“Feel no air coming out. Don’t hear anything either.”
“All right,” Delos said. “Now pull back his jacket and his shirt and take a look at where that second shot got him.”
Tommy did as told. He looked back at Delos, held up one hand to display blood on it, and then stood, faced Delos, and put his other hand high on his right-side rib cage. “It hit him right about here,” he said. “Bleeding right there. And I think broken rib bone. Maybe two.”
“Good,” Delos said. “Now you sit there and watch Mr.
Delonie. Carefully, I mean, because sometimes people aren’t quite as dead as they seem to be. Now I’m going THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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to ask the lieutenant some questions, and I want you to listen. You let me know if he’s not being honest with me.” Tommy nodded and sank into a yoga-like position, legs folded under him.
Leaphorn, aware of how his own tired legs were aching, was thinking how comfortable Tommy looked.
He felt totally exhausted. Hard day yesterday, almost no sleep, then the long drive, and now this. And he was supposed to be retired. Instead he was standing here like a fool, dizzy with fatigue. Making it worse, he had nothing to blame but his own foolishness.
Delos waved his pistol.
“Lieutenant Leaphorn, I want you now to sit down on the ground and then stretch your legs out in front of you.
I want to interview you, and I don’t want either of us to be distracted by your deciding you want to try to get the jump on me. Understand that?”
“Clear enough,” Leaphorn said. He eased himself down on the thickest patch of grass and weeds available, leaned back, and stretched out his legs. It felt good, but as Delos intended, it left him with no chance of getting up in a rush. Overhead he noticed the sunrise had turned the strips of fog clouds over the mountain ridges a brilliant scarlet. Almost morning. And the birds knew it. He could hear robins chirping and the odd sound mountain grouse make when seasons are changing.
“First, I’ll explain the rules. Very simply. If I see any hint you’re just killing time, stalling, playing a game with me, or if I see any hint you’re about to do something reckless, then I will shoot you in the leg. You understand?”
“Yes,” Leaphorn said, “clear enough.”
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Delos was grinning at him. “I will let you pick the leg.
Which one would you prefer?”
“Take your pick.”
“Good,” Delos said. “I’ll shoot the left one first. Above the knee.”
Leaphorn nodded.
“First question,” Delos said. “How did Tommy make his connection with you? I want to know what prompted that to happen.”
Leaphorn considered that. How much did he want Delos to know? Was Tommy going to remain loyal to Delos, as Delos seemed to think? Was he right in concluding that Delos intended to kill him, and Delonie, and Tommy Vang, too? Vang? Why else prepare that little grave? Vang was the only visitor Delos had been expecting.
“You sort of arranged that yourself,” Leaphorn said.
“Sending Tommy over to my home in Shiprock to see if he could recapture that specially prepared cherry you’d given me for my lunch.”
That provoked a long, thoughtful pause.
“That was the way I told him to behave,” Delos said.
“Did he just walk right in and ask you for it?” Leaphorn laughed. “No, he was careful. He waited until he knew I was gone, and then until he saw this professor friend of mine who lives there, too, drive away.
Then he got into my garage, but the professor had forgotten something, and she came back and saw him coming out of the garage. She asked him what he was doing. He said he was looking for me, and she told him he could find me at Crownpoint. So he came to Crownpoint to find me.”
“Tommy,” Delos said, “Is that the way it happened? It sounds like you were being pretty careless.” THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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“Oh, I tried to be careful,” Tommy said, sounding penitent. “But bad luck. Both times bad luck. At Crownpoint I found the lieutenant’s truck in the parking lot. I found the lunch sack, too, but he saw me getting it.”
“You blamed bad luck twice, Tommy. Remember how I tried to teach you about that? We don’t give luck any chance to be bad. And I don’t want to hear any more of that kind of excuse from you. Now tell me how you let this all happen.” He waved his pistol in a circle, bringing in both Delonie and Leaphorn in the sweep. “You were told to come here alone, just to bring me a report.”
“Lieutenant Leaphorn, he told me—”
Leaphorn interrupted him.
“You’re going to have to take the blame for that yourself, Mr. Delos, for several reasons.”
“Oh, now. This is what I’ve been waiting to hear. If one doesn’t understand his mistakes, one is likely to be doomed to repeat them.” Delos was smiling down at Leaphorn, pistol pointing directly at him now.
Leaphorn shifted his legs, making them more comfortable and getting them in a slightly better position to move fast if the opportunity to do anything ever developed. At the moment, that didn’t seem likely. Even if something happened to distract Delos—maybe a mountain lion trotting by, or a minor earthquake—Leaphorn hadn’t come up with any sensible idea of what he could do. The only plan he had seemed pretty hopeless. When Delos had ordered him to sit down, he’d noticed a promising-looking stone, about the size of an apple. When he was lowering himself to the ground, he’d carefully covered the rock with his hands. Finally, when Delos was looking at Tommy, Leaphorn had pulled it closer. Now he had it 254
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gripped in his palm. Fairly good throwing size, if he ever had a chance. And if he did get the chance, maybe about one in a million odds that he could hit Delos with it before Delos shot him. But better than nothing.
“Crownpoint,” Delos said. “That seems to be where you sort of added Tommy to your team, or tried to, if I have this figured right. How did Tommy do that?”
“Actually you get credit for that, too,” Leaphorn said.
Delos stared at him. “Explain.”
“That old, obsolete map you gave him. The roads have been rerouted some in the years since that thing was drawn.”
“So why did Tommy tell you where he was going?” Leaphorn glanced over at Tommy, who was staring at him and looking very tense.
“You know,” Leaphorn said, “I think we should skip all the way back to the beginning where all this started.
That’s where you made your first mistake.”
“The beginning? Where do you think that would be, Lieutenant?”
“I know where it was for me,” Leaphorn said. “It was when you stole those two five-gallon cans of pinyon sap from Grandma Peshlakai.”
Delos was frowning. “Are you going all the way back to that fire at the trading post? How does that—” He stopped. “You’re stalling, Lieutenant. Remember what I promised you I’d do.” He aimed the pistol. “Was it the left leg you chose?”
“If you don’t believe that was a mistake, let me tell you another one. This one more serious.” Leaphorn stopped, grinning at Delos, trying desperately to think of some Delos error he could come up with.
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“Make it fast, then,” Delos said. “I am losing—” Delonie emitted a sort of choking groan, and moved one of his legs.
The Delos pistol swerved from Leaphorn to Delonie.
He aimed it, carefully.
Then he raised the gun and focused on Tommy Vang.
“It seems your diagnosis of Mr. Delonie’s health was far too pessimistic, Tommy. And now you’ll have an opportunity to correct it.”
“I think his arm is hurting him,” Vang said. “The bone is broken. I think—”
“Stop thinking, Tommy. Pick up the rifle there. Now you have a chance to demonstrate that you are—just as I always tried to teach you—that you are good enough material to become one of the predator class.”