Spider Woman's Daughter (12 page)

10

B
y the time she bounced out of bed and answered the phone, the ringing had stopped. She noticed that the driveway was empty except for her Toyota.

The message was from Cordova, asking her to get back to him ASAP.

He answered on the first ring.

“Have you left for Santa Fe yet?”

“No,” she said. “I was going to call you. I was hoping we could reschedule.”

“Great minds think alike,” he said. “The hypnotist has a sick kid. She can’t come in today, and her backup is in Phoenix at a trial. Could you do it tomorrow?”

Bernie said, “Tomorrow is better. That way Chee might come, too, give me some company on the drive.”

“I hear Chee is working with this Tsosie lead,” Cordova said. “Depending on how things go with him today, maybe we won’t even need the hypnosis. I thought you aced all the details, but sometimes this procedure excavates a few more tidbits.”

Bernie said, “You have a good interview technique. Very professional. I might steal some ideas from you.”

“Stealing, huh? I might have to take you out to lunch as a punishment and give you a lecture about that.”

Bernie didn’t know what to say.

Cordova didn’t miss a beat. “Tomorrow at nine? I’ll call you if there’s any change. Thanks for being flexible.”

Bernie put on her sweatpants and running shoes—the new green ones she loved. She brushed her hair and went outside into the glorious morning. Along the banks of the San Juan the air smelled fresh, alive. The day’s heat hadn’t settled in yet, and birds flitted in the brush. The old songs her mother had taught her rang in her head, gentle greetings for the day to ask blessings for the world and all the creatures it contained. She thought about Chee, wondered if he still had the grumps. She thought about Leaphorn and told herself that worry would do no good. She thought about her mother and Darleen and Louisa. Her thoughts drifted toward Jerry Cordova, wondering what had brought him to the FBI, if he was a southwesterner, if he flirted with every woman he met.

Then as her body found the rhythm, she just ran, feeling the breeze on her skin, listening to the serenade of the river, relishing the sturdiness of the cottonwoods and the soft gray leaves of the Russian olives. She let the new day enfold her.

When she got home, she noticed that Chee had fed the cat and emptied the cat box before he left that morning. She picked up the phone to call him, and heard the rapid tone that signaled a waiting voice mail.

“Hi. This is a guy who rents the house from Austin Lee, you know, the one you left a message for yesterday? I called him, and he said to tell you he already knows about what happened.”

End of message. She’d been a cop long enough to understand why “a guy” didn’t tell her his name.

She called Chee’s cell. Before she could say hello, he started apologizing. “It’s hard to be married to the most beautiful girl in the world. I acted like a jerk.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ve been edgy ever since the shooting.”

“I think you’re perfect,” he said.

“I’m even better now.” She told him about the Austin Lee call.

“And Cordova called,” she said. “The hypnotist couldn’t make it today. We rescheduled for tomorrow, and I told him you’d come, too. Was that true?”

“Yeah, if you’ll still have me,” he said. “I’d like to see Leaphorn. I think I can wrap up the Tsosie lead today.”

“What’s up with that?”

“I’m on the road now, heading to Crownpoint to talk to him. Could you take a look at Leaphorn’s notebook again, see if you find anything that could be a reference to Tsosie, initials GT, NT, anything like that?”

“Sure,” Bernie said. “That will take a minute. I’ll call you back. Maybe something in that little book can help us, I mean you, solve this.”

“Us is right.” She heard him exhale. “I worry about you pushing yourself too hard, honey. Seeing somebody you respect shot down in cold blood is a big deal.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I was thinking this morning about those triangles in Leaphorn’s notebook. Some of my old college texts are at Mama’s house. I’m going over there to see if there’s anything in them about sacred symbols. Maybe that’s why Leaphorn made the sketches.”

“That reminds me,” he said. “Something funny happened yesterday with Darleen. She called to tell me your mom had been kidnapped.”

“What?”

He relayed the story.

