Skeleton Man

HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter One

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, had been explaininghow the complicated happening below the Salt WomanShrine illustrated his Navajo belief in universal connections.The cause leads to inevitable effect. The entirecosmos being an infinitely complicated machine all workingtogether. His companions, taking their mid-morningcoffee break at the Navajo Inn, didn't interrupt him. Butthey didn't seem impressed.

"I'll admit the half-century gap between the day allthose people were killed here and Billy Tuve trying topawn that diamond for twenty dollars is a problem,"Leaphorn said. "But when you really think about it, traceit all back, you see how one thing kept leading to another.The chain's there."

Captain Pinto, who now occupied Joe Leaphorn's preretirement office in the Navajo Tribal Police Headquarters,put down his cup. He signaled a refill to thewaitress who was listening to this conversation, andwaited a polite moment for Leaphorn to explain this if hewished. Leaphorn had nothing to add. He just nodded,sort of agreeing with himself.

"Come on, Joe," Pinto said. "I know how that theoryworks and I buy it. Hard, hot wind blowing gets the birdstired of flying. One too many birds lands on a limb. Limbbreaks off, falls into a stream, diverts water flow, undercutsthe stream bank, causes a landslide, blocks thestream, floods the valley, changes the flora and thatchanges the fauna, and the folks who were living off ofhunting the deer have to migrate. When you think backyou could blame it all on that wind."

Pinto stopped, got polite, attentive silence from hisfellow coffee drinkers, and decided to add a footnote.

"However, you have to do a lot of complicated thinkingto work in that Joanna Craig woman. Coming all theway out from New York just because a brain-damagedHopi tries to pawn a valuable diamond for twenty bucks."

Captain Largo, who had driven down from his Shiprockoffice to attend a conference on the drunk-drivingproblem, entered the discussion. "Trouble is, Joe, the timegap is just too big to make you a good case. You say itstarted when the young man with the camera on theUnited Airlines plane was sort of like the last bird onPinto's fictional tree limb, so to speak. He mentioned tothe stewardess he'd like to get some shots down into theGrand Canyon when they were flying over it. Isn't that thetheory? The stewardess mentions that to the pilot, and sohe does a little turn out of the cloud they're flying through, and cuts right through the TWA airplane. Thatwas June 30, 1956. All right. I'll buy that much of it. Passengerasks a favor, pilot grants it. Boom. Everybody dead.End of incident. Then this spring, about five decades later,this Hopi fella, Billy Tuve, shows up in a Gallup pawnshopand tries to pawn a twenty-thousand-dollar diamond fortwenty bucks. That touches off another series of events,sort of a whole different business. I say it's not just anotherchapter, it's like a whole new book. Hell, Tuve hadn't evenbeen born yet when that collision happened. Right? Andneither had the Craig woman."

"Right," said Pinto. "You have a huge gap in thatcause-and-effect chain, Joe. And we're just guessing thekid with the camera asked the pilot to turn. Nobodyknows why the pilot did that."

Leaphorn sighed. "You're thinking about the gap yousee in one single connecting chain. I'm thinking of abunch of different chains which all seem to get drawn together."

Largo looked skeptical, shook his head, grinned atLeaphorn. "If you had one of your famous maps here,could you chart that out for us?"

"It would look like a spiderweb," Pinto said.

Leaphorn ignored that. "Take Joanna Craig's role inthis. The fact she wasn't born yet is part of the connection.The crash killed her daddy. From what Craig said, thatcaused her mama to become a bitter woman and thatcaused Craig to be bitter, too. Jim Chee told me she wasn'treally after those damned diamonds when she came tothe canyon. She just wanted to find them so she could getrevenge."

That produced no comment.

"You see how that works," Leaphorn said. "And that'swhat drew that Bradford Chandler fellow into the case.The skip tracer. He may have been purely after money,but his job was blocking Craig from getting what she wasafter. That's what sent him down into the canyon. AndCowboy Dashee was down there doing family duty. ForChee, the pull was friendship. And -- " Leaphorn stopped,sentence unfinished.

Pinto chuckled. "Go on, Joe," he said. "How aboutBernie Manuelito? What pulled little Bernie into it?"

"It was fun for Bernie," Leaphorn said. "Or love."

"You know," said Largo. "I can't get over our littleBernie. I mean, how she managed to get herself out ofthat mess without getting killed. And another thing that'shard to figure is how you managed to butt in. You're supposedto be retired."

"Pinto gets the blame for that," Leaphorn said."Telling me old Shorty McGinnis had died. See? That's anotherof the chain I was talking about."

"I was just doing you a favor, Joe," Pinto said. "I knewyou were getting bored with retirement. Just wanted togive you an excuse to try your hand at detecting again."

"Saved your budget some travel money, too," Leaphornsaid, grinning. He was remembering that day, rememberinghow totally out-it-all he'd felt, how happy he'dbeen driving north in search of the McGinnis diamond -- which he'd never thought had actually existed. Now hewas thinking about how a disaster buried under a lifetimeof dust had risen again and the divergent emotions it hadstirred. Greed, obviously, and hatred, plus family duty, adebt owed to a friend. And perhaps, in Bernie Manuelito'scase, even love.

Excerpted from Skeleton Manby Hillerman, Tony Excerpted by permission.
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