She walked over to the sluice, and from the bottom of the hole where she presumed Doherty had made his extraction, she scooped out a handful and dumped it into her jacket pocket. That done, she started walking very cautiously down-canyon, using cover when she could and with frequent stops to look and listen. When she reached the point from which she could see the hogan, she stopped a longer time. Still no sign of a vehicle there. She saw no sign of life. She heard nothing.
Her truck was just where she'd left it. In a little while she was pulling off the dirt road onto the asphalt of Navajo Route 9. There she stopped and just sat for a while, getting over a sudden onset of shakes before she drove home.
Chapter Eleven
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For the first time since those awful puberty years of high school, Jim Chee found himself trying to find the wisdom, if any, imparted by the "separation of the sexes" part of Navajo mythology. As in the Old Testament or the New, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, the teachings of Buddha or Muhammad, or any of the other religious texts Chee had read in his philosophy of religions course at unm, the complex poetry of the Navajo version of Genesis mixed lessons in survival as part of teaching your relationship with your Creator and the cosmos.
Hostiin Frank Sam Nakai, Chee's senior maternal uncle, had tried to explain this business of sexual relationships and gender responsibilities one night long ago—the same summer night he'd taken Chee into Gallup after his high school graduation. He'd parked in the bar-and-pawnshop section of Railroad Avenue about twilight since the primary lesson of the trip was to concern the social effects of alcohol. As the evening wore on, Nakai had pointed out a dozen or so normal-seeming individuals, a mix of Navajo, Zuñi, and whites, men and women, plus a single middle-aged Hopi male—their only commonality being that Nakai had picked them as they entered one or another Railroad Avenue bar. The Hopi soon emerged and strode down the street unaffected. The stars came out, the cool evening breeze freshened, a Navajo couple emerged, angry, arguing loudly.
"Notice," said Nakai, "both talk, and talk loud, but neither hears the other. Remember what Changing Woman taught us. Once we could talk to the animals, but when we became fully humans the animals couldn't understand us anymore because now we had the words to talk to each other about the important things. But we have to learn to listen."
Even in the mood he was in now, Chee smiled, remembering that he had not a clue of the point Nakai was making. But as the evening became night, and more and more of their subjects stumbled out onto the street, Nakai made the point clear. The alcohol they had been drinking had wiped away that human intelligence—the link that had connected them with the Holy People—and now they had lost that human intelligence without the animal intelligence they had left behind.
It was while they sat watching an angry argument between a man and a woman that Nakai explained the Separation story. The people had lived beside a river in the Third World, Nakai said, with the men bringing in deer, antelope, rabbits, and turkey, and the women collecting nuts, roots, and berries for the meals. Both genders became unhappy, thinking they were doing more than their share. The women decided they could live better without the men, and the men said they didn't need the women. The women made their own camp across the river. But each gender soon discovered only unhappiness without the other, so they reunited.
Chee had provoked Nakai's story by asking how to handle a problem with a girl at school who switched between liking him a lot and wanting nothing to do with him. Nakai's story didn't seem helpful then. And now, years later, it didn't help him decide what to do about Bernadette Manuelito. And he had to decide soon.
Specifically, he had to call Bernie and ask her if she was coming back to work. First, he'd say, Officer Manuelito, you are about to be late for work. No, first he would apologize for being such a jerk, for losing his temper, for being rude. But where would that leave him? Where would that lead? He tried to calculate that, and found himself back at the beginning—remembering all too vividly her face. Bernie's very pretty smooth and oval face had been transformed by shock, anger, then what? Sorrow, perhaps. Or pain and disappointment. He didn't like to think about it.
"Just go home and keep your mouth shut," he'd said. Sort of shouted, really. And Bernie had looked as if he'd slapped her. Sort of stunned. Staring at him as if she didn't know him. And then she'd turned and gone to her desk and started collecting her stuff. And, of course, being a damned fool, instead of following her and apologizing, explaining that he had lost his temper, and asking her to help him to figure out something to do to solve the problem, he had just taken that damned Prince Albert tin and walked out with it. He'd thought he'd think of something en route to the fbi office, but all he could think of was going to see Leaphorn. Just let the Legendary Lieutenant solve it for him.
When he called Bernadette, and he would any minute now, he wasn't going to tell her about handing Leaphorn the can and the problem along with it. First, he was going to apologize. Second, he was going to tell her all he had been able to find out about their murder victim. And then he was going to tell her he thought he might know where the murder had been committed. Next, he would tell her he was expecting her back to work, remind her she'd been given only a couple of days off and that her next shift started this afternoon.
He picked up the phone, punched in the first digits of her number, stopped, put the phone down. First, he would organize how he wanted to report his progress on the trail of homicide victim Doherty.
That had started with another telephone call he'd dreaded making. He'd called Jerry Osborne, the agent in charge of handling fbi duties in the Shiprock jurisdiction, and made an appointment to meet him in Gallup. Osborne was new—replacing Special Agent Reynald, who had been transferred to New Orleans. Chee had been blamed (or credited, depending on one's point of view) for the disposal of Reynald. Reynald had made intemperate remarks in a telephone conversation with Chee, and subsequently had been left with the impression that this conversation had been recorded without Reynald's knowledge or permission. That, presuming Chee had done it, would have been illegal. Had the case against Chee been pressed, it might have cost Chee his job for what he'd done, and Reynald his job for what he'd said. But it would also have left egg on the face of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Thus the time-tested federal "protect your butt" solution was applied. Reynald was quietly moved out of harm's way, and Chee was put on the list of those to be ignored when possible. Osborne, however, hadn't shown the hostility Chee had expected—perhaps because Chee had started with an apology.
"Since we didn't follow the proper procedures when Doherty was found, I wanted to tell you we'll give you all the help we can now," Chee had said. "You know. Sort of making up for it."
It seemed to Chee that Osborne let that statement hang there a little longer than perfect courtesy prescribed, but maybe that was because Chee had come in expecting trouble, and not just because Osborne was pondering how much he could trust him—if at all.
"Like how?" Osborne said. "What did you have in mind?"
"Like run errands. Talk to people you want talked to. See if we can find someone who saw that blue king-cab pickup enroute from the site of the killing to where we found it."
Osborne nodded. Produced an affirmative grunt.
"Maybe other ways," Chee said. "To tell the truth, I know damn near nothing about the case so far. Have you found the place Doherty was shot? Maybe we could help with that."