The Shape Shifter by Tony Hillerman

who was shooting, and Shewnack shot her twice. Ellie told me that she had started screaming then because Shewnack had promised her nobody would get hurt. So he hustled her into the back room, filled the sacks Ellie had kept there for him with money from the safe. The safe was standing open because Ellie had signaled him to come in just when Handy was starting his daily job of adding the day’s revenue to the stash.”
    “Signaled?” Leaphorn said. “How?”
    Garcia laughed. “Nothing very high tech. She went to the window and pulled down the blind. Just as Shewnack had instructed her. She said the plan was for Shewnack to tie up her and Handy, have Benny and Tomas take off pretending to chase him, then wait for him at a pickup place in the Bis-E ah Wash. He’d come there and they’d divide up the loot. He told her he’d have a bottle of chloroform to put Handy to sleep and he’d pretend to do the same with her. She was supposed to wait ten minutes after hearing him drive off and then reconnect the telephone and call the law.”
    Garcia shook his head, chuckled.
    “She told the highway patrol Shewnack had told her to sound totally hysterical. He even had her practice screaming and sobbing into the telephone.” 58
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    “Sounds like he would have made a pretty efficient professional criminal,” Leaphorn said. “Guess he did.
    Didn’t the federals have him as a top suspect in a couple of other robberies after that?”
    “Yeah,” Garcia agreed. “A whole bunch of them. Jobs with a sort of similar MO. But maybe some other bad guys had heard about it and were copying the system. Anyway, Ellie said that practicing hysteria wasn’t necessary. Once she saw Shewnack shooting Handy, and then killing Mrs.
    Handy when the old lady came rushing in, the hysteria was genuine. Came naturally.”
    Leaphorn found himself feeling sympathy for Ellie.
    Before the long evening was over, Garcia continued, police had received another excited call, telling them that two suspicious-looking young men, one armed with a pistol, were parked down in Bis-E ah Wash. The caller said the two ran up to his truck when he drove down the track there, looked at him, and then waved him on. Who was he? Well, the call was from an old-fashioned short-wave radio; the caller said he was Horse Hauler Mike, and a word or two later the radio shorted out—as was usual those days. When the state police showed up at Tomas Delonie’s pickup in the wash, Delonie said no such truck driver, or anyone else, had come by since they got there. They insisted they knew nothing of the robbery, but since Shewnack had handed them one of the sacks Ellie had left with a little bit of the loot in it, that didn’t seem credible to the policemen.
    “I guess that does sort of establish a new level in ratting out your partners,” Leaphorn said. “I mean, setting it up before the crime happens so you don’t have to split the loot and arranging for the police to get them quick so THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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    they’re not chasing you. I’d say any of those three would have motive for burning Shewnack.”
    Garcia shook his head. “Of course only Ellie was free when Shewnack was cremated, but maybe the others could have arranged something. Communicated with friends on the outside. But how would they have known where to find Shewnack? You have any ideas to offer on that?”
    “Not offhand,” Leaphorn said. “I’d have to know their families. And their friends. But it sounds pretty near impossible to me.”
    “Yeah,” Garcia said. “I did a little casual asking around and got nothing. Well, anyway they’re all out now. Like I said, Ellie got part of her five-year sentence whacked off for good behavior. She was living at Gallup last I heard. Delonie got a twenty-five-year rap, and Begay’s was a lot shorter. But I’ve heard that Begay’s dead.
    When he got out, he got married and he and his wife lived up near Teec Nos Pos. Worked as a sheep shearer, handy man,