Cyber Way

CHAPTER 8

Five minutes later they rounded a bend in the canyon and Moody saw that which he had been anticipating.

The multisided domed structure was much smaller than the average motor home. It was built of mud or adobe, with a roof that came to a slight point. To the detective it most nearly resembled a Mongolian yurt, which he was familiar with only because he’d seen one on an International Geographic special on the Divit channel one night when the game he’d planned to watch had been pre-empted.

A dog of indeterminate breed lay in a path of sunshine in front of the building.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s home.”

“Maybe because that is not the home.” Ooljee leaned forward, resting both hands on the wheel. “That’s an old hogan. You would be surprised how warm it is in winter and how cool in the summer. There is something about sleeping on packed earth that puts you in touch with a whole range of feelings you miss while sleeping on water or foam or air-suspension. You should try it sometime.”

“Not in Florida,” Moody countered. “Too many creepy-crawlies.”

Ooljee drove past the hogan and the indifferent dog,

crossed the lazy stream that looked far too feeble to have cut the mighty canyon. It flowed quiet and unhurried, in no rush to find the next inch nearer sea level.

The second hogan looked much like the first except that it was considerably larger, two stories tall, and constructed of prefab plastic walls filled and insulated with blownfoam. Copper-tinted polarized windows regarded their surroundings, while from the central peak of the roof a large satellite dish pointed southward. Even though the canyon ran north-south, Moody knew that reception had to be limited.

Much of the roof was lined with tracking, hi-dope solar panels. A large rectangular building with few windows dominated the yard behind the hogan. A twinge of recognition went through Moody when he noted that the entrances to both buildings faced east. He was beginning to feel a little less like an intruder.

Next to the creek stood a large abstract sculpture that on closer inspection turned out to have a practical function. Brightly hued metal poles supported a roof of artificial tree limbs. They varied in color from deep raw purple to intense blue to a light rose, shifting subtly within the metal itself. The poles looked too thin to support their sculpted burden.

“That’s a summer shelter,” Ooljee explained, “or rather a modem interpretation of a traditional one whose boughs would have to be replaced every year. This one is more practical, but I miss the wood.”

He didn’t know what the remarkable metal was, though. They were to find out later that it was anodized titanium.

As Ooljee parked in front of the building two more mutts materialized to greet them. One might have had some honest shepherd in him, but Moody wasn’t sure. Both were curious and friendly.

He hung back and let Ooljee ring the bell, hunting in vain for some visible security device like a scanner or heat sensor. It was either expensively concealed or nonexistent. Probably not needed here. This wasn’t Metropolitan Tampa. Besides, anyone trying to steal from a home in this canyon would find himself with but one avenue of escape, easily closed off.

Not that the man who opened the door looked like he’d need any help subduing an intruder. He was taller than Moody and just as heavy, though his weight was far more aesthetically distributed on his bones. He looked like one of the Bucs’ better linebackers. In point of fact he had played football, though only on the college level.

He chatted with Ooljee for a bit, then stepped out and favored Moody with the kind of big, down-home country smile the detective hadn’t encountered much since leaving Mississippi. He felt immediately at home.

“Yinishye Bill Laughter.” He looked to be in his early or mid-thirties. His handshake was as solid as the rest of him, though Moody was quick to note that unusual pressure of the index finger along the back of the hand.

“Vernon Moody. I’m—”

“Paul has told me.” He beckoned for them to follow. “Come on around back. I’d take you through the house, but Marilee’s shopping and my dad’s watching the game.”

They walked around the building, with its views of creek and towering canyon walls. All three dogs accompanied them, one sniffing at the detective’s heels, the other two scouting ahead.

The big, bamlike structure behind the house turned out to be an industrial workshop. Moody had expected cars or trucks, perhaps even a gyrocopter, maybe farm equipment; not an artistic assembly-line. Acrylic bins overflowing with colored sand lined one wall. Long benches and tables occupied the middle of the floor, flanked by stacks of flat boards cut from high-quality hardwood, sheets of metal, rolls of flexifan.

