Book review: 'The Shape Shifter' by Tony Hillerman

Hillerman’s novels feature the Navajo Tribal Police (A real police force, HQ in Shiprock, New Mexico) and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and his sidekick Sgt. Jim Chee. As this story opens, Leaphorn is newly retired, has just come up to headquarters to pick up his mail.

There is a letter from Mel Bork, a guy he knew when they were both rookie cops years ago, investigating suspected arson in a tourist shop where some very rare Indian artifacts had been burned up. Mel encloses a magazine photo “Hey, Joe, ain’t this that rug you kept telling me about, one of a kind, and destroyed in the fire, and we agreed that maybe the fire really was a crime, not just a careless drunk and some talk about witchcraft? If you’re interested, give me a call.”

Bored with retirement, Joe thought why not? He phoned the number in the letter. Mrs. Bork answered, and when she learned Leaphorn was an old police friend, she said he was just who she needed to talk to. Mel had gone two days ago to see a man who owned an old valuable Indian rug, and he hadn’t returned. The local sheriff’s office yesterday had said not to worry yet, but then she had received a threatening phone message. She played it back to Leaphorn. A man’s deep voice: “Mr. Bork, you need to get back to minding your own business. Keep poking at old bones and they’ll jump out and bite you.” A chuckle. “You’ll be just a set of new bones.”

“Mrs. Bork, keep that tape in a safe place. Call Sgt. Garcia at the sheriff’s office down there and have him listen to the tape. Did Mel mention any one he was going to see?”

“I think maybe a Mr. Tarkington; he has an art gallery here in Flagstaff.”

When Tarkington finds out the Navajo police are investigating ‘The mystical rug’ said to be destroyed by fire years ago, he tells Leaphorn, “I think we need to talk about this, but not over the phone. Where are you?”

“In Window Rock.”

“How about coming to the gallery tomorrow?”

Flagstaff is 200 miles from Window Rock, but that’s not far in the southwest. Leaphorn went.

The picture of a very expensive home with a very rare artifact hanging on the wall is a house not far from Flagstaff, Tarkington says. Owned by a man named Jason Delos. The man came up from California for his wife’s health. Nobody has ever seen her. He has an Asian man as a sort of butler and cook. Gossip has him to be ex-CIA from the Vietnam war, whether retired or fired depends on who you listen to. The rug hanging on the wall? Impossible to duplicate it – too many variables – dyes, weaving styles, age. Some say it depicts the Navajos in exile 150 years ago, a tale of sorrows, hatreds, curses, evil spirits of the worst kind, ‘shape shifters’ who could change from human form to animal in an instant – not at all what Navajos usually commemorate. Some say it was destroyed in that fire that Leaphorn investigated years ago.

Leaphorn meets Sgt. Garcia in a coffee shop near the sheriff’s office in Flagstaff. “I’ve worked with Bork a few times. Private investigator; seems like a nice guy. This tape his wife had me listen to has me worried. What’s he into? You talk to this man Delos yet?

Tell him you’re investigating a crime? What crime? We don’t have one yet, do we?”

“I’ll see him tomorrow. Just wondering about that one-of-a-kind rug that was said to be burned up all those years ago.” They decide to go up to the old crime scene, and they find one of the original robber gang digging there, Tomas Delonie, just out of his 25-year prison sentence. He admits he is looking for any part of Shewnack’s loot that might be buried there.

Leaphorn remembers now how he had stopped at old Grandma Peshlakai’s, who had just been robbed of two bucketfuls of pinyon sap. He had explained to her that he had to leave on a call to Totter’s Trading Post where a fire had just killed an important murder suspect.

“He’s dead?” she had asked. Leaphorn agreed.

“He can’t run then. This man I want you to catch is running away with my buckets of pinyon sap.” She still scowls at him every time they meet, even though he had recovered her empty buckets from the site of the fire.

“You find anything yet?” Garcia now asks Delonie.

“Not yet.”

“You think you will?”

“I wanted to just see that the bastard is really dead. Get closure. The Navajos, like Mr. Leaphorn here, have that curing ceremony to help them forgive and forget. My tribe has never had such a ceremony. But maybe just seeing where the bastard burned up will work for me. ”

Back in Flagstaff next morning, Leaphorn places a call to Mr. Delos. A polite voice asks him to wait a moment. “Mr. Leaphorn, Mr. Delos say he can see you. He ask you to be here at eleven.”

A small man waits for him. In his early forties, he had a smooth, flawless complexion. A Hopi or Zuni, he thought at first, then changed it to probably Vietnamese or Lao. “I am Tommy Vang,” he said, smiling. “He say bring you to the office.”

Mr. Delos was cordial but non-committal. Leaphorn came away with little more than he knew before, except for a neatly packaged lunch Tommy Vang had packed for his trip home.

Back home, the 10 o’clock news caught his attention, about a fatal car accident. State police would not identify the driver until next-of-kin had been notified; bystanders said it was a prominent Flagstaff businessman . . . .

I don’t want to spoil the end of this story for you readers. Author Hillerman is justly famous as an interpreter of Navajo culture and those of other minority groups. His many awards include former president of the Mystery Writers of America, and the Navajo Tribe’s Special Friend Award. This is one of the last books he wrote before his death in 2008 at age 83.