Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 14] (21 page)

“What did he want? What did he say?”

“Not much. He wanted directions to that old Latter-Day-Saints mine.
The place those Mormons used to dig their coal. And I told him, and he
run right out of here. In a big hurry.”

“I think we’d better go,” Leaphorn said, and started for the door.

Timms looked sick. He made a move to rise, sank back.

“You telling me Gershwin killed that Everett Jorie? Don’t tell me
that.”

Leaphorn and Bernie were already out the door, and as Chee limped
after them he heard Timms saying, “Oh, God. I was afraid of that.”

It was easy enough to notice where Gershwin’s pickup had turned off
the track, easy to see the path it had left through the crusted
blowsand and broken clusters of snakeweed. Following the tracks was a
different matter. Gershwin’s truck had better traction and much higher
clearance than Bernie’s Unit 11 patrol car, which, under its official
paint, was still a worn-out Chevy sedan.

It lost traction on the side of one of those great humps that wind
erosion drifts around Mormon tea in desert climates. It slid sideways,
rear wheels down the slope. Leaphorn checked Bernie’s instinct to gun
the engine by a sharply whispered "No!”

“I think we’re about as close as we want to drive,” he said. “I’ll
take a look.”

He took the unit’s binoculars out of the glove box, opened the door,
slid out, walked up the hummock, stood for a minute looking and then
walked back.

“The mine structure is maybe a quarter mile,” he said, pointing.
“Over by the rimrock. Gershwin’s truck is about two hundred yards ahead
of us. It looks empty. It also looks like he left it where it couldn’t
be seen from the mine.”

“So now what?” Chee said. “Do we radio in and ask for some backup?”
Even as he asked, he was wondering how that call would sound. Imagining
the exchange. An area rancher had driven his pickup over to an old mine
site. Why do you need backup? Because we think the casino perps are
hiding there. Which mine? One the FBI has already checked out and
certified as empty.

Leaphorn was looking at him, quizzically.

“Or what?” Chee concluded, thinking that surely Leaphorn wouldn’t
propose they simply walk up, ask if anybody was inside and tell them to
come out and surrender.

“We’re on their blind side,” Leaphorn said. “Why don’t we get
closer? See if we can learn what’s going on.”

“You brought your piece,” Leaphorn said. “I’m going to borrow
Officer Manuelito’s pistol. Officer Manuelito, I want you to stay here
close to the radio but get up on the hump there where you can see
what’s going on. We may need you to make some fast contacts. I’ll
borrow your sidearm.”

“Give you my gun?” Bernie said, sounding doubtful.

Chee was easing himself out of the car, thinking that the Legendary
Lieutenant had forgotten he was a civilian. He had unilaterally
rescinded his retirement and resumed his rank.

“Your pistol,” he said, holding out his hand. Bernie’s expression
switched from doubtful to determined.

“No, sir. That’s one of the first things we learn. We keep our
pistols.”

Leaphorn stared at her. Nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Hand me
the rifle.”

She pulled it out of the rack and handed it to him, butt first. He
checked the chamber.

“In fact, Manuelito, I want you to get into radio contact now. Tell
’em where we are, precisely as you can, tell them that Sergeant Chee is
checking an old mine building and we may need some support. Tell them
you’re going to be out of the car a few minutes to back him up and ask
them to stand by. Then I want you on top of that hummock up there
watching what’s going on. Doing what needs to be done.”

“Sergeant Chee should stay here,” Bernie said. “He can’t walk that
far. I’ll go with you. He can handle the radio.”

Chee used his sergeant voice. “Manuelito, you’ll do the radio.
That’s an order.”

Whatever the reason, the excitement, the adrenaline pumping,
perhaps the distracting notion that in a few minutes an award-winning
Green Beret sniper might be shooting him, Chee limped up the hummock
slope hardly aware of his bandaged ankle or the sand in his bedroom
slipper. The ruined mine structure came into view, the back side of
what he had photographed from the helicopter. As Leap-horn had said,
this side presented only a windowless stone wall.

Leaphorn pointed, noted the entrance door was probably to their
left, pointed out the route down the gentle slope that Chee should
take, noting the cover available in the event anyone came out of the
structure. Any pretense of being a civilian, of being anything except
the Navajo Tribal Police officer in charge, had ceased to exist.

“I’ll move down to the right,” Leaphorn concluded. “Watch for a
signal. If anyone comes out, we’ll let them get far enough from the
structure. They, or he, will probably be walking toward Gershwin’s
truck. We’ll see what opportunity presents itself.”

