“Let’s try another theory,” Leaphorn said. “Let’s say that Hal Breedlove didn’t live until his thirtieth birthday. Let’s say those people Hosteen Sam saw climbing on September eighteenth got to the top, or at least two of them did. One of the two was Hal. The other one—or maybe two—push him off. Or, more likely he just falls. Now he’s dead and he’s dead two days too soon. He’s still twenty-nine years old. So the climber’s register is falsified to show he was alive after his birthday.” Chee held up his hand, grinning. “Huge hole in that one,” he said. “Remember Hal was prowling around the canyon with his wife and Amos Nez until the twenty-third of . . . “ Chee’s voice trailed off into silence. And then he said, “Oh!” and stared at Leaphorn.
Leaphorn was making a wry face, shaking his head. “It sure took me long enough to see that possibility,” he said. “I never could have if you hadn’t got into old man Sam’s register.”
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“My God,” Chee said. “If that’s the way it worked, I can see why they have to kill Nez. And if they’re smart, the sooner the better.”
“I’m going to ask you to call the Lazy B and find out if Demott and the widow are there and then arrange to drive up tomorrow and talk to them about what we found on top of the mountain.”
“What if they’re not at home?”
“Then I think we ought to be doing a little more to keep Amos Nez safe,” Leaphorn said. And he opened the door and stepped out into the icy wind.
24
ELISA BREEDLOVE HAD ANSWERED
the telephone. And, yes, Eldon was home and they’d be glad to talk to him. How about sometime tomorrow afternoon?
So Acting Lieutenant Chee showed up at his office in Shiprock early to get his desk cleared and make the needed arrangements. He arrived with tape plastered over the stitches around his left eye and a noticeable shiner visible behind them. He lowered himself carefully into the chair behind the desk to avoid jarring his ribs and gave Officers Teddy Begayaye, Deejay Hondo, Edison Bai, and Bernadette Manuelito a few moments to inspect the damage. In Begayaye and Bai it seemed to provoke a mixture of admiration and amusement, well suppressed. Hondo didn’t seem interested and Officer Bernie Manuelito’s face reflected a sort of shocked sympathy.
With that out of the way, he satisfied their curiosity with a personal briefing of what actually happened at the Maryboy place, supplementing the official one they would have already received. Then down to business.
He instructed Bai to try to find out where a .38-caliber pistol confiscated from a Shiprock High School boy had come from. He suggested to Officer Manuelito that she continue her efforts to locate a fellow named Adolph Deer, who had jumped bond after a robbery conviction but was reportedly “frequently being seen around the Two Gray Hills trading post.” He told Hondo to finish the paperwork on a burglary case that was about to go to the grand jury. Then it was Teddy Begayaye’s turn.
“I hate to tell you, Teddy, but you’re going to have to be taxi driver today,” Chee said. “I have to go up to the Lazy B ranch on this Maryboy shooting thing. I thought I could handle it myself, but”—he lifted his left arm, flinched, and grimaced—“the old ribs aren’t quite as good as I thought they were.”
“You shouldn’t be riding around in a car,” Officer Manuelito said. “You should be in bed, healing up. They shouldn’t have let you out of the hospital.”
“Hospitals are dangerous,” Chee said. “People die in them.”
Edison Bai grinned at that, but Officer Manuelito didn’t think it was funny.
“Something goes wrong with broken ribs and you have a punctured lung,” she said.
“They’re just cracked,” Chee said. “Just a bruise.” With that subject closed, he kept Bai behind for a fill-in about the pistol-carrying student. Typically, Bai provided far more details than Chee needed. The boy had been involved in a joyride car theft during the summer. He was born to the Streams Come Together people, his mother’s clan, and for the Salt clan, for his paternal people, but his father was also part Hopi. He was believed to be involved in the smaller and rougher of Shiprock’s juvenile gangs. He was meanness on the hoof. People weren’t raising their kids the way they used to. Chee agreed, put on his hat and hurried stiffly out the door into the parking lot. It had been chilly and clouding up when he came to work. Now there was solid overcast and an icy northwest wind swept dust and leaves past his ankles.
The gale was blowing Begayaye back toward him.
“Jim,” he said. “I forgot. The wife made a dental appointment for me today. How about me switching assignments with Bernie? That Deer kid isn’t going anywhere.”
“Well,” Chee said. Across the parking lot he saw Bernie Manuelito standing on the sheltered side of his patrol car, watching them.
“Is it okay with Manuelito?”
“Yes, sir,” Begayaye said. “She don’t mind.”
“By the way,” Chee said, “I forgot to thank you guys for sending me those flowers.” Begayaye looked puzzled. “Flowers? What flowers?”
Thus it was that Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee headed north toward the Colorado border leaning his good shoulder against the passenger-side door with Officer Bernadette Manuelito behind the wheel. Chee, being a detective, had figured out who had sent him the flowers. Begayaye hadn’t done it, and Bai would never think of doing such a thing even if he was fond of Chee—which Chee was pretty sure he wasn’t. That left Deejay Hondo and Bernie. Which clearly meant Bernie had sent them and made it look like everybody did it so he wouldn’t think she was buttering him up. That probably meant she liked him. Thinking back, he could 71 of 102
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