“Hope springs.” Moody eyed his partner. “I would’ve expected a lead or two by now.”
“Oh, we’ve had more than that,” Ooljee responded quickly. “The composite cadcam portrait of the suspect generated many calls. But none of them led to anything. Either nobody recognizes our man, or they do and they are not talking. Or else he is hiding somewhere down in the Strip.”
“Shoot, he could’ve had cosmetic surgery by now. Chemically changed his color to white.”
Ooljee smiled. “Not even a murderer would sink that low. But there is something else I’ve been wanting to try.
“My lieutenant insists I spend my time looking for someone to fit the composite. Well, we have been doing that for weeks without any results and I am sick of it.”
Moody rolled his eyes. “Let me guess: you want to work with the sandpainting.”
“You get credit for perception, but not much, because I
have been talking about it ever since you got here. Since they insist I concentrate on finding an individual while I am on the payroll, I thought I might try to combine that directive with my own interests. Especially since I now have an unprejudiced witness to confirm that I am following my orders.”
“Hey, keep me out of it.”
“Don’t be so paranoid. I would not put you in a difficult position.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“It will be good for you.” Ooljee was persistent. “Much more interesting to go into museums and gift shops and trading posts than talking to unpleasant people on the street.”
“You still have trading posts?”
“Sure. We passed one on the way in. The fifty-story tower just outside the park downtown. I pointed it out to you, remember?” He glanced toward a window. The spring sun was beginning to wake up the city. “I have some lists we can work with. If a match is made with the composite, we will be notified. Besides, there is no reason to sit here and monitor the department web when we could be outside enjoying this fine weather.”
“You call this dry icebox fine weather? Anytime the temperature drops below seventy-five, I get twitchy and my skin starts to crawl. And it’s too dry.”
“Despite what you may think, it does rain here. I will see to arranging a Blessing Way ceremony to call up some precipitation for you.”
“Do that. And while you’re at it, how about arranging a ceremony to catch our killer?”
“Perhaps later.” Ooljee said it with a straight face as they left his office, but this time Moody wasn’t buying.
The streets were filling up fast as morning rush hour began to flood downtown Ganado. Pedestrians appeared magically on sidewalks and overhead walkways, their already harried expressions lit by first light. The police truck slid efficiently past the creeping commuters, making good use of the lane reserved for municipal vehicles. With ease bom of long experience, Ooljee ignored the envious glares of travelers trapped in unmoving traffic.
“You think this guy might kill again?”
Ooljee considered the question. “It is anybody’s guess, because we know nothing about him. I have run an extensive cross-country check and there are no records of a murder utilizing a similar modus, so we may be in luck. The Kettrick sandpainting may be all he was after.
“As to researching that, many of my colleagues think I am a little mad myself. Others say I have concocted a clever excuse for avoiding real work, like following leads on potential suspects.”
“But your lieutenant gave you permission to follow this up.”
“Lieutenant Yazzie is a good man for hunches. He has patience. But he also has his limits. He will not let me pursue this line of inquiry forever unless I start showing him some results.”
They spent all that day and all the next talking to owners and managers of gift shops and retail stores and art galleries, from fancy ones in the lobbies of towering hotels—where a working stiff like Moody couldn’t have afforded the frames, much less the paintings—to the tiny pawnshops and secondhand stores that pitted the fronts of ancient commercial buildings on the industrial end of town.
Moody saw more silver and turquoise than he formerly believed existed. Some of the men wore as much jewelry as their women, a sight that took some getting used to. In Tampa the only males likely to strut about so bedecked were pimps.
Nor was all the metal in the familiar form of bracelets and rings and necklaces. There were decorated belts and hatbands, headbands and boot tips and collar tabs, pins and insignia. Yet the more he saw of it, the more natural it seemed.
Ooljee tried to talk him into buying a silver watchband set with coral, turquoise, and synthetic bear claws, to replace the mundane ABSK he currently wore. Though tempted, Moody declined. The band was beautifully made and reasonably priced, but the detective could too readily envision the reaction it would produce back at Tampa HQ.
Not everything was fashioned of skystone and silver. Gold and platinum were also used, as were more exotic metals and stones. Even the smallest shop seemed to be overflowing with inventory.
“Who buys all this stuff?” Moody finally asked his colleague.
“Tourists, business travelers looking for something truly American to take back home. We also buy and sell among ourselves. The really expensive goods are called Old Pawn. Some of it was actually banged out of old coins; dimes and nickels preferred. Good, genuine Old Pawn is always hard to find. People do not have to hock their family treasures to pay the bills the way they used to. Although there is nothing wrong in doing that. It was a perfectly respectable way to raise cash or pay for goods.
“Have you been studying the sandpaintings?”
Moody replied dourly. “I’m trying, but they all look the same to me.”
“I can’t believe that.” Ooljee did not try to hide his disappointment. “You have too good an eye not to have noticed differences.”
Moody hesitated. “Well, maybe some of the overall patterns—gimme a break, Paul. It’s like learning another language.”
One more storefront, one more stop. Like innumerable others, the face it presented to the street was nondescript. There was the standard fluorescent buy-sell trade sign out front. The skystone and silver clutter in the windows that flanked the narrow entrance was more neatly arrayed than in most. Whoever had arranged the display had made some attempt to highlight quality instead of trying to cram as many cheap rings and bracelets into the available space as possible.
Inside the store the lighting was as subdued as the atmosphere. There were drums and pottery for sale, along with sculptures and rugs. The latter might be genuine, since unlike hundreds Moody had seen these past two days, these did not display attached cards declaring in superfine print that while they were Indian-made, they were only Navaho inspired. Which meant, according to Ooljee, that they were not woven on the Rez but down in Mexico, on mechanical looms operated by industrious Zapotecs.
The store owner was short, white, and active. He advanced smoothly toward them as if on maglide skates.
The wall behind him was full of paintings. Well, prints, anyway. Scenes of Ganado modem and ancient, of Canyon de Chelley and Monument Valley, of the Grand Canyon and San Francisco Peaks, of various cliff dwellings and Indian ceremonials. There were also more rugs, most of them small, some of them tattered. All colored with handmade vegetable dye, according to Ooljee. This was a store for the serious trader and collector, not for the casual tourist looking for bright trinkets to take home. The farther back into its depths one walked, the higher the quality of the goods became.
Ooljee methodically flashed his ID, embedded in its slice of softly glowing Lexan. The owner blinked at it, glanced somewhat apprehensively in Moody’s direction, eyed Ooljee the way he might a box of jewelry of uncertain parentage someone was trying to sell him.