A Thief of Time jlajc-8

by Tony Hillerman

  Something like that mood was with him when he awoke the next morning in his bed at Window Rock--a feeling of being alive, and healthy, and interested. He was still weary. The flight from Albuquerque to Gallup in the little Aspen Airways Cessna, and the drive from Gallup, had finished what reserves he had left. But the depression was gone. He cooked bacon for breakfast and ate it with toast and jelly. While he was eating the telephone rang.

  Jim Chee, he thought. Who else would be calling him?

  It was Corporal Ellison Billy, who handled things that needed handling for Major Nez, who was more or less Leaphorn's boss.

  'There's a Utah cop here looking for you,' Billy said. 'You available?'

  Leaphorn was surprised. 'What's he want? And what kind of cop?'

  'Utah State Police. Criminal Investigation Division,' Billy said. 'He just said he wants to talk to you. About a homicide investigation. That's all I know. Probably told the major more. You coming in?'

  Homicide, he thought. The depression sagged down around him again. Someone had found Eleanor Friedman-Bernal's body. 'Tell him ten minutes,' he said, which was the time it took for him to drive from his house among the pinons on the high side of Window Rock to police headquarters beside the Fort Defiance Highway.

  The desk had two messages for him. One from Jim Chee was short: 'Found Nakai near Mexican Hat with a friend who says ruins is located in what the locals call Watersprinkler Canyon west of his place. I will stay reachable through the Shiprock dispatcher.'

  The other, from the Utah State Police, was shorter. It said: 'Call Detective McGee re: Houk. Urgent.'

  'Houk?' Leaphorn said. 'Any more details?'

  'That's it,' the dispatcher said. 'Just call McGee about Houk. Urgent.'

  He put the message in his pocket.

  The door to the major's office was open. Ronald Nez was standing behind his desk. A man wearing a blue windbreaker and a billed cap with the legend LIMBER ROPE on the crown sat against the wall. He got up when Leaphorn walked in, a tall man, middle-aged, with a thin, bony face. Acne or some other scarring disease had left cheeks and forehead pocked with a hundred small craters. Nez introduced them. Carl McGee was the name. He had not waited for a call back.

  'I'll get right to it,' McGee said. 'We got a homicide case, and he left you a note.'

  Leaphorn kept his face from showing his surprise. It wasn't Friedman-Bernal.

  McGee waited for a response.

  Leaphorn nodded.

  'Harrison Houk,' McGee said. 'I imagine you know him?'

  Leaphorn nodded again, his mind processing this. Who would kill Houk? Why? He could see an answer to the second question. And in general terms to the first one. The same person who had killed Etcitty, and Nails, and for the same reason. But what was that?

  'What was the message?'

  McGee looked at Major Nez, who looked back, expression neutral. Then at Leaphorn. This conversation was not going as McGee had intended. He extracted a leather folder from his hip pocket, took a business card from it, and handed it to Leaphorn.

  BLANDING PUMPS

  Well Drilling, Casing, Pulling

  General Water System Maintenance

  (We also fix your Septic Tanks)

  The card was bent, dirty. Leaphorn guessed it had been damp. He turned it over.

  The message there was scrawled in ballpoint ink.

  It said:

  Tell Leaphorn shes still alive up

  Leaphorn handed it to Nez, without comment.

  'I saw it,' Nez said, and handed it back to McGee, who put it back in the folder, and the folder back in his pocket.

  'What do you think?' he said. 'You got any idea who the `she' is?'

  'A good idea,' Leaphorn said. 'But tell me about Houk. I saw him just the other day.'

  'Wednesday,' McGee said. 'To be exact.' He looked at Leaphorn, expression quizzical. 'That's what the woman who works for him told us. Navajo named Irene Musket.'

  'Wednesday sounds right,' Leaphorn said. 'Who killed Houk?'

  McGee made a wry face. 'This woman he wrote you about, maybe. Anyway, it looks like Houk quit trying to find a place to hide to tell you about her. Sounds like you two thought she was dead. Suddenly he sees her alive. He tries to tell you. She kills him.'

