"I'll be there," Leaphorn said. "By the way, do you know anything about a man named Jason Delos?"

A moment of silence. "Delos? Not much. Understand he's rich. Not one of the old families, or anything like that, but I guess he's sort of prominent." He chuckled. "Guy I know in the game and fish department said he thought he had him once for spotlighting deer, but he moved too quick. No shots fired. Didn't have enough to file a charge. Otherwise, he's not the sort of citizen we'd be having much dealings with, I guess, but-"

The sound of someone yelling, "Hey, Kelly," interrupted. "Got to go, Joe. I'll see you at the Havacup in thirty minutes."

7.

The changes Leaphorn noticed in Garcia as the Coconino sheriff's sergeant walked up to the booth were mostly in hair style. Leaphorn remembered him with bushy black hair, a bushy black mustache, and prominent black eyebrows. All still there, but all neatly trimmed now, and the black was modified into various shades of gray. Otherwise he was medium sized, trim and neat, and his eyes had retained their bright brown glint.

"How time flies," Garcia said, after shaking Leaphorn's hand and slipping into the booth. "But I see you still drink coffee."

"I guess I'm an addict. And I asked the young lady to bring a cup for you, but she didn't."

"Good thing," Garcia said. "I swore off the stuff. Switched to drinking tea."

"Oh," Leaphorn said.

"Kept me awake."

Leaphorn nodded.

"Why you hunting Melvin Bork?"

Leaphorn considered that a moment. "Well, he's sort of a friend. Used to be, way back. Haven't seen him for years. We sort of got together in our rookie days, when I went to the FBI school back east. We met there. But maybe it's partly just curiosity."

Garcia was studying him. "Curious? Yeah, me, too."

Leaphorn let that hang.

"So you're saying you really are retired now, right? How long?"

"Just getting started at it. This is the first month."

"How you like it?"

Leaphorn shrugged. "Not much. I think it takes some getting used to."

Garcia sighed. "I'm up for it end of this year."

"You don't look old enough."

Garcia made a wry face. "Getting tired though. Tired of doing all the d.a.m.ned paperwork. Messing with the federal regulations, dealing with drunks, and women beating up on their husbands, and vice versa, all that, and working with some of those young city boys the Federal Bureau of Inept.i.tude sends out here to our waterless desert."

Leaphorn sipped his coffee.

"How about you, Joe. You miss being a cop?"

"I still am one, sort of. I carry a Coconino deputy sheriff's badge, and ones from San Juan and McKinley counties in New Mexico."

Garcia raised his eyebrows. "I think you're supposed to turn those in, aren't you? After all, you're just a-ah, just a civilian now."

"Hadn't thought about it," Leaphorn said, and smiled. "Are you going to report me to the sheriff?"

Garcia laughed.

The waiter arrived. Garcia ordered iced tea and two doughnuts.

"Now you're going to ask me about Bork," he said. "Well, I like him. We worked with him on some stuff. He's smart. Former deputy himself. Seemed honorable."

He sipped his tea, looked at Leaphorn. "But I didn't like the sound of that telephone call."

"No," Leaphorn said.

"The missus said you'd told her to let me hear that tape. What's he into? Any ideas about that?"

"Here's all I know," Leaphorn said. He handed Garcia Bork's letter and the magazine photo of the tale-teller rug. Then he told Garcia about remembering how it had been burned to ashes in the Totter's Trading Post fire-along with one of the FBI's most wanted bad men.

Garcia studied the photo, looking thoughtful.

"I never saw the original," he said. "Is this it?"

"I saw it just once in Totter's gallery," Leaphorn said. "Not long before the fire. Stood and stared at it a long time. I'd heard some of the old stories about it from my grandmother. The photo looks like the rug I remember looking at. But it doesn't seem possible. I talked to Mr. Tarkington at his gallery here. He thought it might be a copy. But he wasn't ready to make any bets."

Garcia looked up from the photo. "Pretty flossy house it's hanging in," he said. "Judging from the view through the window, that might be old John Raskins's house."

"That's what Tarkington told me. He told me this Delos fella lives there now."

"I take it you haven't talked to Delos yet? Asked him where he got the rug?"

"I intend to do that tomorrow. Thought I'd call him and see if he'll let me in. Let me look at the rug."

