“Who?” Leaphorn said. He tried to make it sound casual, resisted the impulse to lean forward. He remembered how McGinnis loved to drag things out and the more you wanted it, the longer he made you wait.
“If it was somebody he was working for, that is,” McGinnis said. “He’d been working for Professor Bourebonette here?” he nodded toward her “?and for somebody from the University of New Mexico. I think his name was Tagert. And for a couple of others off and on. People who wanted his folk tales like the professor, or wanted to put down some of his memories.”
McGinnis stopped, tested the side of the coffeepot for temperature with the back of his finger and looked at Leaphorn. Waiting.
“Which one was it?”
McGinnis ignored Leaphorn’s question. “You sure Mary didn’t know?” he asked Bourebonette.
“Absolutely sure.”
“Had to be Tagert then.” He waited again.
“Why Tagert?” Leaphorn asked.
“Tagert used to give him whiskey. Mary found out about it. She wouldn’t let him work for Tagert any more.”
Leaphorn considered this. It fit with what Mrs. Keeyani had said. And it made a certain amount of sense, even though the way McGinnis told it, it seemed nothing more than a guess. But McGinnis knew more than he’d told. Leaphorn was sure of that. He was also tired, with hours of driving ahead of him. He didn’t want to sit here while McGinnis amused himself.
“Did you write a letter for him? For Hosteen Pinto?”
McGinnis tested the coffeepot again, found the heat adequate, filled one cup, handed it to Professor Bourebonette.
“If you like sugar in it, I can get you that. I’m all out of milk unless I have some condensed out in the store.”
“This is fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You known Lieutenant Leaphorn long? If I might ask such a question.”
“You may. We met just this morning.”
“Notice how he gets right to the point. That’s unusual in a Navajo. Usually they’re more polite about it.” McGinnis glanced at Leaphorn. “We got plenty of time.”
“Pinto got a letter from Tagert here,” Leaphorn said. “He happened to pick it up himself, didn’t he? You read it to him and then you answered it for him. That about right?”
McGinnis poured Leaphorn’s coffee into a mug that bore the legend JUSTIN BOOTS. It reminded Leaphorn that the boots Emma had bought him for his birthday after they were married were Justins. They couldn’t afford them then. But he’d worn them almost twenty years. Emma. The sure knowledge that he would never see her again sat suddenly on his shoulders, as it sometimes did. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, McGinnis was holding the mug out to him, expression quizzical.
Leaphorn took it, nodded.
“You had it about right,” McGinnis said. “He was in the store when the mail came, as I remember it. Tagert wanted to interview him about something. He wanted to know if he could come and get him on some date or other. He asked Ashie to let him know if that date was all right or to name another if it wasn’t.”
“Anything else?” Leaphorn asked. He sipped the coffee. Even by the relaxed standards of the Window Rock Tribal Police headquarters it was bad coffee. Made this morning, Leaphorn guessed, and reheated all day.
“Just a short letter,” McGinnis said. “That was it.”
“What was the date?”
“I don’t remember. Would have been early in August.”
“And Pinto agreed?”
“Yeah,” McGinnis said. He frowned, remembering?the plump, round face Leaphorn remembered from a decade ago shrunken now into a wilderness of lines and creases. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, the upshot was he asked me to write Tagert back and tell him he’d be ready in the afternoon.”
Professor Bourebonette, either politer or more starved for caffeine than Leaphorn, was sipping her coffee with no apparent distaste. She put down the cup.
“So now we know how he got to Ship Rock,” she said. “Tagert came and got him.”
But Leaphorn was studying McGinnis. “Pinto said something about it, or something like that? He didn’t just immediately say write him back?”
“I’m trying to remember,” McGinnis said, impatiently. “I’m trying to get it all back in my mind. We was in this room, I remember that much. Ashie’s getting too damn old to amount to much but I’ve known him for years and when he comes in we usually come back here for a talk. Find out what’s going on over by the river, you know.”
He rocked forward in his chair, got up clumsily. He opened the cabinet above the stove and extracted a bottle. Old Crow.
“The lieutenant here don’t drink,” McGinnis said to Professor Bourebonette. He glanced at Leaphorn. “Unless he’s changed his ways. But I will offer you a sip of bourbon.”
“And I will accept it,” the professor said. She handed McGinnis her empty coffee cup and he poured the whiskey into it. Then he fumbled at the countertop, came up with a Coca-Cola glass and filled it carefully up to the trademark by the label. That done, he sat again, put the bottle on the floor beside him, and rocked.
