“Your telephone,” he said. “I think I hear it ringing in there.”
Leaphorn got it out, flipped it open. Punched the wrong button. Punched the proper one. Listened.
“Hello?”
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“Is this Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn?” a voice asked.
“Ted Rostic asked me to call you about an obituary. I’m Carter Bradley, and I guess I’ve got some bad news for you.” Bradley chuckled. “Or maybe it’s good news.”
“About Totter?” Leaphorn said.
“Yeah. Saint Anthony’s Hospital records said they hadn’t admitted anyone named Totter. Not that year anyway. Hope I got the date right.” He repeated it.
“That’s right,” Leaphorn said.
“Had a Tyler die a few weeks after that date,” Bradley said. “But that was a woman.”
“I wonder if whoever sent the obituary to the paper had the hospital right. Seems unlikely, but you—”
“Well, the obituary said this Totter was buried in the Veterans Administration cemetery. Turns out he wasn’t.
No record of it, and the VA keeps good records.”
“Well, I thank you,” Leaphorn said. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“I am,” Bradley said. “Why would anybody pull a stunt like that?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “Did you call Ted Rostic?”
“I did,” Bradley said. “He didn’t know either. But he didn’t sound surprised either.”
Leaphorn pulled back onto the highway, heading for Torreon, thinking how he’d have to handle this. Tommy Vang was watching him, looking curious.
Leaphorn sighed.
“Tommy,” he said. “I am going to tell you some very important things. Very serious for you and other people, too.
That call was about Mr. Totter, the man who had that famous rug hanging on Mr. Delos’s wall. You know about that?” THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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“I heard something about it,” Tommy said. “About his gallery being burned, but somehow the carpet being saved. And about Mr. Totter going away and dying, and being buried.”
“That call was from an old retired newspaper reporter. Somebody about like me. He checked for me back in Oklahoma where Mr. Totter was supposed to have gone. But Mr. Bradley found out that Mr. Totter didn’t die in that hospital there. And he hasn’t been buried.”
“Oh,” Tommy said, looking surprised, awaiting an explanation.
“I think he is still alive. And I think he is a very dangerous man.”
“Ah,” Tommy said, and raised his eyebrows.
“You’re not going to like hearing what I’m going to tell you, Tommy. And I can’t prove a lot of it. But when we find Mr. Delonie, I’m going to tell him all this, too. And maybe he’s the one who can prove whether I’m wrong or right.” He shrugged. “Probably the only one, for that matter—”
“I guess this is all about what Mr. Delos has been doing with those cherries?” Tommy Vang said. His tone sad.
“Yes, and more than that. In a way, I guess it’s about all these religious things we’ve been talking about. About the chief of the evil spirits you Hmong call Nau Yong.”
“All right,” Tommy Vang said. “I will listen.”
“Let’s start way back when you were still a teenager, living in San Francisco. By yourself then, because Mr. Delos was mostly away on his long business trips. We move to this area. To a service station-tourist gallery-food store beside the highway, run by a couple named Handy.
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One day, a man showed up there. He gave his name as Ray Shewnack, a big, good-looking man, great smile, made friends fast.”
Leaphorn described what happened next, how Shewnack killed Handy and his wife, betrayed his new friends, and vanished with the money.
“Now we skip ahead to when you are a mature man, living mostly alone in California with Mr. Delos often away on a business trip. A man who calls himself Totter buys a roadside store, adds an Indian art gallery to it, does some business. Time passes; the three who went to prison for the Handys’ murders are now getting out on parole.” Leaphorn paused, studied Tommy, who had his lips pursed, staring ahead, seeming deep in memories. Putting things together, Leaphorn hoped.
“I want you to remember the time element and the places. These three people the man called Shewnack had betrayed would be getting out of prison. Coming back right into this very empty country where everybody knows everybody. Think about that. Remember these three would recognize Shewnack if they saw him. Okay?” Tommy nodded.
“So then this Totter hires a man, a stranger so it would seem, to help him at the store. Fire breaks out, the man is burned beyond recognition but left behind a bunch of stuff to identify him as Shewnack, who by then is on the FBI Most-Wanted-Fugitives list. Shewnack is declared dead. Totter collects fire insurance, sells the place, disappears. Then the death notice is published declaring Totter also dead.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Tommy Vang said. “But he isn’t dead. And you are pretty sure that the man who was THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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called Shewnack became Mr. Totter and got rid of Shewnack, and then announced that Totter was dead, and now he has disappeared again.”
“Not exactly vanished this time,” Leaphorn said. “I think we know the name he is using now.” He was staring at Tommy. “Do you agree?”
Tommy exhaled. “Like it would be Mr. Delos, the man who poisons people with fat red cherries?”
“And who, with the latest little packages of cherries, has fixed it very carefully so that if they kill Mr. Delonie, it will be Tommy Vang who brought the poison to the victim, whose fingerprints are all over the bottle, and whose handwriting is on the delivery note.”
Leaphorn waited a reaction to that. Got none.
“Does that make sense to you?”
Tommy nodded. “I am thinking how he had me press my thumb down on the top of the bottle cap. He said it was to make sure it was tight, but it was screwed on tight.” He held up his thumb, inspected the tip, rubbed his hand against his shirt.
“It makes me remember what he told me once, about people. About me. He said when God created humans he let them grow into two groups. A few of them—very few and only males among them—they are the predators. They are like our God of the devil spirits who ate the souls of the others. And the other people. Just about everybody else. They are the prey. The weak ones, he called them. Helpless ones. He said nearly all the Hmong were the prey. But maybe I was the exception. Maybe he could teach me to be one of the powerful ones.” Tommy paused, shook his head.
“Did he try to teach you how to be powerful?” 200
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“At first, when we were living in that hotel. But pretty soon, he got very angry and gave up. Told me to just forget about it. And then after a while, he would try to teach me things again.”
“Did things happen to cause that?”
“I guess I just kept disappointing him. But finally, I came into the dining room where he had all the silver stuff, and I saw the old woman who worked for him putting some of the big serving spoons into her purse. I told her she better put them back because Mr. Delos would miss them, and he’d call the police, and she’d be put in jail. And then—”
Leaphorn violated one of the key rules of Navajo courtesy. He held up his hand, interrupting. “Let me guess. He was angry. He told you that you should have let her take the stolen stuff down to the exit, catch her there leaving, get hotel security involved, and then let her know that she was thereafter at your mercy. Anytime she didn’t follow your orders, you could bring charges against her.” Tommy was nodding. “That’s the way it was. He sat me down, told me how powerful people get to be powerful. How they get control. But I think he saw it might not do any good, so he just got up and told me he guessed I would always be a prey. That I better start learning. And he walked away.”