The Dark Wind jlajc-5

by Tony Hillerman

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  In fact, the answer was not a definite yes. It was "probably."

  With sundown, the thunderheads lost their will to grow. With the cool darkness, they lost their will to live. Chee drove slowly, arm rested on the sill of the open truck window, enjoying the breeze. Lightning still flashed yellow and white in the cloud west of him, and the dark north also produced an occasional jagged bolt. But the clouds were dying. Overhead, the stars were out. The Colorado Plateau and the Painted Desert would live with drought through another cycle of sun. But Chee was aware of this only on a secondary level. He was reaching conclusions.

  The man he'd seen coming from West's office; the man West had said he'd just fired; the man West said was Joseph Musket, might not have been Musket at all. Probably wasn't, Chee thought. West had simply used Jim Chee, a brand-new policeman who'd never seen Musket, to establish on the official record that Musket was alive, and well, and being fired by West, the day after John Doe's remains had been collected on Black Mesa. He'd done it neatly, asking Chee to come in when he knew some appropriate Navajo would be available, then arousing Chee's interest in the man when it was too late to get a good look at him. The pseudo Musket, Chee guessed, would be someone from somewhere else—whom Chee wouldn't be seeing around Burnt Water.

  That was the first conclusion. The second revolved around another illusion. West had probably performed his Musket deception, and then staged the pretended burglary, because Joseph Musket was already dead. Killed by whom? Probably by West himself. Why? Chee would leave that for later. There'd be a reason. There always was. Now he concentrated on the faded white line illuminated by his headlights, and on recreating what must have happened.

  The cool air smelled of wet sage, and creosote bush, and ozone. For the first time in days, Chee felt in harmony with his thoughts. Hozro again. His mind was working as it should, on the natural path. West had found himself with the body of Musket on his hands. He had killed Musket, or someone else had done it, or Musket had simply died. And West didn't want it known. Not yet.

  Perhaps he'd gotten wind of the impending drug shipment. Perhaps his son had told him. Perhaps he'd learned it from Musket. And West wanted to steal it. And if shippers knew their man at Burnt Water was dead, they might move the landing point, or call everything off. So the death and the body had been concealed.

  Chee found himself appreciating the cleverness. West knew he was dealing with very dangerous men. He knew they'd come after the thief. He wanted someone besides West for them to hunt. Ironfingers got the job. Which meant he could never, ever, afford the risk of having the corpse, or even the skeleton, of anyone who met Musket's description turning up to be identified. A skeleton, even a bit of jawbone, would be enough to match against the name of a missing person who'd been in prison—whose dental charts and fingerprints and all other vital statistics would be easily available. Therefore West had put the body out along the traditional pathway of the spruce Messenger's party, where it would be found exactly when he wanted it found. He'd faked the witchcraft mutilation—the hands and feet and probably the penis, too—to eliminate the automatic fingerprinting an unidentified corpse would undergo. It was his only wrong guess—not calculating that the Hopis wouldn't report the corpse before their Niman Kachina ceremonials—and it hadn't mattered. And then—Chee grinned again, savoring the cleverness of it—West had made certain that the official record would show Musket alive and well in Burnt Water after the corpse was found. That would kill any chance of matching dental charts. He would have done that, somehow, even if the body had been reported immediately.

  Chee had this sorted out by the time his pickup made the long climb up the cliff of Moenkopi Wash, passed the Hopi village, and reached the Tuba City junction. By the time he'd reached Tuba City he reached another conclusion. West was hiding the body of Palanzer for the same reason he'd made Musket forever invisible. Palanzer-plus-Musket gave the owners of the cocaine an even more logical target for their rage.

  Puddles from a rain do not long survive in a desert climate. The puddles in the track to Chee's mobile home had disappeared long ago. But the ruts were still soft and driving through them would cut them deeper. Chee parked the pickup, climbed out, and began walking the last fifty yards toward his home. There was still an occasional mutter of thunder from the north, but the sky now was a blaze of stars. Chee walked on the bunch grass, thinking that much of his problem still remained. There was absolutely nothing he could prove. All he would have for Captain Largo would be speculation. No. That wasn't true. Now the remains of John Doe could be identified—unless, of course, Musket had never been to a dentist. That wasn't likely. Chee enjoyed the night, the washed-clean smell of the air. The smell, suddenly, of brewing coffee.

