Dinetah, safely between the Sacred Mountains. She never felt any need to learn what lay beyond them.
A door slammed faintly in distant Albuquerque. Then came the sound of footsteps on a hard floor, and a boyish voice said: “Hello?”
“This is Lieutenant Leaphorn, Taka,” Leaphorn said. “Remember? We talked at your house in Ship Rock.”
“You have the wrong number,” the boy said. “I think so.”
“I am calling for Taka Ji,” Leaphorn said.
“This is Jimmy Ha,” the boy said. “I think they took Taka to my aunt’s house. Down in the South Valley.”
“Do you have that number?”
Jimmy Ha had it, but it took another five minutes to find it. Then, when Leaphorn dialed it, he got another no answer.
He fiddled ineffectively with his paperwork, passing enough time to make another try sensible. Again, no answer. He hung up, dialed the Federal Public Defender’s office in Albuquerque.
No, Jim Chee wasn’t there. He had been in this morning but he’d left.
“To go where?” Leaphorn asked.
To the federal courthouse.
“How about Janet Pete? Is she in?”
Janet Pete was at the courthouse, too. A jury was being selected.
“When she comes in would you tell her that I have to get a message to Jim Chee. Tell her to get word to him that I have to talk to him. Tell her it’s important.”
When he hung up, he made no pretense of doing paperwork, he simply sat and thought. Why had Colonel Ji been killed? He swiveled in his chair and stared at his map. It told him nothing. Nothing except that everything seemed to focus on a rock formation south of Ship Rock. Nothing made any sense. And that, he knew, was because he was seeing it all from the wrong perspective.
He thought about Professor Bourebonette.
He thought about Jim Chee. Unreliable perhaps. But a good mind.
He noticed his wastebasket. The maintenance man who had been neglecting to wash his windows had also neglected to empty it. Leaphorn leaned over and fished out the brochure describing the wonders of the People’s Republic of China. He spread it on the desk and studied the pictures again.
Then he threw it back in the wastebasket. Chapter 20
ODELL REDD WAS not at home. Or if he was, he didn’t respond to Jim Chee’s persistent knocking. Chee gave up. He found a vacant parking place in a loading zone behind the Biology Building and walked over to the History Department.
No, Jean Jacobs hadn’t seen him, either.
“Not this morning. He came in yesterday. We went out to lunch.” Jean Jacobs’s expression made it clear that this was a happy event.
“No idea where he is?”
“He should be working on his dissertation. Maybe in the library.”
The idea of hunting through the labyrinthine book stacks at Zimmerman held no appeal to Chee. He sat down.
“How about your boss? Still missing?”
“Nary a word,” Jacobs said. “I’m beginning to seriously think he died someplace. Maybe his wife killed him, or one of his graduate students.” She laughed. “They’d draw straws. Stand in line for it if they thought they had any chance of getting away with it.”
“What kind of car does he drive?”
“I don’t know.” She opened a drawer and extracted a file. “I’ve seen him driving a white four-door sedan, and sometimes a sexy sports car. Whorehouse red.”
She extracted a card from the file.
“I think that’s when his wife gave up on him, after he bought that red one. Let’s see, now. Oldsmobile Cutlass. Nineteen ninety. Corvette coupe. That’s a 1982 model. But cool, you know. Impresses the cute little coeds looking for a father figure to take them to bed.”
Jean Jacobs laughed when she said it, but it didn’t sound like the thought amused her.
“That’s his application for a parking permit?” ,
“Right,” Jacobs said. “It covers both cars. You just hang it on the one you’re driving.”
Chee looked down at his hand which was itching furiously. He resisted an impulse to rub it, adjusted the bandage instead. Jacobs was watching him.
“Healing up okay?”
Chee nodded. He was thinking about a low-slung Corvette, or a brand-new Oldsmobile, banging over those tracks south of Ship Rock.
“Which car did he drive mostly? Which one was he driving that last day you saw him, that evening when he came in to pick up his mail? You have any way of knowing what he was driving?”
