Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] (15 page)

A
REN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE IN BED?” Leaphorn asked. He was wearing a plaid shirt and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap, but even that didn’t minimize the effect. He still looked to Chee like the Legendary Lieutenant.

“I’m just doing what the doc told me to do,” Chee said. “I’m getting used to walking so these ribs don’t hurt.” He was also getting used to looking at the image of himself in the mirror with one eye bandaged and the other one hideously black. But he wasn’t admitting that to Leaphorn. In fact, he was disgusted with himself for explaining his conduct to Leaphorn. He should have told him to bug off. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Yes, sir. I’m being the model patient so they’ll give me time off for good behavior.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s not as bad as I first heard it was,” Leaphorn said, and helped himself to a chair. “I’d heard he almost killed you.”

They dealt with all the facts of the incident then, quickly and efficiently—became two professionals talking about a crime. Chee eased himself back onto the bed. Leaphorn sat, holding his cap. His bristly short haircut was even grayer now than Chee had remembered.

“I’m not going to stay long,” Leaphorn said. “They told me you’re supposed to be resting. But I have something I wanted to tell you.”

“I’m listening,” Chee said, thinking,
You also have something you want to ask me
. But so what? That was the tried-and-true Leaphorn strategy. There was nothing underhanded about it.

Leaphorn cleared his throat. “You sure you don’t want to get some rest?”

“To hell with resting,” Chee said. “I want out of here and I think they may let me go this evening. The doc wants to change the bandages again and check everything.”

“The quicker the better,” Leaphorn said. “Hospitals are dangerous places.”

Chee cut off his laugh just as it started. Leaphorn’s wife had died in this very hospital, he remembered. A brain tumor removed. Everything went perfectly. The tumor was benign. But the staph infection that followed was lethal.

“Yes,” he said. “I want to go home.”

“I’ve done a little checking,” Leaphorn said. He made an abashed gesture. “When you’ve been in the NTP as long as I was—and out of it just a little bit—then it seems people have trouble remembering you’re just a civilian. That you’re no longer official.”

“Lieutenant,” Chee said, and laughed. “I’m afraid you’re always going to seem official to a lot of people. Including me.”

Leaphorn looked vaguely embarrassed by that. “Well, anyway, things are going about the way you’d expect. It was a slim day for news, and the papers made a pretty big thing out of it. That brings the feds hurrying right in. You’ve seen the newspapers, I guess?”

“No,” Chee said, and pointed to his left eye. “I haven’t been in very sharp focus until today. But I’ve seen the fed.”

“Well, you can’t be surprised they’re on it. Big headlines. Slayer shoots policeman at the scene of the murder. No suspect. No motive. Big mystery. Big headlines. So the Bureau moves in right away without requiring the usual prodding. They found out that Maryboy had been having some livestock stolen. They found out you’d gone out there to check on rustling. So they’re working that angle some…” Leaphorn paused, gave Chee a wry grin. “You know what I mean?”

Chee laughed. “Unless they’ve reformed since day before yesterday it means they’re having my friends in the NTP at Shiprock working on it, and the Arizona Highway Patrol, and the New Mexico State Police, and the San Juan and McKinley County sheriffs deputies.”

Leaphorn didn’t object to that analysis. “And then they think maybe there might be a drug angle, or a gang angle. All those good things,” he added.

“No other theories?”

“Not from what I’m hearing.”

“You’re telling me something right now,” Chee said, unable to suppress a grin, even though it hurt. “I think you’re telling me that neither the feds nor anyone else has shown an interest in trying to tie an eleven-year-old run away-husband case into this felony homicide. Am I right?”

Leaphorn was never very much a man for laughing, but his amusement showed. “That is correct,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to visualize that,” Chee said. “You’ve known Captain Largo longer than have. But can you visualize him trying to explain to some special agent that I had actually gone out to interview Maryboy to see if he could identify who had climbed Ship Rock eleven years ago, because we were still working on a 1985 missing person case? Can you imagine Largo doing it? Trying to get the guy’s attention, especially when Largo doesn’t understand it himself.

The amusement had left Leaphorn’s face.

“I guessed that’s why you were out there,” he said. “What’d you find out?”