  Chee stopped in his tracks. Coffee! From where? He stared at his trailer. Dark and silent. It was the only possible source of that rich aroma. He had placed the trailer here under this lonely cottonwood for privacy and isolation. The site gave him that. The nearest other possible coffeepot was a quarter mile away. Someone was waiting in his dark trailer. They'd grown impatient. In the darkness, they'd brewed coffee. Chee turned and walked rapidly back toward his truck. The trailer produced a sudden clatter of sound. They'd been watching since he'd driven up and parked. They'd seen him turn away. Chee's walk became a run. He had his ignition key in his hand by the time he jerked the pickup door open. He heard the trailer door bang open, the sound of running feet. Then he had the key in the ignition. The still-warm motor roared into life. Chee slammed the gears into reverse, flicked on the headlights.

  The lights illuminated two running men. One of them was the younger of the two men Chee had noticed watching him in the Hopi Cultural Center dining room. The other man Chee had seen hunting at the crash site, helping Johnson in his search for the suitcases. The younger man had a pistol in his hand. Chee switched off the lights and sent the pickup truck roaring backward down the track. He didn't turn on the headlights again until he was back on the asphalt.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chee spent the night beside his pickup truck in a sand-bottomed cul-de-sac off Moenkopi Wash. He'd stopped twice to make absolutely sure he hadn't been followed. Even so, he was nervous. He shaped the sand to fit hips and shoulders, rolled out his blanket, and lay looking up at a star-lit sky. Nothing remained of the afternoon's empty promise of rain except an occasional distant thunder from somewhere up around the Utah border. Why had the two men waited for him in his trailer? Obviously it hadn't been a friendly visit. Could he have been wrong about one of the men having been with Johnson in Wepo Wash? It would have made more sense for them to be members of the narcotics company. As Johnson had warned him, they might logically come looking for him. But why now? They would have learned by now that the dope was being sold back to them. Did they think that he was one of the hijackers doing the selling? He, and Musket, and Palanzer? But if the man had been the one he'd seen with Johnson in the wash, that meant something different. What would the dea want with Chee? And why would the dea wait for him in the dark, instead of calling him into Largo's office for a talk? Was it because, once again, the dea's intentions were not wholly orthodox? Because he hadn't returned Johnson's call? That line of speculation led Chee nowhere. He turned his thoughts to the telephone call to Gaines. Tomorrow night the exchange would be made—five hundred thousand dollars in currency for two suitcases filled with cocaine. But where? All he knew now, that he hadn't known, was that the caller might have been West, and that Musket might be dead. That didn't seem to help. Then, as he thought it through all the way, through from the east, the south, the west, and the north, and back to the east again, just as his uncle had taught him, he saw that it might help. Everything must have a reason. Nothing was done without a cause. Why delay the payoff more than necessary—as the caller had done? How would tomorrow night be different from tonight? Different for West? Probably, somehow or other, the nights would be different on the Hopi ceremonial calendar. And West would be awar
e of the difference. He had been married to a Hopi. In the Hopi tradition, he had moved into the matriarchy of his wife—into her village and into her home. Three or four years, Dashee had said. Certainly long enough to know something of the Hopi religious calendar.

  Chee shifted into a more comfortable position. The nervous tension was draining away now, the sense of being hunted. He felt relaxed and drowsy. Tomorrow he would get in touch with Dashee and find out what would be going on tomorrow night in the Hopi world of kachina spirits and men who wore sacred masks to impersonate them.

