Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 13] (14 page)

"DID YOU NOTICE HIS FACE when he said that?" Leaphorn asked.
"Said 'Mr. Nez is dead. Charley is still alive.' The damn prairie dog is
still alive. Like it was the best news possible."

"I don't think I've ever seen you really angry before," Louisa
said.

"I try not to let things get to me," Leaphorn said. You really
can't if you're a cop. But that was a little too damn coldhearted for me."

"I've seen a few of the real superbrains act like that before,"
she said. "He was making a point, of course. The dog's immune system had
modified to deal with the new bacteria forms, and nothing mattered except the
research. No such luck with Nez. So now he thinks he'll have a whole prairie
dog colony full of test subjects. So it's Nez died but the rodent lived. Hip,
hip, hooray. And aren't you driving too fast for this road?"

Leaphorn slowed a little, enough so the following breeze engulfed them in
dust but not enough to stop the jolting the car was taking. "Weren't you
going to have dinner with Mr. Peshlakai and set up interviews with some
students? I don't want you to miss that and we're running late."

"Mr. Peshlakai and I always operate on Navajo time," she said.
"No such thing as late. We meet when I get there and he gets there. What's
got you in such a rush?"

"I'm going on back down to Flag," Leaphorn said. "I want to
go to the hospital and talk to the people there and try to find out what
Pollard learned that made her so angry."

"You mean that 'Somebody is lying' note in her journal?"

"Yeah. That seemed to explain why she was going back up to Yells Back
Butte. To find out for herself."

"Lying about what?" Louisa said, mostly to herself.

"I'd guess she meant about where Nez picked up his lethal flea. That
was her job, and from what I've heard, she took it very seriously." He
shook his head. "But who knows? I don't. This is getting hard to calculate."

Louisa nodded.

"Find out for herself?" Leaphorn repeated. "And how does she
do that? We know she drove up to Yells Back bright and early either to talk to
Woody about where he had Nez working on the day the flea got onto him. Or maybe
to collect some rodents or fleas from around there for herself. But she didn't
go talk to Woody. Or so he tells us. And if she collected fleas she sure must
have done it fast, because she drove right out again."

"Any idea now where she drove?"

"Well, she didn't go back to her motel room to pack up for a trip. Her
stuff was still there. And none of the people there had seen her."

"Which doesn't sound good."

"We've got to find that Jeep," Leaphorn said. "And meanwhile
I'll try to find out who she talked to at the hospital. It could be
helpful."

They jolted off the gravel onto Navajo Route 3 and skirted past Moenkopi to
U.S. Highway 160 and Tuba City.

"Where do I drop you?"

"At the filling station right here," Louisa said, "but just
long enough to use the telephone. I'm going to call Peshlakai and cancel. Tell
him I'll get with him later." Leaphorn stared at her. "This is
getting too interesting," she said. "I don't want to quit now."

It was after nine when they got back to Flag. They stopped for a fast snack
at Bob's Burgers and decided to check at the hospital on the chance a doctor
who knew something about the Nez case might be working the night shift. The
doctor proved to be a young woman who had completed intern training at Toledo
in March and was doing her residency duties at the Flagstaff hospital in a deal
with the Indian Health Service—paying off her federal medical school loan.

"I don't think I ever saw Mr. Nez," she said. "Dr. Howe
probably handled him in the Intensive Care Unit. Or maybe the nurse on that
floor would know something helpful. Tonight it would be Shirley Ahkeah."

Shirley Ahkeah remembered Mr. Nez very well. She also remember Dr. Woody.
Even better, she remembered Catherine Pollard.

"Poor Mr. Nez," she said. "Except for Dr. Howe, it didn't
seem like the others cared about him after he was dead."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," Leaphorn said.

"Forget it," she said. "It wasn't fair to say it. After all,
it was Dr. Woody who checked him in. And Miss Pollard was just doing her job—trying
to find out where he picked up the infected flea. Did she ever find out?"

"We don't know," Leaphorn said. "The morning after she left
here she left a note for her boss. It just said that she was driving up to
where Dr. Woody had his mobile laboratory and checking for plague carriers
around there. Dr. Woody tells us she never arrived at his lab. She didn't go
back to her office or to the motel where she was staying. Nobody has seen her
since."

