Talking God jlajc-9

by Tony Hillerman

  “A couple of hours ago. Whoever hit her on the head found the perfect place to hide her.” Rodney looked down at them, the tale teller pausing to underline his point. “They laid her out on, the grass there between the shrubbery and the sidewalk, and got some old newspapers out of the trash bin there and threw them over her.”

  Chee understood perfectly the sardonic tone in Rodney’s voice, but Leaphorn said: “Right by the sidewalk and nobody checked all morning?”

  “This is Friday,” Rodney said. “In Washington, the Good Samaritan comes by only on the seventh Tuesday of the month.” And he walked away to make his telephone call.

  The only remaining sign that a corpse had been on display under the shrubbery adjoining the Twelfth Street entrance to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History was a uniformed policeman who stood beside a taped-off area. He was whistling idly, and he glanced at Rodney without a sign of recognition. Probably too young.

  Inside, Rodney’s badge got them through the STAFF ONLY doorway. They took the elevator to the sixth floor and found that Dr. Hartman was not in. A young woman who seemed to be her assistant said she was probably down on the main floor at her mask exhibition. And no, the young woman said, Henry Highhawk had not showed up for work.

  “Did you hear what happened?” she asked. “I mean about the guard being killed?”

  “We heard,” Rodney said. “Do you know where we can get the key to Highhawk’s office?”

  “Dr. Hartman would probably have one,” she said. “But wasn’t that dreadful? You don’t expect something like that to happen to someone you know.”

  “Did you know her?” Rodney said.

  The young woman looked slightly flustered. “Well, I saw her a lot,” she said. “You know. When I worked late she would be standing there.”

  “Her name was Alice Yoakum,” Rodney said, mildly. “Mrs. Alice Yoakum. Is there a way we can page Dr. Hartman? Or call down there for her somehow?”

  There was, but Dr. Hartman proved to be either unreachable or too busy to come to the telephone.

  “It might not be locked,” Chee said. “It wasn’t when I left. If he didn’t come back who would lock it?”

  “Maybe some sort of internal security,” Rodney said.

  But nobody had locked it. The door opened under Rodney’s hand. The room was silent, lit by an overhead fluorescent tube, the blinds down as Chee remembered them. Highhawk’s gesture at keeping his light from leaking out into the night was now holding out the daylight.

  “You leave the light on last night?” Rodney asked.

  Chee nodded. “He said he was coming back. I thought he might. I just pulled the door closed.”

  They stood inside the doorway, inspecting the room.

  “Everything look like you left it?” Rodney asked.

  “Looks like it,” Chee said.

  Rodney picked up the telephone, dialed, listened. “This is Rodney,” he said. “Get hold of Sergeant Willis and tell him I’m calling from Henry Highhawk’s office on the sixth floor of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. He’s not here. Nobody’s seen him. Tell him I have Jim Chee with me. We’re going to look around up here and if I don’t hear from him before then, I’ll call back in—” he glanced at his watch “—about forty-five minutes.” He cradled the telephone, sat in Highhawk’s chair, looked at Leaphorn who was leaning against the wall, then at Chee by the window.

  “Either one of you have any creative thoughts?” he asked. ’This isn’t my baby—nor yours either for that matter—but here we are knee deep in it.“

  “I’m asking myself some questions,” Leaphorn said. “We have this Highhawk vaguely connected to the knifing of a terrorist, or whatever you want to call him, out in New Mexico. Just the name in the victim’s notebook. Now we have him disappearing, I guess, the same night this guard is killed here. But do we know when the guard was killed?”

  “Coroner said the first glance looked like it was before midnight,” Rodney said. “He may get closer when they have the autopsy finished.”

  Leaphorn looked thoughtful. “So it might have been either shortly before, or shortly after, Highhawk walked out of here. Either way?”

  “Sounds like it,” Rodney said. He glanced at Chee. “How about you?”

  “I’m thinking that this is the world’s best place to hide a body,” Chee said, slowly. “Tens of thousands of cases and containers lining the halls. Most of them big enough for a body.”