“There they were, the two grandmothers, happily playing cards in Mrs. Darkwater’s kitchen while your sister was having a breakdown,” he said. “I never heard anybody sound so relieved.”

Bernie had finished her shower when the phone rang again. The ID read “AIRC,” so she picked it up. It was Maxie Davis, calling on behalf of Dr. Collingsworth, asking if Bernie had news about the missing report.

“We searched his truck and his house for it,” Bernie said. “Nothing.” She didn’t mention the copy that might be on his computer. No reason to raise Collingsworth’s hope with speculation.

“I’ll check with the woman who sorts the mail here to see if it could have been misplaced,” Davis said. “It’s hard to find good help.”

“I noticed some sketches Leaphorn made of geometric designs,” Bernie said. “They look to me like what you’d see on old Pueblo pottery. I was wondering if they might have been sensitive images.”

“As far as I know, no sacred symbols are involved in the McManus pots. I doubt that those doodles have anything to do with us.”

“When the report shows up, it will probably explain all this,” Bernie said.

“It might,” Davis said. “Collingsworth is giving us all grief about it.”

After she hung up, Bernie called Largo’s office and left a message about potential relative Austin Lee, thereby completing her assignment. If only the rest of the case would fall into place, she thought, before Chee started to beat himself up over it.

She welcomed the lack of company in her car, the wordless world of scenery and motion, the hour of driving that gave her time to switch from Officer Manuelito who promised to solve Leaphorn’s shooting to Sister and Daughter. Thirty-two miles of paved highway with a steady parade of big trucks heading from Colorado to Gallup through the little berg of Shiprock. The Rock-with-Wings that gave the town its American name to the west, magnificent in its rugged beauty. Blessed landscape. Navajo homeland. How lucky she was, she knew, to be part of this world. To know where she belonged.

She passed Little Water and then Bennett Peak to the west. She thought about what she’d say to Darleen, how to start the conversation. How to tell her baby sister that she worried about her drinking, worried that she was becoming an alcoholic, worried that she didn’t take care of their mother as well as she should, worried that her friend, boyfriend or not, was a bad influence. How to tell her that without also saying, “You are a failure”?

Bernie planned to go right at the convenience store at the junction of US 491 and Navajo Route 18. She noticed the police car at the store’s entrance. If she’d been driving a police car herself, she would have radioed to see if there was a problem. But she wasn’t on duty, didn’t have a radio, and it was none of her business.

She pulled into the parking lot and went inside.

Officer Harold Bigman was listening to the store owner, Leo Crowder, a white man with a belly that hung over his belt. Bernie walked up behind Crowder, not interrupting but letting Bigman know she was there. He acknowledged her with a glance. She picked up a bag of nuts, a bottle of Coke, and a copy of
Woman’s Day
, her mother’s favorite, from the magazine rack. The cashier, a middle-aged woman, took her money without a word and didn’t offer her a bag.

“You having a hard day?” Bernie asked.

The woman glanced toward Bigman.

“Kids. Tried to break in. Probably high on meth or something. Damaged the back door. Someone happened to be driving home past here, noticed the truck, pulled in to see if everything was okay. That musta scared them off. Makes me nervous. One of them lost some sunglasses. Maybe they’ll come back for them. Kids are dumb like that. And then that old one, the policeman, getting shot in Window Rock. Too much bad news.”

“I know what you mean,” Bernie said. “The policeman is in a hospital in Santa Fe where they have special doctors for people with head injuries.”

“Good. That makes me feel better.”

Bigman had finished his interview. “Yá’át’ééh,” he said. “You off to see Mama?”

“Yes,” she said. “She likes to look at this.”

Bigman picked up the magazine and recited the cover headlines. “ ‘Update Your Kitchen for One Hundred Dollars.’ ‘Fifty Foods to Boost Your Immune System.’ ‘Too-Tired-to-Cook Recipes.’ I like this one, ‘Dance Moves for Shimmery Summer Sex Appeal.’ ” He handed the magazine back to her. “These sound more like you than your mama.”

“Yeah, especially that last one,” Bernie said.

