Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman

slipped away, the nurse had said. Emma had died while both of them were sleeping. Six hundred and twenty-two days. A lot longer if you counted the days before the operation, the days when the tumor had pressed against Emma’s brain and cost her her ability to think clearly. It had robbed her of her memory, her happiness, her humor, and her personality, and even—on some terrible days—of her knowledge of who she was, and who he was. He remembered those nights when she would awaken beside him confused and terrified. When . . .
    “Change the subject,” Leaphorn said, and Streib instantly detected the anger in his voice.
    That took them back to the killing of Eric Dorsey, routine as it seemed. A bit odd, perhaps, with no motive apparent immediately, and no promising suspects. But such things took time to develop, and the case was still fresh.
    “One oddity though,” Leaphorn said. He told Streib about Delmar Kanitewa running away the day Dorsey was killed, the bludgeon murder of his uncle, and the koshare effigy in Dorsey’s shop.
    “So,” Streib said. “What’s the connection?”
    “Sounds unlikely,” Leaphorn said. “But maybe.”
    “Or maybe not,” Dilly said. “Maybe the kid just happened to take off the same day.”
    “And the boy’s uncle being killed there at Tano. How about that?”
    “I know you don’t believe in coincidences,” Streib said. “But they do happen. For example, you and the lady both wanting to go take a look at China. And this looks like another one. Unless you can see some possible link.”
    “I can’t,” Leaphorn said. “But I’d like it better if we had a suspect in custody.”
    Which, as it happened, they did.

“HIS NAME’S Eugene Ahkeah,” said Lieutenant Toddy. “The family lives out toward Coyote Canyon but he’s got a place in Thoreau. He works out at the Saint Bonaventure Mission. Sort of a handyman job.”
    The lieutenant had spread an array of items on his desk top. “When he’s sober,” he added. He handed Streib an inventory sheet. Streib glanced at it and passed it to Leaphorn.
    Cardboard grocery carton in which the following items were found:
     
Plastic bread wrapper containing two ingots of silver
    Plastic grocery bag containing following items:
     
Sand-cast silver bracelet
Sand-cast silver concha belt
Hammered silver ornamental pin
Seven silver belt buckles
Four ingots of silver
Ball-peen hammer with bloodstains on hammer head and on handle
    Leaphorn looked from the list at the array on the table, making an unnecessary check of the inventory. Unneeded but not useless. It kept him from thinking his dreary thoughts. About the wages of avarice. About, almost certainly, the bloody cost of alcohol among The People, whose hunger was rarely for money. It was for oblivion bought by the bottle.
    “Did you send a blood sample off to the lab?” Streib was asking.
    “It’s ready to go,” Toddy said. “We just found this stuff this morning.”
    “It was under his house?” Streib asked. “That what you said?”
    “Actually, it’s a mobile home.”
    “Did you get a search warrant?”
    Lieutenant Toddy gave Leaphorn an uneasy sidelong glance.
    “We told him we’d gotten this call. A man called—wouldn’t give his name—and reported some things taken from Dorsey’s shop were under Ahkeah’s place. We told Ahkeah we’d get a search warrant if he wanted us to,” Toddy said. “And he said there wasn’t anything under there. And I told him we’d have to find out for ourselves, one way or the other, and he said, ‘Well, let’s go see, then.’ And he came out and pulled away the plywood he had there to keep the animals out, and there was the box. In plain view. Just pushed back in there.”
    Lieutenant Toddy paused, wrinkled his forehead at the weirdness of human behavior, and shook his head.
    “He pulled the box out himself,” Toddy added.
    “How did he act then?” Leaphorn asked. “What’d he say? Any explanation?”
    Toddy shrugged.