Tony Hillerman Presents The Shape Shifter - A Leaphorn and Chee Novel Book 18

 “Pretty mean around here?” Leaphorn asked. “Pretty mean everywhere,” Bydonie said. “Nobody’s got any respect for anything anymore.”

Once again, a top writer has finished a book, leaving a, in my opinion, very important issue, hanging without closure... It involves a navajo rug...and I was left wondering, just like this cowboy, what happened to the rug?!

Otherwise, I enjoyed very much learning more about our brothers and sisters of the indigenous people who lived here on lands now called the United States. Tony Hillerman is one of the most known writers of fiction for the Navajo tribal police with Leaphorn and Chee as officers of the community... In this book, Leaphorn has officially retired, but as most of us do when retired, we keep on thinking about our work that took up most of our lives, hopefully, in a manner in which we felt fulfilled for at least the majority of time...

Eleven days earlier… The boom of the lightning bolt caused Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, to hesitate a moment before he climbed out of his pickup in the visitors’ parking lot. He took a serious look at the clouds building up in the western sky as he walked into the Navajo Tribal Police building. End of autumn, he was thinking. Monsoon season pretty much over. Handsome clouds of fog over the Lukachukai range this morning, but nothing promising a really good female rain. Just a noisy male thunderstorm. It would be hunting season soon, he thought, which normally would have meant a lot of work for him. This year he could just kick back, sit by the fire. He’d let younger cops try to keep track of the poachers and go hunting for the city folks who always seemed to be losing themselves in the mountains. Leaphorn sighed as he walked through the entrance. He should have been enjoying that sort of thinking, but he wasn’t. He felt…well…retired. Nobody in the police department hall. Good. He hurried into the reception office. Good again. Nobody there except the pretty young Hopi woman manning the desk, and she was ignoring him, chatting on the telephone. He took off his hat and waited. She said: “Just a moment,” into the telephone, glanced at him, said: “Yes, sir. Can I help you?” “I had a message from Captain Pinto. Pinto said I should come in and pick up my mail.” “Mail?” She looked puzzled. “And you are?” “I’m Joe Leaphorn.” “Leaphorn. Oh, yes,” she said. “The captain said you might be in.” She fumbled in a desk drawer, pulled out a manila envelope, looked at the address on it. Then at him. “Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn,” she said. “Is that you?” “That was me,” Leaphorn said. “Once.”

He thanked her, took the envelope back to his truck, and climbed in, feeling even more obsolete than he had as he’d driven by the police-parking-only spaces and stopped in visitors’ parking. The return address looked sort of promising. Why Worry Security, with a Flagstaff, Arizona, street address. The name penned under that was Mel Bork. Bork? Well, at least it wasn’t just more of the junk mail he’d been receiving. “Bork?” Leaphorn said it aloud, suddenly remembering. Smiling. Ah yes. A skinny young man named Bork had been his fellow semi-greenhorn westerner friend from way, way back when both of them were young country-boy cops sent back East to learn some law enforcement rules at the FBI Academy. And his first name, by golly, had been Melvin. Leaphorn opened his Swiss army knife, slit the envelope, slid out the contents. A page of slick paper from a magazine with a letter clipped to it. He took off the clip and put the letter aside. The page was from Luxury Living, and a color photograph dominated it. It showed a grand high-ceilinged room with a huge fireplace, a trophy-sized rack of elk antlers mounted above it, a tall wall of shelved books on one side, and a sliding-glass door on the other. The glass door offered a view into a walled garden and, above the wall, snow-capped mountains. Leaphorn recognized the mountains. The San Francisco Peaks, with Humphreys Peak lording over them. That told him this Luxury Living home was somewhere on the north edge of Flagstaff. The assorted furniture looked plush and expensive. But Leaphorn’s attention was drawn away from this by an arrow inked on the photograph. It pointed to a weaving that was hanging beside the fireplace, and under the shank of the arrow were the words: 

