Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 02] (2 page)

"I don't think we're going to have any jurisdictional problems," Leaphorn said impatiently. "So why don't you fill us in on what we're working on?" It would have been more polite to let Pasquaanti set his own pace. Leaphorn knew it, and he saw in Pasquaanti's face that the Zuñi knew he knew it.

"Here's what we know so far," Pasquaanti said. He shuffled a Xeroxed page to each of them. "Two boys missing and a pretty good bet that one of them got cut."

Two
boys? Leaphorn scanned the page quickly and then, abruptly interested, went back over every sentence carefully. Two boys missing. Bowlegs and a Zuñi named Ernesto Cata, and the Cata boy's bicycle, and a "large" expanse of blood soaked into the ground where the bicycle had been left.

"It says here they're classmates," Leaphorn said. "But Bowlegs is fourteen and Cata is listed as twelve. Were they in the same grade?" Leap horn wished instantly he'd not asked the question. Pasquaanti would simply remind them all that Bowlegs was a Navajo—thereby explaining the gap in academic performance.

"Both in the seventh grade," Pasquaanti said. "The Cata boy'd be thirteen in a day or two. They'd been close friends two, three years. Good friends. Everybody says it."

"No trace of a weapon?" Naranjo asked.

"Nothing," Pasquaanti said. "Just blood. The weapon could have been anything that will let the blood out of you. You never saw so much blood. But I'd guess it wasn't a gun. Nobody remembers hearing anything that sounded like a shot and it happened close enough to the village so
somebody
would have heard." Pasquaanti paused. "I'd guess it was something that chopped. There was blood sprayed on the needles of piñon there as well as all that soaked into the ground, so maybe something cut a major artery while he was standing there. Anyway, whoever it was must have taken the weapon with him."

"Whoever?" Leaphorn said. "Then you're not all that sure Bowlegs is the one?"

Pasquaanti looked at him, studying his face. "We're not sure of nothing," he said. "All we know is down there. The Cata boy didn't come home last night. They went out looking for him when it got daylight and they found the blood where he left his bicycle. The Bowlegs kid had borrowed the bike and he was supposed to bring it back there to that meeting place they had. O.K.? So the Bowlegs boy shows up at school this morning, but when we find out about the borrowed bike and all and send a man over there to talk to him, he's gone. Turns out he got up during his social studies class and said something to the teacher about feeling sick and cut out."

"If he did the killing," Naranjo said, "you'd think he'd have run right after he did it."

"Course we don't know there
was
a killing yet," Pasquaanti said. "That could be animal blood. Lot of butchering going on now. People getting ready for all that cooking for Shalako."

"Unless maybe Bowlegs was smart enough to figure no one would suspect him unless he did run," Naranjo said. "So he came to school and i then he lost his nerve and ran anyway." >

"I don't think it got typed up there in the report, but the kids said Bowlegs was looking for Cata when he got to school, asking where he was and all," Pasquaanti said.

"That could have been part of the act," Leaphorn said. He was glad to find he was thinking like a cop again.

"I guess so," Pasquaanti said. "But remember he's just fourteen years old." Leaphorn tapped the page. "It says here that Cata had gone out to run. What was it? Track team or something?"

The silence lasted maybe three seconds—long enough to tell Leaphorn the answer wouldn't be the track team. It would be something to do with the Zuñi religion. Pasquaanti was deciding exactly how much he wanted them to know before he opened his mouth.

"This Cata boy had been selected to have a part in the religious ceremonials this year," Pasquaanti said. "Some of those ceremonials last for hours, the dancing is hard, and you have to be in condition. He was running every evening to keep in condition."

Leaphorn was remembering the Shalako ceremonial he'd attended a long time ago—back when he'd had a freshman Zuñi roommate. "Was Cata the one they call the Fire God? " he asked. "The one who is painted black and wears the spotted mask and carries the firebrand?"

"Yeah," Pasquaanti said. "Cata was Shulawitsi." He looked uncomfortable. "I don't imagine that has anything to do with this, though."

Leaphorn thought about it. Probably not, he decided. He wished he knew more about the Zuñi religion. But that wouldn't be his problem anyway. His problem would be finding George Bowlegs.