There was a section set aside for welding, with its own scrapmetal yard and anodizing equipment, as well as a potter’s comer with clay, electronically controlled wheel, and flash kiln. A big commercial-grade laser cutter dominated a back table like a lost piece of army ordnance.

Finished sandpaintings were stacked neatly in sorting racks, next to framing equipment. Laughter even had his own seal-wrapping machine and shipping materials. The paintings themselves varied considerably in size, from miniatures a few inches square to a pair of eight-by-ten foot monsters leaning against the near wall. Ooljee asked about them before Moody could.

“They are for the new terminal going in at Casa Grande International Airport.” Laughter was obviously proud of his work. “They’ll be viewed from a distance, hence the outlandish proportions. As you can see, all the designs and yeis are rendered oversized.”

“What’s a yei?” Moody inquired.

“A spirit. A god. A person. It depends. Yei-bei-chei. Yei for short.”

The two young men working near the back of the shop paid little attention to the newly arrived visitors.

“Apprentices. My assistants,” Laughter explained.

Moody watched as one of them prepared to apply an adhesive base to a foot-square piece of thin metal. His companion finished adjusting a protective mask, then turned to his left and picked up a hose-and-nozzle arrangement. It hissed like a snake giving warning as he sprayed transparent fixative over a quartet of finished sandpaintings.

“They do a lot of the drudge work.” Laughter studied the pieces with a critical eye. “It frees me to concentrate on painting and design.”

Moody was still a bit taken aback by the sheer scale and mass production aspects of the operation. To him it didn’t look much like art. But then what did he know?

“You don’t paint. You use sand.”

“Paint is just a medium. Sand is another.” Laughter indicated a custom industrial easel that held a half-finished sandpainting.

“In the old days you had to lay sand fast because your adhesive would set up. That made for some sloppy work. This is much better. I use a debondable elastomeric transparent adhesive. You can cover a whole board with it and work on any section you want without worrying about the rest drying out in the meantime. The next day you just spray the area you want to work on with the debonder and it becomes malleable again. None of it sets up hard until you apply the fixative. As for a paintbrush—” He reached behind a nearby workbench.

Moody flinched instinctively when Laughter emerged holding what looked like a gun. In an industrial sense, it was. Instead of emitting a high-powered stream of fine grit to scour away old paint and varnish, Laughter’s sandblaster had been modified to apply sand. The width and impact of the stream could both be manipulated electronically. A built-in switch allowed the attached vacuum hose to select from any of the nearby bins of colored sand. The whole contraption was no bigger than an automatic pistol. One hose connected it to its air supply, a second to the sand distributor. The custom device was a compact cross between a sandblaster and an airbrush.

Laughter slipped on protective goggles and demonstrated how it all worked by adding to the sandpainting in progress. Three eagle feathers, white tipped with black, appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the board as he played the nozzle back and forth over the treated surface.

“You can go pretty fast with the setup we have here,” he said as he shut off the unit and picked up another self-contained device. While they looked on, he carefully applied fixative to the feathers he’d just drawn, securing them to the board.

Moody found the technique more intriguing than the technology. “There’s nothing on there; no tracings, no outlines. Don’t you sketch in your designs before you start?

Laughter slid the goggles up onto his head. “Don’t need to. I started learning from my father when I was eight. The designs we use are sketched in permanently up here.” He tapped his forehead. “That’s where a good hatathli keeps his. But I’m not a hatathli, of course. I’m just a painter. Though I know what not to paint.”

Moody kept pace with him as they exited the workshop. “Paul’s told me about that.”

Laughter smiled softly. “Then you know that no commercial, fixed, permanent sandpainting, no matter how accurate it looks, is a precise reproduction of a medicine painting. If it was an exact replication it might adversely affect the painter, or the purchaser, or universal harmony. If I made such a reproduction and harm befell the purchaser, I could be sued. Maybe not in a Florida court, but things can be different here on the Rez.