Shirley's face registered a mixture of shock and surprise. "You
mean—has something happened to her?"

"We don't know," Leaphorn said. "Her office reported her
disappearance to the police. And the vehicle she was driving is missing,
too."

"You think I was the last one to talk to her? Nobody has seen her since
she left here?"

"We don't know. No one that we can locate. Did she say anything to you
about where she was going? Anything that would give us a hint of what was going
on with her?"

Shirley shook her head. "Nothing that you don't already know. All she
talked about here was Mr. Nez. She wanted to know how he'd been infected. Where
and when."

"Did you tell her?"

"Dr. Delano told her we didn't know for sure. That Nez had a high fever
and fully developed plague symptoms—the black splotches under the skin where
the capillaries have failed, and the swollen glands—he already had all that
when we got him up here in Intensive Care, and they brought him right up. She
asked Delano a lot of questions, and he told her that Dr. Woody had said that
Nez had been bitten by the flea the evening before he brought him in. And she
said that wasn't what Dr. Woody had told her, and Delano—"

"Wait a second," Louisa said. "She had already talked to
Woody about Nez?"

Shirley chuckled. "Apparently. She said something about a lying
sonofabitch. And Delano, he's sort of touchy and he seemed to think that Miss
Pollard was accusing him of lying. So then she said something to make it clear
she had meant Woody. And Delano said he wasn't certifying what Woody had told
him, because he didn't think it was true either. He said Nez couldn't possibly
have developed a fever that high and the other plague symptoms so
quickly."

Shirley shrugged. End of explanation.

Leaphorn frowned, digesting this. He said: "Do you think Dr. Delano
could have misunderstood him? About when Nez was infected?"

"I don't see how," Shirley said. She pointed. "They were
standing right there and I heard it all myself. Delano had told Woody that Nez
had died sometime after midnight. And Woody said he wanted to know just exactly
when Nez died. Exactly. He said the flea had bitten Nez on the inside of his
thigh the evening before he brought him in. Woody was very emphatic about the
time. He told Delano he'd left a list of symptoms and so forth that he wanted
timed and charted as the disease developed. He wanted an autopsy scheduled and
he wanted to be there when it was done."

"Was it done?"

"So I hear," Shirley said. "Nurses aren't included in the
circuit of information at that level, but the word gets around."

Louisa chuckled at that. "Hospitals and universities. About the same
story."

"What did you hear?" Leaphorn asked.

"Mostly that Woody had more or less tried to take over the procedure,
and the pathologist was sore as hell Otherwise, I guess it was just a finding of
another death from bubonic plague. And Woody had a lot of tissue and some of
the organs preserved."

Neither Leaphorn nor Louisa had much to say on their way back to his truck.
Settled in their seats, Louisa said they were probably lucky Delano hadn't been
there. "He might have known a little more, but he probably wouldn't have
told us much. Professional dignity involved, you know."

"Yeah," Leaphorn said, and started the engine.

"You're not very talkative," Louisa said. "Did that answer
any questions for you?"

"Well, now we know for sure who Miss Pollard thought had been lying to
her," Leaphorn said. "And of course that raises the next
question."

"Which is why would Woody lie to her? And for that matter, he must have
lied to us, too."

"Exactly," Leaphorn said.

"We should go up there again and confront him with it. See what he
says."

"Not yet," Leaphorn said. "I think he'd just insist he wasn't
lying. He'd come up with some sort of explanation. Or he'd tell me to bug off.
Quit wasting his time."

"I guess he could, couldn't he."

"We're just two nosy civilians," Leaphorn said, wondering if that
sounded as sad as it felt.

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to call Chee in the morning. See if anything new has turned
up on Pollard or her Jeep. And then I'll return Mrs. Vanders's call and tell
her what little ^e know. And then I want to go see Krause."

"And see if he knows more than he's told you?"

"I didn't know what questions to ask," Leaphorn said. "And
I'd like to get a look at that note Pollard left for him."

