Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 14] (15 page)

“Which one was it? Ironhand or Baker?”

“A tall, middle-aged Indian,” Chee said. “Sounds like Ironhand.”

“And he just took newspapers? Like the radio said this morning?”

Chee was trying to fill in the form with the clipboard balanced on
his right knee. “Apparently. The victim didn’t think anything else was
missing. But then he was still pretty stunned.”

“I think you should call Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Manuelito said. “It
sounds awfully funny.”

Chee looked up at her. “Why?”

“Because, you know, running that risk just to get a newspaper.”

“I meant why call Leaphorn?”

“Well, you know, I think he’d be interested. At the roadblock he
told us we should be extra careful because he guessed it would be about
now those guys, if they were hiding in the canyons, about now they’d be
making their move. And the deputy I was working with said he thought
they’d be more likely to lie low until everybody got tired of looking
before they made a run, and the lieutenant said, maybe so, but their
radio was broken. They’d wouldn’t know what was going on. They’d be
getting desperate to know something.”

“He said that?” Chee said, sounding incredulous. “About making their
move now. How the devil could Leaphorn have guessed?” Manuelito
shrugged.

“And that’s why you think I should call him?”

Now it was Bernie’s turn to look slightly embarrassed. She
hesitated. “I like him,” she said. “And he likes you. And I think he’s
a very lonely man, and -"

The buzz of the telephone cut her off. Captain Largo again.

“What the hell are you and Manuelito doing?” Largo said. “Get her
back up here with that report.”

“She just left a minute ago,” Chee said. He clicked off, filled in
the last space, signed the form, handed it to her. Leaphorn liked him?
Nobody had ever suggested that before. He’d never even thought of it.
Of Leaphorn liking anyone, for that matter. Leaphorn was—Well, he was
just Leaphorn.

“You know, Bernie,” he said. “I think I will call the lieutenant.
I’d like to know what he’s thinking.”

Having resigned himself to more long hours spent listening to
elderly Utes recounting their tribal mythology, Joe Leaphorn was
reaching for his cap when the phone rang.

“Hello,” he said, sounding glum even to himself.

The voice was Jim Chee’s. Leaphorn brightened.

“Lieutenant, if you have a minute or two, I’d like to fill you in on
what happened at the Chevron station in Bluff yesterday. Have you heard
about that? I’d like to find out what you think about it.”

“I have time,” Leaphorn said. “But all I know is what I got on the
television news. A man shows up at the station around opening time. He
knocks out the operator and drives off in a previously stolen pickup
truck. The FBI presumes the man was one of the casino bandits. The
newscaster said a Navajo Tribal Policeman was at the station buying gas
when it happened, but the robber escaped. Is that about it?”

A moment of silence. “Well, I was the one buying the gas,” Chee
said, sounding somewhat defensive, “but I wasn’t there until it had
already happened. The perp was driving off as I drove up. But what’s
interesting is that all the man wanted was a newspaper. He took one
from the rack, and when the operator got there and found him digging
through the trash barrel, he said he was just hunting a newspaper.”

Now it was Leaphorn’s turn for a moment of silence.

“Just a newspaper,” he said. “Just that. And he hadn’t taken
anything from inside the station. Food, cigarettes, anything like that?”

“The station was still locked up. I thought maybe the guy had taken
the operator’s keys after he hit him. Got in, looted the place, and
then relocked it - silly as that sounds - but apparently not.”

“Well now,” Leaphorn said, sounding thoughtful. “He just wanted a
newspaper out of the rack.”

“Or maybe another one. From what he’d scattered around out of the
trash can, he was hunting something there, and he told the operator he
was after a newspaper. I was guessing he wanted an older edition. One
reporting earlier stuff about the manhunt.”

“Sounds reasonable. Where are you calling from?”

“My place in Shiprock. I hurt my ankle yesterday hunting the
newspaper bandit. I took a fall, and I’m homebound until I get the
swelling down. I called your place in Window Rock and got another of
those messages you leave on your answering machine. That’s a good idea.”

“Just a minute,” Leaphorn said. He put his hand over the telephone
and looked at Louisa, who was standing in the doorway, tape-recorder
case over her shoulder, purse in hand, waiting and looking interested.

