The Ghostway jlajc-6

by Tony Hillerman

  And tonight, she'd need it. The air against his cheek was already icy. In the thin, dry air here, 9,000 feet above sea level, the temperature would drop another 30 degrees before sunrise.

  Chee cupped his hands and shouted toward the mountain slope. "Margaret. Come back. I won't arrest you."

  He listened, waiting for the echo to subside, and heard nothing.

  "Margaret. I'll take you wherever you want to go."

  Listened again. Nothing.

  "I'm leaving the horse. Take it back where you got it. Find a warm place."

  Again, silence.

  On his way back to the pickup, Chee detoured down into the arroyo and jammed his lunch sack between the willow limbs where the mare's halter was tied. One of his two bologna sandwiches was left in it, and an orange. The mare snorted and rubbed against his shoulder, wanting company as much as food.

  Chapter 9

  Jim chee was about two thirds of the way through his account of what he had seen and heard at the places of Hosteen Joe and Hosteen Begay when Captain Largo raised his large brown hand, palm out, signaling a halt. Largo picked up the telephone, got the switchboard.

  "Call Santa Fe. St. Catherine Indian School. Get me that sister I talked to earlier. The principal. Tell her I need to talk to that friend of the Sosi girl. Need some more information from her. See if you can get me that girl on the telephone. Ring me back when you get her. Okay?"

  Then he turned back to Chee and heard the rest of it without comment or question. His black eyes watched Chee without expression, drifting away now and then to study his thumbnail, then back to study Chee.

  "First piece of advice I need from you," he said when Chee had finished, "is what to tell Sharkey when he finds out the Navajo Tribal Police have been questioning one of his witnesses in a federal murder case."

  "You mean Joseph?"

  "Of course, Joseph," Largo said, shifting his eyes from thumbnail to Chee. "I don't have any trouble explaining why you went to Begay's hogan. You went there looking for a runaway girl, and Sharkey has to swallow that one because you're lucky, as usual. She was there."

  "Tell him I talked to Joseph for the same reason," Chee suggested.

  "Doesn't work."

  "I guess not," Chee admitted. "Change the subject then. Ask him why the Agency left that stuff out of the report they sent you. Ask him why no mention was made of Gorman coming to Shiprock looking for somebody else named Gorman. Ask him why the picture of the trailer…" Chee didn't finish the sentence. Largo's expression said he wasn't liking this suggestion.

  "What am I going to tell Sharkey?" he repeated. "Are you going to give me an explanation, or do I have to tell him that one of our men violated department regulations and the direct and specific orders of his commanding officer and is therefore being suspended without pay to teach him some better manners?"

  "Tell him the girl disappeared right after all this happened, and she's Hosteen Begay's granddaughter and we think—"

  The telephone interrupted him. Largo picked it up. "Good," he said. "What's her name again?" He listened, then pushed the selector button.

  "Miss Pino? This is Captain Largo of the Navajo Tribal Police in Shiprock. Could you give us a little more information to help us find Margaret Sosi?… What?… No, no, we think she's all right. What we need is a clearer idea of just why she left when she did."

  Largo listened.

  "A letter?" he said. "When?… Did she say anything about what her grandfather said in it?… Uh-huh. I see. Did she mention the name?… Sure. I can understand that. Would you remember it if you heard it? Was it Gorman?… You're sure. How about the first name… Her uncle?… Okay. Go over it again, would you please? Everything you remember she said."

  Largo listened, jotting notes now and then on his pad.

  "Well, thank you very much, Miss Pino. This is very helpful… No, we think she's safe enough. We just want to find her." Largo looked at Chee with no expression whatever and added, "Again."

  "One other thing. Did she say when she planned to come back?… Okay. Well, thanks again."

  Largo replaced the receiver, gently.

  "You are one lucky Navajo," he said, "which is almost as good as being smart."

  Chee said nothing.

  "It turns out I can tell Sharkey that Margaret Sosi got a letter from her grandfather mailed the day after the shooting, and in this letter he told her about some danger. Warned her to stay away from Shiprock and not to go around Gorman."

  "Danger?"

