Sacred Clowns

Chapter 4

LEAPHORN AND David W. Streib took the short way from Window Rock to Crownpoint and a conference with Lieutenant Ed Toddy, in whose reservation precinct Eric Dorsey had died. They followed old Navajo Route 9 past the Nazhoni Trading Post, Coyote Wash, and Standing Rock, and crossed that invisible line that separated the Big Rez from the Checkerboard. Special Agent Streib worked out of the Farmington office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Since the wrongful death of Eric Dorsey was clearly a felony committed on a federal reservation and therefore a federal offense, he was responsible for the investigation. But that didn’t make it particularly interesting to him. Streib could be described as a Bureau old-timer. He should have been in an assignment much loftier than a tiny office in northwestern New Mexico from which he dealt mostly with Indian reservation business. But the whimsical sense of humor that had earned Streib his nickname of Dilly had not earned him the confidence of those selected by J. Edgar Hoover to run his FBI. And while Hoover was now long gone, Hoover’s reign had lasted longer than Streib’s ambitions. Special Agent Streib had evolved into a laid-back, contented man with lots of friends in Indian Country.

One of them was Joe Leaphorn, which was fortunate on this day because even the short way from Window Rock to Crownpoint involved some seventy miles of mostly empty road. Plenty of time for conversation. They covered Streib’s plans for building a greenhouse behind his home when he retired from the Bureau. They rehashed cases they had worked together, skirted around the sensitive subject of what Leaphorn intended to do with his accumulated leave time, and covered an assortment of gossip about the small world of Indian Country law enforcement. Just as they passed the turnoff to the Nahodshosh Chapter House, they got to the question of why anyone would want to kill a Saint Bonaventure Mission School shop teacher. Theft was clearly the number one choice, since some silver ingot and other materials seemed to be missing from Dorsey’s shop. Trouble over a girlfriend made number two as the motive. Trouble with a student made number three. No number four suggested itself.

Finally, Streib brought up the sensitive subject.

“You going with the professor?”

Leaphorn was sure he didn’t want to open this subject to discussion. Not even with Dilly.

“Where? What do you mean?”

“To China with that professor from Northern Arizona University, goddammit,” Streib said. “Bourebonette’s the name. I heard that’s the plan. What are you being so goddam coy about?”

Leaphorn had never, ever discussed accompanying Bourebonette to China with Dilly or with anyone else that he could think of. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would discuss. But it didn’t occur to him to be surprised that Dilly knew. In empty country everybody knew everything about everybody. One’s inner thoughts seemed to transmit themselves through the clear, dry air without need for verbalizing.

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “That’s the plan.”

“That’s what I heard,” Streib said.

Leaphorn looked at his watch, a $13.99 Casio digital. He pushed the proper buttons and adjusted the seconds.

“I checked it when they gave the time on the radio,” he said. “It’s a little slow. Or maybe the radio is a little fast. Probably it was exactly right. Makes you wonder why anyone would pay a hundred bucks for a watch. Or one of those five-thousand-dollar jobs.”

Streib ignored this signal to change the subject.

“That’s a hell of a long ways to go,” Streib said. “All the way to China. If you got something going with the lady, why not just stay here? Nobody would care. You’re a widower. I think she’s single. That’s what I heard.”

“I always wanted to go to China.”

“Yeah,” Streib said. “Really. I’ll bet you did.”

The skepticism provoked Leaphorn. “I used to talk about it with Emma,” he said, irritated with himself for explaining this to Streib. “But she didn’t like to travel. She went to New York with me once. And once to Washington. But it was really just to keep me company. It made her nervous, being away from the reservation. Even when we just went to Albuquerque. Or Phoenix. She’d be anxious to get home.”

“I heard the lady was doing a research project in China. Quite a coincidence.” The tone remained skeptical. “Good thing she wasn’t doing research on Antarctica or you’d be telling me of your lifelong fascination with penguins.”

“Back when I was a grad student at Arizona State I got interested,” Leaphorn said. “We had an anthro professor who was into linguistics. The evolution of languages, that sort of thing. He’d ask me how my grandfather said things, and my relatives. And he’d show me the charts he’d accumulated about the Athabascan languages up and down the Pacific Coast, Canada, Alaska, and across the straits among some of the Siberian tribes. It got me interested.”

Leaphorn looked up, made a deprecatory gesture. “You know,” he said. “Where’s my homeland? Where’d the Dineh come from? Where are my roots?”

“You Navajos came up from the underworld,” Streib said. “Up from the fourth world into the fifth world. Through a hollow reed, wasn’t it?”

“Flooded out, just like you bilagaani,” Leaphorn said. “You guys made yourself an ark out of gopher wood. Hauled out the animals. We had to climb through a hole in the ceiling and the animals had to climb out, too.”

“I guess my ancestors – the German ones – came out of Alsace. That part that switches back to France depending on who won the last war. But I never much wanted to go see it.”

Streib uncapped his thermos, poured coffee into a cup marked austin sam for tribal council, new lands chapter, and handed it to Leaphorn. He poured coffee into the thermos cap for himself “Maybe if I had a good-looking woman as a traveling companion I’d find Alsace more interesting.”

Leaphorn let it pass. Sipped coffee.

Streib grinned at him. “Admit it,” he said. “Knock off the bullshit about tracking down your roots. I’ve met the prof a couple of times. At cultural doings there at the university. She’s a nice-looking woman.”

Leaphorn finished his coffee slowly.

“Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed,” Streib said.

“See if you can pour me some more coffee,” Leaphorn said, passing the cup. “Without talking.”

“I’m not knocking it,” Streib said. “I think it’s a good idea. Why not? You’ve been alone now for too damn long. It’s making you cranky. The old testosterone must still be working. Young man like you. You better find yourself a permanent lady or you’ll be hanging around the squaw dances and getting yourself into trouble.”

Leaphorn thought: A year and eight months and eleven days since the nurse had awakened him in the chair in Emma’s room. She slipped away, the nurse had said. Emma had died while both of them were sleeping. Six hundred and twenty-two days. A lot longer if you counted the days before the operation, the days when the tumor had pressed against Emma’s brain and cost her her ability to think clearly. It had robbed her of her memory, her happiness, her humor, and her personality, and even – on some terrible days – of her knowledge of who she was, and who he was. He remembered those nights when she would awaken beside him confused and terrified. When…

“Change the subject,” Leaphorn said, and Streib instantly detected the anger in his voice.

That took them back to the killing of Eric Dorsey, routine as it seemed. A bit odd, perhaps, with no motive apparent immediately, and no promising suspects. But such things took time to develop, and the case was still fresh.

“One oddity though,” Leaphorn said. He told Streib about Delmar Kanitewa running away the day Dorsey was killed, the bludgeon murder of his uncle, and the koshare effigy in Dorsey’s shop.

“So,” Streib said. “What’s the connection?”

“Sounds unlikely,” Leaphorn said. “But maybe.”

“Or maybe not,” Dilly said. “Maybe the kid just happened to take off the same day.”

“And the boy’s uncle being killed there at Tano. How about that?”

“I know you don’t believe in coincidences,” Streib said. “But they do happen. For example, you and the lady both wanting to go take a look at China. And this looks like another one. Unless you can see some possible link.”

“I can’t,” Leaphorn said. “But I’d like it better if we had a suspect in custody.”

Which, as it happened, they did.