Hey, Joe, Ain’t this that rug you kept telling me about? And if it is, what does that do to that arson case of ours? Remember? The one that the wise men ruled was just a careless smoker. And take a look at those antlers! Folks who know this guy tell me he’s a hunting fool. See attached letter. Leaphorn let the letter wait while he stared at the photograph. It did remind him of the rug he had described to Bork—a great rectangle of black, gray, red tones, blues, and yellows all partially encircled by the figure of Rainbow Man. It seemed to be just as his memory told him. He noticed a symbol for Maii’—the Coyote spirit—at his work of turning order into chaos and others representing the weapons that Monster Slayer and Born for Water had stolen from the sun to wage their campaign to make the Dineh safe from the evils that had followed them up from the underworld. But the photograph was printed much too small to show other details that had impressed Leaphorn when he’d seen the original in Totter’s trading post gallery before it burned. He remembered seeing faint suggestions of soldiers with rifles, for example, and tiny white dots scattered in clusters here and there, which someone at the gallery had told him the weaver had formed from parts of feathers. They represented big silver peso coins, the currencies in the mountain west in the mid-1860s. And thus they represented greed, the root of all evil in the Navajo value system. That, of course, was the theme of the famous old rug. And that theme made it a sort of bitter violation of the Navajo tradition. The Dineh taught its people to live in the peace and harmony of hozho, they must learn to forgive—a variation of the policy that belagaana Christians preached in their Lord’s Prayer but all too often didn’t seem to practice. 

And the rug certainly didn’t practice forgetting old transgressions. It memorialized the worst cruelty ever imposed on the Navajo. The Long Walk—the captivity, misery, and the terrible death toll imposed on the Navajo by the white culture’s fierce hunger for gold and silver—and the final solution they tried to apply to get the Dineh out of the way. But could this picture torn from the magazine be of that same rug? It looked like it. But it didn’t seem likely. Leaphorn remembered standing there examining the rug framed on the gallery wall behind its dusty glass. Remembered someone there telling him of its antiquity and its historical value. If this was a pre-fire photo, then how had it gone from the wall of this lavish house at the edge of Flagstaff to Totter’s gallery. The other possibility was that it had been taken from the gallery before the fire. Furniture and other items in the room suggested the photo was recent. So did a distinctly modern painting on another wall. Leaphorn put the magazine page back on the car seat, and considered another old and unpleasant memory the photo provoked from the day after the fire. 

The angry face of Grandma Peshlakai glowering at him through the window of his patrol car while he tried to explain why he had to leave—had to drive over to meet Captain Desbah, who had called him from Totter’s place. “It’s a federal case,” he’d told her. “They had a fire over at Totter’s Trading Post Saturday. Burned up a man, and now the FBI thinks the dead man is a murderer they’ve been after for years. Very dangerous man. The federals are all excited.” “He’s dead?” Leaphorn agreed. “He can’t run then,” Grandma said, scowling at him. “This man I want you to catch is running away with my buckets of pinyon sap.” Leaphorn had tried to explain. But Grandma Peshlakai was one of the important old women in her Kin Litsonii (Yellow House) clan. She felt her family was being slighted. Leaphorn had been young then, and he’d agreed that the problem of live Navajos should be just as important as learning the name of a dead belagaana. Remembering it now, much older, he still agreed with her. Her case involved the theft of two economy-sized lard buckets filled with pinyon sap. They had been stolen from the weaving shed beside her hogan. She’d explained that the loss was much more significant than it might sound to a young policeman who had never endured the weary days of onerous labor collecting that sap. “And now it’s gone, so how do we waterproof our baskets? How do we make them so they hold water and have that pretty color so tourists will buy them? And now, it is too late for sap to drip. We can’t get more. Not until next summer.” Grandma had bitten back her anger and listened, with traditional Navajo courtesy, while he tried to explain that this dead fellow was probably one of the top people on the FBI’s most wanted list. A very bad and dangerous man. When he’d finished, rather lamely as he remembered, Grandma nodded. “But he’s dead. Can’t hurt nobody now. Our thief is alive. He has our sap. Two full buckets. Elandra there”—she nodded to her granddaughter, who was standing behind her, smiling at Leaphorn—“Elandra saw him driving away. Big blue car. Drove that direction—back toward the highway. You policemen get paid to catch thieves. You could find him, I think, and get our sap back. But if you mess around with the dead man, maybe his chindi will get after you. And if he was as bad as you say, it would be very, very bad chindi.” Leaphorn sighed. Grandma was right, of course. And the sort of mass murderer that was high on the FBI’s Most Wanted list would, based on Leaphorn’s memory of his maternal grandfather’s hogan stories, be a formidable chindi. Since that version of ghost represented all of the unharmonious and evil characteristics that couldn’t follow the dead person into his last great adventure, they were the sort any traditional Navajo would prefer to avoid. But, chindi or not, duty had called. He drove away, leaving Grandma staring resentfully after him. Remembering, too, the last theory she had offered. When he’d asked Grandma Peshlakai if she had any idea who would want to steal her pinyon sap, she stood silent a long moment, hesitating, looking around, making sure Elandra was out of hearing range. “They say that sometimes witches need it for something. That sometimes a skinwalker might want it,” Grandma had said. That was a version of the witchcraft legend he had never heard before. Leaphorn remembered telling Grandma Peshlakai that he doubted if this very worst tribal version of witchcraft evil would be driving a car. She had frowned at him a moment, shook her head, and said: “Why you think that?” It was a question he couldn’t think of any answer for. And now, all these years later, he still couldn’t. 

