Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 17 - Skeleton Man

by Skeleton Man(lit)

  23

  "I wasn't raising my voice," Joanna Craig said, in something close to an indignant whisper. "And why dangerous? It's either a smallish woman or a tiny little man," she said. "Judging from the size of their shoes."

  Brad Chandler didn't respond to that. Instead he put his finger to his lips, put a hand behind an ear, signaling to Joanna that they should listen. She did, and heard nothing but the tinkling sound of water dripping from the gloomy passageway far ahead up the slot and the occasional faint sigh of the wind blowing past the slot's open roof far overhead.

  "We'll go in a little farther," Chandler whispered. "If all remains quiet and we see no sign of anyone, then I'll give us a little better light. We want to pick up that woman's track again. She must have some reason for being in here."

  "Sure," Joanna said.

  "And you have to take for granted it's dangerous. There's a lot of money involved in this, and where there's money, there are dangerous people."

  "Okay," Joanna said. "I understand."

  He made a sort of chuckling sound. "And maybe she's a little woman, but you're not so big yourself. And even little women can be packing pistols. Remember?"

  "I remember you forgot to return mine," Joanna said. "If it's dangerous in here, I'd feel a lot safer with it. Didn't you say we're partners?"

  "Right," Chandler said. "But don't let it worry you. I always look after my partners."

  He snapped on his heavy police-model flashlight, directing its beam back and forth across the smooth stone floor.

  "There," Joanna said, pointing. On the dusty stone were the faint tracks left by Bernie's waffle soles.

  As far as the light reached through the gloom, the tracks seemed to continue in an irregular line along the right edge of the floor.

  "Let's hope it stays this easy," Chandler said.

  "Take a look up," Joanna said. "At the sky almost straight overhead."

  Chandler glanced at Joanna, suspicious.

  "I saw a flash of lightning," she said.

  A boom of thunder punctuated her statement, producing a deafening battery of echoes from the cliffs.

  "Guess it's going to rain," Chandler said, looking up now. "We'll be dry in here. And if it keeps doing that, you can talk as loud as you like."

  "Yes," she began, intending to tell this big, obnoxious man what she had read about the effects of rainstorms above the canyon. And what one of the people at the Park Service Center had told her of the sudden flash floods roaring down the little washes that drained the mesa tops. But no. Maybe that knowledge, and his ignorance, might be useful if she had any luck. And Joanna Craig had no doubt that she was going to need a lot of luck to get out of this situation.

  He shifted the light beam, revealing nothing but the uneven layers of stone of the slot cliffs to the left, then he directed it up the cliffs, then across the slot. The light produced a brief burst of glitter as it passed the diamonds and then illuminated the cliffs to the right.

  "There!" Chandler said, keeping the beam focused on the high shelf where Bernie had seen the diamond man's bed. "See the cloth? I think we've found something."

  "Didn't you notice something shining?" Joanna asked. She pointed. "Back that way."

  Chandler ignored her. Walked toward the shelf.

  "Somebody had a bed roll up there," he said. "This must be where the man with the diamonds lived."

  And as he said that, the beam of the flash struck the corpse.

  Joanna sucked in her breath.

  "Yes," Chandler said. "I see him now. Or what's left of him."

  He focused the light on the body. "Looks like somebody got here first," he said, and switched the flashlight into his left hand and used his right to take out his pistol.

  "You're not going to need that gun," Joanna said. "He's already dead. A long time dead, the way he looks."

  "I can see that, dammit," Chandler said. "But who killed him?"

  "Look at him," Joanna said. "Maybe it was time. Old age. Anyway, it certainly wasn't very recently. He's practically a mummy."

  "I see it now," Chandler said. "And look, here's some more of those footprints. All around here. She's probably close. Anyway, I'll keep this pistol handy." He shined the light directly into Joanna's face. "Might need it," he said, grinning at her.

  Joanna turned away from the flashlight, held out her hand. "Then give me mine. Maybe I'll need it."

  He ignored that, swinging the flashlight beam past the body.

  "And there," he said. "Wow. Just look at that. Those must be my diamonds."

  "Arranged in two rows," Joanna said. But she was staring at the white shape standing between the glittering columns. And thinking, My father's arm. And noticing this man had said "my diamonds." Not that she had ever believed he would share them with her. Or that she cared about the diamonds anyway, for that matter. The bone was what she wanted.

  24

  Bernie had reacted fast at the first sound of the voices. Strange voices. The man's voice had an East Coast urban sound. Not Jim and not Cowboy, and it certainly didn't sound like what she'd expect Billy Tuve to sound like. Who were they? What were they doing here? And why were they following her?

