“Genetics wasn’t my favorite course. Too much math,” Leaphorn said. What the devil was Brigham Houk doing? Was he still behind that slab up ahead?
“Exactly,” Elliot said, pleased by this. “It’s one percent digging and ninety-nine percent working out statistical models for your computer. Anyway, the third thing, which sort of mathematically proves the passalong genes, is that hole in the mandible through which the blood and nerve tissue passes. At Chaco, from about 650 A.D. until they turned out the lights, this family had two holes in the left mandible and the usual one in the right. Plus those other characteristics. And out here, I’m still finding it among these exiles. Can you see why it’s important?”
“And fascinating,” Leaphorn said. “Dr. Friedman must have known what you were looking for. She saved a lot of jawbones.” He was almost to the great sandstone slab. “I’ll show you.”
“I doubt if she found anything I overlooked,” Elliot said. He followed Leaphorn, keeping the pistol level. “But this is the way we were going anyway.”
They were passing the sandstone now. Leaphorn tensed. If nothing happened here, he would have to try something else. It wouldn’t work, but he wouldn’t simply stand still to be shot.
“Right over here,” Leaphorn said.
“I think you’re just—”
The sentence ended with a grunt, a great exhalation of breath. Leaphorn turned. Elliot was leaning slightly forward, the pistol hanging at his side. About six inches of arrow shaft and the feathered tip protruded from his jacket.
Leaphorn reached for him, heard the whistle and thump of the second arrow. It went through Elliot’s neck. The pistol clattered on the stone. Elliot collapsed.
Leaphorn retrieved the pistol. He squatted beside the man, turned him on his back. His eyes were open but he seemed to be in shock. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
There was snow in the wind now, little dry flakes that skittered along the surface like white dust. Leaphorn tested the arrow. It was the sort of bow hunters buy in sporting goods stores and it was lodged solidly through Elliot’s neck. Pulling it out would just make things worse. If they could be worse. Elliot was dying. Leaphorn stood, looking for Brigham Houk. Houk was standing beside the slab now, holding a great ugly bow of metal, wood, and plastic, looking upward. From somewhere Leaphorn heard the clatter of a helicopter. Brigham Houk had heard it earlier. He stood very close to cover, ready to vanish.
The helicopter emerged over the rim of the mesa almost directly overhead. Leaphorn waved, saw an answering wave. The copter circled and disappeared over the mesa again.
Leaphorn checked Elliot’s pulse. He didn’t seem to have one. He looked for Brigham Houk, who seemed never to have existed. He walked over to the litter where Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal lay. She opened her eyes, looked at him without recognition, closed them again. He tucked the rabbit fur cloak around her, careful to apply no pressure. Now it was snowing harder, still blowing like dust. He walked back to Elliot. No pulse now. He opened his jacket and shirt and felt for a heartbeat. Nothing. The man was no longer breathing. Randall Elliot, graduate of Exeter, of Princeton, of Harvard, winner of the Navy Cross, was dead by arrow shot. Leaphorn gripped him under the arms and pulled him into the cover of the slab where Brigham Houk had hidden. Elliot was heavy, and Leaphorn was exhausted. By pulling hard and doing some twisting, he extracted the arrows. He wiped the blood off as well as he could on Elliot’s jacket. Then he picked up a rock, hammered them into pieces, and put the pieces in his hip pocket. That done, he found dead brush, broke it off, and made an inefficient effort to cover the body. But it didn’t matter. The coyotes would find Randall Elliot anyway.
Then he heard the clatter of someone scrambling down the cut. It proved to be Officer Chee, looking harassed and disheveled.
It took some effort for Leaphorn not to show he was impressed. He pointed to the litter. “We need to get Dr. Friedman to the hospital in a hurry,” he said. “Can you get that thing down here to load her?”
“Sure,” Chee said. He started back toward the cut at a run.
“Just a second,” Leaphorn said.
Chee stopped.
“What did you see?”
Chee raised his eyebrows. “I saw you standing beside a man slumped down on the ground. I guess it was Elliot. And I saw the litter over there. And maybe I saw another man. Something jumping out of sight back there just as we came over the top.”