He sighed, picked up the letter: Dear Joe, If I remember you correctly, by now you’ve stared at that picture and examined the rug and you’re trying to figure out when the photo was taken. Well, old Jason Delos didn’t buy that mansion of his on that mountain slope outside of Flagstaff until just a few years ago. As I remember your story, that famous old “cursed” rug you told me about was reduced to ashes in that trading-post fire long before that. Yet there it is, good as new, posing for the camera. You remember we agreed there was more going on in that crime, and that maybe it really was a crime, and not just a careless drunk accident and a lot of witchcraft talk. Anyway, I thought you’d be interested in seeing this. I’m going to look into it myself. See if I can find out where old man Delos got the rug, etc. If you’re interested, give me a call and I’ll let you know if I learn anything. And if you ever get as far south and west as Flagstaff, I’ll buy you lunch, and we can tell each other how we survived that FBI Academy stuff. Meanwhile, stay well, Mel

~~~~

Seeing the rug, as presented on the cover, is a cultural phenomenon, that is most significant for the representation of man as well as because it was the women of the Tribe who created these masterpieces. There was no doubt in Leaphorn's mind that the picture he had received by an old friend did indeed very much appear to be the same one-of-a-kind rug that he had once closely studied in a gallery he had visited. He knew he wanted to know more, but did not imagine that it would be quicker than planned because the friend who had first contacted him about the rug...was...now...dead!

After talking with Mrs. Bork and hearing her fear as she shared a threatening call:

 “Mr. Bork, I have some very serious advice for you. You need to get back to minding your own business. Stop trying to dig up old bones. Let those old bones rest in peace. You keep poking at ’em and they’ll jump out and bite you.” Silence. Then a chuckle. “You’ll be just a set of new bones.” The tape clicked off.

Whether he was now retired or not, Leaphorn knew only one thing--he was on the case! And he would be heading for Flagstaff to learn more about the rug, the present owner, and if Mel had actually visited there, and what had happened...

An interesting character was introduced at the location of the rug. Tommy was an orphan brought from overseas and had been taught how to cook, take care of his boss's needs, and more. On the other hand, his boss had little time to deal with Leaphorn's questions, especially when Mel's name was brought up. While acknowledging that Mel had visited, he made it quite clear that Mel had spent little time with the owner of the rug...  

But Leaphorn used his connections and sought an autopsy, which confirmed that Mel had been dead before his car went over the mountain... He had been murdered. And Leaphorn was fairly sure just how it had been done...

Because the same thing could have also killed him!

Even if that were true, the old stories of shape shifters kept coming into his mind and he wondered if his mind was still able to put together the entire set of events that seemed to be happening...

Leaphorn had no comment on that. He held his wristwatch close enough to read its hands, looked out at the brightening sky, and found himself confronting the same need for self-analysis he’d felt a few days ago when he was home alone, analyzing what he had run into since he’d begun this chase of Mel Bork and the tale-teller rug. Wondering if he had slipped prematurely into senile dementia. Why was he here and what did he expect to accomplish? He couldn’t quite imagine that. But on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine turning back either. So they may as well get on with it...

In the early chapters of the book, there had been a story about a grandmother who had contacted Leaphorn to help her catch a thief of a very important substane used in their basket weaving. During that conversation, Leaphorn had been called to a fire location where a man had been killed and he told her he'd have to leave. She pointed out that the man was already dead, while he was alive and the thief who had robbed her was also alive, so he should work on her request for assistance before going to look at a dead man. Leaphorn had silently agreed, and also agreed with her even as the book closed... So, in his own way, he made sure that he had sufficient money to pay her for what she would have made if he had first caught her thief.... So in all ways, other than the retrieval of the stolen rug, if that is what had happened, I loved how Hillerman closed out each detail for the characters in the book...

And the rug? My guess is that, in some magical way, the rug would be returned to the Navajo tribe from which it had been stolen...

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