And thus it would go, with Delbert's creaky old voice stripping off the layers of the Colorado Plateau from the core of a newly formed planet to the last volcanic age, hardly a millennium past. It was the only class that Chandler had really enjoyed. The only class that had seriously interrupted his preoccupation with the seduction of the daughters of the super-rich. They were always there, all around him, nodding and giggling through these lectures. He thought now he should have become a geologist.
He was considering that when another cloud formation made its way across the canyon, changing the light pattern, reminding him that time was passing, that Sherman still hadn't called. Why not?
Chandler dug his cell phone out of its belt holster and punched in the number Sherman had given him. It rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. He checked the number. It was correct and it was still ringing. Suddenly a voice.
"Yes."
"Sherman?"
No answer. Then: "Who is this calling?"
Odd, Chandler thought, but it sounded like Sherman. Sort of. Had that no-nonsense "cop talking" ring to it.
"It's Chandler, dammit. Who were you expecting? And where the hell are you? We're wasting too much time. Is Tuve cooperating?"
"What is your business with Mr. Sherman?" the voice said. "Identify yourself."
"Just a moment," Chandler said. "Can you hear me all right? I can barely hear you." He rechecked the number he'd punched. It was Sherman's. But he was, almost certainly, talking to a cop. Which meant something had gone very wrong.
"Can you hear me now?" Chandler asked.
"Perfectly," the voice said.
"Well, I'm very curious about this. You seem to have Sherman's phone. Where's Sherman?"
"You were going to tell me who you are. And where you're calling from."
"Oh, yes," Chandler said. "I'm Jim Belshaw. And I'm calling from the Best Western at Flagstaff. Sherman was supposed to come and meet me here. How come you have his telephone?"
"How come you have his number?"
Chandler thought for a moment about how to make his voice sound angry. "Well, you just better ask him that. But let me talk to him. What the hell's going on? He was supposed to be here an hour ago. Is he all right?"
"You a friend?"
"Yes. Yes I am. Has something happened to him?"
"I'm Officer J. D. Moya, Arizona State Police. And Mr. Belshaw, I want you to stay right where you are until I can get someone there to talk to you."
"Sure. I'll be here at the Best Western. Did something happen to him? Can I do something to help?"
"I hate to tell you this," Officer Moya said, "but the man in the car is in critical condition."
"Critical condition?" Chandler said. "Car accident? Or what?"
"Shot," Moya said. "Do you know why he carried a gun?"
That left Chandler speechless. But only for a moment.
"Somebody shot him? Carjacking, was it? Or maybe an accident. But I didn't even know he had a gun."
Moya didn't respond to that. He said, "What was he doing parked out by the rim of the Grand Canyon?"
"I have no idea," Chandler said. "Was he alone? Have you caught whoever shot him? I'd be surprised if he'd be picking up a hitchhiker. Or does it look like he shot himself?"
"This investigation has just started, Mr. Belshaw. I'm not in a position to release any information."
Chandler considered this for a moment. How long would it take Arizona State Police to discover there was no Jim Belshaw at the Flagstaff Best Western? Probably just a few minutes. Moya would radio the state cop office in Flagstaff, tell them to send someone over. Then what? When the crime scene crew arrived, and a regular criminal investigator got there, they'd be looking at that little notebook Sherman carried. Would they find Brad Chandler's name written in it? Would they find Chandler's cell phone number? An awfully good chance of that. And maybe the Grand Hotel number.
"Officer Moya," Chandler said. "If somebody shot Sherman, I want to see him punished. I probably don't know anything that would help, but if I knew more about what you found, maybe that would trigger a memory. For example, I think he was planning to take a hike down into the canyon. Was there any hiking stuff in his vehicle? For example, he told me once he knew an Indian who he was going to hire as a guide if he went. So if he was doing that, maybe there would be two sets of camping stuff, or hiking stuff, in the car."
This caused a moment of silence on the Moya end of the conversation.
"Well, thank you for the offer, Mr. Belshaw. But you were wrong about that. I saw what seemed to be just one backpack in the car. But then we don't mess around with the scene of a violent crime like this until the crime scene crew gets here with all its stuff. I just reached in to get a look at his billfold for an identification, and noticed the blood and that big pistol down on the floor. That's about all. Hold on just a minute."
Chandler held on, nervously, hearing the sounds of Moya using his radio.
"Mr. Belshaw, you sure you gave me that Flagstaff hotel right? We radioed in. Our Flagstaff office said Best Western doesn't have any Belshaw registered."
Chandler managed a laugh. "That because I just pulled into the front entrance here, decided to call Sherman before I checked in, and got all this bad news. I'll go in now and see if they're still holding my reservation. I'll check in and wait. But with Sherman in bad shape, I may not want to stay here in Flagstaff."
"Hey," Moya said. "Stay there. We need to talk to you."
