Two men waited in the hall. Even in Washington, where every male—to Leaphorn’s casual eye—dressed exactly like every other male, these two were obviously Bureau men.
“Come in,” Leaphorn said, glancing at the identification each man was now holding out for inspection, “I’ve been sort of expecting you.”
He introduced himself. Their names were Dillon and Akron, both being blond, Dillon being bigger and older and in charge.
“Your name is Leaphorn? That right?” Dillon said, glancing in his notebook. “You have identification?”
Leaphorn produced his folder.
Dillon compared Leaphorn’s face with the picture. He examined the credentials. Nothing in his expression suggested he was impressed by either.
“A lieutenant in the Navajo Tribal Police?”
“That’s right.”
Dillon stared at him. “How did you get involved in this Santillanes business?”
Leaphorn explained. The body beside the tracks. Learning the train had been stopped. Learning of the abandoned luggage. Learning of the prescription number. Going to the apartment on the prescription address.
“Have you checked on the man in apartment two?” Leaphorn asked. “He fit the description of the man the attendant saw in Santillanes’ roomette. And he was curious.”
Akron smiled slightly and looked down at his hands. Dillon cleared his throat. Leaphorn nodded. He knew what was coming. He had worked with the Bureau for thirty years.
“You have no jurisdiction in this case,” Dillon said. “You never had any jurisdiction. You may have already fouled up a very sensitive case.”
“Involving national security,” Leaphorn added, thoughtfully and mostly to himself. He didn’t intend any sarcasm. It was simply the code expression he’d been hearing the FBI use since the 1950s. It was something you always heard when the Bureau was covering up incompetence. He was simply wondering if the Bureau’s current screwup was considered serious by Dillon’s superiors. Apparently so.
Dillon stared at him, scenting sarcasm. He saw nothing on Leaphorn’s square Navajo face but deep thought. Leaphorn was thinking about how he could extract information from Dillon and he had reached some sort of conclusion. He nodded.
“Did Agent Kennedy mention to you about the slip of paper found in Santillanes’ shirt pocket?”
Dillon’s expression shifted from stern to unpleasant. He took his lip between his teeth. Released it. Started to say something. Changed his mind. Pride struggled with curiosity. “I am not aware of that at this point in time,” he said.
So there was no purpose in talking to Dillon about it. But he wanted Dillon’s goodwill. “Nothing was written on it except the name Agnes Tsosie—Tsosie is a fairly common Navajo name, and Agnes is prominent in the tribe—and the name of a curing ceremonial. The Yeibichai. One of those had been scheduled to be held for Mrs. Tsosie. Scheduled about three or four weeks after the Santillanes body was found.”
“What is your interest in this?” Dillon asked.
“The agent-in-charge at Gallup is an old friend,” Leaphorn said. “We’ve worked together for years.”
Dillon was not impressed with “agent-in-charge at Gallup.” As a matter of fact, an agent stationed in Washington wasn’t easy to impress with an agent stationed anywhere else, much less a small Western town. In earlier days agents were transferred to places like Gallup because they had somehow offended J. Edgar Hoover or one of the swarm of yeasayers with which he had manned the upper echelons of his empire. In J. Edgar’s day, New Orleans had been the ultimate Siberia of the Bureau. J. Edgar detested New Orleans as hot, humid, and decadent and presumed all other FBI employees felt the same way. But since his demise, his camp followers usually exiled to smaller towns agents considered unduly ambitious, unacceptably intelligent, or prone to bad publicity.
“It’s still not your case,” Dillon said. “You don’t have any jurisdiction outside your Indian reservation. And in this case, you wouldn’t have jurisdiction even there.”
Leaphorn smiled. “And happy I don’t,” he said. “It looks too complicated for me. But I’m curious. I’ve got to get with Pete Domenici for lunch before I go home, and he’s going to want to know what I’m doing here.”
Agent Akron had sat down in a bedside chair just out of Leaphorn’s vision but Leaphorn kept his eye on Dillon while he said this. Obviously, Dillon recognized the name of Pete Domenici, the senior senator from New Mexico, who happened to be the ranking Republican on the committee which oversaw the Bureau’s budget. Leaphorn smiled at Dillon again—a conspiratorial one-cop-to-another smile. “You know how some people are about homicides. Pete is fascinated by ’em. I tell Pete about Santillanes and he’s going to have a hundred questions.”
“Domenici,” Dillon said.
“One thing the senator is going to ask me is why Santillanes was killed way out in New Mexico,” Leaphorn said. “Out in his district.”
Leaphorn watched Dillon making up his mind, imagining the process. He would think that probably Leaphorn was lying about Domenici, which he was, but Dillon hadn’t survived in Washington by taking chances. Dillon reached his decision.
“I can’t talk about what he was doing out there,” Dillon said. “Agent Akron and I are with the antiterrorist division. And I can say Santillanes was a prominent member of a terrorist organization.”
“Oh,” Leaphorn said.
“Opposed to the regime of President Pinochet.” Dillon looked at Leaphorn. “He’s the president of Chile,” Dillon added.
Leaphorn nodded. “But you can’t tell me why Santillanes was out in New Mexico?” He nodded again. “I can respect that.” In the code the FBI had developed down the years, it meant Dillon didn’t know the answer.
“I cannot say,” Dillon said. “Not at this moment in time.”