“It’s Jim Chee at Shiprock,” Leaphorn said. “You know that Chevron
station robbery we were talking about. Chee said the only thing the man
wanted was newspapers. Remember what I was saying about that broken
radio -"

“That sounds strange,” Louisa said. “And look, unless you really
want to come along and listen to this mythology cross-examination, why
don’t you drive over to Shiprock and talk to Chee? I’ll ride with Mr
Becenti.”

That was exactly the way Emma would have reacted, Leaphorn thought.
And he noticed with a sort of joy that he could make such a comparison
now without feeling guilty about it.

The door of Chee’s little house trailer was standing open as
Leaphorn drove up, and he heard his ‘come on in’ shout as he closed the
door of his pickup. Chee was sitting beside the table, his left foot
propped on a pillow on his bunk. As they exchanged the required
greetings, the words of sympathy, the required disclaimer and
disclaimer response, Leaphorn noticed the table was bare except for a
copy of the Indian Country Map, unfolded to the Four Corners canyon
country.

“I see you’re ready for work,” he said, tapping the map.

“My uncle used to tell me to use my head to save my heels,” Chee
said. “Since I have to save my ankle today, I’ll have to think instead.”

Leaphorn sat. “What have you come up with?”

“Nothing but confusion,” Chee said. “I was hoping you could explain
it all to me.”

“It’s as if we have a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of the central
pieces missing,” Leaphorn said. “But driving over from Farmington I
began thinking how two of the pieces fit.”

“The broken radio producing the need to get a paper to find out what
the devil has been going on,” Chee said. “Right?”

“Right. And that can tell us something.”

Chee frowned. “Like they don’t have another radio? Or any other
access to news? Or something more than that?”

Leaphorn smiled. “I have an advantage in this situation, being able
to sit by a telephone and tap into the retired-cops circuit while
you’re out working.”

Chee leaned forward and readjusted his ice pack, engulfed in deja vu
— a sort of numb feeling of intellectual inadequacy. He’d heard this
sort of preamble from Leaphorn often enough before to know where it
led. It was the Legendary Lieutenant’s way of leading into some
disclosure without making Chee, the green kid who’d been assigned to be
his gofer, feel more stupid than necessary. “To tell the truth, all
this tells me is that these guys, without their radio, got desperate to
find out what the devil was going on. They had to find out whether or
not it was time to run.”

“Exactly,” Leaphorn said. “That’s my conclusion, too. But let me add
a little bit of information that wasn’t available to you. I think I
told you I might call Jay Kennedy to see if he could tell us what the
FBI lab learned about that radio. Jay called back yesterday. He said
his buddy back there told him the radio had been put out of commission
deliberately.”

Chee lost interest in realigning the ice pack. He stared at
Leaphorn. Leaphorn said he’d asked Kennedy to ‘tell us.'

“On purpose?” Chee said. “Why would they do that? Or, wait a minute.
Let me restate that question. Make it which one did it, and why? And
how could the Bureau determine it was done deliberately?”

“Never underestimate the Bureau’s laboratory people. They took the
radio apart to see if they could pick up any prints. The sort someone
might leave changing batteries, or whatever. They noticed that a couple
of the wire connections inside had been pried apart with something
sharp. Knife point maybe.”

Chee thought for a moment. “Fingerprints,” he said. “Did they find
any?” If they had, they would be Jorie’s. Jorie, knowing he was being
betrayed, doing a vengeful act of sabotage.

“Some partials,” Leaphorn said. “But they belonged to nobody they
had any record of.”

Chee thought about that, noticed that Leaphorn was watching him,
waiting his reaction. Whose prints would the FBI have on record?
Jorie’s of course, since they had his body. Perhaps Ironhand’s, if they
printed servicemen during the Vietnam War. Probably Baker’s. He’d been
arrested on minor stuff more than once.

“It could still be Jorie who sabotaged the radio,” Chee said. “He
could have had on gloves, used a handkerchief, been very careful with
his knife.”

Leaphorn nodded, smiling.

He’s
happy I thought it through,
Chee thought.
Maybe
Bernie was right. Maybe Leaphorn does like me.

