Empire of Dust (16 page)

A mission, then. That must have been it. He had seen a Spanish mission. But the only mission that he could remember was the Alamo, and he had only seen it in photographs. Still, that was what it had looked like. He would have to look at a picture of it again, refresh his memory. But he felt fairly confident that what he had seen was not the Alamo. It had been more open, the door recessed beneath the balustrade. At least, he thought that was how he remembered it.

But if there was one thing of which he did feel certain, it was that the prisoner was near. He had been in New York when Joseph had had his first dream, only a few miles away. So it seemed likely that he was close by now. Joseph didn't think it possible that so strong a dream impression could be sent over vast distances.

"Jesus," he muttered, "listen to yourself." He gave an exasperated sigh as he considered the idiotic places to which his imagination was taking him. A year ago he never would have even considered the strength of dream images as something to be transmitted, and now here he was, sounding less like his late hero, Carl Sagan, and more like Marianne Williamson or Deepak Chopra.

Still, the force of the prisoner's personality was such to make Joseph doubt if he could have come up with something so . . . godlike. But maybe that was why, he thought. Maybe his disbelief in God and the gods had been masking a need for the divine, the infinite. Maybe he was at that point in his life now where he realized that he was all too mortal. As a result, he hungered after immortality, even though he would not admit it to his waking self.

Or maybe the sonofabitch was really sending him dreams, telling him where he was.

And maybe he'd better try and get some sleep before he tried to explain this all to his colleagues in the daylight.

"I
think it's a coincidence," he told Laika and Tony, over a late breakfast in the Gallup Inn's coffee shop, "but I thought it's something that you should know about, if for no other reason than to keep an eye on me if I start cracking up."

"I don't think you're going nuts," Tony said. "Your previous dream was, what's the word, visionary? It fit in with the windows we found in the church where the prisoner had once been held. And the fact that he was imprisoned within lead walls . . . we saw that at the church,
and
at the deserted office building where he was imprisoned."

Laika put down her cup and eyed Tony. "So you think the dream wasn't just a coincidence, a construct of different elements?"

"Look," Tony said, "even though this area has missions, I don't recall us driving past any since we got here, do you? As for this keyhole-shaped room with the little hole, where'd
that
come from? Does that have any significance for you, Joseph?"

"Not a bit. But it doesn't mean my dreaming it was the result of some outside force. Maybe when my subconscious was thinking about the prisoner, it was only natural to think of him as being under lock and key—so I saw a big keyhole."

"What about the smaller hole?" Tony asked.

Joseph wiggled his eyebrows up and down. "Sexual, no doubt."

"Or a
sipapu
, " Laika said softly.

"A who?" asked Joseph.

She frowned, then shook her head and looked out the window. "Oh, nothing. Just more Indian mumbo jumbo." Her eyes narrowed. "And speaking of Indians. . . ."

Tony followed her gaze and saw Officer Yazzie pulling into the parking lot in his big white dusty car. He got out and set his dark cowboy hat on top of his stylishly cut hair, then walked toward the lobby. "Go get him," Tony said to the others. "I'll sign the tab."

When Tony stepped into the lobby two minutes later, Yazzie was talking with Laika and Joseph. "Dr. Antonelli," Laika said to him, "Officer Yazzie's given us some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the BIA is allowing us to investigate these deaths all we want on Indian land. But the bad news is that it's conditional."

"On what?" Tony asked, knowing when to give the set-up.

"On our being accompanied at all times by a tribal policeman." She looked up at a grinning Yazzie. "And guess who that tall, dark, and handsome gentleman is?" It occurred to Tony that of the three of them, only Laika could get away with the "dark" line.

Tony stuck out his hand and shook Yazzie's. "Howdy, colleague."

"I'm glad you're taking it so well," Yazzie said, tongue firmly in cheek.

"We got a choice?" asked Tony.

"No, but frankly, you're better off with me than without me. You try to talk to the People on your own, you won't get very far. But maybe I can sort of ease the way. They'll be more likely to tell me things they wouldn't tell you alone."

"What's this 'People' stuff?" Joseph asked. "That's not the first time I've heard it, and it sounds more than just generic."

"It is. The Navajo refer to themselves as
Dineh
, which means 'the People,' with a capital P."

"No ego problems there," said Joseph. "Is that what these Anasazi called themselves, too?"

Yazzie shook his head. "Navajo aren't descended from Anasazi—that's the Pueblo Indians, Zuni and Hopi. Navajo come from Athapascan tribes, from the north."

"So 'the People' are a mite cliquish, huh?" asked Joseph.

"I think you learned that when you visited Ralph Begay's family." Yazzie smiled at their startled looks. "No, I wasn't checking up on you—I just figured you'd go there first, ask for permission. And last night proved you didn't get it. Believe me, you won't be any more persuasive in other areas. You're going to be glad I'm around." He shrugged. "What do you want to do first?"

T
he four drove in Yazzie's car to Red Water, the village where Ralph Begay had lived. The cars that had been so numerous the day before were gone, except for a 1980 Dodge Dart whose rocker panels were nearly eaten away by rust. A Navajo woman in her forties was sitting in a white resin chair on the porch. She was wearing a short-sleeved, red-checked blouse and a long green skirt. "Can I help you?" she asked in English.

"We'd like to see Mrs. Begay," Yazzie said. "I'm Officer Yazzie. I'd like to talk to her about her husband."