  Chee was thinking of kachinas when he drifted off into sleep, and he dreamed of them. He awoke feeling stiff and sore. Shaking the sand out of his blanket, he folded it behind the pickup seat. Whoever had been waiting in his trailer had probably long since left Tuba City, but Chee decided not to take any chances. He drove southward instead, to Cameron. He got to the roadside diner just at sunrise, ordered pancakes and sausage for breakfast, and called Dashee from the pay telephone booth.

  "What time is it?" Dashee said.

  "It's late," Chee said. "I need some information. What's going on tonight at Hopi?"

  "My God," Dashee shouted. "It's only a little after six. I just got to bed. I'm on the night shift for the next week."

  "Sorry," Chee said. "But tell me about tonight."

  "Tonight? " Dashee said. "There's nothing to night. The Chu'tiwa—the Snake Dance ceremony—that's at Walpi day after tomorrow. Nothing tonight."

  "Nowhere?" Chee asked. "Not in Walpi, or IIotevilla, or Bacobi, or anywhere?" He was disappointed and his voice showed it.

  "Nothing much," Dashee said. "Just mostly stuff in the kivas. Getting ready for the Snake ceremonials. Private stuff."

  "How about that village where West lived? His wife's village. Which one was it?"

  "Sityatki," Dashee said.

  "Anything going on there?"

  There was a long pause.

  "Cowboy? You still there?"

  "Yeah," Cowboy said.

  "Anything at Sityatki tonight?"

  "Nothing much," Cowboy said.

  "But something?"

  "Nothing for tourists," Dashee said.

  "What is it?"

  "Well, it's something we call Astotokaya. It means Washing of the Hair. It's private. Sort of an initiation ceremony into the religious societies of the village."

  It didn't sound to Chee like the sort of thing that would be useful to West.

  "Does it draw a big crowd? I think that's what we're looking for."

  Dashee laughed. "Just the opposite—they close the roads. Nobody is supposed to come in. Everybody is supposed to stay indoors, not even look out the windows. People who live in houses that look out on the kivas, they move out. Nobody stirs except the people working on the initiation in the kivas and the young people getting initiated. And they don't come out until dawn."

  "Tell me about it," Chee said. The disappointment was gone. He thought he knew, now, where West would set up his rendezvous.

  Cowboy was reluctant. "It's confidential," he said. "Some of that stuff we're not really supposed to talk about."

  "I think it might be important," Chee said. "A funny thing happened yesterday. I was at the cultural center, and the clerk got called away from the desk, and the telephone was ringing, so Miss Pauling went over there and worked the switchboard and—"

  "I heard about that fire," Dashee said. "You start that fire?"

  "Why would I start a fire?" Chee asked. "What I'm trying to tell you is Miss Pauling overheard this guy telling Gaines that the people who owned the cocaine could buy it back for five hundred thousand dollars. He said they should have the money available in two briefcases by nine o'clock Friday night. And he said he'd be back in touch to say where the trade-off would be made."

  "How'd you know when to start the fire?" Dashee said. "How'd you know when that call was coming? You son of a bitch, you almost burned down the cultural center."

  "The point is why hold off until nine o'clock Friday night? That's the question; and I think the answer is because they want to make the switch in a place where the buyers will figure there's going to be a bunch of curious people standing around watching, when actually it will be private."

  "Sityatki," Cowboy said.

  "Right. It makes sense."

  Long pause, while Cowboy thought about it. "Not much," he said. "Why go to all that trouble if they're just going to swap money for cocaine?"

  "Safety," Chee said. "They need to be someplace where the guys buying the dope back won't just shoot them and keep the money and everything."

  "No safer there than anyplace else," Dashee argued.

  Maybe it wasn't, Chee thought. But why else wait until nine Friday night? "Well," he said, "I think the swap's going to be made in Sityatki, and if you'd tell me more about what goes on, maybe I'll know why."

  So Cowboy told him, reluctantly and haltingly enough so that Chee's pancakes and sausages were cold by the time he had prodded it all out, and it added nothing much. The crux of the matter was the village was sealed from darkness until dawn, people were supposed to remain in doors and not be looking out to spy on the spirits who visited the kivas during the night, and the place was periodically patrolled by priests of the kiva—but more ceremonially than seriously, Cowboy thought.

