“Their foreman was a peyote chief. He’d had services the night before and he had a vision,” Becenti said. “God talked to him and God told him something bad was going to happen out at the well.”
“And he warned his crew?”
“That’s right,” Becenti said. “And when Sena found out about it he just about went crazy. Sena didn’t believe in visions. He figured there was some funny business and somebody had killed his brother.”
“Hard to blame him,” Chee said.
“Anyway, Sena had three of the crew locked up at Grants and was looking for the peyote chief. I was, too—for illegal use of a narcotic on the reservation. One of our people found him first and we had him in custody when a deputy sheriff got there to arrest him.” Becenti’s wrinkled face folded itself into a grin. “Big damned argument over who was gonna get him. Whether it was reservation land or county jurisdiction where he lived, and where the oil well was. Looked like we was going to have another Indian war there for a while. But the well wasn’t on Navajo land, so I let Sena have him.”
Becenti inhaled a puff of cigaret smoke, breathed it out, and looked at the mountain. Its slopes were rosy now with the sunset. Chee said nothing. In Navajo fashion, when Becenti knew what he wanted to say next he would say it. There was no reason to hurry.
“Nothing ever came of it,” Becenti said. “Not as far as Sena was concerned. The peyote preacher stuck to his story, and there wasn’t any reason in the world to believe anyone would have blown up those men on purpose, and so finally Sena turned him loose. But something came of it for us. The Council wanted the peyote church stopped. So we was trying to arrest anyone with peyote. But word got around about the preacher saving those lives, and the congregation kept growing.”
“And you kept arresting them?”
“Trying to,” Becenti said. “They kept moving the services around. First one place and then another. Sort of went underground.” Becenti laughed again. “Got real secret. The leaders took to wearing mole amulets and they called themselves the People of Darkness.” Becenti used the same Navajo word that Mrs. Vines had remembered.
“The peyote chief was a Navajo named Dillon Charley?”
“That’s right,” Becenti said. “He was the peyote chief. He was the one who had the vision.”
“Did B. J. Vines have anything to do with that oil well?”
“No,” Becenti said. “He didn’t come into this country until after all that happened.” Becenti slammed his fist into his palm. “By God, though,” he said. “Vines and Charley got connected later on. Charley worked for him. After that explosion Sena hated Charley and pretty soon Sena was hating Vines, too.” He glanced at Chee. “How much you know about Vines?”
“Just what I’ve heard,” Chee said. “Came in here a poor boy at the very beginning of the uranium discoveries. Made the big uranium find on Section 17 and sold his leases to Anaconda for ten million dollars and a percentage royalty on the ore, and now he gets a little richer every time they drive an ore truck out of the Red Deuce Mine. Got more money than the U.S. government, big-game hunter, flies an airplane, so forth.”
“That’s about it,” Becenti said. “Except early on he and Sena had their troubles. Sena was sheriff by then, and Vines ran some Anglo against him and spent a lot of money and be damned if he didn’t beat Sena. And Sena came back two years later and beat the Anglo. Sena’s been sheriff of Valencia ever since, and he never did forgive Vines.”
“How did Charley get involved with Vines?” Chee asked.
“Politics. He started working with Vines against Sena—getting out the Navajo vote, and the Lagunas and Acomas. On Vines’ payroll, probably. Later on he worked out there at Vines’ ranch. Died years ago.”
“What happened to the People of Darkness?”
“Haven’t heard of them for years,” Becenti said. “But the church is still operating. You remember the courts ruled that peyote was a sacrament and they had a right to dope themselves up with it. Charley’s son—I think his name was Emerson—he was the preacher after Dillon died. And Emerson’s boy, he’s a peyote chief since Emerson’s sick.”
“Tomas Charley?”
Becenti nodded. “He’s a crazy little son of a bitch,” Becenti said. “All them Charleys was crazy and this youngest one is the worst. His mother’s a Laguna. From what I hear, he’s into one of the Laguna kiva societies, and he’s the peyote chief in the Native American Church around here, and he does some curing for the People on top of it all.”
“How’d that happen?” Chee asked.
