"Do you know how many are involved? I've seen three in the cave. Are there more than that?"
"I've seen at least five," Father Tso said. "When my brother brought us back, first there was just a young man here they call Jackie. Just my brother and Jackie. Then when they brought the Boy Scouts there were three more of them. One with an awfully disfigured face, called Tull. He's still here, I think. But I haven't seen the other two again."
"This Jackie. How was he dressed?" Leaphorn asked.
"Jeans," Father Tso said. "Denim shirt. Red sweatband around his forehead."
"Yes, I've seen him," Leaphorn said. "Where are the other hostages? And how'd you get away?"
"They've got a sort of cage welded together out of reinforcing rods or something," Tso said. "Set back in a part of the cave way back there. That's where they put Theodora and me at first, and then they brought the Boy Scouts in. Then a couple of hours ago they took me out and moved me into another part of the cave." Tso pointed behind him. "A sort of big room back in that direction, and they put these things on my wrists and ankles and they sort of anchored me to a stalagmite." Tso laughed. "Tied a rope around
"How'd you get loose?"
"Well, they warned me that if I moved around too much with these nylon things on they'd tighten up and cut off my circulation, but I found that if you didn't mind a little of that, you could work the strip around so that the knot was where you could get at it."
Leaphorn remembered trying on the nylon cuffs when the department was considering them, and how quickly pulling against them caused them to cut into your wrists. He glanced at Tso, remeasuring him.
"The people who invented those things counted on people not wanting to hurt themselves," Leaphorn said.
"I guess so," Father Tso said. He was massaging his ankles now. "Anyway, these calcite deposits are too soft to cut anything. I thought maybe I could find some sort of outcropping-granite or something-where I could cut the nylon off."
"Is the feeling coming back?" Leaphorn asked. "Good. I don't think we want to waste any time if we can help it. I don't have a gun." He helped Tso to his feet and supported him. "When they come to the cage to get the questions answered, who comes? Just one of them?"
"The last time it was just the one with the red headband. The one they called Jackie."
"You okay now? Ready to move?"
Father Tso took a step, and then a smaller one, and sucked in his breath sharply. "Just give me a second to get used to it." The breath hissed through gritted teeth. "What are we going to do?" he whispered.
"We're going to be there when they come back to the cage. If you can find a place for me to hide. If two come, we won't try anything right now. But if just one of them comes, then you step out and confront him. Make as much noise as you can to cover me coming, and I'll jump him."
"As I remember it, there's not much to hide behind," Tso said doubtfully. "Not close anyway."
They moved slowly through the dark, the priest limping gingerly, Leaphorn supporting part of his weight.
"There's one other thing," Tso said. "I don't think this Tull is sane. He thinks he dies and comes back alive again."
"I've heard about Tull," Leaphorn said.
"And my brother," Tso said. "I guess you'd have to say he's sort of crazy, too."
Leaphorn said nothing. They moved silently toward the light, feeling their way. From ahead, suddenly, there came the sound of a woman's voice-distant, and as yet undecipherable.
"This is terrible for Theodora," Father Tso said. "Terrible."
"Yes," Leaphorn said. He was remembering Captain Largo's instructions. He flicked the flash on-getting direction-and quickly off.
"My brother," Tso said. "He stayed with my father, and my father was a drunk." Tso's whisper was barely audible. "I didn't ever live with them. All I know is what I've heard, but I heard it was bad. My father died of a beating in Gallup." The whisper stopped and Leaphorn began thinking of other things, of what his tactics would have to be.
"My brother was about fourteen when it happened," Father Tso said. "I heard my brother was there when they beat him, and that it was the police that did it."
"Maybe," Leaphorn said. "There're some bad cops." He flicked the light on again, and off.
"That's not what I'm talking about," Father Tso said. "I'm telling you because I don't think there'll be any hostages released." He paused. "They've gone too far for that," the voice whispered. "They're not sane. None of them. Poor Theodora."
They could hear the voice of Theodora Adams again, a matter more of tones echoing than of words. Leaphorn was suddenly aware that he was exhausted. His hip throbbed steadily now, his burn stung, his cut hand hurt. He felt sick and frightened and humiliated. And all this merged into anger.
"God damn it," he said. "You say you're a priest? What were you doing with a woman anyway?"
Tso limped along silently. Leaphorn instantly regretted the question.
"There are good priests and bad ones," Tso said. "You get into it because you tell yourself somebody needs help..."
"Look," Leaphorn said. "It's none of my business. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"
"No," Father Tso said. "That's fair enough. First you kid yourself somebody needs you-which is easy to kid yourself about, because that's why you thought you had the vocation to start with. That's what the fathers tell you at St. Anthony's Mission, you know: Somebody needs you. And then it's all reversed: a woman comes along who needs help. And then she's an antidote for loneliness. And then she's most of everything you're giving up. And what if you're wrong? What if there's no God? If there's not, you're letting your life tick away for nothing. It gets complicated. So you get your faith back...." He stopped, glanced at Leaphorn in the brief glow of the flash. "You do get it if you want it, you know. And so you try to get out of it. You run away." Father Tso stopped. Then he began again. "But by then, she really does need you. So what are you running away from?" Even whispered, the question was angry.
