Watchman said, “You kept your mouth shut all these years for your wife’s sake, for your little boy’s sake. There’s no reason to, now.”
Joe’s eyes sought help from Will Luxan but the old Mescalero only brooded upon his own fantasies and finally Joe rocked his face forward and back. “Well he was going to pay Joey’s way right through college.”
“That was your deal with Rand.”
“Yeah.”
“Did Rand kill Calisher?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. I come home that night, I got a call from Mr. Rand on the phone out to my line shack, he said he wanted to see me right away. It was the middle of the night, man, but he said it had to be right now. I drove over there and he walked me down to the foreman house, old Calisher was down on the floor there and this gun was on the chair. You could smell the powder smoke, you know? I guess he got shot a couple hours before that but you could still smell it. All Mr. Rand said to me, what he said was he had this dead body on his hands and I could help him out of this little problem, and he said he’d pay Joey right through college. So I listened to him, you know, I mean I wasn’t never gettin’ rich out in that line shack. He said all I had to do was take that gun off the chair and take it home and tell the cops I killed old Calisher because I found him trying to rape my wife. He said he’d make sure I didn’t spend more than a few years in the slam.”
“Was the whole thing a lie? There was nothing between Calisher and your wife?”
Rage stiffened Joe. ‘She was always straight with me.”
“But Calisher was hot for the ladies, wasn’t he?”
“She never give him the time of day, I’ll swear it on a Bible. She liked him but it wasn’t nothing like that.”
“Who hired Kendrick to defend you?”
“I guess the tribe did. I never saw the bill. Mr. Kendrick didn’t know about Mr. Rand, my deal with Mr. Rand. I told Mr. Kendrick I done it, I killed Calisher. He said he thought they’d throw the book at me and I’d get life, but I think maybe Mr. Rand made a deal with the prosecutor up there. I’m just guessing, I don’t know about that, you know, but Mr. Rand told me I’d be out in seven or eight and that’s the way it would’ve turned out except I bust out first. I pulled fifteen but you always get parole.”
“Nobody ever did a paraffin test on your hands?”
“A what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Watchman said. “Kendrick paid out that money to your wife. Why Kendrick?”
Joe puzzled it out. “Well what Mr. Rand told me, you know, he said he couldn’t afford to get his own name mixed up in that. He said he had to fix it so we got the money through somebody that couldn’t be, like, connected with him, you know? That was why he picked Mr. Kendrick to do that for him, he said nobody was ever going to believe they had anything to do with each other.”
“But why did Kendrick go along with it?”
“Well I guess Mr. Rand paid him, didn’t he?”
“What about Harlan Natagee? Where’d he fit in all this?”
“I don’t know nothing about that.” Joe’s ingenuous frown slipped into place.
Watchman switched back. “How did Rand explain to Kendrick the money he was paying you?”
“I don’t know that neither. I wasn’t there.”
“Didn’t Kendrick ever say anything to you about it?”
“No, man. That money didn’t start until I went in.”
“Then you don’t have any real way to prove the money came from Rand, do you.”
“Well look, he told me I’d get the money and then I got the money. You put that together for yourself.”
Watchman reached behind him and picked up the magnum rifle. It was heavy with a great carved wooden butt-stock. The thick telescope had black caps over both lenses. There was a little dust on the piece, clinging to the oil. Watchman said, “Who was this for, then? Rand or Harlan?”
Joe looked up and his eyes changed just a little. In that instant Watchman sensed weight behind him; the reflexes turned him around and Danny Sanada was crouched just outside the oval doorway with a double shotgun aimed at his face.
The hammers were cocked.
6.
It was a range at which two loads of 12-gauge buck would tear the head off your shoulders. Watchman froze.
Danny Sanada said, “Yeah. It figured.” He moved the barrels an inch, a warning gesture.
Watchman slowly laid the automatic pistol on the ground and pushed it away from him with his foot. Sanada said, “Drop that magnum too, man.”
Joe Threepersons said, “It ain’t loaded. He took the shells out of it.”
“Put it down anyway,” Sanada said and Watchman obeyed. Sanada came inside. “You shouldn’t leave that Volvo around like that where folks can spot it. I knowed you was here.”
Joe bent over. He stretched his hand to the rifle and dragged it to him and started picking up the cartridges. His movements destroyed most of the patterns of the sand-painting and Watchman became aware that Rufus Limita had stopped humming.
“We got him,” Sanada said. “Now what do we do with him?”
“Maybe just hang onto him while I get clear,” Joe said.
“Yeah. Then he goes and gets a warrant on all of us for obstructing justice and kidnapping a police officer. Sometimes you don’t think too straight, Joe.”
“What do you want to do then? Kill him? Man he ain’t done nothing to get killed for.” Joe glanced at Will Luxan and the old man said something in Apache and after that all of them talked in their own tongue. The sounds were familiar but the words meant nothing to Watchman. It was like a bad dream in which everything looked real and natural but nothing was comprehensible.
Watchman glanced at the pistol but Sanada’s shotgun never wavered. He couldn’t fight that kind of drop.
His mind worked quickly and clearly but his thoughts seemed to focus on irrelevant abstractions. Sanada had spotted the Volvo along the roadside. Had he got out of the Jeep wagon and sent the others on their way? Or were the others out there on the hillside watching? More likely they had gone on to work. But Sanada didn’t need any help, the shotgun was all the authority he needed.
The talk paused and Watchman cleared his throat. “Think about it, Joe. You could turn yourself in now and clear yourself. You’ll be a free man soon enough. Cut loose now and you’ll be a fugitive for whatever’s left of your life.”
The side of Sanada’s mouth curled up; no one made any other response but Will Luxan launched into a passionate speech in Apache; he addressed himself mainly to Rufus Limita but he kept glancing at Joe while he spoke.
Joe began to shake his head with resolute negation and before Luxan stopped talking Joe picked up the loaded magnum rifle and got his feet under him. Sweat broke out like gel on hot dynamite across his face; he stumbled but kept his feet and when Luxan stopped in mid-sentence Joe said something brief and decisive. Luxan did not speak again. Joe carried the rifle around behind Danny Sanada and paused, bent-over, in the doorway. “You go back to Phoenix, you tell them you never found Joe Threepersons.”
“No,” Watchman said. “I’ll find you again. It’s only a question of whether that happens before or after you get killed.”
“Ain’t nobody getting a chance to kill me,” Joe said. “But if they did it wouldn’t be no great loss to anybody.” Then he went out.
7.
No one spoke; no one moved. Watchman heard Joe’s feet crunch across the weedy yard and there was some crashing around, things being flung aside. Then there was the grind of a starter and the chug of a low-geared engine that could only be the Land Cruiser. Its tires crushed the ground for a while and diminished and finally the sound was absorbed by distance.
Watchman said, “How long do we sit here?”
“A while,” Danny Sanada said.