“One of the boy’s paternal uncles is a yataalii,” Becenti said. “Pretty good old fellow. He taught Tomas the Blessing Way and the kid does it now and then. But most people would rather get someone else.”
“Why do you say he’s crazy?”
Becenti laughed and shrugged. “Chewed too goddamn many peyote buttons,” he said. “Got his brains curdled. Sees visions. Thinks he’s talking to God. Silly little bastard.” Becenti paused, searching for an illustration. “He come in the office last year and said Jesus had told him there was going to be a terrible drought and we should warn everybody to stock up on food. And then this fall he was in telling us that some witch was making his daddy sick. His daddy, that’s Emerson Charley.”
“Well, it’s been dry as hell,” Chee said, “and his daddy is dying.”
“It’s always dry,” Becenti said. “And his daddy’s got cancer. That’s what I heard. I didn’t know he was dying.” Becenti thought about it. “Anyway, he didn’t get witched. I think cancer runs in that family, like craziness. I think that’s what the grandfather died of, too.”
“Dillon Charley? Yeah. That’s what Mrs. Vines said.”
Becenti looked uneasy. He was old enough to have the traditions of the People worn deep into the grain, and one of the traditions was not to speak the name of the dead. The ghost might overhear and be summoned to the speaker.
“Did you know Vines had Dillon Charley buried up at his house?” Chee asked.
“I heard that,” Becenti said. “White men sure got some weird customs.”
Especially their burial customs, Chee thought. He’d spent years among the whites, first at boarding school, then through enough years at the University of New Mexico to win a degree in anthropology, but he still couldn’t fathom the attitude of whites toward the corpse.
“You have any idea why Vines would want to bury Dillon Charley?” Chee asked.
Becenti made a wry face. “Hell, no.”
“This Tomas Charley,” Chee said. “You said he was crazy. Would he be crazy enough to get into Vines’ house and steal a lockbox with keepsakes in it?”
Becenti extracted the cigaret from between his lips and looked at Chee. “Did something like that happen?” he asked. “Why would he want to steal something like that? Vines and his woman are both big hunters. I understand either one of them would just as soon shoot somebody as not.”
“I heard that Tomas’ grandfather thought Vines kept the luck of the Darkness People in that box,” Chee said. “Maybe Tomas heard about that.”
Becenti nodded. “Okay, then. I’d say yes. That kid would be about crazy enough to break in to steal himself some luck.”
6
The spike on his desk the next morning held three pink “While You Were Out” slips. One told him to call Captain Leaphorn at the Chinle substation. The other two, one left over from yesterday, and one received just before he’d got to work, told him to call B. J. Vines. He put those aside and called the Chinle station. Leaphorn’s business involved identifying a middle-aged Navajo killed in a truck-pedestrian accident. The captain wanted him to send someone to Thoreau to check with a family there. Chee added it to the afternoon assignment of Officer Dodge. Then he picked up the “Call B. J. Vines” slips, leaned back in his chair and considered them. Both were initialed “T.D.” Trixie Dodge was at her desk across the room. He glanced at her. She looked grim this morning. Trixie, he suspected, should have written “Cal
l Mrs. B. J. Vines.” Vines wouldn’t be back for weeks.
“Hey, Trixie,” he said. “You put down ‘Call Vines’ here. Wasn’t the call from Mrs. Vines?”
Trixie didn’t look up. “Vines,” she said.
“Mr. Vines?” Chee insisted.
“It was a man. He said his name was B. J. Vines. He asked for you and then he asked you to call him at that number.” Trixie’s voice was patient.
Chee dialed the number. It rang once.
“Yes.” The voice was male.
“This is Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. I have a note to call B. J. Vines.”
“Oh, good,” the voice said. “I’m Vines. I’d like to talk to you about that little theft we had. Could you come out?”
“When?”
“Well,” the voice said, “the sooner the better. I understand my wife talked to you about it and…” The voice paused and interjected a nervous laugh. “Well, there’s some misunderstandings that need to be cleared up.” The tone was ironic now. “There tends to be when Rosemary gets involved.”
