Cave of Bones

by Anne Hillerman

  “Mom worked in the oil company office out in Farmington, and the white people pitched in to give her a big savings bond the first time she was pregnant, and they put the name of her baby on it, you know, the little one who died. She decided that I should be given that name, so when I got old enough I could have the money for school. Her relatives were horrified and my father’s family advised against it, but she didn’t listen. I mean, giving a baby the name of a dead child has to be bad. I use CS or a nickname or sometimes my private name, you know?”

  Chee nodded. He had his secret Navajo name that no one used except Blue Woman, the beloved wife of the deceased uncle who had begun to teach him the prayers, songs, and sand paintings of a haatali. And now, Bernie.

  CS leaned forward. “That name . . . it freaks me out. No one ever called me that until I went to school, and then the teachers needed a birth certificate. They used it until I got them to stop. CS fits me, and it doesn’t have to do with the negative. What your investigator thought was my death certificate was for that baby. I wasn’t trying to get away with anything, OK?” He stood. “If you don’t believe me, ask my mother. What’s with all your suspicion, anyway?”

  “Well, besides the death certificate, there’s the way you pretended not to know me at the barbecue restaurant. The fact that you’re associating with a guy I arrested for assaulting a woman. The black-and-blue place on Darleen’s arm.” Chee looked around the studio again, at the gun, the beer and liquor, what could have been drugs. “I think it comes down to trusting that a person is who he says he is. What’s going on in this studio?”

  “We’ll get there, but I have a question for you first. Why are you so tough on Herbert?”

  Chee shifted his weight from heel to toe. “We’ve talked about that already, and my answer is the same. I have no respect for men who beat up on women. Is he the one who flattened my tire?”

  “No. I did that so you’d come over here to talk to me. And yeah, you’re right. Herbert did some time for domestic violence. But he is less angry now. He learned how to get out of tough situations at home without using violence.” CS motioned to the gun, the baggie with the white powder, the beer, the empty liquor bottles. “You’re probably wondering about this stuff, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Like I said, these are all props for the video. Here.” He handed the gun to Chee.

  Chee took it and looked at it. It was unloaded.

  CS picked up the little zip-lock bag. “This? It looks like meth, right? But it’s salt a friend gave me from Zuni Salt Lake. It’s a blessing to have it here.” He handed it to Chee. “Taste it if you don’t believe me.”

  Chee opened the bag. The contents did look like salt, but he wasn’t about to taste it. He closed it and offered it to CS.

  “We’re done with it. Take it.”

  Chee put the bag of salt in his pocket. “Tell me about the bruise on Darleen’s arm, and then we’ll talk about my tire.”

  CS glanced at the big digital clock over the door. “Better than that. D will be here soon. She can tell you herself.”

  “No, I left her and London at the dorm. They said they had to study.”

  “I told D there were too many secrets around here and that I was going to tell you about my name. She said she was ready to tell you about what happened to her arm.”

  “How did she know I’d be here?”

  “I told her.”

  “You knew because of the flat tire?”

  He nodded. “I figured giving you a flat meant you’d come here and blame it on me or Herbert.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “And then we’d talk, and you’d understand and give us some help.”

  “Help? With what?”

  “With whom, actually. With Juanita.”

  14

  Joe Leaphorn left the Window Rock offices of the Navajo Tribal Police Department in a mood that matched the heavy overcast sky. He argued with the weather: Come on, snow, if you are going to. Enough of this pointless cold gray.

  He stopped at Bashas’ for some cough medicine for Louisa and a copy of the Navajo Times, and on impulse picked up a box of Navajo Tea bags, the kind some entrepreneur made that saved grandmothers the trouble of gathering the plants and enabled Navajo families living in Pittsburgh and Boston to have a reminder of home. He could certainly have asked one of the secretaries at the station for some of the herbs and had enough to make a gallon for free. But he didn’t like to receive favors unless he knew he could repay the kindness, and the office staff seemed different every time he visited.