Garcia smiled. "Good luck," he said. "He's pretty high society for Flagstaff. He's probably going to refer you to his Asian housekeeper. What are you going to tell him? Going to just show him your Coconino deputy sheriff's badge and tell him you're investigating a crime?"

Leaphorn shook his head. "I see your point. What's the crime?"

"Exactly." Garcia tested his tea again, looking thoughtful.

Leaphorn waited.

"So you're curious, too?" Garcia asked.

"Afraid so," Leaphorn said. "After all these years."

Garcia drained his iced tea, picked up the ticket, put on his hat.

"Joe," he said. "Let's drive out to that old Totter place and look around and have a talk. I'll explain why I'm still curious, and then you tell me what's bothering you."

"It's a long drive," Leaphorn said. "All the way up there past Lukachukai."

"Well, it's a long story, too," Garcia said. "And a real sad one. Goes all the way back to that crime that put Ray Shewnack on the FBI's Most Wanted list. And I wouldn't think you'd be too busy. Being retired."

"I'm afraid you're right," Leaphorn said, with a rueful chuckle.

"We'll burn Coconino County sheriff gasoline," Garcia said, as they got into his patrol car. "And remember, you've got to tell me more about what pulled you into this. As I recall, all you were doing up there at Totter's that day was sort of taking orders from the federals."

"My story isn't all that long," Leaphorn said. "To tell you the truth, I don't really understand it myself."

8.

Garcia swerved off the interstate at Holbrook and roared up Highway 71 past Bidahochi, took 191 to Chinli, and thence along the north rim of Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly to Lukachukai and onward past Round Rock onto the gravel road that wandered between Los Gigante b.u.t.tes into the empty rough country. Here the Carrizo Mountains ended and became the Lukachukai stem of the Chuska range. That represented a three-hour drive, but Garcia made it in less than that. Talking all the way, and sometimes listening to Leaphorn.

Leaphorn had been doing some listening, too, but mostly he was enjoying his role as pa.s.senger-a position that policemen almost never hold. He had wasted a few moments trying to remember the last time he had rolled down a highway without being the driver. Then he concentrated on enjoying the experience, savoring the beauty of the landscape, the pattern of cloud shadows on the hills-all those details you miss when you're navigating through traffic-happy to surrender the job of staring at the center stripe, reading road signs, and so forth, to Sergeant Garcia.

Anyway a lot of what Garcia was telling him was already stored in his memory. It dealt with the old double murder of an elderly couple named Handy at their place of business. It had been so ruthlessly coldhearted that it had put Ray Shewnack right up among the FBI's blue ribbon Most Wanted felons, advertised in post offices across the nation. But most of what Leaphorn had learned had been just hearsay filtered through police coffee talks. With Garcia he was hearing it right from the horse's mouth. Or almost. Garcia had been too green to be at the middle of the first chase. But he'd been deeply involved in the cleanup work.

"Funny thing, Joe. Naturally it seemed downright too evil to believe for me back then. I was just a rookie. Hadn't seen a lot of violent crime." Garcia shook his head, laughed. "But here I am now. Seen just about everything from incest murders to just-for-fun killings, and it still shocks me when I think about it."

"You don't mean the robbery itself," Leaphorn said. "You mean..."

"Well, not exactly. I mean the coldhearted and clever way Shewnack set it up. The way he used his partners and then betrayed them. Planning things so he could use his friends sort of as bait while he was driving away with all the loot. And that's why I've always thought we should have taken a harder look at the Totter fire. Some people really, really, really hated Shewnack. And I have to admit he did give 'em a d.a.m.n good reason to want to burn him to death." He laughed. "Burn him now. Sort of get a jump on the devil."

Although Leaphorn's Navajo culture hardly allowed even good reasons for hatred, he had to admit Shewnack had given Benny Begay, Tomas Delonie, and Ellie McFee some unusually strong causes for resentment. Ellie, as Garcia explained it, had been the clerk and cashier at the Big Handy's service station/grocery store/trading post at the Chinli junction.

She had been, so she had told police, Shewnack's girlfriend and soon to be his bride. But that would be after the robbery. Leading up to that she was the way Shewnack knew that Mr. Handy kept his acc.u.mulated sales collections in a backroom safe and made his deposits in a Gallup bank just once a month. So Shewnack had a.s.signed Ellie her job in the robbery and told her that when it was over she should wait at a roadside turnout for him to pick her up and take her away to be married. She stayed there with her suitcase and waited until two Coconino County deputies came looking for her.

