The Shape Shifter Part 16

"I'm figuring minimum wage at an average of $5 an hour in California 'cause it goes up and down. Higher now. Lower then. Figure him a forty-hour, five-day week, even though he was working full time and seven days, just figure it at forty. That would be two hundred bucks a week. Now maybe we should cut that in half because he got room and board. Make it a hundred per week. That fair?"

Without waiting for Vang or Leaphorn to answer, Delonie was doing the math.

"I'm calling it twenty years-knocking off those years before Vang was in his late teens. Then knocking two weeks off each year for vacation time, even though Vang didn't get any vacation. That gives us an even thousand weeks. Right? Multiply that by a hundred dollars a week, and it comes out Delos owes Vang a hundred thousand dollars. Right? Now if we figure in some interest, compounded annually, then it means that Mr. Delos-"

Leaphorn, who almost never interrupted anyone, interrupted. "Mr. Delonie," he said. "We see your point. But don't you think we should be sort of changing the subject and getting back to what we've got to do tomorrow?"

Delonie stared at Leaphorn. Put down the pencil. Picked it up again.

"All right. I guess so. I can't get it in my mind though, that this Delos is really going to be Ray Shewnack. If I see him, and it really is Shewnack, what I think I'm going to do is just shoot him."

"You do that, you'll be right back in prison again," Leaphorn said. "And not just for parole violation."

Delonie nodded. "I know. But it would d.a.m.n sure be worth it."

"Trouble is, I'd be going in there with you. Me and Tommy Vang here."

"You think you can go up there, catch him, take him in, and get him convicted of anything? d.a.m.ned if I see how. Me, a convicted felon, as your only witness."

"Let the jury decide," Leaphorn said. "Anyway, you can't cook the rabbit until you catch it."

Delonie made a wry face, bent over the map again.

"Well," he said. "If Delos wants to meet Mr. Vang right here where he marked that spot, it must mean he'd have his hunting stand pretty close. I guess we can drive up there, though. He must know that area pretty well."

"Mr. Delos has been there before," Tommy Vang said. "He took me once, when I was a lot younger." He smiled at the thought. "I got to learn how to cook on the woodstove. Mostly just frying meat and boiling stuff and mixing drinks for people. But the cooking wasn't easy until you know how to control the heat. Be way too hot, or then too cold." He shrugged. "The way my mother had to do it."

"Has a kitchen then," Delonie said. "I guess they have a cabin up there handy for those permit hunters to keep dry and comfortable."

"A little log house," Tommy said. "Mostly just one big room and a little kitchen place and then there was a water tank on the roof. You turned a big valve and the water came down in a sink in the kitchen." His expression registered disapproval. "It didn't look very clean. Everything dirty. The water, too, I mean. Sort of rusty looking."

"You were a mountain boy, weren't you?" Delonie said. "Maybe that sort of reminded you of home. Log cabin, wood fire, and all."

"It did," Vang said, and looked down. "But we weren't dirty like that."

Delonie was staring at him, expression grim. "That son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said. "He should have taken you home again."

"He said he would," Vang said. "Said he was going to do that."

"Do you still believe that?" Delonie asked.

Vang considered. "I used to believe it. For a long time I believed it," he said. Then he bent over the map, either studying it or, Leaphorn guessed, not wanting them to see that he was about to cry.

"Right here," Vang said, tapping an ink dot beside a line which, in the map marking code, identified a road as "doubtful" and to be avoided in bad weather.

"I guess that's where we're going," Leaphorn said. "Shouldn't be any problem this time of year."

"I think that's going to be on the old T.J.D. Cater spread," Delonie said. "I hunted up fairly near to there when I was a lot younger. The old man owned a lot of his own land and then his grazing permit spread out over a bunch of National Forest leases. Went way up into the mountains, I remember. It was all posted. No trespa.s.sing. Had a deal with the Game Department people to let the deer and elk graze on his leased gra.s.s and drink his water. Then they'd give him a bundle of hunting permits he could sell."

"But Mr. Delos said he'd be hunting on the Witherspoon Ranch," Vang said. "And that's where he went last year. That mark he made right there, that little squiggle, he said that was a big sign by the road. It tells people that anybody who goes on the property without permission will be prosecuted. Big sign says Posted, and then there's what Delos said they call 'The Lazy W,' painted on a board nailed to a tree."

