“Sure. It sets the air brakes.”
“How long would it be stopped?”
“That would depend on circumstances. Ten minutes maybe. Or maybe an hour. What’s going on?“
“We had a body beside the tracks east of Gallup last month. I’m trying to figure out how it got there.”
“I heard about it,” St. Germain said. “You think somebody stopped the Amtrak and took the body off?”
“Just a thought. Just a possibility.”
“What day was it? I can find out if somebody pulled the big hole lever.”
Leaphorn gave him the date of the death of Pointed Shoes.
“Yeah. All that stuff has to be reported,” St. Germain said. “Any time a train makes an unscheduled stop for any reason you have to turn in a delay report. And that has to be radioed in immediately. I’ll find out for you Monday.”
Chapter Seven
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One is not supposed to deal with one’s personal mail while on duty in the Navajo Tribal Police Office at Shiprock. Nor is one supposed to receive personal telephone calls. On Monday, Officer Jim Chee did both. He had a fairly good reason.
The post office would not deliver mail to Chee’s little aluminum house trailer parked under the cottonwoods beside the San Juan River. Instead, Chee picked it up at the post office each day during his lunch break. On Monday his portion was an L. L. Bean catalog for which he had sent off a coupon, and a letter from Mary Landon. He hurried back to the office with them, put the catalog aside, and tore open the letter.
“Dearest Jim,” it began. From that excellent beginning, it went downhill fast.
When your letter arrived yesterday, I was thrilled at the thought of your visit, and seeing you again. But now I have had time to think about it and I think it is a mistake. We still have the same problem and all this will do is bring all the old pain back again…
Chee stopped reading and stared at the wall across from his desk. The wall needed painting. It had needed painting for years. Chee had stuck a calendar to it, and an eight-by-ten photograph of Mary Landon and himself, taken by Cowboy Dashee with the two of them standing on the steps of the little “teacherage” where she had lived when she taught at the Crownpoint Elementary School. Like many of Cowboy’s photographs it was slightly out of focus but Chee had treasured it because it had managed to capture Mary’s key ingredient: happiness. They had been out all night, watching the final night of an Enemy Way ceremonial over near the Whippoorwill Chapter House. Looking back on it, Chee had come to realize that it was that night he decided he would marry Mary Landon. Or try to marry her.
He read the rest of the letter. It was short—a simple recitation of their problem. She wouldn’t want her children raised on the reservation, bringing them up as strangers to her own culture. He wouldn’t be happy away from the reservation. And if he made the sacrifice for her, she would be miserable because she had made him miserable. It was an impossible dilemma, she said. Why should they revive the pain? Why not let the wound heal?
Why not, indeed? Except it wasn’t healing. Except he couldn’t seem to get past it. He put the letter aside. Think of something else. What he had to do today. He had pretty well cleaned up everything pending, getting ready for this vacation. There was a man he was supposed to find out behind Toh-Atin Mesa, a witness in an assault case. The trial had been postponed and he’d intended to let that hang until he came back from Wisconsin and seeing Mary. But he would do it today. He would do it right now. Immediately.
The telephone rang. It was Janet Pete, calling from Washington.
“
“Fine,” Chee said. “What’s up?”
“Our paths are crossing again,” she said. “I’ve got myself a client and it turns out you arrested him.”
Chee was puzzled. “Aren’t you in Washington?”
“I’m in Washington. But you arrested this guy on the rez. Out at a Yeibichai, he tells me.”
Henry Highhawk. “Yeah,” Chee said. “Guy with his hair in braids. Like a blond Kiowa.”
“That’s him,” Janet said. “But he noticed he wasn’t in style on the reservation. He changed it to a bun.” There was a pause. “You doing all right? You sound sort of down.”
“Even Navajos get the blues,” Chee said. “No. I’m okay. Just tired. Tomorrow my vacation starts. You’re supposed to be tired just before vacation. That’s the way the system’s supposed to work.”
“I guess so,” Janet said. She sounded tired, too. “When you arrested him, do you remember if there was another man with him? Slender. Latin-looking.”
“With crippled hands? He said his name was Gomez. I think it was Gomez. Maybe Lopez.”
“It was Gomez. What did you think of him?”
The question surprised Chee. He thought. “Interesting man. I wondered how he managed to lose so many fingers.”
There was a long silence.
“How did he lose those fingers?”
“I don’t know,” Janet said. “I’m just trying to get some sort of handle on this man. On my client, really. I like to understand what I’m getting into.”
“How did you manage to get involved with this Highhawk bird anyway?” Chee asked. “Are you specializing in really weird cases?”
“That’s easy. Highhawk is part Navajo and very proud of it. He wants to be whole Navajo. Anyway, he talks like
