“Why?”
Demott shrugged. “Because of Elisa,” he said. “The other cop, Jim Chee I think it was, he was coming up to see us. He said you had looked at the climber register. What did Elisa say about that?”
“I wasn’t there. Chee showed her the page with Hal’s name on it, and the date. He said she sort of went to pieces. Cried.” Leaphorn shrugged. “About what you’d expect, I guess.”
Demott slumped against the fender. “Ah, hell,” he said, and slammed his fist against the hood. “Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!”
“It made it look premeditated, of course,” Leaphorn said.
“Of course,” Demott said. “And it wasn’t.”
“An accident. If it wasn’t, it may be hard to keep her out of it.”
“She was still in love with the bastard. Didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Leaphorn said. “But considering what’s involved, the Breedloves will probably hire a special prosecutor and they’ll be aimed at getting the ranch back. Voiding the inheritance.”
“Voiding the inheritance? What do you mean? Wouldn’t that sort of be automatic? I mean, with what you said about Nez knowing
. . . You know, Hal didn’t inherit until he was thirty. The way the proviso read, if he didn’t reach that birthday, everything was voided.”
“Nez thinking you were Hal isn’t the only evidence that he lived past that birthday,” Leaphorn said. “There’s his signature in the climbers’ register. That’s dated September thirty. You know of any evidence that he died before that?” Demott was staring at Leaphorn, mouth partly open. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait. What are you saying?”
“I guess I’m saying that I think there’s sometimes a difference between the law and justice. If there’s justice here, you’re going to spend life in prison for the premeditated murder of Mr. Maryboy, with maybe an add-on twenty years or so for the attempted murder of Amos Nez. I think that would be about right. But it probably won’t work quite like that. Your sister’s probably going to be charged with accessory to murder—maybe as a conspirator and certainly as an accessory after the fact. And the Breedloves will get her ranch.”
Demott inhaled a deep breath. He looked down at his hands, rubbed at his thumb.
“And Cache Creek will be running water gray with cyanide and mining effluent.”
“Yeah,” Demott said. “I really screwed it up. Year after year you’re nervous about it. Sunny day you think you’re clear. Nothing to worry about. Then you wake up with a nightmare.”
“What happened up there?” Leaphorn said.
Demott gave him a questioning look. “You asking for a confession?”
“You’re not under arrest. If you were, I’d have to tell you about your rights not to say anything until you get your lawyer. Elisa told Chee she didn’t get all the way to the top. Is that right?”
“She didn’t,” Demott said. “She was getting scared.” He snorted. “I should say sensible.” Leaphorn nodded.
“This birthday was a big deal for Hal,” Demott said. “He’d say, Lord God Almighty, I’ll be free at last, and get all excited thinking about it. And he’d invited this guy he’d known at Dartmouth to bring his girlfriend to see Canyon de Chelly and Navajo National Monument, the Grand Canyon, all that. Meet him and Elisa at the canyon for a birthday party for starters. But first he wanted to climb Ship Rock before he was thirty. That proved something to him. So we climbed it. Or almost.” Demott looked away. Deciding how much of this he wants to tell me, Leaphorn thought. Or maybe just remembering.
“We stopped in Rappel Gulch,” Demott said. “Elisa had dropped out about an hour before that. Said she would just wait for us. So Hal and I were resting for that last hard climb. He had been talking about how the route up involves so much climbing up and then climbing back down to get to another up-route. He said there surely had to be a better way with all the good rappelling equipment we had now. Anyway, he edged out on the cliff. He said he wanted to see if there was a faster way down.” Demott stopped. He sat on the fender, studying Leaphorn.
“I take it there was,” Leaphorn said.
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Demott nodded. “Partway.”
“Gust of wind caught him. Something like that?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I like your sister,” Leaphorn said. “A kind, caring woman. And besides, I don’t like strip miners ruining the mountains.” The wind was blowing a little harder now, and colder. It came out of the northwest, blowing the hair away from Demott’s face and dust around the tires of the Land-Rover.
“How does this come out?” Demott said. “I don’t know much about the law.”
“It will depend mostly on how you handle it,” Leaphorn said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Here’s where we are now. We have three felonies. The Maryboy homicide and the related shooting of a Navajo policeman. The FBI is handling that one. Then there is the assault upon Amos Nez, in which the FBI has no interest.”
“Hal?”
