A Thief of Time

'No,' Chee said. 'I came out to talk to Randall Elliot but he's away somewhere. I remembered you said he went to Washington last month. You said his travel agent called and you took the message. Do you remember the name of the agency?'

'Bolack's,' Mrs. Luna said. 'I think just about everybody out here uses Bolack's.'

Chee called Bolack Travel in Farmington.

'Navajo Tribal Police,' he told the man who answered. 'We need to confirm the dates of an airline ticket. Don't know the airline, but the tickets were issued by your agency to Randall Elliot, address at Chaco Canyon.'

'You know about when? This year? This month? Yesterday?'

'Probably late last month,' Chee said.

'Randall Elliot,' the man said. 'Randall Elliot. Let's see.' Chee heard the clacking sound of a computer keyboard. Silence. More clacking. More silence.

'That's funny,' the man said. 'We issued them, but he didn't pick them up. It was an October eleven departure, with an October sixteen return. Mesa from Farmington to Albuquerque, American from Albuquerque to Washington. You just need the dates?'

'The tickets weren't picked up? You're certain?'

'I sure am. Makes a lot of work for nothing.'

Chee called Mrs. Luna again. Listening to the ring, he felt a sense of urgency. Randall Elliot wasn't in Washington that morning Eleanor Friedman-Bernal drove away to oblivion. He didn't go. But he pretended to go. He arranged it so that everyone in this gossipy place would think he was in Washington. Why? So they wouldn't be curious about where he'd actually gone. And where was that? Chee thought he knew. He hoped he was wrong.

'Hello,' Mrs. Luna said.

'Chee again,' he said. 'Another question. Did a deputy sheriff come out here yesterday to talk to people?'

'He did. About a month late, I'd say.'

'Did he tell you about the note left for Lieutenant Leaphorn? The one that sounded like Dr. Friedman might still be alive.'

'Is alive,' Mrs. Luna said. 'He said the note said, Tell Leaphorn she is still alive.` '

'Does everybody here know about that? Does Elliot?'

'Of course. Because everybody was beginning to have their doubts. You know, that's a long time to just disappear unless something bad has happened.'

'You sure about Elliot?'

'He was right here when he told Bob and me.'

'Well, thanks a lot,' Chee said.

The wind had fallen now into something near a calm. Which was lucky for Chee. He drove back to Blanco Trading Post much faster than the rutted dirt roadbed made wise, and then much faster than the law allowed on N.M. 44 to Farmington. He was worried. He had told Undersheriff Bates to tell the people at Chaco about Houk's note. He should not have done that. But maybe these suspicions were groundless. He thought of a way he could check -- a call he should have made before he left Chaco.

He pulled into the grocery store at Bloomfield and ran to the pay phone, then ran back to his truck for the supply of quarters he kept in the glove box. He called the Farmington airport, identified himself, asked the woman who answered who there rented helicopters. He jotted down the two names she gave him, and their numbers. The line was busy at Aero Services. He dialed Flight Contractors. A man who identified himself as Sanchez answered. Yes, they had rented a copter that morning to Randall Elliot.

'Pretty sorry weather for flying, even in a copter,' Sanchez said. 'But he's got the credentials and the experience. Flew for the navy in Nam.'

'Did he say where he was going?'

'He's an anthropologist,' Sanchez said. 'We been renting to him for two, three years now. Said he was going down over the White Horse Lake country hunting one of them Indian ruins. If you're going to fly in this kind of weather that's a good place to fly. Just grass and snake-weed down that way.'

It was also just about exactly the opposite direction from where Elliot was really flying, Chee thought. Southeast instead of northwest.

'When did he leave?'

'I'd say maybe three hours ago. Maybe a little longer.'

'Do you have another one to rent? With a pilot.'

'Have the chopper,' Sanchez said. 'Have to see about the pilot. When's it for?'

Chee made some instant calculations. 'Thirty minutes,' he said.

'I doubt it by then,' Sanchez said. 'I'll try.'

It took Chee a little less than that, at considerable risk of a speeding ticket. Sanchez had found a pilot, but the pilot hadn't arrived.

