People of Darkness jlajc-4

by Tony Hillerman

  Did you know Vines had Dillon Charley buried up at his house? Chee asked.

  I heard that, Becenti said. White men sure got some weird customs.

  Especially their burial customs, Chee thought. He’d spent years among the whites, first at boarding school, then through enough years at the University of New Mexico to win a degree in anthropology, but he still couldn’t fathom the attitude of whites toward the corpse.

  You have any idea why Vines would want to bury Dillon Charley? Chee asked.

  Becenti made a wry face. Hell, no.

  This Tomas Charley, Chee said. You said he was crazy. Would he be crazy enough to get into Vines’ house and steal a lockbox with keepsakes in it?

  Becenti extracted the cigaret from between his lips and looked at Chee. Did something like that happen? he asked. Why would he want to steal something like that? Vines and his woman are both big hunters. I understand either one of them would just as soon shoot somebody as not.

  I heard that Tomas’ grandfather thought Vines kept the luck of the Darkness People in that box, Chee said. Maybe Tomas heard about that.

  Becenti nodded. Okay, then. I’d say yes. That kid would be about crazy enough to break in to steal himself some luck. Chapter Six

  The spike on his desk the next morning held three pink While You Were Out slips. One told him to call Captain Leaphorn at the Chinle substation. The other two, one left over from yesterday, and one received just before he’d got to work, told him to call B. J. Vines. He put those aside and called the Chinle station. Leaphorn’s business involved identifying a middle-aged Navajo killed in a truck-pedestrian accident. The captain wanted him to send someone to Thoreau to check with a family there. Chee added it to the afternoon assignment of Officer Dodge. Then he picked up the Call B. J. Vines slips, leaned back in his chair and considered them. Both were initialed T.D. Trixie Dodge was at her desk across the room. He glanced at her. She looked grim this morning. Trixie, he suspected, should have written Call Mrs. B. J. Vines. Vines wouldn’t be back for weeks.

  Hey, Trixie, he said. You put down ‘Call Vines’ here. Wasn’t the call from Mrs. Vines?

  Trixie didn’t look up. Vines, , she said.

  Mr. Vines? Chee insisted.

  It was a man. He said his name was B. J. Vines. He asked for you and then he asked you to call him at that number. Trixie’s voice was patient.

  Chee dialed the number. It rang once.

  Yes. The voice was male.

  This is Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. I have a note to call B. J. Vines.

  Oh, good, the voice said. I’m Vines. I’d like to talk to you about that little theft we had. Could you come out?

  When?

  Well, the voice said, the sooner the better. I understand my wife talked to you about it and The voice paused and interjected a nervous laugh. Well, there’s some misunderstandings that need to be cleared up. The tone was ironic now. There tends to be when Rosemary gets involved.

  Okay, Chee said. I’ll be out there after lunch.

  Good, Vines said. Thanks.

  Chee marked the Thoreau assignment off Dodge’s assignment sheet. It was on his way. He’d handle it himself. Chapter Seven

  The pueblo woman answered the doorbell and showed Chee into the predator room without a sign she’d ever seen him before. There was a man behind the glass-topped desk nowa small man with a round face made rounder by the great bush of iron-gray beard that surrounded it. The man pulled himself to his feet. Ben Vines, he said, offering a small, hard hand. Have a seat. Chee sat. So did Vines. The room was brighter now than it had been when he had seen it with Mrs. Vines. Autumn sunlight streamed in, reflecting from the glass eyeballs and ivory teeth of the cats. The sunlight made the room less hostile. The lioness above Vines’ left shoulder seemed to be smiling. So did Vines.

  I understand my wife told you we had a break-in, and she hired you to solve the crime, Vines said.

  She asked me, Chee said.

  This is embarrassing, Vines said. What Chee could see of his face through its frame of hair didn’t look embarrassed. His alert black eyes were studying Chee. I have a feeling there really isn’t a crime to be solved.

  No?

  No, Vines said. He laughed. My wife is not a very predictable woman at times. She’s a very nervous woman. Sometimes things get confused.

  Having someone break into your wall safe can make you nervous, Chee said.