"So that's why you came-trying to get away from her?" Leaphorn asked.
"I don't know," Father Tso said. "The old man asked me to come. But mostly I was running, I guess."
"And you got tangled with your brother?"
"We're the Hero Twins." Father Tso made a sound a little like laughing. "Maybe we're both saving the People from the Monsters. Different approaches, but about equal success."
Now the voice of Theodora Adams was close enough so that they could understand an occasional word. The cavern narrowed again, and Leaphorn stood against the wall, one hand holding the priest's elbow, and stared toward reflected light. The light was harsh and its source was low-probably a lantern of some sort placed on the calcite floor. Here a hodgepodge of stalagmites rose in crooked lines from the level floor and curtains of stalactites hung down toward them. The light cast them in relief-black against the dim yellow.
"The cage is just back around that corner," Tso whispered. "That light's from a butane lamp sitting outside."
"Does the guard have to come past this way?"
"I don't know," Tso said. "It's confusing in here."
"Let's get closer, then," Leaphorn said softly. "But keep it absolutely quiet. He might be there already."
They edged through the darkness, keeping in the cover of a wall of stalagmites. Leaphorn could see part of the cage now, and the butane lantern, and the head and shoulders of Theodora Adams sitting in its corner. Close enough, he thought. Somewhere near here he would stage his ambush.
"I wonder why they took me out of there," Father Tso whispered.
Leaphorn didn't answer. He was thinking that maybe with Father Tso subtracted, the cage held the symbolic number-eleven children and three adults. Father Tso would have spoiled the symmetry of revenge. But there must be more reason than that.
In the darkness, time seemed to take on another dimension. After three exhausting days and nights virtually without sleep, Leaphorn was finding it took much of his concentration simply to stay awake. He shifted,
moving his weight from his left side to his right. In this new position, he could see most of Theodora Adams. The lantern light gave her face a sculptured effect and left her eye sockets dark. He could see two other hostages of the Buffalo Society. A man who must be one of the Scout leaders lay on his side, his head cushioned on his folded coat, apparently asleep. He was a small man, perhaps forty-five years old, with dark hair and a delicate doll-like face. There was a dark smudge on his forehead, rubbed into a brown streak across his cheek. Dried blood from a head cut, Leaphorn guessed. The man's hands lay relaxed and limp against the floor. The other person was a boy, perhaps thirteen, who slept fitfully. Theodora Adams spoke to someone out of Leaphorn's vision.
"Is he feeling any better?"
And a precise, boyish voice said, "I think he's almost asleep."
After that, no one said anything. Leaphorn longed for a conversation to overhear. For anything to help him fight off the dizzying assault of sleep. He forced his mind to consider the furious activity this kidnapping must be creating. The rescue of this many children would have total, absolute priority. Every man, every resource, would be made available for finding them. The reservation would be aswarm with FBI agents, and every variety of state, federal, military and Indian cop. Leaphorn caught himself slipping into a dream of the bedlam that must be going on now at Window Rock, and shook his head furiously. He couldn't allow himself to sleep. He forced his mind to retrace what must have been the sequence of this affair. Why this cave was so important was clear to him now. On the surface of the earth, there was no way an operation like this could remain undetected. But this cave was not only a hiding hole under the earth; it was one whose existence was hidden behind a century of time and the promises made to a holy man's ghost. Old Man Tso must have learned that the sacred cave was being used-and desecrated-when he came to take care of the medicine bundles left by Standing Medicine. That seemed now to be what was implied in the story Tso had told Listening Woman. And the Buffalo Society either `knew he had found them, or had learned he used the cave. And that meant he could not be left alive. A dream of the murder of Hosteen Tso began merging with reality in Leaphorn's mind. He ground his chin deliberately against the stone, driving away sleep with pain.
And the police would never find this cave. They would ask the People. The People would know nothing. The cave would have been entered only by water-on which no tracks can be followed. From outside, the cave mouth would seem only one of a hundred thousand dark cliff overhangs into which the water lapped. They would ask Old Man McGinnis, who usually knew everything, and McGinnis would know nothing. Leaphorn fought back sleep by diverting his thoughts into another channel. The same "fade-away" tactics employed in the Santa Fe robbery were probably being used here. Those who seized and delivered the hostages would have run for cover. They would have gone safely away long before the crime was discovered. Only enough men would have been left here to handle the hostages and collect the ransom. Probably only three men. But how would they get away? Everyone had escaped, except three. Tull and Jackie and Goldrims. They would have set up a way to relay and rebroadcast the radio message that kept the police away. Easy enough to rig, Leaphorn guessed. It wouldn't take much-if the transmissions were kept brief-to confuse radio directional finders. But how did the Society plan to extricate the final three when the ransom arrived? How could they be given time to escape? No one except the hostages would have seen them. If the hostages were killed, there would be no witnesses. Still, Goldrims would need running time-an hour or two to get far enough away from here to become just another Navajo. How could he provide himself with that time? Leaphorn thought of the dynamite, and the timing device, and of John Tull, who believed himself to be immortal.
