'Wonder what caused her to get the wrong name—or whatever happened.'
'Oh, Frank Begay used to be here. He was diabetic, with all sorts of complications. But he died way back in the winter. Earlier than that. It was in October. He was the one from Lukachukai.'
'I wonder if that's what caused the confusion,' Chee said. 'She didn't seem like a woman who'd get confused much.'
Mrs. Billie nodded, agreeing. She looked thoughtful. 'What she said was that we had our records all screwed up. Said we had him on our list as a patient. I looked, and told her we didn't. And she said, Damn it, yes we did. Maybe not today, she said, but a couple of weeks ago.' Mrs. Billie was showing her white teeth in another joyful grin, remembering. 'That's why I know just when Frank Begay died. October three. I went back into the files and found it.'
Chee allowed himself to imagine for a moment how much pleasure Mrs. Billie had attained by giving that news to Irma Onesalt. He remembered his own discomfort at the chapter house, with the woman leaning on the door of his patrol car, staring at him contemptuously, bombarding him with questions about why he had delivered Franklin Begay when she had told him to deliver Frank Begay. An unusually arrogant woman, Irma Onesalt. He wondered, half seriously, if Dilly Streib, or whoever was working her homicide for the FBI, had considered that as a motive for her murder. Someone might simply have got tired of suffering Irma Onesalt's bad conduct.
'What else did Onesalt say?' Chee asked.
'Wanted to see the doctor to argue about it.'
'Dr. Yellowhorse?'
'Yeah. So I sent her on in.'
Yellowhorse and Onesalt, Chee thought. Two tough coyotes. For different reasons, he didn't like either of them—but Yellowhorse he respected. His differences with the doctor were purely philosophical—the believer and the agnostic exploiting the belief. Onesalt was, or had been, simply an obnoxious jerk. 'I wish I could have seen those two,' Chee said. 'What happened?'
Mrs. Billie shrugged. 'She went in. Maybe five minutes she came out.'
The telephone at Mrs. Billie's plump elbow buzzed. 'Badwater Clinic,' she said. 'What? Okay. I'll tell him.' She hung up. 'Came out steaming,' she continued, grinning again. 'Pure rage now. The doctor, he can be rough, you get him stirred up.'
Chee was remembering what Janet Pete had told him—of Irma Onesalt's remark about the wrong Begay business tipping her off to something. This conversation hadn't opened any doors to what that might be. Or had it?
'She say anything else? Any remarks or anything?'
'No,' Mrs. Billie said. 'Well, not much. She got almost to the door and then she turned around and came back and asked me what that date was when Frank Begay died.'
'You told her October third?'
'No. I hadn't looked it up yet. I told her last fall, I guess. And then she asked me if she could see a list of the patients we had in here.' Mrs. Billie's face expressed disapproval of this remembered outrage. 'Imagine that kind of brass!' she said. 'And I said she'd have to ask the doctor about that and she said to hell with it then, she'd get it another way.' Mrs. Billie looked even more disapproving. 'Actually she said a little worse than that. Rough-talking woman.'
A middle-aged black woman in a nurse's uniform came down the hall with a young Navajo who was pushing a wheelchair. The wheelchair contained a woman with her leg in a cast. 'Now tell her again that it will itch, but she's not supposed to scratch it. Just let it itch. Think about something else.' The Navajo said, 'Don't scratch,' in Navajo, and Woman in Cast said, in English, 'Don't scratch. You told me that before.'
'She speaks English,' Mrs. Billie told the nurse. 'Better than I do.'
'That was it? Nothing else?' Chee asked, getting Mrs. Billie's attention again.
'Just walked out after that,' Mrs. Billie said.
'She said she could get the list of patients another way?'
'Yeah,' Mrs. Billie said. 'I guess she could, too. They'd all be on some sort of medical-cost reimbursement list. Medicare, or Medicaid, or some insurance claim if they had insurance. Most of them wouldn't.'
'Just have to go through the red tape?'
'Probably no big deal. She worked in Window Rock with all the other bureaucrats. Probably just get somebody in the right accounting office to get her a Xerox, or let her take a peek.'
Chee had been remembering Leaphorn in his trailer, putting the list on his countertop. Leaphorn watching his face as he looked at the list. Leaphorn asking if he knew any of them. Looking disappointed when he didn't. Asking if the names suggested anything to him. They had suggested nothing. But now they did. Now they seemed terribly important.
'I haven't got any friends among the bureaucrats at Window Rock. Any way I could find out who was here that day?'
'You could ask Dr. Yellowhorse.'
'Good,' Chee said. 'Can I get in to see him?'
'He's not here,' Mrs. Billie said.
Chee looked as disappointed as possible. He shrugged, made a wry face.
'You're a policeman. I guess you could say it was police business.'
'It's police business,' Chee said.
