Skeleton Man

by Tony Hillerman

  And the clouds were building up in the west. That was always a reason for optimism.

  7

  Joanna Craig was determined not to let her impatience show. This was far too important. This was the only really important thing in her life. Ever. She couldn’t risk alienating this tough-looking little Indian sitting there by the window, examining the back of his hand to keep from looking at her. She had to suppress her impatience. And the anger she had been suppressing for much of her life. She had always managed that before. She would manage it now.

  And somehow the irony of all of it seemed to make where this was leading foredoomed and inevitable. Even this room. The way it was decorated for another generation. As if designed to take her back to the day when her father was killed, to make her remember that. Not that she didn’t always remember it, what she had read about it in that thick bundle of newspaper clippings she had found in the closet after her mother’s death. The sad stories, the dramatic news photos of the wreckage of the two planes made it seem that she had actually seen it. Now the scenes her imagination had created had a reality of their own. Her father in his first-class seat, eager to be reunited with her mother, loving her, thinking of the honeymoon they would take, looking down into the vast colorscape of the canyon’s cliffs, and then seeing that other airliner emerging from a cloud, imagining him knowing a terrible death was just a second away. Then Joanna had always fled from that thought to the way life might have been. Should have been.

  Billy Tuve was still studying the back of his hand, ignoring what she had just said to him about the wealth those diamonds could bring to him. Wealth seemed to be something that didn’t interest him. He wanted to talk about his mother being worried, about how good it was that this cousin of his, this deputy sheriff, was trying to help him.

  “Mr. Tuve,” Joanna said. “I guess I didn’t really explain why I came out here to put up the money to get you out of jail. I just made it sound like I was doing it because I knew you didn’t kill that man for his diamond. Just because I wanted to see you treated justly. I can see why you wouldn’t believe that, and I don’t think you did.”

  Billy Tuve looked up, produced a faint smile.

  “No,” he said. “I have known quite a few white people. There’s always something they’re after.”

  “So you know I have my own reason. I want to tell you what that is and ask you if you can help me.”

  Tuve stared at her, nodded.

  Now he was interested. At least curious.

  “That diamond you got from that man in the Canyon, that diamond they accuse you of stealing from the storekeeper, that diamond used to belong to my father. His name was John Clarke. Mama called him Johnnie, and he was on one of those airplanes that ran together over the canyon all those years ago. Before either one of us was born. That was John’s business. Diamonds. He was bringing a case full of them back to New York, and one of them was for my mother. They were getting married as soon as he got home. That diamond was going to be her present.”

  Tuve considered that. “Oh?”

  “But he got killed,” Joanna said. “She didn’t get it.”

  Tuve just looked at her, thinking about that. Nodded, with that expression that said he understood.

  “Well,” Joanna said. “They’d got together when they got engaged. She was already pregnant.”

  Tuve shrugged.

  “They had a big wedding planned. Dress fitted. Invitations sent out. Lots of—” She stopped, trying to imagine a Hopi wedding, knowing she didn’t have a clue about that.

  “Anyway, after my father died, his family wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Wouldn’t have anything to do with me, either.” She stopped. Why would Tuve care about any of this? But he seemed to. Seemed eager to hear more. His face was slightly lopsided, as if his right cheekbone had been smashed or something. It made his expression a little hard to read, but now he looked sympathetic. He shook his head again.

  “Not even your grandparents,” Tuve said. “That’s too bad.”

  “They lived a long ways off,” she said, and suddenly she realized she really, really wanted to tell this homely little man everything. He was obviously mentally retarded. But he’d been hurt, too. He could understand that.

  “Yes,” Tuve was saying. “My grandmother taught me a lot of things. My grandfather taught me how to ride, how to hunt rabbits. When I was in the hospital, they both came. And they always brought me things.”