  “But locked,” Rodney said. “And some of them, I noticed, were sealed, too.”

  “They all use the same simple little master key,” Chee said. “At least most of them must use the same key, or you’d need a truck to haul your keys around. I think you just pick up a key, sign for it, and keep it until you’re finished with it. Something like that.”

  “You know if Highhawk had a key?”

  “I’d guess so,” Chee said. “He was a conservator. He would have been working with this stuff all the time.”

  Leaphorn put his forefinger on a hook which had been screwed into the doorjamb. “I’d been wondering what this was for,” he said. “I’d guess it was where Highhawk hung his key.”

  No key hung there now, but the white paint below the hook was discolored with years of finger marks.

  “Let’s go look around,” Rodney said. He got up.

  “He took it when he left,” Chee said. “And before we go looking, why not make a telephone call first? Call maintenance, or whoever might know, and ask them if they found anything unusual this morning.”

  Rodney paused at the doorway, looking interested. “Like what?”

  Chee noticed that Leaphorn was looking at him, smiling slightly.

  “Chee’s a pessimist,” Leaphorn said. “He thinks somebody killed Highhawk. If somebody did, it would be tough to drag him out of the building—even with the guard dead. Not many people around at night in here, I’d guess, but it would only take one to see you.”

  Rodney still looked puzzled. “So?”

  “So this place is jammed with bins and boxes and cases and containers where you could hide a body. But they’re probably all full of things already. So the killer empties one out, puts in the body, and then he relocks it. But now he’s stuck with whatever came out of the bin. So he looks for a place and dumps it somewhere.”

  Rodney picked up the telephone again. He dialed, identified himself, and said: “Give me the museum security office, please.” Judging from the Rodney end of the conversation, Museum Security had no useful information. The call was transferred to maintenance. Chee found himself watching Leaphorn, thinking how quickly his mind had worked. Leaphorn was still standing beside the open door and as Chee watched, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, grimacing slightly. He was wearing black wing-tip shoes burnished to a high gloss. Leaphorn’s feet, as was true of Chee’s, would be accustomed to boots and more breathing space. Chee guessed Leaphorn’s hurt and that made him conscious of the comfort of his own feet, at home in the familiar boots. He felt slightly superior. It served Leaphorn right for trying to look like an Easterner.

  “A what?” Rodney was saying. “Where did they find it?” He listened. “How large is it?” Listened again. “Where did it come from?” Listened. “Okay. We’ll check. Thanks.” He hung up, looked at Chee.

  “They found a fish trap,” he said. “Thing’s made out of split bamboo by somebody-or-other. They said it had just sort of been pushed up into a passage between two stacks of containers.”

  “How big?” Leaphorn asked.

  Rodney was dialing the telephone again. He glanced up at Leaphorn and said: “Big as a body.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  « ^ »

  First, Leroy Fleck called his brother. It was something he rarely did. Delmar Fleck had made it very clear that he couldn’t afford to have contacts with a convict—particularly one known to be his relative. Delmar’s wife answered the telephone. She didn’t recognize his voice and Leroy didn’t identify himself to her
because if he did, he was pretty sure she would hang up on him.

  “Yeah,” Delmar said, and Leroy got right to the point.

  “It’s me. Leroy. And I got to have some help with Mama. They’re kicking her out of the home here in the District and the one I found to move her into wants more advance money down than I can handle.”

  “I told you not to call me,” Delmar said.

  “I just got to have some help,” Leroy said. “I was supposed to get a payment today, but something held it up. Ten thousand dollars. When I get it next week, I’ll pay you right back.“

  “We been over this before,” Delmar said. “I don’t make hardly anything at the car lot, and Faye Lynn just gets tips at the beauty shop.”

  “If you could just send me two thousand dollars I could come up with the rest. Then next week I’ll send it back to you. Western Union.” Next week would take care of itself. He would think of something by then. Elkins would have another job for him. Elkins always had jobs for him. And until Elkins came through with something bigger, he’d just have to go on the prowl for a few days.