“No commercial sandpainter would do such a thing anyway, because the misfortune might befall him instead of a customer. ”

Moody found himself wondering about the Kettrick painting. Could it be the unfortunate exception, the exact reproduction Laughter seemed so confident no sandpainter would create? Did that have something to do with the obsession of their killer? Misfortune had certainly befallen Elroy Kettrick.

Been out in the sun too long, he told himself. Need to spend more time inside.

That was exactly where Laughter was taking them. They turned right and entered the main house, emerging into a high-ceilinged kitchen. Wide, tinted windows looked out over the indifferent creek. The appliances were modern, though designed to run straight off DC. That made sense to Moody. Solar electric production was always more efficient when it could be used directly, instead of having to be run through a converter first.

The painter waved some coffee for them. When it was ready, he and Ooljee resumed talking.

Left to himself, Moody studied his surroundings. There were fewer of the homey, traditional touches that distinguished his partner’s condo, perhaps because the awesome setting in which this house stood would detract from the finest art.

Ooljee brought out the fax for Laughter’s inspection. He frowned at it in disbelief. “Somebody killed somebody, over this?”

“For a copy of it, we assume. Or maybe just for the chance to look at it. We do not know for a fact that a copy was made. We do know that the original was destroyed.” Laughter was studying it closely but without especial interest, like a lepidopterist examining a brilliantly colored but not unique specimen.

“We were told in Ganado that this painting or one similar to it might have been painted here.” Ooljee was watching the artist closely.

“Not by me.” Laughter shook his head. “I sure as hell have never seen anything like it.”

Mentally Moody was already back in the truck. It was the same answer they’d received from a hundred different people back in town.

Laughter, however, wasn’t through. “Let’s ask my dad. He won’t yell too loud if we break in on him.”

“You said you learned from him. Does he still paint?” Moody asked.

Laughter led them through the house. “Sometimes when he’s in the mood, or just when he gets bored. He leaves most of it to me. He prefers to handle the financial end of the business.”

The den was a cool, sunken oval dominated by a huge fireplace. A six-foot square top-of-the-line zenat color monitor occupied a recess in the curving wall. The oversized couches and peeled-wood furniture were covered with the familiar earthtone upholstery. San Idelefonso black pottery shone side-by-side with intricate titanium sculptures.

Clearly there was money in sandpainting as well as in art and tradition.

The man who rose from the couch in front of the screen was as tall as Bill Laughter but much slimmer. He looked as if time had worn the bulk off him much as the wind had sculpted the wild sandstone monuments of the canyon.

Moody glanced at the zenat, which the elder Laughter had thoughtfully muted at their entrance. Tucson was playing Dallas in the Columbia Dome, ahead 49 to 6. Good. He had nothing on the game and the boring spread would allow him to concentrate wholly on the discussion at hand.

Once more Ooljee repeated the reason for the visit, waiting while both Laughters studied the fax and conferenced. The younger asked questions while the older man nodded and ventured comments in Navaho. His first words in English drove all thoughts of football from the detective’s mind.

“Yes, I think I have seen this before. Or something very much like it.”

“Where?” Ooljee asked quickly, as though the response might slip away if he didn’t inquire rapidly enough.

“I think it might be one of my father’s pieces. Of course, I could be wrong.”

In the excitement of the moment Moody spoke without thinking, a fault he was not usually prone to. “Where is he? Can we ask him about it?”

“My father’s been dead for many years.” Courteously, the elder Laughter did not allow Moody time in which to apologize. “He taught me, just as I have taught Bill.”

“Then that’s it.”

“Not necessarily.” The elder Laughter smiled softly. “I had to prepare for the day when he would no longer be here to help me. So I put everything he could teach me on file. Come into the office and we’ll see what we can find. That is, if I’m not completely mistaken and there is actually something to be found.”

