“Or maybe still digging,” Leaphorn said. He pointed past the wall of the main structure to a vehicle protruding from behind it. “Dark green. Looks like a Cherokee.” As he spoke, a man stepped through the empty doorway of the building. He stood staring at them. A tall man in a plaid shirt, much-faded blue jeans, long billed cap, and sunglasses. His hair needed trimming, and so did a short but scraggly beard.
“I do believe I recognize Mr. Tomas Delonie,” Kelly Garcia said. “Which means this is going to save me the trouble of driving all over looking for him.”
9
Tomas Delonie’s reaction to the arrival of a police car and a deputy sheriff was just what Leaphorn had learned to expect from ex-cons out on parole. He was a big man, a little stooped, looking tense, slightly defensive, and generally unfriendly. Not moving, hands by his sides. Just waiting for whatever fate had in store for him.
Leaphorn sat watching. Garcia got out, shut the door behind him, said: “Mr. Delonie? You remember me?” The man nodded. “Yes.”
“Deputy Sheriff Kelly Garcia,” Garcia said. “Glad to see you again. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you.”
“Talk?” Delonie said. “About what?”
“About this place here,” Garcia said with a sweeping gesture. “About what happened here?”
“I don’t know a damn thing about that,” Delonie said. “I was up there in the New Mexico State Prison.
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Near Santa Fe. Long way from here when that was happening.”
Leaphorn got out of the car, nodded to Delonie.
“This is Mr. Joe Leaphorn,” Garcia said. “He’s interested in what happened here too.”
“Oh?” Delonie said, looking slightly surprised. “I wonder why that would be? Is he an insurance man? Or a cop? Or what?”
“Just curious, I guess, about what could be found.
And so are you,” Garcia said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.
So we have something in common to talk about.” Delonie nodded. Looking at Leaphorn.
Leaphorn smiled. “Have you found anything yet?” Delonie’s expression abruptly changed from his stolid neutral pose. His mouth twisted, his eyes pinched shut, his head bowed. “What do you mean by that?” Delonie said, his voice strangled.
“I meant, maybe you might have been looking for something Ray Shewnack might have left behind for you.”
“That dirty son of a bitch,” Delonie said, the words pronounced with heavy, well-spaced emphasis. “He wouldn’t leave anything for me.”
“You mean Raymond Shewnack?” Leaphorn said.
“That bastard.” Delonie wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, looked up at Leaphorn. “No, I didn’t find a damned thing.”
Garcia cleared his throat. “What are you looking for?”
“This is the place where the federals claim he got burned up, isn’t it? I was looking for just a tiny little bit of what that bastard owed me,” Delonie said.
THE SHAPE SHIFTER
71
“You mean like part of the money out of old man Handy’s safe?” Garcia asked.
“That’d be just fine,” Delonie said, wiping his eyes again. “If I found all of it, it wouldn’t cover what he owes me.”
“I don’t think there’d be enough money in the whole world to cover what he did to you,” Leaphorn said. “Not for the way he treated all of you at Handy’s.”
“Well . . .” Delonie said, staring at Leaphorn. He nodded.
“You know, if you do find a bunch of money,” Garcia said, “or anything valuable, you’d have to—”
“Sure, sure,” Delonie said. “I know the law. I’d turn it all in. I know that. I was just curious.”
“Any place in the store there where we can sit down and talk?” Garcia asked.
Totter’s store had been pretty thoroughly stripped of furniture, but a table with bench seating had been shoved against a wall amid a jumble of fallen shelving. Delonie sat on the table bench. Garcia stood looking at him.
Leaphorn wandered to the back door, noticing how lines of dust blown in through the vacant windows had formed across the floor, observing the piles of leaves in the corners, thinking how quickly nature moved to restore the damage done by man. He looked out at the burned remains of the gallery section, remembering how a typical torrential rain of the monsoon season had arrived in time to save this part of the Handy’s establishment. But not much left of the adjoining Indian artifacts gallery or its storage room where Shewnack had his sleeping space.
Where Shewnack’s cigarette had ignited the fire. Where Shewnack was too drunk to awaken. Where Shewnack 72
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had burned to bones and ashes. Behind him Garcia was asking Delonie what he had been doing lately, where he was working.
