The Shape Shifter

This book is dedicated to Anne Margaret, Janet Marie, Anthony Grove, Jr., Steven August, Monica Mary, and Daniel Bernard listed in order of the date they arrived to brighten our lives.

Contents

1 Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, stopped his pickup about a

hundred…

1

2 Eleven days earlier…

9

3 Leaphorn parked in the driveway of his Window Rock house,…

17

4 Leaphorn, being elderly, knew the wisdom of learning all

you…

23

5 Leaphorn was on the road early, driving with a gaudy…

27

6 Luxury Living magazine protected the privacy of those who

allowed…

43

7 The changes Leaphorn noticed in Garcia as the Coconino sheriff’s…

47

8 Garcia swerved off the interstate at Holbrook and roared

up…

53

9 Tomas Delonie’s reaction to the arrival of a police car

and…

69

10 It was quiet in the patrol car until it had…

77

11 Back in Flagstaff, back in his own car, with farewells…

85

12 Joe Leaphorn awakened unusually late the next morning. Just as…

89

13 Halfway down the slope from the Delos mansion a sharp…

105

14 It proved to be another uneasy sleep, broken by troublesome…

117

15 The good mood Louisa’s attitude had left with Joe

Leaphorn…

125

16 While this conversation was winding down, Leaphorn had been keeping…

165

17 The truck was still there when Leaphorn pulled up by…

203

18 Getting ready for the venture first involved cleaning off

enough…

219

19 For Leaphorn, getting some sleep had been easier said

than…

227

20 The place they found as their lookout point was in…

239

21 Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, would sometimes wish that he had…

247

22 The first step now for Leaphorn was to deal with…

257

23 Daylight now, the sun just up, and Tommy Vang driving.

265

24 And now three rest and recuperation days had passed.

The…

269

About the Author

Other Books by Tony Hillerman

Credits

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, stopped his pickup about a hundred yards short of where he had intended to park, turned off the ignition, stared at Sergeant Jim Chee’s trailer home, and reconsidered his tactics. The problem was making sure he knew what he could tell them, and what he shouldn’t, and how to handle it without offending either Bernie or Jim. First he would hand to whomever opened the door the big woven basket of fruit, flowers, and candies that Professor Louisa Bourbonette had arranged as their wedding gift, and then keep the conversation focused on what they had thought of Hawaii on their honeymoon trip, and apologize for the duties that had forced both Louisa and him to miss the wedding itself.

Then he would pound them with questions about their future plans, whether Bernie still intended to return to her job with the Navajo Tribal Police. She would know he already knew the answer to that one, but the longer he 2

TONY HILLERMAN

could keep them from pressing him with their own questions, the better. Maybe he could avoid that completely.

It wasn’t likely. His answering machine had been full of calls from one or the other of them. Full of questions. Why hadn’t he called them back with the details of that Totter obituary he wanted them to look into? Why was he interested? Hadn’t he retired as he’d planned? Was this some old cold case he wanted to clear up as a going away present to the Navajo Tribal Police? And so forth.

Louisa had provided him with a choice of two solu-tions. Just go ahead and swear them both to secrecy and tell them the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Or just say he simply couldn’t talk about it because it was all totally confidential.

“Don’t forget, Joe,” Louisa had said, “they’re both in the awful gossiping circuit you police people operate. They’re going to be hearing about the murders, and the shooting, and all the rest of it, and by the time it gets passed along second-, third-, and fourth-hand, it’s all going to seem a lot more horrible than what you told me.” With that, Louisa had paused, shaken her head, and added: “If that’s possible.”

Both of Louisa’s suggestions were tempting, but neither was practical. Chee and Bernie were both sworn-in officers of the law (or Bernie would be again as soon as the papers were signed) and telling them everything he knew would put them in an awful ethical position. Sort of the same position he had landed in himself, which he really didn’t want to think about right now.

Instead he’d think about Chee and Bernie, starting with how Bernie had already seemed to have a civilizing influence on Jim, judging from the nice white curtains THE SHAPE SHIFTER

3

Leaphorn could see in the trailer’s windows, and— even more dramatic—the attractive blue-and-white mailbox with a floral design substituted for the rusty old tin box that had always before received Chee’s mail. Not, Leaphorn guessed, that many people had been writing to Jim.

Leaphorn restarted his engine and began the slow drive toward the house. Just as he did, the door opened.

And there was Bernie, waving to him, and Chee right behind her, big grin on his face. Quit worrying, Leaphorn told himself. I’m going to enjoy this. And he did.

Chee took the basket, looking as if he had no idea what to do with it. Bernie rescued it, declaring it was just what they needed and how thoughtful it was of him and Louisa, and how the basket was beautifully woven, neatly waterproofed with pinyon sap, and would long be trea-sured. Then came the hand shaking, and the hugs, and inside for coffee and conversation. Leaphorn kept it on the Hawaii trip as long as he could, listening to Bernie’s report on her arrangements to rejoin the tribal police and her chances of being assigned to Captain Largo’s command and being posted at Teec Nos Pos, which would be convenient, presuming that Chee would still be working out of Shiprock.

And so it went, coffee sipped, cookies nibbled, lots of smiling and laughing, exuberant descriptions of swim-ming in the cold, cold Pacific surf, a silly scene in which an overenthusiastic Homeland Security man at the Honolulu Airport had been slapped by an elderly woman he was frisking, had seized her, and had been whacked again by her husband, who turned out to be a retired, oft-decorated Marine Corps colonel. This resulted in the Homeland Se-4

TONY HILLERMAN

curity supervisor wanting the colonel arrested, and an airport official, who turned out to be an army survivor of the Korean War, apologizing to the colonel’s wife and giving the Homeland Security pair a loud public lecture on American history. All happy, easy, and good-natured.

But then Sergeant Jim Chee said: “By the way, Lieutenant, Bernie and I have been wondering what got you interested in the Totter obituary. And why you never called us again. We would have been willing to do some more checking on it for you.”

“Well, thanks,” Leaphorn said. “I knew you would do it, but I knew of a fellow living right there in Oklahoma City who sort of volunteered for the job. No use bothering you honeymooners again. By the looks of things, you’ve decided to settle in right here. Right? Great place, here, right on the bank of the San Juan River.” But that effort to change the subject didn’t work.

“What did he find out for you?” Bernie asked.

Leaphorn shrugged. Drained his coffee cup, extended it toward Bernie, suggesting the need for a refill.

“Didn’t amount to anything,” he said. “Great coffee you’re making, Bernie. I bet you didn’t follow Chee’s old formula of ‘too little grounds, boiled too long.’” Chee was grinning at Leaphorn, ignoring the jibe.

“Come on, Lieutenant, quit the stalling. What’d you find out? And what got you so interested in the first place?”

“You’re a married man now,” Leaphorn said, and handed his empty cup to Chee. “Time to learn how to be a good host.”

“No more coffee until you quit stalling,” Chee said.

Leaphorn sighed, thought a bit. “Well,” he said, “it THE SHAPE SHIFTER

5

turned out the obituary was a fake. Mr. Totter hadn’t died in that Oklahoma City hospital, and hadn’t been buried in that Veterans Administration cemetery.” He paused, shrugged.

“Well, go on,” Chee said. “Why the obituary? What’s the story?”

Bernie took the cup from Leaphorn’s hand.

“But don’t tell it until I get back with the refill,” she said. “I want to hear this.”

“Why the fake being dead?” Chee asked. “What happened to Totter?”

Leaphorn pondered. How much of this could he tell?

He imagined Chee and Bernie, under oath on the witness stand, the U.S. District Attorney’s prosecutor reminding them they were under oath, or the penalty of perjury.

“When did you first hear this? Who told you? When did he tell you? After his Navajo Tribal Police retirement, then?

But wasn’t he still a deputized law enforcement officer for about three Arizona and New Mexico counties?”

“Well?” Chee asked.

“I’m waiting for your wife to get back with the coffee,” Leaphorn said. “Being polite. You should learn about that.”

“I’m back,” Bernie said, and handed him his cup. “I’m curious, too. What happened to Mr. Totter?”

“To tell the truth, we don’t really know,” Leaphorn said. And paused. “Not for sure, anyway.” Another thoughtful pause. “Let me rephrase that. To tell the truth, we think we know what happened to Totter, but we never could have proved it.”

Chee, who had been standing, pulled up a chair and sat down. “Hey,” he said. “I’ll bet this is going to be interesting.”

6

TONY HILLERMAN

“Let me get some more cookies,” Bernie said, hopping out of her chair. “Don’t start until I get back.” That gave Leaphorn about two minutes to decide how to handle this.

“Long and complicated story,” he said, “and it may cause you both to think I’ve gone senile. I’ve got to start it way back by reminding you both of our origin stories, about there being so much meanness, greed, and evil in those first three worlds that the Creator destroyed them, and how our First Man brought all that evil up to this fourth world of ours.”

Chee looked puzzled. And impatient. “How can that connect with Totter’s obituary?”

Leaphorn chuckled. “You’ll probably still be wondering about that when I finish this. But while I’m telling you about it, I want you to think about how our Hero Twins killed the evil monster on the Turquoise Mountain, and how they tried to rid this fourth world of ours of all the other evils and also about that name we sometime use for our worst kind of witches. One version translates into English as skinwalkers. Another version comes out as shape shifters.”

“Fits better sometimes,” Chee said. “The last time someone told me about seeing a skinwalker bothering her sheep, she said when she went into the hogan to get her rifle to shoot it, it saw her coming and turned into an owl. Flew away.”

“My mother told me about one,” Bernie said. “It changed from a wolf into some sort of bird.”

“Well, keep that in mind when I tell you about Totter, and so forth,” Leaphorn said.

Chee was grinning.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

7

“Okay,” he said. “I promise.”

“Me, too,” said Bernie, who seemed to be taking this a little more seriously. “On with the story.” Leaphorn took a cookie, sampled the fresh coffee.

“For me it started just about the time you two were enjoying yourselves in Hawaii. I had a call telling me I had mail down at the office, so I went down to see what it was.

That’s what pulled me into it.”

He took a bite of cookie, remembering he’d had to park in the visitors’ parking lot. It was just starting to rain. “Big lightning bolt just as I parked there,” he said.

“If I was as well tutored in our Navajo mythology as your husband is, Bernie, I would have recognized right away that the spirit world wasn’t happy. I’d have seen that as a bad omen.”

Chee had never got quite used to Leaphorn kidding him about his goal of being both a tribal policeman and a certified shaman, conducting Navajo curing ceremonials.

Chee was frowning.

“Come on, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’re saying it was beginning to rain. Lightning flashes. Now tell us what happened next.”

“Big lightning bolt just as I got there,” he said, smiling at Chee. “And I think when I’m finished with this, with as much as I can tell you anyway, you’re going to agree it was a very bad omen.”

2

Eleven days earlier . . .

The boom of the lightning bolt caused Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, to hesitate a moment before he climbed out of his pickup in the visitors’ parking lot. He took a serious look at the clouds building up in the western sky as he walked into the Navajo Tribal Police building. End of autumn, he was thinking. Monsoon season pretty much over. Handsome clouds of fog over the Lukachukai range this morning, but nothing promising a really good female rain. Just a noisy male thunderstorm.

It would be hunting season soon, he thought, which normally would have meant a lot of work for him. This year he could just kick back, sit by the fire. He’d let younger cops try to keep track of the poachers and go hunting for the city folks who always seemed to be losing themselves in the mountains.

Leaphorn sighed as he walked through the entrance.

10

TONY HILLERMAN

He should have been enjoying that sort of thinking, but he wasn’t. He felt . . . well . . . retired.

Nobody in the police department hall. Good. He hurried into the reception office. Good again. Nobody there except the pretty young Hopi woman manning the desk, and she was ignoring him, chatting on the telephone.

He took off his hat and waited.

She said: “Just a moment,” into the telephone, glanced at him, said: “Yes, sir. Can I help you?”

“I had a message from Captain Pinto. Pinto said I should come in and pick up my mail.”

“Mail?” She looked puzzled. “And you are?”

“I’m Joe Leaphorn.”

“Leaphorn. Oh, yes,” she said. “The captain said you might be in.” She fumbled in a desk drawer, pulled out a manila envelope, looked at the address on it. Then at him.

“Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn,” she said. “Is that you?”

“That was me,” Leaphorn said. “Once.” He thanked her, took the envelope back to his truck, and climbed in, feeling even more obsolete than he had as he’d driven by the police-parking-only spaces and stopped in visitors’

parking.

The return address looked sort of promising. Why Worry Security, with a Flagstaff, Arizona, street address.

The name penned under that was Mel Bork. Bork? Well, at least it wasn’t just more of the junk mail he’d been receiving.

“Bork?” Leaphorn said it aloud, suddenly remembering. Smiling. Ah yes. A skinny young man named Bork had been his fellow semi-greenhorn westerner friend from way, way back when both of them were young country-boy cops sent back East to learn some law enforcement THE SHAPE SHIFTER

11

rules at the FBI Academy. And his first name, by golly, had been Melvin.

Leaphorn opened his Swiss army knife, slit the envelope, slid out the contents. A page of slick paper from a magazine with a letter clipped to it. He took off the clip and put the letter aside.

The page was from Luxury Living, and a color photograph dominated it. It showed a grand high-ceilinged room with a huge fireplace, a trophy-sized rack of elk antlers mounted above it, a tall wall of shelved books on one side, and a sliding-glass door on the other. The glass door offered a view into a walled garden and, above the wall, snow-capped mountains. Leaphorn recognized the mountains. The San Francisco Peaks, with Humphreys Peak lording over them. That told him this Luxury Living home was somewhere on the north edge of Flagstaff.

The assorted furniture looked plush and expensive. But Leaphorn’s attention was drawn away from this by an arrow inked on the photograph. It pointed to a weaving that was hanging beside the fireplace, and under the shank of the arrow were the words:

Hey, Joe, Ain’t this that rug you kept telling me about? And if it is, what does that do to that arson case of ours? Remember? The one that the wise men ruled was just a careless smoker.

And take a look at those antlers! Folks who know this guy tell me he’s a hunting fool.

See attached letter.

Leaphorn let the letter wait while he stared at the photograph. It did remind him of the rug he had described 12

TONY HILLERMAN

to Bork—a great rectangle of black, gray, red tones, blues, and yellows all partially encircled by the figure of Rainbow Man. It seemed to be just as his memory told him.

He noticed a symbol for Maii’—the Coyote spirit—at his work of turning order into chaos and others represent-ing the weapons that Monster Slayer and Born for Water had stolen from the sun to wage their campaign to make the Dineh safe from the evils that had followed them up from the underworld. But the photograph was printed much too small to show other details that had impressed Leaphorn when he’d seen the original in Totter’s trading post gallery before it burned. He remembered seeing faint suggestions of soldiers with rifles, for example, and tiny white dots scattered in clusters here and there, which someone at the gallery had told him the weaver had formed from parts of feathers. They represented big silver peso coins, the currencies in the mountain west in the mid-1860s. And thus they represented greed, the root of all evil in the Navajo value system.

That, of course, was the theme of the famous old rug.

And that theme made it a sort of bitter violation of the Navajo tradition. The Dineh taught its people to live in the peace and harmony of hozho, they must learn to forgive—a variation of the policy that belagaana Christians preached in their Lord’s Prayer but all too often didn’t seem to practice. And the rug certainly didn’t practice forgetting old transgressions. It memorialized the worst cruelty ever imposed on the Navajo. The Long Walk—the captivity, misery, and the terrible death toll imposed on the Navajo by the white culture’s fierce hunger for gold and silver—and the final solution they tried to apply to get the Dineh out of the way.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

13

But could this picture torn from the magazine be of that same rug? It looked like it. But it didn’t seem likely.

Leaphorn remembered standing there examining the rug framed on the gallery wall behind its dusty glass.

Remembered someone there telling him of its antiquity and its historical value. If this was a pre-fire photo, then how had it gone from the wall of this lavish house at the edge of Flagstaff to Totter’s gallery. The other possibility was that it had been taken from the gallery before the fire. Furniture and other items in the room suggested the photo was recent. So did a distinctly modern painting on another wall.

Leaphorn put the magazine page back on the car seat, and considered another old and unpleasant memory the photo provoked from the day after the fire. The angry face of Grandma Peshlakai glowering at him through the window of his patrol car while he tried to explain why he had to leave—had to drive over to meet Captain Desbah, who had called him from Totter’s place.

“It’s a federal case,” he’d told her. “They had a fire over at Totter’s Trading Post Saturday. Burned up a man, and now the FBI thinks the dead man is a murderer they’ve been after for years. Very dangerous man. The federals are all excited.”

“He’s dead?”

Leaphorn agreed.

“He can’t run then,” Grandma said, scowling at him.

“This man I want you to catch is running away with my buckets of pinyon sap.”

Leaphorn had tried to explain. But Grandma Peshlakai was one of the important old women in her Kin Lit-sonii (Yellow House) clan. She felt her family was being 14

TONY HILLERMAN

slighted. Leaphorn had been young then, and he’d agreed that the problem of live Navajos should be just as important as learning the name of a dead belagaana. Remembering it now, much older, he still agreed with her.

Her case involved the theft of two economy-sized lard buckets filled with pinyon sap. They had been stolen from the weaving shed beside her hogan. She’d explained that the loss was much more significant than it might sound to a young policeman who had never endured the weary days of onerous labor collecting that sap.

“And now it’s gone, so how do we waterproof our baskets? How do we make them so they hold water and have that pretty color so tourists will buy them? And now, it is too late for sap to drip. We can’t get more. Not until next summer.”

Grandma had bitten back her anger and listened, with traditional Navajo courtesy, while he tried to explain that this dead fellow was probably one of the top people on the FBI’s most wanted list. A very bad and dangerous man. When he’d finished, rather lamely as he remembered, Grandma nodded.

“But he’s dead. Can’t hurt nobody now. Our thief is alive. He has our sap. Two full buckets. Elandra there”—

she nodded to her granddaughter, who was standing behind her, smiling at Leaphorn—“Elandra saw him driving away. Big blue car. Drove that direction—back toward the highway. You policemen get paid to catch thieves.

You could find him, I think, and get our sap back. But if you mess around with the dead man, maybe his chindi will get after you. And if he was as bad as you say, it would be very, very bad chindi.”

Leaphorn sighed. Grandma was right, of course.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

15

And the sort of mass murderer that was high on the FBI’s Most Wanted list would, based on Leaphorn’s memory of his maternal grandfather’s hogan stories, be a formidable chindi. Since that version of ghost represented all of the unharmonious and evil characteristics that couldn’t follow the dead person into his last great adventure, they were the sort any traditional Navajo would prefer to avoid.

But, chindi or not, duty had called. He drove away, leaving Grandma staring resentfully after him. Remembering, too, the last theory she had offered. When he’d asked Grandma Peshlakai if she had any idea who would want to steal her pinyon sap, she stood silent a long moment, hesitating, looking around, making sure Elandra was out of hearing range.

“They say that sometimes witches need it for something. That sometimes a skinwalker might want it,” Grandma had said. That was a version of the witchcraft legend he had never heard before. Leaphorn remembered telling Grandma Peshlakai that he doubted if this very worst tribal version of witchcraft evil would be driving a car. She had frowned at him a moment, shook her head, and said: “Why you think that?”

It was a question he couldn’t think of any answer for.

And now, all these years later, he still couldn’t.

He sighed, picked up the letter:

Dear Joe,

If I remember you correctly, by now you’ve stared at that picture and examined the rug and you’re trying to figure out when the photo was taken. Well, old Jason Delos didn’t buy that mansion of his on that mountain slope outside 16

TONY HILLERMAN

of Flagstaff until just a few years ago. As I remember your story, that famous old “cursed” rug you told me about was reduced to ashes in that trading-post fire long before that. Yet there it is, good as new, posing for the camera. You remember we agreed there was more going on in that crime, and that maybe it really was a crime, and not just a careless drunk accident and a lot of witchcraft talk.

