People Of Darkness

“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 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 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.”