"She seemed like a nice young woman," Garcia said. "Not a real good looker, and too chunky for the taste of some, but nice eyes, nice smile." He shook his head. "Not that she was doing much smiling when I was talking to her. She told me it had taken her a long time to believe that Shewnack was the one who had tipped off the cops about where to find her. And she still didn't seem to really believe he'd done that to her."

"I guess it was quite a contrast to the honeymoon trip he'd had her expecting," Leaphorn said.

"How about that for a reason for some hatred?" Garcia asked. "h.e.l.l hath no fury like a woman scorned, they say." He glanced at Leaphorn. "Scorned and betrayed. And she was out and about when Shewnack got burned up. She'd gone to prison, done her years, earned some time off for good behavior, and then got a quick parole."

"So she's your suspect?" Leaphorn asked, and grinned. "I mean if the feds hadn't taken over and ruled it was an accidental death."

"Well, maybe," Garcia said. "Delonie was still in stir when it happened. Benny Begay was just out on parole, but Benny didn't seem like a killer to me. Or to anyone else. The judge agreed. He gave him just five to seven and he got that shortened with nothing but good conduct reports. Besides, he hadn't had much to do with the crime."

Begay, Garcia explained, had been sort of a stock boy, cleanup man, and gasoline pumper at Handy's place. His role in the crime was disconnecting the telephone to delay the call for police help. Tomas Delonie was the outside man-a.s.signed to be there, armed with pistol and shotgun to make sure no one came along and interrupted the action. After that, Shewnack had instructed him to collect Benny and drive them both down that unimproved road that leads from Chinli down through Beautiful Valley. There they waited on a trail down into Bis-E ah Wash for Shewnack, to come by and deliver their half of the loot. They did exactly what he'd told them to do. The story he told them to give to the police was that they hadn't actually seen the robbery. They were to say they saw Shewnack drive away, suspected something bad had happened, tried to follow him in Delonie's pickup, but had lost him. They were to wait by the road about three hours, then return to the store and report what happened to the police who, Shewnack explained to them, would surely be there by then.

"Of course it didn't work that way," Garcia said. "Here's the way it actually went. Shewnack drove up to Handy's place in his pickup truck, walked in, pointed his pistol at Mr. Handy, and demanded all the cash. Handy started to argue. Shewnack shot him three times. Then Mrs. Handy came running in to see who was shooting, and Shewnack shot her twice. Ellie told me that she had started screaming then because Shewnack had promised her n.o.body would get hurt. So he hustled her into the back room, filled the sacks Ellie had kept there for him with money from the safe. The safe was standing open because Ellie had signaled him to come in just when Handy was starting his daily job of adding the day's revenue to the stash."

"Signaled?" Leaphorn said. "How?"

Garcia laughed. "Nothing very high tech. She went to the window and pulled down the blind. Just as Shewnack had instructed her. She said the plan was for Shewnack to tie up her and Handy, have Benny and Tomas take off pretending to chase him, then wait for him at a pickup place in the Bis-E ah Wash. He'd come there and they'd divide up the loot. He told her he'd have a bottle of chloroform to put Handy to sleep and he'd pretend to do the same with her. She was supposed to wait ten minutes after hearing him drive off and then reconnect the telephone and call the law."

Garcia shook his head, chuckled.

"She told the highway patrol Shewnack had told her to sound totally hysterical. He even had her practice screaming and sobbing into the telephone."

"Sounds like he would have made a pretty efficient professional criminal," Leaphorn said. "Guess he did. Didn't the federals have him as a top suspect in a couple of other robberies after that?"

"Yeah," Garcia agreed. "A whole bunch of them. Jobs with a sort of similar MO. But maybe some other bad guys had heard about it and were copying the system. Anyway, Ellie said that practicing hysteria wasn't necessary. Once she saw Shewnack shooting Handy, and then killing Mrs. Handy when the old lady came rushing in, the hysteria was genuine. Came naturally."

Leaphorn found himself feeling sympathy for Ellie.

