The mild early-winter storm which had been bringing Washington rain mixed with snow yesterday had drifted out over the Atlantic and left behind a grim gray overcast with a forecast for high broken clouds and clearing by late afternoon. Now it was cold and still. Chee found that even in this strange place, even under these circumstances, he could catch himself up in the rhythm of the fast, hard motion, of heart and lungs hard at work. The nightmares faded a little, coming to seem like abstract memories of something he might have merely dreamed. Highhawk had never really existed. There were not really eighteen thousand ancestors in boxes lining hallways in an old museum. No one had actually tried to commit mass murder with the mask of Talking God. He walked briskly down Pennsylvania Avenue, and veered northward on Twelfth Street, and strode briskly westward again on H Street, and collapsed finally on a bench in what he thought, judging from a sign he'd noticed without really attending, might be Lafayette Square. Through the trees he could see the White House and, on the other side, an impressive hotel. Chee caught his breath, considered the note from Leaphorn, and decided it was a sort of subtle gesture. (You and I, kid. Two Dineh among the Strangers.) But maybe not. And it wasn't the sort of thing he would ever ask the lieutenant about.
A dove-gray limousine pulled up under the hotel’s entryway roof, and after it a red sports car which Chee couldn’t identify. Maybe a Ferrari, he thought. Next was a long black Mercedes which looked like it might have been custom built. Chee was no longer breathing hard. The damp low-country cold seeped up his sleeves and around his socks and under his collar. He got up, inspired half by cold and half by curiosity, and headed for the hotel.
It was warm inside, and luxurious. Chee sank into a sofa, removed his hat, warmed his ears with his hands, and observed what his sociology teacher had called “the privileged class.” The professor admitted a prejudice against this class but Chee found them interesting to observe. He spent almost forty-five minutes watching women in fur coats and men in suits which, while they tended to look almost identical to Chee’s untrained eye, were obviously custom made. He saw someone who looked exactly like Senator Teddy Kennedy, and someone who looked like Sam Donaldson, and a man who was probably Ralph Nader, and three others who must have been celebrities of some sort, but whose names eluded him.
He left the hotel warm but still with the headache. The material splendors, the fur and polished leather of the hotel’s guests, had replaced his nightmares with a depression. He hurried through the damp cold back to his own hotel room.
The telephone was ringing. It was Janet Pete.
“I tried to call you last night,” she said. “How are you? Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Chee said. “We had trouble down at the museum. The FBI got involved and—”
“I know. I know,” Janet said. “I saw it on television. The paper is full of it. There’s a picture of you, with the statue.”
“Oh,” Chee said. The final humiliation. He could see it in the Farmington Times: Officer Jim Chee of Shiprock, New Mexico, seen above wrestling with a representation of Talking God, from which he has removed the head, in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
“On television, too. On the ABC morning news. They had some footage of you with the mask. But I’m not sure people who didn’t know how you were dressed would know it was you.”
Chee could think of nothing to say. His head still ached. He wished with a fervent longing to be back in New Mexico. In his trailer under the cottonwood on the bank above the San Juan River. He would take two aspirin and sprawl out on his comfortable, narrow bed and finish reading A Yellow Raft on Blue Water. He’d left it opened to page 158. A hard place to stop.
“They said Henry Highhawk was dead,” Janet Pete said in a small voice.
“Yes. The police think Santero killed him,” Chee said. “It seems fairly obvious that it must have been Santero.”
“Henry was a sweet man,” Janet said. “He was a kind man.” She paused. “He was, wasn’t he, Jim? But if he was, how did they talk him into being a part of this—of this horrible bomb thing?”
“I don’t think they did,” Chee said. “We’ll never know for sure, I guess. But I think they conned him, and used him. Probably they saw the story in the Post about Highhawk digging up the skeletons. They needed a way to kill the general and they had a way of knowing their target would be visiting the Smithsonian, so they went out and made friends with Henry.”
“But that doesn’t explain why he would help them.”
“I think Highhawk thought Santero was sympathetic to what Henry was trying to do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that planting the tape recorded message in the mask was dreamed up by the Santillanes bunch. Maybe they knew he’d need technical help with the timer on the tape recorder and all that.”
“I’d like to think you’re right,” Janet said. “I’d like to think I wasn’t a complete fool. Wanting to help him when he was helping to murder a lot of innocent people.” But her tone was full of doubt.
“If I wasn’t right—If you weren’t they wouldn’t have had to kill him,” Chee said. “But they did kill him. Maybe he noticed something and caught on. Maybe they just couldn’t leave him around to tell all to the police.”
“Sure,” Janet said. “I didn’t think of that. I feel better. I guess I needed to keep believing Henry just wanted to do good.”
“I think that’s right,” Chee said. “It took me a while, but I’ve decided that, too.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I have a flight this afternoon back to Albuquerque. Then I catch the Mesa Airlines flight to Farmington, and pick up my car and drive back to Shiprock,” Chee said.
Janet Pete correctly read the tone of that.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea what I was getting you into. I never would have—”
Chee, a believer in the Navajo custom of never interrupting anyone, interrupted her.
“I wanted to come,” he said. “I wanted to see you.”
“Do you still want to see me? I’ll come over and take you to the airport.” A long pause. “If you really do have to go. You’re on vacation, aren’t you?”
“I’d like that,” Chee said. “A ride to the airport.” So now he waited again. He was able now to think about what had happened yesterday. The D.C. police would probably catch Santero sooner or later. He found he had no interest in that. But he wondered what Leaphorn had done to keep Santero from pushing the button. Chee retraced it all in his memory. Handing the museum guard the ball of plastic explosive. (“Here. Be careful with this. It was a bomb. Give it to the cops.”) He'd walked back to the STAFF ONLY elevator carrying Talking God's mask. He had pushed his way through the uproar of scurrying and shouting. He’d gotten off at the sixth floor and walked back to Highhawk’s office. He’d emptied an assortment of leather, feathers, and bones out of a box beside Highhawk’s chair. He placed the mask gently in the box and closed it. Then he searched the office, quickly and thoroughly, without finding what he wanted. That left two places to look.