  Lieutenant Leaphorn believed these diamonds were involved in a legal battle so big it had attracted FBI interest. Both of these people were armed. Park Service rules prohibited firearms in the canyon, so they weren't merely tourists. If they thought she was dangerous to them, they might be dangerous to her. She ran up the slanting floor as fast and as quietly as the rock-cluttered pathway allowed. She wanted to find a place as far from the voices as she could get. A place where she could conceal herself until she could locate a way out of this slot.

  Instead she ran almost immediately into a dead end. Part of one of the cliff walls had collapsed into a towering dam of chunks, slabs, and boulders blocking the floor and partially the slot. She climbed. A chunk of sandstone slid under her weight and dislodged smaller stones, bruising Bernie's knee and starting a rattling little landslide that touched off a chorus of echoes. Surely they would have heard that. She moved cautiously toward the wall, slid under a tilted slab leaning against it, and sat down.

  Time to subdue panic. Time to rest. Time to think. Time to make a plan.

  Thinking came first. Remembering everything she had heard from Chee about the genesis of this crazy business. Then remembering (now she could hardly believe this) her voluntarily tagging along uninvited and unwanted.

  Why? Out of a sense of adventure? Out of a yen to get a close look at the botanical/geological magic of this incredible canyon? Well, that was her excuse and it was partly true. But mostly it was to be with Jim Chee. She loved Jim Chee. Or thought she did. But where was Sergeant Chee now, when she really needed him?

  Bernie slid a little deeper under the slab, trying to get more comfortable, realizing this line of thought was utterly unproductive. She had to remember what else she knew, things that might tell her something about this couple she was hiding from. Everything she knew about that might bear on what she must do now. Just what Chee had heard from Lieutenant Leaphorn, who had harvested it from his lifelong and nationwide Cop Good Old Boy Network.

  The FBI was interested in a Gallup pawnshop arrest, which had to mean somebody big in the Washington bureaucracy was interested, which according to the inter-cop psychic vibration connected it to an old legal battle over a plutocrat's estate, the outcome of which had left a nonprofit foundation with the money and a woman who thought she should have inherited it determined to get it back. A great pile of money was involved and-as she had overheard the man telling the woman-you have to connect piles of money with dangerous people trying to get it.

  Probably true in the white man's world, Bernie thought, and in this canyon, too. Both of them had arrived with guns, which made them fit Bernie's notion of dangerous people. And now the man had the woman's gun, and the woman wanted it back, and he wouldn't give it to her. That, and the tone of the conversation, suggested they were not really part
ners in whatever they were doing here. She guessed the woman was the one who thought she had been cheated out of her inheritance. The one who had put up the money to bail Tuve out of jail. Because he had one of the diamonds. If she remembered what she'd heard from Chee, this woman believed the man carrying the case of diamonds was her father and that the foundation's lawyer had cheated her out of her inheritance.

  Bernie groaned. Not enough data to figure out anything useful in this situation. Wishing she had really paid attention to what Chee had been saying. At the time it had seemed like another fairy tale. Sort of like the Havasupai version of how a shaman had forced the Grand Canyon cliffs to stop clapping themselves together to kill people by walking across the river with a tree log on his head.

  The man? Was he someone she had brought along to help her until their deal went sour? Or maybe someone representing the foundation, here to protect its interests?

  Bernie had no way to decide that, but she knew that if she stayed half hidden here, they would find her if they wanted to. She had to have a plan.

  A flash of lightning erased the gloom down the slot below where she sat, giving her a momentary glimpse of the place the diamond dispenser had lived and died, and of a small woman and a big man standing near it. The following crash of thunder started echoes bouncing around the slot. Another flash illuminated the scene. The man, she now saw, was holding a white stick in his hand, waving it. Probably the arm bone of the skeleton man.

  She had to stop wasting time. She had to have a plan.

  25

  "Put it down," Joanna Craig said.

  Chandler laughed. "I'm just enjoying the thought of walking up to Mr. Plymale and waving this in the old bastard's face," he said. "I'd say, `Okay, you old bastard, here it is. How much will you offer me for it?'"

  "Give it to me," Joanna said. "It's mine. It's my father's arm."

  "Possession is nine-tenths of the law," Chandler said. "So let's talk business. You can take custody of your daddy's bone. I'll take the diamonds."

  Joanna nodded.

  "I mean all the diamonds. Each and every one."

  "I don't care about the damned diamonds," Joanna said. "Give me my father's bone."

  Chandler stared at her. Looked thoughtful. Nodded.

  "Why not?" he said. "But how about that woman we followed in here. She must have known about this place. I'm sort of uneasy about her. I want you to go on up there and see if you can find her."

  Joanna considered this, held out her hand.

  "Okay," she said. "You said she was dangerous. Give me my pistol."

  Chandler laughed. "If you have that pistol, then you might be dangerous. I don't think you'll need it, anyway. Those little footprints said either a little woman or a small boy. Right? And the Park Service doesn't allow people to carry guns down here."

