'Not her,' Pedwell said. 'Another of those people out at Chaco did. Dr. Randall Elliot. They working together?'
'I don't think so,' Chee said. 'Does the application say he was collecting St. John's Polychrome pots?'
'Lemme look.' Papers rustled. 'Doesn't sound like pots. Says he is studying Anasazi migrations.' Mumbling sounds of Pedwell reading to himself. 'Says his interest is tracing genetic patterns.' More mumbling. 'Studying bones. Skull thickness. Six-fingeredness. Aberrant jaw formation.' More mumbling. 'I don't think it has anything to do with ceramics,' Pedwell said, finally. 'He's looking at the skeletons. Or will be if your famous Navajo bureaucracy, of which I am a part, ever gets this processed. Six-fingeredness. Lot of that among the Anasazi, but hard to study, because hands don't survive intact after a thousand years. But it sounds like he's found some family patterns. Too many fingers. An extra tooth in the right side of the lower jaw. A second hole where those nerves and blood vessels go through the back of the jaw, and something or other about the fibula. Physical anthropology isn't my area.'
'But he hasn't gotten his permit yet?'
'Wait a minute. I guess we weren't so slow on this one. Here's a carbon of a letter to Elliot from the Park Service.' Paper rustled. 'Turndown,' Pedwell said. 'More documentation needed of previous work in this field. That do it?'
'Thanks a lot,' Chee said.
Janet Pete was watching him.
'Sounds like you scored,' she said.
'I'll fill you in,' he said.
'On the way back to my car.' She looked embarrassed. 'I'm normally the usual stolid, dull lawyer,' she said. 'This morning I just ran off in hysterics and left everything undone. People coming in to see me. People waiting for me to finish things. I feel awful.'
He walked to the car with her, opened the door.
'I'm glad you called on me,' he said. 'You honored me.'
'Oh, Jim!' she said, and hugged him around the chest with such strength that he caught his breath. She stood, holding him like that, pressed against him. He sensed she was about to cry again. He didn't want that to happen.
He put his hand on her hair and stroked it.
'I don't know what you'll decide about your Successful Attorney,' he said. 'But if you decide against him, maybe you and I could see if we could fall in love. You know, both Navajos and all that.'
It was the wrong thing to say. She was crying as she drove away.
Chee stood there, watching her motor pool sedan speed toward the U.S. 666 junction and the route to Window Rock. He didn't want to think about this. It was confusing. And it hurt. Instead he thought of a question he should have asked Pedwell. Had Randall Elliot also filed an application to dig in that now-despoiled site where Etcitty and Nails had died?
He walked back into the station, remembering those jawbones so carefully set aside amid the chaos.
Chapter Sixteen
T ^ t
TO LEAPHORN, the saddle had seemed a promising possibility. She had borrowed it from a biologist named Arnold, who lived in Bluff. Other trails led to Bluff. The site of the polychrome pots seemed to be somewhere west of the town, in roadless country where a horse would be necessary. She would go to Arnold's place. If he could loan her a saddle, he could probably loan her a horse. From Arnold he would learn where Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had headed. The first step was finding Arnold, which shouldn't be difficult.
It wasn't. The Recapture Lodge had been Bluff's center of hospitality for as long as Leaphorn could remember. The man at the reception desk loaned Leaphorn his telephone to call Chee. Chee confirmed what Leaphorn had feared. Whether or not Dr. Friedman was killing pot hunters, her pistol was. The man at the desk also knew Arnold.
'Bo Arnold,' he said. 'Scientists around here are mostly anthropologists or geologists, but Dr. Arnold is a lichen man. Botanist. Go up to where the highway bends left, and take the right toward Montezuma Creek. It's the little redbrick house with lilac bushes on both sides of the gate. Except I think Bo let the lilacs die. He drives a Jeep. If he's home, you'll see it there.'
The lilacs were indeed almost dead, and a dusty early-model Jeep was parked in the weeds beside the little house. Leaphorn parked beside it and stepped out of his pickup into a gust of chilly, dusty wind. The front door opened just as he walked up the porch steps. A lanky man in jeans and faded red shirt emerged. 'Yessir,' he said. 'Good morning.' He was grinning broadly, an array of white teeth in a face of weathered brown leather.
'Good morning,' Leaphorn said. 'I'm looking for Dr. Arnold.'
'Yessir,' the man said. 'That's me.' He stuck out a hand, which Leaphorn shook. He showed Arnold his identification.
'I'm looking for Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal,' Leaphorn said.
'Me too,' Arnold said enthusiastically. 'That biddy got off with my kayak and didn't bring it back.'
'Oh,' Leaphorn said. 'When?'
'When I was gone,' Arnold said, still grinning. 'Caught me away from home, and off she goes with it.'
'I want to hear all about that,' Leaphorn said.
Arnold held the door wide, welcomed Leaphorn in with a sweep of his hand. Inside the front door was a room crowded with tables, each table crowded with rocks of all sizes and shapes--their only common denominator being lichens. They were covered with these odd plants in every shade from white through black. Arnold led Leaphorn past them, down a narrow hall.
'No place to sit in there,' he said. 'That's where I work. Here's where I live.'
