interrupt. Ever watch ’em?”
Martin denied it. He wanted to talk about what the blond man looked like. And about why anyone would want Tomas Charley killed. And about the Vines burglary. It took Chee less than five minutes to exhaust all he knew about all three subjects and ten minutes more to go over it all twice more from slightly different angles.
“You find anything in the man’s car?” Chee asked. “It was a rental car, wasn’t it?”
“We haven’t recovered it yet,” Martin said. “We think it was rented from Hertz at the Albuquerque airport.” He fished a folder from his briefcase and extracted a copy of Hunt’s sketch.
“Your man look like this?”
“Pretty close,” Chee said.
“The Hertz people identified him as the man who rented a green-and-white Plymouth sedan. Now the car’s overdue. He gave his name as McRae and an Indiana address. It doesn’t check out.”
Chee didn’t comment. Talking to Hunt had tired him. His chest hurt. His ears were ringing. He wanted Martin to go away.
“When you get out of here, we want you to come down to the office,” Martin said. “We want you to look at mug shots and give us more details on the identification if you can.”
“Mug shots? You think you have a record on him?”
“Not really,” Martin said. “We think we have a ten-year accumulation of suspicions. We want you to look just in case. And we want you to spend a lot of time remembering everything you can about him. Everything.”
Chee said nothing. He just closed his eyes.
“It’s important,” Martin said. “This guy’s slick. That little pistol he used must be really silent. And he gets it in places where nobody sees anything. Apparently he scouts everything out very methodically, and then he likes to catch them alone for one quick close shot at the head. In the john is a favorite of his. We know of four found sitting on the john with the stall door closed. And a couple in telephone booths. Places like that. A quick shot and he just walks away. Never any witnesses. Not until the bombing. And now you and Miss Landon.”
Chee opened his eyes. “We’re the first witnesses?”
Martin was staring at him. “The first he knows about. He didn’t know anyone saw him putting the bomb in Charley’s truck. Medium-sized. Blond. So forth. You’re the only two who actually got a look at him and who could pin him to a killing.”
Chee’s head ached. He closed his eyes again.
“You know,” Martin said, “I think I’d be careful if I were you.”
Chee had already had that thought.
16
WHEN MARTIN LEFT, Chee spent the next ten minutes on the telephone. He got Mary Landon’s number from information, but no one answered when he called it. He remembered then that it was a school day and called the school. Miss Landon had taken the day off. He called his own office, explained the situation, and told Officer Dodge to see if she could find Mary and do what she could do to keep an eye on her. The doctor came in then – a young man with red hair and freckles. He inspected Chee’s ribs, replaced the dressing, said, “Take it easy,” and left. The nurse arrived, took his temperature, gave him two pills, watched while he took them, said, “This isn’t a police station. You’re supposed to be resting,” and left. Chee rearranged himself on the pillow and gazed out across the university campus. He thought about Mary, and about the peyote religion, and B. J. Vines’ keepsake box, and the ways of white men, and drifted off into an uneasy sleep. When he awoke it was late afternoon. The sun was slanting through his window and Mary sat in the bedside chair.
“Hello,” she said. “How’re you feeling?”
“Fine,” Chee said. He did feel fine. Vastly relieved.
“Boy,” she said. “You sure scared me. I thought you were dead. I waved down a truck, and he got that state policeman on his CB radio. And when we got back to you, you were just lying there.” She grimaced at him. “Like dead.”
Chee told her what he’d learned about the blond man. “You see the problem? There’s a chance he’s going to decide he needs to get rid of us.”
Even as he was saying them, the words sounded melodramatic to him. In this quiet, antiseptic room, the idea of anyone wanting to kill Jim Chee and Mary Landon seemed foolish.
“Don’t you think what he’d really do is just run?” Mary asked. “That’s what I’d do.”
“But you’re not a professional gunman,” Chee said.
“If that remark’s a reflection on my shooting, I want to remind you that it was you who screwed up the rear sight.”
“Be serious,” Chee said. “This guy kills people.”
The humor left Mary’s face. “I know,” she said. “But what can you do? It’s sort of like being struck by lightning. You can’t go around all the time hiding from clouds.”
“But you don’t stand under trees while it’s raining, either,” Chee said. “Why don’t you take a leave and go off and visit some relatives somewhere for a while and don’t tell anyone where you’re going?”
Mary’s expression shifted from somber to skeptical. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
“I would if I could,” Chee said. “But I’m a policeman. It’s my business.”
“No, it’s not,” Mary said. “You don’t even have jurisdiction. That’s what you told me. It’s FBI business. Or maybe the sheriff’s.”
“Legally,” Chee said. “But this sore rib sort of gives me a special interest. And besides, I’m a material witness.”
“So am I,” Mary said.
They argued about it, an uneasy, tentative sparring of two persons not yet sure of their relationship.
Mary changed the subject to his earlier visitors, to Sheriff Sena, to Sena’s obsession with the death of his brother in the oil well explosion. The conversation was oddly strained and uncomfortable.
“When I get out of here,” Chee said, “I’m going to dig into the newspaper files and learn everything I can about that oil well accident, and get some names, and see what I can find out.”
“I’ll go see about it,” Mary said. “The university library keeps newspapers on microfilm?” She got up and collected her purse. “I’ll see if they have the right ones. If I hurry, I can get it done today.”
17
IT WAS 3:11 A.M. when Chee looked at his watch. He had been awake perhaps fifteen minutes, lying motionless with his eyes closed in the vain hope that sleep would return. Now he gave it up. Sleeping away the afternoon had left him out of tune with time. The nurse had given him another sleeping pill at ten o’clock but he had let it lay. His policy was to take pills only when unavoidable. Having his sleeping habits dislocated was the price he was now paying for that pill at lunch. He sat on the edge of the bed and put on the hospital slippers. Much of the soreness had gone out of his side. Only when he moved was there still pain under the heavy bandages. Through the curtain that now partitioned the room he could hear the heavy breathing of a drugged sleep. They had wheeled a man in from the post-surgery recovery room about midnight – a young Chicano sewn up after some sort of accident earlier in the evening. Chee flicked on his bed light and began to reread the newspaper. Through the curtain he heard his roommate mumble in his steep. The man shifted his position, groaned. Chee switched off the’ light. Let him sleep, he thought. This is the time of night for sleeping. But Chee had never felt more wide awake. He put on his robe and walked down to the nurse’s station. The nurse was a woman in her middle forties, with a round, placid face and a complexion marred by those ten thousand wrinkles the desert sun inflicts upon white people. She glanced up from her paperwork through bifocal glasses.
“Can’t sleep,” Chee said.
“Let’s see,” Bifocals said. “You’re Chee?’ She found his folder and glanced at it. “You had a pill at ten, but I