  That’s why he enjoyed helping Chee and Bernie. When he was busy as a private investigator, they had gathered information for him that as a civilian he didn’t have rapid access to. He happily returned the good deed when he could.

  Chee had come across an ex-con who might have it in for him, another questionable character, and a man alive despite a death certificate. Thinking of Chee, Leaphorn remembered how a cat had saved the man’s life by alerting him to an intruder. That triggered another memory, the crucial thing he’d come to the store for: cat food.

  Leaphorn held firm to the opinion that cats should support themselves by ridding the house and surrounding landscape of mice, but neither Louisa nor the cat agreed. Looking at the bags and cans of cat food with their pictures of big-eyed felines, well nourished and stress free, lifted his spirits. He smiled at himself, an old man cheered up by illustrations on cat food containers.

  He selected a bag with a cat that looked like his—or was it Louisa’s?—and headed home.

  Louisa had warmed some soup for them. She always added crackers and sometimes cheese or peanut butter to their weekday lunch, but she hadn’t done it this time, so Leaphorn filled in. He set the table with spoons and a rectangle of sturdy paper towel he preferred to her little napkins. She sat in her regular place looking out the window, not reading, not asking him yet about the meeting and his new assignments. A sign, along with the neglected lunch additions, that she must feel terrible.

  He gave her the medicine. He thought the tea deserved an explanation.

  “My grandmother offered a tea like that to us kids every winter, so I hope you will try some. She told us it strengthened us for the cold weather. She sweetened it with a little honey when we had some.”

  Louisa looked at the box. “This has Thelesperma in it. That’s good.” She put the box down and examined the package of cough syrup. “This stuff is guaranteed to put me to sleep.”

  “Try them both. A little sleep might do you good.” Leaphorn spoke as he served the soup, using a measuring cup to transfer it into the bowls since he could not find the ladle Louisa hid somewhere.

  “Sleep would be good for you, too. I bet my coughing kept you awake all night.”

  “No, no.” He was glad she had said “all night” because he had slept periodically between her coughing jags.

  “How was your police meeting?”

  “Fine, I guess. They want me to check on a couple of cold cases. Both of them have some interest to me: the suspected murder of a boy who died mysteriously at boarding school and a woman who walked away from her family and disappeared.”

  “They sound like they will keep you busy.” She coughed.

  After the soup, Leaphorn fixed Louisa the Navajo tea and put it on the table.

  She had a swallow. “Good, even without the honey.”

  He realized he had forgotten the honey and taken her spoon with her half-eaten soup. He placed a spoon on the table for her, on top of the paper towel next to the honey plate. He watched as she added and stirred.

  “You worry too much, Joe. I’ll be fine. It’s only a cold or maybe a touch of flu.”

  He leaned toward her. “Sit in my big chair in the living room. You’ll be more comfortable. Leave your cup, and I’ll bring it for you.”

  She rose without argument and settled into the recliner. She pulled his throw with the Navajo Department of Public Safety logo over her legs. T
he cat curled onto her lap.

  “I got the Times at Bashas’. Do you want to read the paper?”

  “No, you look at it first.”

  Leaphorn handed her the cup, and she took another little drink. “Thank you. Don’t fret over me. I know you have things to do. I might take a little nap right here in this chair. Go. Do your work.”

  The cat usually followed him to the oversize stuffed chair in the office, but today it stayed with Louisa.

  Before he started on his new assignments from the meeting, Leaphorn decided to finish distilling Chee’s information. Clyde Herbert’s background had been easy to find, but the man hadn’t left much of a trail since prison. That meant he’d either stayed out of trouble or become more competent at covering his tracks.

  He looked at his notes and realized he could do more digging. But maybe he’d take a nap first. A gray December day, the image of Louisa snoozing peacefully with a warm cat on her legs, the soup and crackers, all inspired a move toward the comfortable chair in his office, the one that gave him pleasant dreams. He’d stretch out for a few minutes and then . . .