Chee couldn’t pass up this opportunity to needle the Legendary Lieutenant. Besides Leaphorn was working for McDermott. So Chee said, “Nothing. Maryboy was dead when I got there.”

“No. No.” Leaphorn let his impatience show. “I meant what had you learned that caused you to go out there? In the night?”

The moment had come:

“I learned that on the morning of September 18, 1985, a dark green, square, ugly recreational vehicle with a ski rack on its roof was driven to the usual climbers’ launch site on Maryboy’s grazing lease. Three men got out and climbed Ship Rock. Maryboy had given them trespass permission. Now, to bring things up to date, I learned yesterday that John McDermott hands this same Hosteen Maryboy one hundred dollars for trespass rights for another climb. I presume that George Shaw and others intend to climb the mountain, probably just as quickly as they can get a party organized. So, I went out to learn if Hosteen Maryboy remembered who had paid him for climbing trespass rights back in 1985.”

Chee recited this slowly, watching Leaphorn’s face. It became absolutely still. Breathing stopped. The green vehicle was instantly translated into Breedlove’s status truck, the date into a week before Hal had begun his vanishing act, and two days before his all-important thirtieth birthday. All that, and all the complex implications suggested, had been processed by the time Chee finished his speech. Leaphorn’s first question, Chee knew, would be how he had learned this. Whether the source of this information was reliable. Well, let him ask it. Chee was ready.

Leaphorn sighed.

“I wonder how many people knew that George Shaw was looking for a team to climb that mountain with him,” Leaphorn said.

Chee looked at the ceiling, clicked his tongue against his teeth, and said, “I have no idea.” Why did he continue trying to guess how the Legendary Lieutenant’s mind worked? It was miles and miles beyond him.

Leaphorn abruptly clapped his hands together.

“Now you’ve given us the link that can fit the pattern together,” Leaphorn said, with rare exuberance. “Finally something to work with. I spent most of my time for months trying to think this case through and I didn’t come up with this. Emma was still healthy then, and she thought about it, too. And I’ve spent a lot of thought on it since then, even though we officially gave up. And in—how many days was it?—less than ten, you come up with the link.”

Chee found himself baffled. But Leaphorn was beaming at him, full of pride. That made it both better and worse.

“But we still don’t know who killed Hosteen Maryboy,” Chee said, thinking at least he didn’t know.

“But now we have something to work on,” Leaphorn said. “Another part of the pattern takes shape.”

Chee said, “Umm,” and tried to look thoughtful instead of confused.

“Breedlove’s skeleton is found on Ship Rock,” Leaphorn said, holding up a blunt trigger finger. “Amos Nez is promptly shot.” Leaphorn added a second finger. “Now, shortly thereafter, just as arrangements are being made for another climb of Ship Rock, one of the last people to see Breedlove is shot.” He added a third finger.

“Yes,” Chee said. “If we have all the pertinent facts it makes for a short list of suspects.”

“I can add a little light to that,” Leaphorn said. “Actually, it’s what I came in to tell you. Eldon Demott told me some interesting things about Hal. The key one was that he’d quarreled with his father, and his family. He had decided to cut the family corporation out of the mining lease as soon as he inherited the ranch.”

“Did the family know that?”

“Demott presumed they did. So do I. He probably told them himself. Demott understood Hal had tried to get money out of his father, and got turned down, and came home defiant. But even if he tried to keep it secret, the money people seemed to have known about it. Hal was in debt. Borrowing money. And if the money people knew, I’m sure the word got back to the Breedlove Corporation.”

“Ah,” Chee said. “So we add George Shaw to the list of people who would be happy if Hal Breedlove died before he celebrated the pertinent birthday.”

“Or even happier to prove that Hal Breedlove was murdered by his wife, which would mean she couldn’t inherit. I would guess that would put the ranch back into probate. And the Breedlove family would be the heir.”

They sat for a while, thinking about it.

“If you want a little bit more confusion, I turned up a possible boyfriend for Elisa,” Leaphorn said. “It turns out their climbing team was once a foursome.” He explained to Chee what Mrs. Rivera had told him of Tommy Castro and what Demott had added to it.

“Another rock climber,” Chee said. “You think he killed Hal to gain access to the widow? Or the widow and Castro conspired to get Hal out of the way?”