Anyway, I thought you’d be interested in seeing this. I’m going to look into it myself. See if I can find out where old man Delos got the rug, etc. If you’re interested, give me a call and I’ll let you know if I learn anything. And if you ever get as far south and west as Flagstaff, I’ll buy you lunch, and we can tell each other how we survived that FBI Academy stuff.

Meanwhile, stay well,

Mel

Below the signature was an address in Flagstaff, and a telephone number.

Oh, well, Leaphorn thought. Why not?

3

Leaphorn parked in the driveway of his Window Rock house, turned off the ignition, took the cell phone from the glove box, and began punching in Mel Bork’s number.

Five numbers into that project he stopped, thought a moment, put the cell phone back where he kept it. He had an odd feeling that this call might be important. He’d always tried to avoid making calls of any significance on the little toy telephones, explaining this quirk to his housemate, Professor Louisa Bourbonette, on grounds that cell phones were intended to communicate teenage chatter and that adults didn’t take anything heard on one seriously. Louisa had scoffed at this, bought him one anyway, and insisted he keep it in his truck.

Now he put his old telephone on the kitchen table, poured himself a cup of leftover breakfast coffee, and dialed. The number had a Flagstaff prefix, which by mountain west standards was relatively just down the 18

TONY HILLERMAN

road from him, but the call would be a long, blind leap into the past. That old case had nagged at him too long.

Maybe Bork had hit on something. Maybe learning what happened to the famous old weaving would remove that tickling burr under his saddle, if that figure of speech worked in this case. Maybe it would somehow tie into his hunch that the fire that erased the “Big Handy’s Bandit” from the FBI’s most-wanted list had been more complicated than anyone had wanted to admit. Bork, he remembered, had thought so, too.

Remembering that, he thought of grouchy old Grandma Peshlakai again and her righteous indignation.

If he actually took a little journey down to Flagstaff to talk to Bork and reconnect with his past, it wouldn’t take much of a detour to get him into her part of the country. Maybe he’d stop at her hogan to see if she was still alive. Find out if anyone had ever found the thief who ran off with her two big buckets of pinyon sap. See if she was willing to forgive him and the belagaana ideas about enforcing the law.

He put Bork’s letter and the magazine page on the table beside the telephone and stared at the photo while listening to Bork’s phone ring, trying to remember the name of Bork’s wife. Grace, he thought it was. Considered the photograph. Most likely his eyes had fooled him. But it certainly resembled the old rug as he recalled it. He shook his head, sighed. Be reasonable, he told himself.

Famous as that old weaving had become, someone probably tried to copy it. This would be the photo of an effort to duplicate it. Still, he wanted to find out.

Then, just after Bork’s answering machine cut in, a woman’s voice took over. She sounded excited. And nervous.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

19

“Yes,” she said. “Yes? Mel? Where are you calling . . .” Leaphorn gave her a moment to complete the question. She didn’t.

“This is Joe Leaphorn,” he said. “I am calling for Mr.

Bork.”

Silence. Then: “Mel’s not here. I’m Mrs. Bork. What’s this about?”

“I have a letter from him,” Leaphorn said. “We knew each other years ago when we were in Washington. Both of us were students at the FBI Academy. He sent me a photograph and asked me to call him about it.”

“Photograph! Of that damned weaving. Was that it?” she asked. “He said he was going to send that to someone. The picture he cut out of that magazine?”

“Yes,” Leaphorn said. “He said he was going to check into it and—”

“You’re the policeman,” she said. “The Navajo cop. I remember now.”

“Well, actually I’m—”

“I need to talk to a policeman,” she said. “There’s been a threatening telephone call. And, well . . . I don’t know what to do.”

Leaphorn considered this, sucked in a deep breath.

Waited for a question. None came.

“Was the call about the picture?” he asked. “Threatening Mel about that weaving? Who was it? What did he say?”

“I don’t know,” Grace Bork said. “He didn’t say who he was. It was on the answering machine. A man’s voice, but I didn’t recognize it.”

“Don’t erase the tape,” Leaphorn said.

“I’ll let you hear it,” she said. “Hold on.” 20

TONY HILLERMAN

Leaphorn heard the sound of the telephone mouth-piece bumping against wood, then a sound remembered from the past: Bork’s recorded answering machine voice:

“Can’t come to the phone now. Leave a message.” Then a pause, a sigh, and another deeper male voice:

“Mr. Bork, I have some very serious advice for you. You need to get back to minding your own business. Stop trying to dig up old bones. Let those old bones rest in peace. You keep poking at ’em and they’ll jump out and bite you.” Silence. Then a chuckle. “You’ll be just a set of new bones.” The tape clicked off.

Mrs. Bork said, “What should I do?”

“That call came when?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has Mel heard it?”

“No. I guess it either came in after he left, or maybe he didn’t notice it on his answering machine. I think he would have said something about it if he’d heard it. And now I don’t know where he is. He’s been gone since the day before yesterday. I haven’t heard from him.” Grace Bork was beginning to sound distraught.

“He didn’t say where he was going?”

“Not specifically, he didn’t. He just told me he was going to find out where that rug in that picture came from. He had made a call to somebody—in an art gallery or museum, I think. I think he was going to meet the man he called. Or have lunch with him. I expected him back in time for dinner, and I’ve worried ever since. He just doesn’t do things like this. Just rush off and . . . and not call, or anything.” Mrs. Bork added that Mel had explained that this business with the carpet in that photograph reminded him of what he’d seen in an arson fire in which a THE SHAPE SHIFTER

21

man had been burned, and Leaphorn had talked to him about it when they were both at the FBI Academy.

“He seemed excited about that,” she said. “I’m worried. I’m really worried. He has a cell phone. Why doesn’t he call me?”

Leaphorn found himself remembering Louisa’s plea that he always keep a cell phone in his truck.

“Mrs. Bork,” he said, “first, take that tape out of the answering machine and put it somewhere safe. Take care of it. Does Mel always carry that cell phone with him?”

“He keeps one in his car. I’ve been calling it and calling it, but he doesn’t answer.”

“I presume your company has some contact with the Flagstaff police, or the sheriff’s people. Does Mel have anyone working with him in his investigative service who could help you?”

“Just a woman who keeps his books. She comes in to answer the phone when he’s away.”

“If you have a friend in law enforcement, I think you should call him and discuss this situation.”

“I called Sergeant Garcia last night. He said he didn’t think I should worry.”

Leaphorn checked his mental inventory of cops in the high, dry, mostly empty Four Corners Country.

“Is that the Garcia with the sheriff’s department there? Kelly Garcia, I think it is. Is he a friend?”

“Of Mel’s? I think so. Sort of anyway. Sometimes they more or less work together on cases, I think.”

“I’d call him back, then. Tell him Mel is still away and doesn’t answer his cell phone. Tell him you talked to me.

Tell him I thought he should listen to that tape you played for me.”

22

TONY HILLERMAN

“Yes,” Mrs. Bork said.

“And please let me know if you learn anything. Or if I can do anything.” He recited his home phone number.

Thought a moment, shrugged. “And here’s my number, in case I’m not home.”

She read back the numbers to him.

“One more thing,” Leaphorn said. “Did he mention any names? I mean names of anyone he might be seeing.

Or which museum he was going to?”

“Oh, my,” she said. “Well, he might have said Tarkington. He’s at one of the Indian arts and craft places in Flagstaff. Gerald Tarkington, I think it is.”

“I think I know his place,” Leaphorn said. “Anyone else?”

“Probably the Heard Museum in Phoenix,” she said, hesitantly. “But that’s just a guess. He worked for them once, a long time ago. And, Mr. Leaphorn, please let me know.”

“I will,” Leaphorn said, with a vague feeling that it would be a promise that would find him bringing her bad news. It was a message he’d had to deliver far too often in his career.

4

Leaphorn, being elderly, knew the wisdom of learning all you can about the one you intend to interview before you ask the first question. Thus, before calling Tarkington’s gallery in Flagstaff, he dialed a number a few blocks away in Shiprock and talked to Ellen Klah at the Navajo Museum.

“Tarkington? Tarkington,” Mrs. Klah said. “Oh, yeah.

Well, now. What in the world would you be doing with that man?”

“I need to get some information from him,” Leaphorn said. “See if he knows anything about an old rug.”

“Something sneaky? Something criminal?”

“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said, sounding glum. “It’s just this rug has turned up. And it looks a lot like one that was supposed to be burned up in a fire at a gallery years ago.”

“I bet this involves insurance fraud,” Mrs. Klah said.

24

TONY HILLERMAN

“I hope not,” Leaphorn said. “It was the fire that burned that little gallery at Totter’s Trading Post. You remember that?”

“Of course I remember it,” Mrs. Klah said. “Wasn’t the rug that burned there an old, old tale-teller weaving? The one people called Woven Sorrow. Or maybe it was Sorrow Woven In? Something like that, anyway.” She laughed. “That would fit the story people tell about it, you know. The weaving came out of that Long Walk sorrow, and everywhere it goes it takes troubles with it. I’ll bet it’s insurance fraud now. Is Tarkington a suspect, or co-conspirator, or what?”

“You’re way ahead of me, Ellen,” Leaphorn said.

“No crime alleged, or anything. I just want to talk to Tarkington about what might have happened to that rug if it didn’t actually burn.”

“I’ve been reading in the Albuquerque Journal about that grand jury investigation involving Navajo rugs.

Three of ’em. Very old. Supposed to be worth about two hundred thousand dollars if you add them all together. Is that what you’re into?”

“No, no,” Leaphorn said. “Nothing that exciting. I just want to ask you if Tarkington would be the guy to talk to about . . . well, let’s say if a famous old rug had been destroyed and you had pictures of it, and wanted to hire a weaver to make you a copy. What would you do? Who could do it? Things like that.”

“Well, Tarkington’s an old-timer. I’d say he’d be as good as anyone to ask. If ethics are involved, from what I’ve heard I doubt he’d be worried about them. But are we talking about that Woven Sorrow rug? The one that woman wove after she got back from Bosque Redondo, THE SHAPE SHIFTER

25

full of things to remind you of all the death and misery that came out of that business. Was that the rug you’re talking about?”

“I think that must be the one. That sounds like it.”

“The rugs mentioned in that lawsuit all had names,” Ellen said, sounding slightly disgruntled.

“I don’t know its name. Don’t know if it even had one,” Leaphorn said. “I just remember a great big, complicated, old rug. I saw it framed behind glass and hanging in Totter’s gallery near Tohatchi years ago. And I remember there was a story that went with it. It was supposed to have been cursed by a hand trembler, or some other medicine person.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Klah said. “Behind glass in a frame, wasn’t it? I remember that. That was it. That was Woven Sorrow.

Wow!”

“Anyway, you think Tarkington could tell me something. Right?”

She laughed. “If you promise him it won’t get him in any trouble. Or cost him any money.”

So Leaphorn dialed the Tarkington number, got an answering machine that advised him to either leave a message or, if business was involved, call the number at the “downtown gallery.”

He called that one. He did the “wait just a moment” duty required by the secretary who took his name, and then: “Joe Leaphorn?” a deep, rusty male voice said.

“There used to be a Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn with the Navajo Tribal Police. Is that you?”

“Yes sir,” Leaphorn said. “Are you Mr. Tarkington?”

“Right.”

“I am trying to get into contact with a Mr. Mel Bork.

26

TONY HILLERMAN

His wife said he’d gone to see you on some business we’re trying to check into. I thought you might know where I could reach him.”

This produced a silence. Then a sigh. “Mel Bork.

What was this business of yours about?”

“It concerned a Navajo rug.”

“Ah, yes. The magical, mystical rug woven to com-memorate the return of the Dineh from captivity at Bosque Redondo. Full of bits and pieces supposed to reflect memories of the miseries, starvation, of the tribe’s captivity and that long walk home. It was supposed to be started in the 1860s, finished a lot later. That it?”

“Yes,” Leaphorn said, and paused. Noticing that Tarkington’s tone had been sarcastic. Waiting for anything Tarkington might add. Deciding how to handle this.

“Well,” Tarkington said. “What can I do you for?”

“Can you tell me where Bork was headed when he left you?”

“He didn’t say.”

Leaphorn waited again. Again, no luck.

“You have no idea?”

“Look, Mr. Leaphorn, I think maybe we do need to talk about this, but not on the phone. Where are you?”

“In Window Rock.”

“How about coming to the gallery tomorrow? Could you make it? Maybe have a late lunch?” Leaphorn thought about what tomorrow held for him. Absolutely nothing.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

5

Leaphorn was on the road early, driving with a gaudy sunrise in his rearview mirror. He took Navajo Route 12, joined Interstate 40, set his speed at a modest (but legal) seventy-five miles per hour, and let the flood of westbound speeders race by him. He would reach Flagstaff with time to find Tarkington’s gallery, and the drive would give him a chance to consider what he was getting into.

The first step was reexamining his memory of the tape Mrs. Bork had played for him and what little else he’d learned from her in that short conversation. That didn’t take long.

She’d remembered that seeing the picture had excited Bork. She’d said Mel had told her about the old crime, and about having talked to Leaphorn about it in Washington years ago. Then Mel had made two, maybe three telephone calls. She hadn’t heard who he was calling. After the last one he had shouted something to her 28

TONY HILLERMAN

about the Tarkington gallery, and maybe coming home late, and to tell anyone who called he’d be back in his office tomorrow. Then he had driven away. Nothing in that helped much.

By the time he reached the Sanders, Arizona, exit, Leaphorn decided it was coffee time and pulled off the interstate at a diner to see what he could learn. The old Burnham trading post here had been known for its Navajo weavers. The Navajo Nation had bought territory along the Santa Fe Railway mainline here and used it as relocation places for the five hundred Navajo families forced out of the old Navajo-Hopi Joint Use reservation.

The weavers among the refugees had developed some new patterns that came to be called the New Lands rugs, and a Sanders trader had been sort of an authority on them, and on rugs in general. If he could find this fellow, Leaphorn planned to show him the photo of the old carpet to see what he knew about it.

The waitress who brought him his coffee was about eighteen and had never heard of any of this. The man behind the cash register had heard of him, and he recommended Leaphorn find Austin Sam, who had been a candidate for the Tribal Council and seemed to know just about everybody in the New Lands Chapter House territory. But the cashier didn’t know where Mr. Sam could be found. Neither did Leaphorn.

Thus Leaphorn reentered the roaring river of Interstate 40 traffic no wiser than before. He rolled into Flagstaff and found the Tarkington Museum Gallery parking lot about ten minutes before noon. A tall man, gray-bearded, wearing an off-white linen jacket, was standing at the door, smiling, waiting for him.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

29

“Lieutenant Leaphorn,” he said. “You look just like the pictures I’ve seen of you. You drove all the way from Window Rock this morning?”

“I did,” Leaphorn said, as Tarkington ushered him into the gallery.

“Then freshen up if you wish,” Tarkington said, pointing toward the restroom, “and then let’s have some lunch and talk.”

When Leaphorn emerged refreshed, he found lunch was being served in an alcove just off the gallery. A girl, who Leaphorn identified as probably a Hopi, was pouring ice water into glasses on a neatly set table. Tarkington was already seated with a copy of Luxury Living in front of him, opened to the photograph.

“Unless you want something special, we could get lunch here,” he said. “Just sandwiches and fruit. Would that satisfy you?”

“Sure,” Leaphorn said, and seated himself, weighing what this development might mean. Obviously it meant Tarkington must consider this talk important. Why else would he be taking the trouble to put Leaphorn in the role of guest, with the psychological disadvantage that went with that. But it did save time. Not that Leaphorn didn’t have plenty of that.

The girl passed Leaphorn an attractive plate of neatly trimmed sandwiches in a variety of types. He took one offering ham, cheese, and lettuce. She asked if he’d like coffee. He would. She poured it for him from a silver urn.

Tarkington watched all this in silence. Now he served himself a sandwich and toasted Leaphorn with his water glass.

“Down to business now?” he said, making it a question. “Or just make chat while we eat?” 30

TONY HILLERMAN

“Well, I am here trying to find an old friend, but I am also hungry.”

“You are looking for Melvin Bork, right? The private investigator?”

Leaphorn nodded. He sipped his coffee. Excellent. He looked at his sandwich, took a small bite. Also fine.

“Why look here?”

“Because his wife thought he would be coming here to ask you about a rug. Is that correct?”

“Oh, yes. He was here.” Tarkington was smiling, looking amused. “Three days ago. He had a copy of one of those expensive upscale real estate magazines with a picture of it. This magazine.” He tapped the picture, smiling at Leaphorn.

Leaphorn nodded.

“He asked if I had seen a rug that looked like that, and I said yes, I had. One much like that got burned up in a fire way back. A real shame. It was a famous tale-teller rug. Famous among the bunch who love the really old weavings, and especially among the odd ones who dote on the artifacts that have scary stories attached. And this one does. Dandy stories. Full of death, starvation, all that.” He smiled at Leaphorn again, picked up his glass, rattled the ice in it.

“And it was also a wonderful example of the weavers’

art. A real beauty. Bork asked me to take a close look at the magazine photo and tell him what I could about it.” Tarkington paused to take a sip of his water. And, Leaphorn presumed, to decide just how much he wanted to say about this.

“I told him the picture resembled a very old, very valuable antique. Rug people called such weavings tale THE SHAPE SHIFTER

31

tellers because they usually represent someone, or something, memorable. And the tale in this one was of all the dying, humiliation, and misery you Navajos went through when the army put you in that concentration camp over on the Pecos back about a hundred and fifty years ago.” Tarkington extracted a reading-sized magnifying glass from his jacket pocket and held it close to the photograph, studying places here and there. “Yes, it does look something like that old rug Totter had at his trading post years ago.”

“Something like?” Leaphorn asked. “Can you be a little more specific than that?”

Tarkington put down the glass, studied Leaphorn.

“That brings up an interesting question, doesn’t it? That one was burned—let’s see—back in the very late 1960s or early 1970s I think. So the question I want to ask you is, when was this photograph taken?”

“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said.

Tarkington considered that, shrugged.

“Well, Bork asked me if I thought it could be a photograph of a copy of the rug Totter had, and I said I guessed anything is possible, but it didn’t make much sense. Even if you had real good detailed photos of the original to work from, the weavers would still be dealing with trying to match yarns, and vegetable dyes, and using different people with different weaving techniques. And with this particular rug, they would even be trying to work in the same kind of bird feathers, petals from cactus blossoms, stems and such. For example . . .” Tarkington paused, tapped a place on the photo with a finger. “For example, this deep color of red right here—presuming this is a good color reproduction—is pretty rare. The old weavers 32

TONY HILLERMAN

got it from the egg sac of one of the big desert spiders.” He smiled at Leaphorn. “Sounds weird, I guess, but that’s what the experts say. And it gives you an idea how tough it would be to make a copy.”

Tarkington sipped his water again, eyes on Leaphorn, waiting for a reaction.

“I guess you’re telling me that Bork asked you for an opinion about whether the photograph was of a copy of the original.”

“Yep. He did. And I told him it was probably a photograph of somebody’s effort at making a copy. Pretty damned good one, too. I suggested he might call the fellow who has it on his wall. See if he’d let him take a look at it. And then Mr. Bork said he thought he would do that, but he wanted to find out what I thought about it first. And I said those superrich folks who collect artifacts like that are going to be very careful about who they let into their house unless they know you. Bork said he thought about that and he wanted me to sort of introduce him so the man would let him in. And I had to tell him I didn’t actually know the man myself. Just by reputation.” Tarkington picked up his cup, noticed it was empty, put it down.

“Bork thought a man named Jason Delos had bought that house. I guess I could call information to get his telephone number. If it’s listed,” Leaphorn said. “Is that the right name? I think I’ll need to go talk to him.”

“You’re right about the number being unlisted,” Tarkington said. “And Jason Delos is the name. I guess he must be out of a Greek family.”

Leaphorn nodded. “Am I right in guessing you know his number?”