  An electronic sound woke him. His cell phone. He didn’t use it very often this time of year because he stayed home more, and the land line was more reliable. He saw that it was Bernie. “Yá’át’ééh.”

  “Yá’át’ééh, Lieutenant.” Speaking in Navajo, Bernie made polite conversation for a few moments, and then got down to business. “I could use your advice on how to deal with Councilor Walker. I know you said she’s a dahsáni, but so far I’m only seeing this porcupine’s quills, not her soft side. She suspects that I’m involved in some sort of corruption cover-up, and Largo told me to change her mind. She’s taking over my working life.”

  “You know what animals eat the dahsáni?”

  “Well, sir, out here it’s bobcats and mountain lions.”

  “Do you know how they get around the quills?”

  “Not exactly, but they must figure out how to reach the porcupine’s stomach. That’s the only area not protected.”

  “Correct.” Bernie could figure out the rest, he thought.

  “Sir, I need another favor. It’s a big one this time, and Largo says the department will pay you.” He listened as Bernie mentioned the three-ring binder of information on Wings and Roots from Cooper and the slim folder of papers from Councilor Walker.

  “I can look at Walker’s information if you can get it to me soon. The folks at headquarters gave me some assignments today. The binder will have to wait until next week.”

  “I appreciate it, sir. I can scan the folder’s pages and e-mail them.”

  “It would be better if you could make a copy and drop it by.”

  “I can’t take the time today to drive to Window Rock. Could you meet me somewhere in Gallup?”

  “How about T&R?” T&R was an all-purpose rural shopping mecca—a truck stop, feed store, grocery, pawnshop, and snack bar a few miles west of the junction of the road into Arizona and the road to Shiprock.

  “That works, sir. I’m leaving the office now. Will Louisa be with you?”

  “No, she isn’t feeling well.”

  After the Lieutenant’s injury, Louisa had done all the driving. Now he had recovered enough to drive, and that freedom seemed to have further stirred his brain into more recovery.

  “Let me know if you have any tips on getting Councilor Walker to stop shaking her quills at me. And how to find her soft spot.”

  “Any leads on the lost man you were involved with?”

  “There’s a little article about him today in the Navajo Times. There may have been a sighting of him hitchhiking on the interstate.”

  He’d brought the newspaper into his office, and Leaphorn quickly scanned the two paragraphs about Cruz, thankful that his ability to read English outpaced his ability to speak it. Then he noticed an announcement that the Navajo Tribal Council’s Law and Order Committee was meeting that afternoon, chaired by Councilor Elsbeth Walker. He’d stop by to talk to her before he met with Bernie.

  He didn’t mean to wake Louisa, but she glanced up when he entered the room to get his truck keys and his jacket. “How are you doing on all that research?”

  “I’m almost done with Chee’s request. I realized that, in his case, no news was good news.” He told Louisa about the odd death certificate and the ex-con. “Bernie wanted some information about how to deal with the councilor I know who is giving her a little trouble. The woman thinks Bernie is involved in something underhanded.”

  Louisa chuckled. “Bernie? That’s crazy.”

  “I’m going to the council chamber for the Law and Order Committee meeting, and then to the T&R to pick up some work from Bernie. I shouldn’t be long.”

  Louisa coughed and sipped what was left of her tea. “I’m glad you and Bernie get along. I never know what to say to her on the phone. I think I always talk too much.”

  “You have interesting things to say. Are you feeling better?”

  “A bit. The rest helps.”

  Outside, what might have been a snowflake drifting past the window, and a few minutes later, a couple more of them. Good, Leaphorn thought. They could use the moisture, and the gloomy day would have meant something. He turned to Louisa to see if she had noticed the snow, but her eyes were closed. He gently pulled the throw a bit higher.

