“A homicide?”
“Maybe. We sent an ambulance. You want me to call the captain?”
“Don’t interrupt him,” Leaphorn said. “When he comes in, tell him I went directly out to the Huan Ji residence. Tell him I’ll fill him in if I learn anything.”
“Huan Ji,” the dispatcher said. “That’s where the shooting was reported. That’s where we sent the ambulance.” Chapter 13
THEY MET THE ambulance returning to the Ship Rock Public Health Service Hospital as they turned off onto Huan Ji’s street. The emergency lights were flashing and the siren growling. Leaphorn had been around violence too long to be deceived by that. The driver was in no hurry. He recognized Leaphorn as they passed, and raised a hand in salute. Whoever had been shot at Huan Ji’s place was either in no danger or he was already dead.
Ji’s house was a rectangular frame-and-stucco bungalow in a block of such structures. They had been designed long ago by a Bureau of Indian Affairs bureaucrat to house Bureau of Indian Affairs employees. As they had weathered and sagged, they had passed from that existence and become tribal property?occupied now by schoolteachers, hospital clerks, road-grader operators, and similar folk. Ji’s house was instantly recognizable. It had attracted a cluster of police cars and a scattering of neighbors watching from their yards. Even without the magnet of this temporary tragedy, it would have stood out.
It was surrounded by a neat chain-link fence and flanked by a tidy gravel driveway that led to an empty carport. Inside the fence was a flower bed, precisely bordered by a perfectly aligned row of bricks. Six rose bushes were spaced on each side of the concrete sidewalk. Autumn had turned the Bermuda-grass lawn gray, but it was trimmed and ready for spring.
The house itself was a clone of its neighbors and as alien as a Martian. In a row of houses frayed, faded, and weary, its fresh white paint and fresh blue trim seemed a reproach to the dusty street.
Captain Largo, as neat as the house but somewhat smaller, was standing on the porch. He was talking to a skinny tribal policeman and a neat young man in a felt hat and a dark gray business suit?which meant in Four Corners country that he was either an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a young man making his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Largo’s bulk made them both look unnaturally small. He recognized Leaphorn and waved.
Leaphorn glanced at Bourebonette, thinking of how to phrase his request.
She anticipated it.
“I’ll wait in the car,” she said.
“I won’t be long,” Leaphorn said.
On the porch, Largo introduced him. The skinny policeman was Eldon Roanhorse, who Leaphorn vaguely remembered from some affair out of the past, and Gray Suit was Theodore Rostik of the Farmington office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Mr. Rostik just transferred in this summer,” Largo said. “Lieutenant Leaphorn is with our criminal investigation division. Out of Window Rock.”
If Rostik was impressed by Leaphorn or his title, he concealed it. He nodded to Leaphorn, turned back to Largo.
“Window Rock,” he said. “How’d he know about this? How did he get here so quick?”
Once this rudeness would have irritated Leaphorn. That was a long time ago. He said, “I just happened to be up here on another matter. What do you have?”
“Homicide,” Largo said. “Somebody shot the owner here. Twice. No witnesses. Mailman heard him moaning. Looked in and saw him on the floor and turned it in.”
“Any suspects?”
“We’re talking to neighbors but nobody much seems to have been around when it happened,” Largo said.
“This will be a federal case,” Rostik said. “Felony on a federal reservation.”
“Of course,” Leaphorn said. “We’ll help any way we can. Interpreting, things like that. Where’s his wife?”
“Neighbors say he’s a widower,” Roanhorse said. “He was a teacher down at the high school. He lived here with his boy. Teenaged kid.”
“If we need help?” Rostik began, but Leaphorn held up his hand.
“Just a second,” he said. “Where’s his car?”
“Car?” Rostik said.
“We’ve got a call out on it,” Largo said, looking solemnly at Leaphorn. “I understand it’s an old white Jeepster.”
“The son wasn’t here?”
“Not unless he did it,” Rostik said. “When the mailman got here there was just Mr. Ji.”
“Mr. Rostik,” Leaphorn said, “if you don’t have any objection, I’d like to look around inside. Nothing will be touched.”
“Well, now,” Rostik said. He cleared his throat. “I don’t see what?”
Captain Largo, who almost never interrupted, interrupted now. “The lieutenant is usually our liaison with the Bureau in cases like this. He’d better see what you have here,” he said, and led the way inside.
The homicide team had drawn a chalk outline of where Colonel Huan Ji’s body had fallen against the front room’s wall. A great splotch of blood drying on the polished hardwood floor made the chalk redundant. Except for that, and a scrabble of reddish marks on the tan wallpaper, the room was as neat as the yard. Immaculate. And cool as the autumn afternoon outside.
