"So much for the goddam promises," Leroy Gorman said. "Nobody knows but one guy in the Prosecutor's office and your fbi guardian angel. That's what they tell you. Nobody else. Not the local fuzz. Not nobody, so there's no way it can leak." He rapped his hand sharply on the Formica tabletop. "Who'd they tell? They have something about it on TV? Front page of the Times? On the radio?"
"They didn't tell anybody as far as I know," Chee said. "The postcard you wrote gave you away. The one you sent to your brother."
"I didn't write any postcard," Gorman said.
"Let me see your camera," Chee said.
"Camera?" Gorman looked surprised. He stood, opened the overhead cabinet behind him, and extracted a camera from its contents. It was a Polaroid model with a flash attachment. Chee inspected it. It was equipped with an automatic tinier.
"Not exactly a postcard," Chee said. "You set this thing up, and took a picture of yourself and this trailer house, and sent it to your brother.
Whatever you wrote on it, it caused him to come running out here to Shiprock looking for you. And when Old Man Begay saw it, something on it, or something Albert told him, caused him to send it along to his granddaughter to tell her to stay away."
Gorman was looking at him, thinking. He shook his head.
"What did you write on it?" Chee asked.
"Nothing, really," Gorman said. "I don't remember, exactly. I just figured Al would be worried about me. Just wrote a little note. Like wish you were here."
"Did you say where 'here' was?"
"Hell, no," Gorman said.
"Just a little note," Chee said. "Then what do you think it was that brought your brother running?"
Gorman thought. He clicked his tongue. "Maybe," he said, "maybe he heard something I need to know about."
"Like what?" Chee said.
"I dunno," Gorman said. "Maybe he heard they were looking for me. Maybe he heard they knew where to find me."
That had a plausible sound. Albert had heard Leroy's hiding place had leaked. When Leroy's card arrived, he'd seen the Shiprock postmark and had hurried here to warn his brother and hadn't quite made it. And then someone had been sent to make sure that Albert Gorman didn't survive his gunshot wound. How had Albert Gorman really died? The coroner had said gunshot wound, which was obvious and what they'd expected, and what they'd have looked for. But if they were looking for something else, what would they have found? That Albert Gorman had been suffocated, or something like that, which didn't show but would hurry the death from the gunshot wound along? Or had whoever had come to the hogan found him already dead and killed Ashie Begay because of what Albert might have told him? It didn't really matter. Chee's head ached, his eyes burned. He was thinking maybe Albert Gorman died outside the hogan after all. Maybe he hadn't stepped through the corpse hole into a chindi hogan. Maybe he wasn't contaminated with ghost sickness. But that didn't matter either. The ghost sickness came when he made the step—out of hozro and into the darkness. Out of being a Navajo, into being a white man. For Chee, that was where the sickness lay.
"Any idea who killed him," Leroy Gorman asked, "or why?"
"No," Chee said. "Do you?"
Gorman was slumped back in his chair, his hands on the table in front of him, looking over them at nothing. He sighed, and the wind outside picked up enough to remind them both of the storm. "Could be just meanness," Gorman said. He sighed again. "Did you find that girl?"
"Not exactly," Chee said.
"I don't guess she'll be coming here," Gorman said. "Didn't you say her grandfather told her to stay away? Something dangerous?"
"Yeah," Chee said. "But it didn't stop her the first time."
"What did he tell her?" Gorman was still looking past his hands, his eyes on the door. The wind pressed against it, letting in the cold. "She know I'm a car thief?"
"I don't know what he told her," Chee said. "I intend to find out."
"She's kinfolk of mine," Gorman said. "I don't have many. Not much family. Just Al and me. Dad run off and our mother was sickly and we never got to know nobody. She's my niece, isn't she? Begay's granddaughter. That'd be my mother's sister. I knew she had one out here somewhere. I remember she mentioned that. Wonder if that aunt of mine would still be alive. Wonder where that little girl went."
Chee didn't comment. He wanted a cup of coffee badly. And food, and sleep. He tried to think of what else he could ask this man, what he could possibly learn that would keep this from being just another in a long line of dead ends. He could think of nothing.
"I'd like to get acquainted with her," Leroy Gorman said. "Meet her family. I didn't make much of a white man. Maybe when I get through with all this I could make some sort of Navajo. You know where I could find the Sosi family?"
Chee shook his head. He got up and thanked Leroy Gorman for his time and went through the aluminum door into the driving snow, leaving Gorman sitting there looking at his hands, his face full of thought.
Chapter 24
He called largo from his trailer while the coffee perked and told the captain what he had found at Begay's hogan. It took Largo something like a micromillisecond to get over his sleepiness and then he was full of questions, not all of which Chee could answer. Finally that part of it was over, and it was a little after 2 a.m. and Chee was full of hot coffee, and two sandwiches, and in bed, and asleep almost before he could appreciate the sound of the winter outside.
He awoke with the sun on his face. The storm had moved fast, as early winter storms tend to move in the Mountain West, and had left in its wake a cold, bright stillness. Chee took his time. He warmed himself some leftover mutton stew for his breakfast and ate it with corn tortillas and refried beans. He ate slowly and a lot, because he had a lot to do and a long way to go, and whether or not he had another hot meal this day would depend on road conditions. He put on his thermal underwear, his wool socks, the boots he used for mud. He made sure that his tire chains were in the box behind the seat in his pickup, that his shovel, his hand winch, and his tow chain were in their proper places. He stopped at the gas station beside the San Juan bridge and topped off his gas tank and made sure the auxiliary tank was also full. And then he drove westward out of Shiprock to find Frank Sam Nakai. Nakai was his teacher, his friend since earliest boyhood, and, most important of all in the Navajo scheme of things, the brother of his mother—his key clan uncle.
The first seventy miles, through Teec Nos Pos, Red Mesa, Mexican Water, and Dennehotso, was easy enough going over the snow-packed asphalt of Route 504. Beyond Dennehotso, reaching the winter hogan of Frank Sam Nakai involved turning southward off the highway on a dirt road that wandered across Greasewood Flats, dipped across the usually dry Tyende Creek Canyon, and then climbed Carson Mesa. Five miles down this doubtful route, Chee decided it wasn't going to work. The air was still cold but the hot sun was turning the snow pack into mush. He had put his chains on before he left the highway, but even with them, the truck slipped and slid. As the day wore on it would get steadily worse until sundown froze it all again. He made it back to the highway and made the hundred-mile circle back through Mexican Water and southward to Round Rock and Many Farms and Chinle, and then the long, slippery way to the south side of Black Mesa past the Cottonwood Day School and through Blue Gap, to an old road which led to Tah Chee Wash. It was as bad as the road south from Dennehotso but, from where the passable stretch ended near Blue Gap, much shorter. Chee drove down it in second, at a cautious ten miles an hour. He'd drive as far as the melting snow would allow, walk in the remaining miles, and walk out again when the cold darkness turned the snow into ice and the mud into frozen iron.