silver
  

Plastic grocery bag containing following items:

• Sand-cast silver bracelet
  
• Sand-cast silver concha belt
  
• Hammered silver ornamental pin
  
• Seven silver belt buckles
  
• Four ingots of silver
  
• Ball-peen hammer with bloodstains on hammer head and on handle
  

Leaphorn looked from the list at the array on the table, making an unnecessary check of the inventory. Unneeded but not useless. It kept him from thinking his dreary thoughts. About the wages of avarice. About, almost certainly, the bloody cost of alcohol among The People, whose hunger was rarely for money. It was for oblivion bought by the bottle.

“Did you send a blood sample off to the lab?” Streib was asking.

“It’s ready to go,” Toddy said. “We just found this stuff this morning.”

“It was under his house?” Streib asked. “That what you said?”

“Actually, it’s a mobile home.”

“Did you get a search warrant?”

Lieutenant Toddy gave Leaphorn an uneasy sidelong glance.

“We told him we’d gotten this call. A man called—wouldn’t give his name—and reported some things taken from Dorsey’s shop were under Ahkeah’s place. We told Ahkeah we’d get a search warrant if he wanted us to,” Toddy said. “And he said there wasn’t anything under there. And I told him we’d have to find out for ourselves, one way or the other, and he said, ‘Well, let’s go see, then.’ And he came out and pulled away the plywood he had there to keep the animals out, and there was the box. In plain view. Just pushed back in there.”

Lieutenant Toddy paused, wrinkled his forehead at the weirdness of human behavior, and shook his head.

“He pulled the box out himself,” Toddy added.

“How did he act then?” Leaphorn asked. “What’d he say? Any explanation?”

Toddy shrugged. “He acted like he’d been drinking. He said, ‘How’d that get under there?’”

“Was he drunk?”

“About two-thirds. Maybe four-fifths.”

“Any idea at all who the call was from? Did Ahkeah have any idea?”

“The dispatcher took it,” Toddy said. “A man. He wouldn’t give a name. She said he sounded like an Anglo. And Ahkeah, he acted like he didn’t have any idea.”

“I’ll handle the blood sample,” Streib said. “Get it to the lab for you. Did you get a statement from Ahkeah?”

“He said he didn’t know anything about it.” Toddy extracted a clipboard from his desk and handed it to Streib. “He said Dorsey was a friend of his. That he didn’t kill him.”

Streib read, lips pursed. He handed the clipboard to Leaphorn. The statement was brief and Toddy had summarized it well. He’d only left out that Ahkeah wasn’t going to talk to anyone anymore until he got a lawyer. Everybody was watching television these days. Doing it like they did it on TV.

“Did he call a lawyer?” Leaphorn asked.

“He said he didn’t have any money so we called DNA for him. He said they were going to send somebody out from Window Rock.”

Leaphorn felt one of those uneasy premonitions. The supply of legal aid people at Window Rock was small, of those competent to defend criminal cases even smaller.

“Did they say who they’re sending?”

“That woman,” Toddy said. “Janet Pete.”

“Oh, shit,” Leaphorn said.

Streib noticed the tone. “She’s trouble?”

“She’s the lady friend of my new assistant,” Leaphorn said. “At least I think he wants her to be. That’s what I hear.”

“That could be trouble,” Streib said.

“Yes, indeed.”

Back in the lockup section, they found Ahkeah dozing on his bunk under the window. He was slightly overweight and slightly gone-to-seed. Leaphorn guessed his age in the late forties. He sat up clumsily into the sunlight, facing them first with the apologetic confusion of one emerging from alcoholic sleep, and then with the defiant, tense look of a worried man. Seeing him now in the bright sunlight, Leaphorn reconsidered his judgment of Ahkeah’s age. Maybe early thirties, with fifteen years subtracted from his prime by whiskey.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Ahkeah said.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Streib told him. “We just wondered how that silver, and jewelry, and all that other stuff got under your place. If you could help us with that maybe we could get you out of here.”

