The other policeman emerged from the passenger door, putting his uniform hat back on a head of short- cropped gray hair. Lieutenant Leaphorn.
“Yaa”eh t’eeh,” Leaphorn said.
The afternoon sun still lit the high side of Ship Rock town but here in the cottonwoods beside the river Chee’s trailer had been in shadow for long enough to be cold. Chee turned on the propane heater, filled his coffeepot with water, got out three cups and three of the paper filters he was now using to brew the stuff right in the cups. Why had the captain been looking for him? Why was Leaphorn here, so far from his desk at Window Rock? Chee lit the fire under the coffeepot, conscious that he was more cautious with fire than he used to be. The captain and the lieutenant occupied his two chairs. Chee took a seat on the edge of his bunk.
“We have to wait until the water boils,” he said. “Just takes a few minutes.”
Largo cleared his throat, producing a rumble.
“We had a man killed here in Ship Rock today,” Largo said. “Shot.”
This was not anything like what Chee had expected.
“Shot? Who?”
“Fellow named Huan Ji,” Largo said. “You know him?”
“Wow,” Chee said. He sat stock still, digesting this. Digesting how he was learning it, too. “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t exactly know him, but I’ve talked to him. Once. Last week. It was his car I saw out there where Delbert was killed.” Then another thought. “Who shot him?”
He noticed Leaphorn sitting, arms folded across his chest, watching him.
“No suspects,” Largo said. “Apparently somebody came to his house this afternoon. It must have been very soon after he got home from school. Or maybe they were there waiting for him. Anyway, whoever it was shot him twice. Left him on the floor in the front room.”
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Chee said. “Any idea why anybody’d shoot him?”
“None,” Largo said. He was leaning his chair back against the wall, looking at Chee over his glasses. “How about you? Any ideas?”
“None,” Chee said.
“What did you talk to him about?”
“About what he might have seen that night Nez got killed.”
“What did he see?”
“He said he didn’t see anything.”
“He left a note,” Largo said. “Wrote it on the wallpaper there where he was lying. He wrote ‘Take care of Taka’ and under that he wrote ‘Tell Chee I lied.’ He put his finger in his own blood and wrote it.”
“Be damned,” Chee said.
“What do you think he meant?”
Chee hesitated. “Well, I knew he lied about one thing. He said he didn’t see any other cars. He had to have seen my police car. He was coming toward me, his Jeepster was, and he did a right turn just before we met. My siren was going and the flasher. And my headlights were right on him. No way he wouldn’t have seen me.”
The three of them considered that.
Leaphorn said: “Odd thing to lie about.”
“I thought so, too,” Chee said. “I wondered why.”
“Did you ask him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t think it would lead anywhere.”
Leaphorn considered this, and nodded. He said: “Why did you go talk to him? You’re on convalescent leave. And it’s a federal case.”
Chee felt himself flushing. “The FBI hadn’t talked to him,” Chee said. “I thought he might have seen something.”
Leaphorn didn’t comment on that. He said: “The water’s boiling for your coffee.”
Once Joe Leaphorn had been addicted to cigarettes?smoking unfiltered Pall Malls at a rate of two packs a day and, when he shifted to niters in response to Emma’s concern, three packs a day. He had broken that habit early in Emma’s terminal illness. He had bitten the nicotine deprival bullet as a sort of offering to her, who loved him. And to the gods?that this small, lovely woman would be left with him. As the yearning for cigarettes faded he had found it replaced by a delight in coffee. Now he awoke each morning in his lonely bed anticipating that first sip and savoring it. His working day was measured out in the intervals between the cups. Being Leaphorn, being logical, he’d known that this obsessive affair with coffee represented a flaw in his character, a weakness, as well as a risk to his health. He’d made a logical compromise: no more than four cups before noon and nothing but decaffeinated stuff after lunch. With that he lived fairly happily.
But today he’d had almost no coffee. He had drunk his usual two cups with what was left of last night’s mutton stew for breakfast. He had stopped at the store beside the highway at the Newcomb junction for another cup. But none had been available. At lunch in Shiprock the product served had been a reheated stale brew obviously left over from breakfast and undrinkable even by Leaphorn’s relaxed standards. And then the homicide of Huan Ji had interfered. Now, as Jim Chee poured boiling water through the coffee grounds, the aroma that reached Leaphorn’s nostrils was indescribably delicious.