  How nervous it makes you depends on who broke into it.

  Vines said. He shifted his weight, glanced out the window and then back at Chee. Do you know where the safe is?

  It’s behind that head, Chee said, nodding to the appropriate cat.

  Vines got to his feet again and maneuvered himself laboriously to the wall. He balanced carefully and lifted the mounted head off its hook, dumping it on the carpet. The safe door eased itself open on well-oiled hinges. The space behind it was dark and empty. Vines looked at it, his expression thoughtful. He extracted a pack of cigarets from the side pocket of his jacket, shook one out and lit it. At his feet, the cat’s head smiled benignly at the ceiling.

  Rosemary and I weren’t young when we married, Vines said. We’d enjoyed lives of our own and we were going to continue to be private persons as well as man and wife. We kept our old friends and our old memories. Both of us. Separate.

  Vines had been talking to the safe. Now he glanced around at Chee. A trickle of tobacco smoke leaked through his lips. It made its way through his mustache like gray fog. Chee could see now that the left side of Vines’ face was affected. The corner of his mouth and the muscles around his left eye drooped. This safe operates with a key and a combination. Rosemary doesn’t have either one of them. I have a toolbox in the stables. There’s a prying bar in it. Vines pushed the safe door closed. You’ll notice that this wall safe is like a lot of wall safes. It has a limited purpose and it’s not built like a bank vault. It’s not designed to do more than slow down a safe-cracker. You can take a pry bar and jam it in the door fitting, and it gives you enough leverage to spring the lock. Take a look.

  Chee looked. He noticed, as he’d noticed the first time he’d examined it, that the safe door did seem to have been pried open. Whatever had been used had left marks, and the door had been slightly bent. Once again, that seemed odd. The door was heavy. Unless it was poor metal, it would take tremendous strength to bend it even with the leverage of a wrecking bar. Chee looked for a trademark and found none.

  I think you should get your money back on that door, he said.

  Vines laughed. I’m afraid the warranty’s run out. As a matter of fact, I had the safe made and installed, and I guess they didn’t use the most expensive material.

  Who did it for you?

  I don’t remember, Vines said. Some outfit in Albuquerque. I had it done when I built this place, and that was thirty years ago. He pushed the door shut. The point I was making was that Rosemary doesn’t have a key to the wall safe, but she does have a key to the tool locker. The pry bar was gone. I found it in her closet.

  Oh, Chee said.

  Vines shrugged. He produced a wry face. So I want to apologize for all this. And I’d like to pay you for your trouble. He produced a check. You made two trips out here. Would two hundred dollars be fair?

  Chee glanced from Vines to the sly smile of the tiger. He thought of the bent metal of the door and the empty space behind the door, and of what Mrs. Vines had told him. Among other things, she had told him that B. J. Vines was away at a hospital. But two hundred dollars was too much to be offered. Vines was watching him. Vines had told him, in effect, that the crime was family business, and thus no crime at all, and no concern of Chee’s. To ask a question now would be impertinent.

  Did Mrs. Vines have the box? Chee asked.

  Vines considered this impertinence, his mild eyes on Chee’s face. He sighed. I don’t know, he said. Maybe she had it. Maybe she disposed of it. The point is it doesn’t matter. I think she told you there wasn’t much in it. Ther
e wasn’t. Mementos. Things that reminded me of the past. Nothing of value. Not even to me any longer.

  Vines held the check toward Chee, dangling it between his fingers.

  I understand you reported it to the sheriff, he said. Of course you’d have to do that. Old Gordo came out yesterday to ask about it. I wondered how much you told him.

  Just what Mrs. Vines told me.

  Vines took three careful steps toward Chee and put the check in Chee’s shirt pocket.

  This isn’t necessary, Chee said. I’m not even sure it’s allowed.

  Take it, Vines said. Rosemary and I will both feel better. If it’s against policy, tear it up. I wonder if you noticed that our sheriff is very interested in my business? Vines made his laborious way back to his chair.

  I noticed, Chee said.

  Did he ask a lot of questions?

