Listening Woman jlajc-3

by Tony Hillerman

  Leaphorns 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.

  Lets 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 Leaphorns vision.

  Sure, Goldrims said. When we get what were 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 cages 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 mans church, giving himself up to the white mans 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 Leaphorns 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 adjustment, 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 well 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.

  Your answers are May the third and a sweater, Goldrims said. And now were ready to wrap this up. Here are your orders. Goldrims leaned toward the microphone and Leaphorn could hear only part of the instructions. There were references to map coordinates, a line drawn between them, one man in a helicopter, references to times, a flashed signal from the ground. Obviously instructions for the ransom drop, and like everything else about this operation, it seemed meticulously planned. No way to set a trap if the drop site wasn’t known until the copter reached it. In all, the instructions took only a minute. And then the radio was off, and Goldrims was standing, facing directly toward Leaphorn, talking to Tull, going over it again. They walked away together, away from the pool of lantern light toward the water, still talking.

  Then the purring sound of a heavily muffled engine started. Not a generator, as he had thought, but almost certainly a muffled boat engine. The sound moved and faded toward the dim light of the cave mouth.

  Leaphorn waited long enough to make absolutely sure that the man returning with the bobbing flashlight was John Tull. Then he moved quietly away from the stalagmites, back into the darkness. It would be at least an hour, he guessed, before the next questions were radioed in and the next answers extracted to prove the hostages still alive. Leaphorn intended to use that hour well. He had not seen the boat. He planned to make sure there was nothing else hidden in this darkness that he didn’t know about.

  The dynamite was gone. Leaphorn flicked the flashlight beam quickly across the cartons of supplies to make sure he hadn’t simply forgotten where the wooden case had been.

  Even as he did, logic told him the dynamite, and the small boxes containing the timer and the electrical wire, would be missing. He had expected it. It fit into the pattern Leaphorns mind was trying to make of this affair of the relationship between Tull and Goldrims and between what seemed to be too many coincidences, and too many unanswered questions. He snapped off the flashlight and stood in the darkness, concentrating on arranging what he knew of Goldrims and the Buffalo Society, and of what was happening here, into some order. He tried to project, and understand, Goldrims’s intentions. The man was extremely smart. And he was Navajo. He could easily vanish in the immense empty canyon country around Short Mountain, no matter how many people were hunting him. If he had another well-stocked hideaway like this, he could stay holed up for months. But finally he would run out of time. He would be the country’s most wanted man. There seemed to be no real possibility of escape for Goldrims. That seemed out of character. A fatal loose end. Goldrims would leave no loose ends, Leaphorn thought. There must be something Leaphorn was overlooking.

  The dynamite and the timer must have something to do with it. But Leaphorn couldn’t see how blowing up the cave would solve Goldrims’s problem. He glanced at his watch. In about forty-five minutes, the next set of questions would be broadcast and brought to the Boy Scouts for the time-buying answers. When that time came, Leaphorn had to be in position to jump whoever came with the tape recorder. In the meantime, he had to find the dynamite.

  Leaphorn did find some of the dynamite. But first he discovered what had to be Hosteen Tsos tracks, undisturbed in the quiet dust for months. They were moccasin prints scuff
ed across the white floor. Mixed with them were boot tracks which Leaphorn had long since identified as Goldrims’s. They led into what seemed to be a dead-end cavern. But the cavern turned, and dropped, and widened into a room with a ceiling which soared upward into a ragged hanging curtain of stalactites. Leaphorn examined it quickly with his flashlight. In several places the calcite surface was piled deep with ashes of old fires.

  Leaphorn took two steps toward the old hearths and stopped abruptly. The floor here was patterned with sand paintings. At least thirty of them, each a geometric pattern of the colors and shapes of the Holy People of the Navajos. Leaphorn studied them recognizing Corn Beetle, the Sacred Fly, Talking God, and Black God, Coyote and others. He could read some of the stories told in these pictures-formed-of-colored-sand. One of them he recognized as part of the Sun Father Chant, and another seemed to be a piece of the Mountain Way. Leaphorn came from a family rich in ceremonial people. Two of his uncles were singers, and a grandfather; a nephew was learning a curing ritual, and his maternal grandmother had been a Hand-Trembler famous in the Toadlena-Beautiful Mountain country. But some of these dry paintings were totally unfamiliar to him. These must be the great heritage Standing Medicine had left for the People the Way to start the world again.