The room located just off the den was long and narrow, the zenat on the far wall a strictly utilitarian model from Zenith T&T’s industrial division. Red Laughter palmed a well-used tactile 3.4 Black Widow spinner from a desktop and aimed it at the mollybox squatting beneath the window.

Images washed across the zenat, the outside windows automatically dimming as the mollybox was activated. The elder Laughter’s fingers played with the Widow. A succession of sandpaintings appeared on the monitor. Some were badly positioned for recording purposes, others were frozen in primitive, uncorrectable out-of-focus.

“A lot of these were taken when I was just a kid, with an old hand-held two-D camera, and transferred to my file much later. When I was learning and helping my father we couldn’t afford fancy stuff like mollystorage, and I didn’t know anything about holomaging. This was the best I could do.”

“You deserve credit for thinking so far ahead,” Ooljee told him.

“1 can’t take credit. It was my grandmother’s idea. Preserving these designs and techniques didn’t strike me as important until 1 was a lot older. Only then did I realize the debt I owed to her. She was very proud of my father’s work and didn’t want it to be lost. I can still remember the two of them arguing about it. My father didn’t want to spend the money for film and developing. He said I should learn everything by rote, the way he had learned from my grandfather. He wanted me to be a hatathli, like him.” Red Laughter’s gaze shifted to Moody, who stood listening respectfully.

“My father was a real hatathli; one of the very best. He believed the paintings should only be used to make medicine. That was how he supported himself; by doing traditional medicine. Not by making paintings to sell in the stores.” Laughter froze the screen on a particularly complex piece of work.

“Look at this; at the detail, the fine edges and the straight lines. All done from memory, right on the ground on the floor of an old hogan. Depending on the Way, something like this could take many days to complete. When it was finished and the ceremony completed, Father and his assistants would destroy the entire work, end to beginning. For another client he would have to start all over again with the same painting, or a completely different one. From scratch. A terrible waste, but that is the way it was done. Done still, by the few men with the skill or gall to call themselves true hatathlis.” He resumed searching.

“So y’all don’t make any medicine paintings?” Moody was surprised how naturally the question came to mind.

Laughter looked at him as if he were crazy. “Are you kidding? Even if I knew how, I wouldn’t have time for it. Bill and I sell our work all over the world. I don’t mean to imply that we’re not respectful of it, but sandpainting can be art in the pure sense as well as the basis for traditional medicine. We develop and incorporate many of our own ideas into each painting, though it’s nice to have the original designs to use as a starting point.” Abruptly he hesitated, staring at the monitor.

“Wait a minute.”

Carefully he backtrawled until he found the image he wanted. It was difficult to make out details because the sandpainting was so large. Using the Widow, he focused on specific sections, enlarging them for a better view.

Moody grabbed the fax and held it out in front of him, placing it tangent to the monitor visually if not physically. Ooljee didn’t need to see the copy.

“That’s it, or if it’s not, then it’s something awfully damn similar. ” Moody eyed Red Laughter. “You said your father only did paintings for medicine.”

“And for my file, because my mother insisted on it. He was very reluctant to do it. He always grumbled.”

“He never made anything for commercial sale?”

“Not intentionally. But”—Laughter thought hard—“he did render a few of the more complicated ones on wood, so I could be sure to make a good copy for the records.”

“What happened to those?”

“I still have some of them.”

“Some?”

Red Laughter looked out the darkened window. “There was a time when we needed money badly. That’s when I think my mother sold one or two of the paintings. I remember there was yelling about it. You must understand, my father was a hatathli. But people offered her a lot of money.” He turned back to the monitor. “This might have been one of those.” He enlarged the edge. “See, it’s done on wood, not on earth. A very uncommon design. Let’s see what the accompanying text has to say. I always tried to make a record of what my father said about each painting.” He thumbed the Widow, and a text window appeared in the lower left quadrant of the monitor. It was in English, for which Moody was grateful.

