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“What’d he do?”
“Well, for starters he got born in the East,” Finch said. “That’s two strikes on you right there. And he was raised there. Citified.
Preppy type. Papa’s boy. Ivy Leaguer. He didn’t get any bones broke falling off horses, lose a finger in a hay baler. Didn’t pay his dues, you know. You don’t have to actually do anything to have folks down on you.”
“How about the widow? You hear anything specific about her?”
“Don’t hear nothing about her, except some fellas guessing. And she’s a real pretty woman, so that was probably just them wishing,” Finch said. He was grinning at Chee. “You know how it works. If you’re behaving yourself it’s not interesting.” The front door of the Breedlove house opened and Chee could see someone standing behind the screen looking out at them. He picked up his evidence satchel and stepped out of the vehicle.
“I’ll wait here for you,” Finch said, “and maybe scout around a little if I get too stiff from sitting.” Mrs. Elisa Breedlove was indeed a real pretty woman. She seemed excited and nervous, which was what Chee had expected. Her handshake grip was hard, and so was the hand. She led him into a huge living room, dark and cluttered with heavy, old-fashioned furniture. She motioned him into a chair, explaining that she’d had to run into Mancos “to get some stuff.”
“I got back just before you drove up and Ramona told me you’d called and were coming.”
“I hope I’m not—” Chee began, but she cut him off.
“No. No,” she said. “I appreciate this. Ramona said you’d found Hal. Or think so. But she didn’t know anything else.”
“Well,” Chee said, and paused. “What we found was merely bones. We thought they might be Mr. Breedlove.” He sat on the edge of the sofa, watching her.
“Bones,” she said. “Just a skeleton? Was that the skeleton they found about Halloween up on Ship Rock?”
“Yes, ma’am. We wanted to ask you to look at the clothing and equipment he was wearing and see if—tell us if it was the right size, and if you thought it was your husband’s stuff.”
“Equipment?” She was standing beside a table, her hand on it. The light slanting through windows on each side of the fireplace illuminated her face. It was a small, narrow face framed by light brown hair, the jaw muscles tight, the expression tense. Middle thirties, Chee guessed. Slender, perfectly built, luminous green eyes, the sort of classic beauty that survived sun, wind, and hard winters and didn’t seem to require the disguise of makeup. But today she looked tired. He thought of a description Finch had applied to a woman they both knew: “Been rode hard and put up wet.”
Mrs. Breedlove was waiting for an answer, her green eyes fixed on his face.
“Mountain climbing equipment,” Chee said. “I understand the skeleton was in a cleft down the face of a cliff. Presumably, the man had fallen.”
Mrs. Breedlove closed her eyes and bent slightly forward with her hips against the table.
Chee rose. “Are you all right?”
“All right,” she said, but she put a hand against the table to support herself.
“Would you like to sit down? A drink of water?”
“Why do you think it’s Hal?” Her eyes were still closed.
“He’s been missing for eleven years. And we’re told he was a mountain climber. Is that correct?”
“He was. He loved the mountains.”
“This man was about five feet nine inches tall,” Chee said. “The coroner estimated he would have weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds. He had perfect teeth. He had rather long fingers and—”
“Hal was about five eight, I’d say. He was slender, muscular. An athlete. I think he weighed about a hundred and sixty. He was worried about gaining weight.” She produced a weak smile. “Around the belt line. Before we went on that trip, I let out his suit pants to give him another inch.”
“He’d had a broken nose,” Chee continued. “Healed. The doctor said it probably happened when he was an adolescent. And a broken wrist. He said that was more recent.”
Mrs. Breedlove sighed. “The nose was from playing fraternity football, or whatever the boys play at Dartmouth. And the wrist when a horse threw him after we were married.”
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15/03/2008 19:57
TheFallenMan
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Floop/Local%20Settings/Te...
Chee opened the satchel, extracted the climbing equipment, and stacked it on the coffee table. There wasn’t much: a nylon belt harness, the ragged remains of a nylon jacket, even more fragmentary remains of trousers and shirt, a pair of narrow shoes with soles of soft, smooth rubber, a little rock hammer, three pitons, and a couple of steel gadgets that Chee presumed were used somehow for controlling rope slippage.
When he glanced up, Mrs. Breedlove was staring at them, her face white. She turned away, facing the window but looking at nothing except some memory.
“I thought about Hal when I saw the piece the paper had on the skeleton,” she said. “Eldon and I talked about it at supper that night.
He thought the same thing I did. We decided it couldn’t be Hal.” She attempted a smile. “He was always into derring-do stuff. But he wouldn’t try to climb Ship Rock alone. Nobody would. That would be insane. Two great rock men were killed on it, and they were climbing with teams of experienced experts.”
She paused. Listening. The sound of a car engine came through the window. “That was before the Navajos
