Skeleton Man

by Tony Hillerman

  “And, Lieutenant, I’ve got a problem. Like to talk to you about it. Maybe get some advice. This man they’re holding in that Zuni robbery-homicide thing, well, he’s my cousin. That diamond he was trying to pawn, well, he says he’s had that thing for years. He didn’t do that robbery. I’d like to get your help on that.”

  Dashee paused. He cleared his throat. Leaphorn sighed.

  “Ah,” said Dashee, “Sergeant Chee suggested I ask you about this. Get some advice. He told me something about that old trading post operator way up there at Short Mountain, between Tuba City and Page—McGinnis, I think it is. Anyway, Chee said that in one of your old burglary cases, McGinnis reported having a big diamond stolen from his store. Could you let me know if you have any time to fill me in on that?” Another pause. “Well, thank you, sir.”

  Did he have any time? Did he have anything else? Leaphorn dialed the number Dashee left, got Dashee’s answering machine, left a message saying he had time. Plenty of time. Nothing but time. Besides, this diamond thing was different enough to be interesting. He looked in the refrigerator, saw nothing appealing, put on his hat, and went out to his pickup. He’d get a sandwich down at the Navajo Inn and then he’d—He’d what? Watch people playing golf on afternoon television? Play the Free Cell solitary game on the computer? Listen to all those lonely little sounds a house makes when it’s empty? To hell with that. He dialed the Dashee number again.

  “Turns out I’ll be going over into your territory today,” he told the answering machine. “I’ll stop at the Hopi Cultural Center for some late lunch. You could meet me there if it’s handy. Otherwise, I’m going on to that old Short Mountain Trading Post. Maybe you could catch me there.”

  That done, he wrote a note to Louisa telling her he was taking care of business north of Tuba City and would call her. He climbed into his truck, thinking about Sergeant Chee finally getting wise enough to realize that Bernie loved him. That led him to consider whether he should, once again, suggest to Professor Louisa Bourbonette that they get married. He’d proposed that once, when they decided she would use his Window Rock house as the northern base of her endless research on the mythology of Navajo, Ute, Paiute, Zuni, Hopi, and any other tribes she could persuade to talk into her tape recorder. The first time he’d asked her, the answer had been brief and determined.

  “Joe,” she had said, “I tried that once and I didn’t like it.”

  The next time he brought it up, she reminded him that he was still in love with Emma, which was still true even though ten years had passed since Emma had left him a lonely widower. Louisa said she would give him another ten years to think about it.

  Leaphorn sighed, decided to leave well enough alone again, and made the westward turn onto U.S. 264. He paused at Ganado to top off his gas tank, and spent the next hour trying to decide how to tell Dashee he had not the slightest idea what he could do to help his cousin. No profit in that thought. He shifted to trying to restore his usual Navajo harmony with the world around him—a world in which too many of his old friends seemed to be dying. Even Shorty McGinnis, hard as that was for him to realize.

  The Bureau of Land Management pickup he’d last seen Dashee driving wasn’t among the four vehicles in the Hopi Cultural Center parking lot, a disappointment. But the pretty Hopi receptionist in the center’s café recognized him (the first bright spot in the day) and gave him a huge smile. Of course she knew Dashee. He hadn’t been in, but she’d tell him Lieutenant Leaphorn had been there and was driving on to Short Mountain. Leaphorn drank two cups of coffee, ate the Hopi cook’s version of the taco, and headed for Tuba City and the great emptiness of the multicolored cliffs and canyons that lay beyond it.

  He paused in Tuba looking for friends he’d made there a lifetime ago as a green rookie cop. It would be good, he thought, to catch them before they cashed in and went off on that Last Great Adventure with the Holy People. He found three, one too busy to do much visiting, one nursing a bad bout with arthritis, and his former Tuba City district sergeant, who was all too happy to remind him of the mistakes he used to make. That took time.

  He headed north out of Tuba City, driving faster than he should, but when he made the left turn onto the wash-board gravel of Navajo Route 6130, the westering sun was low enough to be blinding.

  That discomfort was more than offset in the eyes of Leaphorn (with his Navajo conditioning to apply value to beauty, and economic importance to the weather) by the great ranks of towering clouds rising like white castles to the north and west. The usual late-summer “monsoon” was late. Maybe much-needed rain was finally arriving.

