People of Darkness Read online

  The silver service was on the sideboard—a great urn and a dozen goblets on a massive tray. Worth a lot, Chee thought. And behind it, on the wall, a perfect little Navajo yei rug which on the reservation would bring two thousand dollars from the greediest of traders.

  Chee resisted an impulse to ask Mrs. Vines what she meant by “People of Darkness.” He’d never heard of them. But it would be smarter to simply let her talk.

  She talked, perched on the edge of the chair, sipping occasionally. She said that when she had come to this place—the house then still under construction—the foreman of the B. J. Vines ranch had been a Navajo named Dillon Charley—the man now buried next to Vines’ first wife by the garage. Vines and Charley had been friends, Rosemary Vines said. “The old man had organized himself some sort of church,” Mrs. Vines said. “B.J. was interested in it. Or seemed to be. He claimed he wasn’t; said he was just humoring the old man. But he was interested. I’d hear the two of them talking about it. And I know B.J. contributed money. And when you Navajo Police were arresting them, B.J. helped get them out of jail.”

  “Arresting them?” Chee asked. Understanding dawned. “Was it for using peyote?” If it was, Dillon Charley’s cult was part of the Native American Church. It had flourished on the Checkerboard Reservation after World War II, and had been outlawed by the Tribal Council because of its use of the psychedelic drug in its ritual; but the federal court had thrown the tribal law out on grounds that it violated freedom of religion.

  “Peyote. Yes. That was it,” Rosemary Vines said. “Drug abuse.” Her voice was scornful. “B.J. is never discriminating in his interests. Anyway, B.J. gave them some sort of thing out of that precious box of his. He and Dillon Charley had the box out several times. And whatever it was seemed to be very important to their religion. And now they’ve stolen it.”

  “What was in the box?” Chee asked.

  Mrs. Vines took a drink. “Just keepsakes,” she said.

  “Like what?” Chee asked. “Anything valuable? What was it these people wanted?”

  “I’ve never seen the inside of that goddamned box,” Rosemary Vines said. She laughed. “B.J. has his little secrets. He has his private side, just as I have.” Her tone said this was a source of an old resentment. “B.J. called it his keepsake box, and he said nothing in it was worth anything to anyone but him.” She laughed again. “Obviously wrong about that.”

  “Do you have any idea what he gave Dillon Charley out of the box? Any idea at all?”

  She looked over the glass at him, her expression wry. “Would moles make any sense?”

  Now Chee laughed. This conversation, more and more, reminded him of his very favorite tale from the white culture: Alice in Wonderland.

  “No,” he said. “Moles wouldn’t make any sense to me.”

  “What’s your word for moles?”

  “Dine’etse-tle,” Chee said. He pronounced the series of gutturals.

  She nodded. “That’s what Dillon Charley called it,” she said. “I asked him what B.J. had given him and that’s what he said. We had a Navajo maid then—that was back when Navajos would work for B.J.—and I asked her what the word meant, and she said ‘moles.’”

  “That’s right,” Chee said. Technically, when broken into its parts, it meant more than that. “Dinee” was the word for “people.” The expression literally meant “people of darkness.”

  “Why do you call Dillon Charley’s church the ‘People of Darkness’?” he asked her.

  “That’s what B.J. called them. Or something like that. It’s been so many years, it’s hard to remember.”

  But you do remember, Chee thought. He said, “There’s another possible motive for taking that box. This is a legendary place.” He motioned around the room. “B. J. Vines is a legendary person. So maybe there’s a legend about his keepsake box. Maybe there’s a rumor that he keeps it full of gold, or diamonds, or thousand-dollar bills. So somebody who came to take it wouldn’t be interested in paintings, or silver, or Navajo rugs. Was it locked? Would they have to carry it out and break it open before they could find out what was in it?”

  “It was always locked,” Rosemary Vines said. “You’d have thought B.J. kept the crown jewels in it. But B.J. said it was just mementos, odds and ends to remember. I don’t think he was lying.” She smiled her taut, humorless smile. “B.J. is very big about saving keepsakes. He saves everything. If he can’t frame it, he stuffs it.” The humorless smile became a humorless chuckle. “You’d think he was afraid of losing his memory.”

  “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 o
n 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 back—and everything that was inside of it—I’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 in 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 death—that’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, which 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.

  3

  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 Sheriff's Department working late. 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 constellations—the 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 abrasive—like 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 cubicle—barely 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 names—all 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?”