Shaw took a huge breath, exhaled it. 'Well, hell,' he said. 'You got any notions?'
'I've got a headache,' Chee said.
'I'll make a phone call,' Shaw said, getting up. 'Get somebody to that Jacaranda address and see if we can pick up Sosi.' He glanced back from the doorway. 'Too bad you didn't hit him harder.'
Chee didn't comment on that. Through the general haziness, he was becoming aware of what the girl had done. She'd gotten the big man to bring him to the hospital. How the hell had she managed that? He had given up looking for an answer when Shaw returned.
'Okay,' he said. 'They'll find her.'
'I doubt it.'
'Whatever,' Shaw said. He stared down, peered at Chee. Made a quizzical face. 'What's going on here? Have you figured it out?'
'No,' Chee said.
'I know the man in the van,' Shaw said. 'Eric Vaggan. That guy I told you about who works for McNair. Or he has, now and then. And for other people, I guess. Sort of an enforcer.'
Chee didn't say anything. He was wishing Shaw would go away.
'The girl has something to do with the McNair business,' Shaw said. 'No other reason for any of this. Why else would Vaggan be out there looking for her?' He waited for Chee to tell him.
'Why don't you pick up this guy? Ask him?' Chee said.
'We don't know him all that well,' Shaw said. 'Don't have a file on him to amount to anything. No address. Just some stuff off some telephone taps from the other end of the call. Things like that. Witnesses describing a guy who looks like that, and so forth. Nothing concrete. You said he was taking her in?'
'She said he said he was a cop.'
'Had to be a reason for it. What could it be?'
Chee closed his eyes. It didn't help much.
'What we need to do,' Shaw said slowly, 'is go see Farmer about this.'
'Farmer?'
'The Assistant u.s.d.a. The man handling the McNair case. Maybe it fits something he knows. When can you get out of here?'
'I don't know,' Chee said.
'I'll handle it, then,' Shaw said. 'I'll do it right now.'
It was late afternoon when Shaw called. A nurse's aide had brought Chee his lunch, and a doctor had come in and removed the bandage and inspected him, and said something about not trying to knock down walls with his head. This had caused the nurse attending to chuckle. Chee had asked when he could check out, and the doctor had said he was suffering from concussion and should stay another day to see how things went. They seemed to be going well, physically. He felt better after the meal; his vision was no longer blurred, and the headache had become both intermittent and tolerable. When the woman came up from the business office to talk to him about who was going to pay for all this, he found his memory had regained full Chee-like efficiency. He rattled off the name of his Tribal Police medical insurance company, the amount of the deductible, and even the eight digits of his account number. By the time the telephone beside his bed rang, the only thing bothering him much was the scraped bruise on his hip.
Shaw hadn't had much luck.
'Typical,' he said. 'Farmer's long gone. He quit the Justice Department and went to work with some law firm up in San Francisco. The man who has the case now apparently hasn't even read the file on it.'
The noise Chee made must have sounded incredulous.
'What's the hurry?' Shaw said, sounding a little bitter. 'McNair doesn't come to trial for a couple of months, and then there'll probably be an extension. So I sit there in his office cooling my heels while he reads through the file, and then he looks up and says, 'Okay, now, what was it you want?' Like I was asking him some damn favor.'
Chee made a sympathetic sound.
'So I tell him all about the business with Margaret Sosi, and so forth, and he listens politely and gets rid of me.'
'Did you tell him about the Leroy Gorman angle, and Grayson, and the trailer?'
'I mentioned it,' Shaw said. 'Yes.'
'What'd he say.'
'He opened the file again, and looked through it, and then he changed the subject.'
'What'd ya think?'
'Well,' Shaw said, slowly, 'I think that Grayson showed up in his file as one of his protected witnesses. Namely, Leroy Gorman.'
'Yeah,' Chee said. 'I don't see how it could be any other way.'
'Wasted time,' Shaw said. 'Wasted time. We could already guess that.' There was silence on the telephone while Shaw considered this. He sighed. 'Ah, well,' he said. 'I don't guess that lawyer was as dumb as he acted. At least he's alerted now that they're after Gorman. Either he'll move him someplace safer or watch him.'