“Why did you think it was Elliot?”
Chee looked surprised. “The helicopter he rented is parked up there. I figured when he heard she was still alive he’d have to come out here and kill her before you got here.”
Leaphorn again was impressed. This time he made a little less effort to conceal it. “Do you know how Elliot knew she was alive?”
Chee made a wry face. “I more or less told him.”
“And then made the connection?”
“Then I found out he had filed for permission to dig this site, and the site where he killed Etcitty. Turned down on both of them. I went out there to talk to him and found—you remember the box of plastic wastebasket liners at the Checkerboard site. One missing from it. Well, it was hidden in Elliot’s kitchen. Had jawbones in it.”
Leaphorn didn’t ask how Chee had gotten into Elliot’s kitchen.
“Go ahead, then, and get the copter down here. And don’t say anything.”
Chee looked at him.
“I mean don’t say anything at all. I’ll fill you in when we get a chance.”
Chee trotted toward the cut.
“Thank you,” Leaphorn said. He wasn’t sure if Chee heard that.
It was snowing hard by the time they had the litter loaded and the copter lifted off the shelf. Leaphorn was jammed against the side. He looked down on a stone landscape cut into vertical blocks by time and now blurred by snow. He looked quickly away. He could ride the big jets, barely. Something in his inner ear made anything less stable certain nausea. He closed his eyes, swallowed. This was the first snow. They would come when the weather cleared to recover the copter and look for Elliot. But they wouldn’t look hard because it was so obviously hopeless. Snow would have covered everything. After the thaw, they would come again. Then they would find the bones, scattered like the Anasazi skeletons he looted. There would be no sign of the arrow wounds then. Cause of death unknown, the coroner would write. Victim eaten by predators.
He glanced back. Chee was jammed in the compartment beside the litter, his hand on Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal’s arm. She seemed to be awake. I will ask him what curing ceremony he would recommend, Leaphorn thought, and knew at once that his fatigue was making him silly. Instead he said nothing. He thought of the circumstances, of how proud Emma would be of him tonight if she could be home to hear about this woman brought safely to the hospital. He thought about Brigham Houk. In just about twenty-four more days, the moon would be full again. Brigham would be waiting at the mouth of Many Ruins Canyon, but Papa wouldn’t come.
I will go, Leaphorn thought. Someone has to tell him. And that meant that he would have to postpone his plan to leave the reservation, probably a long postponement. Solving the problem of what to do about Brigham Houk would take more than one trip down the river. And if he had to stick around, he might as well withdraw that letter. As Captain Nez had said, he could always write it again.
Jim Chee noticed Leaphorn was watching him.
“You all right?” Chee asked.
“I’ve felt better,” Leaphorn said. And then he had another thought. He considered it. Why not? “I hear you’re a medicine man. I heard you are a singer of the Blessing Way. Is that right?”
Chee looked slightly stubborn. “Yes sir,” he said.
“I would like to ask you to sing one for me,” Leaphorn said.
As Tony’s home state paper,
the Oklahoma City Oklahoman, says,
“Readers who have not discovered Hillerman
should not waste one minute more.”
/> Find out what you’ve been missing
with Leaphorn and Chee…
A supernatural killer known as the “Wolf-Witch” becomes Leaphorn’s target on a thrilling mystic pursuit.
THE BLESSING WAY
When Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police discovers a corpse with a mouth full of sand at a crime scene seemingly without tracks or clues, he is ready to suspect a supernatural killer. Blood on the rocks…A body on the high mesa…Leaphorn must stalk the Wolf-Witch along a chilling trail between mysticism and murder.
“A thriller…Highly recommended.”
The New Yorker
“Brilliant…As fascinating as it is original.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A dead reporter’s secret notebook implicates a senatorial candidate and political figures in a million-dollar murder scam.