Louisa's expression asked him why.

Leaphorn laughed. "Because I spent too many years being a cop, and I
can't get over it. I ask him to see the note, so what happens? Possibility A.
He finds a reason not to show it to me. That makes me wonder why not."

"Oh," Louisa said. "You think he might, ah, be
involved?"

"I don't think that now, but I might if he refused to let me see the
note. But on to possibility B. He shows me the note. The handwriting obviously
doesn't match her script in the journal. That raises all sorts of
possibilities. Or C. He hands me the note, and it has information on it that he
didn't think was important enough to mention. Possibility C is the best bet.
Even that's unlikely, but it doesn't cost anything to try."

"Are you going to invite me along again?"

"I'm counting on it, Louisa. Instead of the job just being a grind, you
make it fun."

She sighed. "I can't go tomorrow. I'm chairing a committee meeting, and
it's my project and my committee."

"I'll miss you," Leaphorn said. And he knew he would.

CHEE HAD STARED AT the telephone with distaste, dreading this call. Then he
picked it up, took a deep breath and dialed Janet Pete's office at the federal
building in Phoenix. Ms. Pete was not in. Did he want her voice mail? He didn't.
Where could he reach her? Was this matter urgent?

"Yes," Chee said. Janet might not agree, but it was urgent for
him. He couldn't focus on anything else until the genie that Cowboy's
"Pollard did it" theory had released was securely back in the bottle.
Chee's "yes" earned him a number in Flagstaff, which proved to be the
telephone on a desk in a multiple-users' office assigned to public defenders in
the courthouse at Flagstaff.

The very familiar voice of many happy memories said: "Hello, Janet
Pete."

"Jim Chee," he said. "Do you have some time to talk, or
should I call you back?"

Brief silence. "I have time." The voice was even softer now, or
was it his imagination? "Is this about business?"

"Alas, it's business," Chee said. "I've heard Cowboy Dashee's
theory of what happened to Kinsman and we've been checking on it. I need to
talk to your client. Is he still being held there at Flag? And would you be
willing to get me in to talk to him?"

"Yes, on the first one," Janet said. "He's still there
because I couldn't get bail for him. Mickey opposed it and I think that's
stupid. Where could Jano hide?"

"It is stupid," Chee agreed. "But Mickey wants to go for the
death penalty, I guess. If he didn't fight bond, even for a Hopi who sure as
hell isn't going to run, then you could use it to prove even the U.S. attorney
didn't really believe Jano is dangerous."

Even as he was finishing the sentence, Chee was wondering why he always
seemed to begin conversations with Janet like this—as if he were trying to
start a fight. The silence at the other end of the line suggested she was
having the same thought.

"What do you want to talk to Mr. Jano about?"

"I understand he saw the Jeep Ms. Pollard was driving."

"He saw a Jeep. Have you picked her up yet?" More adversarial than
"Have you found her?" Chee closed his eyes, remembering how it had
been once. "We haven't located her," he said. "It may not be
easy," Janet said. "She's had a long time to hide, and I understand
she has plenty of money to make that easy."

"We didn't make the connection until—" He stopped. He wasn't going
to apologize. None was needed. Janet had worked as a defense attorney long
enough to know how the police operated. How they couldn't possibly investigate
every time someone drove off without telling anyone where they were going. Why
explain what she already knew?

"Look, Jim," she said. "I'm the man's defense attorney.
Unless you can let me see how he—how justice would benefit by letting you
cross-examine him, then I can't do it. Tell me what good it would do him."

Chee sighed. "We found the Jeep," he said. "The
passenger-side seat was smeared with dried blood. There's evidence it was
abandoned within an hour or so after Jano—after Kinsman was hit on the
head."

Silence. Then Janet said; "Blood. Whose was it? But you haven't had
time for any lab work yet, I guess. Is •Jano a suspect in this, too?"

"I don't see how he could be. I know exactly where he was when the Jeep
was being abandoned."

"Where was it?"

"About twenty miles southwest. Down an arroyo."

"You think Jano might have seen something, or heard something, that
would help you find Catherine Pollard?"

