“I didn’t know Charley had the box,” Chee said for the third time. “It was an educated guess. I told you what Mrs. Vines told me. About thinking the burglary had a religious connection. Well, the religion is peyote, and Charley is the peyote chief. One plus one is two.”
“Was,” Sena corrected. “Was the peyote chief. So you just walk up to Charley and ask him if he’s the burglar, and he admits it. That’s what you’re trying to get me to believe.”
“That’s what happened,” Chee said. “Not quite, but just about.” His ears were ringing, and his rib hurt, and the nausea that had come and gone all morning was coming again. He didn’t feel like talking. He closed his eyes. Sena’s glowering face went away, but not the voice. Question after question about why Charley had stolen the box, what Charley had said was in the box, what Charley had said about the Vineses. Questions that explored from every possible angle what Chee knew about the blond man in the green-and-white Plymouth.
“What kind of voice did he have?” Sena asked.
Chee opened his eyes. “Never talked to him.” He’d told Sena that before. Twice, in fact.
“That’s right, you didn’t,” Sena said. His alert eyes were studying Chee’s face. Why did Sena think they had talked? Why was that so important to the sheriff?
More questions. Why had the blond man burned Chee’s car? The answer seemed obvious to Chee, but he answered it. To prevent pursuit and the quick radio call that would have inevitably snared the Plymouth at a roadblock. Why did the blond man seem inclined to pursue Mary Landon? Obvious again. She and Chee had had a good look at the killer. He was trying to eliminate witnesses.
Sena hitched his chain closer to the bed. He leaned forward. “Did you find the box?”
“No,” Chee said.
“Had Tomas Charley opened it? Did he tell you that?”
“He opened it,” Chee said. They had already covered this.
“What was in it?”
Chee was dizzy. He wanted Sena to go away. The sheriff’s avid face went slightly out of focus.
“Did he tell you that? What was in the box?”
“What I said; mostly just some rocks,” Chee said. “A bunch of black rocks, and some old military stuff – medals, a paratroop badge, a shoulder patch, and a few old photographs of people. Family, Charley thought they were.”
“Rocks?” Sena said.
“Mostly full of black rocks,” Chee said.
Sena was silent. His hard dark eyes stared at Chee. “You got any brothers?”
“No,” Chee said. “Two sisters. No brothers.” The question surprised him.
“I had one,” Sena said. “Older brother. His name was Robert. He was smart. Smartest kid in Grants High School. Made the valedictorian speech. First time in years it hadn’t been some Anglo girl. Got a scholarship to the university here, but he didn’t go at first. Our old man had heart trouble. Robert worked in the onion fields, in the oil fields, things like that. He looked after us kids. Took care of us. Kept us out of trouble. The old man died and left some social security, so Robert finally went to the university. He was studying engineering.”
Sena had delivered that information in a flat staccato. Now his voice trailed off. He looked down at his hands, drew in a long breath, held it and then let it go. When he looked up again, his eyes were no longer hard. “I’m going to ask you a favor,” he told Chee. “I don’t do that much.”
Chee nodded.
“I want to tell you how Robert died,” Sena said. He described the oil well explosion and how the chief of the Navajo roustabout crew had kept his men away that day. “For a while I thought he did it. Now I just think he was in on it somehow. Knew about the plan. Knew Robert was going to be killed. That fella was Dillon Charley, Tomas’s granddaddy.”
Sena looked down at his hands. The muscles in his jaw were working.
“What do you want me to do?” Chee asked.
Sena didn’t look up. “I want to know who killed Robert,” he said. “I want to nail the sons of bitches. You talked to Mrs. Vines. You talked to Dillon Charley’s grandson. There’s some secret here that’s got to do with being Indian, and with that peyote religion. One of them told you something. You’ve figured something out. You know more than you’re telling. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have found Vines’ box so quick.”
“I don’t know a damned thing,” Chee said. “Not about that oil well explosion. You think the Vineses had something to do with it?”
Sena shook his head. “He didn’t live here then. And she didn’t get here until his first wife died. I think Dillon Charley told Vines something. Anyway, it’s a damned cinch Mrs. Vines knows something. Why else would she connect stealing that box with that bunch of peyote freaks?”
“I don’t know,” Chee said.
The room fell silent. An ambulance turned off Lomas toward the BCMC emergency room entrance, its siren abruptly growling out.
“Nothing to tell me, then?” Sena asked.
“Not that I haven’t already told you,” Chee said.
Sena pursed his lips, glanced at his watch. “It’s a hell of a way to kill a man,” he said. “Blowing ’em to pieces like that. We didn’t hardly find enough of Robert to bury. And part of what we buried might not have been him. Had one of his legs with the boot still on it. Part of the torso we could recognize because his belt buckle was in it. Never found a lot of him. The coyotes and the buzzards and things had had a couple of days to carry it away.” Sena’s eyes were hard and bright, staring into Chee’s eyes. His jaw muscles were rigid. “My mother used to go out there and look. She’d walk around in the creosote bush looking for pieces of bone.” Sena produced a series of sounds that might have been a laugh. “I think she wanted to put Robert all back together again. What do you think of that?”
Chee could think of nothing to say. White people’s attitude toward their dead was beyond his understanding.
“Two things,” Sena said. “One I’m asking you, and one I’m telling. If you can tell me anything about that peyote bunch, or the Vineses, or anything that will help me, well, I’d appreciate that. I’d remember it. I never forget a favor. And two, I’m telling you to stay out of my jurisdiction. This whole business is mine. The burglary and the killing and everything else. It’s mine. It’s been mine for most of my life, and I don’t want you in it. I told you that once, and you didn’t pay attention to me.” Sena’s voice was shaking. He stopped talking for a moment, gaining control. “Now, I got a name for being hard,” he continued. “I’ve killed a man or two in the line of duty, and there’s some that says I’ve killed some that didn’t need to be killed. However that is, I’ll tell you this. You think you’re unlucky that blond man run into you out there on the malpais. Fact is, you’re lucky it wasn’t me.”
Sena got up and placed his chair neatly against the wall under the television set. He went through the door without a glance or a word.
On the television screen, a barrage of commercials replaced Hollywood Squares and gave way in turn to what seemed to be a soap opera. The screen was filled with the tear-wet face of a woman. Her lips moved soundlessly, and she dabbed at her eyes. Chee shifted his own eyes to the left, and stared out across the central campus of the University of New Mexico. He thought first about Gordo Sena’s hatred. And then about the pattern of his questions. It had not been a debriefing – one officer collecting information from another. It had been an interrogation – the probing of a hostile witness, skillfully done. But exactly what had Sena wanted to learn?
Part of that was obvious. Part of it wasn’t. Chee sorted it out in his mind. Three times, in three different ways, Sena had tried to learn if there had been any communication between him and the blond man. Why was that so important to Sena? Was the blond man working for the sheriff? Had Sena hired the man to get the box away from Tomas Charley? There was no way to answer that question. It would seem more logical that he had been hired by Vines.