  And so Joanna kept talking. Talking about how, when she had reached puberty, her mother told her the whole story, of her love affair with John Clarke, about their wedding plans, about going to the Clarke family’s huge house after John’s death and knowing right away that she wasn’t welcome. About how coldly they had treated her—especially John’s father. How she had left with nobody saying good-bye.

  “Nobody even told her good-bye?” Tuve asked. That seemed to touch a memory.

  Joanna had ordered lunch from room service. She talked on and on while they waited for it, about becoming a nurse, the death of the elderly engineering professor she had married, and about how after she had buried him, she’d come to the Grand Canyon to see if she could find the grave of her own father.

  “I went to the cemetery they established at Northern Arizona University, but that was for all those killed in one of the airplanes—a great granite headstone with all the names on it was there, but my father was on the other plane and his name wasn’t there. So I came to the Grand Canyon, to the National Park Service Center. They have the names of those on his plane there at the Shrine of the Ages monument, where they buried body parts they couldn’t identify. An old man there told me that the plane my father was on had flown right into the wall of the cliff and sort of splattered, and then burned, but some of the bodies were thrown out, all torn up. I told him that my father told my mother he was bringing home a whole container full of diamonds for his company in New York, and the best one of them would be for her ring, and that he had the case all those diamonds were in handcuffed to his arm so nobody could steal it.”

  With that, Joanna paused, wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. It was the ideal place for weeping to impress Tuve, but she hadn’t consciously planned it. The tears had been spontaneous. Since her childhood she had loved this man whom she was doomed never to see. And cried for him. Or perhaps it was for what his death had cost her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Anyway, the man told me that a lot of the bodies were all torn up, or burned up, and just put in mass graves. And he said people used to talk about one of the Grand Canyon people seeing an arm caught in a brush pile below one of the rapids that had a case of some sort handcuffed to it, but before it could be retrieved, it washed away.” She paused again, studying Tuve. His expression was blank.

  “Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  Tuve was silent a moment. Then: “No.”

  “The man who you got the diamond from must have found that arm, and that case locked to it.”

  “Yeah,” Tuve said, smiling. “You want me to help you find that man so you can find the diamonds. The ones that would make you rich.”

  “I want to find the man so I can find the arm,” Joanna said. “I want to give it back to my father. Bury it where he is buried at the Shrine of the Ages. But if we find the arm, we will also find the diamonds, and that will prove you told the truth to the police and you didn’t steal it.”

  That provoked another thoughtful silence. “Yes,” he said. “But about what you told me about burying that arm bone. Do you think that would make a difference?”

  “I have dreams about it,” Joanna said. “I don’t see my father in them. I have never seen him. But I hear him. And he is crying for that arm. So it will quit hurting. So the pain will go away. So he can sleep in peace.”

  Tuve considered. “You dream that a lot?”

  “All the time,” Joanna said.

  “Yes,” Tuve said. “Sometimes I am afraid to go to sleep. The dreams scare me.”


  “I know. I woke up once just cold and shaking. In the dream I had been sleeping under a bridge, and I couldn’t find my purse, and I didn’t know anyplace to go where I could wash, or get warm.” She looked up at Tuve.

  He seemed fascinated.

  “And the rats were all around me,” she said.

  “Sometimes it’s terrible,” Tuve said. “Once I dreamed I was under the horse and I couldn’t get out, and my head, well, it was almost flat, like a plate. And my eyeballs were out and there was no place I could put them.”

  Joanna shuddered at that. “That’s worse than any I can remember. I think you understand why I think you and I should help each other.”

  Someone was tapping on the door. Room service, Joanna thought. She glanced at Tuve. “Should I let them in?”

  “It’s all right,” Tuve said. “I understand.”

  8

  The thunderstorm that had been moving steadily toward Gallup from the southwest produced a dazzling flash of lightning just as Navajo County Deputy Sheriff Cowboy Dashee and Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police climbed out of Chee’s car in the parking lot. A sharp clap of thunder came two seconds later, the characteristic ozone scent generated by electrically charged air, and then a gust of dusty wind that made the jail door hard to open and blew Chee’s hat into the room ahead of him.