  "That's all she told the Pino girl. Or all the Pino girl could remember her saying about it. She said Margaret told her her grandfather must be very upset, because writing a letter was very hard for him to do. She said she was worried about him and she was going to see about him."

  "That was the letter he mailed from Two Gray Hills," Chee said.

  "Probably," Largo said. "Been nice if you'd have asked her some things like that. Something practical. You know, Sharkey's going to be curious about that. He's going to say, 'Now, your policeman had this girl in his custody. But he didn't ask her why she came to the hogan. Or find out about the letter. Or find out that her grandfather warned her about something dangerous. Or anything useful.' And Sharkey is going to say, 'What do your officers chat about in cases like this? I mean, how do they keep the conversation going until they let the suspect walk away?' What do I tell Sharkey about that?"

  "Tell him we talked about ghosts," Chee said.

  "Ghosts. Sharkey will enjoy that."

  "I heard you asking the Pino girl if Margaret Sosi mentioned a first name for Gorman," said Chee, changing the subject. "You thinking the same thing I am?"

  "I'm thinking we don't know for sure which Gorman she was supposed to stay away from. The one who had already been shot or the one that one was looking for."

  "The occupant of the aluminum house trailer," Chee said.

  "Maybe," Largo said. He scratched his nose. "Or maybe he was just having his picture taken." He got up, stretched, walked to the window, and scrutinized the parking lot. "Put it together," he said, finally, "and what have you got? Albert Gorman, a car thief, drives from L.A. to Shiprock, looking for Leroy Gorman. A minor hoodlum rents himself an expensive plane ride and comes after Albert. They shoot each other. Gorman goes to his uncle's place, gets there in the night, tells the old man what happened. Next day Uncle Begay goes out to the trading post and mails a letter to Margaret Sosi. Tells her something or other is dangerous and to stay away from Shiprock and to stay away from Gorman. Which Gorman? I'd guess it wouldn't be the Gorman with the bullet in him. Old as Begay was, he's seen enough hurt people to know when one's bad hurt. He'd have known Albert wasn't dangerous to anybody. The warning would be about Leroy. Stay away from Leroy."

  "Yes," Chee said. "Probably, anyway."

  Largo abandoned the parking lot and sat again behind his desk. He regained his interest in his thumbnail, holding the heel of his hand on the desk top, thumb rampant, flexing slowly when he inspected it. "I am going to call Sharkey," he said. "I think we better find that Sosi girl." He glanced from thumb to Chee. "Again," he added.

  "Yes," Chee said. "I think so."

  "And Leroy Gorman," Largo said. "You think Sharkey has that photograph? Of the trailer?"

  "No." Chee described Sharkey's search of Albert Gorman's wallet.

  "So either Gorman got rid of the photograph or somebody else took it out of his wallet. Old Man Begay, maybe. Or Joseph Joe didn't know what the hell he was talking about."

  While he was saying that, Largo was picking up his telephone. He told the operator to call the fbi in Farmington and get Sharkey for him. "You sure Joe told Sharkey about the photograph, about Albert Gorman looking for Leroy Gorman?"

  "I'm sure."

  "That son of a bitch," Largo said. He didn't mean Joe.

  Sharkey was in.

  "This is Largo," Largo said. "We have a teenage girl missing, which looks like it's tied in with this Gorman shooting of yours. Name's Margaret Billy S
osi. You heard anything we should know about?"

  Largo listened.

  "She's a student at St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe. Granddaughter of Ashie Begay. She got a letter he mailed the day after the shooting. Her granddaddy told her something about staying away from Shiprock and not to go around Gorman because it was dangerous."

  Largo listened.

  "I don't know why," he said, and listened again. "Well, it was worth a call anyway," he said. "She cut out from school after she got the letter and went up to the Begay place. We were puzzled about why old Ashie Begay would think Gorman was dangerous when he had a bullet in him—dying right there in the hogan, you know. Could there be another Gorman the old man was talking about?"

  Largo listened very briefly.

  "We can't ask her because"—he glanced at Chee—"she got away and disappeared again. What? Granddaughter. Margaret Sosi is Ashie Begay's granddaughter. You guys got anything that would point us to looking for another Gorman around here? A dangerous one?"