“If so, they didn’t do much about it. As far as we know, that is.”

“How about Shaw as the man who left Breedlove dying on the ledge? Or maybe gave him a shove?”

Leaphorn shrugged. “I think I like one of the Demotts a little better.”

“How about the shootings?”

“About the same,” Leaphorn said.

They thought about it some more, and Chee felt himself being engulfed with nostalgia. Remembering the days he’d worked for Leaphorn, sat across the desk in the lieutenant’s cramped second-floor office in Window Rock trying to put the pieces of something or other together in order to understand a crime. Stressful as it had been, demanding as Leaphorn tended to be, it had been a joyful time. And damn little paperwork.

“Do you still have your map?” Chee asked.

If Leaphorn heard the question he didn’t show it. He said, “The problem here is time.”

Lost again, Chee said, “Time?”

“Think how different things would be if Hal Breedlove’s thirtieth birthday had been a week after he disappeared, instead of a week before,” Leaphorn said.

“Yeah,” Chee said. “Wouldn’t that have simplified things?”

“Then the presumption that went with his disappearance would have been foul play. A homicide to prevent the inheritance.”

“Right,” Chee said.

Leaphorn rose, recovered his Cubs cap from Chee’s table.

“Do you think you can get Largo to make Ship Rock off limits to climbers for a few days?”

“Do I tell him why?” Chee asked.

“Tell him that mountain climbers have this tradition of leaving a record behind when they reach a difficult peak. Ship Rock is one of those. On top of it, there’s a metal box—one of those canisters the army uses to hold belted machine gun ammunition. It’s waterproof, of course, and there’s a book in it that climbers sign. They jot down the time and the date and any note they’d like to leave to those who come later.”

“Shaw told you that?”

“No. I’ve been asking around. But Shaw would certainly know it.”

“You want to keep Shaw from going up and getting it,” Chee said. “Didn’t you tell me you were working for him?”

“He retained me to find out everything I could about what happened to Hal Breedlove,” Leaphorn said. “How can I learn anything I can depend on from that book if Mr. Shaw gets it first?”

“Oh,” Chee said.

“I want to know who was in that party of three who made the climb before Hal disappeared. Was one of them Hal, or Shaw, or Demott, or maybe even Castro? Three men, Hosteen Sam said. But how could he be sure of gender through a spotting scope miles away? Climbers wear helmets and they don’t wear skirts. Was one of the three Mrs. Breedlove? If Hal was one of them and he got to the top, his name will be in the book. If it isn’t, that might help explain why he went back after he vanished from Canyon de Chelly: to try again. If he got to the top that time, his name and the date will be there. I want to know when he made the climb that killed him.”

“It wasn’t in the first forty-three days after he disappeared,” Chee said.

“What?” Leaphorn said, startled. “How do you know that?”

Chee described Hosteen Sam’s ledger, his habit of rolling his wheelchair to the window each day after his dawn prayers and looking at the mountain. He described Sam’s meticulous entry system. “But there was no mention of a climbing party from September eighteenth, when he watched the three climb it and then complained to Maryboy about it, through the first week of November. So if Hal climbed it in that period he had to somehow sneak in without old Sam seeing him. I doubt if that’s possible, even if he knew Sam would be watching—which he wouldn’t—or had some reason to be sneaky. I’m told that that’s the starting point for the only way up.”

“I think we need to keep that ledger somewhere safe,” Leaphorn said. “It seems to be telling us that Breedlove was alive a lot longer than I’d been thinking.”

“I’ll call Largo and get him to stall off climbing for a while,” Chee said. “And I’ll call my office. Manuelito knows Lucy Sam. She can go out and take custody of that ledger for a little while.”

“You take care of yourself,” Leaphorn said, and headed for the door.

“Wait a second. If we get the climbing stopped, how are you going to get someone up there to look at the register?”

“I’m going to rent a helicopter,” Leaphorn said. “I know a lawyer in Gallup. A rock climber who’s been up Ship Rock himself. I think he’d be willing to go up with me and the pilot, and we put him down on the top, and he takes a look.”

“And brings down the book.”

“I didn’t want to do that. I’m a civilian now. I don’t want to tamper with evidence. We’ll take along a camera.”

“And make some photocopies?”