Leaphorn, whose memory was excellent, recalled reading the autopsy report in the FBI file. No mention of a dime. But there had been mention of 'foreign objects,' which would cover a dime as well as the more usual buttons, thread, gravel, and broken glass. Could a knife punch a dime into a wound? Easily enough. It seemed odd, but not unreasonable.
'But Endocheeney wasn't on the list.'
'I don't think so,' Jenks said.
Leaphorn hesitated. 'How about Jim Chee?' he asked.
Dr. Jenks thought hard again. But he couldn't remember whether or not Jim Chee's name was on the death date list.
Chapter 8
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it was almost dark when Chee pulled into the police parking lot in Shiprock. He parked where a globe willow would shade the car from the early sun the next morning and walked, stiff and weary, toward his pickup truck. He had left it that morning where another of the police department willows would shade it from the afternoon sun. Now the same tree hid it from the dim red twilight in a pool of blackness. The uneasiness Chee had shaken off at Badwater Wash and on the long drive home was suddenly back in possession. He stopped, stared at the truck. He could see only its shape in the shadows. He turned abruptly and hurried into the Police Building.
Nelson McDonald was working the night shift, lounging behind the switchboard with the two top buttons of his uniform shirt open, reading the sports section of the Farmington
'You still alive?' he asked, with no hint of a smile.
'So far,' Chee said. But he didn't think it was funny. He would later, perhaps. Ten years later. Crises past, in police work, tended to transmute themselves from fear into the stuff of jokes. But now there was still the fear, a palpable something affecting the way Chee's stomach felt. 'I guess nobody noticed anyone tinkering around with my truck?'
Officer McDonald sat up a little straighter, noticing Chee's face and regretting the joke. 'Nobody mentioned it,' he said. 'And it's parked right out there where everybody could see it. I don't think…' He decided not to finish the sentence.
'No messages?' Chee asked.
McDonald sorted through the notes impaled on a spindle on the clerk's desk. 'One,' he said, and handed it to Chee.
'Call Lt. Leaphorn as soon as you get in,' it said, and listed two telephone numbers.
Leaphorn answered at the second one, his home.
'I want to ask you if you learned anything new about Endocheeney,' Leaphorn said. 'But there's a couple of other loose ends. Didn't you say you met Irma Onesalt just recently? Can you tell me exactly when?'
'I could check my logs,' Chee said. 'Probably in April. Late April.'
'Did she say anything to you about a list of names she had? About trying to find out what date the people on that list died?'
'No, sir,' Chee said. 'I'm sure I'd remember something like that.'
'You said you went to the Badwater Clinic and picked up a patient there and took him to a chapter meeting for her and they gave you the wrong man. And she was sore about it. That right?'
'Right. Old man named Begay. You know how it is with Begays.' How it was with Begays on the reservation is how it is with Smiths and Joneses in Kansas City or Chavezes in Santa Fe. It was the most common name on the reservation.
'She said nothing about names? Nothing about a list of names? Nothing about how to go about finding out dates of deaths? Nothing that might lead into that?'
'No, sir,' Chee said. 'She just said a word or two when I got to the chapter house. She was waiting. Wanted to know why I was late. Then she took the old man in to the meeting. I waited because I was supposed to take him back after he had his say. After a while, she came out and raised hell with me for bringing her the wrong Begay, and then he came out and got in and I took him back to the clinic. Not much of a chance for chatting.'
'No,' Leaphorn said. 'I had some dealing with the woman myself.' Chee heard the sound of a chuckle. 'I imagine you learned a few new dirty words?'
'Yes, sir,' Chee said. 'I did.'
A long silence. 'Well,' Leaphorn said. 'Just remember that a little while before she was shot she showed up at the pathologist's office at the Gallup hospital with a list of names. She wanted to know how to find out when each of them died. If you hear anything that helps explain that, I want to know about it right away.'
'Right,' Chee said.
'Now. What did you learn out around Bad-water?'
'Not much,' Chee said. 'He had several hundred dollars' worth of pawn left at the post there—a lot more than he owed for—and his kin-folks haven't picked it up. And he broke a leg last summer falling off a fence. Nothing much.'
Silence again. Then Leaphorn said, in a very mild voice: 'I've got a funny way of working. Instead of telling me 'Not much,' I like people to tell me all the details and then I'll say, 'Well, that's not much,' or maybe I'll say, 'Hey, that part about the pawn explains something else I heard.' Or so forth. What I'm saying is, give me all the details and let me sort it out.'
And so Chee, feeling slightly resentful, told Leaphorn of the bent woman, and the Kayonnie brothers with morning beer on their breath, and the letter from Window Rock, and the crutches which Iron Woman wouldn't accept as pawn and couldn't sell, and all the other details. He finished, and listened to a silence so long that he wondered if Leaphorn had put down the telephone. He cleared his throat. 'That letter,' Leaphorn said. 'From Window Rock. But what agency? And when?'