"I think he might have. Slim chance, but we don't have anything else to
go on. Not now, anyway. Maybe we will when the crime scene crew and the lab
people finish with the Jeep."

"Okay then," Janet said. "You know the rules. I'm there, and
if I cut off the questions, that ends it. You want to do it today?"

"Fair enough," Chee said. "And the sooner the better. I'll
leave Tuba City as soon as I hang up."

"I'll meet you at the jail," she said. "And, Jim, let's try
not to make each other mad all the time." She didn't wait for a response.

Janet was waiting in the interrogation room—a small dingy space with two
barred windows looking out at nothing. She was sitting across a battered wooden
table from Robert Jano. She talked quietly. Jano listened intently. Glanced up
as Chee appeared in the doorway. Examined Chee with mild, polite curiosity.
Chee nodded to him, suddenly aware that when he had caught Jano with his hands
still red with Kinsman's blood he hadn't—in his shock and rage—really studied
the man. He studied him now. This handsome, polite young killer whom Chee was
trying to give a place in history. The first man strapped into a gas chamber
under the new federal reservation death sentence law.

He nodded to Janet, said: "Thanks."

"You two have met," Janet said, with no sign that she appreciated
the irony of that. They nodded. Jano smiled, then seemed embarrassed that he
had. "Have a seat," Janet said, "and I'll go over the rules. Mr.
Chee here will ask a question. And, Robert, you won't answer it until I say
it's okay. All right?"

Jano nodded. Chee looked at Janet, who returned the look with no trace of
warmth. She'd learned a lot, he thought, since he'd first met her in the
interrogation room at the San Juan County Jail in Aztec. Many happy times ago.
"Okay," Chee said. He looked at Jano. "That morning I arrested
you, did you see a young woman anywhere around there?"

"I saw—" he began, but Janet interrupted.

"Just a moment," she said, and took a tape recorder from her
purse, put it on the table, set up a microphone and switched it on.
"Okay," she said.

"I saw a black Jeep," Jano said. "I didn't see who was
driving it."

"When did you see it, and where were you?" Jano looked at Janet.
She nodded. "I had climbed the butte and was walking along the rim to
where I have a blind for catching eagles. I looked down and saw a black Jeep
parked on that rise near the abandoned hogan."

"No one was in it?"

Jano glanced at Janet. She nodded.

"No."

"Did you see Officer Kinsman's car driving in?"

Jano glanced at Janet. "What's the purpose of that question?"

"I want to find out if the Jeep was still there when Kinsman
arrived." Janet thought about it. "Okay."

"I saw him coming in, yes. And the Jeep was still there."

Chee looked at Janet. "So," he said, "if Pollard was the Jeep
driver, she was in the vicinity when Kinsman was killed."

"Injured," Janet said. "But yes, she was."

"I intend to ask your client to just re-create what he saw and heard
and did that morning," Chee said.

She thought. "Go ahead. We'll see."

Jano said he arrived about dawn, parked his pickup, unloaded his eagle cage
with the rabbit in it that he'd brought along as bait and climbed the saddle to
the rim of the butte. He heard an engine sound, watched and saw the Jeep
arriving, but he couldn't see who got out of it because of where it had been
parked. He had settled himself into the blind and put the rabbit, secured with
a cord on the brush, on top of it. Then he had waited about an hour. The eagle
came circling over, in its hunting pattern. It saw the rabbit, dived, and
caught it. He had caught the eagle by one leg and its tail. It had slashed his
forearm with its other talon. "Then I turned the eagle loose and—"

"Just a second," Chee said. "You had the eagle in the cage
when I arrested you. The cage was beside the rocks, just a few feet away.
Remember?"

"That was the second eagle," Jano said. "You're saying you
caught an eagle, released it and then caught a second one?"

"Yes," Jano said. "Will you tell me why you released the
first one?"

Jano looked at Janet.

"No, he won't," she said.

"He'll be asked at the trial," Chee said.

