The Shape Shifter

by Tony Hillerman

  “See that?” Garcia said, pointing to the tire tracks through the weeds. “I’ll bet I can tell you who did that. Ever since Delonie got his parole, I’ve had this old case on my mind. And when I heard that telephone threat to Mel Bork, and you told me about that rug, I’ve had a yen to come up here and look around.”

  Leaphorn nodded. “So you wanted to see if Delonie would return to the scene of his crime?”

  “Not exactly that, because it couldn’t be his crime. If it was a crime. I just thought he’d be, ah, well, let’s say, curious.”

  “Seems logical, since Delonie just got out,” Leaphorn said. “But here’s the way my mind works. Delonie knows Shewnack got away from that Handy robbery with a bagful of cash. Delonie probably knows no large sums were found with the body. Shewnack wouldn’t have kept a big bundle in his pockets while he was working here. He probably intended to rob Totter’s too, when he could set it up properly. So there’s a good chance that Shewnack found himself a place right here, or near enough to be handy, to stash away his funds.”

  “Exactly,” Garcia said. “And Delonie would come looking for it.” He was grinning. “I guess us cops all get into the habit of thinking the same way,” he said. “I’ll bet we find some places where somebody’s been digging.”

  They were bumping up the access road now toward what fire, weather, and inattention had left of Totter’s Trading Post.

  “Or maybe still digging,” Leaphorn said. He pointed past the wall of the main structure to a vehicle protruding from behind it. “Dark green. Looks like a Cherokee.”

  As he spoke, a man stepped through the empty doorway of the building. He stood staring at them. A tall man in a plaid shirt, much-faded blue jeans, long billed cap, and sunglasses. His hair needed trimming, and so did a short but scraggly beard.

  “I do believe I recognize Mr. Tomas Delonie,” Kelly Garcia said. “Which means this is going to save me the trouble of driving all over looking for him.”

  9

  Tomas Delonie’s reaction to the arrival of a police car and a deputy sheriff was just what Leaphorn had learned to expect from ex-cons out on parole. He was a big man, a little stooped, looking tense, slightly defensive, and generally unfriendly. Not moving, hands by his sides. Just waiting for whatever fate had in store for him.

  Leaphorn sat watching. Garcia got out, shut the door behind him, said: “Mr. Delonie? You remember me?”

  The man nodded. “Yes.”

  “Deputy Sheriff Kelly Garcia,” Garcia said. “Glad to see you again. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you.”

  “Talk?” Delonie said. “About what?”

  “About this place here,” Garcia said with a sweeping gesture. “About what happened here?”

  “I don’t know a damn thing about that,” Delonie said. “I was up there in the New Mexico State Prison. Near Santa Fe. Long way from here when that was happening.”

  Leaphorn got out of the car, nodded to Delonie.

  “This is Mr. Joe Leaphorn,” Garcia said. “He’s interested in what happened here too.”

  “Oh?” Delonie said, looking slightly surprised. “I wonder why that would be? Is he an insurance man? Or a cop? Or what?”

  “Just curious, I guess, about what could be found. And so are you,” Garcia said. “Or you wouldn’t be here. So we have something in common to talk about.”

  Delonie nodded. Looking at Leaphorn.

  Leaphorn smiled. “Have you found anything yet?”

  Delonie’s expression abruptly changed from his stolid neutral pose. His mouth twisted, his eyes pinched shut, his head bowed. “What do you mean by that?” Delonie said, his voice strangled.

  “I meant, maybe you might have been looking for something Ray Shewnack might have left behind for you.”

  “That dirty son of a bitch,” Delonie said, the words pronounced with heavy, well-spaced emphasis. “He wouldn’t leave anything for me.”

  “You mean Raymond Shewnack?” Leaphorn said.

  “That bastard.” Delonie wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, looked up at Leaphorn. “No, I didn’t find a damned thing.”

  Garcia cleared his throat. “What are you looking for?”

  “This is the place where the federals claim he got burned up, isn’t it? I was looking for just a tiny little bit of what that bastard owed me,” Delonie said.

  “You mean like part of the money out of old man Handy’s safe?” Garcia asked.

