“Damn right,” Delonie said. “I remember that day.
Cold day. Ellie and me had been over to the Sky City Casino. Having some lunch, talking to some people, and Bennie Begay saw us, and Bennie brought this Shewnack over. They’d been playing seven card stud in the poker room, as I remember it, and Begay introduced us. Said Shewnack was from California, was a detective with the Santa Monica Police Department. Out here on vacation.
Just looking around.”
Delonie nodded to Leaphorn. “How about that? A policeman on vacation.”
“I guess it sort of fits into what we’re going to be telling you. Changed names, changed places, never the same twice.”
“Evil son of a bitch,” Delonie said. “Like those worst kind of witches you Navajos have. The shape shifters.”
“To tell the truth, I’d thought of that myself,” Leaphorn said.
“I could tell he was interested in Ellie right from the start. Sat down, talked about how much he admired our part of the country, said he was going to move out here, wanted to know where we lived. Where we worked. You couldn’t imagine anybody being any friendlier.” Delonie took a drink of his coffee, slammed the cup down on the table. “If I’d just been smart enough to see what was coming. If I just had a gun with me and been that smart, I’d a killed the bastard. Would’ve been a lot better off.” The sound of rage in this produced a moment of silence. Leaphorn noticed that Tommy Vang’s expression went from startled to nervous.
“But how can anyone read the future?” Leaphorn asked. “Here you are, being friendly to a stranger.” 208
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“Yeah,” Delonie said, and laughed. A bitter sound.
“So what happened next?”
“He keeps showing up at the Handys’ place. Driving a pale blue Cadillac four door. Bought gasoline the first time and got out and checked his tire pressure and his oil.” Delonie produced a wry smile. “Remember when people did that? I mean ask the gasoline pumper to do it for them? Well, he did it himself. That’s how friendly he was. And then he went in, got himself some cigarettes, talked to Ellie and Handy. Did a lot of smiling, being friendly. That kept on happening for a while.” Delonie stopped. Stared out the window. Shook his head. “Pretty soon, dumb as I am, I could see Ellie was a hell of a lot more interested in Shewnack than she was in me. And pretty soon he’d be coming about quitting time, and we’d go down the road a ways, or maybe back over to the Acoma tribes casino, and eat something and so-cialize. Sometime play a little poker. And Shewnack was filling us in on his career as a policeman, mostly talking about how really dumb criminals made the job so easy for the cops. He was full of stories about that. Then he would tell us how easy it would be out here in the wide open country to get a lot of money by pulling stuff off. Not so many cops out here. Not well trained. Not all that smart, either. Said the secret was knowing how to not leave any evidence behind. So on, so forth. Full of good yarns about how it happened, and how cops really weren’t all that interested in doing the work to catch people. Underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked. We heard that a lot from Shewnack. Just let nature take its course and the dumb criminals will catch themselves. Anyway, I admit it was kind of interesting, and Ellie got real caught up in THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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it. One day she asked him how he would organize one if he wanted to rob a place, and he said, you mean like where you guys work, and she said yeah, how would you do that? And he said, well the real pros we run into now and then in California do a lot of planning. First, will there be enough profit involved for it to be worth the time. And he said Handy’s store wouldn’t be a prospect, because the day’s take would just be a few hundred bucks.” Delonie stopped, drank coffee, stared out the window at the bird activity.
“Knowing what I know now, I’m sure he knew better even when he said that, but Ellie fell for it. She told him that Handy never takes his money into the bank more than once a week, and sometimes it’s a whole month before he drives it into the bank in Gallup. Told him he keeps the money in a hidden safe. So forth. Anyway, sweet Ellie wasn’t deceptive at all. Any question Shewnack had, she answered.
And then, when the time came, what does he do to her?” Delonie left that question hang, staring out the glass door into the patio.
“Those birds get even livelier than that in the spring,” he said. “Birds get to thinking about nesting, pairing up.
Even the Gambel quails are coming in, laying their eggs under the heavy brush out there. And after the hatch, they bring the young ones into the patio sometimes.
Daddy quail sits on the wall and keeps an eye out for cats or hawks or anything he thinks looks dangerous. And the mama quail sort of herds them around. Teaches ’em to run into the bushes or hide under things when she gives
’em the danger warning.”
Delonie’s lips had curved into a sad smile now, remembering this.
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“I used to get Ellie to come out here sometimes and watch them with me.” He shook his head. “Very good company, Ellie was. She should have married me like I asked her. I think she would have if Shewnack hadn’t come along.”
“I talked to the police who handled that case,” Leaphorn said. “They told me how nice they thought she was.”
“Prison changed her, I guess,” Delonie said. “Did me, too. When I finally got out, I tried to find her, but she didn’t want to see me anymore. I finally gave up. Then, just a while back, I heard she was dead.”
“You knew Bennie Begay is dead, too?”
“So I’ve heard.”