  Leaphorn stood staring at them, and then past them at the black metal case that sat on the cave floor beyond them. His flashlight beam glittered from the glass face of dials and from shiny metal knobs. Leaphorn squatted beside it. A trademark on its side read hall crafters. It was another radio transmitter. Wires ran from it, disappearing into the darkness. Connecting to an antenna, Leaphorn guessed. Taped securely to its top was a battery-powered tape recorder, and wired to both tape recorder and radio was an enameled metal box. Leaphorn was conscious now of a new sound, a sort of electric whirring which came from the box another timer. The dial on its top showed its pointer had moved past seven of the fifty markings on its face. There was no way of telling whether each mark represented a minute or an hour. It was obviously adjustable. Behind the radio a paper sack sat on the floor also linked to terminals on the timer box. Leaphorn opened the sack gingerly. In it were two dynamite sticks, held together around a blasting cap with black friction tape. Leaphorn rocked back on his heels, frowning. Why dynamite a radio?

  He studied the timer again. It seemed to be custom-made. Sequential, he guessed. First it would turn on the radio, and then the tape recorder, and when the recording was broadcast, it would detonate the dynamite.

  Leaphorn extracted his pocket knife and carefully removed the screws that attached the dynamite wires to the timer. Then he cut the tape recorder free, sat on the floor and pushed the play button.

  You were warned. But our people

  The words boomed out into the cave. Leaphorn stabbed the off button down. The voice was that of Goldrims. But he couldn’t risk playing it now. Sound carried too well in this cavern. He shoved the recorder under his shirt. He would play the tape later.

  As it happened, Leaphorn had cut it close. He found Father Benjamin Tso waiting where he had left him, hidden among a cluster of stalagmites close to the cage door. He told the priest what he had learned, of Goldrims’s leaving to pick up the ransom, and of the radio and the time bomb in the cave room where Father Tso had been left.

  I saw the radio, Father Tso said. I didn’t know what was in the sack. He paused. But why would he want to blow me up? The voice was incredulous. Leaphorn didn’t attempt an answer. Far back in the darkness a tiny dot of light had appeared, bobbing with the walk of whoever carried it. Leaphorn prayed it was Jackie, and only Jackie. He motioned Father Tso back out of sight and climbed quickly onto a calcite shelf, from which he could watch and launch his ambush. He was still trying to control his breathing when the yellow light of a battery lantern joined the glow of the butane light at the cage.

  Time to talk again. The voice was Jackie’s. Got questions for two of these boys. He hooked his lantern on his belt, shifted the shotgun he was carrying to his left hand and fished a piece of paper from his shirt pocket.

  Leaphorn moved swiftly. He had the walkie-talkie out of its case, holding it like a club as he came around the wall of stalagmites. Then he hesitated. Once he jumped down to the lower calcite floor, there was no cover. For thirty yards he would be in the open and clearly visible. It was much too far. Jackie would have him. He could spin around and shoot Leaphorn dead.

  But Father Tso was there, walking toward Jackie.

  Hey, Jackie said. He swung the shotgun toward Tso. Hey, how’d you get loose?

  Put down the gun! Father Tso shouted it, and the cavern echo-boomed: Gun . . . gun . . .

  gun . . . gun. He walked toward Jackie. Put it down.

  Hold it, Jackie said. Hold it or Ill kill you. He took a step backward. Come on, he shouted.

  Jesus, you’re as crazy as Tull.

  I’m as immortal as Tull, Father Tso shouted. He walked toward Jackie, hands outstretched, reaching for the shotgun.

  Leaphorn was running now knowing what would happen, knowing how Father Tso planned it to happen, knowing it was the only way it could work.

  God forgive Father Tso was shouting and that was all Leaphorn heard. Jackie fired from a crouch. The gunshot boomed like a bomb, surrounding Leaphorn with a blast of sound.

  The impact knocked Father Tso backward. He fell on his side. Only after Father Tso lay still did Jackie hear through the booming echoes the sound of Leaphorn running, and spin with his catlike quickness so that the walkie-talkie struck not the back of his head, where Leaphorn had aimed it, but across his temple. Jackie seemed to die instantly, the shotgun spinning from his hand as he fell. Father Tso lived perhaps a minute. Leaphorn picked up the shotgun it was a Remington automatic and knelt beside Tso. Whatever the priest was saying, Leaphorn couldn’t understand it. He put his ear close to Father Tsos face, but now the priest was saying nothing at all. Leaphorn could hear only the echoes of the gunshots dying away and over that the sound of Theodora Adams screaming.

