Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman

Author:Tony Hillerman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Police Procedural, Police, Leaphorn, Mystery & Detective, Navajo Indians, Political, General, Chee, Joe, Southwestern States, Fiction, Cultural Heritage, Jim (Fictitious character), Lt. (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780061808364
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-05-26T06:27:25+00:00

EVEN BEFORE he had finished reading Chee’s memo, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn had come to a couple of conclusions. The first was that he had guessed right about Chee. He was young, and he still had the crazy idea that he could be both a hataalii and a tribal cop simultaneously, and he had a tendency to do things his own way. But he was smart. And in this job, being smart was something you needed to be a lot. The second conclusion was that he should clear up this question of the link between Eric Dorsey and Francis Sayesva now, and the place to start was exactly in the unlikely place that Chee’s memo had suggested.

He picked up the cap he’d just taken off and headed for the door. The first step was to talk to Dilly Streib. Streib would probably still be lingering over his breakfast at the Navajo Nation Inn, where Leaphorn had just left him. He’d get Dilly to make the proper calls to assure that no jurisdictional toes were bruised. Then he’d make the long drive to Tano. Perhaps Dilly would like to go along.

Dilly wouldn’t. He called the Albuquerque FBI office, and got the proper people at the BIA Law and Order Division to set things up across the jurisdictional boundaries. But as far as making the trip was concerned, he told Leaphorn, “Sorry, I got other sheep to shear.

“Maybe you’ve got the time to solve problems for people over in the Albuquerque office. Not me,” Streib said. “Besides, my tailbone’s hurting from all the driving we’ve been doing.”

So, a little before noon, Leaphorn arrived at Tano, stopped at the pueblo administrative office, asked appropriate questions, and got directions to the house of Teddy Sayesva.

Teddy Sayesva showed no enthusiasm for giving a Navajo policeman the fifth repetition, as he put it, “of what damn little I know about how my brother got killed.” But the Tano culture’s demand for hospitality quickly overpowered his irritation. He prepared coffee in the pot on the cookstove, and then perched stiffly on the edge of a kitchen chair—a small, thin man with a burr haircut and wire-rimmed glasses that looked too youthful for a face that was lined and tired. No, he hadn’t been at home when his nephew had come to see his brother Francis. He was a member of a kachina society and had duties to take care of at the kiva society. Except for the boy’s visit, which he hadn’t been home to witness, he could think of nothing unusual happening that evening.

He recited what had happened as if he’d memorized it. Francis had driven in from his home in Albuquerque early in the afternoon. As always during ceremonials, he used Teddy’s place as his home base. At supper he’d seemed preoccupied, maybe worried, but Teddy presumed that was because he had to go the next week to testify before a federal grand jury. Teddy paused after mentioning that and glanced at Leaphorn to see if it needed explanation.

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