People of Darkness jlajc-4 Read online

  But an outsider

  An outsider wouldn’t have known where B.J. kept it, Mrs. Vines said. Her voice was impatient. Dillon Charley knew. I can only presume that Dillon told his son. She rose, a graceful motion. Come along and I’ll show you.

  Chee followed her. One more point, he said. Your husband knows all about this People of Darkness business. Wouldn’t he rather go after the box himself?

  I said he was at a hospital, Mrs. Vines said. He had a stroke last summer. Away hunting in Alaska. They flew him back. He’s partly paralyzed on his left side. They’re fitting him with a device in Houston so he can get around better, but I don’t want him chasing after burglars.

  No, Chee agreed.

  She paused at an open doorway which led off the hall, motioning Chee past her. He’s the kind who would, crutches and all, she said. He’d try to go after them in an iron lung. That’s why I want the box back right away. I want it back when he gets home. I don’t want him worrying about it.

  The room that Rosemary Vines called B.J.‘s office was down a carpeted hallway. It was large, with a beamed ceiling, a stone fireplace flanked by windows that looked across the mountain slope, and a great glass-surfaced desk. Three of the walls were covered with the heads of cats, each snarling in terminal rage. Chee’s glance took in three lions, two lionesses, four tigers, and a variety of panthers, leopards, pumas, cheetahs, and predator cats which Chee could not identify. In all, forty or fifty, he guessed. The light reflected from hundreds of bared teeth.

  The burglar came through that window beside the fireplace and he went directly to the place where B.J. kept the box and he took it. He didn’t disturb anything else, Rosemary Vines said. He knew where it was. She looked at Chee. Would you?

  Chee examined the room. Rosemary Vines had said her husband collected mementos. He did indeed. The room was cluttered with them. The west wall, the only one free of Vines’ array of trophy predators, was a gallery of photographs and framed certificates. Vines beside a dead tiger. Vines at the controls of a speedboat. Vines holding a trophy. Vines dwarfed by the wheel of one of those immense ore trucks at the Red Deuce Mine. Vines’ broad, gray-bearded face beaming under a pith helmet. His narrower, younger, black-bearded face peering out the cockpit window of a plane. Chee glanced away from the gallery of Vineses. Two glass-fronted cabinets, one crowded with trophies and cups, the other with carved and sculpted items of wood and stone. Shelves, a table, every flat surface carrying its burden of the artifacts of memory. Mrs. Vines was watching him, her face amused. All those objets d’art are his sculpture, she said. She gestured toward the gallery of photographs. And as you can see, my husband has a problem with his ego.

  Would it have been in the desk? Chee asked.

  Wrong, Mrs. Vines said. She walked to the fireplace wall and lifted down the head of the smallest tiger. Behind it, a metal panel swung slightly open, one corner bent.

  They knew where to look, and they knew they had to bring something to pry this door open, and that’s exactly what they did, Mrs. Vines said. Didn’t even bother to shut the panel, or hang the head back up.

  Chee inspected the panel. It was mounted on heavy hinges and secured with a lock that looked expensive. Whoever had opened it had jammed something like a crowbar between panel and frame and pried until the lock gave. The door was thick and surprisingly heavy on its hinges, but it hadn’t been strong enough to withstand the leverage. Chee was mildly surprised. The door looked stronger than it was.

  How big was the box? Chee asked.

  Just about the size of that empty space, Mrs. Vines said. B.J. had it made. It had the knob of a combination lock in the front of it. What I want you to do is find those people, and tell them unless they give it backand everything that was inside of itI’ll make damn sure they go to prison for it. She moved to the doorway and motioned Chee out ahead of her. You might also tell them B.J. will put a spell on them if he gets home and finds that box gone.

  What? Chee said.

  Mrs. Vines laughed. The Navajos around here think he’s a witch, she said.

  I had the impression that he got along well with the Dinee, Chee said.

  That was a long time ago. Dillon Charley died and that was the end of getting along with Navajos. Within a year or two nearly every one of them who was working here had quit. We haven’t had one of your people on the payroll for years. Maria is an Acoma. Most of the hired hands are Lagunas or Acomas.

  What happened?