"Yeah," Delonie said. "When old Cater died, Witherspoon's the one who bought out the estate. And that sounds like his brand. That's what I heard. Anyway, whoever has it, to hunt up there you still had to either sneak in, or pay the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds their fee."

"Okay," Leaphorn said. "Now let's figure out the best way to get there."

Delonie pushed back his chair and rose.

"I'll leave that to you, Lieutenant Leaphorn," he said. "I'm going to fix us some supper. Tomorrow's going to be a long day and probably pretty interesting. We should eat something and then get some sleep."

19.

For Leaphorn, getting some sleep had been easier said than accomplished. After feeding them overfried pork chops with bread, gravy, and more coffee, Delonie had put him and Tommy Vang in a s.p.a.ce once apparently used as a second bedroom but now stacked full of odds and ends of mostly broken furniture. Vang fit himself neatly onto a sagging sofa against the wall, leaving Leaphorn to retire upon a stack of three old mattresses on the floor.

It was comfortable enough, and certainly Leaphorn was tired enough, but his mind was occupied with setting up plans for the various unpleasant situations he kept imagining. Ideally, Delonie would get an early look at Delos, would clearly identify him as the man who called himself Ray Shewnack, the one who had murdered the Handys in cold blood and then gone on to earn high ranking on the FBI's list of Most Wanted felons. In that case, he would manage to persuade Delonie to choke down his long-building hatred and come back with Leaphorn to get a warrant for the arrest of Delos. An even happier outcome involved Delonie staring through his telescopic sight a bit and declaring that Delos was not Shewnack, that he didn't resemble Shewnack in any way at all, and asking what in the world had provoked Leaphorn into taking them on this foolish wild-goose chase. Whereupon Leaphorn would apologize to Delonie, head for home, and try to forget this whole affair.

But what about Tommy Vang then? And what if Delonie simply kept looking through that telescopic sight on his rifle until he was certain it was Shewnack and then shot the man? Even worse, what if Delos, who had clearly demonstrated his tendency to be cautious, saw them first, recognized the danger, and initiated shooting himself? Judging from the trophy heads on his wall, he was good at shooting. And Delos certainly knew Delonie was a dangerous enemy, and the fact that he had also poisoned one of those delicious-looking cherries for Leaphorn's own lunch made it clear that the name of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, was also on his kill list.

Leaphorn had worked his way through a mult.i.tude of such thoughts, including whether Tommy Vang was still perhaps just a little bit loyal to Delos, how much he could be trusted, and how to handle the Vang situation in general. He was still thinking that when he finally dozed off. He resumed pondering it when the sound of Delonie clumping around in the next room and the smell of coffee perking jarred him out of an uneasy sleep.

He rubbed his eyes. Moonlight coming through the dusty window revealed Vang curled on the sofa, lost in the sleep of the innocent. Leaphorn stared at him for a moment, decided he would rule Tommy an ally with some reservations, and pulled on his boots.

By a little after three A A.M., the coffee had been consumed, they had piled into the King Cab pickup Tommy Vang had been driving, they had slid through the sleeping town of Cuba while the moon was sailing high over the San Pedro Mountains, and now they were making pretty good time on County Road 112. Vang had suggested that he should drive, since he knew the truck, but Leaphorn had again noted that pickups were a lot alike and that he knew the roads. Thus Vang had settled in the jump seat behind them, and was occupying himself for the first thirty minutes or so examining Delonie's lever-action 30-30 rifle. He had seen lots of firearms, he explained-the U.S. Army rifles carried by the ARVN, the Russian models the Vietcong used, and the Chinese weapons carried by the Pathet Lao-but never one that loaded itself by pulling down a lever. Before many miles he somehow resumed his sleep on the jump seat behind them.

Delonie was riding up front, wide awake but deep in some sort of silent contemplation. Totally silent for miles, except for muttering a sardonic "heavy traffic this morning" remark when they met the first car they'd seen in about fifty miles. But now he stirred, glanced at Leaphorn.

"If we're where I think we are," he said, "that mountain is what they call Dead Man's Peak, and you've got a junction just ahead. If I read Vang's old map right, you're taking the left turn. That right? That takes you past Stinking Lake and then across a lot of Jicarilla Apache Reservation lands and into Dulce. Then what?"

