frowned. “Natural disasters?”
Naranjo nodded. “Unless returned to their shrines.”
“You said someone stole an ahayu:da this summer. Do you have any idea who?’
“Could be anybody.” Naranjo shook his round, weathered face. “An art dealer...a grave-robber...one of the hippies who come to hike on our land without asking permission. We see them all the time. We tell them to leave, but they just come back.”
“Even a Zuni,” Suino added. “One who’s become greedy like an Anglo. Or a Mexican.”
He knew Indians commonly referred to Hispanics as Mexicans, but common or not, he didn’t like to be called a Mexican. Nor did he like this Suino fellow. Still, he had a job to do, so he tried to put aside his feelings and assume an air of polite informality. “Can these carvings be sold for as much as fifty thousand dollars?”
Suino shrugged. “How would we know, we don’t sell our own ahayu:da.”
He scratched his head. “Okay. Why don’t you give me a description of the missing ahayu:da.”
Suino corrected him. “Stolen.”
He started to respond, then thought twice about it and took a drink of coffee instead.
Again Naranjo intervened. “It’s slender, about thirty inches long, with a face carved in the wood.”
He recorded the information. Then he passed the notepad to Naranjo. “Write down a phone number where I can reach you. Are you staying in town?”
“We thought maybe you could get the ahayu:da back today,” Naranjo said.
He shook his head in disbelief. They didn’t expect much, did they? “That depends. I’ll talk to Soto, but I can’t promise anything. For all I know, he might have already sold the ahayu:da. Or the letter might be a hoax. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can.”
“Then we’ll stay in town,” Suino said.
He didn’t like the way Suino said that. It sounded like a threat. “Suit yourself.”
Suino sprang to his feet and pulled the baseball cap lower on his forehead. Naranjo nodded, sighing as he got to his feet. He gave him an apologetic look, and then turned and followed his young companion into the dimly lit corridor outside his office.
Relieved to be alone, he settled back in his chair to relax. His mind began to clear, a process that seemed to take longer the older he got. Lately he’d been thinking about retiring. His wife wanted him to. His daughters, too.
They’d also convinced him to stop smoking. He finally gave in to their complaints and surprised them this past spring. They didn’t know he still carried around his emergency pack of Camel Lights. What had his wife said last night? Something about his face being as wrinkled as a saguaro cactus. She blamed smoking for all his troubles, including the wrinkles, but he wasn’t so sure.
Who wouldn’t have wrinkles after thirty years of police work? Too many people with bad attitudes. That was a fact.
He didn’t look forward to questioning Soto. Rich gallery owners were some of his least favorite people. He didn’t know much about Soto, just that he’d bought Sabado Indian Arts on the Plaza. He’d seen Soto only once, at some function at City Hall. He couldn’t remember the occasion, but he did remember the small man in the linen suit, very outgoing, a natural salesman. With his short black hair slicked back, Soto looked like a gigolo from a 1930s Hollywood movie. Hard to forget.
He took the opportunity to step outside for a breath of fresh air, just to clear his head. When he returned, he decided he needed another cup of coffee before making any decisions about how to proceed with this ahayu:da business, so he went down the hall to the coffee machine. He didn’t like to drink coffee that came from a concession machine, but at the moment he didn’t want to walk down the street to the Great Burrito Company.
From the hallway he spotted Fidel Rodriguez talking to the police dispatcher at the front counter. Sure as the sun rose every morning, Fidel or one of the other metro reporters from the Santa Fe Independent would show up at the station about eight o’clock to read the police log for the latest criminal activity in the area. They loved the juicy stories, the murder and mayhem stuff. Fidel was one of the few reporters he admired because Fidel didn’t sensationalize.
Fidel had manners. That was more than he could say for most of the hotshots who worked for the Independent.
“Fidel.” He held up his cup.
“Are you buying?” Fidel, a small dapper man wearing a blue work shirt and red paisley tie, minus the jacket, asked.
“Sure, if you can drink this shit,” he grumbled.
Fidel stuffed a notebook in his back pocket and stepped behind the counter.
He inserted more quarters in the coffee machine and handed Fidel a small paper cup filled with murky black liquid. “Santa Fe Concessions.” He shook his head. “I think they’re trying to poison us.”
“Doing a pretty good job, too. You look like hell.”
“Yeah, that’s what my wife says. She tells me I’m smoking too much.”
“I thought you quit.”
“I did, sort of.”
Fidel laughed. “So what do you have for me this morning? Any road kill last night?”
“Road kill? I hate that expression.”
“Sorry, cabrón. Just a little humor.”
While they talked, the police dispatcher answered a telephone call at the front desk. Linda Stephens jotted down the information and then turned to him. “Hey, Fernando, this must be your lucky day.”
He liked Linda, a leftover hippie from the 1970s who’d managed to preserve her sardonic sense of humor. He saw her peering over the counter at him, steel-gray Afro, thick glasses, and a big smile on her face. From years of experience he knew what her smile meant—big trouble.
“Yeah?” he asked tentatively, not really wanting to know.
“Guy by the name of José Padilla just called to report a homicide in Jacoñita.” Linda pushed the glasses back on her nose.
“Jacoñita? Where’s Jacoñita?”
“You know, out by San Ildefonso Pueblo.”
He nodded, remembering.
“Guess who our lucky victim is?”
Expecting the worst, he wasn’t disappointed when he heard Linda say, “Michael Soto.”
2
He shaded his eyes from the glare of the sunlight striking the tin roof of José Padilla’s house and wished he hadn’t forgotten his sunglasses. Just last week his wife had bought him an expensive pair that were supposed to block out 99.9 percent of all harmful rays. Estelle liked to warn him about cataracts, caused by