  I honestly don’t know, Mrs. Vines said. I’m sure it was something B.J. did, but God knows what. I asked Maria, and she said the Navajos think B.J. is bad luck.

  And you haven’t reported this burglary to the sheriff?

  Gordo Sena would do absolutely nothing for us, Mrs. Vines said. B.J. got him beaten for reelection once, many years ago, and tried it a couple of times since. Sena’s not an honest man, and I don’t want him involved with this in any way whatsoever.

  I’m going to have to report it, Chee said. I have to get along with the sheriff. We’re in the same line of work.

  Go ahead, Mrs. Vines said. If he sends someone out, I’ll tell him we’re not signing a complaint and not pressing charges and it was all a mistake.

  Chee retrieved his hat from the sofa. It was damp.

  The man you want to find is old Dillon Charley’s son. He took over the church. His name’s Emerson Charley and he lives around Grants somewhere. He used to come around here some after his father died and get into arguments with B.J.

  About what?

  I think he wanted whatever was in the box, Mrs. Vines said. I heard him say something about having their luck locked up in it. Something like that. I remember hearing old Dillon saying about the same thing. He was laughing about it, but Emerson wasn’t laughing.

  Chee revolved his hat on his hands, looking thoughtful.

  Two more questions, he said. How would Emerson Charley have known about the safe?

  That’s easy, Rosemary Vines said. Dillon knew about it. Dillon was in here with B.J. a lot. I’m sure Dillon told his boy about it. After all, Emerson was going to keep Dillon’s crazy cult going. What’s the other question?

  How did Dillon Charley die?

  How? Mrs. Vines looked puzzled. Then she laughed. Oh, she said. I see what you’re thinking. Nothing mysterious. He died of cancer. She laughed again. That’s the reason for that strange line on the tombstone about him being a good Indian. He’d been sick and he came back from Albuquerque one day and told B.J. that the doctor told him he couldn’t be cured. He told B.J. the doctor told him he was going to be a good Indian in a couple of months. Rosemary Vines grimaced. Laughing at his own deaththat’s the sort of weird thing that impressed B.J. He put it on the tombstone. She handed him an envelope.

  I’m going to have to talk to my office about this, Chee said. And give it some thought. I’ll let you know in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll return this.

  Your superiors will approve, Mrs. Vines said. I already checked on that.

  I’ll call you, Chee said.

  The old woman from Acoma opened the front door for Chee and held it against the gusting wind. He nodded to her as he stepped into the darkness.

  Tenga cuidado, the old woman said.

  It occurred to Chee as he started the cold engine that she couldn’t speak Navajo, and he wouldn’t understand her Keresan language, and that it would have been more logical of her to say Be careful in English instead of Spanish, whieh he might not understand. Then it occurred to him that perhaps Mrs. Vines did not speak Spanish, and that the warning might not have anything to do with the weather. Chapter Three

  By the time chee had made his cautious way down the mountain and into Grants, the storm had moved away to the east. It left behind an air mass which was windless, arid, and twenty degrees below freezing. It also left a half-inch layer of snow as light and dry as feathers. Chee detoured past the Valencia County Office Building on the chance that the tricky road conditions would have the Sheriffs Department working lat
e. The light was on. He pulled into the parking lot.

  Except for the east, the clouds were gone now and the night sky, swept clean of dust, was ablaze with starlight. Chee stood for a moment, enjoying it. He hunted out the autumn constellationsthe formations that rose from the south as the earth tilted to end summer and begin the Season When the Thunder Sleeps. Chee knew them not by the names the Greeks and Romans had given them, but from his grandfather. Now he picked out the Spider Woman (named Aquarius by the Romans), low on the southern horizon, and the mischievous Blue Flint Boys, whom the Greeks called the Pleiades, just above the blackness of the storm against the northeast sky. Almost directly overhead was Born of Water, the philosophical member of the Hero Twins. Over his right shoulder, surrounded by stars of lesser magnitude, soared the Blue Heron. According to the Origin Myth as told in Chee’s clan, it had been the Heron whom First Man had sent back into the flooding underworld to rescue the forgotten witchcraft bundle and thus bring evil into the surface world. Chee felt the cold seeping under his collar and through his pant legs. He hurried into the warmth of the county building.

