Read Online Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 05] by The Dark Wind (v1.1) [html] - Free Book Online Page A

Gaines smiled at Chee, his eyes friendly and moist. "A big one. If you happen onto that, let me know about it. Quietly. Then I'll get to work and find out a way to get into contact with whoever owned whatever it was. You find the stuff. I find the owners. Sort of a partnership between the two of us. You know what I mean?"
    "Yes," Chee said. "I know."

Chapter Nine
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    T he late-afternoon sun slanted through the windows of the Burnt Water Trading Post, breaking the cavernous interior into a patchwork of harsh contrasts. Dazzling reflected sunlight alternated with cool darkness. And in the sunlight, dust motes danced. They reminded Chee of drought.
    "Shrine?" Jake West said. "Hell, between you people and the Hopi, this country is covered up with shrines." West was sitting in a patch of darkness, his heavy bearded head silhouetted against an oblong of sunlight on the wall.
    "This one is in the arroyo just east of the windmill," Chee said. "By a dried-up spring. It's full of prayer plumes. Some of 'em fresh, so somebody's been taking care of it."
    "
Pahos
," West said. "You call 'em prayer plumes, but for the Hopis they're
pahos
."
    "Whatever," Chee said. "You know anything about it?"
    Through the open front door came the sound of a car, moving fast, jolting into the trading post yard. Over the noise, West said he didn't know anything about the shrine. "Never heard of that one," he said. There was the sound of a car door slamming. The smell of aroused dust drifted to their nostrils.
    "That Cowboy?" Chee asked.
    "Hope so," West said. "Hope there's not somebody else that parks like that. You'd think they'd teach the sons-a-bitches how to park without raising a cloud of dust. Ought to teach that before they let 'em into a car."
    At the door a bulky young man in a khaki uniform paused to exchange remarks with a cluster of old men passing the afternoon in the shade. Whatever he said provoked an elderly chuckle.
    "Come on in, Cowboy," West said. "Chee here needs some information."
    "As usual," Cowboy said. He grinned at Chee. "You caught your windmill vandal yet?"
    "Our windmill vandal," Chee corrected. "You solved the great airplane mystery?"
    "Not quite," Cowboy said. "But progress has been made." He extracted an eight-by-ten glossy photograph from a folder he was carrying and displayed it. "Here's the dude we're looking for. You guys see him, promptly inform either Deputy Sheriff Albert Dashee or call your friendly Coconino County Sheriff's Department."
    "Who is he?" West said. The photograph obviously had been blown up from a standard police mug identification shot. It showed a man in his middle forties, with gray hair, close-set eyes, and a high, narrow forehead dominating a long, narrow face.
    "Name's Richard Palanzer, also known as Dick Palanzer. What the feds call a 'known associate of the narcotics traffic.' All they told me is he was indicted a couple of years ago in Los Angeles County for conspiracy, narcotics. They want us looking for him around here."
    "Where'd the picture come from?" Chee asked. He turned it over and looked at the back, which turned out to be bare.
    "Sheriff," Cowboy said. "He got it from the dea people. This is the bird they think drove off with the dope after the plane crash." Cowboy accepted the photograph back from Chee. "That is if Chee didn't do the driving. I understand the feds can't decide whether Chee rode shotgun or drove."
    West looked puzzled. He raised his eyebrows, looked from Dashee to Chee and back.
    Dashee laughed. "Just a joke," he said. "Chee was out there when it happened, so the dea was suspicious. They're suspicious of everybody. Including me, and you, and that fellow over there." Dashee indicated a geriatric Hopi who was easing himself out of the front door with the help of an aluminum walker and a solicitous middle-aged woman. "What was it Chee wanted to know?"
    "There's a little shrine in that arroyo by the windmill," Chee said. "By a dried-up spring. Lots