"If it goes to trial, he will say his reason involves religious beliefs
that he is not free to discuss outside his kiva. He may say that two of its
tail feathers were pulled out in the struggle, eliminating its ritual use. And
then, if I have to do it, I will call in an authority on the Hopi religion who
will also explain why a eagle thus stained by bloody violence could not be used
in the role assigned to it in this religious ceremonial."

"Okay," Chee said. "Please continue, Mr. Jano. What happened
next?"

"I took the rabbit and walked maybe two miles down the rim of the butte
to where another eagle has its hunting ground, got into the blind there and
waited. Then the eagle you saw came for the rabbit and I caught it."

Jano stopped, looked at Chee as if waiting for an argument and then went on.

"This time I was more careful." He smiled and displayed his
forearm. "No injury this time."

Jano said he had seen the Navajo Tribal Police car driving up the trail
while he was carrying the eagle down the saddle toward his truck. He said he'd
hidden behind an outcrop of rock for a while, hoping the policeman would leave,
and then had crept down the rest of the way, thinking he had not been seen.

"Then I heard a loud voice. I think it was the policeman. I heard him
several times. And then—" Chee held up his hand. "Hold it there. Did
you hear a response from the person he was talking to?"

"I just heard that one voice," Kinsman said.

"A man's voice?"

"Yes. It sounded like he was giving orders to someone."

"Orders? What do you mean?"

"Yelling. Like he was arresting someone. You know. Ordering them
around."

"Could you tell where the voices were coming from?"

"Just one voice," Jano said. "From about over where I found
Mr. Kinsman."

"I want you to skip back a little," Chee said. "When you were
climbing down the saddle, was the Jeep still parked where you first saw it
parked?"

Jano nodded, then looked at the microphone and said: "Yes, the Jeep was
still there."

"Okay. Then what did you do when you heard the voice?"

"I hid behind a juniper for a while, just listening. I could hear what
sounded like walking. You know, boots on rocky ground and sort of coming in my
direction. Then I heard a voice saying something. And then I heard a sort of a
thumping sound."

Jano paused, looking at Chee. "I think it might have been Mr. Kinsman
being hit on the head with something. And then there was a clatter."

Jano paused again, pursed his lips, seemed to be remembering the moment.

"Then what?" Chee asked. "I just waited there behind the
juniper. And after it was silent awhile, I went to look. And there was Mr.
Kinsman on the ground, with the blood running out of his head." He
shrugged. "Then you walked up and pointed your gun at me."

"Did you recognize Kinsman?"

Janet Pete said: "Hold it. Hold it." She frowned at Chee.
"What are you trying to do, Jim? Establish malice?"

"The D.A. will establish that Kinsman had arrested Mr. Jano
before," Chee said. "I wasn't trying anything tricky."

"Maybe not," she said. "But this looks like a good place to
cut this off."

"Just one more question," Chee said. "Did you see anyone else
when you were there? Anyone at all? Or anything? Going in, or coming out, or
anything?"

"I saw a bunch of goats over on the other side of the saddle,"
Jano said. "Lot of trees over there. I couldn't tell for sure. But maybe
there was somebody with them."

"Okay," Janet said. "Mr. Jano and I have some things to talk
about. Good-bye, Jim."

Chee stood, took a step toward the door, turned back. "Just one more
thing," he said. "I found a blind at the rim of Yells Back where you
may have caught an eagle." He described the location and the blind.
"Is that right?"

Jano looked at Janet, who looked at Chee. She nodded.

"Yes," Jano said.

"The first eagle, or the second one?"

"The second one."

"Where did you catch the first eagle?"

Jano didn't glance at Janet this time for permission to answer. He sat, eyes
on Chee, looking thoughtful.

He won't tell me, Chee thought, because there was only one eagle, or he
won't tell me because he isn't willing to reveal the location of another of his
kiva's hidden hunting blinds.

Janet cleared her throat, rose. "I'm going to cut this off," she
said. "I think—"

Jano held up a hand. "Stand there on the rim at the top of the saddle.
Look directly at Humphrey's Peak in the San Franciscos. Walk straight toward
it. About two miles you come to the rim again. It's a place there where a slab
tilted down and left a gap."

"Thank you," Chee said.

Jano smiled at him. "I think you know eagles," he said.