“This sandpainting,” it informed them in obsolete two-D font, “is from a Way which has been forgotten. I remember only that it was an important Way. It was taught to me by my father, who learned it from his father, who learned it from one whose true name I do not know and which can only be guessed at. Like many of the Ways which the young people have forgotten, it is a very old Way. I put it down here so it will not join the forgotten, even though it seems to be of no use in medicine, since no one knows what ceremony it is a part of.”

“My grandfather’s words.” Bill Laughter was solemn. “None of the museum specialists or academics I showed this to has any idea what Way it is from,” Ooljee informed their hosts.

“Then it is truly from a forgotten one.” Bill Laughter looked at Moody. “The simplest of the traditional Ways is unbelievably complicated. Elements and devices are swapped between them whenever the resident hatathli thinks it expedient.”

“Not all is forgotten.” The elder Laughter generated a pointer within the Widow, used it to circle a substantial portion of the center-right section of the painting. “This whole piece here; it I know. The colors are strange and so is some of the design, but it is still recognizable.”

Moody tried and failed to make any sense of what the father had isolated. “What is it?” he finally asked exas-peratedly.

“A painting within a painting, called ‘Scavenger Being Carried Through the Skyhole by Eagles and Hawks Assisted by Snakes with Bird Power.’”

“I can see the bird shapes,” Moody conceded.

Bill Laughter took control of the spinner, isolating a long, impossibly attenuated human figure within the painting. “That’s Scavenger in the middle. The figures on either side of him are snakes. See the feathers they’ve been given, here and here? Bird power. As for the birds themselves, there are many kinds represented: big black hawks; black and white eagles; white hawks; big blue hawks; yellow-tailed, bald eagles. Even the guardians are snakes with bird power.

“These eagles on either side of the Scavenger figure, see how they’re linked by ropes of rainbow and lightning?” The pointer moved. “But these lines here I don’t recognize, or these small shapes. They shouldn’t be in this painting. And these designs just outside, that link it to the rest of the overall, larger work, I don’t recognize them at all. They could all be personal embellishments, but an old hatathli like Grandfather, I don’t know how much he’d go in for that kind of thing.”

“Maybe he was in an unusually artistic mood the day he made this one,” the detective blithely suggested.

“Embellishing was not unknown in my father’s time, or even before it. Hatathlis can be as individual as their medicine.” Red Laughter rubbed his chin. “It is just that it was not like him. I do not remember him doing this particular sandpainting, but it is here in the files, so that means he must have done it. Grandmother probably put it here. She’s the one who taught me the importance of keeping good records.”

“The Scavenger portion,” the younger Laughter explained, “is from the Bead Chant, but the rest of it is a total blank to me.”

Moody was squinting at the monitor, trying to will himself to make sense of it. “How do you tell the snakes and the lightning apart?”

“Sometimes you don’t. In our mythology they can be one and the same.”

“What about this business of a ‘skyhole’?”

Red Laughter sighed. “I do not want to go into the whole Way. It’s very complicated and uses many paintings. There used to be a fire dance involved, but—” He shrugged. “Today young people go to different kinds of dances.”

“At least we found it.” There was satisfaction in Ooljee’s voice.

“Let’s go back to the kitchen.” Bill Laughter switched off the zenat and mollybox, put the spinner back on the crowded desk.

Ooljee wanted to talk sandpainting, while Moody was much more interested in finding out if there might be a way to trace the original sale. He found himself talking to the younger Laughter while Ooljee engaged the elder at the kitchen table.

“What about that old building we saw coming in?” he asked, by way of making casual conversation.

“My grandfather’s. We maintain it for tradition’s sake. Also it’s nice just to go inside sometimes and sit on the floor and do nothing. Some of Grandfather’s things are still there and, well, it takes you back.”

Moody remembered the house he’d been raised in, back in Mississippi. Tin roof, wooden screen door always in need of repair, a porch slowly subsiding toward the Gulf. He understood.