“I got a lawyer coming,” Ahkeah said. “Talk to the lawyer.”

“You don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want. It just saves everybody some time. Maybe it would fix it so you could go on home.”

“Or maybe not,” Ahkeah said. “I just tell you one thing, though.” He wiped his hand across his face and then stared directly into Streib’s eyes. “There’s no way I’d ever hurt Eric. He was a friend to me. There’s no goddam way I’d ever hurt him,” he said, and his voice was shaking as he said it. Then Eugene Ahkeah slumped back on his bunk, turned to the wall, and put his pillow over his head.

* * *

The twenty-seven twisting miles up and over Borrego Pass to Thoreau gave them time to talk about Ahkeah.

“He’d be pretty dumb to do it that way, or pretty drunk,” Streib said.

“You know,” Leaphorn said. “If I had just one single wish, what I think it would be, it would be to get rid of booze. No more beer. No more wine. No more bourbon, or Scotch, or any other damn thing that causes a man to hit his friend on the head with a hammer.”

“You think he did it?” Streib’s sideways glance showed surprise. “That anonymous telephone tip. I’ll bet that makes you uneasy.”

“It makes me uneasy some. But that little speech he made there at the end was sort of like a confession.”

Streib looked surprised again. “You mean, where he was telling us he’d never hurt Dorsey?”

Leaphorn sighed. “Sounded to me like a drunk trying to convince himself that it was all a bad dream.”

The acting assistant director of Saint Bonaventure Indian Mission was named Montoya, but she was clearly a Pueblo Indian and she looked to Leaphorn like a Zuni. She said she didn’t know for sure why all that silver hadn’t been reported missing from the craft shop inventory but she said she could make an educated guess.

“I’ll bet it was because Eric didn’t put it down in the first place.”

“Why not?” Streib asked.

“Because he was always buying stuff out of his own money. Buying stuff we couldn’t afford. Tools. Turquoise. Special fancy woods.” She shrugged. “Everything. Eric wasn’t very practical.”

“So he didn’t log it in when it was delivered. Is that what you mean?”

The conversation was getting more specific than the acting assistant director wanted. She looked slightly flustered. “You should be asking Father Haines. He’ll be back next Tuesday.”

“We’ll ask him,” Streib said. “We just wanted to hurry things along a little. How about the jewelry? The concha belt. The bracelet.”

“I saw something about the belt here on the desk,” she said, and fished a piece of salmon-colored notepaper out of the in-basket and read from it. “’Tom Tso wants to pick up the concha belt he was finishing in Eric’s class. How does he get it? And some other students want to get their projects. Let me know what to tell them.’ That’s from Mr. Denny. He helps Eric with driving the school buses.” She made an odd face, and Leaphorn guessed it was to keep from crying. “Helped Eric, I meant. No more Eric now.”

“Mrs. Montoya,” Streib said. “I want to ask you to get us a list of everything students had in that craft shop that’s missing now. We particularly want to know who was making one of the kachina dolls in there. The koshare. And then could you shed any light on a sort of funny-looking wood and cloth contraption we found on Dorsey’s shell? Looked like it might have been a hand puppet.” Streib demonstrated with his own hand. “It looked like a duck.”

But Mrs. Montoya was focused on the koshare doll. “Oh, that koshare,” she said. “That’s my son doing that one.” The thought startled her. “Why do you want to know about that?”

Streib glanced at Leaphorn. “See?” he said. Then, to Mrs. Montoya, “It’s a class project?”

“Mr. Dorsey always wanted them to make something they thought they could sell. Allen thought he could sell one of those. Why?”

“We thought it might be significant,” Leaphorn said. “But it probably isn’t if it’s a student project. Do you know about the hand-puppet duck?” He gave Streib a glance. Dilly hadn’t told him about this duck.

Mrs. Montoya seemed relieved. She laughed. “Mr. Dorsey was our school comedian,” she said. “When the kids put on programs they’d get him to be the master of ceremonies. He was a ventriloquist. He wasn’t very good at it, but the children thought he was great.”

