A Thief of Time (4 page)

The Houk killings, they had called them. Leaphorn, who forgot little, remembered the names. Della Houk, the mother. Elmore Houk, the brother. Dessie Houk, the sister. Brigham Houk, the killer. Harrison Houk, the father. Harrison Houk had been the survivor. The mourner. Leaphorn remembered him standing on the porch of a stone house, listening intently while the sheriff talked, remembered him climbing up from the river, staggering with fatigue, when it was no longer light enough to search along the bank for Brigham Houk. Or, almost certainly even then, Brigham Houk's drowned body.

Would it be this same H. Houk now whom Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had noted on her calendar? Was Harrison Houk some part of the reason for the uneaten banquet spoiling in the refrigerator? To his surprise Joe Leaphorn found his curiosity had returned. What had prevented Eleanor Friedman-Bernal from coming home for her party with a guest whose name deserved three exclamation points? What caused her to miss a dinner she'd worked so hard to prepare?

Leaphorn walked back into the closet and recovered the album. He flipped through it. Which one was Eleanor Friedman-Bernal? He found a page of what must have been wedding pictures—bride and groom with another young couple. He slipped one of them out of the corners that held it. The bride was radiant, the groom a good-looking Mexican, his expression slightly stunned. The bride's face long, prominent bones, intelligent, Jewish. A good woman, Leaphorn thought. Emma would have liked her. He had two weeks left on his terminal leave. He'd see if he could find her.

I
T HAD BEEN A BAD DAY
for Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. In fact, it had been the very worst day of an abysmal week.

It had started going bad sometime Monday. Over the weekend it had dawned upon some dimwit out at the Navajo Tribal Motor Pool that a flatbed trailer was missing. Apparently it had been missing for a considerable time. Sunday night it was reported stolen.

“How long?” Captain Largo asked at Monday afternoon's briefing. “Tommy Zah don't know how long. Nobody knows how long. Nobody seems to remember seeing it since about a month ago. It came in for maintenance. Motor pool garage fixed a bad wheel bearing. Presumably it was then parked out in the lot. But it's not in the lot now. Therefore it has to be stolen. That's because it makes Zah look less stupid to declare it stolen. Better'n admitting he just don't know what the hell they did with it. So we're supposed to find it for 'em. After whoever took it had time to haul it about as far as Florida.”

Looking back on it, looking for the reason all of what followed came down on him instead of some other officer on the evening shift, Chee could see it was because he had not been looking alert. The captain had spotted it. In fact, Chee had been guilty of gazing out of the assembly room window. The globe willows that shaded the parking lot of the Shiprock sub agency of the Navajo Tribal Police were full of birds that afternoon. Chee had been watching them, deciding they were finches, thinking what he would say to Janet Pete when he saw her again. Suddenly he became aware that Largo had been talking to him.

“You see it out there in the parking lot?”

“Sir?”

“The goddam trailer,” Largo said. “It out there?”

“No sir.”

“You been paying enough attention to know what trailer we're talking about?”

“Motor pool trailer,” Chee said, hoping Largo hadn't changed the subject.

“Wonderful,” Largo said, glowering at Chee. “Now from what Superintendent Zah said on the telephone, we're going to get a memo on this today and the memo is going to say that they called our dispatcher way back sometime and reported pilfering out there at night and asked us to keep an eye on things. Long before they mislaid their trailer, you understand. That's to cover the superintendent's ass and make it our fault.”

Largo exhaled a huge breath and looked at his audience—making sure his night shift understood what their commanding officer was dealing with here.

“Now, just about now,” Largo continued, “they're starting to count all their stuff out there. Tools. Vehicles. Coke machines. God knows what. And sure as hell they're going to find other stuff missing. And not know when they lost it, and claim it got stolen five minutes ago. Or tomorrow if that's handier for 'em. Anyway, it will be at some time after—I repeat, after—we've been officially informed and asked to watch out for 'em. And then I'm going to be spending my weekends writing reports to send down to Window Rock.” Largo paused. He looked at Chee.

“So, Chee…”

“Yes sir.” Chee was paying attention now. Too late.

“I want you to keep an eye on that place. Hang around there on your shift. Get past there every chance you get. And make chances. Call the dispatcher to keep it on record that you're watching. When they finish their inventory and find out they've lost other stuff, I don't want 'em in a position to blame us. Understand?”

Chee understood. Not that it helped.