“How come,” he wondered, studying the fax and sipping coffee, “you and your father haven’t reproduced this design? It’s sure enough attractive.”

“And much too complex to be a cost-effective proposition.” Laughter traced the intricate patterns with a finger. “Besides, it doesn’t come with a convenient, easy to understand explanation. Tourists need that sort of thing. They like plenty of yeis, rainbows, the four sacred plants. Not complex interconnected abstracts. We’re doing fine. No reason to make something too complicated to earn back the time and effort spent on it. Not when you can do com, beans, squash, and tobacco over and over again and come out way ahead.

“Oh, every once in a while Dad and I will do something different, but it’s usually of our own invention, and to fill a prepaid order. Remember, sand is just the medium, not the art. In any case, we’d never do anything this big on spec.”

Moody glanced around the kitchen. “Seems to me you could afford the time.”

“Sure we could. We just don’t want to. Dad’s got a forty-foot twin GE Craft catamaran docked down at Puerto Penasco. You have any idea what the upkeep is on a sucker like that? Come to think of it, you’re from Florida, so you probably do. Doesn’t leave him a lot of time to play at being an artist. We run a business here.

“Not that we don’t have respect for tradition; we do. You don’t see us turning out any of the pornographic sand-paintings that show up in downtown Ganado or Gallup. Then there are the computer games based on the stories of the Holy People. We wouldn’t have anything to do with stuff like that. So we feel pretty good about what we do.” His attitude had turned almost belligerent. Moody hastened to calm him.

“I understand, I was just asking. We’re trying to find a motive in all this and we’re not having a lot of luck so far. So sometimes you’ve got to ask some awkward questions. For example, if the Kettrick design was the only one of its kind, maybe one of your people felt the need to have it all to himself.”

Bill Laughter chuckled and waved the fax. “A Navaho collector would laugh at this because it makes no sense. A rich Brazilliana, now, or an Asian, they’d put a light on it and stick it up on their wall and be happy with it. But not a Navaho collector.”

“So he’d shy away from it because it isn’t traditional? How do you know it isn’t? Maybe your grandfather was wrong. Maybe the Way described in this painting is still known to someone.”

“So what? It’s of no use to anybody.”

“What if it’s an exact reproduction, laid down without any of the little changes necessary to render it harmless?” Ooljee should be asking these questions, he thought.

“Hey, my grandfather wouldn’t have done that.” Up to now Laughter had been brash and confident. Suddenly he looked uncomfortable.

“You just said you don’t believe in this stuff.”

“1 know that.” Laughter leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Look, if you asked me straight out do I believe in any of the old ways, I’d say no. But it never hurts to play it safe. There’s a whole history of funny things that have happened on the Rez.

“Maybe your guy is another artist. Maybe he’s working for someone else who wants something really unique. Except that it’s a lot simpler to create your own designs than to kill to acquire somebody else’s.

“There’s also the possibility that this guy is a hatathli, or a would-be hatathli, or some nut who thinks he can be a hatathli and that he really can work miracles by muttering ancient baloney over a pile of colored sand and dirt.”

“People who believe what they want to believe are capable of anything,” Moody informed him coldly. “I know that from experience.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Me, I believe in positive cash flow. My dad, he maybe believes in this stuff a little. My grandfather believed a lot, and he wasn’t an isolated case in his day. If this guy you’re after thinks using this painting will make a real hatathli out of him…

“Me, I wouldn’t kill for a sandpainting if it was made out of gemstones. We’ve actually done a couple like that. Ruby dust for red color, amethyst for purple, emerald for green and so on. Strictly for tourists, of course.

“The whole point being that while this is real interesting”—and he tapped the fax—“I don’t see anything here worth killing for.”

“How do you think I feel?” Moody finished his coffee. “Y’all have no way of telling if it’s a true medicine painting or if it’s been altered?”