  Leaphorn was thinking that his terminal leave had five more days to run. Actually, only about four and two-thirds. He hadn't been in a mood to screw around like this for at least three months. Not since Emma got bad. He was in no mood for it today. In fact, he had never been tolerant of it. Nor for being polite to this belagana, who wanted to act as if Leaphorn was some sort of suspect. But he'd make one more effort to be polite.

  'I've been away,' he said. 'Back east. Just got in last night. You're going to have to skip way back and tell me about it.'

  McGee told him. Irene Musket had come to work Friday morning and found a note on the screen door telling her that Houk was in the barn. She said she found his body in the barn and called the Garfield County Sheriffs Office, who notified Utah State Police. Both agencies investigated. Houk had been shot twice with a small-caliber weapon, in the center of the chest and in the lower back of the skull. There were signs that Houk had been rearranging bales of hay, apparently into a hiding place. Two empty .25 caliber cartridge casings were found in the hay near the body. The medical examiner said either of the bullets might have caused death. No witnesses. No physical evidence found in the barn except the shell casings. The housekeeper said she found the back screen door lock had been broken and Houk's office was in disarray. As far as she could tell, nothing had been stolen.

  'But then, who knows?' McGee added. 'Stuff could be gone from his office and she wouldn't know about it.' He stopped, looking at Leaphorn.

  'Where was the note?'

  'In Houk's shorts,' McGee said. 'We didn't turn it up. The medical examiner found it when they undressed him.'

  Leaphorn found he was feeling a little better about McGee. It wasn't McGee's attitude. It was his own.

  'I went Wednesday to see him about a woman named Eleanor Friedman-Bernal ,' Leaphorn said. He explained the situation. Who the woman was, her connection with Houk, what Houk had told him. 'So I presume he was telling me she was still alive.'

  'You thought she was dead?' McGee asked.

  'Missing two, three weeks. Leaves her clothes. Leaves a big dinner waiting to be cooked in her fridge. Misses important appointments. I don't know whether she's dead or not.'

  'Pretty fair bet she is,' Nez said. 'Or it was.'

  'You and Houk friends?' McGee asked.

  'No,' Leaphorn said. 'I met him twice. Last Wednesday and about twenty years ago. One of his boys wiped out most of the family. I worked a little on that.'

  'I remember it. Hard one to forget.' McGee was staring at him.

  'I'm just as surprised as you are,' Leaphorn said. 'That he left me the note.' He paused, thinking. 'Do you know why he left the note in the screen door? About being in the barn?'

  'Musket said she'd gone off and left some stuff--some squash--she was going to take home. He'd put it in the refrigerator and left the note. It said, `squash in the icebox, I'm in the barn.' She figured he thought she'd come back for it.'

  Leaphorn was remembering the setting--the long, weedy drive, the porch, the barn well up the slope behind the house, a loading pen on one side of it, horse stalls on the other. From the barn, Houk would have heard a car coming. He might have seen it, watched its driver open the gate. He must have recognized death coming for him. McGee said he'd started preparing a hiding place--stacking bales with a gap behind them, to form a hidey-hole probably. And then he'd stopped to write the unfinished note. And put it in his shorts. Leaphorn imagined that. Houk, desperate, out of time, sticking the calling card under his belt line. The only possible reason would be to keep his killer from finding it. And that meant the killer would not have left it. And what did that mean? That the killer was Eleanor Friedman-Bernal, who would not want people to know she was alive? Or, certainly, that
Houk knew she was alive.

  'You have any theories yet?' he asked McGee.

  'One or two,' he said.

  'Involving pot hunting?'

  'Well, we know about Etcitty and Nails. They were hunting pots. Houk's been dealing with `em for years and not particular where what he buys comes from,' McGee said. 'So, maybe somebody he cheated got tough about it. Houk screwed one person too many. He had a reputation for that. Or maybe it was this woman he was selling to.' McGee got up stiffly, adjusted his hat. 'Why else the note? He saw her coming. Back from the dead, so to speak. Knew she was after him. Figured she'd already bagged Nails and Etcitty. Started leaving you the note. Put it where she wouldn't find it and get off with it. I'd like you to tell me what you know about that woman.'

  'All right,' Leaphorn said. 'Couple of things I have to do and then I'll get with you.'

  He'd stayed away from his office since Emma's death and now it smelled of the dust that seeps gradually into everything in a desert climate. He sat in his chair, picked up the phone, and called Shiprock. Chee was in.

