Leaphorn walked out into the yard, around the building, toward Delonie’s vehicle. It was a dirty Jeep Cherokee, middle-aged, with the dents and crunches of hard use. A brown woolen blanket was folded on the front seat. Through the driver’s-side window he could see nothing interesting. Scanning through the rear side windows revealed only Delonie’s habit of tossing old hamburger wrappers and beer cans there instead of into garbage cans. He lifted the rear door, checked around, found nothing. On the passenger’s side, he opened the front door, felt under the seat, extracted an old New Mexico road map, put it back. Checked the glove box and found it locked. Checked the door pockets. Another New Mexico road map, newer version. Stared at the folded blanket, detecting the shape of something under it. He reached in and lifted the end of it. It was covering a rifle.
Leaphorn folded the blanket back. The rifle was an old model Savage 30-30, a fairly typical type of deer rifle that had been popular when he was young. What was less typical was the telescopic sight mounted on it. That looked new. Leaphorn pulled the blanket back over the rifle, restored its folds, and walked back into the building.
Delonie was shaking his head, looking grim.
“So you didn’t just get out here today?” Garcia asked.
“Yesterday,” Delonie said. “I’m about ready to give up.”
“You just came looking for anything useful Shewnack might have had that didn’t get burned up with him?”
“Like I said, I figured if he had any money with him, THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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if he was planning to stay with Totter as a hired hand, he might have tucked it away someplace safe. Maybe buried it. Hid it under something.”
“But you didn’t find anything?”
“Not yet.”
“You think you will?”
Delonie thought a while. “I guess not. I think I’m ready to quit looking.” He sighed, took a deep breath, looked down. “Don’t know,” he said. “I guess maybe I found what I really wanted. I wanted to just see for myself that the bastard was really dead.” He looked up at Garcia, then at Leaphorn. Forced a smile. “Get closure. Isn’t that what the shrinks are calling it now? Put it behind you.
“Mr. Leaphorn here, if he’s a Navajo like he looks, then he’d know about that. They have that curing ceremony to help them forgive and forget when they get screwed. Bennie Begay, he had one of those. An enemy way ceremony, he said it was.”
“You look like you might be Indian,” Leaphorn said.
“Not Navajo?”
“Part Pottawatomie, part Seminole,” Delonie said.
“Probably part French, too. We never had such a ceremony. Neither tribe. But maybe just seeing where the bastard burned up will work for me. Anyway, it gave me a little satisfaction. Maybe it wasn’t as hot as the hell he’s enjoying now but it must have been next to it. People who knew this place said Totter stored his firewood in that gallery back room where Shewnack was sleeping. That wood burns hot.”
That provoked a brief, thoughtful silence.
Leaphorn cleared his throat. “This Shewnack must have been quite a man,” he said. “I’m thinking about the 74
TONY HILLERMAN
the way he sucked all of you into that plot he was working up. Sounds like he was awful damn persuasive. A genuine, bona fide charmer.”
Delonie produced a bitter-sounding laugh. “You bet. I remember Ellie saying he was the prettiest man she ever saw.” He laughed again. “Anyway, a lot prettier than me.”
“I don’t think there’s anything in the records about where he came from. Was he a local man? Family? Anything like that? If he had any criminal record, it must have been under some other name.”
“He told us he was from California, or somewhere out on the West Coast,” Delonie said. “But after Ellie got to know him, she said he was actually from San Francisco. Great talker, though. Always smiling, always cheerful. Never said anything bad about anybody or anything.
Seemed to know just about everything.” Delonie stopped, shook his head, gave Leaphorn a wry smile. “For example, how to unlock a locked car, or jump-start it; how to avoid leaving fingerprints. He even showed me and Bennie Begay how to get out of those plastic cuffs highway patrol-men carry.”
“You think he had a record?” Leaphorn asked.
“I think maybe he used to be a policeman,” Delonie said. “He seemed to know so much about cops and law enforcement. But I don’t know. Then I thought maybe he had worked in a machine shop or something like that. He seemed to know a lot about construction and machinery.
But with him, I think most of what he was saying was just sort of talk intended to give you a phony idea of who he was. Or had been.” He shook his head and chuckled. “I remember a preacher we used to listen to when I was a boy.
He’d have called Shewnack the ‘Father of Liars.’” THE SHAPE SHIFTER
75
“Like the devil himself,” Garcia said.
“Yep,” Delonie said, “exactly.”
“Did he ever talk about what he’d done for a living?” he asked. “Any mention at all?”