  “That’d be just fine,” Delonie said, wiping his eyes again. “If I found all of it, it wouldn’t cover what he owes me.”

  “I don’t think there’d be enough money in the whole world to cover what he did to you,” Leaphorn said. “Not for the way he treated all of you at Handy’s.”

  “Well…” Delonie said, staring at Leaphorn. He nodded.

  “You know, if you do find a bunch of money,” Garcia said, “or anything valuable, you’d have to—”

  “Sure, sure,” Delonie said. “I know the law. I’d turn it all in. I know that. I was just curious.”

  “Any place in the store there where we can sit down and talk?” Garcia asked.

  Totter’s store had been pretty thoroughly stripped of furniture, but a table with bench seating had been shoved against a wall amid a jumble of fallen shelving. Delonie sat on the table bench. Garcia stood looking at him. Leaphorn wandered to the back door, noticing how lines of dust blown in through the vacant windows had formed across the floor, observing the piles of leaves in the corners, thinking how quickly nature moved to restore the damage done by man. He looked out at the burned remains of the gallery section, remembering how a typical torrential rain of the monsoon season had arrived in time to save this part of the Handy’s establishment. But not much left of the adjoining Indian artifacts gallery or its storage room where Shewnack had his sleeping space. Where Shewnack’s cigarette had ignited the fire. Where Shewnack was too drunk to awaken. Where Shewnack had burned to bones and ashes. Behind him Garcia was asking Delonie what he had been doing lately, where he was working.

  Leaphorn walked out into the yard, around the building, toward Delonie’s vehicle. It was a dirty Jeep Cherokee, middle-aged, with the dents and crunches of hard use. A brown woolen blanket was folded on the front seat. Through the driver’s-side window he could see nothing interesting. Scanning through the rear side windows revealed only Delonie’s habit of tossing old hamburger wrappers and beer cans there instead of into garbage cans. He lifted the rear door, checked around, found nothing. On the passenger’s side, he opened the front door, felt under the seat, extracted an old New Mexico road map, put it back. Checked the glove box and found it locked. Checked the door pockets. Another New Mexico road map, newer version. Stared at the folded blanket, detecting the shape of something under it. He reached in and lifted the end of it. It was covering a rifle.

  Leaphorn folded the blanket back. The rifle was an old model Savage 30-30, a fairly typical type of deer rifle that had been popular when he was young. What was less typical was the telescopic sight mounted on it. That looked new. Leaphorn pulled the blanket back over the rifle, restored its folds, and walked back into the building.

  Delonie was shaking his head, looking grim.

  “So you didn’t just get out here today?” Garcia asked.

  “Yesterday,” Delonie said. “I’m about ready to give up.”

  “You just came looking for anything useful Shewnack might have had that didn’t get burned up with him?”

  “Like I said, I figured if he had any money with him, if he was planning to stay with Totter as a hired hand, he might have tucked it away someplace safe. Maybe buried it. Hid it under something.”

  “But you didn’t find anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You think you will?”

  Delonie thought a while. “I guess not. I think I’m ready to quit looking.” He sighed, took a deep breath, looked down. “Don’t know,” he said. “I guess maybe I found what I really wanted. I wanted to just
see for myself that the bastard was really dead.” He looked up at Garcia, then at Leaphorn. Forced a smile. “Get closure. Isn’t that what the shrinks are calling it now? Put it behind you.

  “Mr. Leaphorn here, if he’s a Navajo like he looks, then he’d know about that. They have that curing ceremony to help them forgive and forget when they get screwed. Bennie Begay, he had one of those. An enemy way ceremony, he said it was.”

  “You look like you might be Indian,” Leaphorn said. “Not Navajo?”

  “Part Pottawatomie, part Seminole,” Delonie said. “Probably part French, too. We never had such a ceremony. Neither tribe. But maybe just seeing where the bastard burned up will work for me. Anyway, it gave me a little satisfaction. Maybe it wasn’t as hot as the hell he’s enjoying now but it must have been next to it. People who knew this place said Totter stored his firewood in that gallery back room where Shewnack was sleeping. That wood burns hot.”