THE FLY ON THE WALL
John Cotton was a simple man with one desire: to write the greatest story of his life and have enough life left to read all about it. He knows what to do when he finds a great story, but he is a little afraid when a big story begins to find him. It starts when a fellow reporter is murdered, and his notebook, filled with information about a tax scam, ends up in John’s hands. Not long afterward, a body is discovered in John’s car. Then John’s car ends up in the river, a bomb is found in his apartment, and his girlfriend drops out of sight. It’s up to John to unravel the mystery of the notebook and why anyone would kill for the information it contains.
“Fascinating…breathless suspense.”
Minneapolis Tribune
“Explosive…sensational…excellent.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
An archaeological dig, a steel hypodermic needle, and the strange laws of the Zuñi complicate the disappearance of two young boys.
DANCE HALL OF THE DEAD
Two young boys suddenly disappear. One of them, a Zuñi, leaves a pool of blood behind. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police tracks the brutal killer. Three things complicate the search: an archaeological dig, a steel hypodermic needle, and the strange laws of the Zuñi. Compelling, terrifying, and highly suspenseful, Dance Hall of the Dead never relents from first page till last.
“High entertainment, an aesthetically
satisfying glimpse of the
still-powerful tribal mysteries.”
New York Times
“Riveting descriptions of Zuñi religious rites.”
Newsweek
A baffling investigation of murder, ghosts, and witches can be solved only by Lieutenant Leaphorn, a man who understands both his own people and cold-blooded killers.
LISTENING WOMAN
The state police and FBI are baffled when an old man and a teenage girl are brutally murdered. The blind Navajo Listening Woman speaks of ghosts and of witches. But Lieutenant Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police knows his people as well as he knows cold-blooded killers. His incredible investigation carries him from a dead man’s secret to a kidnap scheme, to a conspiracy that stretches back more than one hundred years. Leaphorn arrives at the threshold of a solution—and is greeted with the most violent confrontation of his career.
“Hillerman’s mysteries are special…
Listening Woman is among the best.”
Washington Post
“A good exciting mystery that has everything.”
Pittsburgh Press
An assassin waits for Officer Chee in the desert to protect a vision of death that for thirty years has been fed by greed and washed in blood.
PEOPLE OF DARKNESS
Who would murder a dying man? Why would someone steal a box of rocks? And why would a rich man’s wife pay $3,000 to get them back? These questions haunt Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police as he journeys into the scorching Southwest. But there, out in the Bad Country, a lone assassin waits for Chee to come seeking answers, waits ready and willing to protect a vision of death that for thirty years has been fed by greed and washed in blood.
“Hillerman…is in a class by himself.”
Los Angeles Times
“Great suspense.”
Chicago Tribune
Sergeant Jim Chee becomes trapped in a deadly web of a cunningly spun plot driven by Navajo sorcery and white man’s greed.
THE DARK WIND
A corpse whose palms and soles have been “scalped” is only the first in a series of disturbing clues: an airplane’s mysterious crash in the nighttime desert, a bizarre attack on a windmill, a vanishing shipment of cocaine. Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is trapped in a deadly web of a cunningly spun plot driven by Navajo sorcery and white man’s greed.
“Hillerman is first-rate…fresh, original,
and highly suspenseful.”
Los Angeles Times
“A beauty of a thriller…
exotic and compelling reading.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
A photo sends Officer Chee on an odyssey of murder and revenge that moves from an Indian hogan to a deadly healing ceremony.
THE GHOSTWAY
Old Joseph Joe sees it all. Two strangers spill blood at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat. One dies. The other drives off into the dry lands of the Big Reservation, but not before he shows the old Navajo a photo of the man he seeks. This is enough to send Tribal Policeman Jim Chee after a killer…and on an odyssey of murder and revenge that moves from an Indian hogan and its trapped ghost, to the dark underbelly of L.A., to a healing ceremony whose cure could be death.
“A first-rate story of suspense and mystery.”
The New Yorker
“Fresh, original and highly suspenseful.”
Los Angeles Times
Three shotgun blasts in a trailer bring Officer Chee and Lieutenant Leaphorn together for the first time in an investigation of ritual, witchcraft, and blood.
