Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] (16 page)

“Exactly.”

“That’s going to cost a lot of money, isn’t it?”

“The Breedlove Corporation is paying for it,” Leaphorn said. “I’ve got their twenty thousand dollars in the bank.”

T
HE KOAT-TV WEATHER MAP the previous night had shown a massive curve of bitterly cold air bulging down the Rocky Mountains out of Canada, sliding southward. The morning news reported snow across Idaho and northern Utah, with livestock warnings out. The weather lady called it a “blue norther” and told the Four Corners to brace for it tomorrow. But at the moment it was a beautiful morning for a helicopter ride, if you enjoyed such things, which Leaphorn didn’t.

The last time he’d ridden in one of these ugly beasts he was being rushed to a hospital to have a variety of injuries treated. It was better to go when one was healthy, he thought, but not much.

However, Bob Rosebrough seemed to be enjoying it, which was good because Rosebrough had volunteered to climb down the copter’s ladder to the tip of Ship Rock, photograph the documents in the box there, and climb back up.

“No problem, Joe,” he’d said. “Climbing down a cliff can be harder than climbing up it, but ladders are different. And I sort of like the idea of being the first guy to climb down onto the top of Ship Rock.” Liking the idea meant he wouldn’t accept any payment for taking the day off from his Gallup law practice. That appealed to Leaphorn. The copter rental was taking eight hundred dollars out of the Breedlove Corporation’s twenty thousand retainer, and Leaphorn was beginning to have some ethical qualms about how he was using that fee.

The view now was spectacular. They were flying south from the Farmington Airport and if Leaphorn had cared to look straight down, which he didn’t, he would have been staring into row after row of dragon’s teeth that erosion had formed on the east side of the uplift known as the Hogback. The rising sun outlined the teeth with shadows, making them look like a grotesquely oversized tank trap—even less hospitable than they appeared from the ground. The slanting light was also creating a silver mirror of the surface of Morgan Lake to the north and converting the long plume of steam from the stacks of the Four Corners Power Plant into a great white feather. The scale of it made even Leaphorn, a desert rat raised in the vastness of the Four Corners, conscious of its immensity.

The pilot was pointing down.

“How about having to land in those shark’s teeth?” he asked. “Or worse, parachuting down into it. Just think about that. It makes your crotch hurt.”

Leaphorn preferred to think of something else, which in its way was equally unpleasant. He thought about the oddity of murder in general, and of this murder in particular. Hal Breedlove disappears. Ten quiet years follow. Then, rapidly, in a matter of days, an unidentified skeleton is found on the mountain, apparently a man who has fallen to his death in a climbing accident. Then Amos Nez is shot. Next the bones are identified as the remains of Hal Breedlove. Then Hosteen Maryboy is murdered. Cause and effect, cause and effect. The pattern was there if he could find the missing part—the part that would bring it into focus. At the center of it, he was certain, was the great dark volcanic monolith that was now looming ahead of them like the ruins of a Gothic cathedral built for giants. On top of it a metal box was cached. In the box would be another piece to fit into the puzzle of Hal Breedlove.

“The spire on the left is it,” Rosebrough said, his voice sounding metallic through the earphones they were wearing. “They look about the same height from this vantage, but the one on the left is the one you have to stand on top of if you want to say you’ve climbed Ship Rock.”

“I’m going to circle around it a little first,” the pilot said. “I want to get a feeling for wind, updrafts, downdrafts, that sort of thing. Air currents can be tricky around something like this. Even on a calm, cool morning.”

They circled. Leaphorn had been warned about what looking down while a copter is spiraling does to one’s stomach. He folded his hands across his safety belt and studied his knuckles.

“Okay,” Rosebrough said. “That’s it just below us.”

“It doesn’t look very flat,” the pilot said, sounding doubtful. “And how big is it?”

“Not very,” Rosebrough said. “About the size of a desktop. The box is on that larger flattish area just below. I’ll have to climb down to get it.”

“You have twenty feet of ladder, but I guess I could get close enough for you to just jump down,” the pilot said.

