“Wait a minute,” Chee said. “I’ll have to get out there anyway.” He delivered a self-deprecatory laugh. “I’m supposed to get him to call his grandmother. So when I get out there, I’ll see if I can get anything out of him. If I do, I’ll call you.”
“Yeah,” Blizzard said. “Good.” A long pause followed. “Anything I can provide you?” Blizzard finally asked.
“I don’t think so,” Chee said, sounding puzzled.
“You got my phone number?”
“Oh,” Chee said. “No.”
“I didn’t think so,” Blizzard said, and gave it to him.
Chee copied it, read it back. “I’ll call,” he said.
“Like about when, you think?” Blizzard said. “Maybe today?”
“What’s the hurry?”
“The hurry is my agent-in-charge. I told him about the two visits, and the package. And that got him all heated up. He hasn’t got another damn thing to work on in this case. So then when I found the boy and let him off at the school, I called the son-of-a-bitch. And I told him what the boy said. About it just being religious business. The package and all. And he wants to know exactly what was in the package.”
“Oh,” Chee said.
“Or bring the kid back to Albuquerque for him to question him.”
“Fat lot of good that will do,” Chee said. He was thinking of the Grandmother Councilwoman, who would be plenty pissed off, and would pass it along to Leaphorn, who would – Would what? He had just worked for the man a few days. How would Leaphorn react? “But I guess you don’t have much choice,” Chee concluded.
“Well, some,” Blizzard said. “While I was talking to the feds in Albuquerque, the kid took off again.”
“Oh,” Chee said. “Not again.” He was silent a moment, absorbing the disappointment. Back to square one. It didn’t surprise him much. But it was interesting. So was Blizzard. Chee found himself thinking of the man not as a Cheyenne but as a cop new to the territory, not knowing the people, lost. For Chee that was a familiar role.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You get yourself something to eat in that diner by the gas station, and then get over to the Crownpoint police station. I’ll meet you there. The lieutenant in charge is a man named Toddy. Try to be nice to him. It’ll take me maybe two hours, and if anything hangs me up, I’ll call you there.”
“Done,” Blizzard said, and hung up.
Chee put on his cap, his gun belt, and his jacket. He called the dispatcher and told her he would be driving to the subagency office at Crownpoint. He sat for a moment, thinking, then picked up the phone book and extracted the number of radio station KNDN.
The woman who took the call was cooperative. She put him on hold for a few moments, and then read him the transcript of the six P.M. news of three nights ago. It included five items: the change in schedule of a rodeo at Tuba City, a plan to improve the runway of the landing strip at Kayenta, the death in the hospital at Gallup of the former chairwoman of the Coyote Pass Chapter, the replacement of the retired principal of the Toadlena school, and the murder of Eric Dorsey at the Saint Bonaventure Indian Mission.
Chee took two steps toward the door. Then he turned and sat, cap, jacket, and gun belt on, typing a memo for Lieutenant Leaphorn. He had worked for the lieutenant long enough now to make it a long one.
Chapter 9
“HE SHOULD BE in just about any time,” said Virginia Toledo, examining Chee over her glasses. “He went to Flagstaff yesterday and he called a little while ago and said he’d be late.”
“Called from here?” Chee asked. “Or called from Flag? Or radioed in from somewhere?” He was holding a folder in his right hand and his uniform cap in his left.
Virginia Toledo had not yet decided what her relationship would be with Officer Jim Chee and did not like the sound of this abrupt questioning. For the past twenty-three years her job title had been Administrative Assistant, Navajo Department of Public Safety, and she was, in fact, the workaday nerve center of the Window Rock operation. What’s going on? Ask Virgie. Why’s Desbah not in his office? Virgie will know. What happened at that meeting last night? Get Virgie to tell you. Virgie knew exactly how to deal with everybody in the building, including Joe Leaphorn, Chee’s boss. But now this young Jim Chee was holding down that little office upstairs. She didn’t know him. She’d heard he was sometimes something of a screwup. She inspected him over her glasses. His tone had struck her as unduly demanding. He was a college man. Maybe he’d been around white men so long he’d lost his good manners. Maybe he’d picked up the
“He called from his house,” she said. “Just about ten minutes ago.”
“If he calls again,” Chee said, heading for the stairs, “would you tell him I’ll be waiting in my office? And I need to see him.” He stopped, turned, and smiled at Administrative Assistant Virginia Toledo. “Please,” he said. “And thank you.”
The door to Leaphorn’s office was about fifteen feet from Chee’s door. He tapped on it on his way past, got no response, tapped again, and turned the knob. Of course it wasn’t locked. He’d heard it wouldn’t be – that one of the lieutenant’s several idiosyncrasies was a refusal to lock his office. “If you have to lock your door in the police station,” Leaphorn would say, “then it’s time to get new policemen.” But that attitude seemed to be common in the department. Nobody locked doors at the Tuba City station either. Nor, come to think of it, at Crownpoint when he’d worked out of there.
Chee said, “Lieutenant?” in a loud voice, and looked around. Neat, tidy, the desk top clear. No sign of dust. Dust wouldn’t dare.
In his own office, Chee reread his newly revised report.
Blizzard had been waiting in the parking lot outside the Crownpoint station – sprawled across the front seat of his car, long legs dangling out the open door, head resting on his jacket folded against the passenger door, reading a book. The book, Chee noticed, had a dust jacket that looked science fictionish and bore the name Roger Zelazny.
He had put it on the dashboard, pushed himself erect, looked at Chee and then at his watch. “I see you’re operating on Navajo time,” he said.
Chee had let it pass and let Blizzard tell him what had happened. That hadn’t taken long. Blizzard had told the boy to wait at his car while he made his telephone call to Albuquerque. When he finished talking to his agent-in- charge and came back to the car, the boy was gone.
“The school buses were loading up and leaving when I went in to use the phone. So I found out which one he’d take to get home, and chased it down, but he wasn’t on it. Then I found out where he lived and went out to his daddy’s place. His stepmother was there but she said she hadn’t seen him since, he took off the first time.”
“So he didn’t go home,” Chee said. “That’s funny.”
“Maybe not,” Blizzard said. “When I picked him up there at Grants he was walking out toward the interstate. I didn’t ask him where he was going. I just let him in the car, and he was in before he knew I was a cop, and then I told him I’d give him a ride back to his school.”
“So maybe he was actually headed somewhere else.”
“I should have found out,” Blizzard said, sounding repentant. “He told me he’d gone in the bus station to buy a ticket but he didn’t have enough money. I figured the ticket was just to Thoreau.”
“Probably right,” Chee said.
“Maybe,” Blizzard agreed. “He acted nervous. I think I told you that.”
“His stepmother. Did she give you any guesses about where he might be staying? Kinfolks? Friends?”
“She said she had no idea. Didn’t have a clue. She wasn’t very talkative.”
That hadn’t surprised Chee. He had stopped thinking of Blizzard as a Cheyenne and was thinking of him as a city man. Chee had concluded years ago that not many city people knew how to talk to country people. Delmar Kanitewa’s Navajo stepmother would definitely be country people. Blizzard had probably offended her.
“Let’s go find the school bus driver,” Chee said.