  Largo listened again. He covered the mouthpiece with his palm, looked at Chee, said, "Lying son of a bitch," and listened some more.

  "Well," he said, "we went out and talked to Joseph Joe to see if Albert Gorman had said anything to him, and he told us that Albert was looking for a guy named Leroy Gorman." Largo winked at Chee. "I guess Joe forgot to tell you about that. And Joe said Gorman showed him a photograph of an aluminum house trailer, which was where this Leroy Gorman was supposed to be living. You know anything—"

  Largo looked slightly surprised. "All right," he said. "We'll keep in touch."

  He hung up, looking suspiciously at the telephone and then at Chee.

  "Sharkey tells me that Joe didn't say anything to them about Albert Gorman looking for anybody, or about a picture, and that there was no picture on Gorman's body."

  "Interesting," Chee said,

  "Wonder what's going on," Largo said. "I don't think Sharkey's lying just to keep in practice."

  "No," Chee said. He was thinking that he would start hunting the aluminum house trailer.

  "I think we better see if we can find that house trailer," Largo said.

  Chapter 10

  Finding an aluminum trailer in Shiprock, New Mexico, required only persistence. The town is the most populous of the hundreds of dots that mark populated places on the vastness of the Navajo Big Reservation. Even so, it counts less than 3,000 permanent residents. Knowing the trailer was parked under a cottonwood tree simplified the search. On the arid Colorado Plateau, cottonwoods grow only along streams, or beside springs, or in places where the runoff from snowmelt augments their water supply. In and around Shiprock, natural cottonwood habitat was limited to the San Juan river bottom and a few places along Salt Creek Wash and Little Parajito Arroyo. Chee checked the San Juan first, working upstream from the old U.S. 666 highway bridge and then downstream. He found hundreds of cottonwoods, and scores of places where a trailer might be parked, and dozens of trailers of all descriptions, including aluminum. Just before noon, he found an aluminum trailer parked under a cottonwood. It had taken a little less than two hours.

  It was parked perhaps a mile below the bridge, near the end of a dirt track which led behind the Navajo Northern District Health Clinic, went past a pump station of the Shiprock town water system, and finally petered out on a low bluff overlooking the San Juan River. Chee parked just off the track and inspected his discovery.

  The glossy metal reflected a pattern of sun and shadow in streaks caused by the bare branches above. Nothing on the ground indicated occupancy—neither litter nor the boxes, barrels, broken furniture, cots, or other effluvia of life that those who occupy trailers or hogans or other crowded spaces tend to leave outside to make room inside. There was nothing on the ground except a yellow mat of fallen cottonwood leaves.

  Chee was instantly aware of this departure from the normal, as he always was of any deviation from the harmony of the expected. He noticed other peculiarities too. The trailer looked new, or almost new. Its glossy skin was clean and polished. Trailers that housed Shiprock Navajos and those who lived among them would more typically have the look of second-, third-, and fourth-hand models, wearing the dents, scrapes, and rust marks of hard wear and poor maintenance. Second, Chee noticed the trailer was tied to two black wires, telephone and electric power. The powerline was no surprise, but telephones were relatively rare on the reservation. The Navajo telephone book, which covered more territory than all the New England States and included Hopi country as well as Navajo, was small enough to fold neatly into one's hip pocket, and nearly all the numbers in it were for some sort of government or tribal office or a business. Residential telephones were unusual enough to draw Chee's attention. He took off his uniform jacket and hat and put on his nylon windbreaker. As he walked toward the trailer he became aware that the telephone was ringing. The sound was faint at first, muffled by distance and whatever insulation the walls of such trailers held, then louder as he came nearer. It rang as if it had always been ringing, as if it would ring on through the noon hour, and into the evening, and forever. Chee stopped at the retractable metal step below the trailer door, hesitated, then tapped on the metal. The telephone's ring coincided with the knock. He waited, knocked again into the silence, listened. No response. He tried the knob. Locked.

