Gaines worked might well guess that Palanzer would have needed a local helper. There was no way for Chee to know for sure that they knew about Ironfingers.
Chee fished out his notebook and reexamined what he had written while waiting for Cowboy Dashee. 'Where is J. Musket?' He stared at the question. And then at another. 'Why the burglary?' And then at 'Who is John Doe?' He thought about the dates. Doe had died July 10, young West had died July 6. Musket had walked out of this trading post two weeks later and vanished—apparently after coming back the same night to haul off a load of pawn jewelry. Then, weeks later, he carelessly gives away a single piece. Or someone gives it away in Musket's name.
Chee climbed out of his truck and walked into the trading post. If West wasn't occupied, he'd go over the whole burglary business with him again.
West was putting an order of groceries and odds and ends into a box for a middle-aged Navajo woman. The purchase included a coil of that light, flexible rope which Navajos used to tie sheep, horses, loads on pickup trucks, and all those thousands of things which must be tied. West had left the coil for last. Now he dropped it into the box, said something to the woman, and took it out again. He measured out fifteen or twenty feet of it with quick outthrusts of his arms, and then collected this in a tangle of loops in his right hand, talking to the woman all the time. Still standing at the doorway, Chee couldn't overhear what he was saying. Whatever it was, it attracted two men who had been standing down the counter. West handed the woman the rope. All three Navajos inspected it. They were grinning. West the sorcerer was about to perform. He took the rope back, folded it into a half-dozen dangling loops in his huge right hand. His left hand extracted a knife from his coveralls pocket. He slashed through the loops, and held up eight cut ends. Then he disposed of the knife, extracted a bandanna from his pocket, covered the severed ends with the handkerchief. He was talking steadily. Chee guessed he was explaining the curing quality of his magic handkerchief. A moment later West pulled the bandanna away and with the same motion dropped the rope. It fell to the floor, a single piece again. West whipped it up, snapped it between his outstretched hands. He handed it to the woman. She inspected it, and was impressed. The two male watchers were grinning appreciatively. Chee grinned, too. A good trick, well done. He'd seen it before—a magic show done for donations on the Union Mall at the University of New Mexico. It had taken him most of the day to narrow down the only possible way the trick could be done. And that night he'd gone to the library, and found a book of magic tricks in the stacks, and confirmed that he'd been right. The trick was in creating the illusion with the gathered loops that the cord had been cut into fragments when actually only short bits had been sliced from one end—and those disposed of in a pocket when the bandanna was whipped away.
Chee stood by the doorway, remembering the three of diamonds trick, which also depended on creating an illusion—the distracting thought that it mattered which card the victim named. West was a master of this business of controlling how one thought. A master of illusion.
Chee's smile faded. His face fell into that slack, mindless appearance of totally concentrated thought. Slowly the smile appeared again, and broadened, and converted itself into a great, exultant laugh. It was loud enough to attract West's attention. He was looking at Chee, surprised. His audience was also staring.
'You want to see me?' West asked.
'Later,' Chee said. He hurried out, the grin fading as his thoughts took better shape, and climbed into his pickup truck. The notebook was on the seat. He opened it, flipped to the proper page.
Across from 'Why the burglary?' he wrote: 'Was there a burglary?' Then he studied the other questions. Across from 'Did Musket kill John Doe?' he wrote: 'Was John Doe Iron-fingers?' Then he closed the notebook, started the engine, and pulled the truck out of the trading post parking lot. He would talk to West later. First, he wanted time to think this through. Had West, the magician, the sorcerer, used Jim Chee to create one of his illusions? He wanted time to answer that. But now, as he drove down the bumpy road beside Wepo Wash, toward the reddish sunset, and the towering thunderclouds which promised rain and delivered nothing, he was fairly sure that when he had thought it through he would know the answer. The answer would be yes. Yes, for all these weeks Ironfingers had been hidden behind Jim Chee's stupidity.
Chapter Twenty-Five
In fact, the answer was not a definite yes. It was 'probably.'
With sundown, the thunderheads lost their will to grow. With the cool darkness, they lost their will to live. Chee drove slowly, arm rested on the sill of the open truck window, enjoying the breeze. Lightning still flashed yellow and white in the cloud west of him, and the dark north also produced an occasional jagged bolt. But the clouds were dying. Overhead, the stars were out. The Colorado Plateau and the Painted Desert would live with drought through another cycle of sun. But Chee was aware of this only on a secondary level. He was reaching conclusions.
The man he'd seen coming from West's office; the man West had said he'd just fired; the man West said was Joseph Musket, might not have been Musket at all. Probably wasn't, Chee thought. West had simply used Jim Chee, a brand-new policeman who'd never seen Musket, to establish on the official record that Musket was alive, and well, and being fired by West, the day after John Doe's remains had been collected on Black Mesa. He'd done it neatly, asking Chee to come in when he knew some appropriate Navajo would be available, then arousing Chee's interest in the man when it was too late to get a good look at him. The pseudo Musket, Chee guessed, would be someone from somewhere else—whom Chee wouldn't be seeing around Burnt Water.
That was the first conclusion. The second revolved around another illusion. West had probably performed his Musket deception, and then staged the pretended burglary, because Joseph Musket was already dead. Killed by whom? Probably by West himself. Why? Chee would leave that for later. There'd be a reason. There always was. Now he concentrated on the faded white line illuminated by his headlights, and on recreating what must have happened.
The cool air smelled of wet sage, and creosote bush, and ozone. For the first time in days, Chee felt in harmony with his thoughts.
Perhaps he'd gotten wind of the impending drug shipment. Perhaps his son had told him. Perhaps he'd learned it from Musket. And West wanted to steal it. And if shippers knew their man at Burnt Water was dead, they might move the landing point, or call everything off. So the death and the body had been concealed.
Chee found himself appreciating the cleverness. West knew he was dealing with very dangerous men. He knew they'd come after the thief. He wanted someone besides West for them to hunt. Ironfingers got the job. Which meant he could never, ever, afford the risk of having the corpse, or even the skeleton, of anyone who met Musket's description turning up to be identified. A skeleton, even a bit of jawbone, would be enough to match against the name of a missing person who'd been in prison—whose dental charts and fingerprints and all other vital statistics would be easily available. Therefore West had put the body out along the traditional pathway of the spruce Messenger's party, where it would be found exactly when he wanted it found. He'd faked the witchcraft mutilation —the hands and feet and probably the penis, too—to eliminate the automatic fingerprinting an unidentified corpse would undergo. It was his only wrong guess—not calculating that the Hopis wouldn't report the corpse before their Niman Kachina ceremonials—and it hadn't mattered. And then—Chee grinned again, savoring the cleverness of it