Before the long evening was over, Garcia continued, police had received another excited call, telling them that two suspicious-looking young men, one armed with a pistol, were parked down in Bis-E ah Wash. The caller said the two ran up to his truck when he drove down the track there, looked at him, and then waved him on. Who was he? Well, the call was from an old-fashioned shortwave radio; the caller said he was Horse Hauler Mike, and a word or two later the radio shorted out-as was usual those days. When the state police showed up at Tomas Delonie's pickup in the wash, Delonie said no such truck driver, or anyone else, had come by since they got there. They insisted they knew nothing of the robbery, but since Shewnack had handed them one of the sacks Ellie had left with a little bit of the loot in it, that didn't seem credible to the policemen.

"I guess that does sort of establish a new level in ratting out your partners," Leaphorn said. "I mean, setting it up before the crime happens so you don't have to split the loot and arranging for the police to get them quick so they're not chasing you. I'd say any of those three would have motive for burning Shewnack."

Garcia shook his head. "Of course only Ellie was free when Shewnack was cremated, but maybe the others could have arranged something. Communicated with friends on the outside. But how would they have known where to find Shewnack? You have any ideas to offer on that?"

"Not offhand," Leaphorn said. "I'd have to know their families. And their friends. But it sounds pretty near impossible to me."

"Yeah," Garcia said. "I did a little casual asking around and got nothing. Well, anyway they're all out now. Like I said, Ellie got part of her five-year sentence whacked off for good behavior. She was living at Gallup last I heard. Delonie got a twenty-five-year rap, and Begay's was a lot shorter. But I've heard that Begay's dead. When he got out, he got married and he and his wife lived up near Teec Nos Pos. Worked as a sheep shearer, handy man, so forth. Supposed to have learned a lot about working with tools and fixing things in the penitentiary, and for a while he worked for a sporting goods store in Farmington. Mostly from what I heard repairing outboard motors, sporting equipment, things like that. I remember the first time I saw him after he was paroled he was helping out at one of those booths at the Four Corners Monument parking place. Very cool about it. Said he'd had an enemy way cure. Got himself restored to harmony. He sounded like he was very much occupied with forgetting his old mistakes. And all those bad years."

"You say Begay's dead now. How'd that happen?"

"Shot himself," Garcia said.

"You mean suicide?"

"No. Not Benny. I guess he wasn't as good at fixing as he thought he was. He had taken some stuff home from the Fish and Hunt Shop over the weekend to repair it. Had himself a workbench in his garage, and when his wife got home from whatever she was doing, he was there on the floor. And one of those old German World War II pistols on the floor beside him. A Walther. The one they called the P-38. The magazine was out of it on the table, but the empty sh.e.l.l casing was still in the chamber." Garcia looked at Leaphorn, shrugged.

"That's how it can happen," Leaphorn said. "Working with an unfamiliar weapon. You think you unloaded it and you didn't. No sign of foul play?"

"That was over here in New Mexico," Garcia said. "Not my case, but I doubt it. Probably handled by the San Juan County sheriff. Wouldn't be any reason to be suspicious. Who'd want to kill Benny Begay?"

"Good question," Leaphorn said. He found himself trying to visualize how Begay, a gunsmith then by practice, had managed to point that pistol at his head and pull the trigger. He'd extracted the magazine. What was he doing. Peering into the pistol barrel. That would make no sense.

Garcia studied Leaphorn. "You know, you Navajos have a lot of d.a.m.n fine ideas in your culture."

"Yes," Leaphorn said. "And we have a lot of trouble these days sticking to them. Begay managed it, I guess. But how about Delonie. Was he that forgiving?"

Garcia laughed "Delonie's no Navajo. I think he is part Pottawatomie, or maybe it's Seminole. He wasn't quite like Ellie and Begay, who were clean as a whistle. Delonie had already acc.u.mulated himself a little rap sheet. He'd done a little time in the Oklahoma reformatory as a juvenile, and then got himself arrested as an adult for stealing cars out of parking lots. The cops who worked Handy's case from the beginning told me Delonie might have been the reason it happened."

Leaphorn considered that, raised his eyebrows, provoking Garcia to explain what he meant.

"You know how it sometimes works. A professional robbery type looking for a way to make some money asks around among the proper level of citizens for some locals who might have spotted a likely job, and so forth. He hears about Delonie. Checks with him. Delonie says Handy's looks ripe for a robbery. Shewnack offers to buy in. Something like that. You know what I mean?"