“Okay,” Chee said. “I’ll be out there after lunch.”
“Good,” Vines said. “Thanks.”
Chee marked the Thoreau assignment off Dodge’s assignment sheet. It was on his way. He’d handle it himself.
7
The Pueblo woman answered the doorbell and showed Chee into the predator room without a sign she’d ever seen him before. There was a man behind the glass-topped desk now—a small man with a round face made rounder by the great bush of irongray beard that surrounded it. The man pulled himself to his feet. “Ben Vines,” he said, offering a small, hard hand. “Have a seat.” Chee sat. So did Vines. The room was brighter now than it had been when he had seen it with Mrs. Vines. Autumn sunlight streamed in, reflecting from the glass eyeballs and ivory teeth of the cats. The sunlight made the room less hostile. The lioness above Vines’ left shoulder seemed to be smiling. So did Vines.
“I understand my wife told you we had a break-in, and she hired you to solve the crime,” Vines said.
“She asked me,” Chee said.
“This is embarrassing,” Vines said. What Chee could see of his face through its frame of hair didn’t look embarrassed. His alert black eyes were studying Chee. “I have a feeling there really isn’t a crime to be solved.”
“No?”
“No,” Vines said. He laughed. “My wife is not a very predictable woman at times. She’s a very nervous woman. Sometimes things get confused.”
“Having someone break into your wall safe can make you nervous,” Chee said.
“How nervous it makes you depends on who broke into it,” Vines said. He shifted his weight, glanced out the window and then back at Chee. “Do you know where the safe is?”
“It’s behind that head,” Chee said, nodding to the appropriate cat.
Vines got to his feet again and maneuvered himself laboriously to the wall. He balanced carefully and lifted the mounted head off its hook, dumping it on the carpet. The safe door eased itself open on well-oiled hinges. The space behind it was dark and empty. Vines looked at it, his expression thoughtful. He extracted a pack of cigarets from the side pocket of his jacket, shook one out and lit it. At his feet, the cat’s head smiled benignly at the ceiling.
“Rosemary and I weren’t young when we married,” Vines said. “We’d enjoyed lives of our own and we were going to continue to be private persons as well as man and wife. We kept our old friends and our old memories. Both of us. Separate.”
Vines had been talking to the safe. Now he glanced around at Chee. A trickle of tobacco smoke leaked through his lips. It made its way through his mustache like gray fog. Chee could see now that the left side of Vines’ face was affected. The corner of his mouth and the muscles around his left eye drooped. “This safe operates with a key and a combination. Rosemary doesn’t have either one of them. I have a toolbox in the stables. There’s a prying bar in it.” Vines pushed the safe door closed. “You’ll notice that this wall safe is like a lot of wall safes. It has a limited purpose and it’s not built like a bank vault. It’s not designed to do more than slow down a safe-cracker. You can take a pry bar and jam it in the door fitting, and it gives you enough leverage to spring the lock. Take a look.”
Chee looked. He noticed, as he’d noticed the first time he’d examined it, that the safe door did seem to have been pried open. Whatever had been used had left marks, and the door had been slightly bent. Once again, that seemed odd. The door was heavy. Unless it was poor metal, it would take tremendous strength to bend it even with the leverage of a wrecking bar. Chee looked for a trademark and found none.
“I think you should get your money back on that door,” he said.
Vines laughed. “I’m afraid the warranty’s run out. As a matter of fact, I had the safe made and installed, and I guess they didn’t use the most expensive material.”
“Who did it for you?”
“I don’t remember,” Vines said. “Some outfit in Albuquerque. I had it done when I built this place, and that was thirty years ago.” He pushed the door shut. “The point I was making was that Rosemary doesn’t have a key to the wall safe, but she does have a key to the tool locker. The pry bar was gone. I found it in her closet.”
“Oh,” Chee said.
Vines shrugged. He produced a wry face. “So I want to apologize for all this. And I’d like to pay you for your trouble.” He produced a check. “You made two trips out here. Would two hundred dollars be fair?”