“Yes sir,” Chee said. He rechecked his pistol and did exactly as
told.

About five minutes, and fifty cautious yards later, Chee first heard
a voice.

He stood, waved at Leaphorn, pointed to the wall and made talking
motions with his hand. Leaphorn nodded.

A moment later, the sound of laughter.

Then the sharp door-slam sound of a pistol shot. Then another, and
another.

Chee looked at Leaphorn, who was looking at him. Leaphorn signaled
him to stay down. They waited. Time ticked past. Leaphorn signaled him
to close in and moved slowly toward the wall. Chee did the same.

A tall, elderly man emerged from behind the wall. What seemed to be
a student’s backpack dangled from one hand. He was wearing a white
shirt with the tail out, jeans and a tan straw hat. As Leaphorn had
predicted, he walked toward Gershwin’s truck.

Chee ducked back out of sight behind a growth of salt bush,
following the man with his pistol. No more than twenty yards. An easy
shot if a shooting was called for.

Leaphorn was standing in the open, the rifle cradled across his arm.

“Mr Gershwin,” he shouted. “Roy. What are you doing way out here?”

Gershwin stopped, stood frozen for a moment, then turned and looked
at Leaphorn.

“Well now, I don’t hardly know what to tell you about that. If I had
noticed you first, I’d have asked you the same thing.”

Leaphorn laughed. “I probably would have told you I’m out here
hunting quail. But then you’d have noticed this is a rifle and not
something you use to shoot birds. And you wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Prob’ly not,” Gershwin said. “I’d guess you were thinking about all
that money taken out of that casino and how it had to be hidden
someplace and maybe this old mine was it.”

“Well,” Leaphorn said, "it’s true that the Navajo Nation doesn’t
offer high retirement pay. How about you? You looking for some extra
unmarked paper money?”

“Are you talking as an officer of the law, or are you still a
civilian?”

“I’m the same civilian you brought your list of names to,” Leaphorn
said. “Once you’re out they don’t let you back in.”

“Well, then, I hope you have better luck than I did. There’s no
money back there. I turned over every piece of junk. Nothing. Just a
waste of time." Gershwin started walking again.

“I heard some shots fired,” Leaphorn said. “What was that about?”

Gershwin turned around and started back toward the mine. “Come on,”
he said. “I’ll show you. And I’ll tell you, too. Remember me telling
you I was pulling out. Going to move into a motel somewhere. Not wait
around for those militia bastards to come after me. Well, I decided to
hell with that. I’m too old a dog to let those punks run me out. I
decided I’d have a showdown.”

“Hold it a minute,” Leaphorn said. “I want you to meet a friend of
mine.“ He motioned to Chee.

Chee holstered his pistol, came out from behind the brush, raised a
hand in greeting. If Gershwin was carrying a weapon it wasn’t visible.
If it was any size, he’d probably be carrying it under his belt, hidden
by his shirt and not in a pocket. The sound of the gunshots suggested a
serious weapon. Certainly not a pocket-sized twenty-two.

“This is Sergeant Jim Chee,” Leaphorn said. “Roy Gershwin.”

Gershwin looked shocked. “Yes,” he said, and nodded to Chee.

“Chee’s short of money, too,” Leaphorn said. “He’s a single man, but
he’s trying to live on a police salary.”

Gershwin gave Chee another look, nodded again, and resumed his walk,
toward the mine. “Well, as I was telling you, I drove out here thinking
I was going to have it out with these bastards. Either take ‘em in for
the reward money, or run ’em off, or shoot ‘em if I had to. That
reward’s supposed to be for dead or alive. I just decided not to run.
I’m way too damned old to be running.”

“You shot ’em?” Leaphorn asked.

“Just one. I shot Baker. George Ironhand, he got away.”

They were in the structure by then, through a double doorway that
pierced a partly tumbled wall and into the patterned light and darkness
of a huge room. Sunlight streaming through gaps in its roof illuminated
the cluttered earthen floor in streaks. It was about as Special Agent
Cabot had described it.

Empty except for a jumble of junk and scattered debris. Where the
floor wasn’t hidden by fallen roofing material and sheets of warped
plywood, it was covered by layers of drifted sand, dust and trash
drifted in by years of wind. Tumbleweeds were piled against the back
wall, and beside them was the body of a man dressed in gray-green
camouflage coveralls.

Gershwin gestured toward the body. “Baker,” he said. “Son of a bitch
tried to shoot me.”

