Hunting Badger jlajc-14

by Tony Hillerman

  “Come on in,” Chee said, and Officer Bernadette Manuelito stepped in, in full uniform and looking neater than usual.

  “Wow,” she said. “Look at that ankle." She made a wry face. “I’ll bet it hurts.”

  “Right,” Chee said.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” she said, her tone disapproving. “Barging right in like that.”

  “I didn’t “barge right in.” I drove up to get some gasoline. I noticed a pickup driving away. Then I saw the victim sitting by the wall. And weren’t you supposed to bring me a report to fill in and then rush right back to the captain with it, with no time wasted talking?”

  “I still think you were lucky,” Manuelito said. “You’re a fine one to be thinking I wasn’t competent to work on a roadblock.”

  Chee was conscious of his face flushing. He looked at Bernie, found her expression odd but inscrutable—at least to him.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Professor Bourebonette told me.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Chee said. “When did she say that? And why would she say anything like that?”

  “At the roadblock. She and Lieutenant Leaphorn came through about an hour or so after you -" Bernie hesitated, seeking a way to describe Chee’s arrival. “After you were there. They stopped and talked a while. That’s when she said it. She asked me if you had come by, and I said yes, and she asked me what you’d said, and I said nothing much. And she acted surprised, and I asked why, and she said you’d gotten all angry and excited when they told you they’d seen me at the roadblock and ran right out and drove away.”

  Chee was still trying to read her expression. Was it fond, or amused? Or both.

  “I didn’t say you were incompetent.”

  Officer Manuelito said, “Well, OK,” and shrugged.

  “I just thought it was too dangerous. Those guys had already shot two cops, and shot at another one, and the Ironhand guy, he’d killed a lot more in Vietnam.”

  “Well, thanks then." Manuelito’s expression was easy to read now. She was smiling at him.

  “The captain said for you to rush that report right back to him,” Chee said, and held out his hand.

  She gave it to him, secured to a clipboard with a pen dangling.

  “Which one was it? Ironhand or Baker?”

  “A tall, middle-aged Indian,” Chee said. “Sounds like Ironhand.”

  “And he just took newspapers? Like the radio said this morning?”

  Chee was trying to fill in the form with the clipboard balanced on his right knee. “Apparently. The victim didn’t think anything else was missing. But then he was still pretty stunned.”

  “I think you should call Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Manuelito said. “It sounds awfully funny.”

  Chee looked up at her. “Why?”

  “Because, you know, running that risk just to get a newspaper.”

  “I meant why call Leaphorn?”

  “Well, you know, I think he’d be interested. At the roadblock he told us we should be extra careful because he guessed it would be about now those guys, if they were hiding in the canyons, about now they’d be making their move. And the deputy I was working with said he thought they’d be more likely to lie low until everybody got tired of looking before they made a run, and the lieutenant said, maybe so, but their radio was broken. They’d wouldn’t know what was going on. They’d be getting desperate to know something.”

  “He said that?” Chee said, sounding incredulous. “About making their move now. How the devil could Leaphorn have guessed?” Manuelito shrugged.

  “And that’s why you think I should call him?”

  Now it was Bernie’s turn to look slightly embarrassed. She hesitated. “I like him,” she said. “And he likes you. And I think he’s a very lonely man, and -"

  The buzz of the telephone cut her off. Captain Largo again.

  “What the hell are you and Manuelito doing?” Largo said. “Get her back up here with that report.”

  “She just left a minute ago,” Chee said. He clicked off, filled in the last space, signed the form, handed it to her. Leaphorn liked him? Nobody had ever suggested that before. He’d never even thought of it. Of Leaphorn liking anyone, for that matter. Leaphorn was—Well, he was just Leaphorn.

  “You know, Bernie,” he said. “I think I will call the lieutenant. I’d like to know what he’s thinking.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Having resigned himself to more long hours spent listening to elderly Utes recounting their tribal mythology, Joe Leaphorn was reaching for his cap when the phone rang.

