That was the first conclusion. The second revolved around another illusion. West had probably performed his Musket deception, and then staged the pretended burglary, because Joseph Musket was already dead. Killed by whom? Probably by West himself. Why? Chee would leave that for later. There'd be a reason. There always was. Now he concentrated on the faded white line illuminated by his headlights, and on recreating what must have happened.
The cool air smelled of wet sage, and creosote bush, and ozone. For the first time in days, Chee felt in harmony with his thoughts. Hozro again. His mind was working as it should, on the natural path. West had found himself with the body of Musket on his hands. He had killed Musket, or someone else had done it, or Musket had simply died. And West didn't want it known. Not yet.
Perhaps he'd gotten wind of the impending drug shipment. Perhaps his son had told him. Perhaps he'd learned it from Musket. And West wanted to steal it. And if shippers knew their man at Burnt Water was dead, they might move the landing point, or call everything off. So the death and the body had been concealed.
Chee found himself appreciating the cleverness. West knew he was dealing with very dangerous men. He knew they'd come after the thief. He wanted someone besides West for them to hunt. Ironfingers got the job. Which meant he could never, ever, afford the risk of having the corpse, or even the skeleton, of anyone who met Musket's description turning up to be identified. A skeleton, even a bit of jawbone, would be enough to match against the name of a missing person who'd been in prison—whose dental charts and fingerprints and all other vital statistics would be easily available. Therefore West had put the body out along the traditional pathway of the spruce Messenger's party, where it would be found exactly when he wanted it found. He'd faked the witchcraft mutilation—the hands and feet and probably the penis, too—to eliminate the automatic fingerprinting an unidentified corpse would undergo. It was his only wrong guess—not calculating that the Hopis wouldn't report the corpse before their Niman Kachina ceremonials—and it hadn't mattered. And then—Chee grinned again, savoring the cleverness of it—West had made certain that the official record would show Musket alive and well in Burnt Water after the corpse was found. That would kill any chance of matching dental charts. He would have done that, somehow, even if the body had been reported immediately.
Chee had this sorted out by the time his pickup made the long climb up the cliff of Moenkopi Wash, passed the Hopi village, and reached the Tuba City junction. By the time he'd reached Tuba City he reached another conclusion. West was hiding the body of Palanzer for the same reason he'd made Musket forever invisible. Palanzer-plus-Musket gave the owners of the cocaine an even more logical target for their rage.
Puddles from a rain do not long survive in a desert climate. The puddles in the track to Chee's mobile home had disappeared long ago. But the ruts were still soft and driving through them would cut them deeper. Chee parked the pickup, climbed out, and began walking the last fifty yards toward his home. There was still an occasional mutter of thunder from the north, but the sky now was a blaze of stars. Chee walked on the bunch grass, thinking that much of his problem still remained. There was absolutely nothing he could prove. All he would have for Captain Largo would be speculation. No. That wasn't true. Now the remains of John Doe could be identified—unless, of course, Musket had never been to a dentist. That wasn't likely. Chee enjoyed the night, the washed-clean smell of the air. The smell, suddenly, of brewing coffee.
Chee stopped in his tracks. Coffee! From where? He stared at his trailer. Dark and silent. It was the only possible source of that rich aroma. He had placed the trailer here under this lonely cottonwood for privacy and isolation. The site gave him that. The nearest other possible coffeepot was a quarter mile away. Someone was waiting in his dark trailer. They'd grown impatient. In the darkness, they'd brewed coffee. Chee turned and walked rapidly back toward his truck. The trailer produced a sudden clatter of sound. They'd been watching since he'd driven up and parked. They'd seen him turn away. Chee's walk became a run. He had his ignition key in his hand by the time he jerked the pickup door open. He heard the trailer door bang open, the sound of running feet. Then he had the key in the ignition. The still-warm motor roared into life. Chee slammed the gears into reverse, flicked on the headlights.
The lights illuminated two running men. One of them was the younger of the two men Chee had noticed watching him in the Hopi Cultural Center dining room. The other man Chee had seen hunting at the crash site, helping Johnson in his search for the suitcases. The younger man had a pistol in his hand. Chee switched off the lights and sent the pickup truck roaring backward down the track. He didn't turn on the headlights again until he was back on the asphalt.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chee spent the night beside his pickup truck in a sand-bottomed cul-de-sac off Moenkopi Wash. He'd stopped twice to make absolutely sure he hadn't been followed. Even so, he was nervous. He shaped the sand to fit hips and shoulders, rolled out his blanket, and lay looking up at a star-lit sky. Nothing remained of the afternoon's empty promise of rain except an occasional distant thunder from somewhere up around the Utah border. Why had the two men waited for him in his trailer? Obviously it hadn't been a friendly visit. Could he have been wrong about one of the men having been with Johnson in Wepo Wash? It would have made more sense for them to be members of the narcotics company. As Johnson had warned him, they might logically come looking for him. But why now? They would have learned by now that the dope was being sold back to them. Did they think that he was one of the hijackers doing the selling? He, and Musket, and Palanzer? But if the man had been the one he'd seen with Johnson in the wash, that meant something different. What would the dea want with Chee? And why would the dea wait for him in the dark, instead of calling him into Largo's office for a talk? Was it because, once again, the dea's intentions were not wholly orthodox? Because he hadn't returned Johnson's call? That line of speculation led Chee nowhere. He turned his thoughts to the telephone call to Gaines. Tomorrow night the exchange would be made—five hundred thousand dollars in currency for two suitcases filled with cocaine. But where? All he knew now, that he hadn't known, was that the caller might have been West, and that Musket might be dead. That didn't seem to help. Then, as he thought it through all the way, through from the east, the south, the west, and the north, and back to the east again, just as his uncle had taught him, he saw that it might help. Everything must have a reason. Nothing was done without a cause. Why delay the payoff more than necessary—as the caller had done? How would tomorrow night be different from tonight? Different for West? Probably, somehow or other, the nights would be different on the Hopi ceremonial calendar. And West would be aware of the difference. He had been married to a Hopi. In the Hopi tradition, he had moved into the matriarchy of his wife—into her village and into her home. Three or four years, Dashee had said. Certainly long enough to know something of the Hopi religious calendar.
Chee shifted into a more comfortable position. The nervous tension was draining away now, the sense of being hunted. He felt relaxed and drowsy. Tomorrow he would get in touch with Dashee and find out what would be going on tomorrow night in the Hopi world of kachina spirits and men who wore sacred masks to impersonate them.
Chee was thinking of kachinas when he drifted off into sleep, and he dreamed of them. He awoke feeling stiff and sore. Shaking the sand out of his blanket, he folded it behind the pickup seat. Whoever had been waiting in his trailer had probably long since left Tuba City, but Chee decided not to take any chances. He drove southward instead, to Cameron. He got to the roadside diner just at sunrise, ordered pancakes and sausage for breakfast, and called Dashee from the pay telephone booth.