“They charge you a lot of money,” Mrs. Kanitewa agreed. “I read in the papers that the funeral home people even got a law passed so you can’t have the corpse incinerated. Even if you say so yourself, you got to get all the kinfolks to sign papers.” She rubbed her fingers together – society’s universal metaphor for the greed of its predator class. “They want to squeeze that money out of the widow.”
Blizzard shifted his weight on the plastic sofa, creating a round of crackling and signaling his impatience with this philosophizing. “Well,” he said. “You got about all you want?”
Chee ignored him.
“I’m not supposed to be asking anything about Mr. Sayesva because they handle that out of Albuquerque,” he told Mrs. Kanitewa. “I’m just interested in talking with Delmar. Do you know why he came home?”
“Yes,” she said. “He said he had to talk to his uncle.”
Ahh, Chee thought. He glanced at Blizzard to see if he’d noticed this, if he was aware that Sayesva was the kid’s uncle. Blizzard was. Too late now.
“To your brother?” Chee asked.
She nodded. “Yes. To my brother.”
“He came to tell your brother something?”
She nodded.
Blizzard ceased being the stoic Cheyenne sitting motionless on the couch waiting for Chee to finish wasting his time. He cleared his throat and leaned forward.
“We’re talking about Mr. Sayesva now,” he said. “What did your boy tell him? What did he want to see him about?”
“It was religious business,” she said. “He didn’t tell me.”
Sergeant Blizzard looked skeptical. “So how did you know it was religious if he didn’t tell you?”
The question surprised Mrs. Kanitewa. “Because he didn’t tell me,” she explained. “If it wasn’t religious, he would have told me.”
Blizzard’s expression changed from skeptical to blank. He said, “I don’t quite…” and then stopped. Chee considered interrupting to explain things. To give Blizzard a little lecture on how the Tano people, and most of the other Pueblos, kept their religious duties very much to themselves. Neither the boy nor any other citizen of the pueblo would ever discuss the business of his particular religious society with anyone not initiated into its kiva. Not even with his mother. Nor would she ask him to. If Delmar’s discussion with his uncle was religious, only his uncle would know about it. Chee respected that. To hell with Blizzard. Let the sergeant handle this himself.
It took a little longer that way, but Blizzard eventually got it straightened out. Delmar had arrived at the pueblo the afternoon before the ceremony. He had dropped off his backpack and gone to the house of Sayesva. Then he had come home, eaten supper, talked to his mother about school. He had told her he would go back after the ceremony. Then, before he went to bed, he’d gone to see his uncle again.
“Saw him again?” Blizzard asked. “Why?”
Mrs. Kanitewa considered. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. But I think now that it might have been something he heard on the radio.”
Blizzard’s expression suggested this conversation was full of surprises. “Like what? What did he say?”
“Well, he said he had to see Mr. Sayesva again. And he ran out of the house.”
Blizzard was leaning forward now. “I mean, what did he say he’d heard on the radio? Was it a news program or what?”
“He just said he had to go see his uncle. I didn’t hear what he was listening to.”
“What did he tell you when he came back?”
“I was asleep when he came back. It was late. Here we get up early, so we go to bed early.”
Blizzard leaned back, looking thoughtful. Digesting all this. Chee formed a question. What station was the radio tuned to? What time was it when Delmar heard whatever he’d heard? He stirred, took a deep breath.
“Could you estimate what time it was when you were out in the kitchen? When Delmar…”
Blizzard held up his hand. “Officer Chee,” he said. “Hey, now.”
“Suppertime,” Mrs. Kanitewa said. “Just getting dark.”
Blizzard was glaring at him. Chee swallowed the next question. The radio was on the end table beside the sofa. He looked at the dial. It was tuned to KNDN. “Kay-Indun.” The fifty-thousand-watt Farmington voice of the Big Rez. KNDN-AM was all-Navajo, but the FM version was mostly English. The Kanitewa radio was tuned to FM.
“Sayesva had a telephone,” Blizzard said. “At his office in Albuquerque and in his brother’s house here. The boy could have called him from school.”
“He was bringing him something,” Mrs. Kanitewa said.
Another surprise. “What?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me. Something for Mr. Sayesva. Not my business.”
“Something he wouldn’t tell his mother about?” Blizzard asked.
“Not my business.”
“Didn’t you ask? Weren’t you curious?”
“Not my business.”
“Did you see it?”
“I saw a package.”
“What did it look like?”
“Like a package,” said Mrs. Kanitewa, whose expression suggested to Chee that what little patience she once had for police had worn thin. But she shrugged, and described it. “Sort of long.” She held her hands about three feet apart. “Not big around. I thought maybe it was a poster or a picture or something like that. It was round, like one of those cardboard tubes people get to mail big pictures in.”
“You didn’t ask him what was in it?” Blizzard’s tone made it clear that he was sure she had asked him.
“No,” she said. Her expression made it clear to Chee that she was surprised Blizzard would even think such a thing.
“Where’s the package?”
“He took it with him. I didn’t see it no more.”
“Took it when he went to see Sayesva?”
She nodded.
“And he didn’t bring it back?”
Another nod.
And that was about it. There were a few details that Chee gingerly collected to keep Lieutenant Leaphorn happy. For example, the object was wrapped in a newspaper, but Mrs. Kanitewa didn’t notice which one. For example, she had no idea where her son might be staying because he’d never done this before. For example, she asked them to promise to let her know as soon as they found the boy. She didn’t have a telephone but they could call the Senas just three houses down.
Blizzard drove directly back to the access road and headed the patrol car back toward the highway.
“You think we ought to go to Sayesva’s place?” Chee suggested. “See if we can find whatever it was the kid brought for him?”
Blizzard steered around the worst of the bumps. “Tell me how that helps you find the kid,” he said, staring straight ahead. “It won’t, so I’ll take care of finding the package.”
Chee considered that answer. “But not now?”
“Later,” Blizzard said.
“When I’m not around?”
“Like you explained to me. Sayesva’s not Navajo Police business. It wouldn’t be nice to get you in trouble with your lieutenant.”
Chee let it ride. Leaphorn would ask him what was in the package and he would tell the lieutenant why he didn’t know, and about Blizzard. Maybe that would spare him working with Blizzard in the future.
“Wonder why the lady wouldn’t tell us what the kid brought home?” Blizzard asked. The tone, for Blizzard, was friendly. “Did that strike you as funny?”
“No,” Chee said. “She didn’t tell us because she didn’t know.”
Blizzard gave him a sideways glance. “Man, what are you talking about? You don’t know women, if you say that. Or you don’t know mamas.”