  That provoked a brief, thoughtful silence.

  Leaphorn cleared his throat. “This Shewnack must have been quite a man,” he said. “I’m thinking about the the way he sucked all of you into that plot he was working up. Sounds like he was awful damn persuasive. A genuine, bona fide charmer.”

  Delonie produced a bitter-sounding laugh. “You bet. I remember Ellie saying he was the prettiest man she ever saw.” He laughed again. “Anyway, a lot prettier than me.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything in the records about where he came from. Was he a local man? Family? Anything like that? If he had any criminal record, it must have been under some other name.”

  “He told us he was from California, or somewhere out on the West Coast,” Delonie said. “But after Ellie got to know him, she said he was actually from San Francisco. Great talker, though. Always smiling, always cheerful. Never said anything bad about anybody or anything. Seemed to know just about everything.” Delonie stopped, shook his head, gave Leaphorn a wry smile. “For example, how to unlock a locked car, or jump-start it; how to avoid leaving fingerprints. He even showed me and Bennie Begay how to get out of those plastic cuffs highway patrolmen carry.”

  “You think he had a record?” Leaphorn asked.

  “I think maybe he used to be a policeman,” Delonie said. “He seemed to know so much about cops and law enforcement. But I don’t know. Then I thought maybe he had worked in a machine shop or something like that. He seemed to know a lot about construction and machinery. But with him, I think most of what he was saying was just sort of talk intended to give you a phony idea of who he was. Or had been.” He shook his head and chuckled. “I remember a preacher we used to listen to when I was a boy. He’d have called Shewnack the ‘Father of Liars.’”

  “Like the devil himself,” Garcia said.

  “Yep,” Delonie said, “exactly.”

  “Did he ever talk about what he’d done for a living?” he asked. “Any mention at all?”

  Delonie shook his head. “Not really. Anytime anyone got serious about things like that he’d say something about there being lots of easy ways to get money. Once he made a crack about how coyotes know you don’t have to raise chickens to eat them.”

  “Quite a guy,” Garcia said. “Well, look, Mr. Delonie, if you do decide to look some more, and you find anything, I want you to give me a call.” He handed Delonie his card. “And don’t forget to keep checking in with your parole officer.”

  “Yeah,” Leaphorn said, “and you should—” But he stopped. Why inject himself into this until he knew a lot more than he did. Delonie would know that parolees were not allowed to possess firearms.

  10

  It was quiet in the patrol car until it had rolled down the last hump of the old Totter’s Trading Post access track and was reaching the junction of the gravel road.

  “If you do a left here, we could take a three-or-so-mile detour and get to Grandma Peshlakai’s place,” Leaphorn said. “Wouldn’t take long. Unless you have something else to do.”

  Garcia glanced at him, looking surprised. “You want to do that?”

  “I’d like to see if she ever got her pinyon sap back. Or found out who stole it. Or anything.”

  “Well, why not? That would probably be as useful as anything we learned here.”

  They came to a culvert bridging the borrow ditch beside the county road. Up the hillside beyond it was an old-fashioned dirt-topped hogan; a zinc water tank sat atop a platform beside it. Behind it was a slab-sided outhouse, a rusty-looking camping trailer, and a sheep pen with a loading ramp. Garcia slowed.

  “That it?”

  “Yep,” Leaphorn said.

  “Probably nobody home,” Garcia said. “I don’t see any vehicles.”

  “There’s that old tire hanging on the gate post though,” Leaphorn said, pointing. “Most people out here, they take that off when they leave the hogan.”

  “Yeah. Some of ’em still do,” Garcia said. “But that old custom is sort of dying out. Tells the neighbors it’s safe to come in and see what they can steal.”

  Leaphorn frowned, and Garcia noticed it.

  “Didn’t mean that as an insult,” Garcia said.

  “Trouble is, it’s true.”

  “Well, times change,” Garcia said, looking apologetic. “It ain’t like it used to be.”

  But it was at the Peshlakai place. As they drove up the track and stopped east of the hogan, a woman pulled back the carpet hanging across the doorway and stepped out.