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

33

“Carrie,” Tarkington shouted. “Bring Mr. Leaphorn some more coffee and me some more ice water.”

“You know him just by reputation? Who is he?” Tarkington laughed. “I know him just as a potential future customer. It’s obvious he has a lot of money. Collects expensive stuff. Moved in here a while back, either from Southern California because the sun was bad for his wife’s skin condition, or Oregon, because the fog and humidity depressed his wife.” Tarkington gave Leaphorn a wry smile. “You know how reliable gossip is out here where we don’t have a lot of people to gossip about.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he doesn’t have a wife. Nobody seems ever to have met her. He has a middle-aged Asian man living out there with him. Sort of a butler, I think. And he uses a maid/laundry service, and so forth. And that butler leads into another story.” With that Tarkington shook his head and laughed, signaling to Leaphorn that this story did not carry his certification.

“This one makes Mr. Delos some sort of CIA agent, did a lot of work in the Vietnam War, retired after that and went into some sort of investment business. Then another version is that he got kicked out of the CIA because a bunch of the money our government was using to pay off South Vietnam government types when they were arranging that coup to get rid of President Diem—you remember that business?”

“I’ve read about it,” Leaphorn said. “As I remember, it blew up into a big battle in Saigon with paratroopers attacking Diem’s bunch in the Presidential Palace.”

“Yeah. It brought in a new president more popular with President Kennedy. Well, anyway, the way the gossip 34

TONY HILLERMAN

goes, the CIA, or whatever they were calling it then, had been handing out bags of money to help arrange that, and some of the generals who were getting it thought they were shorted. One of those quiet investigations got started, and it was concluded that some of those money bags got lighter when in the custody of Mr. Delos.”

“Oh,” Leaphorn said, and nodded.

Tarkington shrugged. “Well, you could probably find a couple of other versions of the Delos biography if you wanted to ask around in Flagstaff. He just sits up there all alone on his mountain and gives us somebody interesting to talk about. Take your pick, whichever version you prefer. Like a lot of rich folks, he’s into protecting his family’s privacy, so our gossiping fraternity has to be creative.”

The Hopi girl returned, smiled at Leaphorn, refilled his coffee cup, refilled Tarkington’s glass, and left.

“What I really want to know, I guess, is how he got that rug. Then I track it back, find out who made it, and that’s the end of it,” Leaphorn said. “So I need to know his telephone number so I can go ask him.” Tarkington was grinning. “So you can be done with this case, and go back to your usual police duties?”

“So I can go back to being a bored-stiff-by-retirement former policeman.”

“Well,” Tarkington said, staring at Leaphorn. “If you do learn anything interesting—for example, who copied it if anyone actually did, and why, and so forth—I’d sure appreciate hearing all about it.”

Leaphorn considered that. “All right,” he said.

Now Tarkington took a moment to think. He sipped his water again, while Leaphorn sipped coffee.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

35

“You may have noticed I love to talk,” Tarkington said, emphasizing the statement with a wry smile. “That would give me something new to talk about.” Leaphorn nodded. “But you haven’t told me his number.”

“You had the name right,” Tarkington said. “Jason Delos.”

Leaphorn picked up a second sandwich, took a bite.

Judged it as very good.

“Of course I collect stuff myself,” Tarkington said, and gestured into the gallery to demonstrate. “And I collect stories. Love ’em. And that damned Woven Sorrow tale-teller rug collected them like dogs collect fleas. And I want to know what you find out from Delos, if anything, and how this all turns out. Will you promise me that?”

“If it’s possible,” Leaphorn said.

Tarkington leaned forward, pointed at an odd-looking pot on a desk by the wall. “See that image of the snake on that ceramic there? That’s a Supai pot. But why is that snake pink? It’s a rattler, and they’re not that color. Well, I guess they are in one deep part of the Grand Canyon.

There’s a very rare and officially endangered species down there in Havasupai territory, and they have a great story in their mythology about how it came to be pink.

And that’s going to make that pot a lot more valuable to the fellow who collects it.”

He stared at Leaphorn, looking for some sign of agreement.

“I know that’s true,” Leaphorn said. “But I’m not sure I understand why.”

“Because the collector gets the story along with the pot. People say why is that snake pink. He explains. That 36

TONY HILLERMAN

makes him an authority.” Tarkington laughed. “You Navajos don’t practice that one-upmanship game like we do.

You fellows who stay in that harmony philosophy.” Leaphorn grinned. “Be more accurate to say a lot of Navajos try, but remember we have a curing ceremony to heal us when we start getting vengeful, or greedy, or—

what do you call it—‘getting ahead of the Joneses.’”

“Yeah,” Tarkington said. “I could tell you a tale about trying to get a Navajo businessman to buy a really fancy saddle. Lots of silver decorations, beautiful stitching, even turquoise worked in. He was interested. Then I told him it would make him look like the richest man on the big reservation. And he took a step back and said it would make him look like a witch.”

Leaphorn nodded. “Yes,” he said. “At least it would make the traditional Dineh suspicious. Unless he didn’t have any poor kinfolks whom he should have been helping. And all of us have poor kinfolks.” Tarkington shrugged. “Prestige,” he said. “You Navajos aren’t so hungry for that. I’ll ask a Navajo about something that I know he’s downright expert about. He won’t just tell me. He’ll precede telling me by saying,

‘They say.’ Not wanting me to think he is claiming the credit.”

“I guess I’ve heard that preamble a million times,” Leaphorn said. “In fact, I do it myself sometimes.” He was thinking that at his age, already retired, left on the shelf like the pink snake, he should understand that white cultural values were different from those of the Dineh, remembering how Navajo kids were conditioned by their elders to be part of the community, not to stand out, not to be the authority; remembering how poorly that attitude THE SHAPE SHIFTER

37

had served his generation, the age group that had been bused away to Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools to be melded into the belagaana culture.

“Who discovered America?” the teacher would ask.

Every student in the class knew the belagaana answer was Christopher Columbus, but only the Hopi and Zuni kids would hold up their hands. And if the teacher pointed to a Navajo kid, that kid would inevitably precede his answer with the “they say” disclaimer. And the teacher, instead of crediting the Navajo with being politely modest, would presume he was taking a politically correct Native American attitude and implying that he was refusing to agree with what textbook and teacher had been telling him. Remembering all that, and the confusion it sometimes produced, caused Leaphorn to smile.

The smile puzzled Tarkington. He looked slightly disappointed.

“Anyway, I’d like to hear more about the stories you’ve collected about this tale-teller rug,” Leaphorn said.

“I’ll tell you what I hear if it’s anything new.” Tarkington took another sandwich. He passed the tray to Leaphorn, his expression genial again.

“First one I’ll tell you is pretty well documented, I think. Probably mostly true. Seems the rug was started by a young woman named Cries a Lot, a woman in the Streams Come Together clan. It was in the final days of the stay in the Bosque Redondo concentration camp. She was one of the nine thousand of your people the army rounded up and marched way over to the Pecos River Valley to get them out of the way.”

Tarkington paused, raised his eyebrows. “But I guess 38

TONY HILLERMAN

I don’t need to refresh your memory about the Long Walk.”

“No,” Leaphorn said, smiling. “My maternal grandfather used to tell us about freezing to death out there in his winter hogan stories when I was a boy. And then my paternal great-grandfather had his own stories about the bunch who escaped that roundup, and spent those years hiding out in the mountains.”

Tarkington chuckled “And the government then makes sure you don’t forget it. Calls a big piece of your space out here the Kit Carson National Forest, in memory of the colonel in charge of rounding you up, and burning down your hogans, and chopping down your peach orchards.”

“We don’t blame Kit Carson much,” Leaphorn said.

“He comes out pretty decent in the hogan stories, and the history books, too. It was General George Carlton who issued that General Order 15 and gave the shoot-to-kill and scorched-earth orders.”

“Most Americans never heard of that, I’m afraid,” Tarkington said. “We don’t teach our kids our version of how we tried Hitler’s final solution on you folks. Round you all up, kill anyone who tries to escape, drive off the cattle, let the Indians starve. We ought to have a chapter in all our history books describing that.” Tarkington took the final bite of his sandwich, considering this, seeming to Leaphorn to be more troubled by the failing of historians than by the deed itself.

“There’ll never be a chapter on that,” Leaphorn said.

“And I’m glad there isn’t. Why keep that kind of hatred alive? We have our curing ceremonials to get people back in harmony. Get rid of the anger. Get happy again.” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

39

“I know,” Tarkington said. “But according to the stories I hear, a lot of memories of that brutality live on in that Woven Sorrow rug. They say that when the Navajo headmen signed that treaty with General Sherman in 1866 and the survivors started their long walk home, that young woman and her sister brought the beginnings of the rug with them and kept working on it, working in little reminders of their treatment. Little bit of a root woven in here, and rat hair there, and so forth, as reminders of what they were eating to keep from starving.

Anyway, so the story goes, the weaving went on when the families began getting their flocks reestablished for some good wool. And other people heard about it, and more weavers got a hand in it and added another bitter memory of misery and murder and dying children. And then, finally, one of the clan headmen, some say it was either Barboncito or Manuelito, told the weavers it violated the Navajo way to preserve evil. He wanted all the weavers to arrange an Enemy Way sing to cure themselves of all those hateful memories and restore themselves to harmony.”

Tarkington took a sip of water. “What do you think of that?”

“Interesting,” Leaphorn said. “My mother’s mother told us something like that one winter when I was about ten or so. She didn’t approve of what those weavers were doing either. She told us about three of the shamans in her clan getting together and putting a special sort of curse on that rug.”

“I heard something like that, too,” Tarkington said.

“They said it had too many chindi associated with it. Too many ghosts of dead Navajos, starved and frozen and 40

TONY HILLERMAN

killed by the soldiers. The rug would make people sick, bring down evil on people involved with it.”

“Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. You keep your bad memories, grudges, hatreds, and all that alive with you, and it makes you sick.” Leaphorn chuckled. “Not bad reasoning for people who never enrolled in introduc-tion to psychology.”

“Christians have that thought in their Lord’s Prayer,” Tarkington said. “You know: ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ Too bad a lot of ’em don’t practice what they’re preaching.”

Leaphorn let that pass.

Tarkington stared at him. “I’m thinking about people crying when the judge gives the guy who killed their kid just life in prison instead of the death penalty they were praying for.”

Leaphorn nodded.

Tarkington sighed. “But back to the rug. I’ve heard bad luck stories about people who owned it down through the years.” He shrugged. “You know. Murders, suicides, bad luck.”

“We Dineh don’t believe much in luck,” Leaphorn said. “More in a sort of inevitable chain of causes producing naturally inevitable effects.”

And when he said that, he was thinking of Grace Bork’s fear, and of what sort of cosmic cause-and-effect chain might involve that Woven Sorrow rug, the photo of it, the fire at Totter’s Trading Post, the wanted murderer burned in there, Mel Bork’s being sucked into it, and the death threat taped on his answering machine. Then, suddenly, he was thinking of himself being sucked in as well. By being at Grandma Peshlakai’s THE SHAPE SHIFTER

41

hogan and having his hunt for her pinyon sap bandit being interrupted by the fire because it destroyed the FBI’s most wanted murderer. He shook his head, produced a rueful smile. No. That seemed to be stretching the Navajo cosmic natural connection philosophy a little too far.

6

Luxury Living magazine protected the privacy of those who allowed its photographers access to their mansions.

It published neither names nor addresses. Leaphorn had concluded, by studying the view through the window beside the Woven Sorrow rug, that the house was in the high slopes outside Flagstaff—one of the handsome residences built as summer homes for those who enjoyed the long views and the cool mountain air and could afford a second home. After some stalling, Tarkington checked his address file and read all the information off it that he considered pertinent to Leaphorn. But the telephone number? It’s unlisted, Tarkington said. But you’d certainly know it, Leaphorn had insisted. Well, yes, Tarkington had admitted. But don’t let anyone know you got it from me.

And thus Leaphorn left the Tarkington Museum Gallery with nothing much more than he arrived with—

except for an expert’s vague opinion that the rug in the 44

TONY HILLERMAN

photo might or might not be a copy of the original Woven Sorrow, and that making such a copy would be very dif-ficult and, besides, who would want to do it? Beyond that, he had enjoyed two cups of excellent coffee, two tasty but not filling sandwiches, and an interesting version of the story of how that rug had come to be woven, and its history of spreading the misery, brutality, and misfortune it was designed to recall. The only thing he’d received that might help him was the telephone number of Jason Delos.

Leaphorn pulled into a Burger King, ordered a burger, found the pay phone, picked up the receiver, then decided not to call Delos. Not yet. First he would call the Coconino Sheriff’s Department and find Sergeant Kelly Garcia.

If Garcia was in, he might know something useful about Mel Bork. And if Grace Bork had played that telephone tape for him as she said she would, maybe Garcia would have some ideas about that. Anyway, it was a reasonable way of postponing the call to Delos. He had a sad feeling that the call would lead him to a dead end.

But if he just called Grace Bork saying he had nothing helpful to tell her, and then made the long drive back to Shiprock, he would be welcomed there by the loneliness of an empty house and the smell of an almost-full half gallon of milk, thoroughly soured by now, which he had forgotten to put back in the fridge.

He dialed the sheriff’s office. Yes, Sergeant Garcia was in.

“This is Garcia,” the next voice said.

“Joe Leaphorn,” Leaphorn said. “I used to be with—”

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

45

“Hey, Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Garcia said, sounding pleased. “Haven’t heard your voice since we worked on that Ute Mountain burglary thing. Somebody told me you were going to retire,” Garcia continued. “I said, no way.

Old Leaphorn ain’t the kind of man you’ll see out there chasing those golf balls around the grass. Just couldn’t quite imagine that.”

“Well, I am retired,” Leaphorn admitted. “You’re right about the golf thing. And now I’m trying to act like a detective again. Trying to find a friend from way back. A fellow named Mel Bork. Runs a private-eye business.”

“Yeah,” Garcia said. “Mrs. Bork called me. Said she had talked to you. Had me listen to her answering machine tape.” Garcia made a clicking sound with his tongue.

“What did you think?”

“Makes you wonder what Mel’s got himself into, doesn’t it?”

“It made me wonder. And if you have any time, I’d like to talk to you about it. Could we get together for a cup of coffee?”

“I can’t handle it today,” Garcia said.

Leaphorn overheard him shouting at someone, then a little bit of one end of a conversation, then Garcia came back on the phone.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I can. You remember the Havacup Café there by the courthouse? How about meeting me there. Thirty minutes or so.”

“I’ll be there,” Leaphorn said. “By the way, do you know anything about a man named Jason Delos?” A moment of silence. “Delos? Not much. Understand he’s rich. Not one of the old families, or anything like that, but I guess he’s sort of prominent.” He chuckled. “Guy I 46

TONY HILLERMAN

know in the game and fish department said he thought he had him once for spotlighting deer, but he moved too quick. No shots fired. Didn’t have enough to file a charge.

Otherwise, he’s not the sort of citizen we’d be having much dealings with, I guess, but—”

The sound of someone yelling, “Hey, Kelly,” interrupted. “Got to go, Joe. I’ll see you at the Havacup in thirty minutes.”

7

The changes Leaphorn noticed in Garcia as the Coconino sheriff’s sergeant walked up to the booth were mostly in hair style. Leaphorn remembered him with bushy black hair, a bushy black mustache, and prominent black eyebrows. All still there, but all neatly trimmed now, and the black was modified into various shades of gray. Otherwise he was medium sized, trim and neat, and his eyes had re-tained their bright brown glint.

“How time flies,” Garcia said, after shaking Leaphorn’s hand and slipping into the booth. “But I see you still drink coffee.”

“I guess I’m an addict. And I asked the young lady to bring a cup for you, but she didn’t.”

“Good thing,” Garcia said. “I swore off the stuff.

Switched to drinking tea.”

“Oh,” Leaphorn said.

“Kept me awake.”

48

TONY HILLERMAN

Leaphorn nodded.

“Why you hunting Melvin Bork?”

Leaphorn considered that a moment. “Well, he’s sort of a friend. Used to be, way back. Haven’t seen him for years. We sort of got together in our rookie days, when I went to the FBI school back east. We met there. But maybe it’s partly just curiosity.”

Garcia was studying him. “Curious? Yeah, me, too.” Leaphorn let that hang.

“So you’re saying you really are retired now, right?

How long?”

“Just getting started at it. This is the first month.”

“How you like it?”

Leaphorn shrugged. “Not much. I think it takes some getting used to.”

Garcia sighed. “I’m up for it end of this year.”

“You don’t look old enough.”

Garcia made a wry face. “Getting tired though. Tired of doing all the damned paperwork. Messing with the federal regulations, dealing with drunks, and women beating up on their husbands, and vice versa, all that, and working with some of those young city boys the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude sends out here to our waterless desert.”

Leaphorn sipped his coffee.

“How about you, Joe. You miss being a cop?”

“I still am one, sort of. I carry a Coconino deputy sheriff’s badge, and ones from San Juan and McKinley counties in New Mexico.”

Garcia raised his eyebrows. “I think you’re supposed to turn those in, aren’t you? After all, you’re just a—ah, just a civilian now.”

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

49

“Hadn’t thought about it,” Leaphorn said, and smiled.

“Are you going to report me to the sheriff ?” Garcia laughed.

The waiter arrived. Garcia ordered iced tea and two doughnuts.

“Now you’re going to ask me about Bork,” he said.

“Well, I like him. We worked with him on some stuff. He’s smart. Former deputy himself. Seemed honorable.” He sipped his tea, looked at Leaphorn. “But I didn’t like the sound of that telephone call.”

“No,” Leaphorn said.

“The missus said you’d told her to let me hear that tape. What’s he into? Any ideas about that?”

“Here’s all I know,” Leaphorn said. He handed Garcia Bork’s letter and the magazine photo of the tale-teller rug. Then he told Garcia about remembering how it had been burned to ashes in the Totter’s Trading Post fire—

along with one of the FBI’s most wanted bad men.

Garcia studied the photo, looking thoughtful.

“I never saw the original,” he said. “Is this it?”

“I saw it just once in Totter’s gallery,” Leaphorn said.

“Not long before the fire. Stood and stared at it a long time. I’d heard some of the old stories about it from my grandmother. The photo looks like the rug I remember looking at. But it doesn’t seem possible. I talked to Mr.

Tarkington at his gallery here. He thought it might be a copy. But he wasn’t ready to make any bets.” Garcia looked up from the photo. “Pretty flossy house it’s hanging in,” he said. “Judging from the view through the window, that might be old John Raskins’s house.”

“That’s what Tarkington told me. He told me this Delos fella lives there now.”

50

TONY HILLERMAN

“I take it you haven’t talked to Delos yet? Asked him where he got the rug?”

“I intend to do that tomorrow. Thought I’d call him and see if he’ll let me in. Let me look at the rug.” Garcia smiled. “Good luck,” he said. “He’s pretty high society for Flagstaff. He’s probably going to refer you to his Asian housekeeper. What are you going to tell him?

Going to just show him your Coconino deputy sheriff ’s badge and tell him you’re investigating a crime?” Leaphorn shook his head. “I see your point. What’s the crime?”

“Exactly.” Garcia tested his tea again, looking thoughtful.

Leaphorn waited.

“So you’re curious, too?” Garcia asked.

“Afraid so,” Leaphorn said. “After all these years.” Garcia drained his iced tea, picked up the ticket, put on his hat.

“Joe,” he said. “Let’s drive out to that old Totter place and look around and have a talk. I’ll explain why I’m still curious, and then you tell me what’s bothering you.”

“It’s a long drive,” Leaphorn said. “All the way up there past Lukachukai.”

“Well, it’s a long story, too,” Garcia said. “And a real sad one. Goes all the way back to that crime that put Ray Shewnack on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. And I wouldn’t think you’d be too busy. Being retired.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Leaphorn said, with a rueful chuckle.