  Chee took his time over breakfast, killing some of the minutes that had to pass before he could call Captain Largo at his office. Largo would be just a little bit late, and Chee wanted his call to be hanging there waiting for the captain when he walked in. Sometimes little psychological edges like that helped, and Chee was sure he'd need some.

  "He's not in yet," the girl on the switchboard reported.

  "You're sure?" Chee asked. "Usually he gets in about eight-oh-five."

  "Just a minute," she amended. "He's driving into the parking lot."

  Which was exactly how Chee had planned it.

  "Largo," Largo said.

  "This is Chee. There's a couple of things I have to report."

  "On the telephone?"

  "When I came in last night, there were two men waiting for me in my trailer. With the lights off. With a gun. One of them, anyway."

  "Last night?" Largo said.

  "About ten, maybe."

  "And now you're reporting it?"

  "I think one of them was Drug Enforcement. At least, I think I've seen him with Johnson. And if one was, I guess they both were. Anyway, I wasn't sure what to do, so I took off."

  "Any violence?"

  "No. I figured they were in there, so I headed back to my truck. They heard me and came running out. One of them had a gun, but no shooting."

  "How'd you know they were there?"

  "Smelled coffee," Chee said.

  Largo didn't comment on that. "Those sons-a-bitches," he said.

  "The other thing is that Miss Pauling told me she overheard a telephone call from some man to Gaines. He told Gaines he could have the cocaine back for five hundred thousand dollars and to be ready with the money at nine p.m. Friday and—"

  "Where?"

  "He didn't say. This isn't our case, so I didn't ask too many questions. I told Cowboy Dashee and I guess they'll go out and talk to her."

  "Heard they had a little fire out there," Largo said. "You know anything about that?"

  "I'm the one who reported it," Chee said. "Bunch of tumbleweeds caught on fire."

  "Listen," Largo said. "I'm going to do some seeing about the way the dea is behaving. We're not going to put up with any more of that. And when I talk to people I'm going to tell them that I gave you strict orders to stay away from this drug case. I'm going to tell people I'm going to kick your ass right out of the Navajo Police if I hear just one little hint that you're screwing around in federal territory. I'm going to tell people you understand that perfectly. That you know I'll do it. No question about it. You know that if you get anywhere near that drug case, or anybody involved with it, you are instantly and permanently suspended. Fired. Out of wor
k."

  Largo paused, allowing time for the speech to penetrate. "Now," he continued. "You do understand that, don't you? You understand that when I hang up this telephone I am going to write a memo for the files which will show that for the third and final time Jim Chee was officially and formally notified that any involvement on his part in this investigation would result in his immediate termination, said memo also showing that Chee did understand and agree to these instructions. Now, you got all that?"

  "I got it," Chee said. "Just one thing, though. Would you put in the memo what I'm supposed to be doing? Put down that you've assigned me to working on that windmill, and solving the Burnt Water burglary, and finding Joseph Musket, and identifying that John Doe case up on Black Mesa. Would you put all that down, too?"

  Another long pause. Chee guessed that Largo had never intended to write any memo for the record. Now he was examining Chee's motives.

  "Why?" Largo asked.

  "Just to get it all in, all in one place on the record."

  "Okay," Largo said.

  "And I think we should ask the medical examiner's office in Flagstaff to check the New Mexico State Penitentiary and see if they can come up with any dental x-rays on Joseph Musket, and then check them against the x-rays they took of John Doe's teeth."

  "Wait a minute," Largo said. "You saw Musket alive after Doe's body was found."

  "I saw somebody," Chee said. "West said it was Musket."

  Another silence. "Ah," Largo said. "Yes, indeed."

  "And about the windmill. I think I know who has been doing it, but it's nothing we're ever going to prove." He told Largo about the spring, and the shrine, and about how old Taylor Sawkatewa had tacitly admitted being there the night the plane had crashed, when Deputy Sheriff Dashee and Chee had talked to him.