People Of Darkness

“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. Al-most 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.