“I’d guess the prints don’t mean much,” Leaphorn said. “They’ll
belong to some clerk at a Radio Shack who put the battery in. I was
thinking about Jorie, too. He still looks like the logical bet.”

“He certainly had a motive. We have to presume he had access to the
radio after he knew what they were planning.”

Leaphorn nodded. “If he had decided to turn them in, he wouldn’t
want them to know the cops had them identified. Wouldn’t want them to
hear anything on the radio.”

Chee nodded.

There’s a problem with that, though.”

“Yeah,” Chee said, wondering which problem Leaphorn saw. “Certainly
a lot of unanswered questions left.”

“Jorie must have thought he knew what he was talking about when he
told the police in that suicide note where to find them. At their
homes, he said, or that place up north. FBI went to get them, and they
weren’t there. Why not?” He looked at Chee to see if he would volunteer
an answer.

“They didn’t trust him,” Chee said.

Leaphorn nodded. “They wouldn’t. Not when they were double-crossing
him.” He tapped the map. “And next, why did they come up on this mesa?”

“I have two answers to that. Take your pick. One. I think they may
have had a second escape vehicle hidden away someplace not far from
where they ditched the pickup. Cowboy said they could find no trace of
it, no tracks. Nothing. But in this country they could hide the tracks,
knowing they had to, and taking their time to do it right.”

Leaphorn acknowledged this with the barest hint of a nod.

“The second idea goes back to what you learned about Ironhand. He
knew where his daddy hid during his career. How he managed his magical,
mystical escapes. So I say that hiding place is around there someplace.
The perps stocked it with food and water. And that’s where they intend
to hide until it’s safe to make a run for it. That’s why they drove the
truck over the rock—ripped out the oil pan to make it appear to the FBI
that they were forced to abandon it there. Then they hiked away to
their hidey-hole.”

Leaphorn’s nod acknowledging this was a bit less languorous.

“But they didn’t tell Jorie anything about this. It was their
secret. Which means the double cross was planned far in advance of the
crime.”

“Sure,” Chee said.

“I’m thinking of that second choice to look for them Jorie gave the
police. That’s way up toward Blanding. A long, long way from where they
abandoned the pickup.”

Chee sighed. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Cowboy had found three
sets of tracks at that damned truck.”

Leaphorn laughed. “But let’s set that aside for now and get back to
your second idea. We’ll say Baker and Ironhand had a place arranged to
hide out. Jorie had parted company with them somehow before they got
there. So Baker and Ironhand leave the truck and start walking. It
wouldn’t be a long walk because, if we can believe what Jorie said in
that note, they must have been carrying a heavy load of paper money.
Presuming they hadn’t left it somewhere else, and why would they?”

“Heavy? I don’t think of paper money as being heavy.”

“I was guessing the Ute Casino wouldn’t be using many hundred-dollar
bills. I guessed a ten-dollar average, and came up with forty-five
thousand pieces of paper.”

“Be damned,” Chee said. “That’s a new factor to be thinking about.”

“I’m remembering the old Ute lady said the Utes sometimes called the
original Ironhand Badger. She said he’d disappear from the canyon
bottom and reappear at the top. Or the other way around. Remember that?
She said our people chasing him thought he could fly.”

“Yes,” Chee said. But he was thinking about a huge problem with the
second idea. With both of them, in fact. Jorie. Given what he said in
the suicide note about where to find his partners, he must have slipped
away from them long before they abandoned the truck. The distances were
simply too great. Especially if they were humping almost a hundred
pounds of money as well as their weapons. But how could he have slipped
away? Probably possible. But then, why would he believe his partners
would be going home? Wouldn’t he know they’d expect him to betray them?

Leaphorn was pursuing his own line of speculation. “Thinking of
badgers got me to thinking of holes in the ground,” he said. “Of old
coal mines. This part of the world has far more than its share of
those. Coal almost everywhere. And then when the uranium boom started
in the forties, the geologists remembered how the coal veins were
usually mixed with uranium deposits, and they were digging away again.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “We noticed three or four old digs when we were
looking for tracks down in the Gothic Creek Canyon.”