  “Well, now,” said the woman behind the desk. “Look what the wind blew in. I was hoping we’d finally get some rain.”

  Dashee said, “It’s coming. Today’s the day the Zunis are having their rodeo. They did their rain dance last night.”

  Chee rescued his cap, said, “Hello, Mrs. Sosi.”

  Mrs. Sosi was laughing. “I asked one of them about that last year when they got rained out again. Told him they should do the dance after the rodeo. He said the rain-outs kept the cowboys from getting hurt. Cut down the medical bills. Did you two come in to get out of the weather?”

  “I want to talk to one of your tenants,” Dashee said. “Billy Tuve. He’s my cousin.”

  “Tuve?” Sosi said, frowning. She checked the roster on the desk in front of her. “Mr. Tuve is a popular man today. But you’re too late. He bonded out about an hour ago.”

  “He what?! Wasn’t that bond set at fifty thousand dollars? Was it lowered? Tuve couldn’t have come up with any property valuable enough to cover that. And I guarantee he didn’t have the five thousand he’d have needed to cover the bond company fee.”

  Mrs. Sosi looked down at her records, then looked up with an expression that registered amazed disbelief. “And it was a cash bond,” she said.

  “Cash? Fifty thousand in cash?”

  “Same as cash. Registered, certified cashier’s check,” Mrs. Sosi said. “Bank of America.”

  Dashee’s reaction to all this was shock.

  “Who did it?” Chee asked.

  “A woman. Just about middle-aged. Nice looking. I never saw her before.” She glanced at the record book. “Ms. Joanna Craig. That mean anything to you?”

  “Not to me,” Dashee said.

  “She wasn’t local? Where was she from?”

  “Well, she used a New York City bank account. She said she was representing Mr. Tuve, and I think maybe there was a lawyer with her.”

  Dashee was looking baffled.

  “Did Tuve know her?” Chee asked.

  “He seemed as surprised as you do,” Mrs. Sosi said. “But he walked right out with her. Climbed into the car she was driving.”

  “What kind of car?” Chee asked. “Going where?”

  “She said she was staying at the El Rancho Hotel. The car? It looked like one of those Ford sedans Avis rents out at the airport.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Dashee said. “I think we better go find him.”

  Chee held up his hand. “This lawyer with her. Was he in the car, too?”

  “Just her and Tuve. And this other fella, I don’t know he was a lawyer. He just came in earlier. Big blond guy and he said he came from Tuve’s family, but he sure wasn’t no Hopi. Just said he wanted to talk to Tuve about getting money put up for his bond. The deputy took him back there awhile, and pretty soon he came out and said thank you, and went on out. That’s the last I saw of him.”

  “But he was with the woman?”

  She shook her head and laughed. “We don’t get an awful lot of out-of-town traffic in here, so I just connected them. Both interested in getting Tuve out. But I don’t know,” Mrs. Sosi said. “Now I sort of doubt it. He was gone before she got here. I never saw them together.”

  “Let’s go,” Dashee said. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Tuve. Find out what this is all about.”

  The ride up Railroad Avenue to the El Rancho was a splash through a rain mixed with occasional flurries of popcorn-size hail.

  “What do you think, Jim?” Dashee said. “What sort of mess has the silly bastard got himself into? I can’t think of a thing he could do that would make him worth that much money to anyone.”

  “You think maybe he actually did shoot that tourist shop operator?” But Chee answered his own question with a negative head shake. “No. That wouldn’t add up. Wouldn’t make somebody in New York come out here to buy him out for that much money.” He shook his head, thinking. “I was wondering who that man was. You have any ideas about that?”