  Yep, Chee said. Vines waited for more. He realized gradually that it wouldn’t be forthcoming.

  Gordo asked me a lot of questions about the People of Darkness, Vines said. I got the impression that you’d told him Rosemary thought one of the Charley boys had taken the box.

  That’s right, Chee said.

  Vines waited again. He sighed. I’ve had a lot of trouble with Gordo Sena, he said. Years ago. I thought it was over with. Vines put out his cigaret and walked to the window. Past him, Chee could see an expanse of Mount Taylor’s east slope. At this altitude it was the zone of transition from ponderosa pine into fir, spruce, and aspen. The ground under the aspens was yellow with fallen leaves. The slanting sunlight created a golden glow a little like fire.

  It was early in the 1950s, Vines said. I’d found that uranium deposit that the Red Deuce is mining now, and I was building this place, and I hired a Navajo named Dillon Charley as a sort of foreman to look after things. I didn’t know it, but Gordo had a thing about Charley, and about a bunch of other Indians in a church old Dillon was running. Vines glanced back at Chee, the window light giving his gray beard a translucent frosting. It was the peyote church. It was against tribal law in those days.

  I know about it, Chee said.

  Well, Sena was dogging them. He was picking them up, and beating them up. I got involved in it. Hired a lawyer over in Grants to take care of bonding them out and to bitch to the Justice Department about rights violations, and finally I put up some money behind a candidate and we got Sena beat for reelection for one term. For several years there, it was hairy between Sena and me. Things had settled down for the last few years. I’m wondering if he wants to stir it up again. That’s why I wanted to know what kind of questions he was asking you.

  He asked why your wife wanted to hire me, Chee said. He gave Vines a quick resume of Sena’s questions.

  What do you think of that oil well business? Vines asked. Did Sena tell you about that? About why he hated old Dillon Charley?

  He didn’t talk about it, Chee said. But I understand he thinks it’s funny Dillon Charley got that advance warning.

  You don’t believe in visions? Through the bristling whiskers Vines’ expression seemed to be amused. Chee couldn’t be sure.

  It depends, Chee said. But I don’t believe in crimes without motives. No one can find one for this explosion, I guess.

  Well, there are some theories.

  Like what?

  You know Sena’s, I guess. He doesn’t seem to have any ideas about a motive, but he appears to think that Dillon Charley was tied up in some sort of conspiracy. And then there’s another theory that Gordo did it himself.

  Why?

  The way the story goes, the older brother was the apple of everybody’s eyeincluding his mother’s. Gordo is supposed to have known that the old lady was leaving the ranch to Robert. So he blows up the oil well.

  How’d he handle it?

  Vines shrugged. I don’t know, he said. I heard it was a nitroglycerin explosion, some sort of charge they lower down into the shaft of oil wells to shake things up, but it went off too early. I guess you could set that stuff off by shooting into it with a rifle. It was all before my time.

  How does the Sena-did-it theory explain Dillon Charley’s vision?

  That’s easy, Vines said. Dillon finds out somehow that Sena was planning something funny. So he arranges to have his peyote vision at the church service, and he tells his crew to stay away from the well. Sena blows the place up, but he finds out that Dillon must have known something. So he tries to drive him away with the harassment.

  Could be, Chee said.

  I think Gordo would like to know if Dillon Charley told me anything, Vines said. Did his questions lead that way?

  More or less, Chee said. Did Dillon Charley tell you anything?

  Vines smiled. Did Gordo tell you to ask me that?

  You brought it up, Chee said. I’ll change the question. What do you think happened out at that oil well?

  I understand nitro is touchy stuff. In those days those accidents happened. I think they had another case like that in the state a few years earlier.

  Do you think it was an accident? Do you think Dillon Charley was just nervous about having the nitro at the well?

  Vines swiveled his chair to give himself a view out the window. Chee could see only his profile.