  He bumped across Big Dry Wash (the sometimes site of roaring runoff floods) and over the ridge into Bikahatsu Wash and onto the Blue Moon Bench.

  There the only buildings were the Short Mountain Trading Post, a big slab-sided barn with its pole-fenced pen for sheep connected to a smaller one for other animals, and the store itself, with two gasoline pumps standing beside it. The only vehicle in the packed earth of the parking space was a rusty and windowless old Ford sedan. Its wheels were missing. It rested on blocks with a collection of tumbleweeds trapped beneath it.

  Leaphorn parked beside it, turned off his ignition, and sat studying the scene, checking it against his memories, looking with fading hopes for some sign of life. The long wooden bench was still on the porch, but the customers who sat there exchanging gossip and drinking the cold soda pop McGinnis provided them were absent. The livestock pens were empty. If any hay bales were stacked in the barn, he couldn’t see them. And except for a mild breeze, now pushing a tumbleweed along to add to the old car’s collection, the silence was absolute.

  Leaphorn glanced at his watch. Plenty of time had passed for McGinnis to have opened the door, peered out, and waved him in. But the door hadn’t opened. Now he was forced to face what Captain Pinto had told him. John McGinnis had died, was dead, gone forever, Pinto had it right. Leaphorn had simply doubted because he hadn’t wanted to believe. He faced it now, admitted to himself that he had made this long drive hoping to find that Pinto was wrong, or someone to tell him how it had happened. Somebody said it was a heart attack. More likely a stroke. McGinnis would never have gone to a hospital willingly to die among strangers. Leaphorn had expected to find someone here to reassure him about that. Someone with whom he could trade memories. But he’d found only empty, dusty silence.

  He got out of the truck, trying to decide what to do, thought of nothing useful, and let habit guide him. He mounted the steps to the porch floor and knocked, and knocked again. No answer. None expected. The sign was still beside the door, telling all who came: THIS ESTABLISHMENT FOR SALE INQUIRE WITHIN. Had a new owner bought it? Highly unlikely. Leaphorn knocked again. No response. He walked down the porch to the nearest window, brushed away the dust, put his forehead against the glass, shaded his eyes, and looked in.

  Rows of mostly empty shelves, the old man’s desk at the end of a long counter, to Leaphorn’s right, a blinking light. A blinking light? He focused on it through the dirty glass. A television set showing what seemed to be a beer commercial in black and white. In front of the set, the back of what seemed to be a rocking chair, and the back of the head of someone sitting in the chair. White hair.

  Leaphorn sucked in a deep breath, went back to the door, knocked again, and tried the door handle. Unlocked. He pulled the door open and stood staring into the room.

  “Mr. McGinnis,” he shouted. “Shorty?” And he hurried in.

  It was McGinnis and he was alive, but Leaphorn wasn’t sure of that until he was almost close enough to touch him. Then McGinnis lifted his left hand to adjust the gadget that was holding an audio device over his ears. While doing that he noticed Leaphorn and turned in the rocking chair.

  “You born in a barn?” McGinnis asked. “Nobody ever teach you about knocking before you come walking right in?”

  Leaphorn found himself not knowing what to say. He watched McGinnis pushing himself awkwardly out of the rocking chair and taki
ng off the earphones he’d been using.

  “Back in Window Rock they think you’re dead,” Leaphorn said. “That’s what I was told.”

  “Speak up,” McGinnis said. “My hearing ain’t what it was, and I can’t make it out when you’re mumbling. But I’m supposed to be dead, huh?”

  “Dead and gone.”

  McGinnis had put on his spectacles and was leaning on the back of his chair, peering at Leaphorn.

  “Let’s see now,” he said. “You’re that Navajo policeman. Used to come out here years ago and drink my soda pop and get me to tell you where to find people. That right? You were out here a lot when Old Man Tso got murdered, I remember that. And I believe your granddaddy was that old fella they called Horse Kicker. Am I right? And your mother was a Gorman. One of the Slow Talking Dinee.”

  “My grandfather was Hosteen Klee, and nobody ever called him Horse Kicker but you,” Leaphorn said. “And Mr. McGinnis, I want to say I’m glad they’re wrong about you being dead.”

  “If you thought I was dead, what the devil brought you way out here? What are you after? You don’t come here not wanting something.”

