“Yes,” Leaphorn said. “We sometimes do things without really knowing what we are doing. Then we say we’re sorry about that. But I guess that doesn’t help much.”
Tommy Vang opened his door. “Would you give me back my piece of fruitcake? I must be going now. I have more things to do.”
“It’s still early,” Leaphorn said. “You said you had come here to talk to me. We haven’t talked much. Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
Vang settled himself into the seat. “I guess I don’t know. I think I found things I didn’t expect.”
“Like what?”
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Vang smiled at Leaphorn. “Like you are a nice man. I didn’t expect that.”
“You didn’t like me?”
“No. Because you are a policeman. I didn’t think I would like a policeman.”
“Why not?”
“I have sometimes heard bad things about them,” Vang said. “Probably not true. Maybe some policeman are bad and some are good.” He smiled, shrugged. “But now I have to go. I have to find a place out here—” he waved both hands in a widespread gesture. “I know its name, but its name is not on my map.”
“Maybe I can help you with that.” He patted Vang’s shoulder. “Maybe that would prove to you that I’m one of the good policemen. What’s the name of the place?” Vang extracted a folded postcard from his shirt pocket. Unfolded it, read from it.
Leaphorn understood “chapter house,” but the rest was lost in Vang’s Hmong interpretation of the message.
“Let me see it,” Leaphorn said, and took the card.
On it was written:
Tomas Delonie. Torreon. Chapter house. Use 371 north, then Navajo 9 east to Whitehorse Lake, then 12 miles northeast to Pueblo Pintado, the 9 southeast about 40 miles, then 197 short distance northeast. Look for Torreon Navajo Mission signs. Ask directions.
“I think you will have troubles finding that place,” Leaphorn said. “I think I should help you.”
“Yes,” Vang said. “This place. Torreon. I not find on my map. Nor some of these roads. They’re not included.
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Not marked.” He showed Leaphorn his map. It was an old Chevron Service Station version.
“An old map,” Leaphorn said. “I have a better one.” Tomas Delonie, he was thinking. Why was Tommy Vang making this trip?
“Mr. Delos gave you these directions, I guess,” Leaphorn said. “He didn’t have a new map. And I would doubt that he knows this eastern side of the Navajo Reservation very well.”
“I guess he wouldn’t,” Vang said.
“But he wrote these directions for you?”
“Oh, yes,” Vang said.
Leaphorn opened his mouth intending to ask why. To learn if Vang would tell him if Delos had explained the reason for this trip and just what he wanted Vang to learn about Delonie. But he wanted to approach that carefully with Vang.
“I guess he wanted to be sure he knew just where Mr. Delonie lives, and where he works, and things like that. Things he’d need to know if he wanted to come and visit him. He didn’t explain it, but it was about like that, I think. He told me just to sort of act like I was a tourist. You know. Asking about things, looking all around. But then he wanted me to be able to tell him what sort of vehicle Mr. Delonie drove—car or truck, what kind, what color. If he lived alone. Things like that. When he went to work.
When he came home. If he had a woman, or anybody else, living with him.”
Vang paused, reached into his jacket pocket. “And he gave me this.”
Vang extracted a very small camera and showed it to Leaphorn.
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“It is one of those new ones with the computer chips,” Vang said, smiling proudly. “Very modern. You look through the finder, and see what you are photographing, and click it. Then if you don’t like it, you can erase it, and shoot again until you get good pictures. What you think?
Pretty nice?”
“He wanted you to photograph Delonie?” That thought surprised Leaphorn.
“No. No. Not like taking his portrait, not anything like that. He said just take casual pictures. Of his house, his truck, things like that. But he didn’t want Mr. Delonie to see me taking pictures. He told me that lots of people don’t like having their pictures taken.”
“Did he want you to question Mr. Delonie about anything?”
“Oh no,” Vang said. “I was just to be acting like a tourist. Just curious. Just looking around. It would be best, Mr.
Delos said, if Mr. Delonie didn’t even notice me.”
“Did he tell you anything about Delonie? About whether he was an old friend? Anything like that?”
“No,” Vang said, “but I don’t think he was a friend.” Leaphorn studied Vang. “What causes you to think that?”
Vang shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just the way he looked when he talked about him. It make me think that Mr. Delonie made Mr. Delos feel nervous. Or something like that, I think.”
Exactly, Leaphorn thought. Mr. Vang is short on information but well armed with an astute intelligence. Smart enough to try to look beyond the bright and shiny surface of external appearances.
“You know, Tommy, I think the only sensible thing for 180
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us to do is for me to take you there,” Leaphorn said. “We can leave your car here in Crownpoint. Lock it up. We’ll tell whoever’s at the Tribal Police office. They’ll take care of it.”
Vang looked doubtful.
“Otherwise, you’ll probably get lost,” Leaphorn said.
“I think I have to take the truck I came in,” Vang said.
“Have to have it.”
Leaphorn noticed Vang was looking tense, fright-ened.
“Why not just ride with me?”
Vang looked at Leaphorn, looked away, then down.
“After I go where Mr. Delonie lives, ah—. After I do what Mr. Delos told me to do, then I have to drive over to that place where he will be shooting the elk, and wait for him there, and he will be looking for this truck, and if I am riding in another truck, I think then he would think that I have been disobeying him.”
“Oh,” Leaphorn said. And waited.
“Yes,” Vang said. “I think I had better be there in that truck I drive for him.”
“Are you sort of afraid of him?”
“Afraid?” Vang asked, and thought about it. Nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Very afraid.”
Leaphorn considered that for a moment. Of course he would be afraid. Everything in Tommy’s life depended on Jason Delos. Going home to his Hmong mountains, most of all.
“Okay,” he said. “Then we will turn the arrangement around. We’ll leave my truck at the Tribal Police office and we’ll take this one.”
And so they did. Vang pulled his King Cab pickup THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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into the Tribal Police parking lot behind Leaphorn, then turned off the ignition and waited while Leaphorn went into the office.
Inside, Leaphorn shook hands with Corporal Des-mond Shirley and explained what he was doing. Then he returned to his pickup and removed his cell phone and his police issue .38 pistol from the glove box. He dropped both into his jacket pocket, locked the door, and walked over to where Vang was sitting in his vehicle, watching.
“I think I should drive,” Leaphorn said.
Vang looked surprised.
“Because while you know the truck better, I know the roads, and all these pickups are pretty much alike.” Vang scooted over.
He took them north past the Crownpoint airport, then eastward across twenty-five miles of absolutely empty country toward Whitehorse. For the first half hour they drove in a sort of nervous silence, with Vang keeping his eye on his own road map—apparently making sure Leaphorn was taking them where his instructions told him to go. At the little settlement of Whitehorse, the pavement of Navajo 9 swerves northward to climb Chaco Mesa en route to the ancient ruins of Pueblo Pintado before swerv-ing back southward toward Torreon. Leaphorn turned off the pavement onto the twenty-three miles of dirt road that goes directly to Torreon without the wide detour.