Elisa didn’t respond. Chee motioned to Bernie. She left in search of it.
Elisa raised her head, wiped her eyes, looked at Chee. “It was an accident, you know. Hal was always reckless. He wanted to rappel down the cliff. I thought I had talked him out of it. But I guess I hadn’t.”
“Did you see it happen?”
“I didn’t get all the way to the top. I was below. Waiting for them to come down.” Chee hesitated. The next question would be crucial, but should he ask it now, with this woman overcome by shock and grief? Any lawyer would tell her not to talk about any of this. But she wouldn’t be the one on trial.
Bernie reappeared at the doorway, Ramona behind her. “There’s a triple gun rack in the office,” she said. “A twelve-gauge pump shotgun in the bottom rack and the top two empty.”
“Okay,” Chee said.
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“And in the wastebasket beside the desk, there’s a thirty-ought-six ammunition box. The top’s torn off and it’s empty.” Chee nodded and came to his decision.
“Mrs. Breedlove. No one climbed the mountain on the date by your husband’s name. But on September eighteenth three people were seen climbing it. Hal was one of them. You were one. Who was the third?”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” Elisa said. “I want you to go.”
“You don’t have to tell us anything,” Chee said. “You have the right to remain silent, and to call your lawyer if you think you need one. I don’t think you’ve done anything you could be charged with, but you never really know what a prosecuting attorney will decide.”
Officer Manuelito cleared her throat. “And anything you say can be used against you. Remember that.”
“I don’t want to say any more.”
“That’s okay,” Chee said. “But I should tell you this. Eldon isn’t here and neither is his rifle and it looks like he just reloaded it. If we have this figured out right, Eldon is going to know there is just one man left alive who could ruin this for him.” Chee paused, waiting for a response. It didn’t come. Elisa sat as if frozen, staring at him.
“It’s a man named Amos Nez. Remember him? He was your guide in Canyon de Chelly. Right after Hal’s skeleton was found on Ship Rock last Halloween, Mr. Nez was riding his horse up the canyon. Someone up on the rim shot him. He wasn’t killed, just badly hurt.”
Elisa sagged a little with that, looked down at her hands, and said, “I didn’t know that.”
“With a thirty-ought-six rifle,” Chee added.
“What day was it?”
Chee told her.
She thought a moment. Remembering. Slumped a little more.
“If anyone kills Mr. Nez the charge will be the premeditated murder of a witness. That carries the death penalty.”
“He’s my brother,” Elisa said. “Hal’s death was an accident. Sometimes he acted almost like he wanted to die. No thrills, he said, if you didn’t take a chance. He fell. When Eldon climbed down to where I was waiting, he looked like he was almost dead himself. He was devastated. He was so shaken he could hardly tell me about it.” She stopped, looking at Chee, at Bernie, back at Chee.
“I think you were driving that Land-Rover,” Chee said. “When police found it abandoned up an arroyo north of Many Farms they said there was a telephone in it.”
“But what good would it have done to call for help?” Elisa asked, her voice rising. “Hal was dead. He was all broken to pieces on that little ledge. Nobody could bring him back to life again. He was dead!”
“Was he?”
“Yes,” she shouted. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
And now Chee understood why Elisa had been so shocked when she learned the skeleton was intact—with not a bone broken. She didn’t want to believe it. Refused to believe it still. That made the next question harder to ask. What had Eldon told her of the scene at the top? Had he explained why Hal had started his descent before he signed the book? Why he falsified the register? Had he—
Ramona rushed into the room, sat beside Elisa, hugged the woman to her. She glared at Chee. “I said go away now,” she said. “Get out. No more. No more. She has suffered too much.”
“It’s all right,” Elisa said. “Ramona, when you came in did you see the Land-Rover in the garage?”
“No,” Ramona said. “Just Eldon’s pickup truck.”
Elisa looked at Chee, sighed, and said, “Then I guess he didn’t go up to see about the mare. He would have taken his truck.” Chee picked up his hat and the photographs. He thanked Mrs. Breedlove for the cooperation, apologized for bringing her bad news, and hurried out, with Bernie trotting along behind him. The wind was bitter now, and carrying those dry-as-dust first snowflakes that were the forerunners of a storm.
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