  'This Watersprinkler Canyon,' he asked. 'Which side of the river?'

  'South,' Chee said. 'Reservation side.'

  'No question of that?'

  'None,' Chee said. 'Not if this Amos Whistler knew what he was talking about. Or where he was pointing.'

  `There isn't any Watersprinkler Canyon on my map. What do you think it is?'

  'Probably Many Ruins,' Chee said.

  It was exactly what Leaphorn would have guessed. And getting into the north end of it was damn near impossible. It ran for its last forty miles through a roadless, jumbled stony wilderness.

  'You knew Harrison Houk was shot?'

  'Yes sir.'

  'You want to keep working on this?'

  Hesitation. 'Yes sir.'

  'Get on the telephone then. Call the police at Madison, Wisconsin. Find out if handguns are licensed there. They probably are. If they are, find out who does it and then find out exactly what kind of pistol was licensed to Eleanor Friedman-Bernal. It would have been…' He squeezed his eyes shut, recalling what Maxie Davis had told him about the woman's career. 'Probably 1985 or `86.'

  'Okay.'

  'If she didn't license her gun in Madison, you're going to have to keep checking.' He gave Chee other places he knew of where the woman had studied or taught, relying on his memory of his talk with Davis and guessing at the dates. 'You may be spending all day on the phone,' Leaphorn warned. 'Tell `em three homicides are involved. And then stay close to the phone where I can get you.'

  'Right.'

  That done, he sat a moment, thinking. He would go to Bluff and take a look at the barn where Harrison Houk had done the remarkable -- written him a note while waiting for his killer. He wanted to see that place. The action jarred on him. Why would Houk care that much about a woman who was merely a customer? 'Shes still alive up,' the note had said. Up? Up to today? Up what? Up where? Up Watersprinkler Canyon? She had taken her sleeping bag. The boy had seen her loading a saddle. But back to Houk. Starting the note. At that point, almost certainly, Houk had been interrupted by the killer. Had run out of time. Had presumed the killer would destroy the note. Would not want the police to know that 'she' was alive. So was 'she' Eleanor hyphenated? Who else would care about the note? And yet Leaphorn had trouble putting into the picture the woman who marinated the beef and prepared the dinner so lovingly. He could not see her in that barn, firing her little pistol into the skull of an old man lying facedown in the hay. He shook his head. But that was sentiment, not logic.

  Major Nez stood in his door, watching him. 'Interesting case,' Nez said.

  'Yeah. Hard one to figure.' Leaphorn motioned him in.

  Nez simply leaned against the wall, holding a folded paper in his hand. He was getting fat, Leaphorn noticed. Nez had always been built like a barrel, but now his stomach sagged over his broad uniform belt.

  'Doesn't sound like something you can get sorted out in less than a week,' Nez said. He tapped the paper against the back of his hand, and it occurred to Leaphorn that it was his letter of resignation.

  'Probably not,' Leaphorn said.

  Nez held out the letter. 'You want this back? For now? You can always send it in again.'

  'I'm tired, Ron. Have been a long time, I guess. Just didn't know it.'

  'Tired of living,' Nez said, nodding. 'I get that way now and then. But it's hard to quit.'

  'Anyway, thanks,' Leaphorn said. 'You know where McGee went?'

  Leaphorn found Detective McGee eating a late breakfast at the Navajo Nation Inn and told him everything he knew about Eleanor Friedman-Bernal that seemed remotely pertinent. Then he drove back to his house, dug his pistol belt out of the bottom drawer of his dresser, took out the weapon, and dropped it into his jacket pocket. That done, he drove out of Window Rock, heading north.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ť ^ ť

  THE YOUNG WOMAN to whom Chee's call was referred at the Madison Police Department had a little trouble believing in the Navajo Tribal Police. But after that was settled, things became most efficient. Yes, handguns were licensed. No, it would be easy to check the record. Just a moment. It was not much more than that.

  The next voice was male. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal? Yes, she had been issued a license for a handgun. She had registered a .25 caliber automatic pistol.

  Chee noted the details. The pistol was a brand he'd never heard of. Neither had the clerk in Madison. 'Portuguese, I think,' he said. 'Or maybe it's Turkish, or Brazilian.'

