reported that he'd got a ride down to Interstate 40 and was hitchhiking into Gallup to visit some relatives. The mother-in-law claimed to know nothing of any beating, any fight, any cousin. By then it was a little after 4:40 p.m. Chee was now sixty miles as the raven flew, ninety miles by unpaved back roads, or 130 miles via the paved highway from his trailer at Tuba City. He took the more direct dirt route. It wandered northeast across the Painted Desert, past New-berry Mesa, and Garces Mesa, and Blue Point, and Padilla Mesa. The country was dead with drought, no sign of sheep, no trace of green. He was off duty now, and he drove slowly, thinking what he would do. This route would take him through the Hopi villages of Oraibi, Hotevilla, and Bacobi, and near the Hopi Cultural Center. He would stop at the cafe there for his supper. He would learn if Ben Gaines was still in the motel, or the Pauling woman. If Gaines was there, Chee would see what he could learn from him. Maybe he would tell Gaines where to find the car. Most likely he wouldn't. Cowboy had two days to get there and find it, but maybe something had interfered. Most likely he wouldn't risk telling Gaines yet. He'd tell him only enough to determine if he could learn anything from the lawyer.
The parking area at the Hopi Cultural Center held about a dozen vehicles—more than usual, Chee guessed, because the upcoming ceremonials were beginning to draw tourists. Or was it that a missing cocaine shipment was beginning to draw in the hunters? Before he parked, Chee circled the motel, looking for the car Gaines had been driving. He didn't find it.
In the restaurant he took a table beside one of the west windows, ordered a bowl of what the menu called Hopi Stew, and coffee. The Hopi girl who served it was maybe twenty, and pretty, with her hair cut in the short bangs that old-fashioned Hopis wore. She had dazzled the group of tourists at the next table with her smile. With Chee, she was strictly business. The Hopi dealing with the Navajo. Chee sipped his coffee, and studied the other dining room patrons, and thought of the nature of the drought, and where Ironfingers Musket might be, and of ethnic antagonisms. This one was part abstraction, built into the Hopi legends of warfare: The enemy killed by the Hopi Twin War Gods were Navajo, as the enemy killed by the Navajo Holy People were Utes, or Kiowas, or Taos Indians. But the long struggle over the Joint Use Reservation lands lent a sort of reality to the abstraction in the minds of some. Now, at last, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled, and the Hopis had won, and 9,000 Navajos were losing the only homes their families could remember. And the anger lingered, even among the winners. The windowpane beside him reflected red. The sun had gone down behind the San Francisco Peaks and turned the bottom of the clouds that hung over it a luminous salmon-pink. The mountain, too, was contested territory. For the Hopis, it was Mount Sinai itself—the home of the kachina spirits from August until February, when they left this world and returned underground where the spirits live. For Chee's people it was also sacred. It was Evening Twilight Mountain, one of the four mountains First Man had built to mark the corners of Dinetah. It was the Mountain of the West, the home of the great
'Mr. Chee.'
Miss Pauling was standing beside his table.
Chee stood.
'No. Don't get up. I wanted to talk to you.'
'Why don't you join me?' Chee said.
'Thank you,' she said. She looked tired and worried. It would be better, Chee thought, if she looked frightened. She shouldn't be here. She should have gone home. He signaled for the waitress. 'I can recommend the stew,' he said.
'Have you seen Mr. Gaines?' she asked.
'No,' Chee said. 'I haven't tried his room, but I didn't see his car.'
'He's not here,' she said. 'He's been gone since yesterday morning.'
'Did he say where he was going?' Chee asked. 'Or when he'd be back?'
'Nothing,' Miss Pauling said.
The waitress came. Miss Pauling ordered stew. The reflection from the fiery sunset turned her face red, but it looked lined and old.
'You should go home,' Chee said. 'Nothing you can do here.'
'I want to find out who killed him,' she said.
'You'll find out. Sooner or later the dea, or the fbi, they'll catch them.'
'Do you think so?' Miss Pauling asked. The tone suggested she doubted it.
So did Chee. 'Well, probably not,' he said.
'I want you to help me find out,' she said. 'Just whatever you can tell me. Like things that the police know that don't get into the newspapers. Do they have any suspects? Surely they must. Who do they suspect?'
Chee shrugged. 'At one time they suspected a man named Palanzer. Richard Palanzer. I think he was one of the people the dope was being delivered to.'
'Richard Palanzer,' Miss Pauling said, as if she was memorizing it.
'However,' Chee said. He stopped. He'd been out of touch all day. Had Cowboy found the car? Was it known that Palanzer was no longer a suspect? Almost certainly.
'He was flying in narcotics, then,' Miss Pauling said. 'Is that what they think?'
'Seems to be,' Chee said.
'And Palanzer was supposed to pay for it, and instead he killed him. Was that the way it went? Who is this Palanzer? Where does he live? I know there are times when the police know who did something but they can't find the evidence to prove it. I'd just like to know who did it.'
'Why?' Chee asked. He wanted to know, too, because he was curious. But that wasn't her reason.
'Because I loved him,' she said. 'That's the trouble. I really loved him.'