"Then we turn east for about four miles or so on U.S. 84, back on pavement then for a few minutes, and then north on gravel toward a little old village up there named, ah, Edith, I think it is, and then we jog northwestward a little-in to Colorado and winding under Archuleta Mesa, and going very slow because we will have to be looking for that little turnoff road Delos marked."

"Yeah," Delonie said, peering out the window. "That hump over there, it's part of the San Juans, I guess, but they call that long ridge the Chalk Mountain. I've hunted up there a little in my younger days." He sighed. "Complicated country. You never knew whether you were still on the Jicarilla land, or over in Colorado trespa.s.sing on the Southern Ute Reservation, or which state you were in." The thought of that caused Delonie to chuckle.

Leaphorn glanced at him. "Something funny?"

"Not that it mattered. We wouldn't have had a hunting license for either state, or from the Apaches, and I don't think the Southern Utes give them."

"I think we'd better start looking for a turnoff place," Leaphorn said.

"And I think maybe it's time you ought to switch off your headlights. If Delos is out getting ready to hunt, he's going to notice somebody coming. And who is he going to think would be arriving here this early in the morning. It would be way too early for Tommy."

"Maybe you're right," Leaphorn said. The moon was down now, but the eastern horizon was showing its predawn brightness. He slowed, snapped off the headlights, crept along until his eyes were better adjusted to the gloom. They rolled down the slope of the hill they'd just climbed, crossed a culvert with the sound of a stream gurgling under it, negotiated a sharp curve beyond the culvert, and were in the dark shadows cast by a heavy growth of stream-side willows. Leaphorn switched on the headlights again.

Just ahead the beams lit a sign. POSTED POSTED. And below it the graphic design of a W tilted over on its side. Leaphorn eased the pickup to a crawl, turned off the headlights. Just beyond the Ponderosa pine on which the sign was mounted a dirt lane turned off the gravel road they'd been following.

"Well," Delonie said. "I guess that would be old Witherspoon's Lazy W brand on that sign there. So here we are. Now we find out what happens next."

Leaphorn didn't comment on that. Just beyond the Ponderosa pine on which the sign was mounted, rutted tracks swerved off the gravel. Leaphorn guided the pickup onto them, switched on the headlights. They illuminated a three-strand barbed-wire gate, stretched between two fence posts. From the top wire another sign dangled, a square piece of white tin on which the words ALL TRESPa.s.sERS WILL BE PROSECUTED ALL TRESPa.s.sERS WILL BE PROSECUTED were painted in red. were painted in red.

Leaphorn stopped the truck and turned off its headlights.

"Why don't you just drive right through it?" Delonie asked.

"That would make it malicious mischief, too," Leaphorn said. "You take care of it."

"Got wire cutters?"

Leaphorn laughed. "No. But that gate pole looks like it used to be a little aspen. I doubt if you'd need any."

Delonie got out, grabbed the gate pole, applied combined leg and arm leverage, broke it, tossed broken pole and wires aside, stepped back, and waved Leaphorn in.

Inside the fence the road slanted downward toward a small stream. They b.u.mped across a small culvert and the ranch road, now deeply rutted, took them into heavy stream-side growths of willow and brushy trees and almost total darkness. Leaphorn flicked on the lights again, but just long enough to see what he was driving into, then restored the darkness. Better let the ruts steer them, along with what little he could see in the dimness, than take a chance of their headlights giving Delos an early warning.

They rolled along, very slowly, very silently, letting the front wheels take them wherever the ruts guided the pickup along the meandering stream.

"Getting brighter ahead," Delonie said.

It was, and the road was suddenly less rutted and slanting upward. Ahead now they could see a bare-looking ridge faintly illuminated by the predawn glow along the eastern horizon.

"There it is," Delonie said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, pointing ahead and to the right.

Leaphorn could make out the shape of a small house, slanted roof, tall stone chimney, junipers crowding in beside it. He stopped the pickup, turned off the ignition, and listened. A still, windless morning. First there was only the ticking sound of the engine cooling. Then the odd rasping sound of what locals would call a Saw-Whet owl, in recognition of its unpleasant voice. It called and called and called, and finally got a barely audible answer from somewhere far behind them. Then the yipping of coyotes from the ridge behind the cabin, which lapsed quickly into nothing but the vague sound of the breeze and the even vaguer voice of the stream.

Leaphorn yawned, suddenly feeling some of the tension draining away and the acc.u.mulated fatigue taking over. He rubbed his eyes. This was not a time to be getting sleepy.

"What now?" Delonie whispered.