  The third door down the hall bore the legend LAWrence sena, sheriff. valencia county. walk in. The capitalized LAW, Chee had heard, represented Sena’s effort to replace Gordo with a less insulting nickname. It hadn’t worked. Chee turned the doorknob, hoping that Sena had left a deputy handling the overtime. He had met the sheriff only once, making a courtesy call after his transfer to Crownpoint. Sena had impressed him as being hard, smart, and abrasivelike Mrs. Vines, moved beyond the need for tact by access to power. Perhaps it was the product of having too much money, Chee thought. Uranium. Vines had found it, and had sold his leases for a fortune and an interest in the huge open pit mine called the Red Deuce. The Sena family’s fortune was the accident of scratching a living on a worn-out ranch which happened to have radioactive ore twenty feet below the cactus roots. Ah, well, Chee thought, such a rich man would be at home on a night like this.

  Sheriff Sena was standing in a glassed-in cubicle which insulated the department’s radio operator from the world. He was listening while a middle-aged woman wearing headphones argued with someone about dispatching a wrecker somewhere. A long moment passed before he noticed Chee.

  Yeah, he said. What can I do for you, Sergeant?

  I want to report a burglary, Chee said.

  Sheriff Sena registered the mildest form of surprise by lifting his heavy black eyebrows a fraction of a millimeter. His black eyes rested on Chee’s face, bland and neutral, waiting for an explanation.

  Somebody got into B. J. Vines’ house and stole his lockbox, Chee said. Nothing very valuable. Just keepsakes.

  Sena’s eyes were watchful. Well, he said finally. That’s interesting. He moved past Chee out of the cubicle. Come on in to my desk and I’ll get my pencil.

  The sheriff’s office was a room even smaller than the radio cubiclebarely large enough for a desk with a swivel chair on one side of it and a wooden kitchen chair on the other.

  Sena eased his bulk into the swivel and looked up at Chee.

  I guess Vines broke his telephone, Sena said. Is that why he didn’t report it himself?

  Vines is away, Chee said. His wife told me she didn’t report it because she didn’t see how the police could solve it.

  Sena pulled open the top desk drawer and extracted a pencil and a pad. Couldn’t solve it, he said. She say why?

  Nothing to go on, Chee said.

  Have a seat, Sena said, indicating the chair. The years and the weather had engraved Sena’s round face with a thousand expressive lines. They expressed skepticism.

  She didn’t say anything about old B.J. not having any use for me?

  Chee smiled. I think she mentioned something about you two not being friendly. I don’t remember exactly how she put it.

  How come she told you about the burglary? You a friend of the Vineses?

  She wants to hire me to get the box back, Chee said.

  Oh, Sena said. The eyebrows rose again, asking why.

  She thinks an Indian did it. A Navajo. That it’s got something to do with religion, or witchcraft. Something like that.

  Sena thought about it. Just the lockbox, that right? Nothing else missing?

  That’s what she told me.

  Most likely somebody figured he kept his money in it, Sena said.

  Probably, Chee said.

  But she don’t think it’s that simple, Sena said.

  It was a statement, not a question, and Chee didn’t answer it.

  He was looking at a framed photograph on the wall behind the sheriff. It seemed to be a disaster scene, twisted steel wreckage in the foreground, a burned-out truck on its side, two men in khaki uniforms looking at something outside the frame, a police car and an ambulance of 1950 vintage. The scene of an explosion, apparently. A small white card stuck in the corner of the frame bore six typed namesall apparently Navajo. Victims, perhaps. The picture was grainy black-and-white, and glass and card were dusty. Sena inserted the pencil eraser between his teeth, leaned back in the swivel chair, and stared at Chee. The sheriff moved his jaw and the pencil waved slowly up and down, an antenna seeking logic. Sena removed it. What else did she say?

  Chee described the hiding place for the box and how it had been pried open. Nothing else was missing, he said. Lots of valuable stuff in the houseright in plain view. Silver. Rugs. Paintings. Worth a lot of money.

  I imagine so, Sena said. Vines has got more money than Saudi Arabia. What’d she say about religion?

  Chee told him, outlining briefly Mrs. Vines’ account of her husband’s interest in the church of Dillon Charley, her speculation that something in the box was important to the cult, and that only Charley had known where the box was kept.