Rosebrough laughed. “I’ll take the ladder,” he said.

And he did.

Leaphorn looked. Rosebrough was on the mountain, standing on the tiny sloping slab that formed the summit, then climbing down to the flatter area. He removed an olive drab U.S. Army ammunition box from the crack, opened it, removed the ledger, and tried to protect it from the wind produced by the copter blades. He waved them away. Leaphorn, stomach churning, resumed the study of his knuckles.

“You all right?” the pilot asked.

“Fine,” Leaphorn said, and swallowed.

“There’s a barf bag there if you need it.”

“Fine,” Leaphorn said.

“He’s taking the pictures now,” the pilot said. “Photographing one of the pages.”

“Okay,” Leaphorn said.

“It’ll just be a minute.”

Leaphorn, busy now with the bag, didn’t respond. But by the time the rhetorical minute had dragged itself past and Rosebrough was climbing back into the copter, he was feeling a little better.

“I took a bunch of different exposures so we’ll have some good ones,” he said, settling himself in his seat and fastening his safety belt. “And I shot the five or six pages before and after. That what you wanted?”

“Fine,” Leaphorn said, his mind working again, buzzing with the questions that had brought them up here. “Did you find Breedlove’s name? And who else—” He stopped. He was breaking his own rule. Much better to let Rosebrough tell what he had found without intervention.

“He signed it,” Rosebrough said, “and wrote ‘vita brevis.’”

He didn’t explain to Leaphorn that the inscription was Latin and provide the translation—which was one of the reasons Leaphorn liked the man. Why would Breedlove have bothered to leave that epigram? “Life is short.” Was it to explain why he’d taken the dangerous way down in case he didn’t make it? He’d worry about that later.

“Funny thing,” Rosebrough said. “No one else signed it on that date. I told you I didn’t think he could possibly climb it alone. But it looks like maybe I was wrong.”

“Maybe the people with him had climbed it before,” Leaphorn said.

“That wouldn’t matter. You’d still want to have it on the record that you’d done it again. It’s a hell of a hard climb.”

“Anything else?”

“He said he made it up at eleven twenty-seven A.M. and under that he wrote, ‘Four hours, twenty-nine minutes up. Now, I’m going down the fast way.’”

“Looks like he tried,” the pilot said. “But it took him about eleven years to make it all the way to the bottom.”

“Could he have climbed it that fast alone?” Leaphorn asked. “Is that time reasonable?”

Rosebrough nodded. “These days the route is so well mapped, a good, experienced crew figures about four hours up and three hours down.”

“How about the fast way down?” Leaphorn asked. To him it sounded a little like a suicide note. “What do you think he meant by that?”

Rosebrough shook his head. “It took teams of good climbers years to find the way you can get from the bottom to the top. Even that’s no cinch. It involves doing a lot of exposed climbing, with a rope to save you if you slip. Then you have to climb down a declivity to reach the face where you can go up again. That’s the way everybody who’s ever got to the top of Ship Rock got there. And as far as I know, that’s the way everybody always got down.”

“So there isn’t any ‘fast way down’?”

Rosebrough gave that some thought. “There has been some speculation of a shortcut. But it would involve a lot of rappelling, and I never heard of anyone actually trying it. I think it’s way too dangerous.”

They were moving away from Ship Rock now, making the long slide down toward the Farmington Airport. Leaphorn was feeling better. He was thinking that whatever Breedlove had meant by the fast way down, he had certainly done something dangerous.

“I’m thinking about that rappel route,” Rosebrough said. “If he tried that by himself, that would help explain where they found the skeleton.” He was looking at Leaphorn quizzically. “You’re awfully quiet, Joe. Are you okay? You’re looking pale.”

“I’m feeling pale,” Leaphorn said, “but I’m quiet because I’m thinking about the other two people who made the climb with him that day. Didn’t they get all the way up? Or what?”

“Who were they?” Rosebrough asked. “I know most of the serious rock climbers in this part of the world.”

