The Shaman Laughs (4 page)

Parris grinned and glanced at his watch; the morning was slipping away. "Sounds hard to pass up, but I've got to get back to Granite Creek and get things shipshape at the station before I head for Ignacio."

Parker dropped his suitcase at his feet and leaned a long cardboard cylinder against the wall. "Oh, yeah. I heard you were going to be acting chief cop for the Southern Utes while Roy Severe's away on vacation." He searched Parris's face in an effort to detect some clue to his feelings. Parris had seen the same expression when Sam Parker sat in a bass boat, reading meaning into the ripples on Navajo Lake. "I'm surprised Granite Creek can do without you for that long."

Parris leaned against a steel column. "No problem, actually. Got a leave of absence. Leggett will be taking care of the shop while I'm away. He'll probably have my job before I get back."

Parker tilted his head quizzically, a sure sign he had something on his mind. "Frankly, I'm surprised the Utes didn't appoint Charlie Moon as acting chief. Or Sally Rainwater. She's been around since Moses parted the waters."

"I don't know about Sally, but Moon turned 'em down flat," Parris said. "Charlie said he didn't want a desk job. He suggested they ask me to cover for Severe So, they made me an offer."

Parker nodded. "Sergeant Moon's a good cop. Only one thing I have against him," he said with earnest dismay, "he's a
bait
fisherman." He faked a shudder. "Night crawlers, crickets, grasshoppers."

"I figured a change of scenery would be good for me. Nothing's happening in Granite Creek. Anne just left for Washington, won't be back for weeks." Maybe months.

"What's Anne Foster up to in the District?"

"She's in demand since her piece on the 'Sunday Morn-* ing' show last year. She's landed some kind of contract with CBS." His eyes had a faraway look. "Anne speaks several foreign languages, so I expect the network will find lots of ways to keep her busy. She'll probably be wined and dined at the best embassy parties." Parris was suddenly ashamed of the bitterness he heard in his voice; he wondered if he sounded like a small boy whose mommy had left him at school for the first time. "I figure I'll spend a few weeks with Charlie Moon, find out where all the good fishing holes are down there. With any luck, the whole thing will be a vacation. When the stint's over, I'll take a week or two of real vacation, show up on Anne's doorstep. Maybe if I'm good," he said earnestly, "she'll adopt me."

Parker was entirely lost in thoughts of his seven-pound line cutting the water like a hot wire through butter, a bristly Joe's Hopper trailing in intermittent jumps at the end of an invisible meter of nylon tippet. He could almost see a four-teen-inch native brown, its glistening body breaking the surface to take the hand-tied fly, then diving to bend the rod double. "Maybe I'll get a chance to drop by Ignacio myself." He patted the cardboard cylinder as if it was a friendly puppy. "Bought me an antique bamboo rod last week in Connecticut—an Edward's Quadrate." He paused to let this sink in.

"You're kidding." Parris's envy was written all over his face. "One of the numbered series?"

"Serial number five-zero." Parker grinned, displaying a set of oversized teeth that would have looked just right in the mouth of a Neanderthal. The rod had set him back a week's pay. "Can't wait to flick some dry flies in the Piedra.

It's about time for the browns to get hungry." Parker paused, choosing his words carefully. "While you're in Ig-nacio, you'll likely end up working with my people. From time to time."

"Yeah, guess I might at that." Parris waited. The FBI had jurisdiction for major crimes on Indian reservations. But he sensed that Parker had something specific on his mind.

"You know our guys in Durango?"

"Sure," Parris said. "Stan Newman. George Whitmer. First class guys." The Durango office had the responsibility for the pair of Ute reservations along the southern Colorado border.

"Newman had to go in for knee surgery a couple of days ago. He'll be laid up for at least two months. Whitmer's tied up at a federal trial in Salt Lake, then he's off on a job in Arizona. Don't know when he'll get back." Parker avoided eye contact. "I've sent a new man down there. Expect you'll meet him pretty soon after you set up shop in Ignacio."

"Fine," Parris said. "Look forward to it" He could have cared less, but it seemed an appropriate response.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd introduce him to Charlie Moon and the rest of the Ute movers and shakers. Kind of grease the skids for him."

There was something odd about this request. It seemed so reasonable, but there was a worried look in Sam's eyes. Parris nodded. "No problem. Me and Charlie Moon, we'll take care of your new man." And, in a way that neither Parris nor Parker could have foreseen, they would.