  There was no time to plan anything. Leaphorn moved as quickly as he could. He felt rapidly through Jackie’s pockets, finding the padlock key but no additional ammunition for the shotgun. He glanced at the cage. A quick impression of a dozen frightened faces staring at him and of Theodora Adams, sobbing in the corner.

  The other ones going to be coming and I’m going to take him, Leaphorn said. Get everybody to sit back down. Don’t give him any hint I’m out here. And with that, Leaphorn ran back into the darkness.

  He stopped behind the stalagmites and stared in the direction from which Tull would come. Nothing but blackness. But Tull would surely come. The sound of the shot would have reached him at the cave entrance. And he would have heard the Adams woman screaming. If he came at a run, he should be arriving now. Leaphorn held the shotgun ready, looking down its barrel into the darkness. He swung it toward the glow of light, noticing with satisfaction that the bead sight was lined exactly in the V of the rear sight. He could hear Theodora Adams’s sobbing less hysterical now and more the sound of simple sorrow. For the first time, Leaphorn became conscious of the smell of burned gunpowder.

  As soon as Tull came well between him and the light as soon as he could line up the sights on his silhouette he would shoot for the center of the body. There’d be no warning shout. In this darkness, Tull was far too dangerous for that. Leaphorn would simply try to kill him. Time ticked silently away.

  But where was Tull? Leaphorn was belatedly conscious that he had underestimated the man. Tull had not jumped to the obvious conclusion that Jackie had shot someone and come running to see about it. If Tull was coming at all, he was coming quietly, with his light turned off, stalking the lighted place to learn what had happened. Leaphorn lowered himself slightly behind the stony barrier, aware that Tull might be somewhere behind him looking for Leaphorns shape against the glow exactly as Leaphorn had looked for Tull’s.

  But even as he crouched, even as he registered this increased respect for John Tull as an a
dversary, Leaphorn felt a fierce exultant certainty of the outcome. No matter how cautious Tull was, the odds had shifted now. Tull would see Jackie and Father Tso on the cave floor and the surviving hostages in the cage. That would account for everyone. He would have to come into the light to get the answers. And he would want to find out what had happened, how Jackie and Tso had died. With his weapon ready, with everyone accounted for, there’d be no reason for him to hold back.

  Hey. Tull’s voice came from Leaphorns right well out of the periphery of the lantern light.

  What happened? The voice echoed, and died away, and silence resumed.

  They fought. It was the voice of the scout leader named Symons. The priest attacked your man and I think they killed each other.

  A good answer, Leaphorn thought. Smart.

  Where’s Jackie’s gun? Tull shouted. Where’s the shotgun?

  I don’t know, Symons said. I don’t see it.

  A bright light blinked on suddenly, its beam emerging from behind a screen of stalagmites far beyond the cage. It played over the bodies, searching.

  Leaphorn felt a sick disappointment. Tull was even smarter than he’d guessed.

  You son-of-a-bitch, Tull shouted. You’ve got the shotgun in there. Throw it out. If you don’t, I’m going to start shooting people.

  The light had blinked quickly off, but Leaphorn had him located now. A hint of reflected light, perhaps one hundred yards away. Leaphorn tried to line his sights on it, then lowered the gun. The odds of an effective hit at this range were terrible.

  We don’t have the gun, Symons shouted. In the dim light, Leaphorn could see Tull had already without a word raised his pistol.

  It was still a high-odds shot, but there was no choice now. Leaphorn steadied the gun, trying to keep the dim form visible over the bead. He squeezed the trigger.

  The muzzle flash was blinding. Leaphorn wanted desperately to know if he had hit Tull, but he could see only the whiteness burned on his retina and hear nothing but the reverberating thunder of the gunshot booming down the corridors of the cavern. Then there was the sound of another shot. Tull’s pistol. Leaphorn crouched behind the stone barrier, waiting for sight and hearing to return. He became aware that the butane lantern was out. The darkness here now was total. Tull must have shot out the light. A quick-thinking man. Leaphorn stared into the darkness. What would Tull do? The gunman would know now that another person had somehow gotten into the cave. He might guess that the person was the Navajo policeman. He’d know the policeman had Jackie’s shotgun and