That was Monday afternoon. Monday evening it got worse. Even worse than it might have been, because he didn't learn about it until Tuesday.

As instructed, Chee had been hanging close to the motor pool. He would coast out Highway 550 maybe as far as the Hogback formation, which marked the eastern edge of the Big Reservation. Then he would drift back past the motor pool fence and into Shiprock. Stopping now and then to check the gate. Noticing that the summer's accumulation of tumbleweeds piled along the chain-link fence was undisturbed. Drifting down 550 again. Drifting back. Keeping Farmington-Shiprock traffic holding nervously in the vicinity of the speed limit. Boring himself into sleepiness. Calling in now and then to have the dispatcher record that he was diligently watching the motor pool and that all there remained serene.

“Unit Eleven checking at the motor pool,” Chee called. “All quiet. No sign of entry.”

“Since you're there on five-fifty,” the dispatcher said, “see what's going on at the Seven-Eleven. Just had a disturbance call.”

Chee had done a quick U-turn, boredom replaced by the uneasiness that always preceded the probability of dealing with a drunk. Or two drunks. Or however many drunks it was taking to disturb the peace at the Shiprock 7-Eleven.

But the parking space in front of the convenience store had been quiet—empty except for an old Dodge sedan and a pickup truck. No drunks. Inside, no drunks either. The woman behind the cash register was reading one of those tabloids convenience stores sell. A green-ink headline proclaimed
THE TRUTH ABOUT LIZ TAYLOR'S WEIGHT LOSS
. Another declared
SIAMESE TWINS BOTH PREGNANT. BLAME MINISTER
. A teenaged boy was inspecting the canned soda pop in the cooler.

“What's the trouble?” Chee asked.

The teenager put down the Pepsi he'd selected, looking guilty. The cashier lowered her paper. She was a middle-aged Navajo woman. Towering House Clan, Chee remembered, named Gorman, or Relman, or something like that. Anglo-type name with six letters. Bunker. Walker. Thomas.

“What?” she asked.

“Somebody called in a disturbance here. What's the trouble?”

“Oh,” the Towering House woman said. “We had a drunk in here. Where you been?”

“What'd he do? Any damages?”

“She,” the woman said. “Old Lady George. She went away when she heard me calling the police.”

The cashier's name was Gorman, Chee now remembered. But he was thinking of Old Lady George.

“Which way did she go?”

“Just went,” Mrs. Gorman said. She gestured vaguely. “Didn't look. I was picking up the cans she knocked over.”

So Chee had gone looking for Old Lady George. He knew her fairly well. She'd been a witness in an automobile theft case he'd worked on—a very helpful witness. Later, when he was looking for one of her grandsons on an assault warrant, she'd helped him again. Sent the boy down to the station to turn himself in. Besides, she was Streams Come Together Clan, which was linked to Chee's father's clan, which made her a relative. Chee had been raised knowing that you watch out for your relatives.

He had watched out for her, first up and down 550 and then up and down side streets. He found her sitting on a culvert, and talked her into the patrol car, and took her home and turned her over to a worried young woman who he guessed must be a granddaughter. Then he had gone back and established that the motor pool remained intact. At least it seemed to be intact as seen from the highway. But seen from the highway, it hadn't been possible to detect that someone had tinkered with the padlock securing the gate. He heard about that the next day when he reported for work.

Captain Largo's usually big voice was unusually quiet—an ominous sign.

“A backhoe,” Largo said. “That's what they stole this time. About three tons. Bright yellow. Great big thing. I told Mr. Zah that I had one of my best men watching his place last night. Officer Jim Chee. I told Zah that it must be just another case of forgetting to put it down on the record when somebody borrowed it. You know what he said to me?”

“No sir,” Chee said. “But nobody stole that on my shift. I was driving back and forth past there the whole time.”

“Really,” Largo said. “How nice.” He picked up a sheet from the shift squeal report from his desk. He didn't look at it. “I'm pleased to hear that. Because you know what Zah said to me? He said”—Largo shifted his voice up the scale—“‘Oh, it was stolen last night all right. The guy that runs the service station across the street there told us about it.'” Largo's voice returned to normal. “This service station man stood there and watched 'em drive out with it.”

“Oh,” Chee said, thinking it must have been while he was at the 7-Eleven.

“This Zah is quite a comedian. He told me you'd think sneaking a big yellow backhoe out with one of my policemen watching would be like trying to sneak moonrise past a coyote.”