  Dillon Charley’s a long time dead, Sena said.

  Mrs. Vines said he had a son. She figured he’d told his son about it years ago, and the son decided to come and get it.

  Sena sat immobile, studying Chee. That what she figured?

  That’s what she told me.

  The son’s name is Emerson Charley, Sena said. That ring a bell?

  Faintly, Chee said. But I can’t place him.

  Remember that killing they had in Albuquerque in August? Somebody put a bomb in a pickup and it killed a couple of fellows in a tow truck trying to haul the pickup away. That was Emerson Charley’s pickup.

  Chee recalled having read about it. It was a puzzling case. I remember it, Chee said. Understand they think the bomb was intended for one of the big shots at the hospital. Divorce settlement or argument or something, from what I heard.

  That’s what the Albuquerque police seem to think, Sena said. His tone was skeptical.

  Anyway, Mrs. Vines figures Emerson got the box. She wants me to get it back from him.

  Emerson didn’t get the box, Sena said. He reinserted the pencil and chewed on it. His eyes were on Chee, but his attention was far away. He sighed, shook his head, scratched his left sideburn with a thick forefinger. Emerson’s in the hospital. Sena said. bcmc in Albuquerque. If he’s not dead, that is. Last I heard, he was in bad shape.

  I thought he didn’t get hurt, Chee said.

  He was already hurt, Sena said. He’d gone to the hospital to check into that Cancer Research and Treatment Center the university has there. The son of a bitch is dying of cancer. He focused on Chee again, and emitted a snort of ironic laughter. The apd and the fbi between ‘em couldn’t figure out why anyone would blow up a Navajo when he’s already dying.

  Can you? Chee asked.

  The pencil waved, up and down, up and down. No, said Sena, I can’t. Not a thing. Did Mrs. Vines say anything to you about some people they used to call the People of Darkness?

  Sena made the question sound casual.

  She mentioned it, Chee said.

  What did she say? The sheriffs voice, despite his efforts, was tense.

  Not much, Chee said. He repeated what Rosemary Vines had told him about her husband’s inter
est in Dillon Charley’s church, about his contributing money, helping members when they were arrested, and giving Charley something lucky from the boxperhaps a talisman, Chee guessed. Halfway through it, Sena stifled a yawn. But his eyes weren’t sleepy. Like she said herself, it was all pretty vague, Chee concluded.

  Sena yawned again. Well, I’ll send somebody out tomorrow or so and get all the details. No use wasting your time. Sena examined the pencil top. You weren’t figuring on taking that job, were you?

  Hadn’t really decided, Chee said. Probably not.

  That’d be the best, Sena said. It was like I was telling you that day you first came in here and introduced yourselfthat first week you replaced old Henry Becenti. Like I was telling you then, this jurisdiction business can be a real problem if you ain’t careful with it.

  I guess so, Chee said. As far as he could remember, jurisdiction hadn’t been discussed during that brief meeting. He was sure it hadn’t been.

  I don’t know if you ever worked out here on the Checkerboard Reservation before, Sena said. You’re driving along and one minute you’re on the Navajo reservation and the next minute you’re in Valencia County jurisdiction and usually there’s no way in God’s world to know the difference. It can be a real problem.

  I bet, Chee said. The Navajo Police lived with jurisdiction problems. Even on the Big Reservation, which sprawled larger than all New England across the borders of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, jurisdiction was always a question. The serious felony brought in the fbi. If the suspect was non-Navajo, other questions were raised. Or the crime might lap into the territory of New Mexico State Police, Utah or Arizona Highway Patrol, or involve the Law and Order Division of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Or even a Hopi constable, or Southern Ute Tribal Police, or an officer of the Jicarilla Apache tribe, or any of a dozen county sheriffs of the three states. But here on the southwestern fringe of the reservation, checkerboarding complicated the problem. In the 1880s, the government deeded every other square mile in a sixty-mile-wide strip to the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad to subsidize extension of its trunk line westward. The A P had become the Santa Fe generations ago, and the Navajo Nation had gradually bought back part of this looted portion of its Dinetah, its homeland, but in many places this checkerboard pattern of ownership persisted.