“We’ll burn Coconino County sheriff gasoline,” Garcia said, as they got into his patrol car. “And remember, you’ve got to tell me more about what pulled THE SHAPE SHIFTER

51

you into this. As I recall, all you were doing up there at Totter’s that day was sort of taking orders from the federals.”

“My story isn’t all that long,” Leaphorn said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand it myself.”

8

Garcia swerved off the interstate at Holbrook and roared up Highway 71 past Bidahochi, took 191 to Chinli, and thence along the north rim of Canyon de Chelly to Lukachukai and onward past Round Rock onto the gravel road that wandered between Los Gigante buttes into the empty rough country. Here the Carrizo Mountains ended and became the Lukachukai stem of the Chuska range.

That represented a three-hour drive, but Garcia made it in less than that. Talking all the way, and sometimes listening to Leaphorn.

Leaphorn had been doing some listening, too, but mostly he was enjoying his role as passenger—a position that policemen almost never hold. He had wasted a few moments trying to remember the last time he had rolled down a highway without being the driver. Then he concentrated on enjoying the experience, savoring the beauty of the landscape, the pattern of cloud shadows on 54

TONY HILLERMAN

the hills—all those details you miss when you’re navigat-ing through traffic—happy to surrender the job of staring at the center stripe, reading road signs, and so forth, to Sergeant Garcia.

Anyway a lot of what Garcia was telling him was already stored in his memory. It dealt with the old double murder of an elderly couple named Handy at their place of business. It had been so ruthlessly coldhearted that it had put Ray Shewnack right up among the FBI’s blue ribbon Most Wanted felons, advertised in post offices across the nation. But most of what Leaphorn had learned had been just hearsay filtered through police coffee talks. With Garcia he was hearing it right from the horse’s mouth. Or almost. Garcia had been too green to be at the middle of the first chase. But he’d been deeply involved in the cleanup work.

“Funny thing, Joe. Naturally it seemed downright too evil to believe for me back then. I was just a rookie.

Hadn’t seen a lot of violent crime.” Garcia shook his head, laughed. “But here I am now. Seen just about everything from incest murders to just-for-fun killings, and it still shocks me when I think about it.”

“You don’t mean the robbery itself,” Leaphorn said.

“You mean . . .”

“Well, not exactly. I mean the coldhearted and clever way Shewnack set it up. The way he used his partners and then betrayed them. Planning things so he could use his friends sort of as bait while he was driving away with all the loot. And that’s why I’ve always thought we should have taken a harder look at the Totter fire. Some people really, really, really hated Shewnack. And I have to admit he did give ’em a damn good reason to want to burn him THE SHAPE SHIFTER

55

to death.” He laughed. “Burn him now. Sort of get a jump on the devil.”

Although Leaphorn’s Navajo culture hardly allowed even good reasons for hatred, he had to admit Shewnack had given Benny Begay, Tomas Delonie, and Ellie McFee some unusually strong causes for resentment. Ellie, as Garcia explained it, had been the clerk and cashier at the Big Handy’s service station/grocery store/trading post at the Chinli junction.

She had been, so she had told police, Shewnack’s girlfriend and soon to be his bride. But that would be after the robbery. Leading up to that she was the way Shewnack knew that Mr. Handy kept his accumulated sales collections in a backroom safe and made his deposits in a Gallup bank just once a month. So Shewnack had assigned Ellie her job in the robbery and told her that when it was over she should wait at a roadside turnout for him to pick her up and take her away to be married. She stayed there with her suitcase and waited until two Coconino County deputies came looking for her.

“She seemed like a nice young woman,” Garcia said.

“Not a real good looker, and too chunky for the taste of some, but nice eyes, nice smile.” He shook his head. “Not that she was doing much smiling when I was talking to her. She told me it had taken her a long time to believe that Shewnack was the one who had tipped off the cops about where to find her. And she still didn’t seem to really believe he’d done that to her.”

“I guess it was quite a contrast to the honeymoon trip he’d had her expecting,” Leaphorn said.

“How about that for a reason for some hatred?” Garcia asked. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, they say.” 56

TONY HILLERMAN

He glanced at Leaphorn. “Scorned and betrayed. And she was out and about when Shewnack got burned up. She’d gone to prison, done her years, earned some time off for good behavior, and then got a quick parole.”

“So she’s your suspect?” Leaphorn asked, and grinned. “I mean if the feds hadn’t taken over and ruled it was an accidental death.”

“Well, maybe,” Garcia said. “Delonie was still in stir when it happened. Benny Begay was just out on parole, but Benny didn’t seem like a killer to me. Or to anyone else. The judge agreed. He gave him just five to seven and he got that shortened with nothing but good conduct reports. Besides, he hadn’t had much to do with the crime.”

Begay, Garcia explained, had been sort of a stock boy, cleanup man, and gasoline pumper at Handy’s place.

His role in the crime was disconnecting the telephone to delay the call for police help. Tomas Delonie was the outside man—assigned to be there, armed with pistol and shotgun to make sure no one came along and interrupted the action. After that, Shewnack had instructed him to collect Benny and drive them both down that unim-proved road that leads from Chinli down through Beautiful Valley. There they waited on a trail down into Bis-E

ah Wash for Shewnack, to come by and deliver their half of the loot. They did exactly what he’d told them to do.

The story he told them to give to the police was that they hadn’t actually seen the robbery. They were to say they saw Shewnack drive away, suspected something bad had happened, tried to follow him in Delonie’s pickup, but had lost him. They were to wait by the road about three hours, then return to the store and report what hap-THE SHAPE SHIFTER

57

pened to the police who, Shewnack explained to them, would surely be there by then.

“Of course it didn’t work that way,” Garcia said.

“Here’s the way it actually went. Shewnack drove up to Handy’s place in his pickup truck, walked in, pointed his pistol at Mr. Handy, and demanded all the cash. Handy started to argue. Shewnack shot him three times. Then Mrs. Handy came running in to see who was shooting, and Shewnack shot her twice. Ellie told me that she had started screaming then because Shewnack had promised her nobody would get hurt. So he hustled her into the back room, filled the sacks Ellie had kept there for him with money from the safe. The safe was standing open because Ellie had signaled him to come in just when Handy was starting his daily job of adding the day’s revenue to the stash.”

“Signaled?” Leaphorn said. “How?”

Garcia laughed. “Nothing very high tech. She went to the window and pulled down the blind. Just as Shewnack had instructed her. She said the plan was for Shewnack to tie up her and Handy, have Benny and Tomas take off pretending to chase him, then wait for him at a pickup place in the Bis-E ah Wash. He’d come there and they’d divide up the loot. He told her he’d have a bottle of chloroform to put Handy to sleep and he’d pretend to do the same with her. She was supposed to wait ten minutes after hearing him drive off and then reconnect the telephone and call the law.”

Garcia shook his head, chuckled.

“She told the highway patrol Shewnack had told her to sound totally hysterical. He even had her practice screaming and sobbing into the telephone.” 58

TONY HILLERMAN

“Sounds like he would have made a pretty efficient professional criminal,” Leaphorn said. “Guess he did.

Didn’t the federals have him as a top suspect in a couple of other robberies after that?”

“Yeah,” Garcia agreed. “A whole bunch of them. Jobs with a sort of similar MO. But maybe some other bad guys had heard about it and were copying the system. Anyway, Ellie said that practicing hysteria wasn’t necessary. Once she saw Shewnack shooting Handy, and then killing Mrs.

Handy when the old lady came rushing in, the hysteria was genuine. Came naturally.”

Leaphorn found himself feeling sympathy for Ellie.

Before the long evening was over, Garcia continued, police had received another excited call, telling them that two suspicious-looking young men, one armed with a pistol, were parked down in Bis-E ah Wash. The caller said the two ran up to his truck when he drove down the track there, looked at him, and then waved him on. Who was he? Well, the call was from an old-fashioned short-wave radio; the caller said he was Horse Hauler Mike, and a word or two later the radio shorted out—as was usual those days. When the state police showed up at Tomas Delonie’s pickup in the wash, Delonie said no such truck driver, or anyone else, had come by since they got there. They insisted they knew nothing of the robbery, but since Shewnack had handed them one of the sacks Ellie had left with a little bit of the loot in it, that didn’t seem credible to the policemen.

“I guess that does sort of establish a new level in ratting out your partners,” Leaphorn said. “I mean, setting it up before the crime happens so you don’t have to split the loot and arranging for the police to get them quick so THE SHAPE SHIFTER

59

they’re not chasing you. I’d say any of those three would have motive for burning Shewnack.”

Garcia shook his head. “Of course only Ellie was free when Shewnack was cremated, but maybe the others could have arranged something. Communicated with friends on the outside. But how would they have known where to find Shewnack? You have any ideas to offer on that?”

“Not offhand,” Leaphorn said. “I’d have to know their families. And their friends. But it sounds pretty near impossible to me.”

“Yeah,” Garcia said. “I did a little casual asking around and got nothing. Well, anyway they’re all out now. Like I said, Ellie got part of her five-year sentence whacked off for good behavior. She was living at Gallup last I heard. Delonie got a twenty-five-year rap, and Begay’s was a lot shorter. But I’ve heard that Begay’s dead.

When he got out, he got married and he and his wife lived up near Teec Nos Pos. Worked as a sheep shearer, handy man, so forth. Supposed to have learned a lot about working with tools and fixing things in the penitentiary, and for a while he worked for a sporting goods store in Farmington. Mostly from what I heard repairing outboard motors, sporting equipment, things like that. I remember the first time I saw him after he was paroled he was helping out at one of those booths at the Four Corners Monument parking place. Very cool about it. Said he’d had an enemy way cure. Got himself restored to harmony. He sounded like he was very much occupied with forgetting his old mistakes. And all those bad years.”

“You say Begay’s dead now. How’d that happen?”

“Shot himself,” Garcia said.

60

TONY HILLERMAN

“You mean suicide?”

“No. Not Benny. I guess he wasn’t as good at fixing as he thought he was. He had taken some stuff home from the Fish and Hunt Shop over the weekend to repair it. Had himself a workbench in his garage, and when his wife got home from whatever she was doing, he was there on the floor. And one of those old German World War II pistols on the floor beside him. A Walther. The one they called the P-38. The magazine was out of it on the table, but the empty shell casing was still in the chamber.” Garcia looked at Leaphorn, shrugged.

“That’s how it can happen,” Leaphorn said. “Working with an unfamiliar weapon. You think you unloaded it and you didn’t. No sign of foul play?”

“That was over here in New Mexico,” Garcia said.

“Not my case, but I doubt it. Probably handled by the San Juan County sheriff. Wouldn’t be any reason to be suspicious. Who’d want to kill Benny Begay?”

“Good question,” Leaphorn said. He found himself trying to visualize how Begay, a gunsmith then by practice, had managed to point that pistol at his head and pull the trigger. He’d extracted the magazine. What was he doing. Peering into the pistol barrel. That would make no sense.

Garcia studied Leaphorn. “You know, you Navajos have a lot of damn fine ideas in your culture.”

“Yes,” Leaphorn said. “And we have a lot of trouble these days sticking to them. Begay managed it, I guess.

But how about Delonie. Was he that forgiving?” Garcia laughed “Delonie’s no Navajo. I think he is part Pottawatomie, or maybe it’s Seminole. He wasn’t quite like Ellie and Begay, who were clean as a whistle.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

61

Delonie had already accumulated himself a little rap sheet. He’d done a little time in the Oklahoma reforma-tory as a juvenile, and then got himself arrested as an adult for stealing cars out of parking lots. The cops who worked Handy’s case from the beginning told me Delonie might have been the reason it happened.” Leaphorn considered that, raised his eyebrows, provoking Garcia to explain what he meant.

“You know how it sometimes works. A professional robbery type looking for a way to make some money asks around among the proper level of citizens for some locals who might have spotted a likely job, and so forth.

He hears about Delonie. Checks with him. Delonie says Handy’s looks ripe for a robbery. Shewnack offers to buy in. Something like that. You know what I mean?”

“Sure,” Leaphorn said. “I remember the double murder years ago on old Route 66 near the Laguna Reservation.

At Budville. Bud Rice and someone else shot. Turned out a bandit type from Alabama or somewhere shopped around in Albuquerque for someone to rob, paid the locals a fee, they provided him a car, all the information, he did the job and got away.”

“Killed himself in prison,” Garcia said.

“But doing time for another crime,” Leaphorn said.

“He decided to confess to the Budville murders before he died. But you’re saying the thinking was that Shewnack had contacted Delonie, offered to organize the crime for him?”

“The thinking is Shewnack showed up in Albuquerque, hanging around in the bars where the hard guys do their socializing, let it be known he was ready for some action, heard about Delonie. Having a hard-guy reputation, so forth.”

62

TONY HILLERMAN

“Sounds reasonable,” Leaphorn said.

“Anyway, whether or not robbing Handy’s was Delonie’s original idea, I don’t think he gets the blame for the way Shewnack set them all up. He told his parole officer that Ellie was his girlfriend. He was going to marry her, or so he thought, before Shewnack showed up and wooed her away from him and then wrecked her life. Apparently he talked about that a lot in prison. Anyway, his parole was passed over the first time because the board heard he’d been telling other cons he was going to hunt down the son of a bitch who’d ratted on him and kill him.

He didn’t get out until early this year.”

“How’s he doing since then?” Leaphorn asked.

Garcia shrugged. “Okay, I guess. His parole officer told me he’s been checking in and behaving himself. Turns out Delonie was sort of like Begay in prison. Turned himself into a skilled laborer. Got to be an electrician, plumber, that sort of thing. Good with fixing things—from your refrigerator to your truck. He married a Navajo woman over near Torre-jón, and I think he does maintenance and general handy-man stuff over at the chapter house out there.” Leaphorn considered that. “Wonder how he managed that?”

“What I heard, he’s married to a woman who’s involved with that Christian mission place out there, and she’s one of the people working at the chapter house.

Keeps the records or something,” Garcia said. “I’ve heard some gossip that the marriage didn’t last long. But he didn’t have Delonie on his ‘watch out for trouble’ list.” Leaphorn sighed.

Garcia chuckled. “You sound disappointed.”

“Well, I’m just beginning to wonder what we think THE SHAPE SHIFTER

63

we’re looking for out here. Where we are now with what we know, all we could take to the district attorney’s office is a funny feeling. Not a hint of evidence about anything.” He laughed. “I guess we could tell him we just don’t feel right about that Shewnack death, and that fire either, and that maybe somebody stole an antique rug, and so forth, and if it was a murder, the one with the best motive would be Delonie. And then he reminds us that Delonie was in custody when Totter’s place burned and that he could call in a whole crowd of prison guards to back up his alibi, and about then the D.A. would recommend that we make an appointment to see a shrink.”

Garcia laughed. “I’m beginning to think that might not be a bad idea.”

“Well,” Leaphorn said, “I have to admit that all I have is that funny feeling I started with. The arson experts said there was no evidence of any kerosene or gasoline, or any of those fire spreaders arsonists use. Totter’s insurance company lawyers must have worked that over very thoroughly.”

“You think so?”

“Well, from what I’ve heard, Totter collected on a lot of valuable stuff burned with his store. So they would have done some looking.”

“Which brings us back to that damned rug,” Garcia said. “Bork didn’t seem to think it burned after he saw that picture. So we have us a clever insurance fraud arson with Shewnack burned up by accident. Or maybe burned on purpose to provide the careless drunk starting it with a cigarette.”

Garcia paused, waiting a Leaphorn reaction. Got none, and went on.

64

TONY HILLERMAN

“Or maybe Totter killed him for some reason or other, and needed to dispose of the body, and then added in a little insurance fraud as a by-product.” Leaphorn didn’t comment.

“I’ll bet you’d already thought about that,” Garcia said.

“Well, yes,” Leaphorn said. “And I admit I’d like to know more about the fire. But nobody’s likely to help us reopen that case. Just think about it. The FBI was just delighted to get Shewnack’s name off its list after all those years. They won’t be eager to prove they missed the fact somebody murdered him.”

“And who’s around these days who cares?” Garcia asked.

“There’s me,” Leaphorn said. “And then there’s the man who made that call to Mel Bork. That caller seemed to care. He didn’t want Mel messing with Shewnack’s old ashes.”

Garcia nodded.

“You have any idea who made that call?” Leaphorn said.

“I wish I did. And I’ve got a puzzle you could solve for me. How did you get involved in this business? What’s your interest?”

“I showed you Bork’s letter.”

“I meant what got you into it in the first place.”

“I wasn’t really into it,” Leaphorn said. “I was out here looking into a sort of funny burglary of an old woman’s hogan. She and her daughter weave baskets out of willow, or reeds, then waterproof them with sap from pinyon trees and sell them to tourists. Anyway, somebody drove up while the old lady was away, broke into THE SHAPE SHIFTER

65

the shed where they do their work, and stole about ten gallons of that sap. Captain Skeet—you remember him? I was a rookie then, and he sent me out to investigate and then had me drop that and go over to see what the federals were so excited about at Totter’s place.”

“Day or so after the fire then?”

“Yeah, when they went through all the victim’s stuff and found out he was Shewnack.”

Garcia was looking thoughtful. “Who stole that pinyon sap?”

Leaphorn laughed. “I guess you’d have to add that to your list of cold cases. The granddaughter said she saw a blue sedan roaring away. It looked to her like it might be almost new. Didn’t get a look at the driver and didn’t get a license number. She said there wasn’t a license plate on the bumper, but maybe one of those paper dealer’s permits was on the back window. Said it looked shiny new.”

“What else was stolen?”

“That was it, so they said. Just two big old lard buckets filled with pinyon sap.”

Garcia shook his head, shrugged. “Maybe they needed the buckets.”

“Or, let’s try this idea. Maybe Shewnack had taken that job with Totter intending to rob him. Sort of a repeat of the Handy affair. Let’s say Totter resisted, killed Shewnack, decided to dispose of the body, and he knew that pinyon sap would get things hot enough to turn Shewnack into ashes. How about that idea?”

“Yes, indeed,” Garcia said. “And since everybody around here burns pinyon as firewood, it wouldn’t look suspicious to arson inspectors. Totter could get a profit out of it.”

66

TONY HILLERMAN

They drove in silence then until Garcia pointed to the slope ahead, to what was left of the old Totter’s Trading Post. The soot-blackened adobe walls still stood. The old grocery store was mostly intact, as was an adjoining stone structure that had been Totter’s residence. But its doors were missing and its window frames were also empty.

“Scene of the crime,” Garcia said. “Except officially it wasn’t a crime. Just another fire caused by lighting up that last cigarette when you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing.”

“Look’s like someone has done a little pilfering anyway,” Leaphorn said.

Garcia laughed. “You could probably find those doors and window frames built into some sheep herder’s place,” he said. “But Totter sold the place after he collected his insurance loot. And the buyer never did anything with it. Don’t think you could get the D.A. to file any charges.”

As they neared the junction of the eroded trail that had been the access road to Totter’s parking lot, Leaphorn noticed Garcia was slowing, and he saw why. That road seemed to have had some fairly recent traffic.

“See that?” Garcia said, pointing to the tire tracks through the weeds. “I’ll bet I can tell you who did that.

Ever since Delonie got his parole, I’ve had this old case on my mind. And when I heard that telephone threat to Mel Bork, and you told me about that rug, I’ve had a yen to come up here and look around.”

Leaphorn nodded. “So you wanted to see if Delonie would return to the scene of his crime?”

“Not exactly that, because it couldn’t be his crime.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

67

If it was a crime. I just thought he’d be, ah, well, let’s say, curious.”

“Seems logical, since Delonie just got out,” Leaphorn said. “But here’s the way my mind works. Delonie knows Shewnack got away from that Handy robbery with a bagful of cash. Delonie probably knows no large sums were found with the body. Shewnack wouldn’t have kept a big bundle in his pockets while he was working here.