  “Hello,” he said, sounding glum even to himself.

  The voice was Jim Chee’s. Leaphorn brightened.

  “Lieutenant, if you have a minute or two, I’d like to fill you in on what happened at the Chevron station in Bluff yesterday. Have you heard about that? I’d like to find out what you think about it.”

  “I have time,” Leaphorn said. “But all I know is what I got on the television news. A man shows up at the station around opening time. He knocks out the operator and drives off in a previously stolen pickup truck. The FBI presumes the man was one of the casino bandits. The newscaster said a Navajo Tribal Policeman was at the station buying gas when it happened, but the robber escaped. Is that about it?”

  A moment of silence. “Well, I was the one buying the gas,” Chee said, sounding somewhat defensive, “but I wasn’t there until it had already happened. The perp was driving off as I drove up. But what’s interesting is that all the man wanted was a newspaper. He took one from the rack, and when the operator got there and found him digging through the trash barrel, he said he was just hunting a newspaper.”

  Now it was Leaphorn’s turn for a moment of silence.

  “Just a newspaper,” he said. “Just that. And he hadn’t taken anything from inside the station. Food, cigarettes, anything like that?”

  “The station was still locked up. I thought maybe the guy had taken the operator’s keys after he hit him. Got in, looted the place, and then relocked it - silly as that sounds - but apparently not.”

  “Well now,” Leaphorn said, sounding thoughtful. “He just wanted a newspaper out of the rack.”

  “Or maybe another one. From what he’d scattered around out of the trash can, he was hunting something there, and he told the operator he was after a newspaper. I was guessing he wanted an older edition. One reporting earlier stuff about the manhunt.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Where are you calling from?”

  “My place in Shiprock. I hurt my ankle yesterday hunting the newspaper bandit. I took a fall, and I’m homebound until I get the swelling down. I called your place in Window Rock and got another of those messages you leave on your answering machine. That’s a good idea.”

  “Just a minute,” Leaphorn said. He put his hand over the telephone and looked at Louisa, who was standing in the doorway, tape-recorder case over her shoulder, purse in hand, waiting and looking interested.

  “It’s Jim Chee at Shiprock,” Leaphorn said. “You know that Chevron station robbery we were talking about. Chee said the only thing the man wanted was newspapers. Remember what I was saying about that broken radio -"

  “That sounds strange,” Louisa said. “And look, unless you really want to come along and listen to this mythology cross-examination, why don’t you drive over to Shiprock and talk to Chee? I’ll ride with Mr Becenti.”

  That was exactly the way Emma would have reacted, Leaphorn thought. And he noticed with a sort of joy that he could make such a comparison now without feeling guilty about it.

  The door of Chee’s little house trailer was standing open as Leaphorn drove up, and he heard his ‘come on in’ shout as he closed the door of his pickup. Chee was sitting beside the table, his left foot propped on a pillow on his bunk. As they exchanged the required greetings, the words of sympathy, the required disclaimer and disclaimer response, Leaphorn noticed the table was bare except for a copy of the India
n Country Map, unfolded to the Four Corners canyon country.

  “I see you’re ready for work,” he said, tapping the map.

  “My uncle used to tell me to use my head to save my heels,” Chee said. “Since I have to save my ankle today, I’ll have to think instead.”

  Leaphorn sat. “What have you come up with?”

  “Nothing but confusion,” Chee said. “I was hoping you could explain it all to me.”

  “It’s as if we have a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of the central pieces missing,” Leaphorn said. “But driving over from Farmington I began thinking how two of the pieces fit.”

  “The broken radio producing the need to get a paper to find out what the devil has been going on,” Chee said. “Right?”

  “Right. And that can tell us something.”

  Chee frowned. “Like they don’t have another radio? Or any other access to news? Or something more than that?”

  Leaphorn smiled. “I have an advantage in this situation, being able to sit by a telephone and tap into the retired-cops circuit while you’re out working.”

