The Dark Wind

'These white men got you screwed,' Largo said. 'Face it. You file a complaint. What happens? Two belacani cops. One Navajo. The judge is belacani, too. And the Navajo cop is already under suspicion of getting off with the dope. What good does it do you? Go back in the Chuskas. Visit your folks. Get away from here.'

'Yeah,' Chee said. He was remembering Johnson's hand stinging across his face. He would take time off, but he wouldn't go to the Chuskas. Not yet.

'These drug police, they're hard people,' Largo said. 'Don't work by the rules. Do what they want to do. I don't know what they're going to do next. Neither do you. Take your time off. This isn't our business. Get out of the way. Don't tell anybody where you're going. Good idea not to.'

'Okay,' Chee said. 'I won't.' He walked to the door. 'One other thing, Captain. Joseph Musket didn't show up for work at Burnt Water the day John Doe was killed and dumped up on the mesa. Not that day or the day before. I want to go to Santa Fe—to the state pen—and see what I can find out about Musket. Will you set it up?'

'I read your report this morning,' Largo said. 'You didn't mention that.'

'I called Jake West later. After it was written.'

'You think Musket is a witch?'

Largo might have smiled very faintly when he asked it. Chee wasn't sure.

'I just don't understand Musket,' Chee said. He shrugged.

'I'll get a letter off today,' Largo said. 'Meanwhile you're on vacation. Get away from here. And remember this drug case is none of our business. It's a federal felony. Where it happened, it's Hopi reservation now, not joint jurisdiction. It doesn't concern Navajo Tribal Police. It doesn't concern Jim Chee.' Largo paused and looked directly at Chee. 'You hear me?'

'I hear you,' Chee said.

Chapter Thirteen

It seemed to chee, under the circumstances, that the wise and courteous thing to do was to make the telephone call from somewhere where there was no risk of Captain Largo's learning of it. He stopped at the Chevron station on the corner where the Tuba City road intersects with Arizona 160. He called the Hopi Cultural Center on Second Mesa.

Yes, Ben Gaines was registered at the motel. Chee let the telephone ring eight or nine times. Then placed the call again. Did they have a woman named Pauling registered? They did. She answered on the second ring.

'This is Officer Chee,' Chee said. 'You remember. The Navajo Tribal…'

'I remember you,' Miss Pauling said.

'I'm trying to get hold of Ben Gaines,' Chee said.

'I don't think he's in his room. The car he rented has been gone all day and I haven't seen him.'

'When I talked to you, he wanted me to find a vehicle for him,' Chee said. 'Do you know if that's turned up yet?'

'Not that I've heard about. I don't think so.'

'Would you tell Gaines I'm looking into it?'

'Okay,' the woman said. 'Sure.'

Chee hesitated. 'Miss Pauling?'

'Yes.'

'Have you known Gaines a long time?'

There was a pause. 'Three days,' Miss Pauling said.

'Did your brother ever mention him?'

Another long pause.

'Look,' Miss Pauling said. 'I don't know what you're getting at. But no. That wasn't the sort of thing we talked about. I didn't know he had a lawyer.'

'You think you should trust Gaines?'

In Chee's ear the telephone made a sound which might have passed for laughter. 'You really are a policeman, aren't you,' Miss Pauling said. 'How do they teach you not to trust anybody?'

'Well,' Chee said, 'I was…'

'I know he knew my brother,' Miss Pauling said. 'And he called me and offered to help with everything. And then he came, and arranged to get the body brought back for the funeral, and told me what to do about getting a grave site in a national cemetery, and everything like that. Why shouldn't I trust him?'

'Maybe you should,' Chee said.

Chee went home then. He put on his walking boots, got a fresh plastic gallon jug of ice out of the freezer and put it in his old canvas pack with a can of corned beef and a box of crackers. He stowed the bag and his bedroll behind the seat in his pickup and drove back down to the Chevron station. But instead of turning east toward New Mexico, the Chuska Mountains, and his family, he turned west and then southward on Navajo Route 3. Route 3 led past the cluster of Hopi stone huts which are Moenkopi village, into the Hopi Reservation, to Burnt Water Trading Post, and Wepo Wash, and that immensity of empty canyon country where a plane had crashed and a car might, or might not, have been hidden by a thin-faced man named Richard Palanzer.

Chapter Fourteen