He probably intended to rob Totter’s too, when he could set it up properly. So there’s a good chance that Shewnack found himself a place right here, or near enough to be handy, to stash away his funds.”

“Exactly,” Garcia said. “And Delonie would come looking for it.” He was grinning. “I guess us cops all get into the habit of thinking the same way,” he said. “I’ll bet we find some places where somebody’s been digging.” They were bumping up the access road now toward what fire, weather, and inattention had left of Totter’s Trading Post.

“Or maybe still digging,” Leaphorn said. He pointed past the wall of the main structure to a vehicle protruding from behind it. “Dark green. Looks like a Cherokee.” As he spoke, a man stepped through the empty doorway of the building. He stood staring at them. A tall man in a plaid shirt, much-faded blue jeans, long billed cap, and sunglasses. His hair needed trimming, and so did a short but scraggly beard.

“I do believe I recognize Mr. Tomas Delonie,” Kelly Garcia said. “Which means this is going to save me the trouble of driving all over looking for him.”

9

Tomas Delonie’s reaction to the arrival of a police car and a deputy sheriff was just what Leaphorn had learned to expect from ex-cons out on parole. He was a big man, a little stooped, looking tense, slightly defensive, and generally unfriendly. Not moving, hands by his sides. Just waiting for whatever fate had in store for him.

Leaphorn sat watching. Garcia got out, shut the door behind him, said: “Mr. Delonie? You remember me?” The man nodded. “Yes.”

“Deputy Sheriff Kelly Garcia,” Garcia said. “Glad to see you again. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you.”

“Talk?” Delonie said. “About what?”

“About this place here,” Garcia said with a sweeping gesture. “About what happened here?”

“I don’t know a damn thing about that,” Delonie said. “I was up there in the New Mexico State Prison.

70

TONY HILLERMAN

Near Santa Fe. Long way from here when that was happening.”

Leaphorn got out of the car, nodded to Delonie.

“This is Mr. Joe Leaphorn,” Garcia said. “He’s interested in what happened here too.”

“Oh?” Delonie said, looking slightly surprised. “I wonder why that would be? Is he an insurance man? Or a cop? Or what?”

“Just curious, I guess, about what could be found.

And so are you,” Garcia said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.

So we have something in common to talk about.” Delonie nodded. Looking at Leaphorn.

Leaphorn smiled. “Have you found anything yet?” Delonie’s expression abruptly changed from his stolid neutral pose. His mouth twisted, his eyes pinched shut, his head bowed. “What do you mean by that?” Delonie said, his voice strangled.

“I meant, maybe you might have been looking for something Ray Shewnack might have left behind for you.”

“That dirty son of a bitch,” Delonie said, the words pronounced with heavy, well-spaced emphasis. “He wouldn’t leave anything for me.”

“You mean Raymond Shewnack?” Leaphorn said.

“That bastard.” Delonie wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, looked up at Leaphorn. “No, I didn’t find a damned thing.”

Garcia cleared his throat. “What are you looking for?”

“This is the place where the federals claim he got burned up, isn’t it? I was looking for just a tiny little bit of what that bastard owed me,” Delonie said.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

71

“You mean like part of the money out of old man Handy’s safe?” Garcia asked.

“That’d be just fine,” Delonie said, wiping his eyes again. “If I found all of it, it wouldn’t cover what he owes me.”

“I don’t think there’d be enough money in the whole world to cover what he did to you,” Leaphorn said. “Not for the way he treated all of you at Handy’s.”

“Well . . .” Delonie said, staring at Leaphorn. He nodded.

“You know, if you do find a bunch of money,” Garcia said, “or anything valuable, you’d have to—”

“Sure, sure,” Delonie said. “I know the law. I’d turn it all in. I know that. I was just curious.”

“Any place in the store there where we can sit down and talk?” Garcia asked.

Totter’s store had been pretty thoroughly stripped of furniture, but a table with bench seating had been shoved against a wall amid a jumble of fallen shelving. Delonie sat on the table bench. Garcia stood looking at him.

Leaphorn wandered to the back door, noticing how lines of dust blown in through the vacant windows had formed across the floor, observing the piles of leaves in the corners, thinking how quickly nature moved to restore the damage done by man. He looked out at the burned remains of the gallery section, remembering how a typical torrential rain of the monsoon season had arrived in time to save this part of the Handy’s establishment. But not much left of the adjoining Indian artifacts gallery or its storage room where Shewnack had his sleeping space.

Where Shewnack’s cigarette had ignited the fire. Where Shewnack was too drunk to awaken. Where Shewnack 72

TONY HILLERMAN

had burned to bones and ashes. Behind him Garcia was asking Delonie what he had been doing lately, where he was working.

Leaphorn walked out into the yard, around the building, toward Delonie’s vehicle. It was a dirty Jeep Cherokee, middle-aged, with the dents and crunches of hard use. A brown woolen blanket was folded on the front seat. Through the driver’s-side window he could see nothing interesting. Scanning through the rear side windows revealed only Delonie’s habit of tossing old hamburger wrappers and beer cans there instead of into garbage cans. He lifted the rear door, checked around, found nothing. On the passenger’s side, he opened the front door, felt under the seat, extracted an old New Mexico road map, put it back. Checked the glove box and found it locked. Checked the door pockets. Another New Mexico road map, newer version. Stared at the folded blanket, detecting the shape of something under it. He reached in and lifted the end of it. It was covering a rifle.

Leaphorn folded the blanket back. The rifle was an old model Savage 30-30, a fairly typical type of deer rifle that had been popular when he was young. What was less typical was the telescopic sight mounted on it. That looked new. Leaphorn pulled the blanket back over the rifle, restored its folds, and walked back into the building.

Delonie was shaking his head, looking grim.

“So you didn’t just get out here today?” Garcia asked.

“Yesterday,” Delonie said. “I’m about ready to give up.”

“You just came looking for anything useful Shewnack might have had that didn’t get burned up with him?”

“Like I said, I figured if he had any money with him, THE SHAPE SHIFTER

73

if he was planning to stay with Totter as a hired hand, he might have tucked it away someplace safe. Maybe buried it. Hid it under something.”

“But you didn’t find anything?”

“Not yet.”

“You think you will?”

Delonie thought a while. “I guess not. I think I’m ready to quit looking.” He sighed, took a deep breath, looked down. “Don’t know,” he said. “I guess maybe I found what I really wanted. I wanted to just see for myself that the bastard was really dead.” He looked up at Garcia, then at Leaphorn. Forced a smile. “Get closure. Isn’t that what the shrinks are calling it now? Put it behind you.

“Mr. Leaphorn here, if he’s a Navajo like he looks, then he’d know about that. They have that curing ceremony to help them forgive and forget when they get screwed. Bennie Begay, he had one of those. An enemy way ceremony, he said it was.”

“You look like you might be Indian,” Leaphorn said.

“Not Navajo?”

“Part Pottawatomie, part Seminole,” Delonie said.

“Probably part French, too. We never had such a ceremony. Neither tribe. But maybe just seeing where the bastard burned up will work for me. Anyway, it gave me a little satisfaction. Maybe it wasn’t as hot as the hell he’s enjoying now but it must have been next to it. People who knew this place said Totter stored his firewood in that gallery back room where Shewnack was sleeping. That wood burns hot.”

That provoked a brief, thoughtful silence.

Leaphorn cleared his throat. “This Shewnack must have been quite a man,” he said. “I’m thinking about the 74

TONY HILLERMAN

the way he sucked all of you into that plot he was working up. Sounds like he was awful damn persuasive. A genuine, bona fide charmer.”

Delonie produced a bitter-sounding laugh. “You bet. I remember Ellie saying he was the prettiest man she ever saw.” He laughed again. “Anyway, a lot prettier than me.”

“I don’t think there’s anything in the records about where he came from. Was he a local man? Family? Anything like that? If he had any criminal record, it must have been under some other name.”

“He told us he was from California, or somewhere out on the West Coast,” Delonie said. “But after Ellie got to know him, she said he was actually from San Francisco. Great talker, though. Always smiling, always cheerful. Never said anything bad about anybody or anything.

Seemed to know just about everything.” Delonie stopped, shook his head, gave Leaphorn a wry smile. “For example, how to unlock a locked car, or jump-start it; how to avoid leaving fingerprints. He even showed me and Bennie Begay how to get out of those plastic cuffs highway patrol-men carry.”

“You think he had a record?” Leaphorn asked.

“I think maybe he used to be a policeman,” Delonie said. “He seemed to know so much about cops and law enforcement. But I don’t know. Then I thought maybe he had worked in a machine shop or something like that. He seemed to know a lot about construction and machinery.

But with him, I think most of what he was saying was just sort of talk intended to give you a phony idea of who he was. Or had been.” He shook his head and chuckled. “I remember a preacher we used to listen to when I was a boy.

He’d have called Shewnack the ‘Father of Liars.’” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

75

“Like the devil himself,” Garcia said.

“Yep,” Delonie said, “exactly.”

“Did he ever talk about what he’d done for a living?” he asked. “Any mention at all?”

Delonie shook his head. “Not really. Anytime anyone got serious about things like that he’d say something about there being lots of easy ways to get money. Once he made a crack about how coyotes know you don’t have to raise chickens to eat them.”

“Quite a guy,” Garcia said. “Well, look, Mr. Delonie, if you do decide to look some more, and you find anything, I want you to give me a call.” He handed Delonie his card.

“And don’t forget to keep checking in with your parole officer.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said, “and you should—” But he stopped. Why inject himself into this until he knew a lot more than he did. Delonie would know that parolees were not allowed to possess firearms.

10

It was quiet in the patrol car until it had rolled down the last hump of the old Totter’s Trading Post access track and was reaching the junction of the gravel road.

“If you do a left here, we could take a three-or-so-mile detour and get to Grandma Peshlakai’s place,” Leaphorn said. “Wouldn’t take long. Unless you have something else to do.”

Garcia glanced at him, looking surprised. “You want to do that?”

“I’d like to see if she ever got her pinyon sap back. Or found out who stole it. Or anything.”

“Well, why not? That would probably be as useful as anything we learned here.”

They came to a culvert bridging the borrow ditch beside the county road. Up the hillside beyond it was an old-fashioned dirt-topped hogan; a zinc water tank sat atop a platform beside it. Behind it was a slab-sided out-78

TONY HILLERMAN

house, a rusty-looking camping trailer, and a sheep pen with a loading ramp. Garcia slowed.

“That it?”

“Yep,” Leaphorn said.

“Probably nobody home,” Garcia said. “I don’t see any vehicles.”

“There’s that old tire hanging on the gate post though,” Leaphorn said, pointing. “Most people out here, they take that off when they leave the hogan.”

“Yeah. Some of ’em still do,” Garcia said. “But that old custom is sort of dying out. Tells the neighbors it’s safe to come in and see what they can steal.” Leaphorn frowned, and Garcia noticed it.

“Didn’t mean that as an insult,” Garcia said.

“Trouble is, it’s true.”

“Well, times change,” Garcia said, looking apologetic.

“It ain’t like it used to be.”

But it was at the Peshlakai place. As they drove up the track and stopped east of the hogan, a woman pulled back the carpet hanging across the doorway and stepped out.

Leaphorn got out of the car, nodded to her, said, “Ya eeh teh.”

She acknowledged that, nodded, looked surprised, and laughed. “Hey,” she said. “Are you that policeman that made Grandma so mad years and years ago?” Leaphorn grinned. “I guess so, and I came to apologize. Is she here?”

“No, no,” the girl said. “She’s gone off to Austin Sam’s place. He’s one of her grandsons, and she’s taking care of one of her great-grandchildren. She does that for him some when Austin is off doing political cam-THE SHAPE SHIFTER

79

paigning. Running for the Tribal Council seat in his district.”

Leaphorn considered that a moment, wondering how old Grandma Peshlakai would be now. In her nineties at least, he was thinking, and still working.

“I’m sorry I missed her. Please tell her I said, Ya eeh teh.”

This very mature woman, he was thinking, must be Elandra, who had been a lot younger when he’d first met her.

“Elandra, this man here is Sergeant Garcia, a deputy with the sheriff’s office down in Flagstaff.” The glad-to-meet-yous were exchanged, and Elandra, looking puzzled, held back the doorway carpet and invited them in. “I don’t have anything ready to offer you,” she said, “but I could make some coffee.” Leaphorn was shaking his head. “Oh, no,” he said. “I just came by to see your grandmother.” He paused, looking embarrassed. “And I was wondering if anything new had come up in that burglary you had.” Elandra’s eyes widened. “Lots of years gone by since then. Lot of things happened.”

“Long ago as it was, I always felt sorry that I couldn’t stay on that case. I got called away by my boss because the federals wanted help on that fire at the Totter store.” Elandra’s expression made it clear that she remembered. She laughed.

“I’ll tell her you told her ‘ ya eeh teh,’ but telling Grandma to ‘be cool’ isn’t going to do it. She’s still mad at you for running off without finding that pinyon sap.” Then she had another sudden memory. “In fact, long time ago when she was going off to help with Austin’s kids, she 80

TONY HILLERMAN

said you had told her you would come back sometime to deal with that stolen sap problem, and she left something for me to give you if you did. Just a minute. I’ll see if I can find it.”

It was closer to five minutes later when Elandra emerged from the bedroom. She was carrying a sheet of notebook paper folded together and clasped with two hairpins. She grinned at Leaphorn and handed it to him.

On it was printed in pencil: TO THAT BOY POLICEMAN.

“That wasn’t my idea,” Elandra said. “She was mad at you. What she wanted to write was worse than that.”

“I guess I should read it?” Leaphorn said.

Elandra nodded.

Inside was the neatly penciled message: Young policeman.

Get my sap back here before it spoils. If not, get back $10 for each bucketful, and $5 for each bucket. Rather have sap. Otherwise $30.

Garcia had been watching all this, his expression amused.

“What does it say?” he asked. “That is, if it’s not secret.”

Leaphorn read it to him.

Garcia nodded. “You know how much time and labor goes into collecting that damned pinyon sap,” he said.

“Did you ever try to get sticky stuff off of you? I’d say that thirty dollars would be a very fair price.” Leaphorn put the note in his shirt pocket.

Elandra looked slightly abashed. “Grandma is usually very polite. But she thought you were practicing THE SHAPE SHIFTER

81

racial discrimination against us Indians. Remember? Or maybe she just wanted somebody to blame.”

“Well, I could see her point.”

“You want to know if we got our pinyon sap back?”

“Anything at all you can tell me about that.” Elandra laughed. “We didn’t recover any sap, but Grandma Peshlakai did get our buckets back. So I guess you should cut ten dollars off that bill.” Garcia’s eyebrows rose. “Got the buckets back? Well, now,” he said.

Leaphorn drew in a breath. “She recovered the buckets?” he said. “Tell me how she managed to do that.”

“Well, after that fire at Totter’s place, Grandma had been asking around everywhere. Right from the start she had the notion that Totter might have gotten that sap.” She laughed. “She thought he was going to start making his own baskets. Compete with us. Anyway, she noticed people were going over there after Mr. Totter moved with what was left of his stuff. And they were picking up things. Walking away with it. Just taking things away.” She paused.

“Like stealing stuff ?” Garcia said.

Elandra nodded. “So Grandma rode over there and looked around, and she came back with our buckets.” Leaphorn leaned forward. “Where were they?”

“I don’t know exactly. She said they were laying out by the porch. Or maybe out by the back door. I don’t really remember.”

“Empty buckets?” Leaphorn said.

Elandra nodded. “And dented up some, too,” she said. “But they still hold water.”

Leaphorn noticed that Garcia was grinning. That turned into a chuckle.

82

TONY HILLERMAN

“I guess we could make a burglary-theft case against Totter now, Joe. If we knew where he moved to when he left here. You want to try?”

Leaphorn was embarrassed. In no mood to be joshed.

“I think it would be a good idea to find out where he went,” he said. “Remember, one of his hired hands burned to death in that fire.”

“Okay, okay,” Garcia said. “I didn’t mean that to sound like I was joking.”

“Well, then—” Leaphorn began, but Elandra violated the “never interrupt” rule of her tribe.

“You don’t know where he is?” she said. She shook her head. “You don’t know about Mr. Totter? You don’t know he’s dead?”

“Dead?” Garcia said.

“How do you know that?” Leaphorn asked.

“It was in the newspaper,” she said. “After Grandma found the buckets, and knew for sure Mr. Totter had stolen our pinyon sap, she had a real angry spell. Really mad about it. So everywhere she went she would tell people about what he’d done and ask about him. And quite a while later somebody in a store where she was buying something told her Totter had died. He told her he’d seen it in the newspaper. That’s how we knew.”

“What newspaper?” Leaphorn asked.

“She was in Gallup, I think. I guess it was the Gallup paper.”

“The Gallup Independent,” Garcia said.

“Was it a news story about his being killed? Shot? Or in an accident?”

“I don’t know,” Elandra said. “But I don’t think so. I THE SHAPE SHIFTER

83

think the man said it was one of those little pieces where they tell where you’re going to be buried, and who your relatives are, for sending flowers, all that.”

“An obituary item, I guess,” Garcia said.

“Well, since we know within a year or two when that was printed, I guess we can track that down,” Leaphorn said.

As he said it, he was wishing that Sergeant Jim Chee and Officer Bernadette Manuelito were not off somewhere on their honeymoon. Otherwise, retired or not, he could talk Chee into going down to Gallup and digging through their microfiche files of back copies until he found it. Or maybe Chee could talk Bernie into doing it for him. She’d get it done quicker, and not come back with the wrong obituary.

11

Back in Flagstaff, back in his own car, with farewells said to Sergeant Garcia, an agreement reached that they had pretty well wasted a tiresome day and a lot of the sheriff’s department’s gasoline budget, Leaphorn again pulled into the Burger King parking lot. He sat. Organized his thoughts.

Was he too tired to drive all the way back to Shiprock tonight? Probably. But the alternative was renting a cold and uncomfortable motel room, making futile and frustrating efforts to adjust the air conditioner, and generally feeling disgusted. Then he’d have to awaken in the morning, stiff from a night on a strange mattress, and do the long drive anyway. He went in, got a cup of coffee and a hamburger for dinner. Halfway through that meal, and halfway through the list of things he had to do before he went back and told Mrs. Bork that he had absolutely no good news for her about her missing husband, he got up 86

TONY HILLERMAN

and went back out to his pickup. He extracted the cell phone from the glove box, returned with it to his waiting hamburger, and carefully punched in Jim Chee’s home number. Maybe Chee and Bernie would be back from their honeymoon. Maybe not.

They were.

“Hello,” Chee said, sounding sort of grumpy.

“Chee. This is Joe Leaphorn. How busy are you?”

“Ah. Um. Lieutenant Leaphorn? Well, um. Well, we just got back and . . .”

This statement trailed off unfinished, was followed by a moment of silence and then a sigh and the clearing of a throat.

“What do you want me to do?” Chee asked.

“Ah, um. Is there any chance you’d be going down to Gallup pretty soon?”

“Like when?”

“Well, maybe tomorrow?”

Chee laughed. “You know, Lieutenant, this reminds me of old times.”

“Too busy, I guess,” Leaphorn said, sadly.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I know you and Bernie are newlyweds,” Leaphorn said. “So why don’t you take her along.”

“I probably would,” Chee said. “But to do what?”

“It takes a while to explain,” Leaphorn said, and explained it, Navajo style, starting at the beginning. And when he finished he waited for a reaction.

“That’s it?” Chee asked, after waiting a polite moment to be sure he wasn’t interrupting.

“Yes.”

“You want me to prowl through back issues of the THE SHAPE SHIFTER

87

Gallup Independent looking for that Totter obituary, find it, get them to make a copy of it for you, and then find someone old enough to remember when they received it and how, and who brought it in, and—”

“Or mailed it in. Or called it in,” Leaphorn said. “But I’ll bet Miss Manuelito would be good at all that.”

“Probably better than me, because she’s organized and patient. Yes. But Lieutenant, she’s not Miss Manuelito now, she’s Mrs. Bernadette Chee.”

