“Of course, if you prefer the translation, that could be fun. People would be able to look at us and say, “There goes Moon and Moody.’”
“I can manage Ooljee all right.” Here he’d expected the local yokels to be quiet, even taciturn, and the first one he met wouldn’t shut up.
They passed under the blower from a vid ad and his nostrils were awash for an instant in the tantalizing aroma of frangipani. He walked through it without taking the bait and turning to check out the ad.
An elevator took them to ground level.
“You know why I’m here or did y’all just come to pick me up and run me into town?”
“I know why you are here. We will be working together. I have been on this case for several weeks and in daily contact with your office, though not with you personally. Tampa and Ganado have been molly dancing for many days and I am quite familiar with the unfortunate details of the murder.”
“What were you working on before they put you on the Kettrick?”
“A local killing. And I was not ‘put on’ the Kettrick case. I volunteered to work on it. Fascinating business.” The elevator slowed. “Here we are.”
Moody followed him out into a covered parking structure. That’s when it hit him. The air. There was something not right about it. The lack of oxygen he’d expected and was prepared for. Klagetoh was nearly six thousand feet above sea level. But the dryness came as a shock. He was inhaling something cool and utterly devoid of moisture; oxynitro as pure as the symbology of a periodic table. Dizzy, he paused and tried to recover, convinced the potted plants lining the walkway were leaning hungrily toward him, about to puncture his moisture-rich form with hypodermic air-roots capable of sucking the water from his body.
“Hey, Moody; you okay?” Ooljee eyed him with concern.
“Just gimme a minute.” The detective straightened, breathing deeply. The dizziness went away.
He picked up his luggage and resumed walking. Ooljee said nothing about the delay, but did slow his relentless pace.
“I’m glad somebody finds the case interesting,” Moody wheezed. “Got everyone jittery back home. We haven’t made a whole helluva lot of progress lately.”
“I hope we can be helpful.”
“Yeah. Say, why do your friends call you crazy?”
“Everyone in my clan thinks I would be a plant manager by now if I had gone into commerce instead of police work. It does not matter to them that I happen to like police work. It suits my nature. What do you know about Navaho sand-paintings?”
“I know one guy got himself killed over one. That’s about it. In my department you don’t have to take anthropology to make detective.”
“Different departments. Why don’t we rest here a moment? Sometimes it helps, when you have just come up from sea level.”
Moody hesitated, checked with his heart and lungs, and gave in to their reply. He set his luggage down next to a bench and then gratefully let the hardwood slats cradle his weight. Ooljee remained standing.
“You will be seeing sandpaintings all over town, especially in the hotels and gift shops. It is a big business. Some are still done using colored sand, while others are just painted on canvas or board.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “The first thing you should know is that every one of them is wrong.”
“Wrong? Wrong how?”
“The colors, the tilt of a figure, the way it faces, the arrangement of plants or designs; one or all are incorrect. No one would make an accurate sandpainting to sell to a tourist, because the magic might get loose.”
So now I know why they call you crazy, Moody thought amusedly, suspecting he was being skillfully put on. “You’re not telling me anybody out here actually believes in stuff like that anymore?”
“Oh no,” replied Ooljee with exaggerated concern. “To do so would mark that person as an unrepentant primitive, a throwback, an apologist for ancient superstition.”
“Then why bother to change the paintings that are sold to tourists?”
“Many of the people here, especially the older ones, tend to adopt an unspoken agnostic-like position. They can be ninety-nine per cent sure there is no magic, but the remaining one per cent might make life unnecessarily complex. So those who manufacture the sandpaintings for mass distribution will tell you it is all old nonsense at the same time as they are making sure at least one small part of each painting they turn out is inaccurate.
“It’s easy for them, because only a trained hatathli, a medicine man, knows how to make an accurate medicine painting, and they do not make things to sell to tourists. So you need not worry if you buy one. There will be no real magic in it.”
“That’s a great relief,” said Moody. “Now I can embark on a life without fear.”
“Hold to the comfort of your skepticism. We may need it later. Do not forget that someone, and I concur with your department that he is most likely Navaho, has murdered two people and violated the security of a major multinational insurance firm because of a sandpainting.”
“But no specific suspects yet?”
“I regret not. It will come. Your cadcam portrait was very distinctive, and we have more to go on than that. There is, for example, the fact that the victim’s secretary heard the perpetrator make his request to acquire the sandpainting a fourth time. In our culture a request made a fourth time must be honored. I think it an unlikely ploy for a non-Navaho to try.”
“Any idea why he destroyed the painting after making such an effort to acquire it? The theory out my way goes that maybe he wanted to be the only possessor of the design, or something like that.”
Ooljee nodded. “A possibility. When we find him we will ask him.”
“Damn right we will.”
“There is a chance he could be Sioux or Kiowa or someone from another tribe masquerading as Navaho to conceal his true motives, but I tend to think not. I do not see someone from another tribe being so interested in a sandpainting.” For the first time, Ooljee appeared to hesitate before speaking. “Tell me, my friend, if you don’t mind: why are you here?”
“My department wanted one of its own on the scene. Lucky me got elected when he wasn’t looking.”
“I see. I was not told, and I was curious.”
“Shoot, who wouldn’t be? Look, I don’t want to step on anybody’s ego. It’s not that we don’t have complete confidence in you people out here. This wasn’t my idea. I’ll try to stay out of the way.”
“That would be nice. Are you feeling a little better?”
“Yeah.” Moody rose. The initial lightheadedness had left him. “Let’s go. But keep it slow, okay?” He bent to recover his luggage.
CHAPTER 5
On vehicles that had been left in the parking structure for more than a couple of days he noticed a fine coating of what looked like rust but which on closer inspection turned out to be russet-colored dust. He wiped some off the nearest car and rubbed the grit between his fingers, suspecting this too was something he might become unwillingly intimate with in the days to come.
Ooljee led him to a stocky, non-aerodynamic vehicle mounted on oversized tires. The normally exposed back end was covered with an extended accordion cabover. The sergeant unsecured it electronically, popped the back door so his companion could dump his luggage in the rear. Then they climbed into the passenger compartment.