"We're breaking up on this damn cell phone now," Chandler said. "I can't hear you. Just static. Can you read me? Hello? Hello? Officer Moya. Hello? Well, if you can still hear me, I'll check in here. I want to find out what happened to Sherman."
With that, Chandler just listened. Heard Moya yelling at him. Heard Moya cursing. Finally heard Moya give up and break the connection. Then he shut off his own cell phone, shook his head, and started working on the problems this had left him.
The worst one was that notebook Sherman carried in his jacket pocket. There might be some chance Sherman hadn't jotted his name in his book. An awfully good chance he'd noted his telephone number at the Grand Hotel. It wouldn't take much detective work to send them after the man who had called Sherman's cell phone number. But there was nothing he could do about that now.
What he had to do now was find out what happened to Billy Tuve. Had Tuve shot Sherman? Maybe, but it didn't seem likely. If not, who had? Probably one of those other people Plymale had warned him were trying to find the diamonds. Or, as Plymale wanted him to believe, to find the bones. And his job for Plymale was just to keep that from happening. He could probably have accomplished that simply and easily by erasing Tuve from the game. But he had never trusted Plymale. Killing Tuve would have wiped out his chance for his big payoff-a satchel full of prime diamonds.
And now where was Billy Tuve? The competitive team Plymale had described seemed to have eliminated Sherman. From what little he had learned from that damned Arizona state cop, Tuve's stuff hadn't been left behind in Sherman's car. From that, Chandler's logical mind developed the only logical conclusion. The bad guys had come for Tuve. Sherman had resisted. They shot Sherman. They took Tuve away with them, and the only possible use they had for him was identical to Chandler's own. They'd take him to the canyon bottom and use him to find the diamonds. But where? Somewhere very close to the termination of the Hopi Salt Trail, near where the Hopis harvested their ceremonial salt. The jeep-driver guide he had hired to take him to the bottom tomorrow had been full of information about sacred places in the canyon, and the Salt Shrine was near the point where the Little Colorado Canyon dumped its water into the Colorado River. No jeep trail would take them anywhere near that, the driver said, but he could drop them at the head of a trail he'd noticed in his Hiking the Grand Canyon book that ended at the river, just an easy walk upstream to the shrine.
Back at his car, Chandler opened the trunk and took out a small aluminum valise. He unlocked it on the front seat and extracted two cans-one a
Burma Shave shaving cream dispenser, the other a can of Always Fresh deodorant, both of which had been reengineered by some previous owner so that their tops screwed off, and both of which had been slipped out of an old evidence locker. Chandler presumed they'd previously been used to carry purchase-size packs of crack cocaine. He imagined them tucked in a grocery store sack with bread, soup cans, etc., offering a relatively safe way for the dope dealer to smuggle the stuff to the user. For him, they offered a simple way to get his pet little.25-caliber pistol past airport security x-ray machines.
Now he screwed off the tops, extracted pistol barrel, working parts, magazine, etc., wiped off the thick deposit of shaving cream covering the parts, blew the cream out of the barrel, cleaned it with a rod he kept in the can for that purpose, and reassembled the weapon. He'd had it made at a specialty machine shop in Switzerland on one of his skiing trips there, and it worked with typical Swiss efficiency. He clicked a round into the chamber, ejected it into his hand, and put it back into the chamber.
It worked perfectly. When Ms. Joanna Craig arrived with Tuve at the Hopi shrine tomorrow, he'd be down there waiting.
15
Joe Leaphorn found he had a way to get in touch with Sergeant Chee after all. He found Chee's cell phone number where he had jotted it on the margin of his desk calendar. And now that cell phone began ringing in Chee's jacket pocket. Chee was standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, watching Cowboy Dashee planting some painted prayer sticks at an odd-looking rock formation.
Chee snorted out a Navajo version of an expletive, extracted the phone, clicked it on, and said, "Chee."
"Joe Leaphorn," Leaphorn said. "Are you still interested in that Billy Tuve business?"
"Sure," Chee said.
"I mean, trying to find where he got that diamond? If you are, I've heard some things that might be useful."
"Still very interested," Chee said. "Not that any of us have much hope of finding anything."
That produced a silence. "But I'll bet you're going anyway, though. Right?"
Chee glanced around him. Cowboy was standing beside his car, helping Bernie with something. "Lieutenant," he said. "This Billy Tuve is Cowboy's cousin. Brain-damaged guy. And Cowboy has always been there for me when I needed a hand. From way back in high-school days. I think Cowboy's going to climb down and make this search even if there isn't any real hope. We're sort of trying to decide that now."
"You said `any of us.' You and Cowboy and Tuve?"
"Cowboy and me and Bernie Manuelito. Tuve was supposed to come, but when Cowboy went to get him, he was gone. Somebody showed up at his mother's house and he went off with them. That makes finding anything even more doubtful."