“Sorry,” Leaphorn said.

“And it was probably published years ago after that fire at Totter’s Trading Post. There’d be a story about finding the burned man who was a star figure on the FBI bad boy list, I guess. I could look for that story, and then skip ahead a few months to make sure I didn’t miss it, and then keep looking for a couple of years. Right?”

“Well, I think they have it on microfiche. You know.

You just push the button and it gives you the next page, and skip the full-page ads, and the sports pages.”

“How soon do you need it?” Chee asked. “And can you explain why again? It sounded sort of vague.”

“I guess it is sort of vague. I just have a general feeling that something is very peculiar about this whole business.” He paused, thinking. “Tell you what, Jim, I want to think about this some more. Maybe I’m just wasting everybody’s time. Just put it on hold until I call you back.”

“You mean the fire was peculiar?”

Leaphorn sighed. “That and everything else.”

“Well,” Chee said, “ I guess . . . Wait a second, here’s Bernie.”

And the next voice Leaphorn heard was that of Mrs.

Bernadette Chee, sounding happy, exuberant, asking 88

TONY HILLERMAN

about his health, about Professor Louisa Bourbonette, about what he was doing, had he actually retired and, finally, wondering what he and Chee were talking about.

Leaphorn told her.

“Tomorrow?” Bernie asked. “Sure. We’d be happy to take care of that. Have you explained to Jim what you need?”

“Well, yes,” Leaphorn said. Then thought a second.

“Just sort of explained,” he added, and went through it all again.

“Okay, Lieutenant,” Bernie said. “How soon do you need it and what’s your cell phone number?” Leaphorn gave it to her. “But hold off until I understand what in the world I’m doing,” he said. “And welcome home, Bernie.”

“It’s Mrs. Chee, now,” she said.

12

Joe Leaphorn awakened unusually late the next morning. Just as he had expected, his back was stiff, his head was stuffy from a night of breathing air-conditioned motel air, and his mood was glum. Exactly what he had anticipated. The foreboding that had caused him to decide to drive back to Shiprock last night instead of enduring the motel was justified. But talking with Chee and Bernie, two youngsters, had made him face the fact that he was old and too weary to be a safe nighttime driver when the drunks were on the highways. So now he was still in Flagstaff, and the long drive still confronted him.

But the sleeplessness provoked by the lumpy motel mattress had caused him to do a lot of thinking, each toss and turn changing the subject of his speculation. First, he had covered what he would say to Mrs. Bork. Since he was, alas, still here in Flagstaff, he should call her right now, not leave her biting her nails with worry. Telling her 90

TONY HILLERMAN

he hadn’t learned anything useful wouldn’t help much, but courtesy demanded it. Next, he decided he had to quit stalling and set up a meeting with this Jason Delos fellow, who seemed to have that damned rug, or at least a copy of it, and find out where he had obtained it. With that out of the way, he would just start doing some old-fashioned police work, going to Bork’s office, hunting down his friends and associates, collecting some clues as to what might have happened to him, and trying to learn who had made that ominous-sounding telephone call.

He took advantage of the motel’s much-advertised free breakfast for two slices of French toast, a bowl of raisin bran, and two cups of coffee. Then he called Mrs.

Bork. Her joy at first hearing his voice quickly faded. The forlorn sound of her sorrow was exactly what he needed to propel him into the next call.

The number with which Tarkington had finally provided him produced a young-sounding and accented male voice: “Delos residence. Whom shall I say is calling?”

“This is Joe Leaphorn,” Leaphorn said. “I need to talk to Mr. Delos about a very old Navajo tale-teller’s rug.

The curator of the Navajo Tribal Gallery at Window Rock suggested he might have information to determine if a copy might have been made of it. Whether it might be available.”

This produced a long moment of silence. Then: “From where are you calling, sir?”

“I am here in Flagstaff,” Leaphorn said. “I was hoping to make an appointment to meet with Mr. Delos. That rug has accumulated some very colorful history down through the years. I thought he might be interested.” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

91

Another pause. “Please hold, sir. I will see if he is available.”

Leaphorn held. He thought about the staleness of the motel coffee, about whether his car was overdue for an oil change. He glanced at his watch, considered the list-ings waiting for his attention back in Shiprock, wondered how long it would be before Louisa returned from her research project and helped him keep his house clean and reduce its loneliness, glanced at his watch again, changed the telephone from left ear to right.

“Mr. Leaphorn,” the voice said, “Mr. Delos say he can see you. He ask you to be here at eleven.”

“Eleven A.M.” Leaphorn said, with another glance at his watch. “Tell me how to get there from the downtown Flagstaff interstate exit.”

The young man gave him the directions, very pre-cisely. As Leaphorn had suspected, from the view he’d noticed through the window in the Luxury Living photo, the route led him into the foothills rising beyond Flagstaff’s northern limits. Expensive landscape, rising far above Flagstaff’s seventy-two hundred feet above sea level, and offering views extending approximately forever.

“I’ll be there,” Leaphorn said.

The residence of Jason Delos was a little less monu-mental than Leaphorn had expected. It was a structure of stone and timber built on two levels, rising above an under-the-house triple garage and conforming with the wooded slope of its setting. The asphalt of this mountain road had reverted to gravel three miles back, but here, through the bars on a fancy cast-iron gate, the driveway that curved toward the garage had been paved. Built as a summer home, Leaphorn deduced, probably in the high 92

TONY HILLERMAN

end of the half-million-dollar range when it was built—

and that probably had been back in the 1960s. Now the price would be much more than that.

Leaphorn parked beside an entry post equipped with a sign which read:

PLEASE PUSH BUTTON

IDENTIFY YOURSELF

He checked his watch. Six minutes early. He wasted a few of those enjoying this close view of the San Francisco Peaks. If Jason Delos collected Indian antiquities, he probably knew their role in mythology. Not terribly crucial for his Dineh people as he remembered the winter hogan stories from his boyhood. He had heard them mentioned mostly because of Great Bear spirit and his misadventures. But they were sacred indeed for the Hopis. They recognized Humphreys Peak (at 12,600

feet, the tallest of the San Francisco chain) as the gate-way to the other world, the route their spirits used to visit during ceremonials when Hopi priests called them.

For the Zunis, as Leaphorn understood what he’d been told by Zuni friends, it was one of the roads taken by spirits of Hopi dead to reach the wonderful dance grounds where the good among them would celebrate their eternal rewards. He interrupted that thought to glance at his watch again. It was time. He reached out and punched the button.

The response was immediate.

“Mr. Leaphorn,” it said. “Come in, sir. And please park at the paved place to the south of the entrance porch.”

“Right,” Leaphorn said, uneasily aware as he said it THE SHAPE SHIFTER

93

that whoever owned the voice had been looking out at him, probably wondering why he was waiting. It was the same voice he had heard on the Delos telephone.

The gate swung open. Leaphorn drove through it, admiring the house. A handsome place with its landscaping left to nature. No flat country lawn grass. Just the vegetation that flourished in the high-dry mountain country. As he pulled into the parking area, a man stepped from a side door and stood, waiting for him. A small man, straight and slender, in his early forties, with short black hair and a very smooth, flawless complexion. Possibly a Hopi or Zuni, Leaphorn thought. But at second glance, Leaphorn switched that to probably Vietnamese or Lao-tian. As he turned off the ignition, the man was opening the door for him.

“I am Tommy Vang,” he said, smiling. “Mr. Delos say thank you for being so prompt. He say to give you some time to visit the restroom if you wish to do so, and then bring you to the office.”

Tommy Vang was waiting again when Leaphorn emerged from the restroom. The man escorted Leaphorn down a hallway and through the same large and lavish living room he remembered from the Luxury Living photograph. No framed rug was hanging by the fireplace now.

The massive elk antlers trophy was still mounted on one side of the glass door, along with several deer antlers. A pronghorn antelope head stared at him from the oppos-ing wall, with a huge bear head, teeth bared, beside it. A big-game hunter, perhaps, or perhaps they had come with the house when Delos bought it. Leaphorn took a second look at the bear.

“That’s the only bear I ever shot.”

94

TONY HILLERMAN

The man who spoke was emerging from a hallway, walking toward them. A tall man, handsome, well over six feet, tanned, trim, white-haired, wearing gray slacks and a red shirt, looking like a healthy, active seventy-year-old.

He was smiling and holding out his hand.

“Come on in the office,” he said, taking Leaphorn’s hand. “I’m Jason Delos, and I’m glad to meet you. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to tell me about this old rug of mine.”

“Judging from all those trophy heads, I’d guess you are quite a hunter,” Leaphorn said. “Really good at it.” Delos produced a deprecatory smile.

“That, and collecting cultural antiques, are about my only hobbies,” he said. “I’m told practice makes perfect.”

“I’d say you picked a good place to live then. Good hunting for big game all through this Four Corners country,” Leaphorn said. “When I was a youngster there was even a season on bighorn sheep in the San Juan Mountains.”

“I never had a chance at one of those,” Delos said.

“They’re pretty much all gone now. But old people say they used to hunt them in the foothills and even in the high end of the Rio Grande Gorge, about where the river comes out of Colorado into New Mexico, where it cut that deep canyon through the old lava flow.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Leaphorn said. “An old fellow who runs the J. D. Ranch up there told me he used to see them on the cliffs when he was a boy.”

“That’s a ranch I’ve hunted on,” Delos said. “I get elk permits from the foreman. A fellow named Arlen Roper.

In fact, I’m going up there this week.” He laughed, made an expansive gesture. “Going to try to get me an absolute THE SHAPE SHIFTER

95

record-breaking set of antlers before I get too old for it.”

“I think I already am,” Leaphorn said.

“Well, I can’t climb up the cliffs, and down into the canyons like I used to, but Roper has some blinds set up in the trees on a hillside up there. One of them lets you look right down on the Brazos. Elk come in, morning and evening, to get themselves a drink out of the stream. I’ve got that one reserved for next week.”

Leaphorn nodded, without comment. Ranchers who allowed deer, elk, and antelope herds to share grazing with their cattle were granted hunting permits as a rec-ompense. They could either harvest their winter meat supply themselves or sell the permits to others. It was not a practice Leaphorn endorsed. Not much sportsman-ship in it, he thought, but perfectly pragmatic and legal.

Traditional Navajos hunted only for food, not for sport. He remembered his maternal uncle explaining to him that to make hunting deer a sport, you would have to give the deer rifles and teach them how to shoot back. His first deer hunt, and all that followed, had been preceded by the prescribed ceremony with his uncles and nephews, with the prayer calling to the deer to join in the venture, to assure the animal that cosmic eternal law would return him to his next existence in the infinite circle of life. A lot of time and work was involved in the Navajo way—the treatment of the deer hide, the pains taken to waste nothing, and, finally, the prayers that led to that first delicious meal of venison. Leaphorn had known many belagaana hunters who shared the “waste no venison” attitude, but none who bought into the ceremonial partnership between man and animal. And this was not the place nor the time to discuss it. Instead, he said he’d heard hunting 96

TONY HILLERMAN

was expected to be unusually good in the Brazos country this season.

Delos smiled. “I’ve always liked to claim that the skill of the hunter determined how good the season turns out.”

“Probably true,” Leaphorn said. “But if one comes home empty, he likes something else to blame.” The only trophy head on the wall of the Delos office was that of a large male bobcat snarling above an antique-looking rolltop desk. But a rifle rack against a wall revealed the nature of the Delos hobby. Behind its glass door four rifles and two shotguns were lined up in their racks. Delos motioned Leaphorn into a chair and seated himself beside his desk.

“Is the time right for a drink? A Scotch or something?

But I bet you’d prefer coffee?”

“Coffee, if it’s no trouble,” Leaphorn said, seating himself and processing his impressions. The trophy heads, the gun collection, how Delos had presumed Leaphorn would want coffee, the sense of serene and confident dignity the man presented.

“Coffee,” Delos told Tommy Vang, “for both of us.” Then he leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his belly, and smiled at Leaphorn.

“Down to business,” he said. “I asked around, and I understand from my friends that you are a Navajo Tribal Policeman. I gather you have no jurisdiction here. Therefore, I am curious about why you came. I would like to think that you had learned that I obtained the tale-teller’s rug shown in that magazine and you simply, and very generously, wanted to reward me with some of the colorful tales of its past.” Delos smiled, raised his eyebrows, gave Leaphorn a few seconds to respond.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

97

Leaphorn nodded.

Delos sighed. “But being well into my seventh decade, I have learned that it usually takes more than a generous spirit to send one on such a long trip. Normally some trade-off is involved. Some sort of tit-for-tat exchange. Am I right about that?”

“You are,” Leaphorn said. “I have a whole list of things I hope to get from you, Mr. Delos.” He held up a finger. “Most important, I hope you can provide some information that will help me find out what happened to a friend of mine. Mel Bork. He seems to have disappeared.

Second, I hope you’ll let me take a look at that tale-teller rug shown in that magazine. I admired that rug many years ago, and I haven’t seen it for years. Finally, I hope you will let me know where you obtained it.” Delos sat a moment, looking at his hands, apparently thinking. He shook his head, looked up. “That’s all?” Leaphorn nodded.

“And what do you deliver to me in return?” Leaphorn shrugged. “Not a lot, I’m afraid. About all I can do is tell you what I remember of the hogan stories as a boy. Some of them were about the ‘rug woven from sorrows.’ And I could tell you how to get in touch with some of the old weavers who could tell you more.” He produced a wry smile. “But I expect you could do that with your own resources.”

“Perhaps I could,” Delos said. “Some of it anyway. But only you can tell me why you thought I could help you find this friend of yours. This Mel Bork.”

Leaphorn noticed Delos had put his hope of help in finding Bork in the past tense.

“I still hope you can help me with that,” he said. “I 98

TONY HILLERMAN

hope you will tell me where he said he was going when he left here. And everything he said. Some of that might give me at least a hint of where he was going.” Delos threw up his hands, laughed. “I can tell you but if it’s helpful then it means you are indeed what my friends have told me about you. That you are a very shrewd detective.” Delos was smiling.

Leaphorn, registering that Delos hadn’t denied that Bork had been here, returned the smile.

“That causes me to ask another question: What prompted you to ask your friends about me? And which friends advised you?”

The Delos smile faded.

“I exaggerated. It was only Mr. Bork.”

“Another question then. Why did Mr. Bork get me into his conversation with you?”

Delos didn’t answer that. He shook his head. “I’ve led us off into a digression,” he said. “Let me start at the beginning. Mr. Bork called, asked for an appointment.

He said, or perhaps just implied, that he was working in an insurance fraud investigation involving my tale-teller rug. He asked if he could see it. I said yes. He came out.

I showed him the rug. He compared it to the photograph from the magazine. He said something like the photo and the rug looking identical.” Delos paused, awaiting reaction.

“What did you say to that?”

“I agree they looked very similar.”

A tap at the office portal interrupted the answer.

Tommy Vang stood there, a tray cart in front of him, smiling and waiting.

Delos waved him in. Vang deposited a tray on a serv-THE SHAPE SHIFTER

99

ing table beside Delos’s desk, slid it into reachable position between the two men, poured coffee into two saucered cups, removed the lids from a silver sugar bowl and a container of cream. Then, with a flourish and a broad smile, he whipped away a white cloth that had been covering a plate of cake slices and a bowl of nuts.

“He makes that cake himself,” Delos said. “Fruitcake.

It’s downright delicious.”

“It looks very good,” Leaphorn said, admiring the cherry on top. He reached for his coffee cup.

“But back to your question,” Delos said. “I told Bork that old rugs look a lot alike to me, so he showed me a white spot in the rug. Said it was a bird feather woven in. And a rough place. He said that was from some sort of bush that grows out at the Bosque Redondo camp where the Navajos were held captive. And he showed me the same spots on the photograph. I couldn’t argue with that. Then he asked me if I knew the rug was supposedly burned in a trading post fire. I said I’d heard about that, but figured it must have been another rug. And he said it looked to him like a hard rug to copy, and asked me where I had gotten it. He said the man who owned the trading post had collected insurance on it, and it looked like an insurance fraud case.”

Leaphorn nodded. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I had bought it at the Indian market, or whatever they call it, in Santa Fe several years ago.

Anyway, I got it from an Indian under that sidewalk sales area on the plaza.”

“Not in a gallery? That sidewalk at the Palace of the Governors?”

100

TONY HILLERMAN

“Right,” Delos said.

“Who sold it to you?” Leaphorn asked, thinking he was wasting his breath. He was.

Delos frowned, looked thoughtful. “It was an Indian name,” he said. “Spanish-sounding, but I’m almost sure he was from one of the pueblos. Two of the women sitting just up from him against the wall were from San Felipe Pueblo, I remember that.”

“Did the salesman tell you where he got it?”

“Said it was an old Navajo rug. His mother had bought it years ago. Either at a tribal fair on the Navajo Reservation, or maybe at that rug auction the weavers have at the Crownpoint Elementary School gymnasium.

He said when she died, she left it to him.”

“No names then.”

Delos shook his head. “Afraid it’s not much help.”

“Oh, well,” Leaphorn said, and sipped his coffee. Excellent. He sipped again. “At least it tells me that this isn’t the rug destroyed in that fire.” But as he said it, he was thinking he hadn’t phrased that well. He should have said it proved that the tale-teller rug hadn’t been burned. But actually, it hadn’t really proved anything.

“Try that fruitcake,” Delos said. “Tommy’s a damn fine cook, and that cake is his pride and joy. Everything’s in it. Apricots, apple, cherries, six kinds of nuts, just the right spices, all measured out just right. World’s best fruitcake.”

“It sure looks good,” Leaphorn said. “Trouble is, I never did learn to like fruitcake.” He dipped into the nut dish. “I’ll eat more than my share of those walnuts and pecans instead.”

Delos shrugged. “Well, I’ll guarantee you that you’d THE SHAPE SHIFTER

101

like Tommy’s version of it. I’ll have him make you a little snack package to take with you. If you don’t like it, toss it out for the birds. Now, let’s go see what you think of this famous rug.”

The rug was displayed on the wall in a little sitting room adjoining the office, mounted on a hardwood frame.

Leaphorn stared at it, trying to remember the time before the fatal fire when he examined it in Totter’s little gallery. It looked the same. He found the brilliant red spots formed by the liquid taken from the spider’s egg sacs, the little white spots formed by the dove’s feathers, other feathers from birds of different colors, and places where fibers from cactus, snakeweed, and other flora of eastern New Mexico grew. He found the sign of the trickster coyote, and of witchcraft, of the silver dollar, and of other assorted symbols of greed, the ultimate evil in the Dineh value system. And, sickening to Leaphorn, all of that evidence of sorrow and disharmony was surrounded by the enfolding symbol of Rainbow Man, the guardian spirit of Dineh harmony. That made it all an ultimate irony. The weaving, as his grandmother had always told them, was the work of an artist. But it was easy to understand why the shamans who saw it condemned it and put their curse on it.

Delos was staring at it, too.

“I always thought it was an interesting work,” he said. “After that picture got published in the magazine, a lawyer I know told me old man Totter had put in an insurance claim on it for forty thousand dollars. Said he finally settled for twelve thousand on the rug. About half of what he got for all the other stuff that he claimed was destroyed in that fire.”

102

TONY HILLERMAN

“You think this could be a copy of the original?” Leaphorn asked.

Delos weighed that, staring at the rug. He shook his head. “I have no idea. No way for me to judge.”

“Well, if my opinion was recognized as expert, I’d tell the insurance company that here it is, the original, right off old man Totter’s wall, that they were swindled. But the statute of limitations on that’s run out long ago, I guess.

And anyway, old man Totter’s dead.”

Delos’s eyebrows rose. “Dead?”

“His obituary was published in the Gallup Independent,” Leaphorn said.

“Really?” Delos said. “When did that happen?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Leaphorn said. “I heard they had an obituary item in the paper some years ago.”