Chee glanced from Vines to the sly smile of the tiger. He thought of the bent metal of the door and the empty space behind the door, and of what Mrs. Vines had told him. Among other things, she had told him that B. J. Vines was away at a hospital. But two hundred dollars was too much to be offered. Vines was watching him. Vines had told him, in effect, that the crime was family business, and thus no crime at all, and no concern of Chee’s. To ask a question now would be impertinent.
“Did Mrs. Vines have the box?” Chee asked.
Vines considered this impertinence, his mild eyes on Chee’s face. He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she had it. Maybe she disposed of it. The point is it doesn’t matter. I think she told you there wasn’t much in it. There wasn’t. Mementos. Things that reminded me of the past. Nothing of value. Not even to me any longer.”
Vines held the check toward Chee, dangling it between his fingers.
“I understand you reported it to the sheriff,” he said. “Of course you’d have to do that. Old Gordo came out yesterday to ask about it. I wondered how much you told him.”
“Just what Mrs. Vines told me.”
Vines took three careful steps toward Chee and put the check in Chee’s shirt pocket.
“This isn’t necessary,” Chee said. “I’m not even sure it’s allowed.”
“Take it,” Vines said. “Rosemary and I will both feel better. If it’s against policy, tear it up. I wonder if you noticed that our sheriff is very interested in my business?” Vines made his laborious way back to his chair.
“I noticed,” Chee said.
“Did he ask a lot of questions?”
“Yep,” Chee said. Vines waited for more. He realized gradually that it wouldn’t be forthcoming.
“Gordo asked me a lot of questions about the People of Darkness,” Vines said. “I got the impression that you’d told him Rosemary thought one of the Charley boys had taken the box.”
“That’s right,” Chee said.
Vines waited again. He sighed. “I’ve had a lot of trouble with Gordo Sena,” he said. “Years ago. I thought it was over with.” Vines put out his cigaret and walked to the window. Past him, Chee could see an expanse of Mount Taylor’s east slope. At this altitude it was the zone of transition from ponderosa pine into fir, spruce, and aspen. The ground under the aspens was yellow with fallen leaves. The slanting sunlight created a golden glow a little like fire.
“It was early in the 1950s,” Vines said. “I’
d found that uranium deposit that the Red Deuce is mining now, and I was building this place, and I hired a Navajo named Dillon Charley as a sort of foreman to look after things. I didn’t know it, but Gordo had a thing about Charley, and about a bunch of other Indians in a church old Dillon was running.” Vines glanced back at Chee, the window light giving his gray beard a translucent frosting. “It was the peyote church. It was against tribal law in those days.”
“I know about it,” Chee said.
“Well, Sena was dogging them. He was picking them up, and beating them up. I got involved in it. Hired a lawyer over in Grants to take care of bonding them out and to bitch to the Justice Department about rights violations, and finally I put up some money behind a candidate and we got Sena beat for reelection for one term. For several years there, it was hairy between Sena and me. Things had settled down for the last few years. I’m wondering if he wants to stir it up again. That’s why I wanted to know what kind of questions he was asking you.”
“He asked why your wife wanted to hire me,” Chee said. He gave Vines a quick résumé of Sena’s questions.
“What do you think of that oil well business?” Vines asked. “Did Sena tell you about that? About why he hated old Dillon Charley?”
“He didn’t talk about it,” Chee said, “But I understand he thinks it’s funny Dillon Charley got that advance warning.”
“You don’t believe in visions?” Through the bristling whiskers Vines’ expression seemed to be amused. Chee couldn’t be sure.
“It depends,” Chee said. “But I don’t believe in crimes without motives. No one can find one for this explosion, I guess.”
“Well, there are some theories.”
“Like what?”
“You know Sena’s, I guess. He doesn’t seem to have any ideas about a motive, but he appears to think that Dillon Charley was tied up in some sort of conspiracy. And then there’s another theory that Gordo did it himself.”
“Why?”
“The way the story goes, the older brother was the apple of everybody’s eye—including his mother’s. Gordo is supposed to have known that the old lady was leaving the ranch to Robert. So he blows up the oil well.”
People of Darkness Page 4