“Tell us about how it went,” Leaphorn said.

“Well, I parked back there a ways so they wouldn’t hear me coming.
And walked up real quiet and looked in and that one"—Gershwin pointed
to the body by the wall—"he seemed to be sleeping. The tall one was
sitting over there, and when I came in he made a grab for his gun and I
hollered for him to stop, but he got it, and then I shot him and he
fell down. That woke up the other guy and he jumped up and pulled out a
pistol and I hollered for him to drop it and he took a shot at me so I
shot him, too.”

“The first one you shot,” Chee said. “Where did he go?”

“Be damned if I know,” Gershwin said. “I thought he was down for
good and I was busy with the other one, and when I was going to check
on him, he wasn’t there. I guess he just got out of here somehow.
Didn’t you fellas see him running away?”

“We didn’t,” Leaphorn said, "and we better be getting to our car. We
need to call this in, and get the law out here to collect the body and
get a search going for the one that got away.”

“Surprised you didn’t see him,” Gershwin said.

“Where’s your weapon?” Leaphorn asked. “You need to hand that over
to Sergeant Chee here.”

“I threw it away,” Gershwin said. “I never had shot a man before,
and when I realized what I’d done I just felt sick. Went to that side
door over there and threw up and then I threw my pistol down in the
canyon.”

They had moved out through the broken doorway into the sunlight.
Chee kept his hand near the butt of his pistol, thinking Leaphorn
couldn’t possibly believe that, thinking the weapon was probably a hand
gun and it was probably in the backpack Gershwin was carrying. Or
perhaps stuck in Gershwin’s belt, hidden by the shirt.

“It’s a terrible feeling,” Gershwin was saying, "shooting a man."
And as he was saying that his hand flashed under the shirt and came out
fumbling with a pistol.

Chee’s pistol was pointed at Gershwin’s chest. “Drop it,” Chee said.
“Drop it or I kill you.”

Gershwin made an angry sound, dropped his pistol.

Leaphorn shouted, “Look out.” There was a blast of sound from the
darkness. Gershwin was knocked sprawling into the dirt.

“He’s under that big sheet of plywood,” Leaphorn shouted. “I saw a
side of it rise. Then the muzzle flash.”

The plywood was directly under the A-frame of timbers that rose
through what was left of the building’s roof. Chee and Leaphorn
approached it as one approaches a prairie rattler, with caution. Chee
did his stalking via the side door, a route with better cover. He got
there first, motioned Leaphorn in. They stood on opposite sides of it,
looking down at it.

“Gershwin is dead,” Leaphorn said.

“I thought it looked like that,” Chee said.

“If you pulled that plywood back, you’d expect to look right down
into a vertical shaft,” Leaphorn said. “But whoever pushed it up and
stuck out that rifle barrel had to be standing on something.”

“Probably some sort of rope ladder at least,” Chee said. “Or maybe
they dug out some sort of niche." He tried to visualize what would be
under the plywood without much luck.

Leaphorn was studying him. “You want to pull it away and take a
look?”

Chee laughed. “I think I’d rather just wait until Special Agent
Cabot gets here with his people and let him do it. I wouldn’t want to
mess up the Bureau’s crime scene.”

Jim Chee sprawled across the rear seat of Unit 11, his throbbing
ankle high on a pillow reminding him of what the doctor had said about
putting weight on a sprain before it’s healed. Otherwise, Chee was
feeling no pain. He was at ease. He was content. True, George Ironhand
was still at large in the canyons, either wounded or well, but he
wasn’t Chee’s problem.

Chee relaxed, listened to the windshield wipers working against the
off-and-on rain shower, eaves-dropped now and then on the conversation
the Legendary Lieutenant was having with Officer Manuelito (Leaphorn
was calling her Bernie) and rehashing the events of a tense and tiring
day.

The reinforcements had arrived a little before sundown. First came
two big Federal Bureau of
Investigation copters, hovering a while to find a place to put down
among the hummocks of Mormon tea, the Special Agents swarming out,
looking warlike in their official bulletproof costumes, pointing their
automatic weapons at Leaphorn and looking miffed when Leaphorn ignored
them. Then the business of trying to explain what had happened there.
Explaining Gershwin to the Special Agent in Charge, who wanted to
question everything, who wanted answers which would prove the Bureau
was right in its Everett Jorie suicide/gang-leader conclusion, and who
looked downright thunderstruck when he learned that the fellow
instructing otherwise was just a civilian.