“I heard on the scanner that Chee has a potential suspect in Crownpoint,” he said. “Hope that pans out. How’s the cat doing?”

“She misses you,” Bernie said.

C
hee felt optimistic. He found the Tsosie house without difficulty, and a green pickup truck stood in the driveway. A woman came to the door, surprised to see a uniformed officer there. The proper and expected reaction.

When they introduced themselves, Chee learned that the woman, Garrison and Notah Tsosie’s mother, was a distant relative. Which meant the small bit of conversation designed to discover where Garrison was now—living with his girlfriend, Rose, in Gallup—took more than an hour. It also involved eating a Spam sandwich, a treat he’d cut back on since he married Bernie. Mrs. Tsosie added delicious slices of raw onion and tomatoes from her garden, and gave him a box with a big piece of homemade chocolate cake, making him promise to share it with Bernie. Mrs. Tsosie told him that Notah, the older of her two boys, realized he deserved to be in prison and harbored no negative feelings toward the officer who had arrested him.

“It turned out for the good,” she said. “Notah got his GED in there. Now he’s studying something else.”

“What about your other son?” Chee asked. “Some people think he might be angry at a policeman who sent a person in his family to prison.”

“I know people like that, too,” she said. “But Garrison, he felt sad that his brother had come so much out of harmony, strayed away from the right way. He missed his brother when that one went to prison. Garrison even started to go around with some of Notah’s friends, the ones who didn’t keep out of trouble. But then, well, he met Rose.”

And after some ups and down, Garrison had straightened out.

“See these?” Mrs. Tsosie put her index finger behind her earlobe, pushing her hair away so Chee could examine her large silver-and-turquoise earrings.

“Wow. Beautiful.”

“Garrison made these. He’s taking some classes and learning skills. My boy has talent.”

Mrs. Tsosie encouraged Chee to meet her son, and gave him Garrison’s address in Gallup and his home phone number.

Pleasantly stuffed and behind his self-imposed schedule, Chee called Largo.

“Thought I ought to let you know that Garrison Tsosie’s mother is a clan sister,” he said.

“Do you think you’ll have a problem because they’re kinfolk?”

“No problem with Mrs. Tsosie,” Chee said. “If it looks like something with Garrison, I’ll let you know. From what she says, he’s now an upstanding citizen.”

“What else would a mother say? Stay on top of it,” Largo said.

Chee drove to Gallup. He found Rose’s sister at Garrison’s address, babysitting Rose’s little boy and her own children. She told him Garrison and Rose had gone to Ramah to help some friends move. She didn’t know the friend’s last name, address, or phone number, but remembered where the house was, more or less. Garrison and Rose were in Rose’s white Ford truck. Garrison was the nicest guy in the world, she volunteered, except for having a bit of a temper when he drank. And he wasn’t drinking anymore.

Chee cruised the extra forty miles to Ramah, found the friend’s house, learned that Garrison and Rose had left about an hour ago. The friend gave Chee Garrison’s cell phone number, but when it rang, they heard music chiming in a newly relocated sofa. Bruno Mars singing from “The Lazy Song” about not wanting to answer his phone. Chee offered to take the cell to Garrison.

By the time Chee got back to Gallup, Garrison Tsosie had called his friend about the lost mobile phone and knew Chee was on the way. Garrison fit Bernie’s description of the shooter, short, small-boned, dark hair and skin—but then so did about half the people on the Navajo reservation.

Unlike the average crime suspect, Garrison Tsosie invited Chee to come in and sit. Rose’s sister was gone and had taken the kids to play at her house.

“It’s hot in here,” Garrison said. “Would you like a cold soda?”

“How about some water?” Chee said.

Rose, a buxom young woman in tight jeans with a tattoo on her ankle, brought water in a plastic Flying J cup. She didn’t look Navajo; perhaps Hispanic, Chee thought. Whatever, she was pretty in an overly fussy sort of way.

Chee took a sip and started to put the cup on the coffee table.