Laughter shook his head. “We don’t know the design, so how could we tell if it’s been changed or not? Like I said, it makes no difference anyway.”

“People keep pointing that out to me a lot.”

Laughter eyed him uncertainly, unable to tell if his visitor was making a joke or not. It made Moody feel good to be able to turn the tables a little.

The younger man rose. “I’ve got to get back to work.” The detective watched him leave, then ambled over to rejoin his partner. The elder Laughter was speaking earnestly.

“Have you considered the possibility that your murder might have nothing to do with the sandpainting?”

Ooljee looked startled.

Moody sympathized. “How do you mean?” he asked. “Whoever destroyed the painting might have been fulfilling a promise made many years, perhaps even generations, ago. Among the Navaho there are many old feuds,

though few end in bloodshed. This might not have anything to do with your Mr. Kettrick. It might be between your murderer and whoever hired him and someone else entirely. An old argument, an ancient dispute. This Kettrick might simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“No,” said Ooljee with assurance. “The man who killed spoke too often of the painting. I still believe it is central to understanding our case. If only there was a way to interpret its meaning.”

“I wish you luck.” Red Laughter rose. The visit was over.

He tried to console his guests as he escorted them to the door. “I hope my son and I have been of some help.”

“At least now we know where the painting came from.” Ooljee paused at the entrance. “We may need to access your records again.”

Laughter fumbled in his pockets until he found a business card. “Call any time. I will open a modem for you.” He extended a hand. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Moody. I hope you have not come so far for nothing.”

“Thanks,” said Moody, adding with careful enunciation, “Doo ahashyaa da.”

The painter’s eyebrows narrowed and he glanced sharply at Ooljee, who smiled back. “I see you have been getting some lessons in Navaho. I admire you for making the effort. It is not an easy language to learn.”

“What now?” Moody asked his colleague as the truck bounced back along the dirt track that paralleled the main creek. Ancient cliffs towered above them, silent and unhelpful, the edges of the wound in the Earth that was Canyon de Chelley.

“Now that we know where the painting came from originally, maybe we can trace the original owners. I’m going to do some more cross-checking. The hands it has passed through over the years may lead us to the hands that slew. Something might turn up.”

“I hope so, ’cause I’m getting damn sick of talking about sand and painting and Ways when we’re supposed to be trying to catch a real person. You sure you got composites out all over this place?”

For the first time since they’d met, Ooljee tensed. “Do not try to tell me my job, detective.”

“Just thinkin’ out loud. Something else.”

“What?”

“I think you ought to run a background check on the Laughters. They were real friendly and real helpful, but I’m not sure I buy the old man’s story about not remembering that particular painting. He said himself how unique and different it was from anything else he’d ever seen. If that’s the case, why would he forget it? If this involves some old dispute, maybe it involves his family as well. That’d be a good reason for forgetting.”

“But he found the painting for us in his files,” Ooljee pointed out.

“That’s so.”

“Still, you are right. It will not hurt to run a check. What are you going to do while I am mollydiving?”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not gonna sit around and stare over your shoulder. Maybe I’ll take a stroll through town. I don’t want to impose on you and your missus’s privacy any more than I have to. And I’d like to see some more of the city.”

“Suit yourself.” Ooljee shrugged. “I will drop you off centrally downtown. If you get lost…”

“I remember your number. And the address. And I can always walk into the nearest station.”

“That’s right.” The sergeant was relieved. Moody was his responsibility.

“I’ve got a copy of the composite.” Moody tapped the spinner attached to his belt. “Maybe I’ll just flash a few street people, since I’m not familiar with your regular sources.”

“A good idea, since my ‘regular sources’ do not seem to be helping us any.”

Moody leaned back against the seat, relaxing against the high-acceleration padding. “Could be I’ll get lucky. It’s a dumb fisherman who sits in the same spot without catching fish and never moves on.”

“I wish you luck.” Ooljee negotiated a low river dune. “But it would be better if we knew what to use for bait.”