  I think Gordo Sena murdered his brother, Vines said. Chapter Eight

  Colton wolf was running a little behind schedule. He had prepared oeufs en gelee for his breakfast. He meticulously followed the recipe in Gourmet and that took time. The aspic required twelve minutes at a rolling boil, and preparing the puree of peas for the garnish took longer still, and then another hour was required to allow the eggs to cool properly in their molds of aspic. It was midmorning when he folded away the breakfast linen and cleared the silver and china from the Formica top of his trailer’s eating surface. He had planned to work two hours on the model Baldwin steam engine he was building. Now he cut that to eighty minutes, working most of the time with his jeweler’s glass in his eye and getting much of the fitting done on the piston assembly. The alarm dinged at 11:35 a.m. Colton pulled the covers over his lathe and drill and put his metal working tools carefully back in their proper places in his toolbox and the toolbox back in his lock cabinet. The cabinet also held his collection of steam engines, all of which actually operatedblowing whistles, driving belts, and turning wheelsand all of which had been made by Colton himself. The engines sat among the tools of his tradetwo rifles, the chambers and trigger assembly sections of three pistols, an assortment of barrels to be screwed into these assemblies, an array of silencers, three small boxes trailing insulated wires, which were bomb detonators, a candy box which held plastic explosive (Colton kept eight sticks of dynamite and his dynamite caps safely cool in the refrigerator), and a row of cans of shaving cream and spray deodorant. Except for the rifles and their telescopic sights, he had manufactured much of this paraphernalia himselfpartly because if it wasn’t purchased it couldn’t be traced and partly because some of it couldn’t be bought. The shaving cream and deodorant cans were Colton’s way of getting his tools through the x-ray stations at airport loading gates. One could fit the parts of one of Colton’s pistols plus its silencer into two cans, screw the tops back on, and show an airport inspection nothing more questionable than Burma Shave. The bomb detonators were also the products of Colton’s skill. He’d learned the principle from a former Special Services soldier he’d met in Idaho’s Point-of-the-Mountain prison. It involved two batteries and a little ball of mercury which closed the electrical connection when the box moved.

  Colton locked it all away, and went to make his mail check.

  It wasn’t that Colton Wolf expected any mail. It was part of the routine by which he lived. In whatever town he parked his trailer, Colton immediately rented a post office box. He rented it in the name of whatever commercial-sounding noun came to mind. Then he mailed a note to Boxholder at a post office box number in El Paso, Texas, in which he reported his new address. That was Colton’s link to the man who provided him with his assignments.
It was his only link with the world. In Colton Wolf’s mind, and sometimes in his dreams, it was the flaw through which the world would someday catch him and kill him. Colton wished there were another way to do business. There wasn’t. So he minimized the risk as much as he could. Minimizing risks was very much a part of Colton Wolf’s life.

  He drove his gmc pickup slowly past the branch post office, inspecting parked cars. Nothing looked suspicious. He parked at the Safeway lot and strolled the block and a half to the post office, taking inventory of what he saw. Two women and a man were in the lobby. The clerks behind the counter were familiar faces. Colton walked to the wall of post office boxes. Through the glass of box 1191 he could see an envelope. He ignored it and inspected box 960. It was empty. Colton walked out through the lobby, memorizing the customers. He went back to the Safeway, bought a small filet, a half pound of mushrooms, a pound of white grapes, a half pint of cream, and an ounce of black pepper. He put the groceries in the truck, climbed in himself, and tuned in a country western music station on the radio. He let twenty minutes pass while he listened. Then he walked back to the post office. Five customers were in the lobby now and none matched the previous three. Colton walked directly to box 1191 and removed the envelope. A smaller envelope lay under it. He slipped both into his jacket pocket and returned to the truck. No one followed him, and no one followed him a few minutes later as he drove back up the freeway ramp. Colton Wolf had survived another contact with the world.

  The smaller envelope was addressed simply to his box number. It contained a slip of paper on which a series of numerals was penciled. Properly sorted out, they gave Colton a telephone number to call and the time of 2:10 p.m. to call it. He had put the slip in his shirt pocket. The second envelope bore the return address of Webster Investigations and a Los Angeles street number. Colton had known that it would, since no one else knew his box number, but even so he had felt his stomach tighten as he put the envelope on the seat beside him. When he got home he would open it. Meanwhile he would try not to think about it.