“Joe Leaphorn,” Leaphorn said. “Are you still interested in that Billy Tuve business?”
“Sure,” Chee said.
“I mean, trying to find where he got that diamond? If you are, I’ve heard some things that might be useful.”
“Still very interested,” Chee said. “Not that any of us have much hope of finding anything.”
That produced a silence. “But I’ll bet you’re going anyway, though. Right?”
Chee glanced around him. Cowboy was standing beside his car, helping Bernie with something. “Lieutenant,” he said. “This Billy Tuve is Cowboy’s cousin. Brain-damaged guy. And Cowboy has always been there for me when I needed a hand. From way back in high-school days. I think Cowboy’s going to climb down and make this search even if there isn’t any real hope. We’re sort of trying to decide that now.”
“You said ‘any of us.’ You and Cowboy and Tuve?”
“Cowboy and me and Bernie Manuelito. Tuve was supposed to come, but when Cowboy went to get him, he was gone. Somebody showed up at his mother’s house and he went off with them. That makes finding anything even more doubtful.”
“Probably the sheriff’s office came and got him. Sounds like the bond deal went sour. Why is Bernie going?”
“It wasn’t the sheriff’s office,” Chee said. “Maybe it was the woman who bailed him out.”
“Odd,” Leaphorn said. “But why is Bernie going? That’s a hell of a tough climb.”
“I don’t know why she’s going.”
Leaphorn laughed. “Want me to make a guess?”
“Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me what you called for,” Chee said, sounding unhappy. Bernie was standing beside him now, holding a backpack, asking
Chee let her wait while Leaphorn related what Louisa had told him about the reward for the arm bones, about the rumors growing out of the airline disaster she’d been hearing among the canyon-bottom tribes. “You think any of that will help?”
Chee sighed. “Enough to tip the scales, maybe. Sounds like that hander-out-of-diamonds might still be alive, anyway.”
“Who is it?” Bernie asked. “Is that Billy Tuve?”
“Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Chee said, “Bernie is here now. Why don’t you ask her why she wants to climb down there?” And he handed Bernie the cell phone.
“Lieutenant,” Bernie said, grinning at Chee, “it’s just like I told Jim. I think it would be fun. And he and Cowboy need somebody to look after them.”
“Be careful,” Leaphorn said.
“I will,” Bernie said. “You know where I live. I’m good at climbing up and down rocks.”
“I didn’t mean just that, Bernie,” Leaphorn said. “I guess you know that the FBI has been pulled into this. Got Captain Pinto to work on it. The federals wanted him to find out everything possible about a diamond that Shorty McGinnis was supposed to have. That means Washington got interested in it, and that means it’s a big deal for somebody or other.”
“Sergeant Chee told me a little about it,” Bernie said.
“He probably doesn’t know much more than I do,” Leaphorn said. “I hope he told you he and Cowboy weren’t the only ones after those diamonds.”
“I don’t think he did,” Bernie said.
“Plus, there’s an offer of big money for the bones of one of the victims. For burial.”
“Is there more to it than just that?”
“Who knows for sure? But anyway, young lady, remember if Washington is involved, it means very influential people are interested, and that usually means a lot of money is in the balance. That can make it dangerous. So be careful. And try to keep in touch. Just in case you need some help keeping them out of trouble, let me know when you get down to the river if there’s a way to call from there.”
Getting down to the river took almost six hours, which Dashee thought wasn’t too bad, even though he had done it in his late teens in something under five. He’d taken a little extra care at the points where the faithful left little pollen offerings to the Salt Trail’s protective spirits and choked off his habit of exchanging barbs with Chee.
Dashee’s uneasy silence was not just nervousness caused by worry about what the reaction might be among the spirits that oversaw Hopi behavior. He was also worried about the reaction of the elders in his own clan and kiva if they learned he had escorted two Navajos down this sacred pathway. To strictly traditional Hopis, the Dinee were still remembered as “head breakers”—barbarians so uncivil that they slew enemies with the old “rock on the skull” technique.
For Bernie, standing on the sand catching her breath, this descent was already a sort of dream, part of a thrilling close-up look at the nature she loved at its rawest beauty. And it had been a nerve-racking experience as well, where a wrong step on a loose stone could have sent her plunging down five hundred feet, to bounce off a ledge, and fall again, and bounce again, until the journey terminated with her as a pile of broken bones beside the Colorado River.
On the way down, to believe what she was seeing, Bernie found herself recalling the reading she’d done to prepare herself for this. That wavering streak of almost-white between the salmon-colored cliffs catching the sun would be Mesozoic era sandstone, reminders of sand dunes buried when the planet was young, and the bloody red in the strata above that would be staining from dissolved iron ore, and the name for that, required on Professor Elrod’s geology exam, was hematite, and that thought would be jarred away by an inadvertent downward glance which showed her death. Death just as many seconds away as were required for her to fall, and fall, and fall, until
