Talking God by Tony Hillerman

Author:Tony Hillerman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective, Cultural Heritage, General
ISBN: 9780061967832
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-09-27T10:00:00+00:00

“We have to be going,” Highhawk said. “Well,” Dr. Hartman said. “I hope you’re enjoying your visit, Mr. Chee. Is Mr. Highhawk showing you everything you want to see?”

This seemed to be an opportunity. “I wanted to see this,” Chee said, indicating the Night Chant and the world of masks around it. “And I was hoping to see that Tano War God that I’ve heard about. I heard somewhere that someone at the Pueblo was hoping to get that back, too.”

Dr. Hartman’s expression was doubtful. “I haven’t heard of that,” she said, frowning. She looked at Highhawk. “A Tano fetish. Do you know anything about that? Which fetish would they mean?”

Highhawk glanced from Dr. Hartman to Chee. He hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“I guess you could look it up in the inventory,” she said.

Highhawk was looking at Chee, examining him. “Why not?” he said. “If you want to.”

They went up the staff elevator to the sixth floor, to Highhawk’s airless cubicle of an office. He punched the proper information into his computer terminal and received, in return, a jumble of numbers and letters.

“This tells us the hallway, the room, the corridor in the room, the shelf in the corridor, and the number of the bin it’s in,” Highhawk said. He punched another set of keys and waited. “Now it tells us that it is out of inventory and being worked on. Or something.”

He turned off the computer, glanced at Chee, looked thoughtful.

He knows where it is, Chee thought. He knew from the beginning. He’s deciding whether to tell me.

“It should be in the conservation lab,” Highhawk said. “Let’s go take a look.”

The telephone rang.

Highhawk looked at it, and at Chee.

It rang again. Highhawk picked it up. “Highhawk,” he said.

And then: “I can’t right now. I have a guest.”

He listened, glanced at Chee. “No, I couldn’t make the damn thing work,” Highhawk said. “I’m no good with that stuff.” He listened.

“I tried that. It didn’t turn on.” Listened again. “Look. You’re coming down anyway. I’ll leave it for you to fix.” Listened. “No. That’s a little early. Too much traffic then.” And finally: “Make it nine thirty then. And remember it’s the Twelfth Street entrance.”

Highhawk listened, and hung up.

“Let’s go,” he said to Chee.

Highhawk made his limping way down a seemingly endless corridor. It was lined on both sides with higher-than-head stacks of wooden cases. The cases were numbered. Some were sealed with paper stickers. Most wore tags reading CAUTION: INVENTORIED MATERIALS or CAUTION: UNINVENTORIED MATERIALS.

“What’s in all this?” Chee asked, waving.

“You name it,” Highhawk said. “I think in here it’s mostly early agricultural stuff. Tools, churns, hoes, you know. Up ahead we have bones.”

“The skeletons you wanted returned?”

“Want returned,” Highhawk said. “Still. We’ve got more than eighteen thousand skeletons boxed up in this attic. Eighteen goddamn thousand Native American skeletons in the museum’s so-called research collection.”

“Wow,” Chee said. He would have guessed maybe four or five hundred.

“How about white skeletons?”

“Maybe twenty thousand black, white, and so forth,” Highhawk said. “But since

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.