  “No blood in this turnip,” Delmar said. “It’s already squeezed. I couldn’t raise two thousand dollars if my life depended on it. We got two car payments, and rent, and the credit card, and medical insurance and—”

  “Delmar. Delmar. I just got to have some help. Can you borrow something? Just for a week or so?”

  “We been all over this. The government takes care of people like Mama. Let the government do it.”

  “I used to think that, too,” Leroy said. “But they don’t actually do it. There’s no program for people like Mama.” Silence on the other end. “And, Delmar, you need to find a way to come and visit with her. It’s been years and she’s asking about you all the time. She told me she thought the Arabs had you a hostage somewhere. She thinks that to keep her feelings from being hurt. Her mind’s not what it used to be. Sometimes she don’t even recognize me.“

  There was still only silence. Then he heard Delmar’s voice, sounding a long ways off, talking to someone. Then he heard a laugh.

  “Delmar!” he shouted. “Delmar!”

  “Sorry,” Delmar said. “We got company. But that’s my advice. Just call social services. I’d help you if I could, but I’m pressed myself. Got to cut it off now.”

  And he cut it off, leaving Fleck standing at the telephone booth. He looked at the telephone, fighting down first the despair and then the anger, trying to think of who else he could call. But there wasn’t anyone.

  Fleck kept his reserve money in a child’s plastic purse tucked under the spare tire in the trunk of his old Chevy—a secure enough place in a society where thieves were not attracted to dented 1976 sedans. He fished it out now, and headed across town toward the nursing home, counting it while he waited for red lights to turn green.

  He counted three hundreds, twenty-two fifties, eleven twenties, and forty-one tens. With what he had in his billfold it added up to $2,033. He’d see what he could do with that with the Fat Man at the rest home. He didn’t like going back there like this. It sure as hell wasn’t the way he had it planned, or would plan anything for that matter. He normally would have been smart enough not to make an enemy of a man when you were going to have to ask him a favor. But maybe a combination of paying him and scaring him would work for a little while. Until he could pull something off. He could make a hit out at National Airport. In the men’s room. The blade and then off with the billfold. People going on planes always carried money. It would be risky. But he could see no choice. He’d try that, and then work on the tourists around the Capitol Building. That was risky, too. In fact, both places scared him. But he had made up his mind. He would fix something up with the Fat Man to buy a little time and then start collecting enough to get Mama someplace safe and decent.

  The Fat Man wasn’t in.

  “He went out to get something. Down to the Seven-Eleven, I think he said,” the receptionist told him. “Why don’t you just come on back later in the day? Or maybe you better call first.” She was looking at the little sack Fleck was carrying, looking suspicious, as if it was some sort of dope. Actually it was red licorice. Mama liked the stuff and Fleck always brought her a supply. The receptionist was some kind of Hispanic—probably Puerto Rican, Fleck guessed. And she looked nervous as well as suspicious while she talked to him. That made Fleck nervous. Maybe she would call the police. Maybe she had heard something the last time he was here when he told the Fat Man he would kill him if he didn’t hold on to Mama until he could find her another place. But he hadn’t seen her that day, and he’d kept his voice low when he explained things to the fat bastard. Maybe she was around somewhere listening. Maybe she wasn’t. There was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t have any options left.

  “I’ll just go on back there to the parlor and visit with Mama until he gets back,” Fleck said.

  “Oh, she’s not there anymore,” the receptionist said. “She fights with the other ladies all the time. And she hurt poor old Mrs. Endicott again. Twisted her arm.”

  Fleck didn’t want to hear any more of that kind of talk. He hurried down the hallway to Mama’s room.

  Mama was sitting in her wheelchair looking at the little TV Fleck had bought for her, watching some soap opera which Fleck thought might be “The Young and the Restless.” They had her tied in the chair, as they did all the old people, and it touched Fleck to see her that way. She was so helpless now. Mama had never been helpless until she’d had those strokes. Mama had always been in charge before then. It made Fleck unhappy when he came to see her. It filled him with a kind of dreary sorrow and made him wish he could get far enough ahead so that he could afford a place somewhere and take care of her himself. And he always started trying to think again how he could do it. But there was simply no way. The way Mama was, he would have to be with her all the time. He couldn’t just go off and leave her tied in that chair. And that wouldn’t leave him with any way to make a living for them.