  The committee usually met at the Law and Order Building, officially the Navajo Department of Public Safety police headquarters. But the heat was out over there, as he had learned from his appointment that morning. The chief had mentioned that the committee would use the larger Navajo Nation Council Chamber. “It’s warm there already,” he had said. “The heat is on because some movie people are making a documentary on WPA art. They want to include the Gerald Nailor Sr. stuff over there. A bunch of bigwigs were roaming around all morning, taking pictures of the murals and shooting video.”

  Leaphorn parked his truck close to the exit, as was his habit, and walked to the large east-facing entrance door in the red sandstone wall. He hardly used his cane anymore, despite Louisa’s urging. He had been inside the hogan-shaped meeting room a few times, always to share a personal story about why the public safety department needed more of everything. He looked around for Councilor Walker, seeing half a dozen Navajo men talking in clusters and two women standing alone together. One of them he recognized as Elsbeth Walker, a few pounds heavier, perhaps, and still a handsome woman.

  The councilor looked over at him and smiled. “Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. It has been a long, long time. Yá’át’ééh.” Walker introduced the woman with her, a councilor from Kayenta who left them alone to talk. “What brings you here, Lieutenant?”

  Walker hadn’t changed, he thought. She was never one for excessive pleasantries. “Councilor, I have a colleague. A woman you know, too, Officer Bernadette Manuelito from Shiprock.”

  Walker frowned. “I remember that she said she was going to talk to you about some problems with an agency in Shiprock. I can’t discuss it.”

  Leaphorn waited until he was sure that she meant what she said.

  “I respect you as a councilor. You take the job seriously, and you spend more time on tribal business than other councilors I’ve met. I remember when you thought there was something wrong with the police administration here, how you stuck with it until you uncovered the truth.” Leaphorn didn’t add that the truth exonerated the department. “Once you found it, you helped us get more funding.”

  She smiled faintly. It wasn’t appropriate to be too proud of oneself, but she obviously recalled her success. He switched the topic back to Bernie.

  “Officer Manuelito reminds me of you in that way. She doesn’t give up on something until she has it figured out. When someone shot me, she was the one who discovered who had done it and why. She will be the same with the fraud case and the missing man.”

  Walker drummed her fingers on the desktop, but Leaphorn had seen the porcupine’s restlessness before.

  “You know,
people like us, you as a public official and me when I worked full-time, we hear a lot of things. Sometimes the person telling the story only has half the information, or leaves out something important. Sometimes they lie. That happened to me quite a few times, and it made the investigation more difficult.”

  She stopped drumming. “Lieutenant, get on with it. Say what you want to say.”

  “Officer Manuelito has a fine career of service ahead of her. She’s young, but she’s smart and resourceful. And honest. Just like you.”

  Walker laughed, “Like me, except for the young part. Joe Leaphorn, let’s have a cup of coffee next time I’m here for council. I want to know what it’s like to almost die.”

  “No one has asked about that. I’ll have to think on it.”

  “Think on it. I’ll call you. Now I have to get to work.”

  15

  Verifying a burial cave was not Bernie’s job of choice. But the assignment gave her a work-related reason to do what she’d been craving—go back to the Malpais and check on the progress of the search.

  But before that, she had an appointment to keep.

  She pulled her unit alongside the convenience store and passed the gas pumps. No one was buying fuel, but there were three other vehicles there: Leaphorn’s white pickup, a brown minivan with Arizona plates, and a sedan with thick plastic taped to the hole where the front passenger window would have been.

  Inside, the smell of cleaning solution and food under heat lamps greeted her. She saw the Lieutenant seated near the window, the expected cup of coffee on the tabletop. Bernie stood at the empty place across from him.

  Leaphorn acknowledged her with a nod. “You made good time, Officer. Have a seat.”

  “I will, but first, I’m going to get a Coke out of the machine and a hot dog. Do you want something?”

  “No, thanks.”

  When she looked at the franks spinning under the heat lamp, she decided on a bag of peanuts instead. She waited for a little girl filling her cup with a splash of each soda the machine offered. It seemed like only yesterday her sister had been that young, and now she was thinking of going to a school hours away.