“We don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “All we have are the notes of an old mountain watcher. Sort of shorthand, too. He just jotted down nine slash eighteen slash eighty-five and said three men had parked at the jump-off site and were climbing the—”

“Wait a minute,” Rosebrough said. “You said nine eighteen eighty-five? That’s not the date Breedlove wrote. He put down nine thirty eighty-five.”

Leaphorn digested that. No thought of nausea now. “You’re sure?” he asked. “Breedlove dated his climb September thirty. Not September eighteen.”

“I’m dead certain,” Rosebrough said. “That’s what the photo is going to show. Was I confused or something?”

“No,” Leaphorn said. “I was the one who was confused.”

“You sure you feel all right?”

“I feel fine,” Leaphorn said. Actually he was feeling embarrassed. He had been conned, and it had taken him eleven years to get his first solid inkling of how they had fooled him.

C
HEE HAD DECIDED THE GREASE in the frying pan was hot enough and was pulling the easy-open lid off the can of Vienna sausages when the headlight beam flashed across his window. He flicked off his house trailer’s overhead light—something he wouldn’t have considered doing a few days ago. But his cracked ribs still ached, and the person who had caused that was still out there somewhere. Possibly in the car that was now rolling to a stop under the cottonwood outside.

Whoever had driven it got out and walked into the headlights where Chee could see him. It was Joe Leaphorn, the Legendary Lieutenant, again. Chee groaned, said, “Oh, shit!” and switched on the light.

Leaphorn entered hat in hand. “It’s getting cold,” he said. “The TV forecaster said there’s a snow warning out for the Four Corners. Livestock warning. All that.”

“It’s just about time for that first bad one,” Chee said. “Can I take your hat?”

Which got Leaphorn’s mind off the weather. “No. No,” he said, looking apologetic. He regretted the intrusion, the lateness of the hour, the interruption of Chee’s supper. He would only take a moment. He wanted Chee to see what they’d found in the ammunition box on top of Ship Rock. He extracted a sheaf of photographs from the big folder he’d been carrying and handed them to Chee.

Chee spread them on the table.

“Note the date of the signature,” Leaphorn said. “It’s the week after Breedlove disappeared from Canyon de Chelly.”

Chee considered that. “Wow,” he said. And considered it again. He studied the photograph. “Is this it? No one else signed the book that day?”

“Only Breedlove,” Leaphorn said. “And I’m told that it’s traditional for everyone in the climbing party to sign if they get to the top.”

“Well, now,” Chee said. He tapped the inscription. “It looks like Latin. Do you know what it means?”

Leaphorn told him the translation. “But what did he mean by it? Your guess is as good as mine.” He explained to Chee what Rosebrough had told him about the ‘fast way down’ remark— that if Hal had tried this dangerous rappelling route it might explain how his body came to be on the ledge where it was found.

They stood at the table, Chee staring at the photograph and Leaphorn watching Chee. The aroma of extremely hot grease forced itself into Leaphorn’s consciousness, along with the haze of blue smoke that accompanied it. He cleared his throat.

“Jim,” he said. “I think I interrupted your cooking.”

“Oh,” Chee said. He dropped the photograph, snatched the smoking pan off the propane burner, and deposited it outside on the doorstep. “I was going to scramble some eggs and mix in these sausages,” he said. “If you haven’t eaten I can dump in a few more.”

“Fine,” said Leaphorn, who had deposited his breakfast in the barf bag, had been suffering too much residual queasiness for lunch, and had been too busy since to stop for dinner. In his current condition, even the smell of burning grease aroused his hunger.

They replaced the photos with plates, retrieved the frying pan, replenished the incinerated grease with a chunk of margarine, put on the coffeepot, performed those other duties required to prepare dinner in a very restricted space, and dined. Leaphorn had always tried to avoid Vienna sausages even as emergency rations but now he found the mixture remarkably palatable. While he attacked his second helping, Chee picked up the crucial photograph and resumed his study.

“I hesitate to mention it,” Chee said, “but what do you think of the date?”

