Leaphorn nodded.
'Outta luck,' McGinnis said. 'I've known that young fella since he was a buck Indian and I don't know anything about him that's going to help.'
'You've been thinking about it,' Leaphorn said.
'Sure,' McGinnis said. 'Fella you've known gets killed, you think about it.' He sipped again. 'Lost a customer,' he said.
'Anything in that?' Leaphorn said. 'Unusual, I mean. Like him coming in with money to pay off his pawn. Or buying anything unusual. People coming to ask where to find him.'
'Nothing,' McGinnis said.
'He make any trips? Go anyplace? Been sick? Any ceremonials for him?'
'Nothing like that,' McGinnis said. 'He used to come in now and then to do his buying. Sell me his wool. Things like that. Get his mail. I remember he cut his hand bad way back last winter and he went into that clinic that Sioux Indian opened there at Badwater Wash and they sewed it up for him and gave him a tetanus shot. But no sickness. No sings for him. No trips anyplace, except he told me couple of months ago he went into Farmington with his daughter to get himself some clothes.' McGinnis took another sip of bourbon. 'Too damn fashionable to buy his clothes from me anymore. Everybody's wearing designer jeans.'
'How about his mail? Do you write his letters for him? He get anything unusual?'
'He could read and write,' McGinnis said. 'But he ain't bought no stamps this year. Not from me, anyway. Or mailed any letters. Or got any unusual mail. Only thing unusual, couple of months ago he got a letter in the middle of the month.' He didn't explain that, or need to. On the far reaches of the reservation, mail consists primarily of subsistence checks, from the tribal offices in Window Rock or some federal agency. They arrive on the second day of the month, in brown stacks.
'In June was it?' That was when Chee had said Endocheeney received his letter from Irma Onesalt's office. 'About the second week?'
'That's what I said,' McGinnis said. 'Two months ago.'
Leaphorn had managed to find a way to be fairly comfortable on the sofa. He had been watching McGinnis, who in turn had kept his watery eyes focused on the bourbon while he talked. And while he talked, he rocked, slowly and steadily, coordinating a motion in his forearm with the motion of his chair. The net result of this was that while the bourbon glass seemed to move, the liquid in it remained level and motionless. Leaphorn had noticed this lesson in hydraulic motion before, but it still intrigued him. But what McGinnis had said about the letter regained his full attention. He leaned forward.
'Don't get excited,' McGinnis said. 'You gonna expect me to tell you that inside that envelope there was a letter from somebody telling Wilson Sam to hold still because he was coming to kill him. Something like that.' McGinnis chuckled. 'You got your hopes up too high. It wasn't from anybody. It was from Window Rock.'
Leaphorn wasn't surprised McGinnis had noticed this, or that he remembered it. A midmonth letter would have been an oddity.
'What was it about?'
McGinnis's placid expression soured. 'I don't read folks' mail.'
'All right then, who was it from?'
'One of them bureaus there in Window Rock,' McGinnis said. 'Like I said.'
'You remember which one?'
'Why would I remember something like that?' McGinnis said. 'None of my business.'
Because everything out here is your business, Leaphorn thought. Because the letter would have lain around somewhere for days while you waited for Wilson Sam to come in, or for some relative to come in who could take it to him, and every day you would look at it and wonder what was in it. And because you remember everything.
'I just thought you might,' Leaphorn said, overcoming a temptation to tell McGinnis the letter was from Social Services.
'Social Services,' McGinnis said.
Social Services. Exactly. He wished he had found time to check. If the letter wasn't in the file, if no one there remembered writing to Endocheeney, or to Wilson Sam, it would be fair circumstantial evidence that Onesalt had done the writing, and that the letters were in some way unofficial. Why would Social Services be writing to either man?
'Did it have a name on it? I mean on the return address. Or just the office?'
'Come to think of it, yeah.' McGinnis sipped again and inspected the bourbon level with watery eyes. 'That might be of some interest to you,' he said, without taking his eyes off the glass. 'Because that woman who had her name on the return address, she was the one that got shot a little later over there in your part of the reservation. Same name, anyway.'
'Irma Onesalt,' Leaphorn said. 'Yessir,' McGinnis said. 'Irma Onesalt.' The circle was thus complete. The bone beads linked Wilson Sam and Endocheeney and Jim Chee and Roosevelt Bistie. The letters linked Onesalt into the pattern. Now he had what he needed to solve this puzzle. He had no idea how. But he knew himself. He knew he would solve it.
Chapter 18
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it was a day off for Chee, and in a little while it would be time to leave for the long drive to the place of Hildegarde Goldtooth, to meet with Alice Yazzie. Ninety miles or so, some of it on bad roads, and he intended to leave early. He planned to detour past the Badwater Clinic to see if he could learn anything there. And he didn't want to keep Alice Yazzie waiting. He wanted to do her Blessing Way. Now Chee was passing the time in what Captain Largo called his 'laboratory.' Largo had laughed about it. 'Laboratory, or maybe it's your studio,' Largo had said when he found Chee working there. In fact, it was nothing but a flat, hard-packed earthen surface up the slope from Chee's trailer. Chee had chosen it because a gnarled old cottonwood shaded the place. He had prepared it