Pasquaanti was fumbling through a folder. "The only picture we have of the boys so far is the one in the school yearbook." He handed each of them a page of photos, two of the faces circled with red ink. "If we don't find them quick, we'll get the photographer to make us some big blowups off the negatives," he said. "We'll get copies of the pictures sent over to the sheriff's office and the state police, and over to the Arizona state police, too. And if we find out anything we'll get the word to you right away so you won't be wasting your time." Pasquaanti got up. "I'm going to ask Lieutenant Leaphorn to sort of concentrate on trying to find out where George Bowlegs got to. We'll be working on trying to find Ernesto and the bicycle, and anything else we can find out."

It occurred to Leaphorn that Pasquaanti, with his jurisdiction properly established, was not offering any advice about how to find Bowlegs. He was presuming that Naranjo and Highsmith and Leaphorn understood their jobs and knew how to do them.

"I'll need to know where Bowlegs lived, and if anybody's been there to see if he went home."

"It's about four miles out to where Shorty Bowlegs has his hogan and I'm going to have to draw you a little map," Pasquaanti said. "We went out, but we didn't learn anything."

Leaphorn's expression asked the question for him.

Pasquaanti looked slightly embarrassed. "Shorty was there. But he was too drunk to talk."

"O.K.," Leaphorn said. "Did you find any tracks around where you found the blood?"

"Lot of bicycle tracks. He'd been going there for months to start running. And then there was a place where somebody wearing moccasins or some sort of heelless shoes had been standing around. Looks like he waited quite a while. Found a place where he sat under the piñon there. Crushed down some weeds. And then there was the tracks of Ernesto's track shoes. It's mostly rock in that place. Hard to read anything."

Leaphorn was thinking that he might go to this spot himself, that he could find tracks where a Zuñi couldn't. Pasquaanti was looking at him, suspecting such thoughts. "You didn't find anything that told you much, then?" Leaphorn asked.

"Just that our boy Ernesto Cata had a lot of blood in him," Pasquaanti said. He smiled at Leaphorn, but the smile was grim.

THE TIRE BLEW about halfway back from Shorty Bowlegs's place, reconfirming Leaphorn's belief that days that begin badly tend to end badly. The road wound through the rough country behind Corn Mountain—nothing more than a seldom-used wagon track. One
could
follow it through the summer's growth of weeds and grama grass if one paid proper attention. Leaphorn hadn't. He had concentrated on making some sense of what little he had learned from Bowlegs instead of on his driving. And the left front wheel had slammed into a weed-covered pothole and ruptured its sidewall.

He set the jack under the front bumper. Bowlegs had been too drunk for coherent conversation. But apparently he had seen George this morning when the boy and his younger brother left on the long walk to catch the school bus. The elder Bowlegs didn't seem to have the faintest idea when George had returned to the hogan Sunday night. That could mean either that it was after Shorty had gone to sleep or that Shorty had been too drunk to notice.

Leaphorn pumped the jack handle, feeling irritated and slightly sorry for himself. By now Highsmith would be cruising comfortably down Interstate 40, having filed his descriptions of George Bowlegs and Ernesto Cata in the channels which would assure that highway patrolmen would eye young Indian hitchhikers with suspicion. And Orange Naranjo would be back in Gallup and equally done with it once his report was circulated in the proper places. Pasquaanti would have given up on finding any tracks by now and would simply be waiting. There would be nothing much else to do in Zuñi. The word would have spread within an hour through every red stone home in the beehive village and across the reservation that one of the sons of Zuñi was missing and probably dead and that the Navajo boy who was always hanging around was wanted by the police. If any Zuñi saw George Bowlegs anywhere, Pasquaanti would know it fast.