  Chee leaned forward and readjusted his ice pack, engulfed in deja vu — a sort of numb feeling of intellectual inadequacy. He’d heard this sort of preamble from Leaphorn often enough before to know where it led. It was the Legendary Lieutenant’s way of leading into some disclosure without making Chee, the green kid who’d been assigned to be his gofer, feel more stupid than necessary. “To tell the truth, all this tells me is that these guys, without their radio, got desperate to find out what the devil was going on. They had to find out whether or not it was time to run.”

  “Exactly,” Leaphorn said. “That’s my conclusion, too. But let me add a little bit of information that wasn’t available to you. I think I told you I might call Jay Kennedy to see if he could tell us what the FBI lab learned about that radio. Jay called back yesterday. He said his buddy back there told him the radio had been put out of commission deliberately.”

  Chee lost interest in realigning the ice pack. He stared at Leaphorn. Leaphorn said he’d asked Kennedy to ‘tell us.'

  “On purpose?” Chee said. “Why would they do that? Or, wait a minute. Let me restate that question. Make it which one did it, and why? And how could the Bureau determine it was done deliberately?”

  “Never underestimate the Bureau’s laboratory people. They took the radio apart to see if they could pick up any prints. The sort someone might leave changing batteries, or whatever. They noticed that a couple of the wire connections inside had been pried apart with something sharp. Knife point maybe.”

  Chee thought for a moment. “Fingerprints,” he said. “Did they find any?” If they had, they would be Jorie’s. Jorie, knowing he was being betrayed, doing a vengeful act of sabotage.

  “Some partials,” Leaphorn said. “But they belonged to nobody they had any record of.”

  Chee thought about that, noticed that Leaphorn was watching him, waiting his reaction. Whose prints would the FBI have on record? Jorie’s of course, since they had his body. Perhaps Ironhand’s, if they printed servicemen during the Vietnam War. Probably Baker’s. He’d been arrested on minor stuff more than once.

  “It could still be Jorie who sabotaged the radio,” Chee said. “He could have had on gloves, used a handkerchief, been very careful with his knife.”

  Leaphorn nodded, smiling.

  He’s happy I thought it through, Chee thought. Maybe Bernie was right. Maybe Leaphorn does like me.

  “I’d guess the prints don’t mean much,” Leaphorn said. “They’ll belong to some clerk at a Radio Shack who put the battery in. I was thinking about Jorie, too. He still looks like the logical bet.”

  “He certainly had a motive. We have to presume he had access to the radio after he knew what they were planning.”

  Leaphorn nodded. “If he had decided to turn them in, he wouldn’t want them to know the cops had them identified. Wouldn’t want them to hear anything on the radio.”

  Chee nodded.

  There’s a problem with that, though.”

  “Yeah,” Chee said, wondering which problem Leaphorn saw. “Certainly a lot of unanswered questions left.”

  “Jorie must have thought he knew what he was talking about when he told the police in that suicide note where to find them. At their homes, he said, or that place up north. FBI went to get them, and they weren’t there. Why not?” He looked at Chee to see if he would volunteer an answer.

  “They didn’t trust him,” Chee said.

  Leaphorn nodded. “They wouldn’t. Not when they were double-crossing him.” He tapped the map. “And next, why did they come up on this mesa?”

  “I have two answers to that. Take your pick. One. I think they may have had a second escape vehicle hidden away someplace not far from where they ditched the pickup. Cowboy said they could find no trace of it, no tracks. Nothing. But in this country they could hide the tracks, knowing they had to, and taking their time to do it right.”

  Leaphorn acknowledged this with the barest hint of a nod.

  “The second idea goes back to what you learned about Ironhand. He knew where his daddy hid during his career. How he managed his magical, mystical escapes. So I say that hiding place is around there someplace. The perps stocked it with food and water. And that’s where they intend to hide until it’s safe to make a run for it. That’s why they drove the truck over the rock—ripped out the oil pan to make it appear to the FBI that they were forced to abandon it there. Then they hiked away to their hidey-hole.”

