“Sure. If you tell me where it was filled. If it was ours, see—any Merit Drug anywhere—then we’d have it on the computer. Find it that way.”
Leaphorn put the notebook back in his jacket pocket. He made a wry face. “So,” he said. “I can start checking all the Washington, D.C., drugstores.”
“Or maybe the suburbs. Do you know if it was filled in the city?”
“No way of guessing,” Leaphorn said. “It was just an idea. Looks like a bad one.”
“If I were you, I’d start with Walgreen’s. There was a
“You know where the nearest Walgreen’s might be?”
“No. But we’ll look that sucker up,” the pharmacist said. He reached for the telephone book. It proved to be just eleven blocks away.
The pharmacist at Walgreen’s was a young man. He decided Leaphorn’s request was odd and that he should wait for his supervisor, now busy with another customer. Leaphorn waited, conscious that his cab was also waiting, with its meter running. The supervisor was a plump, middle-aged black woman, who inspected Leaphorn’s Navajo Tribal Police credentials and then the number written in his notebook.
She punched at the keyboard of the computer, looking at Leaphorn over her glasses.
“Just trying to get an identification? That right? Not a refill or anything?”
“Right,” Leaphorn said. “The pharmacist at another drugstore told me he thought this was your number.”
“It looks like it,” the woman said. She examined whatever had appeared on the screen. Shook her head. Punched again at the keyboard.
Leaphorn waited. The woman waited. She pursed her lips. Punched a single key.
“Elogio Santillanes,” she said. “Is that how you pronounce it? Elogio Santillanes.” She recited a street address and a telephone number, then glanced at the computer screen again. “And that’s apartment three,” she added. She wrote it all on a sheet of note paper and handed it to Leaphorn. “You’re welcome,” she said.
Back in the cab Leaphorn read the address to Miss Susy Mackinnon.
“No more going to the hotel?” she asked.
“First this address,” Leaphorn said. “Then the hotel.”
“Your humor has sure improved,” Miss Mackinnon said. “They selling something in Walgreen’s that you couldn’t get in that other drugstore?”
“The solution to my problem,” Leaphorn said. “And it was absolutely free.”
“I need to remember that place,” Miss Mackinnon said.
The rain had begun again—as much drizzle as rain—and she had the wipers turned to that now-and-then sequence. The blades flashed across the glass and clicked out of sight, leaving brief clarity behind. “You know,” she said, “you’re going to have a hell of a tab. Waiting time and now this trip. I hope you’re good for about thirty-five or forty dollars when you finally get where you’re going. I wouldn’t want to totally tap you out. My intention is to leave you enough for a substantial tip.”
“Um,” Leaphorn said, not really hearing the question. He was thinking of what he would find at apartment number three. A woman. He took that for granted. And what he would say to her? How much would he tell her? Everything, he thought, except the grisly details. Leaphorn’s good mood had been erased by the thought of what lay ahead. But in the long run it would be better for her to know everything. He remembered the endless weeks which led to Emma’s death. The uncertainty. The highs of hope destroyed by reality and followed by despair. He would be the destroyer of this woman’s hope. But then the wound could finally close. She could heal.
Miss Mackinnon seemed to have sensed he no longer wanted conversation. She drove in silence. Leaphorn rolled a window down an inch in defiance of the rain, letting in the late-autumn smell of the city. What would he do next, after the awful interview ahead? He would notify the FBI. Better to call Kennedy in Gallup, he thought, and let him initiate the action. Then he would call the McKinley County Sheriffs office and give them the identification. Not much the sheriff could do with such information but professional courtesy required it. And then he would go and call Rodney. It would be good to have some company this evening.
“Here you are,” Miss Mackinnon said. She slowed the cab to avoid an old Chevy sedan which was backing into a parking space, and then stopped the cab in front of a two-story brick building with porches, built in a U shape around a landscaped central patio. “You want me to wait? It’s expensive.”
“Please wait,” Leaphorn said. When he had broken the news here, he didn’t want to wait around.
He walked down the pathway, following the man who had disembarked from the Chevy. Apartment one seemed to be vacant. The driver of the Chevy unlocked the door of apartment two and disappeared inside after a backward glance at Leaphorn. At apartment three, Leaphorn looked at the doorbell button. What would he say? I am looking for the widow of Elogio Santillanes. I am looking for a relative of Elogio Santillanes. Is this the residence of Elogio Santillanes?
From inside the apartment Leaphorn heard voices, faintly. Male and then female. Then he heard the sound of music. He rang the bell.
Now he heard only music. Abruptly that stopped. Leaphorn removed his hat. He stared at the door, shifting his weight. From the eaves of the porch behind him there came the sound of water dripping. On the street in front of the apartment a car went by. Leaphorn shifted his feet again. He pushed the doorbell button again, heard the ringing break the silence inside. He waited.
Behind him, he heard the door of apartment two opening. The man who had parked the Chevy stood in the doorway peering out at him. He was a small man and on this dim, rainy afternoon his form was backlit by the lamps in his apartment, making him no more than a shape.
Leaphorn pushed the button again and listened to the ring. He reached into his coat and got out the folder which held his police credentials. He sensed that behind him the man was still watching. Then he heard the sound of a lock being released. The door opened about a foot. A woman looked out at him, a middle-aged woman, slender,
