Tony Hillerman - Sacred Clowns

The doorbell rang.

That had been an unusual sound in this house for a long time. Who could that be? Maybe Dilly Streib had uncovered something he wanted to tell him. Maybe Virginia had suggested that Streib drop by. Or maybe, with the same circumstances, it was Jim Chee. Where had Chee been? He’d have to make sure this absence without explanation business didn’t happen again.

Janet Pete was standing at his door, her little Ford Escort parked on the street. Miss Pete looked tired, slightly disheveled, glum, and nervous.

“Well,” Leaphorn said. “Good evening. Come on in.”

She followed him into the living room. “I apologize for coming like this,” she said. “Intruding into your privacy, I mean. But I couldn’t get you at your office and Virginia said you might be here, and you wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s perfectly all right,” Leaphorn said. This is another coincidence , he thought, happening to me, who does not believe in them. I am worrying about Chee and this young woman, and she appears to talk about him. It will be something personal. So what can I tell her ?

He smiled at her. “Could I get you something to drink? Something legal, of course. Possession of which is not prohibited in the Navajo Nation. I think I have some sort of soda pop in the refrigerator. Or I could put on some coffee if you’d like it. And meanwhile, have a seat.”

“Oh, no,” Miss Pete said. “Nothing for me.” But she sat in the chair he indicated. “I can only stay a moment. Just long enough to represent a client.”

“Ah,” Leaphorn said, and sat across from her, thinking this was his week for guessing wrong. “Which client?”

“I represent Eugene Ahkeah,” she said.

“So I heard.”

“We had a long talk today,” Janet said. “Over at Crownpoint.” She hesitated.

She will tell me something, or ask me a favor. Or perhaps both , Leaphorn thought. But she’s making this visit on an impulse. Worst possible time, right at supper. She hasn’t thought it through. She may change her mind .

“Does Mr. Ahkeah have something to tell me?” Leaphorn said.

“No,” she said. “Well, not exactly. I guess I do.” She laughed, shook her head. “Your assistant, Officer Chee, suggested that I tell you my client is innocent. After today, I’m sure he is. He didn’t kill Eric Dorsey. He didn’t steal all those items you found in the box under his house.”

“Chee said you should tell me Ahkeah was innocent? When? Did you see him today?”

“He was just joking,” she said, surprised at the intensity of his tone. “It was last week.”

“Not something he knew, then,” Leaphorn said, making a gesture of dismissal. “We’ve been working on separate things and I haven’t seen him for a few days. I thought perhaps you were bringing me a dispatch from wherever Chee is spending his time these days.”

Miss Pete looked faintly alarmed. “I think he has some days off,” she said.

“Correct,” Leaphorn said. “And he’s taking them.”

Miss Pete had collected herself. “This may sound unprofessional – my coming to you instead of going through the usual legal channels. But I know going to the U.S. attorney wouldn’t do any good, and I’m not sure what you will say and so the worst I can do is waste some of our time.” She paused, picked up the handbag she’d placed on the chair beside her, and put it in her lap.

Leaphorn waited.

“I realize you have a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Janet said. “The stolen materials under his house, principally, although no search warrant was issued as far as I can find out so far and that probably won’t be admitted in court. I guess you can probably place him at the scene of the homicide at about the right time, and perhaps you have some other evidence. But given time I think I’ll be able to show he was set up, that the crime was actually done by the man who made that anonymous telephone call about the box under Ahkeah’s house.”

She paused, awaited a Leaphorn reaction to all this, received a smile and a nod instead of the argument she’d expected, and hurried on.

“There’s simply no motive for Ahkeah to have done it. The prosecution will argue that the motive was theft. He needed to get money to buy whiskey. But he didn’t sell the stuff. He didn’t buy whiskey.”

She paused, waiting again for the counterargument.

Leaphorn nodded.

Miss Pete flushed slightly. She picked up the purse and put it on the chair beside her and cleared her throat.

“Totally aside from his innocence, Mr. Ahkeah is certainly no risk to become a fugitive. He has no connections off the reservation. He doesn’t have any money, no way to run and no place to hide. He doesn’t even speak very much English. There’s really no reason to hold him in a cell under a bond he can’t possibly raise.”

Miss Pete stopped, looked at him, waited for a response.

“What would you like me to do?”

“I came to ask you if you would ask Mr. Streib to recommend to the court that Mr. Ahkeah be released on his own recognizance.”

Leaphorn thought a moment. “All right,” he said.

Miss Pete looked startled. She picked up the purse and put it down again. “All right? You mean you’ll do it?”

“I’ll call him this evening.” Leaphorn looked at his watch. “I’ll give him time to eat his supper. I think he’ll go along with it. Mr. Streib is usually pretty reasonable.”

He was watching Miss Pete, who was struggling to replace the amazement on her face with something less revealing. She won the battle, and then produced a nervous laugh.

“You know,” she said, “Jim said: ‘Tell the lieutenant Ahkeah is innocent and he’ll turn him loose.’ I thought he was just kidding.”

“He was,” Leaphorn said, smiling at her. “It just happens that I agree with you. Even if Ahkeah did it, he isn’t going to run anywhere that we can’t find him. And you may be right about him being not guilty.”

Miss Pete had recomposed herself. “I wish the police would concentrate on finding who it was who set Ahkeah up. I think that’s what happened. Whoever killed Mr. Dorsey saw Ahkeah at the Bonaventure Mission. They noticed he was drunk and decided he’d be perfect as the fall guy.”

“Possibly,” Leaphorn said. He was thinking, I like this young woman. I like the way she works for her client, and maybe I will be needing a lawyer myself if they decide to charge me with concealing evidence of an illegal wiretap . And he was thinking that he could see now why she appealed to his assistant.

“Do you know where I can find Jim Chee?”

Miss Pete looked surprised. “No.”

“Or how to get a message to him?”

“No.”

Leaphorn allowed himself to look disappointed, which was easy, because he was.

“I thought you might,” he said. “I have gotten the impression that Jim counts his time wasted when you are not nearby.”

It seemed to Leaphorn that Miss Pete looked sad to hear this.

“We’ve been friends a long time,” she said. “He tells me his troubles. I tell him mine.” She dismissed all this with a shrug, but her expression canceled that.

“It’s good to have someone you can talk to like that,” Leaphorn said. “I apologize. I must be sounding like an overaged cupid. I guess I read Jim all wrong. We have an old hit-and-run case – totally hopeless – but the chief wants it solved and there’s probably a promotion there for whoever can nail the guy. I think Chee’s working on it hard because he thinks with sergeant stripes he would look to you more like a worthy marriage prospect.”

Miss Pete’s expression, if Leaphorn read it right, went from irritation, to surprise, to sorrow.