“I never met the man,” Delos said. “But I guess he’d make another case for that rug bringing bad luck with it.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “Why don’t you get rid of it?”

“You know,” Delos said, looking thoughtful, “I hadn’t heard about Totter dying. I think I’ll see what I can get for it.”

“I would,” Leaphorn said. “I’m not really what you’d call superstitious, but I wouldn’t want it hanging on my wall.”

Delos laughed, a wry sound. “Think I’ll advertise it in the antique collectors’ journals. List all those semigeno-cidal horrors that inspired those women to weave it, and all the bad luck that has gone with it. That kind of legendary stuff makes artifacts more precious to some.” He laughed again. “Like the pistol that killed President Lin-coln. Or the dagger that stabbed Julius Caesar.” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

103

“I know,” Leaphorn said. “We’ve had people contact us about trying to get genuine suicide notes. Or trying to get us to make copies for them.”

“No accounting for taste, I guess,” Delos said, smiling at Leaphorn. “For example, just like your saying you don’t like fruitcake.”

13

Halfway down the slope from the Delos mansion a sharp

“ting-a-ling” sound from the seat beside Leaphorn startled him and interrupted his troubled thoughts. It came, he realized, from the cell phone he’d forgotten in the pocket of his jacket. He pulled to the side of the road, parked, fished it out, pushed the Talk button, identified himself, heard Bernadette Manuelito’s voice.

“Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Bernie was saying, “this is the former Officer Bernadette Manuelito, who is now Mrs. Bernadette Chee. We decided not to wait for your callback. Got that obituary information you needed. Or at least some of it.”

“I’m not used to this Mrs. Chee title yet,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll just call you Bernie.”

“I’m going to be Officer Manuelito again pretty soon,” she said, sounding happy about it. “Captain Largo said they kept that job open for me. Isn’t that great?” 106

TONY HILLERMAN

“Great for us,” Leaphorn said, realizing as he said it that he wasn’t part of that “us” anymore. “Great for the Navajo Tribal Police Department. How is your husband behaving?”

“He’s wonderful,” Bernie said. “I should have captured him long ago. And you should come to visit us. I want you to see how we’re fixing up Jim’s trailer house.

It’s going to be very nice.”

“Well, I’m happy you got him, Bernie. And I will accept that invitation as soon as I can get there.” He found himself trying to imagine Chee’s rusty trailer with curtains in the windows, throw rugs here and there. Maybe even some colorful wallpaper pasted to those aluminum walls.

“Here’s the stuff on the Totter obituary,” Bernie said, reverting to her role as a policewoman. “You want me to read it to you?”

“Sure.”

“Erwin James Totter, operator of Totter’s Trading Post and Art Gallery north of Gallup for many years, died last week in Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Oklahoma City. He was admitted there earlier this month with complications following a heart attack.

“Mr. Totter was born in Ada, Oklahoma, April 3, 1939.

A bachelor, he left no known dependents. A navy veteran who had served in the Vietnam War, he was interred in the Veterans Administration cemetery at Oklahoma City.

He had asked that, in lieu of flowers, any memorial contributions be made to the Red Cross in an account at the Wells Fargo Bank of Oklahoma City.”

Bernie paused. “It wasn’t very long,” she said, sounding regretful.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

107

“That was it?” Leaphorn asked. “No mention of any family. Nothing about any survivors?”

“Just what I read to you,” Bernie said. “The woman at the desk, the one who helped me find it, she said she thought it came in a letter, with some cash with it to pay the publication fee. She couldn’t remember who sent it.

She said maybe Mr. Totter had written it himself when he knew he was dying and just got the hospital to mail it.

Does that sound reasonable?”

“Not very,” Leaphorn said. He chuckled. “But then nothing much about this whole business seems very reasonable. For example, I’m not sure what the devil I’m doing out here.”

“You want me to check on it?” Bernie’s tone carried a sort of plaintive sound.

“Golly, Bernie,” Leaphorn said. “I hope it didn’t sound like I was complaining. You did exactly what I asked you to do. Tell the truth, I think I’m just floundering around feeling frustrated.”

“Maybe I could find out from the bank if any contributions had come in. And who made them. Would that help?”

Leaphorn laughed. “Bernie, the trouble is, I don’t really know what I’m looking for. I guess the bank would cooperate on that. We don’t seem to have any reason for asking. If we did, I guess someone could check for people named Totter in Ada. Find out something about him. It sounds like a small town.”

“No crime involved though? Is that right? Wasn’t there a fire involved?”

“A fire, yes. But no evidence of arson. A man who worked for Totter was burned up, but the arson folks 108

TONY HILLERMAN

blamed a drunk smoking in bed and no sign of crime beyond carelessness,” he said. “Anyway, thanks. And now can I ask you another favor?”

This produced a pause.

After all, Leaphorn thought, she’s a new bride, busy with all sorts of things. “Never mind. I don’t want to impose on—”

“Sure,” Bernie said. “Doing what?”

Leaphorn struggled briefly with his conscience and won. “If you are still formally, officially a policewoman—

you are, aren’t you? Just on a leave?”

“That’s right.”

“Then maybe you could ask that hospital in Oklahoma City to give you the date and details of Totter’s death, mortuary arrangements, all that.”

“I’ll do it,” Bernie said, “and if Captain Largo sus-pends me because I can’t explain what I am doing that for, I will refer him to Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn.”

“Fair enough,” Leaphorn said, “and I’ll have to tell him I don’t know myself.”

Leaphorn spent a few moments digesting the information, or lack of it, that Bernie Manuelito’s call had provided. Its effect was to add one more oddity to the pile of oddities that seemed to cluster around this damned tale-teller’s rug. For him, at least, it had started with an oddity.

Why would anyone, especially anyone driving a fairly new, fairly expensive vehicle, get into the work shed behind Grandma Peshlakai’s hogan and steal two lard buckets full of the pinyon sap she had collected? Maybe he shouldn’t link that with the rug. It was a separate case. A wee little larceny memorable to him only because Grandma’s resentment of the way he had abandoned her prob-THE SHAPE SHIFTER

109

lem to deal with the case of a deceased white man still seemed morally justified. But now it seemed vaguely possible there was a link. Grandma had found the purloined lard buckets at Totter’s gallery, which would make him the most likely suspect in that theft. And he had owned the rug. And now he was buried in a Veterans Administration cemetery at Oklahoma City. Or seemed to be.

Leaphorn groaned. To hell with this. He was going home. He would make a fire in the fireplace. He was going to spread his old Triple A Indian Country map out on the kitchen table, put a calendar down beside it, and try to make some sense out of all of this. Then he would call Mrs. Bork and tell her to let him know if anything turned up, if there was anything he could help her with. Better to make such unpleasant calls when one was at home and comfortable.

He opened the glove box, pushed the cell phone back into its place there, and encountered the neatly folded sack lunch Tommy Vang had handed him as he escorted him back to his truck.

“For your drive home,” Tommy had said, smiling at him. “Mr. Delos says people get hungry when they are driving. It be good to eat.”

True enough, Leaphorn thought, but this lunch would be better to eat if he took the time and trouble to put in the cooler box he kept behind the seat for such hunger and thirst moments. He leaned over the seat, opened the lid, and slid the sack in between his thermos jug and a shoe box that usually held a candy bar or two, and on which Louisa had lettered “Emergency Rations.” That reminded him of home, and he suddenly wanted to be there.

And he was, finally. But only after about five hours of 110

TONY HILLERMAN

driving eastward on Interstate 40 through Winslow, then northward on Arizona 87 past Chimney Butte to the turn east on U.S. 15 through Dilkon through Bidahochi, Lower Greasewood, and Cornfield to the Ganado junction, then north again on U.S. 64 past Two Story and St. Michael’s to Window Rock and home. On that last stretch Leaphorn was watching the big harvest moon rising over the Defiance Plateau. By the time he had parked, unloaded his suitcase from the car, and got the fireplace going and the coffeepot perking, he was almost too exhausted to take the time to eat the late supper he’d planned. But he poured himself a cup anyway, got two slices of salami from the refrigerator, and a loaf from the breadbox. Doing that reminded him of the lunch sack Tommy had handed him when he was bidding good-bye to Jason Delos. It was still in his pickup, still protected from his appetite by his aversion to whatever it was in fruitcake that gave him indigestion. Well, it would keep until tomorrow. He sat down with a sigh and switched on the TV.

It was time, he noticed, for the ten o’clock news. He ate his first sandwich, thinking his thoughts to the background sound of a car dealer touting the benefits of a Dodge Ram pickup. His thoughts were not particularly cheerful. The fireplace was helping, but the house still had that cold lonely feeling that greets one coming home to a vacant place. He spent a moment remembering how pleasant it had been when Emma was alive. Glad to see him, interested in hearing what the day had done for him, sympathetic when fate had dealt him nothing but disappointments and frustrations, often able to gently and obliquely make him aware of something helpful he’d overlooked, something he’d failed to check. In an odd way THE SHAPE SHIFTER

111

Louisa Bourbonette was helpful, too. She wasn’t Emma.

No one could ever replace Emma. But it would be pleasant if Bourbonette were here tonight. She’d be reporting what she had added to her oral history archives—telling him another version of an oft-told southern Ute myth, or maybe happily reporting she found a new tale that extended the old ones. But Bourbonette wasn’t Emma. If Emma were here now, she would be reminding him that he should close that chain mail screen in front of the fireplace better because the pinyon logs he was burning would be popping as the sap heated and begin spraying sparks and ashes out onto the floor. Leaphorn leaned forward, adjusted the screen properly, and dusted back the ash that had already escaped. Louisa probably wouldn’t have noticed that problem.

And while he was considering their differences and sipping his second cup of coffee, the newscaster’s voice was intruding on his thoughts. Someone named Elrod was being quoted about finding a fatal accident.

“While state police wouldn’t confirm the victim’s identity until next of kin had been notified, sources at the scene said the body that Mr. Elrod found in the vehicle was believed to be that of a former Arizona lawman and a well-known Flagstaff businessman. His vehicle had apparently swerved on a sharp curve where the county road in-tersects with the access road to Forest Service fire watch stations in the San Francisco Peaks. Police reported the vehicle skidded in the roadside gravel and then rolled down the embankment and plunged into the canyon.

Officers said the car wasn’t seen by passing traffic until Mr. Elrod noticed the slanting afternoon sunlight reflecting off the vehicle’s windshield. Elrod told police he then 112

TONY HILLERMAN

pulled off the road, climbed down, saw the victim’s body in the front seat, and called the police on his cell phone.

The police spokesman said the accident had apparently happened about two days ago and the view of the vehicle was obscured by trees and brush.

“In another tragic accident here in Phoenix, police report a local teenager was killed when the all-terrain vehicle he was driving along an irrigation drain flipped over and rolled. Police said . . .”

But Leaphorn was no longer listening. He considered the “apparently happened about two days ago” statement. He put down his coffee cup, reached for the telephone, and dialed Sergeant Garcia’s home number. He considered the timing and the circumstances while the phone rang and the answering machine told him to leave a message.

“Sergeant, this is Joe Leaphorn. Call me as soon as you can about that wreck. If it was two days ago, it sure sounds like it might have been Mel Bork. And if it was Bork, then I think we might want to go for an autopsy.” He paused. “Even if it looks just like another traffic accident.”

The rest of the evening news flickered past on the screen without distracting Leaphorn from his thoughts.

He pulled open the drawer in the table under the telephone, fumbled through it for a notepad and pen stock-piled there, opened it to a blank page, thought a moment, and printed SHEWNACK near the top. He underlined that, skipped down two inches, wrote TOTTER, stared at the auto dealer offering cash back to purchasers of Dodge Ram trucks, and tapped the pen against the pad. A bit lower, he wrote MEL BORK. Then he stopped. He reached out and THE SHAPE SHIFTER

113

switched off the TV, considered the flames working about the pinyon logs, shook his head, and started writing.

Under Shewnack’s name he wrote:

FBI Most Wanted. Two homicides at Handy’s. FBI thinks probably others.

Handy’s killing, summer 1961. Shewnack probably in his thirties then, been around for several months.

Came from either California or Midwest, or who knows where. Disappeared. Shows up at Totter’s Trading Post/Gallery in 1965. Was he intending to rob Totter? What happened to the loot he took from Handy’s? Had Shewnack tried to kill Totter as he’d killed Handy, gotten killed by Totter instead, and then Totter decides to burn the body erasing evidence of the crime, leaving it so he could keep any loot Shewnack had with him from the Handy’s crime, and add to the profits by pulling off a fire insurance fraud?

He stared at the last line a moment, shook his head and crossed it out. It just didn’t seem quite logical.

Under Totter’s name he wrote:

Born 1939, Ada, Okla. Came to Four-Corners Country when? Opened trading-post gallery when? Place burned autumn l965. Totter dies in Okla City in 1967. Leaves no kith nor kin, no survivors. So why did he go back to Oklahoma?

Leaphorn finished his coffee. Printed JASON DELOS on 114

TONY HILLERMAN

the sheet, got up to refill his cup in the kitchen, and then stood staring into the fire, thinking of the two empty five-gallon lard cans Grandma Peshlakai had found at Totter’s gallery. Navajos used lots of lard and usually got it in those cans because the cans themselves were so useful.

His own fire was burning hot now, and the room was filled with the wonderful perfume that only pinyon fires can produce. The aroma of the forest, of quiet places, of peace, tranquility. He sat again, picked up the pen and wrote:

Few days before Totter fire, Totter apparently stole pinyon sap from Grandma Peshlakai’s work shed.

Why? As fire accelerant? To get fire hot enough to destroy Shewnack’s body beyond identification?

Why would he do that? The burned man was apparently not a local. Nobody seemed to come forward to ask about him. Garcia guessed he was a tran-sient coming through who had noticed Totter’s HELP

WANTED sign. But coming through from where?

He looked at that, produced a wry smile, and added:

“Or for waterproofing some of his own baskets for sale to tourists?”

He started to scratch that out. Stopped. Shook his head. Instead wrote: Joe Leaphorn LOSING IT!!

Skipped some space on the page. Wrote:

“An’n ti’.” Frowned. Lined that out and wrote “an’ t I’.” Studied that sort of generic Navajo word for witchcraft in general, said it aloud, approved it, underlined it. Then he wrote an’t’zi, the Navajo word for the specie of witchcraft employing corpse powder poisons to cause fatal illnesses.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

115

Under that he wrote “ye-na-L o si,” underlined it, thought a moment and slashed an X over the entire list. The ye-na-L o si expression described what the belagaana schol-ars preferred to call skinwalkers, relating them to their European witchcraft stories of werewolves.

At the bottom of the page, he underlined Leaphorn LOSING IT!! And added: SEEMS LIKE I HAVE ALREADY

LOST IT.

He wadded the paper. Tossed it into the fire. Leaphorn didn’t believe in witchcraft. He believed in evil, firmly believed in it, saw it practiced all around him in its various forms—greed, ambition, malice—and a variety of others.

But he didn’t believe in supernatural witches. Or did he?

And he was dead tired and, to hell with it all, he was going to bed to get some sleep.

Easier said than done. He found himself thinking of Emma, missing her, yearning for her. Telling her about the carpet, about Delos, about Totter’s fire, about Shewnack, about the Handy case, about people who didn’t seem to have beginnings anywhere and who faded away into ashes and odd mailed-in obituary notices. And Emma smiling at him, understanding him all too well, telling him that she guessed he already had this all figured out and his problem was he just didn’t like his solution because he didn’t like the idea of “shape shifters,” of his suspects turning into owls and flying away. Which seemed painfully close to true.

He drifted from that into wishing that he could have been in the hogan all those winters when his elderly maternal relatives were telling their winter stories—

explaining the reasons behind the curing ceremonials, the basis for Dineh values. He’d missed too much of that.

116

TONY HILLERMAN

Emma hadn’t. Neither had Jim Chee. Chee, for example, had once passed along to him how Hosteen Adowe Claw, one of Chee’s shaman kinsmen, had clarified the meaning of the incident in the story of the Dineh emergence from the flooded third world into this glittering world, in which First Man realizes he had left his medicine bundle behind, with all of humanity’s greed, malice, and assorted other evils. And then sent a heron back into the flood waters of that world destroyed by God because of those evils and told that diving bird to find the bundle and bring it to him.

And tell the heron not to tell anyone that it contained evil, to just tell them it was “the way to make money.”

14

It proved to be another uneasy sleep, broken by troublesome dreams, by long thoughts about whether the dead man found in the car was Mel Bork, and if not him, who, and what then had happened to Bork? When Leaphorn finally came fully awake, it was because he thought he had heard a door opening. He sat up, totally alert, tensed, listening. Now came the sound of the door closing. It would have been the garage/kitchen door. Now the sound of footsteps. Light footsteps. Someone trying not to disturb him. Probably Louisa, he thought. Probably she had cut off her southern Ute research a little early. Some of the tension went away. But not much. He slid across over the bed toward the nightstand, pulled open the drawer, feeling for the little .32-caliber pistol he kept there, finding it, clutching it, remembering that once, when someone with children was visiting, Louisa had persuaded him to leave it unloaded.

118

TONY HILLERMAN

The sound of another door opening. At Louisa’s adjoining bedroom just down the hall. More steps. Sounds of bathroom water running. Sounds of the shower. Then assorted sounds that Leaphorn identified as connected with unpacking a suitcase, hanging things in the closet, putting things in drawers. Then the sneaky sound of slipper-clad feet. The sound of his doorknob turning, of the door to his bedroom opening just a little. Light from the hall streaming in.

He could see the outline of Louisa’s head, peering in at him.

“Joe,” Louisa’s said, very softly, “you asleep?” Leaphorn exhaled a huge breath.

“I was,” he said.

“Sorry I woke you,” Louisa said.

“Don’t be,” Leaphorn said. “I am delighted it’s you.” She laughed. “Just who were you expecting?” Leaphorn didn’t know how to answer that. He said,

“Did you find any good Southern Ute sources?”

“I did! A really great old lady. Full of stories about all their troubles with the Comanches when they were being pushed west into Utah. But go back to sleep. I’ll give you a complete report at breakfast. And how about you? All quiet on the home front?”

“Relatively,” Leaphorn said. “But if you just drove in, you must be tired. It can wait. Get some sleep.” Leaphorn’s next awakening was much less stress-ful. He was lured out of his sleep by the sound of perking coffee and the aroma of bacon in the frying pan. Louisa was at the kitchen table, reading something in her notebook, sipping coffee. Leaphorn poured himself a cup and joined her. She told him about what her very, very elderly THE SHAPE SHIFTER

119

Ute source had told her of the clever tactics her tribesmen had used to confuse the Comanches, about horses stolen and enemies tricked. She was heading back to her office at Northern Arizona University after breakfast, but first she needed an account of what Leaphorn had been doing, and his copy of last month’s utility bills so she could pay her share. While she served the bacon and eggs, Leaphorn dug out the paperwork and decided what, and how much, he wanted to tell her. He wouldn’t tell her that he was afraid that Mel Bork was dead, not until that was confirmed. And even if it was, he didn’t think he’d report his suspicions about Tommy Vang’s fruitcake. That all seemed sort of silly to him, even though he’d been offered the stuff himself. He was pretty sure it would sound even sillier to the professor.

He started his account with the letter from Mel Bork.

He skipped through all that happened next rapidly, skipping a lot of it, and being stopped several times by her questions about the rug. By the time he’d finished his recitation, he found himself forced back to his conclusion of the previous night—that he had wasted a lot of time and accomplished nothing useful.

But Louisa’s interest, naturally, was in the culturally significant rug. The history of that weaving fit pre-cisely into her professional preoccupation with tribal cultures. What did Leaphorn think had happened to it? That led up and down the list of questions that Leaphorn had been asking himself, and he couldn’t answer a single one of them with anything better than guesses. Louisa’s curiosity eventually, over the second cup of coffee, settled on Jason Delos. One of her graduate students at NAU had done some landscape work at 120

TONY HILLERMAN

his place, had become an acquaintance of Tommy Vang, and had regaled one of her graduate student sessions with Vang’s stories of life among his fellow tribesmen in the mountains along the Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos borders.