  Chee walked away from the trailer and stood beside the cottonwood's trunk, thinking. Below, on a path leading down to the riverbank and along it, a man was walking. He was whistling, coming up the path toward Chee. He wore neatly fitted denims, a long-sleeved shirt of blue flannel, a denim vest, and a black felt hat with a feather jutting from its band. When the path tilted upward so that Chee could see his face, he recorded a man on the young side of middle age, clean-shaven, slender, distinctly Navajo in bone, with a narrow, intelligent face. He walked with an easy grace, swinging the heavy stalk of a horseweed like a cane. He walked now through a tunnel of sunlit yellow where the willows and alders arching over the path had not yet lost all their foliage, still not seeing Chee. But suddenly, he heard the persistent summons of the telephone bell.

  He dropped the stick and sprinted for the trailer, hesitating when he noticed Chee, then regaining stride.

  "Got to catch the phone," he said as he ran past. He had his key out when he reached the door, unlocked it deftly, scrambled inside. Chee stood at the steps by the open door, waiting.

  "Hello," the man said, and waited. "Hello.

  "Hello." He waited again, then whistled into the speaker. "Anybody home?" He waited, then whistled again, waited again, watching Chee. Whoever had dialed his number had apparently put down the phone and left it to ring. "Hello," the man repeated. "Anybody there?" This time he seemed to receive an answer.

  "Yes, this is Grayson… Well, I wasn't far. Just went for a walk down the river." Then he listened. Nodded. Glanced at Chee, his expression curious. "Yes," he said. "I will." He leaned his hip against the trailer's cooking stove and reached into a drawer to extract a note pad and pen. "Give it to me again." He wrote something. "All right. I will."

  He hung up and turned to face Chee.

  Chee spoke in Navajo, introducing himself as born to the Slow Talking Clan, born for the Bitter Water People, naming his mother and his deceased father. "I am looking for a man they call Leroy Gorman," he concluded.

  "I don't understand Navajo," the man said.

  Chee repeated it, clan memberships and all, in English. "Gorman," the man said. "I don't know him."

  "I heard he lived here. In this trailer."

  The man frowned. "Just me here," he said.

  Chee was conscious that the man hadn't identified himself. He smiled. "You're not Leroy Gorman then," Chee said. "Is that a safe bet?"

  "Name's Grayson," the man said. He stuck out his hand and Chee shook it. A hard, warm grip.

  "Wonder how I got the wrong information," Chee said. "This is the place." He gestured at road, tree, river, and trailer. "Supposed to be an aluminum airflow trailer like this.
Strange."

  Grayson was studying Chee. Behind his smile his face was stiff with tension, the eyes watchful.

  "Who is he, this Gorman? Who told you he lived here?"

  "I don't really know him," Chee said. "I was just supposed to deliver a message."

  "A message?" The man stared at Chee, waiting.

  "Yeah. To Leroy Gorman."

  The man waited, leaning in the doorway. Past him Chee could see dishes beside the sink, but except for that the interior of the trailer was utterly neat. The man was a Navajo, Chee was sure of that from his appearance. Since he didn't speak the language, or pretended not to, and since he didn't follow Navajo courtesy, he might be a Los Angeles Navajo. But he said he wasn't Leroy Gorman.

  "You're the second person to show up today looking for this Gorman guy," he said. He laughed, nervously. "Maybe Gorman himself will show up next. You want to leave that message with me so I can pass it along if he does?"

  "Who was the first one?"

  "A girl," Grayson said. "Cute little skinny girl. Late teens."

  "She tell you her name?"

  "She did. I can't think of it."

  "How about Margaret? Margaret Sosi."

  "Yeah," Grayson said. "I think so."

  "How little? How was she dressed?"

  "About so," Grayson said, indicating shoulder height with a gesture of his hand. "Thin. Wearing a blue coat like in the navy."

  "What did she want?"

  "Seemed to think I was this Gorman. And when she understood I wasn't, she wanted to ask me about her grandfather. Had he been here. Things like that. Don't remember his name. She wanted to find this Gorman because he was supposed to know something about where her grandfather was." Grayson shrugged. "Something like that. Didn't make much sense." Chee put his foot on the step, shifted his weight. He wanted the man to invite him inside, to extend the conversation. Who was Grayson? What was he doing here?