Skeleton Man

by Tony Hillerman

  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?”

  “For what?” she said.

  “For what we came for,” he said, and pointed to the double line of diamonds.

  She shook her head.

  “Hell with it, then,” Chandler said. He tucked one of the socks under his belt, went to the shelf wh
ere the bone had been erected, and began picking snuff tins off the sand there, dropping the diamonds into the other sock and tossing aside the empty containers. It took longer than it might have because he was keeping his pistol ready.

  Diamond after diamond clicked into the sock. Bernie watched and counted, conscious of the time, aware that the runoff stream was widening fast, thinking of how much water that dam of fallen stones up the slot must be holding back. What was flowing past now was merely what was running under the slab where she had been sitting. If it came over the dam, if the dam washed out, everything here would be swept down the slot canyon.

  Chandler stopped. All the tins on the sand were emptied now and the foot of the sock, from heel to toe, bulged with diamonds. He tucked the pistol in his belt, knotted the sock at the ankle, and began extracting diamonds from the tins fastened to the sandstone wall, dropping them into the second sock, knotting it above the diamonds, tying the two socks into a single strand with each end a bulging knot of diamonds.

  Job done, he faced the women.

  “Here we have a big bunch of diamonds,” he said, gripping the combined socks where they were knotted, and swinging the bulges back and forth and laughing. “Big diamonds. Perfect blue-whites with expensive cuts. About thirty or so in this sock and”—he pointed—“maybe forty or so in this one. Call it seventy, and multiply that by maybe twenty thousand dollars on the average, and I have let’s say a million and a half dollars.”

  Thunder drowned out what else Chandler was telling them. The storm now must have moved directly overhead. Water was dripping down from the rim of the slot above. The light popcorn hail was peppering directly on them now. The flow down the slot floor was widening fast.

  Bernie made a “wait” gesture to Chandler with an open palm, rushed to his backpack, and pulled it away from the spreading water. She reached under the shirt, extracted Joanna’s little pistol, slipped it into her pocket, zipped the pack shut, picked it up, and deposited it on high ground well away from the flood. Then she exhaled. The man hadn’t noticed, so he hadn’t shot her. Not yet. She glanced at him. He was grinning at her.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “It would have washed away,” she said. “There’s sort of a dam up there where rocks fell down. If the runoff sweeps that out, everything is going to wash away. We better get out of here.”

  “Nice of you to warn me,” Chandler said. “And thank you for saving Joanna’s little pistol from getting wet.”

  “Oh,” Bernie said.

  “In return for your kindness, I guess I should tell you that when you get a chance to shoot me, and try to do it, just don’t try. It won’t work. I unloaded Joanna’s pistol, just in case she got careless with it.”

  He laughed. “However, if you try to shoot me anyway, then I want you to know that I will shoot you. Probably several times. And”—he pointed to the shriveled body of the Skeleton Man—“leave your body here with our deceased friend.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Bernie said.

  While she was saying it, lightning flashed again, followed a moment later by the crack of a nearby strike, and booming echoes of thunder. And as that faded, another sound emerged.

  “Oooh!” said Joanna, in something between a shout and a shriek. It was a rumbling, creaking, crashing sound of boulders being swept along by the overpowering surge of flash waters rushing down-slope. With the sound came the sight of the slot-bottom stream abruptly rising, spreading, sweeping along with it the variety of leaves, twigs, assorted debris the bottom had collected in the years since the last “male rain” downpour had settled over this section of the Coconino Plateau and sent untold tons of water pouring off the rocky surface into the canyon.

  Bernie had expected this, but in a more gradual and less violent form, and had decided what she had to do when it happened.

  Chandler had not waited for a plan to reveal itself. He was running down the slot, splashing along the edge of the stream against the cliff. Looking for a place to climb, she guessed, or hoping to reach the exit where the slot would pour its water into the canyon. He was clutching his diamond-filled socks as he ran.

  Bernie grabbed Joanna Craig’s arm. “Come on!” she shouted. “I know a place we’ll be safe.”

  Saying it, Bernie was wishing she felt as confident as she tried to sound. The place she had in mind was the basalt shelf where the Skeleton Man had made his bed. He must have known the canyon, perched there to be safe from such flash floods. And coming in here, she had noticed on the walls of the slot how high flood debris had been deposited by previous floods. Maybe the Skeleton Man’s shelf wasn’t totally safe, but it would be safer than here.

  And Joanna Craig seemed to trust her. She was following, splashing along with the rushing water. Knee-deep now, it was pushing them along, hurrying them, trying to sweep their feet off the bottom. And then they were at the edge of the sloping shelf.

  Bernie pulled herself onto it, feeling as she did the water sweeping her feet out of its way, helping Joanna pull herself up, then helping her hoist the man’s bright yellow backpack up with her.

  They sat for a moment, regaining their breath.