Scott Parris was halfway to Granite Creek when he realized that Sam Parker had not mentioned the new agent's name.

Near Bondad, on the Banks

of the Rio de LosAmmas Perditas

Charlie Moon folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the fender of the big Blazer. And remembered. It was now most of a year, since Nahum Yacüti had vanished.

The old man had disappeared on the same night his sheep had been slaughtered in the violent storm. There had been nothing but rumors about Nahum's whereabouts, but the Ute policeman stopped every time his duties brought him south of Durango along this stretch of Route 550. He stood in silence and surveyed the small section of earth that had been home to Nahum and provided marginal pasture to his few sheep. It was less than a dozen acres, this sharp wedge of land that pointed to the south. The low bank of the Animas, dotted with tall cotton-woods and bushy willows, was the western boundary. The two-lane blacktop between Durango and Aztec formed the eastern limit. Armilda Esquibel's land abutted the Yacüti property on the north, and the old woman could see everything from her adobe home that hung precariously on a clay bank above Nahum's bottom land. Moon wondered if the troublesome woman was peering at him from her bedroom window. Sure. If Armilda was alive, she was watching.

The Ute policeman put his hands in his jacket pockets and walked slowly down the lightly graveled driveway toward Nahum's small log house. No smoke came from the stone chimney, and a sheet of steel roofing was loose and rattling in the occasional gust of wind. The shepherd's dilapidated Dodge pickup was parked out back of the house near the small corral, exactly where it had been on that morning after the twister came through. Things were much the same, except now the rusty truck was covered with a thin coat of yellow dust. And it had been much colder on the morning after the storm. It had been October, that time of year the old people called Moon of Dead Leaves Falling. Nahum's sheep had fallen like dead leaves. The pasture was dotted with bleached bones scattered by coyote and buzzard. Occasional snatches of dirty wool still hung on a few tumble-weeds.

Moon leaned with both hands on a creosote-soaked timber that served as a heavy cross member in the sagging corral fence. A relative from Towaoc had taken Nahum's skinny Appaloosa mare to shelter in his own barn until the old shepherd returned. But the smell of the animal still hung on the corral. The presence of Nahum Yacüti was also strong.

The policeman did not hear the presence behind him, but he felt something like a feather sweeping over the back of his neck. Moon turned slowly, unconscious that his right hand was moving upward toward the bone handle of the heavy revolver holstered on his belt.

Armilda Esquibel was both amused and annoyed at this big Ute policeman who had never believed her eye-witness account of the shepherd's remarkable disappearance. "Don't need to be afraid, young man. I'm only a harmless old widda woman." But she had her wrinkled right hand in the pocket of her plastic rain coat. Her fingers were wrapped around the black grip of an antique Remington derringer that had not fired any .41 caliber rim fire cartridges since 1952 when Armilda shot a fat Apache woman in the thigh.

Moon grinned and tipped his hat. "You're pretty light on your feet." Sneaky was more like it. He warily watched the twitching hand in the coat pocket. He thought about dying. A policeman's life had little glamour; his death none at all. According to the FBI statistics, he was far more likely to be shot by a deranged old woman than by a vicious bank robber.

She chewed on a tiny plug of Red Man tobacco in her jaw, and relaxed her grip on the hidden derringer. "Since that poor old man was taken away to heaven by them angels, there are yahoos and galoots and pumpkin-heads comin' around here to carry away everything that ain't nailed down." She removed her little hand from the raincoat pocket and pointed toward Nahum's grape arbor, where a dozen excavations pockmarked the clay. "Them chuckle-heads, they think old Nahum buried his greenbacks out there. They come around sometimes and they dig for it… like gophers they dig." She spat tobacco juice very near Moon's left boot and grinned at some private joke. "I come down here," her little brown eyes sparked fire, "and I chase them thievin' bastards off."

"You should call the station," Moon advised gently.

"We'll take care of any trespassers." Most likely, protect them from this unpredictable old woman.

She grunted to show her derision. An honest widow woman could not wait half a day for the Utes, who operated on "Indian time," to make an appearance and then treat her like she was feeble-minded. Besides, Armilda enjoyed chasing the thugs away. Every confrontation made her feel young again. Like she might live forever. Secretly, she hoped that one of these vandals would give her reason to shoot him right between his beady little eyes. "You goin' to go inside his house?" On her television screen, policemen always wanted to nose around inside the house of a missing person to discover some wonderful clue. Armilda Esquibel also wanted to see inside.

