“Did he have it with him when he left you in his office?” Leaphorn asked.
“He had a cardboard box. About three times the size of a shoebox. Anyway, it was big enough for the mask and all. He picked it up just as he was leaving.”
“And that tells us what?” Rodney asked. He shook his head, thinking about it.
Silence in the room. Rodney now slouched in Highhawk’s swivel chair; Chee leaning against the wall in the practiced slouch of a man who had done a lot of leaning against things, a lot of waiting for his age; Joe Leaphorn sitting on the edge of the desk, looking uncomfortable in his three-piece suit, his gray, burr-cut head bowed slightly forward, his expression that of a man who is listening to sounds inside his own head. The quiet air around them smelled of dust and, faintly, of decay.
“Officer Chee here, he and I, we have a problem,” Leaphorn said—half to Rodney and half to the desk. “We are like two dogs who followed two different sets of tracks to the same brush pile. One dog thinks there’s a rabbit under the brush, the other thinks it’s a bobcat. Same brush pile, different information.” He glanced at Chee. “Right?”
Chee nodded.
“As for my end of it, I see the body of a worn-out, toothless man who keeps his old shoes polished. His body is under a chamisa bush in New Mexico. And in the shirt pocket is a note mentioning Agnes Tsosie’s Yeibichai ceremony. When I get out to Agnes Tsosie’s place, I run into the name of Henry Highhawk. He’s coming out. I follow those pointed shoes back to Washington and I find a little den of Chilean terrorists—or, maybe more accurately, the victims of Chilean terror. And right in the next apartment to this den is a little man with red hair and freckles and the torso of a weightlifter who just happens to fit the description of the guy who probably killed Pointed Shoes with his knife. But I’ve come to a dead end. Good idea who killed my man, now. I think that surely the man’s widow, his family, they’ll tell me why. No such luck. Instead of that, they act like they never heard of him.”
Leaphorn sighed, tapped his fingers on the desk top, and continued without a glance at either of his listeners. “I get a make on Mr. Pointed Shoes’ identity from the FBI. It turns out he’s one of the big ones in one of the factions that’s sort of at war with the right-wing government in Chile. Turns out the ins have already killed one of his bunch earlier. So now the mystery is solved. I know who Pointed Shoes is. His name is Santillanes. I know who killed him—or I think I do—and I think I know why. But now I’ve got a new problem. Why were Santillanes’ kinfolks acting that way? It looked like they didn’t want anyone to know the man had been killed.”
Leaphorn’s droning voice stopped for several seconds. “Now why in the world would that be?” he said. He was frowning. He shook his head, looked at Rodney and Chee. “Either one of you want to break in here?”
Neither one did.
“So,” Leaphorn said. “So, I’m almost to the brush pile. Now my question is what the hell is going on here? And for some reason I can’t get Highhawk out of my head. He doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. I think I know how Santillanes found out he should go to the Navajo Reservation to find Highhawk. But I don’t understand why.”
Leaphorn paused again, looked at Chee. “Do you know about this? Right after Highhawk pulled that business of digging up the graves and mailing the bones to the museum, he got the big splash of publicity he wanted. But before anybody could serve a warrant on him, he had dropped out of sight. All his friends and his neighbors could tell anybody looking for him that he was going to Arizona to attend a Yeibichai ceremonial for some relative named Agnes Tsosie. I think Santillanes probably read about his exploits in the paper and went looking for him about the same time the police did. Santillanes got the word that Henry was heading west for the Yeibichai. But he didn’t know it was a month in the future.”
Leaphorn stopped again, inhaled hugely, exhaled, drummed his fingers against the desk top, thinking. Rodney made a sentence-opening sound but cut it off without actually saying anything. But he looked at his watch.
“Why would Chilean politicians want to meet with Henry Highhawk?” Leaphorn asked himself the question. “They had to want to contact him badly enough to send someone three thousand miles, and get him killed, and then send somebody else to complete the mission. And post his bail.” He glanced up at Chee. “That’s right, isn’t it? And Highhawk called that guy with the missing fingers his friend, didn’t he? Any idea how long they’d known each other?”
“They didn’t,” Chee said. “Highhawk was lying. They hadn’t met until the Yeibichai.”
“You sure?” Leaphorn asked.
“I watched them meet,” Chee said. “I’m sure.”
Rodney held up a hand. “Friends, I’ve got to go and do some things. Two or three in fact. I was going to be back at the office about an hour ago. Stick around. I’ll be back.” He slipped off the desk and disappeared into the hallway.
“Every effect has its cause,” Leaphorn said to Chee. “Once in a while, maybe, a star just falls at random. But I don’t believe in random. The Santillanes bunch had a hell of a good reason to chase after Highhawk. What was it?”
“I don’t know,” Chee said. “All I know about the Santillanes bunch is from seeing Bad Hands a couple of times. I got here by a totally different route. And I’ve got a different question under your brush pile.” He sat on the desk about where Rodney had been leaning, thinking, deciding how to explain this premonition, this hunch that had been making him uneasy.
“I keep remembering Highhawk at the Yeibichai,” Chee said. “I was curious about him so I was watching him, standing just a little off to the side where I could see his face. He was cold—” He laughed, glanced at Leaphorn. “Of course he was cold. Everybody’s cold at a Night Chant, but he was colder than most of us because, you know, if you come from the East you think desert country is supposed to be hot, so he wasn’t dressed like us. Just had on a leather jacket. Anyway, he was shivering.” Chee stopped. Why was he telling Leaphorn all this? Highhawk standing, shaking with cold, hugging himself, the wind blowing dust across the dance ground around his ankles, the wavering light from the bonfires turning his face red. His expression had been rapt, and Chee had noticed his lips were moving. Highhawk was singing to himself. Agnes Tsosie had been standing on a blanket spread on the packed earth in front of the medicine hogan attended by the hataalii. Talking God, Humpback God, and Water Sprinkler had been making their slow, stately approach. Chee had edged closer, close enough to hear what Highhawk was chanting. “He stirs. He stirs. He stirs. He stirs,“ Highhawk had been singing. “Now in old age wandering, he stirs.” It had been words from the “Song of Waking” which the hataalii would have sung on the first midnight of the ceremonial, summoning the spirit in the mask from its cosmic sleep to take its part in the ritual. He remembered noticing as Highhawk sang that while some of the words were wrong, the man's expression was deeply reverent.
Now he noticed that Leaphorn’s expression was puzzled. “He was cold,” Leaphorn said. “Yes, but you haven’t made your point.”
“He was a believer,” Chee said. “You know what I mean. Some people come to a ceremonial out of family duty, and some come out of curiosity, or to meet friends. But to some it is a spiritual experience. You can tell by their faces.”
Leaphorn’s expression was still puzzled. “And he was one of those? He believed?”
Yes, Chee thought, Highhawk was one of those. You’re not one, lieutenant. You don’t believe. You see the Navajo Way as a harmless cultural custom. You would be one of those who go only as a family duty. But this crazy white man believed. Truly believed.