The Blessing Way

'Her boyfriend,' he said. 'How'd it all come out in the canyon?'

'Son of a bitch shot himself,' Leaphorn said. 'Walked right away from me into the truck, and slammed the door and locked it and got out a little .22 he had in there and shot himself right through the forehead.' Leaphorn's expression was sour. 'Walked right in with me just standing there,' he added. He didn't sound like he could make himself believe it.

McKee felt sick. Maybe it was the ether.

'You've got more Navajo blood in you now than I do,' Leaphorn said. 'The doc said you had a busted oil pan. Took ten gallons.'

'I guess you had to tell her about Hall.'

'She knows.'

'He must have been crazy,' McKee said.

'Crazy to get rich,' Leaphorn said. 'You call it ambition. Sometimes we call it witchcraft. You remember the Origin Myth, when First Woman sent the Heron diving back into the Fourth World to get the witchcraft bundle. She told him to swim down and bring back 'the way to make money.''

'Knock off the philosophy,' McKee said. 'What happened? How did you find her?'

'I've noticed this before,' Leaphorn said. 'Belacani women are smarter than you Belacani men. Miss Leon got herself over to that camp stove on that cliff. She poured out the kerosene and made herself a smoky little smudge fire. You could see it for miles.'

He grinned at McKee.

'Something else she figured out that you might like to know about. She was having her doubts about Hall when I got there. All excited. Said you'd gone to find him and she was afraid something might happen to you. Miss Leon wanted me to climb up that split in the cliff and go chasing across that plateau to rescue you.'

McKee felt better. He was, in fact, feeling wonderful.

'Why didn't you think of something simple, like making a big smoke?' Leaphorn asked. 'Climbing up that crack in the rock was showing off.'

'How was I going to know you'd be wandering around out there?' McKee asked. 'It's supposed to be the cavalry that arrives in the nick of time, not the blanket-ass Indians.'

McKee had a sobering thought. 'I guess you know I killed those two men?'

'Not officially, you didn't,' Leaphorn said. 'Officially, we've got just two dead people. Officially, Dr. Canfield and Jim Hall were killed in a truck accident. Miss Leon and you were hurt in the crash. And officially Eddie Poher and George Jackson never existed.'

'Was that their names? And what was going on in there, anyway? What was Hall doing?'

'It's a secret,' Leaphorn said.

'Like hell it's a secret,' McKee said. 'If you want me to tell some phony story about Canfield getting killed in a truck wreck, you don't have secrets.'

'I'm not really supposed to know all of it myself.'

'But you do,' McKee said.

Leaphorn looked at him a long moment.

'Well,' he said. 'You cut one of his cables so I guess you know Hall had portable radar sets staked out on that plateau. And you know that plateau is under the route from the Tonepah Range up in Utah down to White Sands Proving Grounds.'

'Yeah,' McKee said. 'I knew that much.' He wondered why he hadn't thought of radar.

'Hall was sitting with his radar right under what the military calls its 'Bird Path,' and when the birds flew from Tonepah the radar was feeding information into a computer in the van. Hall was putting it into tapes.'

'What were they testing?'

'The military intelligence people don't tell a Navajo cop things like that.'

'I'll bet you can guess.'

Leaphorn looked at him again. 'Maybe the MIRV. The Multiple Intercontinental Re-entry Vehicle. Read about it in Newsweek. One missile, but it drops off five or six warheads and some decoys. I'd guess that if I was guessing.'

'It still doesn't make sense. What was he doing with the information and how'd a guy like Hall get tied up with that bunch?'

'If you'll shut up and listen, I'll tell you.'

From what they now knew, Leaphorn explained, Hall, Poher, and Jackson had arrived on the Reservation separately almost two months ago. A fingerprint check had been enlightening. Poher was relatively unknown. One arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to rob a bank, some East Coast Mafia associations, but no convictions. Jackson was another story. He was also known as Amos Raven, and Big Raven and George Thomas, with a long and violent juvenile record dating back into the late thirties in Los Angeles, and one adult conviction for armed robbery, and a half-dozen arrests for questioning in an assortment of crimes of violence-all Mafia-connected.

'A Relocation Indian. Jackson seems to have been born in Los Angeles.' Leaphorn laughed. 'California Navajo. That's what had me hung up. I was expecting him to act like The People and all he knew about The People he must have got out of a book.'

'Case Studies in Navajo Ethnic Aberrations, for one,' McKee said, 'by John Greersen.'