"Probably the sheriff's office came and got him. Sounds like the bond deal went sour. Why is Bernie going?"
"It wasn't the sheriff's office," Chee said. "Maybe it was the woman who bailed him out."
"Odd," Leaphorn said. "But why is Bernie going? That's a hell of a tough climb."
"I don't know why she's going."
Leaphorn laughed. "Want me to make a guess?"
"Why don't you just go ahead and tell me what you called for," Chee said, sounding unhappy. Bernie was standing beside him now, holding a backpack, asking Who? with a hand gesture.
Chee let her wait while Leaphorn related what Louisa had told him about the reward for the arm bones, about the rumors growing out of the airline disaster she'd been hearing among the canyon-bottom tribes. "You think any of that will help?"
Chee sighed. "Enough to tip the scales, maybe. Sounds like that hander-out-of-diamonds might still be alive, anyway."
"Who is it?" Bernie asked. "Is that Billy Tuve?"
"Lieutenant Leaphorn," Chee said, "Bernie is here now. Why don't you ask her why she wants to climb down there?" And he handed Bernie the cell phone.
"Lieutenant," Bernie said, grinning at Chee, "it's just like I told Jim. I think it would be fun. And he and Cowboy need somebody to look after them."
"Be careful," Leaphorn said.
"I will," Bernie said. "You know where I live. I'm good at climbing up and down rocks."
"I didn't mean just that, Bernie," Leaphorn said. "I guess you know that the FBI has been pulled into this. Got Captain Pinto to work on it. The federals wanted him to find out everything possible about a diamond that Shorty McGinnis was supposed to have. That means Washington got interested in it, and that means it's a big deal for somebody or other."
"Sergeant Chee told me a little about it," Bernie said.
"He probably doesn't know much more than I do," Leaphorn said. "I hope he told you he and Cowboy weren't the only ones after those diamonds."
"I don't think he did," Bernie said.
"Plus, there's an offer of big money for the bones of one of the victims. For burial."
"Is there more to it than just that?"
"Who knows for sure? But anyway, young lady, remember if Washington is involved, it means very influential people are interested, and that usually means a lot of money is in the balance. That can make it dangerous. So be careful. And try to keep in touch. Just in case you need some help keeping them out of trouble, let me know when you get down to the river if there's a way to call from there."
Getting down to the river took almost six hours, which Dashee thought wasn't too bad, even though he had done it in his late teens in something under five. He'd taken a little extra care at the points where the faithful left little pollen offerings to the Salt Trail's protective spirits and choked off his habit of exchanging barbs with Chee.
Dashee's uneasy silence was not just nervousness caused by worry about what the reaction might be among the spirits that oversaw Hopi behavior. He was also worried about the reaction of the elders in his own clan and kiva if they learned he had escorted two Navajos down this sacred pathway. To strictly traditional Hopis, the Dinee were still remembered as "head breakers"-barbarians so uncivil that they slew enemies with the old "rock on the skull" technique.
For Bernie, standing on the sand catching her breath, this descent was already a sort of dream, part of a thrilling close-up look at the nature she loved at its rawest beauty. And it had been a nerve-racking experience as well, where a wrong step on a loose stone could have sent her plunging down five hundred feet, to bounce off a ledge, and fall again, and bounce again, until the journey terminated with her as a pile of broken bones beside the Colorado River.
On the way down, to believe what she was seeing, Bernie found herself recalling the reading she'd done to prepare herself for this. That wavering streak of almost-white between the salmon-colored cliffs catching the sun would be Mesozoic era sandstone, reminders of sand dunes buried when the planet was young, and the bloody red in the strata above that would be staining from dissolved iron ore, and the name for that, required on Professor Elrod's geology exam, was hematite, and that thought would be jarred away by an inadvertent downward glance which showed her death. Death just as many seconds away as were required for her to fall, and fall, and fall, until the body of Bernadette Manuelito, more formally known for Navajo ceremonial purposes as Girl Who Laughs, smashed into the riverbank below and became nothing more than a bunch of broken, loosely connected body parts.
Now this journey into her imagination was interrupted by Cowboy Dashee.
"Bernie, what's your idea about that?"
"About what?"
"About what we've been talking about," Dashee said, sounding slightly impatient. "Here we are, right where we were going, and Billy's not here. So what's next? How do we start conducting this search?"
Having no useful idea, Bernie shrugged. "Maybe Billy got here before we did and got tired of waiting for us. How about looking around for him?"
Bernie was looking around herself when she said that, seeing a vast wilderness of cliffs in almost every direction, hearing the roar of water tearing over the rapids and above the thunder of the river, the chorus of whistles, trills, and bong sounds that must have been caused by the various species of
frogs that inhabited the canyon. Combined, it made her suggestion sound silly.
Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 17 - Skeleton Man Page 13