  He got out his own pistol, grinned, pointed it at Joanna.

  "Get along now. Find that woman and bring her down here." He looked at his watch. "I'll give you ten minutes and then I'll come after you."

  Joanna started up the sloping floor. Stopped. Turned to look back at Chandler.

  "What now?" Chandler said. "Get going."

  Joanna pointed at a figure walking down the slope toward her out of the gloom. "This must be her," she said.

  Chandler swung his flashlight around. "How about that," he said. "I guess we have company."

  26

  The flashlight blinded Bernie.

  "Turn it off," she said, snapping on her own flashlight. "Turn it off." She shaded her eyes, turned her own light on Chandler.

  "I said turn it off now."

  Chandler lowered the light. "Who are you?" he asked.

  "What are you people doing in here?" Bernie asked. "And did I hear something about a pistol? This is a National Park with no firearms permitted. If you have one, hand it over."

  Joanna nodded toward Chandler, said, "He has-" Then stopped.

  "And I'll need to see your visitors' permits," Bernie said. "The form they gave you when you checked in and got permission to come down here without an authorized Park Service guide."

  Chandler had been studying Bernie, motionless and wordless. Now he shook his head, laughed. "I'll have to see your credentials."

  "First I'll take the pistol," Bernie said. "I heard this lady say you had it."

  "You don't look like a Park Service ranger to me," Chandler said. "Where's the uniform? Where's the official Park Service shoulder patch? All I see is a little woman in dusty blue jeans and a torn shirt and one of those New York Giants ball caps."

  "Turn over the pistol," Bernie said. "Just having a firearm down here is a federal offense. You add a citation of refusing to obey a federal officer to that charge, and you're going to be facing a federal felony indictment."

  "Oh well," Chandler said. "Why argue about it."

  He extracted a pistol from a jacket pocket, extended it toward Bernie, muzzle forward. And not, she noticed, extended far enough so she could take it without getting within his easy reach. It looked like one of the Glock automatic models used by a lot of police forces.

  "Turn it around butt first and toss it to me," Bernie ordered.

  "All right," Chandler said.

  He raised the pistol, pointed it at Bernie.

  "Now," he said, "let's quit wasting time. Get out your Park Service credentials and show me. Or your badge, or whatever you carry. And if you've got a gun on you, which I don't see, we'll want that, too."

  "I don't have my badge with me. This is an undercover assignment. We're checking into a report we've had."

  "Oh, really!" Chandler said.

  "My partner will be in here anytime joining me. If he sees you holding that gun on me, he'll shoot first and then ask what you're doing. Better give it to me."

  "Put your arms straight out from your sides," he said. "Miss Craig here is going to pat you down. See if you have a weapon. You would have, even if you are doing something undercover."

  "You're getting into serious trouble. Both of you."

  "Go pat her down," Chandler said, nodding to Joanna. "Make sure she doesn't have a weapon."

  "No. No," Joanna said. "I'm not having anything to do with this."

  Chandler stared at her, expression grim.

  "I see," he said. Then, to Bernie: "Turn around, little lady, arms straight out, hands open." He took a step forward, checked for a shoulder holster, checked her belt line, patted her on the back. Nodded.

  "Now that that's out of the way, I'll show you my credentials." He took out his billfold, opened it, thrust it at Bernie's face. "There you see my own badge as a Los Angeles County, California, deputy sheriff. And here"-he took a card from his billfold-"is my authorization as a criminal investigator for the same county. I am here to continue an investigation of a cold case, an old homicide in California, the investigation of which has led us all the way out here."

  Bernie nodded, very aware that Chandler had jerked both the badge and the certification card away before she had a chance to read them. The man was lying, but perhaps he was a private investigator with some sort of credentials. The world seemed to be full of them.

  The thunder was booming again. The sharp crack of a lightning strike on the mesa top near the slot echoed around them. Bernie noticed the dusty stone streambed was no longer dusty. It was carrying a thin sheet of water. And as she watched, it repeated something she'd seen untold times after the "male rains" of summer in desert mesa country-another wave of runoff raced down the floor and left the thin sheet an inch or so deeper. She felt a sense of urgency. Another such wave would be coming, and another, and another. As gravity rushed the runoff water down, the stream would became a flood.

  "Well, then," she said, "what can I do to assist you?"

  "Just take a seat somewhere and stay out of the way," Chandler said. "We want to get our evidence collected and get out of here before this storm turns into something serious."

  He picked up the strap of his backpack, pulled it away from the stream
floor, and zipped it open. Bernie watched as he sorted through its contents, moving a shirt out of the way, pushing aside underwear, shoving a small pistol under the shirt, finally taking out a pair of heavy wool socks. He inspected them and looked at his companion.

  "Joanna," he said. "You got any sort of sack in your pack?"