15/03/2008 19:57
TheFallenMan
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Floop/Local%20Settings/Te...
“Oh,” Chee said. “The climbers who went up for the bones didn’t find it. I doubt if they looked. Largo asked them to go up and bring down the body. And I remember they thought there’d have to be two bodies. Nobody would be crazy enough to climb Ship Rock alone. But they didn’t find another one. I guess our fallen man was that crazy.”
“Sounds like it,” Leaphorn said.
Chee poured them both some more coffee, looked at Leaphorn and said, “I guess this Harold Breedlove was a mountain climber. Am I right?”
“He was,” Leaphorn said. “But if he’s your fallen man, he wasn’t a very smart one.”
“You mean climbing up there alone.”
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “Or if he wasn’t alone, climbing with someone who’d go off and leave him.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Chee said. “The rescue crew said he’d either climbed up to the ledge, which they didn’t think would be possible without help, or tried to rappel down from above. But the skeleton was intact. Nothing broken.” Chee shook his head.
“If someone was with him, why didn’t they report it? Get help? Bring down the body? You have any thoughts about that?”
“Yeah,” Chee said. “Makes no sense either way.”
Leaphorn sipped coffee. Considered.
“I’d like to know more about this climbing gear you said was stolen out of Breedlove’s car,” Chee said.
“I said it might have been stolen, and maybe from the car,” Leaphorn said.
Chee waited.
“About a month after the guy vanished, we caught a kid from Many Farms breaking into a tourist’s car parked at one of the Canyon de Chelly overlooks. He had a bunch of other stolen stuff at his place, car radios, mobile phones, tape decks, so forth, including some mountain climbing gear. Rope, pitons, whatever they call those gadgets. By then we’d been looking for Breedlove long enough to know he was a climber. The boy claimed he found the stuff where runoff had uncovered it in an arroyo bottom. We had him take us out and show us. It was about five hundred yards upstream from where we’d found Breedlove’s car.” Chee considered this.
“Did you say the car hadn’t been broken into?”
“It wasn’t locked when we found it. The stuff kids usually take was still there.” Chee made a wry face. “You have any idea why he’d just take the climbing gear?”
“And leave the stuff he could sell? I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. He picked up his cup, noticed it was empty, put it down again.
“I heard you’re getting married,” he said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. You want a refill?”
“A very pretty lady,” Leaphorn said. “And smart. A good lawyer.” He held out his cup.
Chee laughed. “I never heard you use that adjective talking about a lawyer before. Anyway, not about a defense lawyer.” Janet Pete worked for Dinebeiina Nahiilna be Agaditahe, which translates more or less literally as “People who talk fast and help people” and was more likely to be called DNA, or public defenders, or with less polite language by Navajo Police.
“Has to be a first time for everything,” Leaphorn said. “And Miss Pete—” Leaphorn couldn’t think of a way to finish that sentence.
Chee took his cup and refilled it.
“I hope you’ll let me know if anything interesting turns up on your fallen man.” That surprised Chee. Wasn’t it finished now? Leaphorn had found his missing man. Largo’s fallen man was identified. Case closed.
What else interesting would there be?
“You mean if we check out the Breedlove identification and the skeleton turns out to be the wrong size, or wrong race, or Breedlove had false teeth? Or what?”
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. But he still sat there, holding his replenished coffee cup. This conversation wasn’t finished. Chee waited, trying to deduce the way it would be going.
“Did you have a suspect? I guess the widow would be one?”
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15/03/2008 19:57
TheFallenMan
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Floop/Local%20Settings/Te...
“There seemed to be a good reason for it in this case. But that didn’t pan out. Then there was a cousin. A Washington lawyer named George Shaw. Who just happened to also be a mountain climber, and just happened to be out here and looked just perfect as the odd man in a love triangle if you wanted one. He said he’d come out to talk to Breedlove about some sort of mineral lease proposal on the Lazy B ranch. That seemed to be true from what I could find out. Shaw was representing the family’s business interests and a mining company was dickering for a lease.”
“With Harold? Did he own the place?”
Leaphorn laughed. “He’d just inherited it. Three days before he disappeared.”