  Leaphorn’s nod acknowledging this was a bit less languorous.

  “But they didn’t tell Jorie anything about this. It was their secret. Which means the double cross was planned far in advance of the crime.”

  “Sure,” Chee said.

  “I’m thinking of that second choice to look for them Jorie gave the police. That’s way up toward Blanding. A long, long way from where they abandoned the pickup.”

  Chee sighed. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Cowboy had found three sets of tracks at that damned truck.”

  Leaphorn laughed. “But let’s set that aside for now and get back to your second idea. We’ll say Baker and Ironhand had a place arranged to hide out. Jorie had parted company with them somehow before they got there. So Baker and Ironhand leave the truck and start walking. It wouldn’t be a long walk because, if we can believe what Jorie said in that note, they must have been carrying a heavy load of paper money. Presuming they hadn’t left it somewhere else, and why would they?”

  “Heavy? I don’t think of paper money as being heavy.”

  “I was guessing the Ute Casino wouldn’t be using many hundred-dollar bills. I guessed a ten-dollar average, and came up with forty-five thousand pieces of paper.”

  “Be damned,” Chee said. “That’s a new factor to be thinking about.”

  “I’m remembering the old Ute lady said the Utes sometimes called the original Ironhand Badger. She said he’d disappear from the canyon bottom and reappear at the top. Or the other way around. Remember that? She said our people chasing him thought he could fly.”

  “Yes,” Chee said. But he was thinking about a huge problem with the second idea. With both of them, in fact. Jorie. Given what he said in the suicide note about where to find his partners, he must have slipped away from them long before they abandoned the truck. The distances were simply too great. Especially if they were humping almost a hundred pounds of money as well as their weapons. But how could he have slipped away? Probably possible. But then, why would he believe his partners would be going home? Wouldn’t he know they’d expect him to betray them?

  Leaphorn was pursuing his own line of speculation. “Thinking of badgers got me to thinking of holes in the ground,” he said. “Of old coal mines. This part of the world has far more than its share of those. Coal almost everywhere. And then when the uranium boom started in the forties, the geologists remembered how the coal veins were usually mixed with uranium deposits, and they were digging aw
ay again.”

  “Yeah,” Chee said. “We noticed three or four old digs when we were looking for tracks down in the Gothic Creek Canyon.”

  Leaphorn looked very interested in that. “How deep? Real tunnels, or just places where people were taking a few wagonloads?”

  “Nothing serious,” Chee said. “Just a place where somebody got a sackful to heat the hogan.”

  “When the Mormon settlers moved in the middle of the nineteenth century they found the Navajos were already digging a little coal out of exposed seams. So were the Utes. But the Mormons needed a lot more to fire up smelters, so they developed some tunnel mines. Then the Aneth field development came, and there was natural gas to burn. The mines weren’t economical any longer. Some of them were filled in, and some of them collapsed. But there must be some around there in one form or another.”

  “You’re thinking they’re hiding in a mine. I don’t know. Where I grew up near Rough Rock people dug a little coal, but it was all just shallow stuff. We called them dog-hole mines. Nothing anyone could hide in.”

  “That’s over in the Chuska Mountains,” Leap-horn said. “Volcanic geology. Over by Gothic Creek Canyon it’s mostly formed by sedimentation. Stratum after stratum.”

  "True.”

  “An old-timer in Mexican Water — old fella named Mortimer I think it was—told me there used to be a slide cut down the cliff on the south side of the San Juan across from Bluff. From the rimrock all the way down. He said his folks would dig the coal out of seams in the canyon, hoist it to the top, load it into oxcarts and then dump it down the slide into carts down by the river. Then they’d ferry it across on a cable ferry.”

  Chee was feeling a little less skeptical. “When was that?”

  “It was about forty years ago when he told me, I’d guess, but he was talking about his parents when he was a child. I guess it was operating in the 1880s, or thereabouts. I’d like to take a look at that old mine if it still exists.”