Moon didn't answer, but he headed toward the front door. The old woman followed behind, working hard to keep up with the big man's long strides. "I know where Nahum kept his key hid, but I wouldn't never use it myself." It was much too high for her to reach. "But you're a policeman and a Ute Indian like Nahum, so I guess it would be all right if you wanted to go inside and poke around some."

He was certain that Armilda remembered that he had examined the house on the day after Nahum disappeared. "Why don't you come in too?" The Ute looked thoughtfully at the skinny old woman in the plastic raincoat. "Maybe you'll spot something I missed."

"Well, maybe I will come inside," she said between short gasps for breath, "if you think it'd help."

Moon stepped onto the low porch steps; the unpainted pine boards creaked under his weight. He counted the two-by-four porch rafters until he was seven from the south end. The Ute ran his fingers along an unpainted rafter, wiping away a thin veil of spider webs. He found the tarnished brass key where he had left it last year, hanging on a galvanized roofing nail. Nahum had not been a careful man, but he had been lucky. The windows were unbroken, the door lock showed no signs of tampering. There was no indication that vandals had entered the house. Maybe it was because of the persistent rumors that Nahum came back to sleep in the loft of his log cabin every night. And that he drank gallons of whiskey and would surely shoot anyone who was foolish enough to enter his home. But local folks craved such stories, and many believed Armilda's fantastic tale of a band of angels that carried the old shepherd up to heaven. Swing low, sweet chariot! It was all nonsense, of course. Self-delusion. But the Ute's stomach tightened as he opened the door.

Armilda did not expect to find Nahum Yacüti in the house; she followed the policeman in quickly and flitted about the dusty space like a ragged old moth, touching this, rubbing dust off that, muttering her amazement that "… a man could live in such squalor."

Moon thought the place was reasonably tidy. The downstairs was a single large room. A heavy redwood table had been placed at the west window, which had a view of the rolling waters of the Animas. This sturdy piece of furniture served for eating and, judging from the scattering of papers and lead pencils on its surface, as a desk. And everywhere, there were books. A tattered family bible. An English-Spanish dictionary. A cookbook entitled
The Complete Book of Baking
.

"Too many books, too much reading," Armilda tapped her temple with an arthritic finger and assumed a sage expression, "that was Nahum's problem. Made him think too hard and the poor old man just wore out his mind."

Moon opened the cookbook to a page that had been marked with a slip of yellowed paper. Macaroon Hats. Hazelnut Fingers. Ginger Snaps. Vanilla Paisleys. One and three quarter cups of flour. One half cup ground almonds. Margarine for greasing the pan. The Ute shook his head and smiled. It was hard to picture old Nahum spending his evenings baking cookies. But you never really knew people.

He carefully placed the cookbook back into the rectangle of dustless space on the table and turned to study the room. It was just as the policeman remembered it. A large RC Cola calendar tacked to the wall over the sink displayed an im-possibly pretty brunette. A long, shapely leg was draped over a red bicycle; she held a bottled soft drink near barely parted lips. The Winchester carbine Moon had found in the Dodge pickup and hung on a rack over the back door was still in its place. There was a kerosene lamp on the thick pine mantle over the stone fireplace; the scarlet fuel in the glass chamber looked like cheap wine. A painted iron bed stood in a comer, the fine patchwork quilt still turned back on a blue sheet, inviting the old shepherd to rest his bones. An antique vacuum-tube radio in a varnished wooden cabinet sat mute in a dark comer.

The policeman found his notebook and turned the dated pages back toward that cold autumn morning last year. Moon had made a record of the contents of the log house, including a detailed inventory of the food stored in a rough pine cupboard in the comer. Now he compared his notes to what he saw. Six cans of Bush's Best pinto beans, eight small tins of Hatch green chili. Ten cans of a generic store brand of sweet com. There was an unopened five pound bag of whole-wheat flour. A two gallon tin of com meal. A glass jar filled with brown sugar. A plastic bottle, half-filled with maple syrup. And an unopened glass jar of Aunt Nellie's Com Relish. It was all there, just as it had been last year. Waiting for the owner of the household to return.