The jack slipped on the slope of the pothole. Leaphorn cursed with feeling and eloquence, removed the jack, and began laboriously chipping out a firmer base in the rocky soil with the jack handle. The outburst of profanity had made him feel a little better. After all, what the sergeant and the deputy and the Zuñi cop were doing was all that it made any sense for them to do. If Bowlegs headed for Albuquerque or Phoenix or Gallup, or hung around Zuñi territory, he would almost certainly be picked up quickly and efficiently. If he holed up somewhere in Navajo country, that would be Leaphorn's problem—and it was nobody's fault that it was a much tougher one, solvable only by persistent hard work. Leaphorn reset the jack, reinserted the handle, stretched his cramped muscles, and looked down the wagon track at the expanse of wooded mesas and broken canyon country stretching toward the southern horizon. He saw the beauty, the patterned cloud shadows, the red of the cliffs, and everywhere the blue, gold, and gray of dry country autumn. But soon the north wind would take the last few leaves and one cold night this landscape would change to solid white. And then George Bowlegs, if he was hiding somewhere in it, would be in trouble. He would survive easily enough until the snow came. There were dried berries and edible roots and rabbits, and a Navajo boy would know where to find them. But one day an end would come to the endless sunshine of the mountain autumn. An arctic storm front would bulge down out of western Canada, down the west slope of the Rockies. Here the altitude was almost a mile and a half above sea level and there was already hard frost in the mornings. With the first storm, the mornings would be subzero. There would be no way to find food with the snow blowing. On the first day, George Bowlegs would be hungry. Then he would be weak. And then he would freeze.

Leaphorn grimaced and turned back to the jack. It was then he saw the boy standing there shyly, not fifty feet away, waiting to be noticed. He recognized him instantly from the yearbook photograph. The same rounded forehead, the same wide-set, alert eyes, the same wide mouth. Leaphorn pumped the jack handle. "Ya-ta-hey," he said.

"Ya-ta-hey, uncle," the boy said. He had a book covered with butcher paper in his hand.

"You want to help change this wheel? I could use some help."

"O.K.," the boy said. "Give me the trunk key and I'll get the spare."

Leaphorn fished the keys out of his pocket, realizing now that this boy was too young to be George Bowlegs. He would be Cecil, the younger brother.

Cecil brought the spare while Leaphorn removed the last lug nuts. Leaphorn was thinking hard. He would be very careful.

"You're a
Navajo
policeman," the boy said. "I thought at first it was the Zuñi patrol car."

"The car belongs to the Dinee," Leaphorn said. "Just like you and I." Leaphorn paused, looking at Cecil. "And just like George, your brother." A flicker of surprise crossed the boy's face, and then it was blank.

"We are all of The People," Leaphorn said.

The boy glanced at him, silent.

"It would be a good thing if George talked to a Dinee policeman," Leaphorn said. He stressed the word "Dinee," which meant "The People."

"You're hunting him." The boy's voice was accusing. "You think like the Zuñis said at school—that he ran away because he killed that Ernesto."

"I don't even know the Zuñi boy is dead. All I know now is what the Zuñi policeman told me," Leaphorn said. "I wonder what your brother would tell me."

Cecil said nothing. He studied Leaphorn's face.

"I don't think George ran away because he killed the Cata boy," Leaphorn said. "If he ran away maybe it was because he was afraid the Zuñi policeman would lock him in jail." Leaphorn removed the left front wheel and carefully fit the spare on the lug nuts, not looking at Cecil. "Maybe that was a smart thing to do. Maybe not. If he didn't kill the Cata boy, then running away wasn't smart. It made the Zuñis think maybe he was the one. But if he did kill the Cata boy, maybe it was smart and maybe it wasn't. Because probably they will catch him and then it will be worse for him. And if they don't catch him, he will have to run all the rest of his life." Leaphorn reached for the lug wrench, looking at Cecil now. "That is a bad way to live. It would be better to spend a few years in jail and get it over with. Or maybe spend some time in a hospital. If that boy is dead, and if George was the one who killed him, it was because there is something wrong inside his head. He needs to have it cured. The authorities would put him in a hospital instead of the jail."

The silence ticked away. A gust of breeze moved down the hillside, ruffling the grama grass. It was cold.

Cecil licked his lips. "George didn't run because he was afraid of the Zuñi police," he said. "That wasn't why."

"Why then, nephew?" Leaphorn asked.

"It was the kachina." The boy's voice was so faint that Leaphorn wasn't sure he had heard it. "He ran away from the kachina."

"Kachina? What kachina?" It was a strange sensation, more than an abrupt change of subject; more like an unexpected shift from real to unreal. Leaphorn stared at Cecil. The word "kachina" had three meanings. They were the ancestor spirits of the Zuñi. Or the masks worn to impersonate these spirits. Or the small wooden dolls the Zuñis made to represent them. The boy wasn't going to say anything more. This kachina business was just something that had come off his tongue—something to avoid telling what he knew.