“You mean being a date when the keen eye of Hosteen Sam saw no one climbing Ship Rock?”

“Exactly,” Chee said.

“I’ve reached no precise conclusion,” Leaphorn said. “What do you think?”

“About the same,” Chee said. “And how about nobody at all signing the book twelve days earlier? What do you think about that? I’m thinking that the three people who old man Sam saw climbing up there must not have made it to the top. Either that, or they were too modest to take credit for it. Or, if his ledger hadn’t told me how exactly precise Sam was, I’d think he got his dates wrong.”

Leaphorn was studying him. “You think there’s no chance of that, then?”

“I’d say none. Zero. You should see the way he kept that ledger. That’s not the explanation. Forget it.”

Leaphorn nodded. “Okay, I will.”

The entry signed by Breedlove was near the center of the page. Above it the register had been signed by four men, none with names familiar to Chee, and dated April 4, 1983. Below it, a three-climber party—two with Japanese names—had registered their conquest of the Rock with Wings on April 28, 1988.

“Skip back to September eighteenth,‘ Leaphorn said. ”Let’s say that Hal was one of the three Hosteen Sam saw climbing. It sounds like the car they climbed out of was that silly British recreation vehicle he drove. And then let’s say they didn’t make it to the top because Hal screwed up. So Hal broods about it. He gets the call at Canyon de Chelly from one of his climbing buddies. He decides to go back and try again.”

“All right,” Chee said. “Then we’ll suppose the climbing buddy went with him, they tried the dangerous way down. This time the climbing buddy—and let’s call him George Shaw—well, George screws up and drops Hal down the cliff. He feels guilty and he figures Hal’s dead anyway, so slips away and tells no one.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “I thought about that. Trouble is, why hadn’t the climbing buddy signed the register before they started down?”

Chee shook his head, dealt Leaphorn some more of the Vienna-and-eggs mixture, and put down the pan.

“Modesty, you think?” Leaphorn said. “He didn’t want to take the credit?”

“The only reason I can think of involves first-degree murder,” Chee said. “The premeditated kind.”

“Right,” Leaphorn said. “Now, how about a motive?”

“Easy,” Chee said. “It would have something to do with the ranch, and with that moly mine deal.”

Leaphorn nodded.

“Now Hal has inherited. It’s his. So let’s say George Shaw figures Hal’s going to keep his threat and do his own deal on the mineral lease, cutting out Shaw and the rest of the family. So Shaw drops him.”

“Maybe,” Leaphorn said. “One problem with that, though.”

“Or maybe Demott’s the climbing buddy. He knows Hal’s going for the open strip mine, so he knocks him off to save his ranch. But what’s the problem with the first idea?”

“Elisa inherits from Hal. Shaw would have to deal with her.”

“Maybe he thought he could?”

“He says he couldn’t. He told me this afternoon that Elisa was just as fanatical about the ranch as her brother. Said she told him there wouldn’t be any strip-mining on it as long as she was alive.”

“You saw Shaw today?” Chee sounded as much shocked as surprised.

“Sure,” Leaphorn said. “I showed him the photographs. After all, I spent his money getting them.”

“What’d he think?”

“He acted disappointed. Probably was. He’d like to be able to prove that Hal was dead about a week or so before he signed that register.”

Chee nodded.

“There’s a problem with your second theory, too.”

“What?”

“I was talking with Demott on the telephone September twenty-fourth. Twice, in fact.”

“You remember that? After eleven years?”

“No. I keep a case diary. I looked it up.”

“Mobile phone, maybe?”

“No. I called him at the ranch. Elisa didn’t remember the license number on the Land-Rover. I called him about the middle of the morning and he gave me the number. Then I called him again in the afternoon to make sure Breedlove hadn’t checked in. And to find out if he’d had any other calls. Anything worthwhile.”

“Well, hell,” Chee said. “Then I guess we’re left with Breedlove climbing up there alone, or with Shaw, and then taking the suicidal shortcut down.”

Leaphorn’s expression suggested he didn’t agree with that conclusion, but he didn’t comment on it directly.