  Step two went almost as quickly. He called the San Juan County Sheriff's Office and asked for Undersheriff Robert Bates, who usually handled homicides. Bates was married to a Navajo who happened to be 'born to' the Kin yaa aanü -- the Towering House People -- which was linked in some way Chee had never understood to his grandfather's To` aheedlinü' -- the Waters Flow Together Clan. That made Chee and Bates vaguely relatives. Just as important, they had worked together a time or two and liked each other. Bates was in.

  'If you have the lab report back, I need to know about the bullets that killed Etcitty and Nails,' Chee said.

  'Why?' Bates asked. 'I thought the FBI decided that killing wasn't on reservation land.'

  'Out on the Checkerboard, the FBI always decides that,' Chee said. 'We're just interested.'

  'Why?'

  'Ah, hell, Robert,' Chee said. 'I don't know why. Joe Leaphorn is interested, and Largo has me working with him.'

  'What's going on with Leaphorn? We heard he had a nervous breakdown. Heard he quit.'

  'He did,' Chee said. 'But not yet.'

  'Well, it was a twenty-five-caliber pistol, automatic judging from the ejection marks on the empties. All the same weapon.'

  'You have a missing person's report on a woman who owns a twenty-five-caliber automatic pistol,' Chee said. 'Her name's Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal. She worked out of Chaco Canyon. Anthropologist. Where Etcitty worked.' He told Bates more of what he knew about the woman.

  'I got her file right here on my desk,' Bates said. 'I just a minute ago got a call from a Utah State Policeman. They want us to do some checking up on her out at Chaco. Seems they had a fellow shot up at Bluff and he left a note to Leaphorn telling him this woman is still alive. You know about that?'

  'Heard about the killing. Not about any note.' He was thinking that a few years ago this weird roundabout communication would have surprised him. Now he expected it. He was remembering Leaphorn chewing him out for not passing along all the details. Well, there was no reason for Leaphorn not to have told him about this. Except that Leaphorn considered him merely an errand boy. Chee was offended.

  'Tell me about it,' he told Bates. 'And don't leave anything out.'

  Bates told him what he'd been told. It didn't take long.

  'So Utah State Police think Dr. Friedman showed up and offed Houk,' Chee concluded. 'Any theories about motive?'

  'Big pot hunting conspiracy is what they seem to think. They've had a feder
al crackdown up there on pot thieves last year. Bunch of arrests. Grand jury sitting in Salt Lake handing down indictments. So they're thinking pots,' Bates said. 'And why not? Big money in it the way prices are now. Hell, when we was kids and used to go out and dig `em up around here, you were lucky to get five bucks. Listen,' he added, 'how you coming on being a medicine man?'

  'No clients.' It was not a subject Chee wanted to discuss. It was November, already into the 'Season When Thunder Sleeps,' the season for curing ceremonials, and he hadn't had a single contact. 'You going to Chaco now?'

  'Soon as I get off the telephone.'

  Chee gave him a quick rundown on the people he should talk to: Maxie Davis, the Lunas, Randall Elliot.

  'They're worried about the woman. Friends of hers. Be sure and tell them about the note.'

  'Why, sure,' Bates said. He sounded slightly offended that Chee had even mentioned it.

  There was nothing to do then but stick close to the telephone and wait for Leaphorn's call from Bluff. He dug into his paperwork. A little before noon, the phone rang. Leaphorn, Chee thought.

  It was Janet Pete. Her voice sounded odd. Was Chee doing anything for lunch?

  'Nothing,' Chee said. 'You calling from Shiprock?'

  'I drove up. Really just went for a drive. Ended up here.' She sounded thoroughly down.

  'Lunch then,' he said. 'Can you meet me at the Thunderbird Cafe?'

  She could. And did.

  They took a booth by the window. And talked about the weather. A gusty wind was rattling the pane and chasing dust and leaves and now a section of the Navajo Times down the highway outside.

  'End of autumn, I guess,' Chee said. 'You watch Channel Seven. Howard Morgan says we're going to get the first blast of winter.'

  'I hate winter,' Janet Pete said. She hugged herself and shivered. 'Dismal winter.'

  'The counselor has the blues,' Chee said. 'Anything I can do to cheer you up? I'll call Morgan and see if he can postpone it.'