Dr. Bourebonette stopped, midphrase. She looked embarrassed.
“You were still working with Hosteen Pinto? You hadn’t finished?”
“More or less. I was to pick him up later that week. The week it happened. In fact that’s how I found out he was arrested. I had read about the crime, but they hadn’t released Hosteen Pinto’s name. So I went out to his place and Mrs. Keeyani told me he was in jail.”
In jail, Leaphorn thought. Unavailable to answer professorial questions. A book put on hold. Perhaps never to be finished. Professor Bourebonette’s motivations seemed much less mysterious.
“Can the book be finished without him?” Leaphorn asked. His voice was as neutral as he could make it. But Professor Bourebonette read him exactly. Her sharp blue eyes stared into his. “Of course,” she said. But she nodded, conceding his point and accepting the accusation. “But it might not be as solid a work.”
Leaphorn looked away from her, back at the report, impressed with her astuteness and feeling slightly guilty. If he told Emma of this exchange, as he would have, she would have clucked her tongue, disapproving of his conduct. He turned the page, looking for the answer to the obvious question these women had posed. How had the old man gotten from the west side of the Reservation to Ship Rock country? At least he could try to find that out for them.
“It was mostly his book,” Professor Bourebonette said, as if to herself.
Leaphorn glanced up, directly into her eyes. And saw what? Anger? Disappointment?
He flipped through the remaining pages. The question that seemed so obvious to him and his visitors had not seemed so intriguing to Agent Rostik. It simply wasn’t dealt with. Well, perhaps there was some simple, irrelevant answer.
He had intended to ignore the manila envelope of photographs in the back of the folder. They weren’t the sort of images he’d want to share with these women. But now he was curious. He slid the stack out on his desk.
Nez’s body beside the burned car. More burned car, with Chee’s fire extinguisher lying beside it. The pistol, shiny and new looking. A half-dozen shots of the locale taken in daylight, with the tortured, ugly shape of a basaltic outcrop rising in the background over the grassy ridge, a liquor bottle, a pocketknife, odds and ends that the police photographer, or the officer running the investigation, thought might be relevant.
Relevant. Leaphorn picked up the photograph of the bottle. A typical Scotch bottle?nothing to distinguish it from most any other, except the cost. He put on his glasses and examined the label.
DEWARS WHITE LABEL
He turned over the photograph. The label on the back confirmed that this was the bottle Ashie Pinto was carrying when apprehended by Officer Chee. “One quart capacity,” the notation added, “approx. five sixth empty.”
Scotch. Expensive Scotch.
“Mrs. Keeyani,” Leaphorn said. “Do you know what Hosteen Pinto likes to drink? Wine? Whiskey?”
Mrs. Keeyani’s face said she resented the question. “He doesn’t drink,” she said.
“He had been drinking that night,” Leaphorn said. “Alcohol was in his blood.”
“He used to drink,” Mrs. Keeyani said. “Just now and then. He’d say if he took one little spoonful he just couldn’t stop. For a long time, he wouldn’t drink, and then somebody would have to go into Flagstaff or Winslow or some place and bring him home from jail. And then he wouldn’t drink any more for a long time. For months. But finally four-five years ago, he did it again, and he got sick in the jail at Flag. Had to go to the hospital and the doctor said it would kill him. And after that?” She paused, shook her head. “No more drinking after that.”
“But when he drank, what did he drink?”
Mrs. Keeyani shrugged. “Wine,” she said. “Anything. Whatever was cheap.”
“How about Scotch?”
Mrs. Keeyani looked puzzled. “Is it sweet?”
“No. It’s very strong and expensive, but not sweet. Why?” Leaphorn asked.
Mrs. Keeyani smiled, remembering. “My uncle had a sweet tooth,” she said. “We used to call him Sugarman. Anything sweet, he loved it. If she saw Hosteen Pinto’s pickup coming, my mother would say, hurry up children, hide that cake I baked. Hide the candy. Hide the sugar sack. Here comes my brother the Sugarman.” She chuckled at the memory. Then, not wanting her mother misjudged, added, “She’d give him a piece of cake.”
“But you don’t know if he drank Scotch?”
“If it was sweet, he drank it. If it was cheap.”
Leaphorn glanced at the photograph of the bottle. The Scotch that came in that was definitely not cheap.
Leaphorn sighed. After a lifetime in police work, he understood himself well enough to know he wouldn’t tolerate this apparent violation of the natural order. He had been curious about how Pinto came to be two hundred miles away from home with no way of getting there, or getting back. But that could be explained by hitchhiking. He could think of no such easy explanation for this bottle of Dewars Scotch. Or two fifty-dollar bills. Or how he got that pistol.
Leaphorn stood.
“Ladies,” he said, “I will see what I can find out.” Chapter 4
JIM CHEE CAME slouching out of the Burn Doctor’s examining room at the University of New Mexico Hospital Burn and Trauma Center feeling distinctly down. Predictions concerning his hand had been ambiguous. Then he noticed the woman sitting against the wall in the waiting room. Something about her reminded him of Janet Pete. She was immersed in a Newsweek, her sleek, dark hair visible above the cover and her very nice legs neatly crossed. He stared. She turned the page of the magazine, giving him a look at more than her forehead.
Depression vanished, replaced by delight. It was Janet Pete.
