“One of these days. Anyway, I’m at the point where if a yelling match started with the feds, anybody who decided to fire me would have to move fast.”
Largo didn’t comment on that. He said, “Let me know when you’re coming, and if you need any help. Right now, I’ll just look that address up for you.”
“I’ll probably come this afternoon,” Leaphorn said. “Just as soon as I get my paperwork done.”
But just as he was moving the penultimate report from in-basket to out-basket, the telephone rang.
“A woman down here to see you,” the desk clerk said. “A Professor Bourebonette.”
“Ah,” Leaphorn said. He thought a moment. “Ask her to come on up.”
He put down the telephone, pulled the ultimate report out of the basket, opened it on his desk, and then stared out the window at the sun and shadows on Window Rock Ridge. A question of motive again. What brought the professor here? A long drive from Flagstaff. Either she had risen in the predawn darkness or she had spent the night somewhere. At the Window Rock motel perhaps, or at Gallup. A strong motive. Friendship, she said. Friendship might well be part of it. But what else?
As she came through his door, Professor Bourebonette’s words were apologetic. But her expression wasn’t.
“I realize we’re imposing on your time. Hosteen Pinto isn’t your responsibility. But I wondered if you could bring me up to date. Have you learned anything?”
Leaphorn was standing. “Please,” he said, motioning her to a chair. He sat, too, closed the waiting folder. “I haven’t learned anything very useful.”
“What did Professor Tagert say? I called his office and they told me he wasn’t in. They didn’t know when to expect him. That seems awfully odd. Their semester started two or three weeks ago. He’d have to be keeping office hours.”
“Dr. Tagert seems to have jumped ship,” Leaphorn said. “I got the same information you did.”
“He’s missing?” Dr. Bourebonette sounded incredulous. “Are the police looking for him?”
This was something that always had to be explained. Leaphorn did it, patiently.
“It doesn’t work that way with adults. You have a right to be missing if you want to be. It’s nobody’s business but your own. The police ‘look’ only if there’s some crime involved. Or some reason to suspect foul play.”
Professor Bourebonette was frowning at him. “There’s certainly a crime involved here. And isn’t he what you call a material witness?”
“He might be,” Leaphorn said. “If he is, nobody knows it. The crime is the Nez homicide. There’s nothing to connect him to that. Absolutely nothing.”
Bourebonette absorbed this statement, her eyes on Leaphorn but her thoughts, obviously, on something else. She nodded,
Coyote Waits agreeing with some inner notion. Leaphorn considered her. What was she thinking? It would be something intelligent, he was sure of that. He wished the thought, whatever it was, would provoke some remark that would give him a clue to what she was doing here.
“Have you considered that Tagert might be dead?” she asked. “Have you considered that whoever killed your officer also killed Tagert? Have you thought of that?”
Leaphorn nodded. “I have.”
Bourebonette was silent again, thinking. Long silences didn’t seem to bother her. Unusual in a white. From downstairs Leaphorn could hear a telephone ringing. He smelled coffee brewing. Professor Bourebonette was wearing a cologne of some sort. The aroma was very, very faint. So faint it might be his imagination.
“The trial should be postponed,” Bourebonette said suddenly. “Until they can find Professor Tagert.” She stared at Leaphorn, her eyes demanding. “How can we arrange that? Surely they can’t try Mr. Pinto without knowing what’s going on. Nobody knows what actually happened out there.”
Leaphorn shrugged. But the shrug wasn’t good enough.
“I think we have a right to expect some sort of effort toward simple justice,” Bourebonette said. Her voice sounded stiff. “Mr. Pinto has a right to demand that.”
“I’ll admit I would have liked a little solider investigation,” Leaphorn said. “But it’s not my responsibility. It’s a federal case and the federals have all they need to convince a jury beyond any reasonable doubt. The game is played a little?”
“Game!”
Leaphorn interrupted the interruption with an upraised palm. He, too, could be aggressive. “?a little differently when the defendant does not deny the crime,” he continued. “In the first place, that reduces any worry that you have that you might have arrested the wrong person. In the second place, it leaves you without the defendant’s story to check. So there’s much less the arresting agency can do, even when it has the very best of intentions.”
Bourebonette was studying him. “And you think they’ve done all that’s necessary?”
He hesitated. “Well,” he said, “I would want to talk to Tagert, and there’s another loose end or two.”
“Like what? Lack of a motive?”
Leaphorn closed his eyes. Memory has no temporal limits. When he opened them again two seconds later memory had shown him a score of bloody scenes.
“Whiskey is the perfect motive,” he said.
“Then what?”
He wanted to turn the question around, to ask this woman to tell him why this drunken shooting was worth so