Leaphorn caught himself dozing again and shook his head angrily. If he hoped to leave this cave alive, he must stay awake until Goldrims,' or Tull, or Jackie came alone to check on the hostages, or ask the ritual questions of one of the Scouts. He must be awake and alert for an opportunity at ambush, at overpowering the guard, at getting a gun and changing the odds. To accomplish this he had to stay awake. To go to sleep would be to wake up dead. Thinking that, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn fell asleep.
Leaphorn's dream had nothing at all to do with the cave, or kidnapping, or Goldrims, or Hosteen Tso. It was involved with winter and with punishment, and was motivated by the cold of the stone beneath his side and the pain in his hip. Despite his exhaustion, this discomfort kept dragging him back toward consciousness, and finally to a voice which was saying:
"All right. Wake him up."
For a moment the words were nothing but an incomprehensible part of a chaotic dream. And then Leaphorn was awake.
"Let's not waste any time," the voice was saying, and it was the voice of Goldrims. "I need the one named Symons." A panicky second passed before Leaphorn realized that Goldrims was standing by the cage door and the words were not directed at him.
"You're Symons?" Goldrims asked. The voice was loud and the words echoed through the cavern. "Wake up. I need to know your birth date and what your wife gave you for your last birthday."
Leaphorn could hear Symons's voice, but not his answer.
"May third and what? May third and a sweater. Okay."
"Are you going to let us go?" It was Theodora Adams's voice, but she had moved out of the corner now and out of Leaphorn's vision.
"Sure," Goldrims said. "When we get what we're asking, you're free as a bird." The voice sounded amused.
"What have you done with Ben?" she asked.
Goldrims said nothing. Leaphorn could see his back and his right profile, silhouetted against the reflected lantern light. Far behind him, at the edge of the darkness, John Tull stood. The lantern light glistened on the shotgun Tull held casually by his side. The shadow converted his ruined face into a gargoyle shape. But Leaphorn could see Tull was grinning. He could also see there was no chance for an ambush.
"What have I done with Ben?" Goldrims asked. He moved abruptly to the cage's gate, and there was the click of the padlock opening. Goldrims disappeared inside. "What have I done with Ben?" he asked again. The voice was fierce now and there was the sudden violent sound of a blow struck. Near him in the darkness, Leaphorn heard a sharp intake of breath from where Father Tso was standing, and there was a muffled scream from the Adams woman.
"You bitch," Goldrims was saying. "You tell me what Whitey has done to Ben. It got him crawling on his belly to a white man's church, giving himself up to the white man's God, and then a white bitch comes along.. Goldrims's voice broke, and halted. And when it began again its words were paced, tense, controlled. "I know how it works," Goldrims said. "When I heard that this thing that claims to be my brother had become a priest, I got a book and read about it. They made him lay on his face, and promise to stay away from women. And then the first slut that comes after him, he breaks his promise."
Goldrims's voice halted. He reappeared in Leaphorn's view, opening the gate. Leaphorn could hear Theodora Adams crying, and a whimpering sound from one of the Boy Scouts. Tull was no longer grinning. His grotesque face was somber and watchful. Goldrims closed the gate behind him.
"Slut," he said. "You're the kind of woman who eats men."
And with that, Goldrims clicked the padlock shut and walked angrily across the cave floor, with Tull two steps behind him. The lantern Goldrims carried illuminated them only from the waist down-four legs scissoring, out of step and out of cadence. Leaphorn told Father Tso where to wait for a second chance at an ambush two hours later. And then he followed the now distant legs through the darkness. It was like tracking a strange uncoordinated beast through the night.
18
"N o, no, Goldrims was saying. Look. It goes in like this."
They were squatted beside the radio transceiver, Tull and Goldrims, with the one they called Jackie sprawled on the bedroll, motionless.
"Like this?" Tull asked. He was doing something with the transmitter-changing the crystal or making some sort of antenna a
djustment, Leaphorn guessed. From where he stood behind the stalagmites that formed the nearest cover, the acoustics of the cave carried the voices clearly through the stillness, but Leaphorn was too far away to hear everything. Tull said something else, unintelligible.
"All right, then," Goldrims said. "Run through it again." There was a pause. "Right," Goldrims said. "That's right. Put the speaker of the tape recorder about three inches from the mike. About like that."
"I've got it," Tull said. "No sweat. And right at 4 A.M. Right?"
"That's right-4 A.M. for the next one. If I'm not back by then. Just a second and we'll get this one broadcast." He studied his watch, apparently waiting for the proper second. Then he took the microphone, flicked a series of switches. "Whitey," he said. "Whitey, this is Buffalo Society. We have your answers and instructions."
The radio said: "Go ahead, Buffalo, ready to record."
Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 03 - Listening Woman Page 17