Sacred Clowns

“So you don’t think Eugene killed him.”

“I don’t know,” Haines said. “With whiskey involved, you can’t tell. Mothers kill their children when they’re drunk. Or drink when they’re pregnant, which is about as bad as killing them.”

But, Leaphorn was thinking, even with whiskey there has to be some sort of reason. Something to ignite the lethal rage. He extracted the envelope from his pocket, shook the shaving onto his palm, and showed it to the priest. “Any idea what that’s from?”

“It looks like it came off a table leg or something like that. It looks like a shaving from a lathe.”

“What kind of wood?”

Haines inspected it. “Dark and tough,” he said. “I know what it’s not. It’s not any kind of pine, or fir, or cedar, or oak unless there’s some species that has a darker color. It’s not redwood. I’m pretty sure it’s not mahogany and I know it’s not maple.”

“Something exotic,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe teak or ebony or something like that.”

“I guess so,” Haines said. “I have an idea that ebony is real black and teak’s lighter. Maybe ebony. But I’m no expert.”

“How often is this room swept out? Cleaned?”

“Every evening,” Haines said. “Dorsey did it himself. He was a very neat man.” He made a gesture taking in all the room. “Normally if you walked in here when a class wasn’t in session you’d find it slick as a whistle. No sawdust anywhere. Working surfaces all clear. Everything in its place. Not like this.” He made a disapproving face at the cluttered room. “But after we found Eric’s body, and the police came, they asked us to lock the room and not touch anything until the investigation was finished.”

Leaphorn laid the shaving on the desk. “There was quite a bit of this dark stuff over by the lathe and some more of it over on the bench with the woodworking vise. So I guess it had to get there the morning he was killed.”

“Yes,” Haines said. “Eric always swept up. And he used one of those shop vacuums and a dust cloth. He said that was one of the things he wanted to teach the kids. You want to be a craftsman, or an artist, you have to be organized. You have to be neat.”

“Did he allow some of the students to take out the projects they were working on?”

Haines looked surprised. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Maybe if they were sanding something. Something they could do at home. But the silversmithing projects, we kept them locked up in the storeroom.”

Leaphorn touched the shaving with his finger. He said, “I searched through the storeroom, and every place in here I can think of. I can’t find anything that looks like this wood.”

“Oh,” said Father Haines. He considered. “Maybe one of the students was working on-” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Maybe,” Leaphorn said. “We’ll talk to the students and find out what everybody was doing in woodworking. But Dorsey kept a list of what the kids were making. Nothing looked like it would be using a fancy wood.”

“So you’re thinking that maybe-”

“I’m thinking I’ll take another look around Eugene Ahkeah’s place to see if I can find it there.”

And he was also thinking that he would do a little crossing of jurisdictional lines. Dilly Streib could arrange it for him. They’d make a trip to Tano Pueblo just as Jim Chee had suggested in that memo he’d left. Leaphorn had decided as soon as he’d read it that he wanted to find out what was in the wagon the clown was pulling. What was it that had caused the people of Tano to quit laughing and suddenly become serious? And he wanted to see if he could find something made of heavy, dark wood in the place where Francis Sayesva stayed when he came home to Tano. Came home to educate his people, or maybe to warn them about something. And to die.

Chapter 15

SAMMIE YAZZIE seemed to be in charge of radio station KNDN when Chee pulled up off of Farmington’s Main Street into the parking lot. He was about Chee’s age, with a neat mustache, a short haircut, and a harassed look, if he had enjoyed the excitement of broadcasting a confession earlier in the day it had worn off long ago.

“I don’t know what else I can tell you. Like I told the deputy, and the Farmington police, and the state cops, and the tribal policeman who got here this morning, the guy just walked in and went to the open mike there and did his thing.”

“I’ve got the police report,” Chee said, displaying the copy he picked up at the Farmington police station. “It gives the facts: medium-sized, middle-aged male, probably Navajo, dressed in jeans and jean jacket and billed cap with CAT symbol on crown, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, driving a dirty green pickup, possibly Ford 150 or Dodge Ram. Parked in front, walked in, went to the open mike, said he wanted to broadcast an a

“Right,” Yazzie said. “That’s what happened. Except I think Ellie told the officers that she couldn’t read the license plate when she went to the window to look. And the bumper sticker.”

“Yeah. That’s in here.” He read again: “’License obscured by dirt. Witness noticed sticker on tailgate: ernie is the greatest.’ That’s a fu

Yazzie shrugged. “That’s a new one to me. Maybe it’s one of those you get made up. Like, ‘My kid’s an honor student at Farmington High.’ Or ‘My kid can whip your honor student at Farmington High.’”

“Maybe,” Chee said. “How about shoes? Boots?”

“You better talk to Ellie,” Yazzie said. “She got the best look at him.”

Ellie looked like she was about a year out of high school and was still enjoying talking to cops – especially a good-looking young cop.

“Boots?” she said, and closed her eyes to show that she was thinking hard and had long, pretty eyelashes. “No. He had on high-top work shoes. I remember because I noticed he had tracked in dirt and I looked.”

“Anything else? That might be useful?”

“How would the boots be useful?”

“Well,” Chee said. “What if he was wearing tall lace-up boots? That might tell us he worked for the telephone company. Or the power company. A lineman. Pole climber.”

“Oh,” Ellie said. “Or if he wore those big heavy shoes with the steel cap in the toe, maybe for the pipeline company.”

“Right,” Chee said, returning her grin. “Now if we’re lucky you’ll remember he had a patch on his jacket that said member san juan county sheriff’s posse, or lions club. Something easy like that.”

Ellie displayed her eyelashes again, deep in thought. “No,” she said. “I just remember he looked sort of nervous and scared, but that’s not unusual. Lot of people are nervous when they pick up the mike. You know. About to broadcast on the radio. And he was kind of old.”

Chee looked at the report. “It says middle-aged here. Was he older than middle-aged?”

“That’s kind of old,” she said, and shrugged. “You know. Maybe past thirty. And nervous.”

It would be natural to be nervous, Chee was thinking, when you’re going to tell the world you killed somebody.

“Nervous, you said. But he didn’t ask anybody how to use the microphone? How to turn it on? How far to hold it from his face? Any of that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He just picked it up and seemed to know how to do all the right things?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t think about that. Some of the people who come in to make a

“One other thing,” Chee said. “I understand these open mike a