  “Why did you save that?” Bernie asked, tapping the wet backpack.

  Joanna Craig unzipped it, reached in, extracted the arm bone, showed it to Bernie. Smiling.

  “This is what I came here for,” she said, and Bernie could tell she was crying. “Now I can prove I’m my father’s daughter.”

  27

  The first time he had been to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Jim Chee had thought of the Colorado River system as a sort of reverse copy of a human vascular arrangement, with the Colorado being the artery and the scores of smaller canyons leading down into it the capillaries. Gravity made it all work backward, of course. The little gullies and arroyos collected water from all over the Kaibab and Coconino plateaus to feed their area streams across the immense Colorado Plateau. Then these creeks and rivers poured it down into the Colorado a mile or more below. Having seen the velocity that gravity gave the torrents coming off the lava mesas in northern New Mexico, he guessed he’d find runoff into the Grand Canyon (with ten times more gravity behind it) absolutely spectacular.

  He was right.

  Chee was huddled into a modest overhang at the cliff where the canyon he’d followed from the big river was joined by runoff pouring out of a small slot. He was wet to the skin from the pounding rain—mixed now and then with bits of hail. He was also scratched and bruised from a futile attempt to buck the runoff from the smaller stream. The racing water had knocked him out of the way and deposited him, half drowned, beside the cliff where he now stood. And that stream was puny compared to the roaring runoff it was joining.

  He was as certain as the situation allowed that the slot he’d tried to enter was the one into which Bernie had disappeared. She and whoever she was with must be in that slot now. Maybe they were already drowning. If they drowned, they would wash out here. He had already seen part of a wooden bucket flash by on the flood.

  Now came what looked like some sort of cloth and what might have been a soggy hat. Behind that, bobbing and turning, came what seemed to be a dried and terribly emaciated corpse. It was clad in a torn blue shirt and ragged denim pants. The hair plastered to the skull was white and the body was so wasted that the bones pressed against the skin. The torrent quickly swept it past to disappear in the foam where the stream pouring out of the slot joined the much larger main canyon flood.

  “Skeleton Man,” Chee said. Well, they had finally found him. Or Bernie had found him. And all he could do about her being up there in the slot, and in danger, was wait and worry until the flood subsided.

  The water pouring out of the slot, and the flood racing down the canyon, produced a roaring bedlam made even more deafening by the echoes bouncing off the cliffs. But suddenly Chee heard what seemed to be a yell. Brief, and suddenly choked off.

  A moment later a man shot out of the slot, head out of the water, trying to
swim.

  Chee jumped to his feet, scrambled away from the wall and down the slope toward the flood.

  The man grabbed at the branches of cat’s claw acacia he was being swept past, managed to catch a branch, held on. The force of the water swept his legs downstream. He was on his back now, seeing Chee.

  “Help!” he screamed. “Help me!”

  “Coming,” Chee shouted. “Hold on.”

  The man was holding on only with his left hand, clutching what seemed to be a sort of rope in the other.

  “Use both hands!” Chee yelled. “I’ll wade in as far as I can. When I get close enough, you push off and I’ll try to catch you.”

  The man looked at Chee, expression desperate, tried to say something, couldn’t. Then he swung his right arm, trying for a hold on another limb. The rope he was holding swung upward, caught in the brambles. The man grabbed at it.

  Trying to pull himself up, Chee thought. Impossible. The brush wouldn’t hold his weight. Chee took another step into the water, almost to his knees now, struggling to keep a foothold on the rock below, leaning against the pressure of the water.

  The man was frantically jerking at the rope.

  “For God’s sake, don’t jerk it loose,” Chee told him, “Just get yourself braced and push off and try to swim toward me. Hey, stop jerking!”

  The rope tore free, bringing a piece of cat’s claw limb with it. The man went under, bobbed up, turned sideways to the force of the flow. It swept him past Chee’s hands, beyond any hope of Chee’s reaching him.

  Chee staggered back into shallow water, turned to look.

  The torrent was rolling the man now. He disappeared under it for a second or two, then bobbed up with his hand still clutching the rope. Then the torrent from the slot reached the flood roaring down the canyon. In the foam and confusion, the man disappeared.

  Chee leaned against the cliff, regaining his breath. No sign of the man now. He imagined what would be happening to him. The big flood in the canyon was rolling boulders along with it. He could hear the crashing and banging they produced as they knocked away impediments. He might be floating high enough to escape that kind of death. At least for a while. Chee remembered the big dropoff a mile or so down the canyon. That would be a violent waterfall by now. The current would sweep the man to its bottom there, churn him around with those rolling boulders, and spit out what was left of him to continue the trip down to the next waterfall, and the next one, and through the various rapids, and on to the canyon’s confluence with the Colorado. Unless some rafters saw what was left of him caught in the flotsam at the foot of a rapids somewhere, he’d make it all the way down to Boulder Dam.