“It all seemed totally authentic,” she said, “and interesting. But what we were hearing, of course, was second-hand. So I sent Mr. Vang an invitation to come in and talk to our little seminar. But he didn’t come.”

“Did he say why?” Leaphorn asked. “I’d love to know how he got connected with Mr. Delos.”

“He just said he couldn’t do it,” Louisa said. “Our landscaping grad student said he had the impression that Tommy’s family had been some of the tribesmen who worked with the CIA in the latter phases of the Vietnam War, about the time we were poking into Cambodia. This student of mine was sort of edgy about it. He told me, more or less privately, that he thought Tommy’s family had been sort of wiped out during all that back-and-forth fighting, that Delos had been with the CIA and had sort of rescued him as a boy and brought him back to the States.”

“Well, now,” Leaphorn said.

“Does that sound sensible? Based on what you know?”

“It sounds as sensible as anything else I know about Delos. Which is damned near nothing,” Leaphorn said.

“About all I know for almost certain is that he is a dedicated big-game hunter, likes to collect antiques; and if you’d like to have that old tale-teller rug, he says he’s thinking about getting rid of it.”

“I’ve heard he’s fairly new to Flagstaff,” Louisa said.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

121

“Certainly not old family. And I gather he doesn’t mix much socially.”

Leaphorn nodded. “That fits,” he said.

Louisa had been studying him during this conversation.

“Joe,” she said, “you seem sort of down. Depressed.

Tired. Is this business of being retired getting to you?

From what you said, this rug affair sort of ties in with one of your old cases. So it doesn’t sound like being retired has stopped you from acting like a detective.” Leaphorn laughed. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the utility bills, and handed them to her.

“Perfect time for this. Here what it’s costing you for this unorthodox, possibly even un-American arrangement we’ve been having. But I’ll let you do the figuring of the percentages.”

She took the slips, glanced at them.

“I was just going to remind you about that,” she said, smiling at him. “I will turn them over to my accountant at the university to make sure you’re not cheating. I will also remind you that I am behind on our room rental deal.

Remember, I stayed up here about three times during the summer.”

During all this Leaphorn had been studying her, remembering Emma.

“You know, Louisa, we could save this paperwork, this sort of thing, if you would just go ahead and marry me.” She smiled at him. “You have probably just established a Ripley’s Believe It or Not record for the most un-romantic proposal ever made.”

“It wasn’t intended to be romantic,” Leaphorn said.

“It was intended to be just downright practical.” 122

TONY HILLERMAN

She looked down at her coffee cup, picked it up, held it, replaced it in the saucer, smiled at him ruefully.

“Do you remember what I said the first time you came up with this idea? Let’s see. About nineteen—”

“Several years ago,” Leaphorn said, interrupting her.

“I remember exactly every word of it. You said. ‘Joe, I tried being married once. I didn’t care for it.’ ”

“Yep,” she said, looking at him fondly. “That’s exactly the way I put it.”

“Have you since changed your mind? Found me more attractive?”

That brought a thoughtful silence. A sigh. Another picking up and putting down of the coffee cup. Then:

“Joe, I’ll bet you remember that adage—I’m sure you do because I think you are the very first person I heard using it. It’s about how hard it is for old dogs to learn new tricks. Or something like that. Anyway, how do I say it? I guess I’ll use something an old lady once told me in one of my oral history interviews. She said, ‘Don’t marry a really good friend ’cause they’re a lot better than a husband.’ ”

Leaphorn let that hang there. He was noticing that his reaction to her reaction was a sort of relief.

She was watching him, looking sort of penitent. “Or maybe I got that wrong. Maybe she said it would spoil the friendship.”

“However she worded it,” Leaphorn said, “I damn sure don’t want that to happen to us.”

“Nor me either,” Louisa said, and got up and carried her plate, cup, saucer, and cutlery to the sink. “And just to make sure you don’t think I might be willing to revert to full-time housekeeper, I will leave this in the sink for you THE SHAPE SHIFTER

123

to wash, while I collect my stuff and head south toward my great stack of midterm papers waiting to be graded.” She started to add his plate to her load, but stopped. Instead, she smiled at him.

“Good friends are too hard to collect,” she said.

15

The good mood Louisa’s attitude had left with Joe Leaphorn lasted only about half an hour. While he was watching the professor drive away, with a mixture of sadness and relief, he heard his telephone ringing. It would be Grace Bork, he thought, calling to tell him that Mel Bork was, just as he suspected, the man found dead in the wreck. It would lead to a conversation he’d expected, something he dreaded. What could he tell her ? Only that he had wasted his time. But the voice on the telephone was Sergeant Kelly Garcia’s.

“Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Garcia said. “I want you to tell me how you knew that body would be Mel Bork?”

“I was just guessing,” Leaphorn said. “That’s all I’ve been doing lately. So it was him? What was the cause of death?”

Garcia snorted. “Wasn’t it obvious? You’re not satisfied with tumbling your car down into a canyon, landing 126

TONY HILLERMAN

upside down in what’s left of it, broken bones, multiple concussions and contusions, general bodily trauma?

That’s what we have. And you still want an autopsy.”

“Don’t you?”

That produced a moment of silence.

“Well, I guess I have to admit it would relieve my mind,” Garcia said. “I’d like to know what caused him to be so damned careless on that curve.”

“Have you asked about an autopsy?”

“Yeah, sort of suggested to Saunders that I’d like one.

And he said, What for ? And I said an old retired Navajo cop I used to know is sort of vaguely suspicious about it and asked me to check on the cause of death. And Saunders said the only problem about that is deciding which of his nineteen or so auto crash trauma injuries actually did the job. He offered to take me in there to look at the body and let me take my pick.”

“Is the pathologist still Roger Saunders?” Leaphorn asked. “I’ve always heard tales of how testy he was. Did he say you’d have to get a court order, or what?” Garcia chuckled. “You know about Roger then, don’t you? He told me he is backed up with work on actual homicide cases. But when I whined a little, he said that if we can arouse his curiosity, he’ll do it.”

“Tell him we think Bork might have been poisoned by a slice of fruitcake. That should get him interested.” Garcia laughed. “I don’t think so. I think he’d refer me to a psychiatrist. I’m dead certain he’d ask me why we think that. Why do we?”

Leaphorn described the urging he’d received to eat the special cake made by Mr. Delos’s cook and help-mate, a man named Tommy Vang, and how Bork had THE SHAPE SHIFTER

127

been given a slice of same as a snack just before he drove away from the Delos place, and how the timing made it just about right for Bork to be feeling its effects and losing control of his car about where he did.

Leaphorn added a few details to his explanation and awaited a response.

It was a skeptical-sounding snort.

“You’re not happy with that?”

“Well, it explains what you mean when you said you were guessing,” Garcia said. “About a dozen guesses to reach that conclusion. You guess that Bork ate the cake, and when he ate it, it took however long for whatever poison to work, that Mr. Delos has a motive, and so forth.”

“I plead guilty to that.”

“Well, I’ll go anyway. You have anything else we could tell Saunders to get him interested?”

“That’s it,” Leaphorn said.

“That’s it then. Come on,” Garcia said, his tone somewhere between scornful and incredulous. “But you still want me to push for the autopsy?”

“Well, there’s also the fact that Bork, a longtime law officer, is a very experienced driver in our mountain-ous country. He is extremely unlikely to have that sort of accident. Don’t you agree? And we can also argue that Delos probably thought Bork was poking into some sort of insurance fraud involving that tale-teller rug. Maybe that would satisfy the need for a motive. And then maybe you could get him to listen to that threatening telephone tape.”

More silence from Garcia. Then a sigh.

“Well, it might appeal to Dr. Saunders. He always 128

TONY HILLERMAN

seems to get a kick out of discovering different kinds of homicide weapons anyway. Breaks the monotony. Maybe that notion of a fruitcake as the murder weapon would appeal to him.”

“And Sergeant, would you please let me know what he finds out? Delos gave me a slice of that fruitcake, too.

I have it in a sack in my truck cooler box.” Garcia laughed. “Playing it safe, are you? Well, keep it there a while, and remind me of your cell phone number.”

Leaphorn provided the number. “And one more thing,” he said. “Do you remember the names of the FBI people who were there at Totter’s Trading Post? Working on it after the fire.”

“Well, let me think about that a minute,” Garcia said.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said, and waited.

“Well, let’s see.” He chuckled. “One of them was Special Agent John O’Malley. I’ll bet you remember him.”

“Unfortunately,” Leaphorn said. “I had some trouble with him down through the years.”

“Me, too,” Garcia said. “And I remember Ted Rostic was there, too. Out of the Gallup office then, I think. Nice guy, he was. And then Sharkey. Remember him? Don’t recall his first name.”

“Jay, I think it was. Or Jason. Another hard man to work with. Anyone else?”

“Probably. They sort of swarmed in when it turned out the burned man was Shewnack. But I don’t remember who.”

“All retired by now, I guess.”

“Probably. I heard O’Malley had died back in Wash-THE SHAPE SHIFTER

129

ington. Don’t know about Sharkey. I know Rostic is retired. I heard he lives in Gallup.”

“Good,” Leaphorn said.

“For what?” Garcia said. “What are you after?”

“I can’t seem to let this thing go,” Leaphorn said. “I mean that Totter fire. The whole thing. If I can get hold of Rostic, I’ll see what he remembers about it.” The information operator found no number for Ted Rostic in the Gallup directory.

“But, there’s a Ted in Crownpoint. Could that be him?”

“I’ll bet it is.”

“Want me to ring him for you? For seventy-five cents?”

“I’m on Social Security,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll dial it myself.” He did, and Rostic answered on the fourth ring.

“Leaphorn. Leaphorn,” Rostic said. “That sounds familiar. Sounds like a young fellow I knew once with the Navajo Tribal Police.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “We met on that Ashie Pinto business. When one of our officers got burned up in his car.”

“Uh-huh,” Rostic said. “That was a sad piece of business.”

“I’m interested in another fire now. The one years ago at Totter’s Trading Post with an FBI Most-Wanted felon burned up in it. Do you remember that one?”

“Oh, boy,” Rostic said. “I sure do. Ray Shewnack was the victim’s name. I think that was my first real excite-ment as a police officer. Real big deal. Finding one of our top targets. A real genuine villain, that Shewnack was.”

“Any reason you can’t talk about it now?” 130

TONY HILLERMAN

“I’m retired,” Rostic said. “But it’s hard for me to believe anyone would still be interested. What are you doing? You wouldn’t be writing one of those serial killer celebrity books, would you?”

“No. Just trying to satisfy one of those old nagging questions.”

“Where you calling from?”

“Home in Shiprock. I’m retired, too.”

“And probably just as bored with it as I am,” said Rostic. “If you want to drive on over, I’ll meet you at that little place across from the Crownpoint High School. How about for lunch? Now you’ve reminded me of that business, I’d like to talk about it, too. Could you make it for noon?”

“Easily. Plenty of time,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll see you there.”

Plenty of time, indeed. Just about seventy miles from Leaphorn’s garage to the fried-chicken place across the street from Crownpoint High, and it was now just a little after sunrise. He would just cruise along, maybe stop here and there to see if he could find an old friend at the Yah-Ta-Hay store, and look in at the chapter houses at Twin Lakes, Coyote Canyon, and Standing Rock. In his days as Officer Leaphorn, patrolling that part of the Rez, he had learned the chapter house almost always had a pot of coffee on the stove and maybe a muffin or something to go with it while he updated information about current affairs involving cattle theft, booze bootlegging, or other disruptions of harmony. He would use this unhurried trip to see if he could get himself into the proper mood that the retirement world seems to demand, if one was going to survive in it.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

131

The stop at Ya-Ta-Hay was a disappointment. Those working at the place seemed to be universally of the much-younger generation. No one he knew. At Twin Lakes, the parking lot was empty except for an old Ford Pinto, whose owner was an elderly lady whom he had known for about forty years but who was the grumpy sort.

He was not in a mood today to be the audience for her in-exhaustible armory of complaints about the ineptitude of the Tribal Council, nor to provide explanations for why the Navajo Tribal Police could not stamp out the reservation’s plague of drunk drivers.

His luck got better after he made the turn toward the east onto Navajo Route 9. The morning sunlight was glittering off the early snowpack on the high slopes of Soodzil, Mount Taylor on belagaana road maps, or dootl’izhiidziil to traditional Navajo shaman; it was Joe Leaphorn’s favorite view. Locally it was called Turquoise Mountain, and known as the sacred mountain of the South, built by First Man of materials brought up from the dark, flooded third world, and pinned to the earth with a magic flint knife by that powerful yei when it tried to float away. As Leaphorn had learned in the hogan stories of his childhood winters, it had been magically decorated with turquoise, fog, and female rain, and had been made home of dootl’altsoil

’at’eed and anaa’ji at’eed, whose names translated to Yellow Corn Girl and Turquoise Boy, both friendly yei. The holy people had also made the mountain home for all sorts of animals, including the first flocks of wild turkey Leaphorn had seen.

But most important in Navajo mythology, it was where Monster Slayer and his thoughtful twin, Born for Water, had confronted Ye’iitsoh, the chief of the enemy gods.

132

TONY HILLERMAN

They had killed him on the mountain after a terrible battle, thus beginning their campaign to clear this glittering world from the evils of greed and malice, the nasty conduct that had caused God to destroy the third world and which, alas, had followed the Dineh up from below.

And, Leaphorn was thinking, it was still on the prowl in this part of the glittering world, or why would all these things that were puzzling him—and killing people—be happening?

As he pulled into the parking lot at the Coyote Canyon Chapter House and saw old Eugene Bydonie standing at the door, holding his big black reservation hat in his hand and saying good-bye to an even more elderly lady, Leaphorn climbed out of his car and waved. “Ya teeh albini, Eugene,” he shouted. “Is the coffeepot on?” Bydonie peered, recognized him, shouted, “And good morning to you, Lieutenant. It’s been a long time, Joe.

What crime have we committed now to warrant some police attention again?”

“Well, you gave me stale coffee last time I was here.

How is it today?”

“Come on in,” Bydonie said, laughing and holding the door. “I just made a fresh supply.”

While drinking it, they discussed old times, mutual friends—many of whom seemed to be dying off—and the bad conditions of grazing, the price of sheep, and the higher and higher fees the shearers were trying to charge. They concluded with a rundown of which weaver had been selling what at last month’s Crownpoint rug auction. And finally Leaphorn asked him if he knew Ted Rostic.

“Rostic? There at Crownpoint? I think I’ve met him.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

133

They say he’s married to Mary Ann Kayete. Daughter of Old Lady Notah. Streams Comes Together people, and I think her daddy was a Towering House man.”

“Oh,” Leaphorn said. “What else do you know about him?”

“Well, they say he’s a retired FBI special agent. Guess he lives on his pension. Drives a Dodge Ram King Cab pickup. They say his wife used to teach at Crownpoint High School, and they tell me Rostic is sometimes called in to talk to students about the law.” Bydonie’s face, which was narrow, weathered, and decorated with a dry, gray ragged mustache, produced a wry smile. “These kids we’re raising today, they could use a lot of that kind of talk. Somebody telling them about getting locked up in jail.”

“Pretty mean around here?” Leaphorn asked.

“Pretty mean everywhere,” Bydonie said. “Nobody’s got any respect for anything anymore.”

“I’ve got to go see him to ask him about an old, old case he worked on. Anything else you could tell me about him that might be useful to know?”

“I don’t think so,” Bydonie said.

Though that proved to be correct, it didn’t prevent him from talking through a second cup of coffee. Thus, Leaphorn arrived at his luncheon meeting with Rostic almost seven minutes late.

He saw Rostic sitting at a table next to the window, menu in front of him, short, stocky, wire-rimmed glasses, looking exactly like an older version of the FBI special agent Leaphorn remembered.

“Sorry I’m late,” Leaphorn said. “Good of you to have some time for this.”

134

TONY HILLERMAN

Ted Rostic slid back his chair, stood, held out his hand, grinning.

“Lieutenant Leaphorn,” he said. “It’s been many a year since I’ve seen you. By the way, you don’t need to worry yourself any about my having time. As I said, I’m retired.”

Leaphorn was grinning, too, thinking how long and boring this retirement scheme could be if you took it seriously. “I’ve just started this retirement thing. I hope you’re going to tell me it gets to be fun once you get the hang of it.”

“Not for me, it isn’t,” Rostic said. He reseated himself, handed Leaphorn a menu. “I’d recommend either the hamburger or the hot dog,” Rostic said. “I’d steer clear of the pizza or the meat loaf dinner.”

“I’m thinking about maybe just a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Something sweet.”

“I presume from that you didn’t drive all the way out here just for a fancy Crownpoint luncheon then,” Rostic said. “And I am very eager to learn what aroused your interest, after all these years, into the cremation of ole Ray Shewnack.”

A waiter had arrived, a Navajo boy in his teens, who brought them each a glass of water, and took Rostic’s hamburger order. “Hamburger for me, too,” Leaphorn said. “And a doughnut.”

“Doughnut for me, too. What kind?”

“The fattest one,” Leaphorn said, “with frosting on it.”

“What aroused our interest in that fire, as I remember, was a call from the New Mexico State Police, who had a call from the McKinley County sheriff’s office, that someone had called from Totter’s Trading Post, said they THE SHAPE SHIFTER

135

had a man burned to death out there, and that this dead fellow might be someone on our Most-Wanted list. So I, being the newest man in the New Mexico side of our Gallup office, got sent out to look into it.” Leaphorn sipped his water, waiting for Rostic to add to that. But Rostic was awaiting a Leaphorn question. He occupied himself staring at Leaphorn.

“Well,” Leaphorn said. “Did the caller explain why he thought the dead man was a noted fugitive?”

“It was a woman. The first caller, I mean. Time it got to me the story was thirdhand. Actually fourth. Woman told sheriff’s office, who called state police, who called Gallup FBI office, from which I get the message. But apparently this burned man had a bunch of those Wanted posters in a folder on the seat of his car, or somewhere.

Collected from here and there.”

Leaphorn nodded, considering this. “Just Shewnack posters, I presume?”

Rostic laughed. “I know what you’re thinking. Some creepy people might just collect Wanted posters. But who, who but Shewnack himself, would just collect Shewnack posters? They didn’t even have the usual photograph on them.”

“Oh?”

“Because we never got a photograph of the slippery bastard. He was never arrested, at least not under that name. As a matter of fact, I don’t know anybody in the bureau who ever actually identified the bastard. Always seemed to pick places without surveillance video or many people around to do his robbing. Crime scene people would collect all sorts of fingerprints. Most of them would be people who worked there, others would be unidentifi-136

TONY HILLERMAN

able. Maybe Shewnack, maybe a customer. After it began looking like this guy was a genuine serial bandit, the lab went back and tried to do comparisons on the various crime scene sets.” Rostic laughed, made a dismissing gesture.

“In fact,” he said, “got to be sort of a hobby for some of the old timers who had time on their hands. Compar-ing crime scene stuff. Huge job, and finally they came up with one set that showed up in four places.” Rostic was grinning as he recounted the details of this. “Then they finally nailed the guy with the fingerprints. Turned out he was a salesman who took orders at all those places. I sort of made a hobby of it myself, since this Shewnack business was my first really weird one. I finally found an old-timer retired from CIA special operations who thought he knew this bird’s real name. Or at least one that went all the way back before our famous Handy’s affair.”

Their hamburgers arrived, plus the doughnuts and refills of their coffee cups. Leaphorn took a careful bite, waiting. Not wanting to break Rostic’s chain of thought, anxious to hear Rostic’s statement concluded. The pastry was good. Not quite up to Dunkin’ Donuts’ high standards, but very tasty. Coffee was good, too. He sipped.