The woman stood up. "She's my mother-in-law," she said. "I'm Ella." Then she looked suspiciously at the three ops.

"These folks are from the government," Yazzie said. "They're all right."

Ella seemed to take his word for it, for she nodded and led the way inside. Mrs. Begay was wearing a long black skirt and a long-sleeved black blouse. Her face was a map of wrinkles, like a slab of rock crisscrossed with faultlines. "Mrs. Begay?" Laika said, but the woman only looked at her.

"Mrs. Begay?" Yazzie repeated.

"I'm Dorothy Begay," the woman finally said, looking now at Yazzie's brown face and the badge on his chest. It seemed, Tony thought, as if she wasn't going to talk to the white-eyes, and apparently even Laika fit that category.

Yazzie introduced himself and the ops, and then asked if it would be all right if they would ask her some questions. She nodded, but kept her eyes on Yazzie, not even looking away when Laika spoke to her.

"Mrs. Begay," she said, "your husband's death was quite out of the ordinary, and the foundation is investigating the possible causes. The first thing we have to rule out is foul play, so can you tell us if your husband knew anyone who would have wished him ill?"

Dorothy Begay frowned even more deeply, then closed her eyes for a moment. "No." Tony knew in an instant that she wasn't telling the truth, and the sour look on the daughter-in-law's face only added to his certainty.

"Are you sure?" Yazzie asked, and the old woman looked stubbornly into his eyes.

"He had no enemies," she said.

Laika asked a few other questions about Begay's medical history, and about his drinking habits, but according to his wife, he never drank to excess, nor did he have any adverse medical conditions. Tony was sure they weren't going to get a thing out of the old woman, and Laika must have felt the same way, because she thanked Dorothy Begay and led the way outside.

On the porch, Yazzie turned to Ella. "Your mother-in-law didn't feel like talking. Anything you could add?"

Ella chewed her upper lip for a moment, then nodded and beckoned them toward the car, away from the house. "I don't know what happened to him," she said, when they were out of earshot of the house, "or
how
it happened, but he was my father-in-law, and if anybody did anything bad to him, then they ought to pay. He was a sad and unhappy man, and he didn't deserve to die like he did." She nodded firmly. "He did have enemies, though. He made a lot of them when he talked with John Reece."

"The mystery writer?" asked Tony. He had read a half dozen of Reece's novels, but had stopped after they became repetitious.

"Yes," Ella said. "Reece met my father-in-law in a bar in Gallup—the Wet Moccasin, real politically correct name. Ralph was active in the village ceremonials with the other elders. The young people aren't very interested anymore—oh, for the annual festivals the tourists go to, sure, they can make some money dancing and all, but not the real thing. Tourists don't see that, they don't know. But Ralph knew about the real thing, and that was what Reece wanted."

Ella shook her head. "My father-in-law liked to drink, and Reece bought him plenty. The more he drank, the looser his tongue got. He told Reece a lot. They met again, many times, and every time Ralph told more. Reece paid him for the information, and then he used it in his books. But the other elders found out about it."

"How?" Yazzie asked.

Ella shrugged. "You can't keep these things secret. Somebody saw Reece giving Ralph money, or overheard him talking to Reece, I don't know. But when they found out, Ralph was banned from the ceremonials. And he was pretty well shunned by everybody but his own family, and even some of them. His brother, in particular."

"Why was that?"

"Uncle Kee's a medicine man. He didn't like the idea of Ralph giving away his secrets. He wouldn't even come to his funeral."

"You think this Kee would be angry enough to do something about it?" Joseph asked.

"He
did
," the woman answered. "He was the one who got my father-in-law banned."

Yazzie nodded. "Yes, but anything more than that?"

"Kee told Ralph, when he found out about it, that the gods would punish him for what he'd done. I think," Ella said slowly, "that he might have put a curse on him. But the shunning was enough of a curse. Ralph had no friends outside the family, so he started drinking more and more, and with what John Reece had paid him over the months for information, he had enough to do it. He left behind a fair amount." She smiled thinly at Yazzie. "For a Navajo."

"Does your Uncle Kee live here in Red Water?" asked Yazzie.

Ella pointed down the bare dirt road. "The street to the left. He's in the blue house at the end."

"Could you introduce us?" Yazzie asked.

"You don't want me to. Uncle Kee refuses to have anything to do with any family members who still associated with Ralph."

"Does that mean that you're . . . shunned, too?" Tony asked.

"Just by Uncle Kee," she said. "No big loss."

K
ee Begay's house was painted blue, all right, though much of it had chipped off, revealing the bare boards underneath. On the dirt in front of the porch was a two-foot-wide plateau of sand an inch high, with large, dark feathers encircling it. Several stones and the claw of some bird were arranged in a pattern on the sand.

Yazzie knocked on the torn screen door, while the ops stood a few yards behind him. Behind the mesh screen, Tony could see a shadowy figure, and heard a deep, resonating voice speaking, he assumed, the Navajo language.

After a minute, Yazzie turned and beckoned them onto the worn boards of the porch, as the screen door opened and Kee Begay came out. He put a round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat on as he stepped into the sunlight, and glowered at the ops out of a craggy, fissured face. He wore glasses whose heavy black plastic frames and thick lenses made him look like a Svengali of owls.

"I don't like talking to white folks," were his first words after Yazzie introduced them. "Or to those with them," he added, nodding to Laika. "But I've learned that if you don't talk to them, they come back and keep bothering you, and I like being bothered less than I like talking. What is it you want to know about?"