“It also means I’m going to have to run down all these people who climbed up there in the next ten years and find out if any of them got off with a long piece of that climbing rope.”

“Not necessarily,” Leaphorn said. “You’re forgetting our Fallen Man business is still not a crime. It’s a missing person case solved by the discovery of an accidental death.”

“Yeah,” Chee said, doubtful.

“It makes me glad I’m a civilian these days.”

The wind gusted, rattling sand against the aluminum side of Chee’s home, whistling around its aluminum cracks and corners.

“So does the weather,” Leaphorn said. “Everybody in uniform is going to be working overtime and getting frostbite this week.”

Chee pointed to Leaphorn’s plate. “Want some more?”

“I’m full. Probably ate too much. And I took too much of your time.” He got up, retrieved his hat.

“I’m going to leave you these pictures,” he said. “Rosebrough has the negatives. He’s a lawyer. An agent of the court. They’ll stand up as evidence if it comes to that.”

“You mean if anyone gets up there and steals the ledger?”

“It’s a thought,” Leaphorn said. “What are you going to do tomorrow?”

Chee had worked for Leaphorn long enough for this question to produce a familiar uneasy feeling. “Why?”

“If I go up to the ranch tomorrow and show Demott and Elisa these pictures and ask her what she thinks about them, and ask her who was trying to climb that mountain on that September eighteenth date, then I think I could be accused of tampering with a witness.”

“Witness to what? Officially there’s no crime yet,” Chee reminded him.

“Don’t you think there will be one? Presuming we’re smart enough to get this sorted out.”

“You mean not counting Maryboy and me? Yeah. I guess so. But you could probably get away with talking to Elisa until the official connection is made. Now you’re just a representative of the family lawyer. Perfectly legit.”

“But why would Demott or the widow want to talk to a representative of the family’s lawyer?”

Chee nodded, conceding the point.

“And I think there’s something else I should be doing.”

Chee let his stare ask the question.

“Old Amos Nez trusts me,” Leaphorn said, and paused to consider it. “Well, more or less. I want to show him this evidence that Hal climbed Ship Rock just one week after he left the canyon and tell him about Maryboy being murdered, and ask him if Hal said anything about trying to climb Ship Rock just before he came to the canyon. Things like that.”

“That could wait,” Chee said, thinking of his aching ribs and the long painful drive up into Colorado.

“Maybe it could wait,” Leaphorn said. “But you know the other afternoon you decided Hosteen Maryboy couldn’t wait and you rushed right out there to see if he could identify those climbers for you. And you were right. Turned out it couldn’t wait.”

“Ah,” Chee said. “But I’m not clear on what makes Amos Nez so important. You think Breedlove might have told him something?”

“Let’s try another theory,” Leaphorn said. “Let’s say that Hal Breedlove didn’t live until his thirtieth birthday. Let’s say those people Hosteen Sam saw climbing on September eighteenth got to the top, or at least two of them did. One of the two was Hal. The other one—or maybe two—push him off. Or, more likely he just falls. Now he’s dead and he’s dead two days too soon. He’s still twenty-nine years old. So the climber’s register is falsified to show he was alive after his birthday.”

Chee held up his hand, grinning. “Huge hole in that one,” he said. “Remember Hal was prowling around the canyon with his wife and Amos Nez until the twenty-third of…” Chee’s voice trailed off into silence. And then he said, “Oh!” and stared at Leaphorn.

Leaphorn was making a wry face, shaking his head. “It sure took me long enough to see that possibility,” he said. “I never could have if you hadn’t got into old man Sam’s register.”

“My God,” Chee said. “If that’s the way it worked, I can see why they have to kill Nez. And if they’re smart, the sooner the better.”

“I’m going to ask you to call the Lazy B and find out if Demott and the widow are there and then arrange to drive up tomorrow and talk to them about what we found on top of the mountain.”

“What if they’re not at home?”

“Then I think we ought to be doing a little more to keep Amos Nez safe,” Leaphorn said. And he opened the door and stepped out into the icy wind.