SKINWALKERS
Three shotgun blasts explode into the trailer of Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. But Chee survives to join partner Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn in a frightening investigation that takes them into a dark world of ritual, witchcraft, and blood—all tied to the elusive and evil “skinwalker.” Brimming with Navajo lore and sizzling suspense, Skinwalkers brings Chee and Leaphorn, Hillerman’s best-selling detective team, together for the first time.
“Full of mystery, intrigue, and
dangerous magic.”
Ross Thomas
“Hillerman is unique and Skinwalkers
is one of his best.”
Los Angeles Times
A grave robber and a corpse reunite Leaphorn and Chee in a dangerous arena of superstition, ancient ceremony, and living gods.
TALKING GOD
As Leaphorn seeks the identity of a murder victim, Chee is arresting Smithsonian conservator Henry Highhawk for ransacking the sacred bones of his ancestors. As the layers of each case are peeled away, it becomes shockingly clear that they are connected, that there are mysterious others pursuing Highhawk, and that Leaphorn and Chee have entered into the dangerous arena of superstition, ancient ceremony, and living gods.
“Woven as tightly as a Navajo blanket.”
Newsweek
“Suddenly now Hillerman has become a
national literary and cultural sensation…
it does not take too much to determine why
Hillerman has become so popular. He is a
solid, down-to-earth storyteller.”
Los Angeles Times
When a bullet kills Officer Jim Chee’s good friend Del, a Navajo shaman is arrested for homicide, but the case is far from closed.
COYOTE WAITS
The car fire didn’t kill Navajo Tribal Policeman Delbert Nez, a bullet did. Officer Jim Chee’s good friend Del lies dead, and a whiskey-soaked Navajo shaman is found with the murder weapon. The old man is Ashie Pinto. He’s quickly arrested for homicide and defended by a woman Chee could either love or loathe. But when Pinto won’t utter a word of confession or denial, Lieutena
nt Joe Leaphorn begins an investigation. Soon, Leaphorn and Chee unravel a complex plot of death involving a historical find, a lost fortune…and the mythical Coyote, who is always waiting, and always hungry.
“Hillerman is at the top of his form
in Coyote Waits.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“The master’s newest Chee-Leaphorn
mystery with the usual informative
Navajo anthropology.”
Book News
Officer Chee attempts to solve two modern murders by deciphering the sacred clowns’ ancient message to the people of the Tano pueblo.
SACRED CLOWNS
During a Tano kachina ceremony, something in the antics of the dancing koshare fills the air with tension. Moments later the clown is found brutally bludgeoned in the same manner that a reservation schoolteacher was killed just days before.
In true Navajo style, Officer Jim Chee and Lieutenant Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police go back to the beginning to decipher the sacred clowns’ message to the people of the Tano pueblo. Amid guarded tribal secrets and crooked Indian traders, they find a trail of blood that links a runaway schoolboy, two dead bodies, and the mysterious presence of a sacred artifact.
“This is Hillerman at his best, mixing human
nature, ethnicity and the overpowering
physical presence of the Southwest.”
Newsweek
“[Hillerman’s] affection for his characters
and for the real world in which they live
and work has never been more
appealingly demonstrated.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review
A man met his death on Ship Rock Mountain eleven years ago, and with the discovery of his body by a group of climbers, Chee and Leaphorn must hunt down the cause of his lonely death.
THE FALLEN MAN
Sprawled on a ledge under the peak of Ship Rock Mountain for eleven years lies an unknown body, now only bones. At Canyon de Chelly, three hundred miles across the Navajo reservation, a sniper shoots an old canyon guide who has always walked that pollen path in peace. At his home in Window Rock, Joe Leaphorn, newly retired from the Navajo Tribal Po lice, connects skeleton and sniper, and remembers an old puzzle he could never solve. At his office in Shiprock, Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee is too busy to take much interest in the case—until it hits too close to home. Bringing the beauty and mystery of the Southwest to vivid life once again, Tony Hillerman has reunited Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee in an evocative mystery in which the past and the present join forces in a most unholy union.
A Thief of Time Page 21