The test showed a blood alcohol level of 0.211. The percentage of alcohol in the blood that made one formally and legally drunk in New Mexico was 0.10.
There followed the Federal Bureau of Investigation report dated eleven days following the arrest. Leaphorn scanned it. Ballistics confirmed that the bullet fired into the chest of Nez had come from the pistol confiscated from Pinto, a .38 caliber revolver. It confirmed that holes in Pinto’s trousers were caused by burns. There was more, including the autopsy. Leaphorn knew what it said. Nez had been alive when the fire suffocated him. Probably unconscious, but alive. Leaphorn sighed, turned to the next page. It summarized a statement taken from Chee at the hospital. He scanned it quickly. Familiar stuff. But wait. He lingered on a paragraph. Reread it.
“Officer Chee said that for several weeks Nez had been interested in apprehending an unidentified subject who had been vandalizing and defacing a basaltic outcrop east of Red Rock and south of Ship Rock. Chee said he believed from what he heard on the radio that Nez had seen this person and expected to apprehend the subject. He said the radio signal was breaking up but that he heard Nez laughing and Nez did not appear to want a backup.”
Leaphorn snorted, an angry sound and unintentionally loud. He glanced up to see if the women had noticed. They had.
He covered his embarrassment with a question. “Did anyone tell you about the circumstances?”
“They said he was arrested out there where it happened,” Mrs. Keeyani said. “They said he had the gun that killed that policeman.”
“Did they tell you that he hasn’t denied it?” Leaphorn asked. But he was thinking of Jim Chee. Irritated. Nez did not appear to want a backup. Whether he wanted one or not, the rules said Chee should be there. But that was Chee’s reputation. He made his own rules. Smart. Unusually smart. But not a team player. So he was sitting in the trading post at Red Rock drinking coffee while Nez, alone, was dealing with a homicidal drunk armed with a pistol.
“I don’t know what my uncle told them,” Mary Keeyani said. She shook her head.
“But I know he didn’t do it. Not Hosteen Pinto. He wouldn’t kill anybody.”
Leaphorn waited, watching her face, giving her a chance to say more. She simply sat, looking down at her hands.
Finally she said: “A long, long time ago, before I was born
He got in a fight then, when he was young, and a man was killed. But he was a wild boy then, and drunk. Now he is an old man. He doesn’t drink now. Not for years.”
It was not something to argue about. Instead Leaphorn said, “He won’t tell them anything at all. That’s what I’m told. Not a word. Not even to his lawyer.”
Mrs. Keeyani looked at her hands. “That wasn’t his gun,” she said. “My uncle had an old .22 rifle. A single-shot rifle. He still has that. It’s in his hogan.”
Leaphorn said nothing. This interested him. That pistol Pinto had was a Ruger, an expensive model and not what you would expect a man like Pinto to own. On the other hand, there could be a thousand explanations of why he did own it.
“Perhaps you didn’t know about this pistol,” Leaphorn said.
Now it was Mrs. Keeyani’s turn to be surprised. “He is my mother’s brother,” she said. “He never got married. His place was there at our grandmother’s place behind Yon Dot Mountain.”
Leaphorn needed no more explanation. If Ashie Pinto had owned an expensive Ruger revolver, his relatives would have known it. He glanced back at the FBI report, looking for the name of the investigating officer. Agent Theodore Rostik. He’d never heard of Rostik, which meant he was a newcomer to the Gallup office?either fresh and green from the FBI Academy, or an older agent exiled as a lost cause. Up-and-comers in the agency were not sent to places like Farmington, or Fargo, or Gallup, or other towns considered Siberian by the Bureau hierarchy. These were the billets for new men without political connections in the agency, or those who had fallen from grace?perhaps having caused bad publicity (the agency’s mortal sin) or shown signs of original thinking. For Leaphorn the point was that Rostik might be unusually stupid, or unusually smart?either of which might cause his exile. But most likely he was simply green.
“I’ll tell you what I think you should do,” he said to Mrs. Keeyani without looking up from the report. “Hosteen Pinto has a lawyer who may be green but will be smart. The Federal Public Defender just hires the smart ones. Work with her. Tell her the strange things that trouble you. She will send out one of the investigators to learn the facts. I know one of them personally, a very good man. You should work with them.”
Leaphorn read on, not looking up, waiting for a response. He heard Mrs. Keeyani shift in her chair. But the voice he heard was Dr. Bourebonette’s. “Are they Navajos?” she asked. “Would they understand that Hosteen Pinto’s family would certainly know if Hosteen Pinto owned that pistol?”
“Maybe not,” Leaphorn said. He didn’t look up because he didn’t want to show his resentment. Mrs. Keeyani he could tolerate. He respected her reason for being here?even though it wasted her time and his. Professor Bourebonette was another matter. But it was an astute question.
“Probably they wouldn’t understand that,” he agreed.
He was looking for something in the report that would tell him how Ashie Pinto had gotten from his place behind Yon Dot Mountain to Navajo Route 33 south of Ship Rock, New Mexico. Two hundred miles, more or less. Nothing in the report mentioned an abandoned car or pickup.
Dr. Bourebonette cleared her throat politely. “Does that report tell how Hosteen Pinto got over into New Mexico?”
“I was looking for that,” Leaphorn said, glancing up at her. “Do you know?”
“Someone came and got him,” she said.
“Who?”
Dr. Bourebonette glanced at Mary Keeyani.
“I don’t know,” Mary Keeyani said. “But I know somebody came and got him. I had gone over to the store at the Gap to get some kerosene for the light. And my husband, he was out with the sheep. Everybody was gone