  Before Leaphorn could answer, McGinnis was hobbling back through the store toward the doorway that led to his living quarters.

  “I’m going to make you some coffee,” he said. “Unless you broke that habit you had of not drinking whiskey.”

  “I’ll take coffee,” said Leaphorn, following McGinnis. But he grimaced as he said it. After all these years he could still remember the awful acidic flavor of the old man’s brew.

  McGinnis lit the propane stove on what passed as his kitchen work space, took a chipped cup and a Coca-Cola glass out of the cabinet above. He put his coffeepot over the burner and took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s out of a drawer. He opened that and carefully poured until the glass was filled up to the bottom of the red trademark C.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll take a sip or two of this while your coffee gets made and you can tell me what you want me to do for you. Tell me what sort of favor you’re after this time.”

  “Well, first I want to know how you’re doing. Looks like you’re still in business. Still grouchy as ever.”

  McGinnis snorted, sipped his bourbon, sipped again. He held the glass up close to his eyes, studied it, picked up the bourbon bottle, and dribbled in enough to restore the liquid level up to the bottom of the C.

  “Business?” he said. “Just barely. Customers all starved out, or they drive over to Page and do their buying there. Once in a while somebody comes in. Usually it’s just to offer to trade me something. That’s sort of what I’m doing now. Just getting rid of what I’ve got left. The giant oil company folks, they already quit bringing the gasoline supply truck out here. Said I didn’t buy as much as they burned driving the delivery truck out.”

  They talked awhile about that, about how Old Lady Nez came by with her daughter every once in a while and baked him some bread and did some other cooking for him in exchange for some of the canned goods he still had on his shelves.

  “Except for that, I don’t see many people anymore. And now we’ve got that covered, you’re going to ask me what you want to know.”

  “All right,” Leaphorn said. “I want to know about that robbery you had.”

  “Wasn’t a robbery. Robbery they point a gun at you and take your stuff. Cop like you ought to know the difference. This was a burglary. Broke in after I was sleeping, took a box of canned meat, sugar, stuff like that, and the money I had in my cash box. Mostly food, though. That what you want to know? I can’t tell you much. It didn’t wake me up.”

  He gave Leaphorn a slightly sheepish smile and held up the bourbon bottle.

  “I’d been watching that damned TV set and sipping a little more than I should. Didn’t even hear the son of a bitch. Didn’t know he’d been there until I noticed stuff gone from the grocery shelves.”

  “Just grocery? They take anything else?”

  “Took the blanket I had hanging on a rack in there, and some ketchup, and…” he frowned, straining to remember. “I believe I was missing a box of thirty-thirty ammunition. But mostly food.”

  “None of it ever recovered?”

  McGinnis laughed. “’Course not,” he said. “If the burglar didn’t eat it, you cops would have done that if you caught him.”

  “You didn’t mention a diamond. How about that?”

  “Diamond?”

  “Diamond worth about ten thousand dollars.”

  McGinnis frowned. Took another tiny sip. Looked up at Leaphorn.

  “Oh,” McGinnis said. “That diamond.”

  “The one you mentioned on the insurance claim report. You listed it as a ten-thousand-dollar diamond.”

  “Oh, yeah,” McGinnis said, and took another sip of his bourbon.

  “Did you get it back?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get your insurance money for it?”

  McGinnis peered at Leaphorn, blinked his watery blue eyes, rubbed his hands across them, put down his glass, and sighed.

  “I remember that time, years ago, you came in here trying to find a shaman. Margaret Cigaret, I believe it was—a Listener, as I recall her. And I told you who her clan was, and about a Kinaalda being held for one of the little girls in her clan, and you was smart enough to know Old Woman Cigaret would likely be out where they was holding that ceremonial and we sort of got acquainted.”

  Having finished that statement to remind Leaphorn of his good deed, McGinnis nodded, signaling Leaphorn that he could comment on his helpfulness without violating the polite Navajo ban against interrupting.

  “I remember,” Leaphorn said. “You also told me you knew my grandfather. You claimed they used to call Hosteen Klee Horse Kicker. It made my mother mad at you when I told her that. She said only a liar would say something like that.”

  “Boys shouldn’t tell their mothers such things. Insulting your grandfather,” McGinnis said, choosing to ignore the implication. “Anyway, that day it got to be more like two friends talking. You and me. Not like you was a lawman.” He peered at Leaphorn, quizzically.

