A Thief of Time

Elliot laughed.

'You'd rather not have a bullet hole in me,' Leaphorn said. 'Or her either.'

'That's right,' Elliot said. 'But I don't have any choice now. You seem to have figured it out.'

'I figured you were going to get us far enough up the rocks to make it count and then tumble us down.'

Elliot nodded.

'I'm not sure of your motive for all this. Killing so many people.'

'Maxie told you that day,' Elliot said. The good humor was suddenly gone, replaced by bitter anger. 'What the hell can a rich kid do to impress anyone?'

'Impress Maxie,' Leaphorn said. 'A truly beautiful young woman.' And he was thinking, maybe I'm like you. I don't want this to go wrong now because of Emma. Emma put little value on finding people to punish them. But this would really have impressed her. You love a woman, you want to impress her. The male instinct. Hero finds lost woman. The life saved. He didn't want it to go wrong now. But it had. In a very little while, wherever and whenever it was most convenient, Randall Elliot would kill Eleanor Friedman-Bernal and Joe Leaphorn. He could think of nothing to prevent it. Except maybe Brigham Houk.

Brigham must be somewhere near. It had taken him only minutes to get the poles and return. He had seen his devil, recognized him, and slipped away. Brigham Houk was a hunter. Brigham Houk was also insane, and afraid of this devil. What would he do? Leaphorn thought he knew.

'We'll leave her here for now and we'll walk over there,' Elliot said, pointing with the pistol toward the edge of the shelf. It was exactly the direction Leaphorn wanted to go. It was the only way that led to convenient shelter. It must be the way Brigham had gone.

'It's going to look funny if too many people fall off things,' Leaphorn said. 'Two is too many.'

'I know,' Elliot said. 'Do you have a better idea?'

'Maybe,' Leaphorn said. 'Tell me your motive for all this.'

'I think you guessed,' Elliot said.

'I guess Maxie,' Leaphorn said. 'You want her. But she's a self-made, class-conscious woman with a lot of bad memories of being put down by the upper class. On top of that, she's a tough one, a little mean. She resents you, and everybody like you, because it's all handed to you. So I think you're going to do something that has nothing to do with being born to the upper, upper, upper class. Something that neither Maxie nor anybody else can ignore. From what you told me at Chaco it's something to do with tracing what happened to these Anasazi by tracking genetic flaws.'

'How about that,' Elliot said. 'You're not as dumb as you try to act.'

'You found the flaw you were hunting in the bones here, and over at the site on the Checkerboard, too, I guess. You were digging here illegally, and our friend here came in and caught you at it.'

Elliot held up his empty hand. 'So I tried to kill her and screwed it up.'

'Curious about something,' Leaphorn said. 'Were you the one who called in the complaint about Eleanor being a pot hunter?'

'Sure,' Elliot said. 'You figured why?'

'Not really,' Leaphorn said. Where the devil was Brigham Houk? Maybe he'd run. Leaphorn doubted it. His father wouldn't have run. But then his father wasn't schizophrenic.

'You can't get a permit to dig,' Elliot said. 'Not in your lifetime. These asshole bureaucrats are always saving it for the future. Well, if a site is being vandalized, that puts it in a different category. Not so tough then, after it's already been messed up. I was going to follow up later with some hints about where to find digs Eleanor was stealing from. They'd find her body, so they'd have their Thief of Time. They wouldn't have to be looking for one and maybe suspecting me. And then I'd get my dig permit.' He laughed. 'Roundabout way, but I've seen it work.'

'You were getting your bones anyway,' Leaphorn said. 'Buying some, digging some up yourself.'

'Wrong category, friend,' Elliot said. 'Those are unofficial bones. Not in site.' I was findingem unofficially, so I'd know where to find 'em officially when I got my permit. You understand that?' Elliot peered at him, grinning. He was enjoying this. 'When I get my permit to excavate, I come back and the bones I find then are registered in place. Photographed. Documented.' He grinned again. 'Same bones, maybe, but now they're official.'

'How about Etcitty,' Leaphorn asked, 'and Nails?' Over Elliot's shoulder, Leaphorn had seen Brigham Houk. He saw Houk because the man wanted Leaphorn to see him. He was behind a fallen sandstone slab, screened by brush. He held something that might have been a curved staff and he motioned Leaphorn toward him.

'That was a mistake,' Elliot said.

'Killing them?'

Elliot laughed. 'That was correcting the mistake. Nails was too careless. And too greedy. Once the silly bastards stole that backhoe they were sure to get caught.' He glanced at Leaphorn. 'And Nails was sure to tell you guys everything he knew.'

'Which would have been bad for your reputation,' Leaphorn said.

'Disastrous,' Elliot said. He waved the pistol. 'But hurry it up. I want to get out of here.'

'If you're working on what I think,' Leaphorn said, 'there's something I want to show you. Something Friedman-Bernal found. You're interested in jaw deformities. Something like that?'

'Well, a little like that,' Elliot said. 'You understand how the human chromosome works? Fetus inherits twenty-three from its mother, twenty-three from its father. Genetic characteristics handed down in the genes. Once in a while polyploidy occurs in the genetic crossover points. Someone gets multiple chromosomes, and you get a characteristic change. Inheritable. But you need more than one to do a trace which has any real meaning. At Chaco, in some of the early Chaco burials, I found three that were passed along. A surplus molar in the left mandible. And that went along with a thickening of the frontal bone over the left eye socket, plus--' Elliot stopped. 'You understanding this?'

'Genetics wasn't my favorite course. Too much math,' Leaphorn said. What the devil was Brigham Houk doing? Was he still behind that slab up ahead?

'Exactly,' Elliot said, pleased by this. 'It's one percent digging and ninety-nine percent working out statistical models for your computer. Anyway, the third thing, which sort of mathematically proves the passalong genes, is that hole in the mandible through which the blood and nerve tissue passes. At Chaco, from about 650 A.D. until they turned out the lights, this family had two holes in the left mandible and the usual one in the right. Plus those other characteristics. And out here, I'm still finding it among these exiles. Can you see why it's important?'

'And fascinating,' Leaphorn said. 'Dr. Friedman must have known what you were looking for. She saved a lot of jawbones.' He was almost to the great sandstone slab. 'I'll show you.'

'I doubt if she found anything I overlooked,' Elliot said. He followed Leaphorn, keeping the pistol level. 'But this is the way we were going anyway.'

They were passing the sandstone now. Leaphorn tensed. If nothing happened here, he would have to try something else. It wouldn't work, but he wouldn't simply stand still to be shot.

'Right over here,' Leaphorn said.

'I think you're just--'

The sentence ended with a grunt, a great exhalation of breath. Leaphorn turned. Elliot was leaning slightly forward, the pistol hanging at his side. About six inches of arrow shaft and the feathered tip protruded from his jacket.

Leaphorn reached for him, heard the whistle and thump of the second arrow. It went through Elliot's neck. The pistol clattered on the stone. Elliot collapsed.

Leaphorn retrieved the pistol. He squatted beside the man, turned him on his back. His eyes were open but he seemed to be in shock. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

There was snow in the wind now, little dry flakes that skittered along the surface like white dust. Leaphorn tested the arrow. It was the sort of bow hunters buy in sporting goods stores and it was lodged solidly through Elliot's neck. Pulling it out would just make things worse. If they could be worse. Elliot was dying. Leaphorn stood, looking for Brigham Houk. Houk was standing beside the slab now, holding a great ugly bow of metal, wood, and plastic, looking upward. From somewhere Leaphorn heard the clatter of a helicopter. Brigham Houk had heard it earlier. He stood very close to cover, ready to vanish.