  Mama glanced at him when he came through the door. Then she looked back at her television program. She didn’t say anything.

  “Hello,” Fleck said. “How are you feeling today?”

  Mama didn’t look up.

  “I brought you some licorice, Mama,” Fleck said. He held out the sack.

  “Put it down on the bed there,” Mama said. Sometimes Mama spoke normally, but sometimes it took her a while to form the words—a matter of pitting indomitable will against a recalcitrant, stroke-damaged nervous system. Fleck waited, remembering. He remembered the way Mama used to talk. He remembered the way Mama used to be. Then she would have made short work of the Fat Man.

  “You doing all right today, Mama?” he asked. “Anything I can do for you?”

  Mama still didn’t look at him. She stared at the set, where a woman was shouting at a well-dressed man in poorly feigned anger. “I was,” Mama said, finally. “People keep coming in and bothering me.”

  “I guess I could put a stop to that,” Fleck said.

  Mama turned then and looked at him, her eyes absolutely without expression. It occurred to him that maybe it was him she meant. He studied her, wondering if she recognized him. If she did, there was no sign of it. She rarely did in recent years. Well, he would stay and visit anyway. Just keep her company. All her life, as far back as Fleck could remember into his childhood, Mama had had pitifully little of that.

  “That girl there’s got on a pretty dress,” Fleck said. “I mean the one on TV.”

  Mama ignored him. Poor woman, Fleck thought. Poor, pathetic old woman. He stood beside the open door, examining her profile. She had been a good-sized woman once—maybe 140 pounds or so. Strong and quick and smart as they come. Now she was skinny as a rail and stuck in that wheelchair. She couldn’t hardly talk and her mind was not working well.

  “How about me giving you a push?” Fleck asked. “Would you like to go for a ride? It’s raining outside but I could push you around inside the building.
Give you a little change.”

  Mama still stared at the TV. The angry woman on “The Young and the Restless” had left, slamming the door behind her. Now the man was talking on the telephone. Mama hitched herself forward in the chair. “I had a boy once who had a four-door Buick,” she said in a clear voice that sounded surprisingly young. “Dark blue and that velvety upholstery on the seats. He took me to Memphis in that.”

  “That would have been Delmar’s car,” Fleck said. “It was a nice one.” Mama had talked of it before but Fleck had never seen it. Delmar must have bought it while Fleck was doing his time in Joliet.

  “Delmar is his name, all right,” Mama said. “The Arabs got him hostage in Jerusalem or someplace. Otherwise he’d come to see me, Delmar would. He’d take care of me right. He was all man, that one was.”

  “I know he would,” Fleck said. “Delmar is a good man.”

  “Delmar was all man,” Mama said, still staring at the TV set. “He wouldn’t let nobody treat him like a nigger. Do Delmar and he’d get you right back. He’d make you respect him. You can count on that. That’s one thing you always got to do, is get even. If you don’t do that they treat you like a goddamn animal. Step right on your neck. Delmar wouldn’t let anybody not treat him right.“

  “No, Mama, he wouldn’t,” Fleck said. Actually, as he remembered it, Delmar wasn’t much for fighting. He was for keeping out of the way of trouble.

  Mama looked at him, eyes hostile. “You talk like you know Delmar.”

  “Yes, Mama. I do. I’m Leroy. I’m Delmar’s brother.”

  Mama snorted. “No you ain’t. Delmar only had one brother. He ended up a damn jailbird.”

  The room smelled stale to Leroy. He smelled something that might have been spoiled food, and dust and the acidic odor of dried urine. Poor old lady, he thought. He blinked, rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

  “I think it would be nice for you to get out in the halls at least. Get out of this room a little bit. See something different just for a change.”

  “I wouldn’t be in here at all if the Arabs hadn’t got to Delmar. He’d have me someplace nice.”