  Leaphorn got out of the car, nodded to her, said, “Ya eeh teh.”

  She acknowledged that, nodded, looked surprised, and laughed. “Hey,” she said. “Are you that policeman that made Grandma so mad years and years ago?”

  Leaphorn grinned. “I guess so, and I came to apologize. Is she here?”

  “No, no,” the girl said. “She’s gone off to Austin Sam’s place. He’s one of her grandsons, and she’s taking care of one of her great-grandchildren. She does that for him some when Austin is off doing political campaigning. Running for the Tribal Council seat in his district.”

  Leaphorn considered that a moment, wondering how old Grandma Peshlakai would be now. In her nineties at least, he was thinking, and still working.

  “I’m sorry I missed her. Please tell her I said, Ya eeh teh.”

  This very mature woman, he was thinking, must be Elandra, who had been a lot younger when he’d first met her.

  “Elandra, this man here is Sergeant Garcia, a deputy with the sheriff’s office down in Flagstaff.”

  The glad-to-meet-yous were exchanged, and Elandra, looking puzzled, held back the doorway carpet and invited them in. “I don’t have anything ready to offer you,” she said, “but I could make some coffee.”

  Leaphorn was shaking his head. “Oh, no,” he said. “I just came by to see your grandmother.” He paused, looking embarrassed. “And I was wondering if anything new had come up in that burglary you had.”

  Elandra’s eyes widened. “Lots of years gone by since then. Lot of things happened.”

  “Long ago as it was, I always felt sorry that I couldn’t stay on that case. I got called away by my boss because the federals wanted help on that fire at the Totter store.”

  Elandra’s expression made it clear that she remembered. She laughed.

  “I’ll tell her you told her ‘ya eeh teh,’ but telling Grandma to ‘be cool’ isn’t going to do it. She’s still mad at you for running off without finding that pinyon sap.” Then she had another sudden memory. “In fact, long time ago when she was going off to help with Austin’s kids, she said you had told her you would come back sometime to deal with that stolen sap problem, and she left something for me to give you if you did. Just a minute. I’ll see if I can find it.”

  It was closer to five minutes later when Elandra emerged from the bedroom. She was carrying a sheet of notebook paper folded together and clasped with two hairpins. She grinned at Leaphorn and handed it to him. On it was printed in pencil: TO THAT BOY POLICEMAN.

  “That wasn’t
my idea,” Elandra said. “She was mad at you. What she wanted to write was worse than that.”

  “I guess I should read it?” Leaphorn said.

  Elandra nodded.

  Inside was the neatly penciled message:

  Young policeman.

  Get my sap back here before it spoils. If not, get back $10 for each bucketful, and $5 for each bucket. Rather have sap. Otherwise $30.

  Garcia had been watching all this, his expression amused.

  “What does it say?” he asked. “That is, if it’s not secret.”

  Leaphorn read it to him.

  Garcia nodded. “You know how much time and labor goes into collecting that damned pinyon sap,” he said. “Did you ever try to get sticky stuff off of you? I’d say that thirty dollars would be a very fair price.”

  Leaphorn put the note in his shirt pocket.

  Elandra looked slightly abashed. “Grandma is usually very polite. But she thought you were practicing racial discrimination against us Indians. Remember? Or maybe she just wanted somebody to blame.”

  “Well, I could see her point.”

  “You want to know if we got our pinyon sap back?”

  “Anything at all you can tell me about that.”

  Elandra laughed. “We didn’t recover any sap, but Grandma Peshlakai did get our buckets back. So I guess you should cut ten dollars off that bill.”

  Garcia’s eyebrows rose. “Got the buckets back? Well, now,” he said.

  Leaphorn drew in a breath. “She recovered the buckets?” he said. “Tell me how she managed to do that.”

  “Well, after that fire at Totter’s place, Grandma had been asking around everywhere. Right from the start she had the notion that Totter might have gotten that sap.” She laughed. “She thought he was going to start making his own baskets. Compete with us. Anyway, she noticed people were going over there after Mr. Totter moved with what was left of his stuff. And they were picking up things. Walking away with it. Just taking things away.” She paused.