It took Chee about thirty minutes to establish that Tomas Charley was present at the auction and to get a description of the man. He might have done it faster had there been any sense of urgency. There wasn’t. Chee was more involved in getting acquainted with the occupants of his territory. Then Mary Landon was at his elbow again.
“That’s him,” she said. “Right over there. The red-and-black mackinaw and the black felt hat.”
“Thanks,” Chee said. Mary Landon still wasn’t smiling.
Tomas Charley was leaning against the wall alone. He seemed to be watching someone in the crowd. Mary Landon said something else, but Chee didn’t hear it. He was studying Charley. He was a small man – not over five and a half feet – and skinny. His face was bony, with small, deep-set eyes and a narrow forehead under the brim of his tipped-back hat. There was an alertness about him, a tension. The eyes shifted to Chee now, quickly past him, and back again. Becenti had said he was half crazy, a fanatic. The small black eyes had the took of those who see visions. Getting Tomas Charley to talk, Chee thought, would take a lot of care and a lot of luck.
As it developed, it was no trouble at all. They talked a bit about the rug auction, and about the drought. Chee leaned against the wall beside the man, guiding the conversation. The auctioneer was on the stage now, a florid white man explaining the rules in a West Texas voice. Chee talked of Sheriff Gordo Sena, of jurisdiction problems between Navajo police and white sheriffs. The first rug was auctioned for $65. Bidding on the second one stuck at $110. The auctioneer put it aside and joked with the crowd about its stinginess. He moved the offer up to $155, and sold it.
Chee talked of Mrs. Vines’ job offer, of what she’d said of the burglary, of his decision not to get involved in it, and of Vines’ withdrawing the offer. Tomas Charley said less and less.
“It’s no business of mine,” Chee said. “I don’t care about the burglar.” He grinned at Charley. “I know who went in Vines’ house and got that box You know who went in. And Gordo Sena never is going to know. What I’d like to know is what was in that box.”
Charley said nothing. Chee waited. On the fifth rug, bidding was spirited. The auctioneer sold it for $240.
“I’ve got a curious mind,” Chee said. “Lots of things funny about Vines. Lots of things funny about Gordo Sena. Mrs. Vines, too.”
Tomas Charley glanced at him, then glanced away. He stood with his arms crossed in front of him. The fingers of his left hand, Chee noticed, tapped nervously against his right wrist.
“Why did Vines bury your grandfather there at his house?” Chee asked. “I wonder about that. And why did somebody try to kill your father? And why did Mrs. Vines want me to find Vines’ old box? And then not want me to find it? And why did Gordo Sena warn me to mind my own business?”
Chee asked the last question directly to Charley. The drumming fingers stopped. Charley pursed his lips.
“I don’t give a damn if you got into Vines’ house and took something,” Chee said. “None of my business. But what was in that box?”
“Rocks,” Tomas Charley said. “Chunks of black rocks.”
It occurred to Chee that he hadn’t really thought about what the box might hold. But he hadn’t expected this. He considered it. “No papers?” he asked. “Nothing with anything written on it?”
“Mostly rocks,” Charley said.
“Nothing else?”
“Some medals,” Charley said. “Stuff from the war. Stuff like that.” He shrugged.
“Tell me everything that was in it.”
Charley looked surprised. “Well,” he said. “There’s a little card glued inside the lid. Got Vines’ name and address on it. Then there was three medals. One was the Purple Heart and the other two were like stars. One out of some kind of brown metal and the other one looked about the same, but it had a little silver star in the middle of it And there was a set of wings like paratroopers wear, and a shoulder patch with an eagle head on it and silver bars like lieutenants wear in the army.” Charley thought. “Photo-graphs. A picture of a girl, and a picture of a man and woman standing by an old car, and then a whole bunch of black rocks.” Charley stopped. The catalog was complete.
“Nothing else?” Chee asked. “What did you expect to find?”
Charley shrugged.
“Luck?” Chee asked.
Charley’s face tightened. “Vines was a witch,” he said. He didn’t use the Navajo word, which meant witch, or skinwalker, or Navajo Wolf. He used a Keresan expression – the word the people of Laguna and Acoma used to mean sorcerer.
“I heard that, too,” Chee said. “You think you’d find his medicine bundle?”
Charley glanced at Chee, then looked away. Time ticked past. The auctioneer began the rhythmic litany of another transaction.
“He was killing my father,” Charley said. “I wanted to turn the witching around. I wanted to find something for that.”
Chee didn’t say any of the obvious things. He didn’t say, “Your father is dying of cancer.” He didn’t say, “It’s not witchcraft; it’s something wrong with the way the cells grow.” He said nothing at all. Tomas Charley was sure his father had been doomed by a witch. When that happened, the Navajo way was a ceremonial – usually the Enemy Way or the Prostitution Way. Each invoked a traditional formula which reversed the witchcraft and turned it against the witch. And each required something that the witch had used. But Tomas Charley was half Laguna. He saw Vines as the Lagunas saw sorcerers. Perhaps they had a different formula. The auctioneer completed his transaction, selling a small diamond-patterned rug to a woman using bidding card 72. Chee and Tomas Charley leaned against the wall, watching, their shoulders touching.
“Why was Vines witching your father?” Chee asked. “Do you know that?”
“Vines wasn’t always a sorcerer,” Charley said. “Once he was a good man, I think, and he helped my grandfather and he helped our church. He gave us our totem. He gave it to my grandfather. The mole. It is powerful, and it helps the Lord Peyote open the door for us. It helps bring us visions. Vines wanted to get it back. So he made my father sick. And then he stole my father’s body.”
On the stage, the auctioneer and his assistant held up a saddle blanket. “This un’s a dandy,” the Texan was saying. He leaned comically against its pretended weight. “Take a stout horse to carry this un. Wove so tight you couldn’t get water through it. I’m starting at eighty. Yum at eighty. Eighty. Eighty. Yum at eighty. Eighty-five. Have eighty-five. Yum at eighty-five. Ninety. Yum at ninety.”
“Stole your father’s body?” Chee asked. He was thinking Emerson Charley had been alive last week. Very sick but alive. How long ago was it? Five days? Six? He glanced at Charley. The thin man was staring straight ahead, every line in his face rigid. He seemed to be remembering something.
“When did Vines steal your father’s body?”
“Two, three days ago,” Charley said. “Out of the hospital there at Albuquerque. And he got the mole back again.”
“But how did he do it? Did he just walk in and walk out with it?”
Charley shrugged. “Vines is a witch,” he said. “The hospital, they call me, and they tell me my father died and what to do with the body? When I get there, Vines had already got off with it. That’s all I know.”
“What was the hospital’s explanation?”
“They didn’t know what happened. Just the body was gone. One man told me that some of the kinfolks must have got a funeral home to get it. He said the body was put where they put the bodies, and the next day it was gone. He said it must have been a funeral home got it.”
“You reported it to the police?”
“Yeah,” Charley said. “They didn’t do nothing.”
They wouldn’t, Chee thought. He imagined Charley showing up at the Albuquerque police building, trying to find somebody to take the report, telling a clerk (would the clerk have been incredulous, or merely bored?) of a missing body taken by a witch. What would the crime have been? At worst, transporting a cadaver without a permit from the medical examiner. And the police would have guessed it was merely a mix-up: the body claimed by another relative, a family feud perhaps. And Tomas Charley wouldn’t have raised hell and pressed for answers. He already knew two answers. One was that nobody would pay much attention to a Navajo trying to raise hell. And the other was that a witch had flown away with the body. Still, Chee felt his anger rising at this indignity.