“Yep.”
“Would anybody see if someone did? Anybody on the train crew?”
“You mean at night? After dark? It would depend. But probably not. Not if the guy didn’t want to be seen. It would be simple enough. You’d just have to wait until everybody was busy. Nobody looking.”
“Bernard, what happens to the luggage if a passenger gets off before his destination and leaves it?”
“They take it off at the end of the line—the turnaround point when they’re cleaning out the cars. It goes into the claims office. The Lost and Found. Or, if it comes out of a reserved compartment on the sleeper, or a roomette, then they’d do a tracer on it and send it back to the point of origin. So the passenger could pick it up there.”
“This Amtrak that comes through here, would the turnaround point be Los Angeles?”
“Not exactly. There’s an eastbound and a westbound each day. West is Number 3. East is Number 4.”
“Who would I call there to find out about left-behind luggage?”
St. Germain told him.
Kennedy could wait a minute to have lunch with him. He called the Amtrak claims office in Los Angeles, and told the man who answered who he was, what he needed, and why he needed it. He gave the man the train and the date. Then he waited. It didn’t take long.
“Yeah. There was a suitcase and some personal stuff left in a roomette on that train. We held it here to see if somebody would claim it. But now it’s gone back to Washington,” the man said.
“Washington?”
“That’s where the passenger boarded. He transferred to Number 3 in Chicago.”
Leaphorn took the cap off his ballpoint, pulled his note pad toward him.
“What was his name?”
“Who knows? I guess you could get it from the claims office in Washington. Or from the reservations office. Wherever they keep that sort of records. That’s not my end of the business.”
“How about locating the train crew? That possible?”
“That’s Washington, too. That’s where that crew is based. I’d think it would be easy enough to get their names out of Washington.”
Kennedy had already ordered when Leaphorn reached his table. He was eating a club sandwich.
“You running on Navajo time?” he asked.
“Always,” Leaphorn said. He sat, glanced at the menu, ordered green chili stew. He felt great.
“I’ve learned a few things about that body,” he said. He told Kennedy about the Amtrak being stopped that night at the place where the body was left, and about what St. Germain had told him, and about the passenger’s baggage being left in the roomette.
Kennedy chewed, looking thoughtful. He grinned, but the grin was faint. “If you don’t quit this, you know, you’re going to make a federal case out of it,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Do your famous FBI thing,” Leaphorn said.
Kennedy swallowed, took a sip of water, nodded. “Okay. I’ll get somebody in Washington to go down and take a look at the luggage. We’ll see if they can get an identification. We’ll see where that leads us.”
“What more could anyone ask?”
“I can think of a few more things you’re going to ask,” Kennedy said. “Based on our past experiences with you. It’ll turn out this luggage belongs to an alcoholic who has a habit of falling through cracks. So we will sensibly decide he’s not the body, but you won’t be happy with that.” Kennedy held up a hand, all fingers extended. He bent down one. “One. You’ll want some sort of latent fingerprint check on the luggage.” He bent down another. “Two. You’ll want identification of the eighty-two people who have handled it since the owner.” He bent down a third. “Three. You’ll want a rundown on everybody who was on that particular Amtrak trip.” Kennedy bent down the surviving finger. “Four. You’ll want interviews with the train crews. Five—” Kennedy had exhausted his supply of fingers. He extended his thumb. “In summation, you’ll want the same sort of stuff we’d do if the Emperor of Earth had been kidnapped by the Martians. Cost eighty-six billions in overtime and then it turns out that your body is a car dealer who got in an argument with somebody in the bar of the train and it’s not the business of the Bureau.”
Leaphorn nodded.
“It’s none of your business, either,” Kennedy added. “You know that, don’t you?”
Leaphorn nodded again. “Not my business yet.” He took a spoonful of the stew, ate it. “But I wonder why he was going to the Yeibichai,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“Sure,” Kennedy said. “That seems strange.”
“And if he was going, why was he almost a month early?”
“I wonder about a lot of things,” Kennedy said. “I wonder why George Bush picked what’s-his-name for vice president. I wonder why the Anasazis walked away from all those cliff dwellings. I wonder why the hell I ever got into law enforcement. Or had lunch with you when I knew you’d be wanting a favor.”
“And I wonder about that guy’s false teeth,” Leaphorn said. “Not so much where the false ones went as what happened to his original teeth.”
Kennedy laughed. “I’m not that deeply into the wondering game,” he said.
“There was nothing wrong with his gums, or his jawbone,” Leaphorn said. “That’s what the autopsy showed. And that’s why people have their teeth pulled.”