"We wait until it gets a little lighter," Leaphorn said, talking very low. "Mr. Vang told me Mr. Delos comes up here alone. The way he describes his hunting tactics he gets out to the blind when there's just enough light to see a little. That would be just about now, I'd think."

Vang was sort of semi-standing in the s.p.a.ce behind them, leaning forward for a better view out the winds.h.i.+eld. "He says its takes him about twenty minutes to walk from the cabin around to the hillside where the blind is. There's a regular trail he follows, and he wants to be off it and into the blind before the elk come out of the timber on the slope to start drinking in the stream. He wants to be all ready with everything when that happens. He used to talk to me about that. Back when I was younger. When he was still trying to teach me how to be a hunter."

The tone of that was sad.

"When did he stop doing that?" Leaphorn asked.

"A long, long time ago," Vang said. "When I was maybe twelve. He said he didn't see any signs in me that I would get to be one of the predator people. But he was going to try again later."

"But he didn't?"

"Not yet," Vang said.

Delonie wasn't interested in this.

"Point is you think he's already gone?" Delonie asked. "That is, if he was ever here."

"Oh, I think he was here," Vang said. "I was to come here to meet him. After I left that box..."

"After you left me that gift box of poisoned cherries," Delonie said. "I guess you were supposed to come and give him a report on how many of them I'd eaten before they killed me."

"No. No," Vang said. "I was just supposed to leave the box."

Leaphorn made a shus.h.i.+ng sound.

"Hand me up the rifle, Mr. Vang," Delonie said. "I want to do some looking around through the scope. See what I can see."

Vang dropped back, felt around, handed up the 30-30.

Delonie put it on his lap, muzzle pointed away from Leaphorn, and began loosening the clamps that held the scope in place. He took it off, pulled out his s.h.i.+rt tail, polished the scope with the cloth, then looked through it. First peering at the house, then scanning the area around it.

"No sign of any life," he said. "Didn't expect any."

The rifle lay on the seat beside Delonie. Leaphorn reached it, slid it away, leaned it against the driver's-side door. He glanced at Delonie, who hadn't seemed to notice.

"Let me have a look through that scope," Leaphorn said, and Delonie handed it to him.

Leaphorn looked, saw no signs of life, hadn't expected any. "n.o.body home," he said, also wondering if there ever had been.

"Beginning to wonder some more about all this," Delonie said. "You pretty sure Mr. Vang has been telling us right?"

"Oh yes," Vang said. "I told you right. You see that little bit of white on top of that bush. Beside the house? See? It sort of moves when the breeze blows? That's a white towel."

Delonie said, "Towel?"

Leaphorn said, "Where?"

"Look at the bushes right by the uphill side of the house. Beyond the porch. On the bush."

"That could be anything. Piece of some sort of trash caught there," Delonie said.

Leaphorn moved the scope. Found bushes, saw a wee bit of white amid the green, looked again. Yep.

"I see it now," he said, and handed the scope to Delonie. He said, "Mr. Vang, you got d.a.m.n good eyesight. But Delonie is right. It could be anything."

"Yes," Vang said. "But I remember Mr. Delos told me when he went hunting he would hang out a white towel there, and when he came back from hunting, he would take it in. That was so I would know to wait for him."

"Well, now," Delonie said, "if Mr. Vang here is telling us right, I guess we could walk right up there and make ourselves at home."

Leaphorn had no comment on that. He held his wrist.w.a.tch close enough to read its hands, looked out at the brightening sky, and found himself confronting the same need for self-a.n.a.lysis he'd felt a few days ago when he was home alone, a.n.a.lyzing what he had run into since he'd begun this chase of Mel Bork and the tale-teller rug. Wondering if he had slipped prematurely into senile dementia. Why was he here and what did he expect to accomplish? He couldn't quite imagine that. But on the other hand, he couldn't imagine turning back either. So they may as well get on with it.

"Here's what I think we should do," Leaphorn said. "Mr. Vang will stay in the truck here. Sitting behind the steering wheel. Like the driver doing just what Mr. Delos probably was expecting to find. Is that right, Tommy?"

"I think so. This is what he told me to do."

"Then Mr. Delonie and I will get out and find us a place where we can sit and watch for Mr. Delos to come back. Either we'll sit together, or close enough so that when Mr. Delonie gets a good enough look to make sure he knows who it is, he can signal me, one way or another."