They were everywhere. A shoulder blade, a thigh bone, part of a skull, ribs, four or five connected vertebrae, part of a foot, a lower jaw.
Jim Chee was modern man built upon traditional Navajo. This was simply too much death. Too many ghosts disturbed. He backed away from the excavation, flashlight still on, careful no longer. He wanted only to be away from here. Into the sunlight. Into the cleansing heat of a sweat bath. To be surrounded by the healing, curing sounds of a Ghostway ceremonial. He started up the slope, pulling himself up by the cable.
The panic receded. First he would check the backhoe cab. He trotted to it, guided by the flash. He checked the metal serial-number plate and the Navajo Nation Road Department number painted on its side. Then he flashed the light into the cab.
A man was sitting there, slumped sideways against the opposite door, his open eyes reflecting white in Chee's flash. The left side of his face was black with what must be blood. But Chee could see his mustache and enough of his face to know that he had found Joe Nails.
Chapter Six
Ť ^ ť
LEAPHORN CAME HOME to Window Rock long after midnight. He hadn't bothered to turn on the lights. He drank from his cupped palms in the bathroom and folded his clothing over the bedside chair (where Emma had so often sat to read or knit, to do the thousand small things that Emma did). He had turned the bed ninety degrees so that his eyes would open in the morning to the shock of a different view. That broke his lifelong habit, the automatic waking thought of 'Where's Emma?' and what then followed. He had moved from his side of the bed to Emma's -- which had eliminated that once-happy habit of reaching out to touch her when he drifted into sleep.
Now he lay flat on his back, feeling tired muscles relax, thinking about the food in Eleanor Friedman-Bernal's refrigerator, drifting from that to her arrangement with Nakai to inspect contributed pots and from that to the notebook Nakai had described. He hadn't noticed a pocket-sized leather notebook in her apartment--but then it might be almost anywhere in the room. Thatcher had made no real search. On the long drive homeward across the Checkerboard from Huerfano Mesa, he had thought of why Elliot hadn't mentioned being sent by Friedman to see Nakai and collect a pot. It must have seemed odd to Elliot, this abortive mission. Why not mention it? Before Leaphorn could come to any conclusion, he drifted off to sleep, and it was morning.
He showered, inspected his face, decided he could go another few days without a shave, made himself a breakfast of sausage and fried eggs--violating his diet with the same guilty feelings he always had when Emma was away visiting her family. He read the mail that Saturday had brought him, and the Gallup Independent. He snapped on the television, snapped it off again, stood at the window looking out on the autumn morning. Windless. Cloudless. Silent except for a truck rolling down Navajo Route 3. The little town of Window Rock was taking Sunday off. Leaphorn noticed the glass was dusty--a condition Emma had never tolerated. He got a handkerchief from his drawer and polished the pane. He polished other windows. Abruptly he walked to the telephone and called Chaco Canyon.
Until recently telephone calls between the world outside and Chaco had traveled via a Navajo Communications Company telephone line. From Crownpoint northeast, the wire wandered across the rolling grassland, attached mostly to fence posts and relying on its own poles only when no fence was available going in the right direction. This system made telephone service subject to the same hazards as the ranch fence on which it piggybacked. Drifts of tumbleweeds, winter blizzards, dry rot, errant cattle, broke down both fences and communications. When it was operating, voices sometimes tended to fade in and out with the wind velocity. But recently this system had been modernized. Calls were now routed two hundred miles east to Santa Fe, then beamed to a satellite and re-broadcast to a receiving dish at Chaco. The space age system, like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration which made it possible, was frequently out of operation. When it operated at all, voices tended to fade in and out with the wind velocity. Today was no exception.
A woman's voice answered, strong at first, then drifting away into space. No, Bob Luna wasn't in. No use ringing his number because she'd seen him driving away and she hadn't seen him return.
How about Maxie Davis?
Just a minute. She might not be up yet. It was, after all, early Sunday morning.
Maxie Davis was up. 'Who?' she asked. 'I'm sorry. I can hardly hear you.'
Leaphorn could hear Maxie Davis perfectly-- as if she were standing beside him. 'Leaphorn,' he repeated. 'The Navajo cop who was out there a couple of days ago.'
'Oh. Have you found her?'
'No luck,' Leaphorn said. 'Do you remember a little leather-covered notebook she used? Probably carried in her shirt pocket?'
'Notebook? Yeah. I remember it. She always used it when she was working.'
'Know where she keeps it? When it's not with her?'
'No idea. Probably in a drawer somewhere.'
'You've known her long?'
'Off and on, yes. Since we were graduate students.'
'How about Dr. Elliot?'
Maxie Davis laughed. 'We're sort of a team, I guess you'd say.' And then, perhaps thinking Leaphorn would misunderstand, added: 'Professionally. We're the two who write the bible on the Anasazi.' again, the sound fading in and out. `After Randall Elliot and me, no more need for Anasazi research.'
'Not Friedman-Bernal? She's not part of it?'
'Different field,' Davis said. 'She's ceramics. We're people. She's pots.'
They had decided, he and Emma, to install the telephone in the kitchen. To hang it on the wall beside the refrigerator. Standing there, listening to Maxie Davis, Leaphorn inspected the room. It was neat. No dishes, dirty or otherwise, were in sight. Windows clean, sink clean, floor clean. Leaphorn leaned forward to the full reach of the telephone receiver cord and plucked a napkin from the back of the chair. He'd used it while he'd eaten his eggs. He held the receiver against his ear with his shoulder while he folded it.
'I'm going to come back out there,' he said. 'I'd like to talk to you. And to Elliot if he's there.'
'I doubt it,' Maxie Davis said. 'He's usually out in the field on Sunday.'
But Elliot was there, leaning against the porch support watching Leaphorn as he parked his pickup in the apartment's courtyard.
'Ya tay,' Elliot said, getting the pronunciation of the Navajo greeting almost right. 'Didn't know policemen worked on Sunday.'
'They don't tell you that when they recruit you,' Leaphorn said, 'but it happens now and then.'
Maxie Davis appeared at the door. She was wearing a loose blue T-shirt decorated with a figure copied from a petroglyph. Short dark hair fell around her face. She looked feminine, intelligent, and beautiful.
'I'll bet I know where she keeps that notebook,' Davis said. 'Do you still have the key?'
Leaphorn shook his head. 'I'll get one from headquarters.' Or, he thought, failing that, it would be simple enough to get into the apartment. He'd noticed that when Thatcher had unlocked the door.
'Luna's away,' Elliot said. 'We can get in through the patio door.'
Elliot managed it with the long blade of his pocketknife, simply sliding the blade in and lifting the latch.
'Something you learn in graduate school,' he said.
Or in juvenile detention centers, Leaphorn thought. He wondered if Elliot had ever been in one of those. It didn't seem likely. Jail is not socially acceptable for prep school boys. Everything seemed exactly as it had been when he'd been here with Thatcher--the same stale air, the same dustiness, the boxes of pots, the disarray. Thatcher had searched it, in his tentative way, looking for evidence that Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal was a violator of the Federal Antiquities Act. Now Leaphorn intended to search it in his own way, looking for the woman herself.