That was Monday afternoon. Monday evening it got worse. Even worse than it might have been, because he didn't learn about it until Tuesday.
As instructed, Chee had been hanging close to the motor pool. He would coast out Highway 550 maybe as far as the Hogback formation, which marked the eastern edge of the Big Reservation. Then he would drift back past the motor pool fence and into Shiprock. Stopping now and then to check the gate. Noticing that the summer's accumulation of tumbleweeds piled along the chain-link fence was undisturbed. Drifting down 550 again. Drifting back. Keeping Farmington-Shiprock traffic holding nervously in the vicinity of the speed limit. Boring himself into sleepiness. Calling in now and then to have the dispatcher record that he was diligently watching the motor pool and that all there remained serene.
'Unit Eleven checking at the motor pool,' Chee called. 'All quiet. No sign of entry.'
'Since you're there on five-fifty,' the dispatcher said, 'see what's going on at the Seven-Eleven. Just had a disturbance call.'
Chee had done a quick U-turn, boredom replaced by the uneasiness that always preceded the probability of dealing with a drunk. Or two drunks. Or however many drunks it was taking to disturb the peace at the Shiprock 7- Eleven.
But the parking space in front of the convenience store had been quiet--empty except for an old Dodge sedan and a pickup truck. No drunks. Inside, no drunks either. The woman behind the cash register was reading one of those tabloids convenience stores sell. A green-ink headline proclaimed THE TRUTH ABOUT LIZ TAYLOR'S WEIGHT LOSS. Another declared SIAMESE TWINS BOTH PREGNANT. BLAME MINISTER.
A teenaged boy was inspecting the canned soda pop in the cooler.
'What's the trouble?' Chee asked.
The teenager put down the Pepsi he'd selected, looking guilty. The cashier lowered her paper. She was a middle-aged Navajo woman. Towering House Clan, Chee remembered, named Gorman, or Relman, or something like that. Anglo-type name with six letters. Bunker. Walker. Thomas.
'What?' she asked.
'Somebody called in a disturbance here. What's the trouble?'
'Oh,' the Towering House woman said. 'We had a drunk in here. Where you been?'
'What'd he do? Any damages?'
'She,' the woman said. 'Old Lady George. She went away when she heard me calling the police.'
The cashier's name was Gorman, Chee now remembered. But he was thinking of Old Lady George.
'Which way did she go?'
'Just went,' Mrs. Gorman said. She gestured vaguely. 'Didn't look. I was picking up the cans she knocked over.'
So Chee had gone looking for Old Lady George. He knew her fairly well. She'd been a witness in an automobile theft case he'd worked on -- a very helpful witness. Later, when he was looking for one of her grandsons on an assault warrant, she'd helped him again. Sent the boy down to the station to turn himself in. Besides, she was Streams Come Together Clan, which was linked to Chee's father's clan, which made her a relative. Chee had been raised knowing that you watch out for your relatives.
He had watched out for her, first up and down 550 and then up and down side streets. He found her sitting on a culvert, and talked her into the patrol car, and took her home and turned her over to a worried young woman who he guessed must be a granddaughter. Then he had gone back and established that the motor pool remained intact. At least it seemed to be intact as seen from the highway. But seen from the highway, it hadn't been possible to detect that someone had tinkered with the padlock securing the gate. He heard about that the next day when he reported for work.
Captain Largo's usually big voice was unusually quiet--an ominous sign.
'A backhoe,' Largo said. 'That's what they stole this time. About three tons. Bright yellow. Great big thing. I told Mr. Zah that I had one of my best men watching his place last night. Officer Jim Chee. I told Zah that it must be just another case of forgetting to put it down on the record when somebody borrowed it. You know what he said to me?'
'No sir,' Chee said. 'But nobody stole that on my shift. I was driving back and forth past there the whole time.'
'Really,' Largo said. 'How nice.' He picked up a sheet from the shift squeal report from his desk. He didn't look at it. 'I'm pleased to hear that. Because you know what Zah said to me? He said'--Largo shifted his voice up the scale-- ' Oh, it was stolen last night all right. The guy that runs the service station across the street there told us about it.'' Largo's voice returned to normal. 'This service station man stood there and watchedem drive out with it.'
'Oh,' Chee said, thinking it must have been while he was at the 7-Eleven.
'This Zah is quite a comedian. He told me you'd think sneaking a big yellow backhoe out with one of my policemen watching would be like trying to sneak moonrise past a coyote.'
Chee flushed. He had nothing to say to that. He had heard the simile before somewhere in another form. Hard as sneaking sunrise past a rooster, it had been. A moonrise without a coyote baying was equally impossible, and relating a coyote to Largo's police added a nicely oblique insult. You don't call a Navajo a coyote. The only thing worse is to accuse him of letting his kinfolks starve.
Largo handed Chee the squeal sheet. It confirmed what Zah had told Largo.
Subject Delbert Tsosie informed Officer Shorty that while serving a customer at the Texaco station at approximately 10 P.M. he noticed a man removing the chain from the gate of the motor pool maintenance yard across Highway 550. He observed a truck towing a flatbed trailer drive through the gate into the yard. Subject Tsosie said that approximately fifteen minutes later he noticed the truck driving out the gate towing a machine which he described as probably a backhoe or some sort of trenching machine loaded on the trailer. He said he did not report this to police because he presumed tribal employees had come to get the equipment to deal with some sort of emergency.
