The Shape Shifter by Tony Hillerman Page A

so forth. Supposed to have learned a lot about working with tools and fixing things in the penitentiary, and for a while he worked for a sporting goods store in Farmington. Mostly from what I heard repairing outboard motors, sporting equipment, things like that. I remember the first time I saw him after he was paroled he was helping out at one of those booths at the Four Corners Monument parking place. Very cool about it. Said he’d had an enemy way cure. Got himself restored to harmony. He sounded like he was very much occupied with forgetting his old mistakes. And all those bad years.”
    “You say Begay’s dead now. How’d that happen?”
    “Shot himself,” Garcia said.

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    TONY HILLERMAN
    “You mean suicide?”
    “No. Not Benny. I guess he wasn’t as good at fixing as he thought he was. He had taken some stuff home from the Fish and Hunt Shop over the weekend to repair it. Had himself a workbench in his garage, and when his wife got home from whatever she was doing, he was there on the floor. And one of those old German World War II pistols on the floor beside him. A Walther. The one they called the P-38. The magazine was out of it on the table, but the empty shell casing was still in the chamber.” Garcia looked at Leaphorn, shrugged.
    “That’s how it can happen,” Leaphorn said. “Working with an unfamiliar weapon. You think you unloaded it and you didn’t. No sign of foul play?”
    “That was over here in New Mexico,” Garcia said.
    “Not my case, but I doubt it. Probably handled by the San Juan County sheriff. Wouldn’t be any reason to be suspicious. Who’d want to kill Benny Begay?”
    “Good question,” Leaphorn said. He found himself trying to visualize how Begay, a gunsmith then by practice, had managed to point that pistol at his head and pull the trigger. He’d extracted the magazine. What was he doing. Peering into the pistol barrel. That would make no sense.
    Garcia studied Leaphorn. “You know, you Navajos have a lot of damn fine ideas in your culture.”
    “Yes,” Leaphorn said. “And we have a lot of trouble these days sticking to them. Begay managed it, I guess.
    But how about Delonie. Was he that forgiving?” Garcia laughed “Delonie’s no Navajo. I think he is part Pottawatomie, or maybe it’s Seminole. He wasn’t quite like Ellie and Begay, who were clean as a whistle.

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    Delonie had already accumulated himself a little rap sheet. He’d done a little time in the Oklahoma reforma-tory as a juvenile, and then got himself arrested as an adult for stealing cars out of parking lots. The cops who worked Handy’s case from the beginning told me Delonie might have been the reason it happened.” Leaphorn considered that, raised his eyebrows, provoking Garcia to explain what he meant.
    “You know how it sometimes works. A professional robbery type looking for a way to make some money asks around among the proper level of citizens for some locals who might have spotted a likely job, and so forth.
    He hears about Delonie. Checks with him. Delonie says Handy’s looks ripe for a robbery. Shewnack offers to buy in. Something like that. You know what I mean?”
    “Sure,” Leaphorn said. “I remember the double murder years ago on old Route 66 near the Laguna Reservation.
    At Budville. Bud Rice and someone else shot. Turned out a bandit type from Alabama or somewhere shopped around in Albuquerque for someone to rob, paid the locals a fee, they provided him a car, all the information, he did the job and got away.”
    “Killed himself in prison,” Garcia said.
    “But doing time for another crime,” Leaphorn said.
    “He decided to confess to the Budville murders before he died. But you’re saying the thinking was that Shewnack had contacted Delonie, offered to organize the crime for him?”
    “The thinking is Shewnack showed up in Albuquerque, hanging around in the bars where the hard guys do their socializing, let it be known he was ready for some