  Leaphorn nodded.

  “You still thinking that way?”

  Leaphorn considered that. “When Captain Pinto told me you died, that didn’t seem right to me. I didn’t want to believe it. Too many old friends are dying. I didn’t really think I could learn anything about that diamond out here. I just wanted to see if I could bring back some old memories about when I was really a policeman. Maybe it would help me get into harmony with living with so many of my friends gone.”

  McGinnis picked up his glass, made a sort of semi-toasting gesture with it and took a sip, hoisted himself from the rocker, and shuffled off through the doorway into his bedroom.

  Leaphorn sipped his coffee. His memory of the chemical taste proved accurate. He put down the cup, grimaced, watched the dust float through the shaft of sunlight slanting through the window, remembering how this place (and his own life) had been when he’d been a young cop working out of Tuba City, learning the trade.

  McGinnis emerged, lowered himself into the rocker, put the pouch on his lap, and looked at Leaphorn, expression stern.

  “Now it’s time for you to tell me what kind of information you want to get from me.”

  “Fair enough,” Leaphorn said. “You may have read about that robbery at Zuni a while back. It was in the papers. On TV. On the radio.”

  “Fella killed one of them tourist-trap operators, wasn’t it?” McGinnis said. “One of those places where tourists buy all that Indian junk. Heard it on the radio. Fella got off with some money and a bunch of other stuff.”

  “Right,” Leaphorn said. “Well, now they have a suspect in jail at Gallup. A Hopi who tried to pawn a diamond worth maybe twenty thousand and he wanted only twenty dollars in pawn. FBI thinks he must have gotten it in the robbery. But he claims a man gave it to him down in the Grand Canyon years ago. This Hopi’s name is Billy Tuve and he’s a cousin o
f Cowboy Dashee. You remember Cowboy?”

  McGinnis nodded.

  “Dashee says Tuve’s not guilty. Captain Pinto saw the reference to the diamond in that insurance stuff added to your burglary. Diamonds aren’t common out here. So I wondered if you knew anything useful.”

  “Well, then,” McGinnis said. “That’s interesting. This Tuve, he claims he got it from a man down in the bottom of Grand Canyon, did he?”

  He hoisted himself out of the rocker, shuffled down the store’s aisle, and disappeared again through the doorway into the living quarters.

  Leaphorn sat thinking his thoughts. How much the man had aged. How McGinnis and his store seemed to be dying together. He resumed his study of the dust particles drifting through a beam of light from the lowering sun.

  McGinnis came down the aisle with a small pouch of what seemed to be deer skin hanging from his right hand. He reseated himself in the rocker, looked at Leaphorn.

  “I’ll tell you a story. You decide if it helps any. Probably won’t.”

  Leaphorn nodded.

  “Years ago. Winter, I remember. One of the cold ones. Lots of snow. A fellow came in here, said his name was Reno, probably middle thirties, riding a horse and all bundled up. Wearing a felt hat tied on with a strip of blanket holding the brim down over his ears. He said he needed some food and to use my telephone. My line was down, so I told him he could get to one at that store at Bitter Springs, and if that one wasn’t working, he’d have to get all the way to Page. He got some stuff off the shelf and I heated up a can of pork and beans for him. Then he said he didn’t have any money but he would leave me his horse and saddle for some more food and for me giving him a ride into Page.”

  McGinnis chuckled at the memory, located his Coca-Cola glass, poured a trickle of bourbon into it, took a sip, and shook his head.

  “It was a little roan mare and pretty used up. Limping on its back leg. Fairly good saddle, though. I put the horse in the barn with some hay, thinking I wasn’t going to make anything out of the deal, but if I didn’t take the horse, I’d probably be stuck with the cowboy, too. I asked him where he was coming from. And now we come to the funny part. He said he been down in the canyon with a bunch of hippies and got lost from that crowd and was trying to find a way out of there. Said he ran into an old Indian while he was trying to climb up a side canyon. The old man told him that slot he was going up was a dead end, and showed him how to get to a trail the horse could manage, and asked him if he had a good knife or a hatchet he’d be willing to part with. So Reno said he showed the fella his knife and said he’d take ten dollars for it. The Indian didn’t have any money but he offered a trade.”