other?”
“They didn’t,” Chee said. “Highhawk was lying. They hadn’t met until the Yeibichai.”
“You sure?” Leaphorn asked.
“I watched them meet,” Chee said. “I’m sure.”
Rodney held up a hand. “Friends, I’ve got to go and do some things. Two or three in fact. I was going to be back at the office about an hour ago. Stick around. I’ll be back.” He slipped off the desk and disappeared into the hallway.
“Every effect has its cause,” Leaphorn said to Chee. “Once in a while, maybe, a star just falls at random. But I don’t believe in random. The Santillanes bunch had a hell of a good reason to chase after Highhawk. What was it?”
“I don’t know,” Chee said. “All I know about the Santillanes bunch is from seeing Bad Hands a couple of times. I got here by a totally different route. And I’ve got a different question under your brush pile.” He sat on the desk about where Rodney had been leaning, thinking, deciding how to explain this premonition, this hunch that had been making him uneasy.
“I keep remembering Highhawk at the Yeibichai,” Chee said. “I was curious about him so I was watching him, standing just a little off to the side where I could see his face. He was cold—” He laughed, glanced at Leaphorn. “Of course he was cold. Everybody’s cold at a Night Chant, but he was colder than most of us because, you know, if you come from the East you think desert country is supposed to be hot, so he wasn’t dressed like us. Just had on a leather jacket. Anyway, he was shivering.” Chee stopped. Why was he telling Leaphorn all this? Highhawk standing, shaking with cold, hugging himself, the wind blowing dust across the dance ground around his ankles, the wavering light from the bonfires turning his face red. His expression had been rapt, and Chee had noticed his lips were moving. Highhawk was singing to himself. Agnes Tsosie had been standing on a blanket spread on the packed earth in front of the medicine hogan attended by the hataalii. Talking God, Humpback God, and Water Sprinkler had been making their slow, stately approach. Chee had edged closer, close enough to hear what Highhawk was chanting. “He stirs. He stirs. He stirs. He stirs,“ Highhawk had been singing. “Now in old age wandering, he stirs.” It had been words from the “Song of Waking” which the hataalii would have sung on the first midnight of the ceremonial, summoning the spirit in the mask from its cosmic sleep to take its part in the ritual. He remembered noticing as Highhawk sang that while some of the words were wrong, the man's expression was deeply reverent.
Now he noticed that Leaphorn’s expression was puzzled. “He was cold,” Leaphorn said. “Yes, but you haven’t made your point.”
“He was a believer,” Chee said. “You know what I mean. Some people come to a ceremonial out of family duty, and some come out of curiosity, or to meet friends. But to some it is a spiritual experience. You can tell by their faces.”
Leaphorn’s expression was still puzzled. “And he was one of those? He believed?”
Yes, Chee thought, Highhawk was one of those. You’re not one, lieutenant. You don’t believe. You see the Navajo Way as a harmless cultural custom. You would be one of those who go only as a family duty. But this crazy white man believed. Truly believed.
Leaphorn waited for that to be explained.
“Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think so. I don’t think Highhawk would use the
“Go on,” Leaphorn said.
“So Highhawk was making a duplicate mask. A replica of the genuine Yeibichai mask in the museum’s collection. A copy. He must have had both of them here last night.” Chee picked up the
“This mask we have here, it’s not the genuine Yeibichai mask,” Chee said. “It’s just about an exact replica. Highhawk made it because he wouldn’t use the real one in a public display, and he certainly wouldn’t have rigged up his tape player inside of it.”
“It looks old as the mountains to me,” Leaphorn said. “Cracked and worn.”
“He’s good at that,” Chee said. “But take a look at it. Up close. Look for pollen stains, along the cheeks where the medicine man puts it when he feeds the mask, and on the end of the mouthpiece. And down into the leather tube that forms the mouth. It’s not there. No stains. He dried the buckskin somehow, or got an old piece, and dried out the paint, but why bother with the pollen stains? Nobody would notice it.”
“No,” Leaphorn said slowly. “Nobody would. So the mask on exhibit downstairs is the genuine Yeibichai mask.”
“So who put it there?” Leaphorn mused. “Whoever killed Highhawk must have put it there, wouldn’t you say? But—” Leaphorn stopped, midsentence. “Where is that Yeibichai display?”
“It’s sort of off to one side, to the left of the center of the mask exhibition. Right across from it is an exhibition of Andean stuff, Incan and so forth. The high point is a gold and emerald mask which some Chilean general is trying—” Now it was Chee’s turn to halt, midthought. “My God!” he said. “Dr. Hartman said this Chilean general—I think he’s the head of their political police—was supposed to come in today to look at the thing.”
He moved toward the door while he was still asking the question, amazingly fast for a man of his age in a three-piece suit. And Jim Chee was right behind him.
Chapter Twenty
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Leroy Fleck walked the block and a half to where he’d parked the old Chevy sedan. He walked briskly, but without breaking into a trot, without any sign of urgency that anyone who saw him might remember. The important point was to keep any connection from being made between the crime and the car. If that happened he was a goner. If it didn’t, then he had time to do the things he had to do.
He drove just at the speed limit, careful at the lights, careful changing lanes, and as he drove he listened to the police scanner on the seat beside him. Nothing much exciting except for a multivehicle, multi-injury accident on the Interstate 66 exit ramp at the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. He was almost downtown before the call came. A slight