  “I don’t. Billy didn’t shoot anybody,” Dashee said. “Billy was a good kid. Not the brightest bulb in the house after he got his head hurt. But he never quit being nice. He used to ride in that rodeo for kids. Did calf roping. Then his horse fell on him when he was twelve or so. Rolled over his head. Skull fracture. Longtime coma. The whole thing. And when he finally got out of the hospital, he wasn’t quite right anymore. To tell the truth, he was sort of retarded even before that. But he was always a good boy.”

  “Didn’t change his personality?”

  “Seemed like it made him even better. He did things for everybody. Kept firewood cut for his neighbors. Didn’t make trouble even when he was drinking. And I think he might have quit that drinking.”

  “Remember what we got together to talk to him about?” Chee said. “About that expensive jewel. I think all this must have something to do with that damned diamond.”

  “Probably,” Dashee said, and produced a dour chuckle. “And Tuve told me that thing was a phony. He said he knew everybody thought he was dumb, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think that was a real diamond.”

  The El Rancho Hotel had been built in the long-gone golden days of Hollywood movie studios. One of the big names in the industry had financed it to house the stars and production crews making the cowboy-and-Indian films that filled the theaters in the 1930s and ’40s. Despite some refurbishing, it showed its heritage. Its walls were still lined with autographed publicity photographs of the Hoot Gibson/Roy Rogers generations, and its atmosphere was rich with old and dusty glamour.

  “Yes,” the desk clerk told Dashee. “A Ms. Joanna Craig. She has 201. We call that the Clark Gable Suite. You want me to ring her for you?”

  “Please,” Dashee said.

  “No, wait,” Chee said. “You know how Joanna loves surprises. What’s the suite number again? We’ll just go up and knock.”

  Dashee was looking puzzled as they went up the stairs.

  “What was that all about?”

  “I’m just being cynical,” Chee said. “Thought we’d surprise her. Who is this woman, anyway?”

  Suite 201 was on the second floor, on the corridor overlooking the hotel lobby. Through the door came the faint sound of conversation. Chee knocked. Waited. The door opened. A small blond woman in a trim dark blue suit stood looking at him, then past him at Dashee, expression stern.

  “I thought you were room service,” she said. “Who are you?”

  Chee was reaching for his identification. “And I presume you are Ms. Joanna Craig,” he said.

  “You’re a policeman,” she said.

  “I am Sergeant Jim Chee,” Chee said, and showed her his ide
ntification folder.

  “And I’m a cousin of Mr. Tuve,” Cowboy said. He waved at the young man sitting slumped in an overstuffed chair by the window and said, “Good to see you, Billy. How you doing?”

  The man returned the gesture, with a happy grin of recognition.

  “I would ask you in,” Joanna Craig said, “but Mr. Tuve and I are engaged in a conversation. It’s business.”

  “We have business, too,” Chee said. “Police business.”

  “I don’t understand this,” she said, looking sterner than ever. “I am legally representing Mr. Tuve. And he is free on bond. Free as a bird until he is called in to testify, or this ridiculous charge is dropped.”

  “I’m not here on police business,” Dashee said. “I’m doing family business. Billy Tuve’s mother and my mother are sisters. We’re kinfolks. Cousins. I need to talk to my cousin Billy.”

  “Hey, Cowboy,” Tuve said. “You’re looking good. Did Mama send you?”

  Ms. Craig considered this. Looked at Chee. “It could be that we have a shared interest? I want to clear Mr. Tuve of this homicide-robbery charge. You, too?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Chee said.

  Craig was looking past him now at the arriving room service cart. She stood aside, motioned it in, and extended the same gesture to Chee and Dashee.

  “Would you care to join us? Have some coffee, or tea, or whatever. We’ll just tell the man to bring it up.”

  “No, thanks,” Chee said. “We’d just like to ask Mr. Tuve for some information.”

  “Make yourselves at home,” she said. “Mr. Tuve and I will have our lunch, but go ahead with your questions.”

  Chee and Dashee looked at each other. Dashee shrugged.

  “The trouble is what we want to discuss with Mr. Tuve is police business. It’s confidential.”