“A funny man, then?” Streib said.

“He was our school clown,” she said, looking sad at the thought. “He could always make other people laugh, but I don’t think he laughed much himself.”

This aroused Streib’s interest. “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe Father Haines would know. Maybe he was lonely.” She made a wry face and changed the subject. “I’ll be glad to get that information for you,” and while she was writing a reminder on her notepad, she added, “Eric Dorsey was a good man.” She looked up, at Streib and then at Leaphorn, as if challenging them to deny it. “A kind man. And gentle. And talented, too.”

“The students liked him?” Leaphorn asked.

She nodded. “Everybody liked him. He wasn’t a Catholic, you know, but I think he was a saint. Everybody loved him.”

“Not quite everybody,” Streib said. “Do you have any idea who didn’t?”

“I really don’t,” she said. “And I’ve thought about it, and thought about it, but I just don’t.” She tapped the list Lieutenant Toddy had given them with a plump finger. “I thought you thought somebody killed him to steal this stuff.”

“Maybe that was it,” Leaphorn said. “But we used to think maybe he was killed over a woman.”

“Well,” Mrs. Montoya said. “It wouldn’t be that.”

“You sound sure of that,” Leaphorn said.

Mrs. Montoya looked flustered.

“Could you tell us something that might bear on who killed Eric Dorsey?” Streib asked. “If you can, it’s your duty to tell us.”

“I talk too much,” Mrs. Montoya said. “I gossip. I shouldn’t gossip about the dead.”

“My mother used to say the only thing gossip can’t hurt is live sheep or dead people,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe it would help us find who killed the man.”

“You sounded awful sure no woman was involved. Is there some reason for that?” Streib asked.

“Well,” Mrs. Montoya said. She moved a letter from the out-basket back into the in-basket, and then reversed the process. She looked around the tiny, cluttered office, searching for something to guide her. “Well,” she repeated, “I think maybe Mr. Dorsey was gay.”

Dilly Streib, who had been looking only moderately interested, now looked extremely interested.

“Homosexual?”

She shrugged. “That’s what people thought.”

“Was Eugene Ahkeah his boyfriend?”

Mrs. Montoya looked shocked. “Of course not,” she said.

“You sound like you know,” Streib said.

“Well, Gene had a wife.” She laughed. “Once, anyway. And maybe a couple of girlfriends, too. I know Eugene isn’t gay.”

Leaphorn became aware that he was tired. Streib had occupied the only visitor chair. Leaphorn leaned a hip against Mrs. Montoya’s filing cabinet. It had been a long day. He cleared his throat.

“Do you know if Mr. Dorsey had a boyfriend?”

“No. I don’t think so. Not here, anyway. Maybe back where he came from.”

Back where he came from, if the report Streib had showed him was correct, was Fort Worth, Texas. Eric Dorsey, laboratory equipment maintenance technician, Texas Christian University, single, next of kin: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dorsey, Springfield, Illinois. Cause of death: Blow to base of the skull.

“Maybe you could help with something that puzzled me,” Leaphorn said. “The investigating officer’s report showed he had an envelope full of gasoline credit card receipts in his room. Several hundred gallons. All bought at the station here at Thoreau, so he wasn’t going very far. You have any ideas where he was going?”

Mrs. Montoya looked surprised. “No,” she said. “He was usually around here. He had an old Chevy but . . .” A sudden thought interrupted the sentence. “Oh,” she said. “You know what I’ll bet? I’ll bet he paid for the gas for the water truck. He drove that on weekends. That’s when we did the deliveries. That would be just like him. Father Haines would know.”

“Water truck?” Streib asked.

“He taught during the weekdays, and drove the bus. But on weekends and some evenings he drove the water truck. Took water and food out to the hogans. Hard to get water a lot of places out here so people haul it in. But people get old, or they get sick, or their pickup breaks down and they don’t have any way.”