'He's the substitute pilot for the air ambulance service,' Sanchez said. 'Man named Ed King. He didn't care much for this weather, but then the wind's been dying.'

In fact the wind had moderated to a steady breeze. It seemed to be dying away as the weather front that brought it moved southeast. But now the sky to the north and west was a solid dark overcast.

While they waited for King, he'd see if he could get hold of Leaphorn. If he couldn't, he'd leave word for him. Tell him about finding the missing wastebasket liner hidden in Elliot's kitchen with the bones in it, and about Elliot's rejected applications to dig those sites. He'd tell Leaphorn that Elliot hadn't taken the flight to Washington the weekend that Friedman-Bernal disappeared. That provoked another thought.

'Mr. Sanchez. Could you check and see if Dr. Elliot took out a helicopter on, let's see, the thirteenth of October?'

Sanchez looked as doubtful as he had when Chee had said he should bill the copter rental to the Navajo Tribal Police. The look had hardened, and Chee had finally presented his MasterCard and waited while Sanchez checked his credit balance. It seemed to have reached the minimum guarantee. ('Now,' said Sanchez, cheerful again, 'if it's okay with the tribal auditors you can get your money back.')

'I don't know that I'm supposed to be telling all this stuff,' Sanchez said. 'Randall's a regular customer of ours. It might get back to him.'

'It's police business,' Chee said. 'Part of a criminal investigation.'

'About what?' Sanchez looked stubborn.

'Those two men shot out in the Checkerboard. Nails and Etcitty.'

'Oh,' Sanchez said. 'I'll check.'

'While you do, I'll call my office.'

Benally was in charge of the shift. No, Benally knew no way to get in touch with Leaphorn.

'Matter of fact, you have a message from him. Woman named Irene Musket called from Mexican Hat. She said Leaphorn headed down the San Juan--' Benally paused, chuckling. 'You know,' he said, 'this sounds just like the screwy stuff you get mixed up in, Jim. Anyway, she said Leaphorn took off down the San Juan yesterday evening in a boat, looking for a boat this anthropologist you're looking for took. She was supposed to pick him up this morning at Mexican Hat, and call you if he didn't show up. Well, he didn't show up.'

And just then the door opened behind Chee, letting in the cold breeze.

'Somebody here want a chopper ride?'

A burly, bald-headed man with a great yellow mustache was standing holding it open, looking at Chee. 'You the daredevil who wants to fly out into this weather? I'm the daredevil here to take you.'

Chapter Eighteen

Ť ^ ť

FINDING THE KAYAK Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had borrowed seemed simple enough to Leaphorn. She could have gone only downriver. The cliffs that walled in the San Juan between Bluff and Mexican Hat limited takeout places to a few sandy benches and the mouths of perhaps a score of washes and canyons. Since Leaphorn's reason and instincts told him her target ruin was on the reservation side of the river, his hunting grounds were further limited. And the description he had been given of the woman suggested she wouldn't be strong enough to pull the heavy rubber kayak very far out of the water. Therefore, finding it, even in the gathering darkness with only a flashlight, would be easy. Finding the woman would be the tough part.

Leaphorn had calculated without the wind. It treated Houk's little craft like a sail, pushing against its sides and forcing Leaphorn into a constant struggle to keep it in the current. About four miles below the Bluff bridge, he let the kayak drift into a sandbar on the north side of the river, as much to stretch cramping muscles and give himself a rest as in any hope of finding something. On the cliffs here he found an array of petroglyphs cut through the black desert varnish into the sandstone. He studied a row of square-shouldered figures with chevron-like stripes above their heads and little arcs suggesting sound waves issuing from their mouths. If they hadn't predated the time his own people had invaded this stone wilderness, he would have thought they represented the Navajo yei called Talking God. Just above them was the figure of a bird -- an unambiguous representation of the snowy egret. Above that, Kokopelli played his flute, bent so far forward that it pointed at the earth. The ground here was littered with shards of pottery but Leaphorn found no sign of the kayak. He hadn't expected to.