man's character.
Benaly and Plump Cop climbed into their cars and drove out of the lot. Chee extracted something from the back seat of his vehicle and strolled back toward the station, conscious of Leaphorn's watching presence. Why wait? Leaphorn thought. He would check in with Largo later.
At Leaphorn's suggestion, they took Chee's police car to Chee's trailer. Chee drove, erect and nervous. The trailer, battered, dented, and looking old and tired, sat under a cluster of cotton-woods not a dozen yards from the crumbling north bank of the San Juan River. Cool, Leaphorn thought. Great spot for someone who wasn't bothered, as Leaphorn was, by mosquitoes. He inspected the three patches of duct tape Chee had used to heal the shotgun wounds in the aluminum skin of his home. About evenly spaced, he noticed. About two feet apart. Each a little more than hip high. Nicely placed to kill somebody in bed if you knew exactly where the bed was located in such a trailer.
'Doesn't look random,' Leaphorn said, half to himself.
'No,' Chee said. 'I think some thought went into it.'
'Trailer like this… Any trouble for anyone to find out where the bed would be located? How far off the floor?'
'How high to shoot?' Chee said. 'No. It's a common kind. When I bought it in Flagstaff there were three just about like it on the used lot. See 'em all the time. Anyway, I think they're all pretty much alike. Where they put the beds.'
'I think we'll ask around, anyway. See if somebody who sells them at Farmington, or Gallup, or Flag, can remember anything.' He glanced at Chee. 'Maybe a customer came in and asked to see this particular model, and pulled out a tape measure and said he had to measure the bed off to see where to hold the shotgun to get himself a Navajo Policeman.'
Chee's expressionless face eased into what might have been a smile. 'I'm not usually that lucky.'
Leaphorn's fingers were on the tape that covered the hole nearest the front of the trailer. He glanced at Chee again.
'Pull it off,' Chee said. 'I've got more tape.'
Leaphorn peeled off the patch, inspected the ragged hole punched through the aluminum, then stooped to peer inside. He could see only blue-and-white cloth. Flowers. Chee's pillow slip. It looked new. Hole torn in the old one, Leap horn guessed. He was impressed that a bachelor would put a pillowcase on his pillow. Pretty tidy.
'You were lucky when this happened,' said Leaphorn, who was always skeptical about luck, who was always skeptical about anything that violated the orderly rules of probability. 'The report said your cat woke you up. You keep a cat?'
'Not exactly,' Chee said. 'It's a neighbor. Lives out there.' Chee pointed upstream to a sun-baked slope of junipers. But Leaphorn was still looking thoughtfully at the shotgun hole—measuring its width with his fingers. 'Lives out there under that juniper,' Chee added. 'Sometimes when something scares it, it comes in.'
'How?'
Chee showed him the flap he'd cut in the trailer door. Leaphorn examined it. It didn't look new enough to have been put there after the shooting. He noticed that Chee was aware of his examination, and of the suspicion it suggested.
'Who tried to kill you?' Leaphorn asked.
'I don't know,' Chee said.
'A new woman?' Leaphorn suggested. 'That can cause trouble.' Chee's expression became totally blank.
'No,' Chee said. 'Nothing like that.'
'It could be something mild. Maybe just talking too often to a woman with a boyfriend who's paranoid.'
'I've got a woman,' Chee said slowly.
'You've thought all this out?' Leaphorn asked.
He motioned toward the holes in the side of the trailer. 'It's your ass somebody's after.'
'I've thought about it,' Chee said. He threw his hands apart, an angry gesture aimed at himself. 'Absolutely damned nothing.'
Leaphorn studied him, and found himself half persuaded. It was the gesture as much as the words. 'Where did you sleep last night?'
'Out there,' Chee said, gesturing toward the hillside. 'I have a sleeping bag.'
'You and the cat,' Leaphorn said. He paused, dug out his pack of cigarets, offered one to Chee, took one himself. 'What do you think about Roosevelt Bistie? And Endocheeney?'
'Funny,' Chee said. 'That whole thing's odd. Bistie's…' He paused, hesitated. 'Why not come on in,' Chee said. 'Have a cup of coffee.'
'Why not,' Leaphorn said.
It was left-over-from-breakfast coffee. Leaphorn, made an authority on bad coffee by more than two decades of police work, rated it slightly worse than most. But it was warm, and it was coffee, and he sipped it appreciatively while Chee, sitting on the bunk where he had so nearly died, told him about meeting Roosevelt Bistie.
'I don't believe he was faking anything,' Chee concluded. 'He didn't act surprised to see us. Seemed pleased when he heard Endocheeney was dead, and then the whole business about shooting at Endocheeney on the roof, thinking he'd killed him, not really wondering about it until he got home, not going back to make sure because he figured if he hadn't killed him, Endocheeney wouldn't have stuck around to give him a second chance at it.' Chee shrugged, shook his head. 'Genuine satisfaction when he heard Endocheeney was dead. I just don't think he could have been faking any of that. No reason to. Why not just deny everything?'
'All right,' Leaphorn said. 'Now, tell me again exactly what he said when you asked him why he wanted to kill
