Sacred Clowns

Leaphorn was saying something about linkages.

“Hey,” Chee said, loudly. He got down from the tailgate and stood facing Leaphorn. “I think I know why Applebee would have wanted that Lincoln Cane made.”

Leaphorn looked at him, waiting.

“Just a second,” Chee said, thinking it through. “I’m begi

“I’m glad to hear that,” Leaphorn said.

“And why you use those pins on your map, linking things together. If you can find the link everything makes sense.”

“All right,” Leaphorn said. “Let’s hear it.”

“Why did Applebee get the cane made?” Chee said. “For the same reason he got Chester’s telephone tapped.”

Leaphorn considered. “Maybe. Chester was up for reelection. So was the governor. I see where you’re going but you have some problems with it.”

“I do,” Chee said. “But now I understand why the crowd got so silent when the cane went by in the clown’s wagon. Those Tano people weren’t seeing an artifact for sale. They were seeing the cane as a symbol of the governor’s authority. They saw the koshare accusing the governor of corruption, of selling them out on the toxic dump issue, I’ll bet.”

Leaphorn was smiling slightly now. “Of course,” he said. “That makes sense. But we still have problems.”

“I know it,” Chee said. “Like who killed the koshare. We know it wasn’t Applebee. I guess Janet and I are both his alibi. I know we both saw him out there in the crowd on the plaza about when Sayesva was being killed. She pointed him out to me. Going to introduce us, because I’d just written that letter to the Navajo Times about the waste dump plan. I didn’t put anything about Applebee in my report.”

“Well, there was no reason to do that,” Leaphorn said. “You can’t provide an inventory of the crowd. Now we can see it matters. Can you think of anything else that might matter, knowing what we know now?”

“Nothing,” Chee said.

“Applebee and Davis were both at the Tano ceremonial,” Leaphorn said. “Along with a few thousand other people. But did you see anything that might co

“Wait,” Chee said. “Sure. Davis told us they were old friends.” He stopped, remembering. And Leaphorn stood, willing to wait. Patient again.

And Chee extracted, from a memory trained by a culture which had kept its past alive without a written language, an almost exact account of what Asher Davis had told them of the Applebee-Davis friendship.

Leaphorn considered, shook his head. “Another link,” he said. “Can you see how it helps?”

“No,” Chee said. “Not yet.”

“I guess we’re finished here, anyway,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll take care of reporting this to Dilly Streib. He might have some ideas. You can get back on that hit-and-ru

Chee was backing out of the parking area when he stopped. “One thing I might add to that report from Tano,” he said. “We can’t provide an alibi for Asher Davis there. He was off buying stuff. But as far as I know he could have gone back down that alley and done the job.”

“We have all the wrong alibis for the wrong people in the wrong places,” Leaphorn said.

“And one more thing,” Chee added. “I remember when I met Applebee in the coffee shop, he mentioned he sometimes collects old Navajo stuff.”

“But no mention of collecting Lincoln Canes, I guess,” Leaphorn said.

And Jim Chee drove away, smiling and happy. But that, Leaphorn understood, had nothing at all to do with canes or inconvenient alibis.

Chapter 28

BACK IN DORSEY’S cramped quarters Leaphorn called Dilly Streib. He explained he was once again officially in the law enforcement business, officially unsuspended. He told Streib of the poster and what they had learned in Dorsey’s quarters.

“Uh-huh,” Dilly said. “I don’t see making much out of that. It could have come from anywhere. It doesn’t look to me like it’s going to be much help.”

“Maybe not,” Leaphorn said. But it was all the help they had. And when Dilly was off the line, he called the Santa Fe office of Nature First. A woman answered, sounding young and Eastern. Yes, that was an attractive poster, and yes, Nature First had produced and distributed it. That boycott was one of their more successful ventures. Stonewashed jeans had declined in popularity and the market for Jemez Mountains perlite had significantly diminished.

So there was the possible co

But Applebee couldn’t be the killer. Chee was watching him in the Tano Plaza at the moment Sayesva was being killed.

Davis could have killed the koshare. But he was away on the Hopi Reservation with Cowboy Dashee when Eric Dorsey died.

Think. Applebee and Davis were lifelong friends, if you could call such a relationship friendship. How about some sort of a conspiracy?

Joe Leaphorn sat in the chair Eric Dorsey no longer needed and considered. A bell rang somewhere. A door opened and was slammed. The air smelled of dust and of the long, dark days of winter. Leaphorn methodically worked his way through a variety of possibilities and hit a variety of dead ends. He got up, stretched, glanced at his watch. About quitting time. He’d missed lunch but he wasn’t hungry. He pulled back the curtain on Dorsey’s tiny window to inspect the weather. Clouds building up. Tonight it might snow. Just about now, Louisa would be in Honolulu. He let the curtain fall and sat down again. Concentrate. Work out the possibilities one at a time. And start with Dorsey, where his own jurisdiction was involved. Forget the koshare for a moment. Without that, the solution to the Dorsey homicide seemed clear enough. But even as he was thinking that, Leaphorn’s lifelong Navajo conditioning to look for harmony in all things bore its fruit. Abruptly, he saw the co

Leaphorn picked up the telephone Eric Dorsey would never need, called Virginia, and got the number of Councilwoman Roanhorse. She was at home.

“No,” Leaphorn told her. “I’m not going to ask you where your grandson is. I’m asking you if you have a copy of today’s Navajo Times.”

She did.

“Now,” Leaphorn said. “All I want you to do is ask the boy to take a look at that photograph of Roger Applebee on the front page. Ask him if he saw that man going into the woodworking shop at Saint Bonaventure when he was at the mission. I’ll give you my telephone number here and I just ask you to call me back and let me know. That’s all I’m asking.”

Leaphorn listened.

“If Delmar recognizes Applebee, then we arrest Applebee. Delmar identifies him formally on the record before Applebee can get released on bond. And then you don’t have to worry about Delmar’s safety anymore.”

Leaphorn listened.

“He’ll be safe because we’d already have the formal identification from him. There’d be no reason to do away with Delmar then. Nothing to be gained, a lot to lose.”

Leaphorn listened.

“If he doesn’t recognize Applebee, then you just keep on hiding the boy if you want to.”

Councilwoman Roanhorse said, “Just a minute.”

“Okay,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll hold on.”

Leaphorn held on. He glanced at his watch. A minute passed. Two more. The next voice he heard was a boy’s.

“That’s the man,” Delmar Kanitewa said. “That’s him. I was coming out. He was going in. I held the door open for him and he said thanks.”

“You had the cane? Did he see it?”

“It was wrapped up in newspapers.”

“Why did the teacher give it to you?”

“Well, I went in to get a bracelet this friend of mine – Felix Bluehorse – had made for his girl, and I saw the Lincoln Cane. The teacher was wrapping it up but he left it on the bench there when he went to get the bracelet and I looked at it, and I saw it was our cane. Or maybe a copy of it. And so when he came back with the bracelet, I asked him about it, and he said he was making it for a guy, and I asked what the guy was going to do with it, and he said he didn’t know, and then when I explained to him what it was, he got mad.”