Chee flushed. He had nothing to say to that. He had heard the simile before somewhere in another form. Hard as sneaking sunrise past a rooster, it had been. A moonrise without a coyote baying was equally impossible, and relating a coyote to Largo's police added a nicely oblique insult. You don't call a Navajo a coyote. The only thing worse is to accuse him of letting his kinfolks starve.

Largo handed Chee the squeal sheet. It confirmed what Zah had told Largo.

“That must have been while I was looking for Old Lady George,” Chee said. He explained, hurrying through the last stages because of Largo's expression.

“Get to work,” Largo said, “and leave this alone. Sergeant Benally will be chasing the backhoe. Don't mess with it.”

That was Tuesday morning and should have been the very bottom of the week. The pits. It would have been, perhaps, had not Chee driven past the Texaco station on 550 and seen Delbert Tsosie stacking tires. Benally was handling it, but Chee sometimes bought gasoline from Tsosie. No harm in stopping to talk.

“No,” Tsosie said. “Didn't see either one of them well enough to recognize 'em. But you could see one was Dineh—tall, skinny Navajo. Had on a cowboy hat. I know a lot of 'em that works at the motor pool. They come over here and use the Coke machine and buy candy. Wasn't none I knew and I was thinking it was a funny time to be coming to work. But I thought they must have forgotten something and was coming for it. And when I saw the backhoe I figured some pipe broke somewhere. Emergency, you know.” Tsosie shrugged.

“You didn't recognize anybody?”

“Bad light.”

“Guy in the truck. You see him at all?”

“Not in the truck,” Tsosie said. “The skinny Navajo was driving the truck. This guy was following in a sedan. Plymouth two-door. About a '70, '71 maybe. Dark blue but they was doing some bodywork on it. Had an off-color right front fender. Looked white or gray. Maybe primer coat. And lots of patches here and there, like they was getting ready to paint it.”

“Driver not a Navajo?”

“Navajo driving the truck.
Belagana
driving the Plymouth. And the white guy, I just barely got a look at him. They all sort of look alike anyway. All I notice is freckles and sunburn.”

“Big or little?”

Tsosie thought. “About average. Maybe sort of short and stocky.”

“What color hair?”

“Had a cap on. Baseball cap. With a bill.”

None of which would have mattered since Benally was handling it, and Tsosie had already told Benally all of this, and probably more. But Saturday morning Chee saw the Plymouth two-door.

It was dark blue, about a '70 model. When it passed him going in the other direction—Shiprock-bound on 550—he saw the mismatched front fender and the patches of primer paint on its doors and the baseball cap on the head of the white man driving it. Without a thought, Chee did a U-turn across the bumpy divider.

He was driving Janet Pete's car. Not exactly Janet Pete's car. Janet had put down earnest money on a Buick Riviera at Quality Pre-owned Cars in Farmington and had asked Chee to test-drive it for her. She had to go to Phoenix Friday and when she got back Monday she wanted to close the deal.

“I guess I've already decided,” Janet had told him. “It has everything I need and only fourteen thousand miles on it and the price seems reasonable and he's giving me a thousand dollars on my old Datsun and that seems fair.”

To Chee the thousand for the Datsun seemed enough more than fair to arouse suspicion. Janet's Datsun was a junker. But it was clear that Janet was not going to be receptive to discouraging words. She described the Buick as “absolutely beautiful.” As she described it, the lawyer in Janet Pete fell away. The girl emerged through the delight and enthusiasm, and Janet Pete became absolutely beautiful herself.

“It has the prettiest blue plush upholstery. Lovely color. Dark blue outside with a real delicate pinstripe down the side, and the chrome is just right.” She looked slightly guilty at this. “I don't usually like chrome,” she said. “But this…” She performed a gesture with shoulder and face that depreciated this lapse from taste. “…But this…well, I just love it.”

She paused, examining Chee and transforming herself from girl to lawyer. “I thought maybe you would check it out for me. You drive all the time and you know all about mechanical things. If you don't mind doing it, and there's something seriously wrong with the engine, or something like that, then I could…”

She had left the awful statement unfinished. And Chee had accepted the keys and said sure, he'd be glad to do it. Which wasn't exactly the case. If there was something seriously wrong with the engine, telling her about it wasn't going to make him popular with Janet Pete. And Chee wanted to be popular. He wondered about her. He wondered about a woman lawyer. To be more precise, he wondered if Janet Pete, or any woman, could fill the gap Mary Landon seemed to be leaving in his life.