They raised the dispatcher just as they bounced away from the radio shadow of Yells Back Butte. Chee told him to send an ambulance down the road to Goldtooth and an officer to guard Woody's mobile lab at the butte. Leaphorn sat in the back with Woody, and Woody talked.
He'd found two fleas in his groin area when he awakened the day before and immediately redosed himself with an antibiotic, hoping the fleas, if infected at all, were carrying the unmutated bacteria. By this morning a fever had developed. He knew then that he had the form that resisted medication and had killed Nez so quickly. He had hurriedly compiled his most recent notes in readable form, put away breakable items, stored the blood samples he'd been working on in the refrigerator for preservation and started the engine. But by then he felt so dizzy that he knew he couldn't drive the big vehicle out. So he'd begun a note explaining where he stood in the project, to be passed along to an associate at the Center for Control of Infectious Diseases.
'It's there in the folder on the desk with his name on it—a microbiologist named Roy Bobbin Hovey. But I forgot to mention that he'll want an autopsy. The name and number are in my wallet in case I'm out of it before we get to a telephone. Tell him to do the autopsy. He'll know what organs to check.'
'Your organs?' Leaphorn asked.
Woody's chin had dropped down to his breastbone. 'Of course,' he mumbled. 'Who else?'
Chee was driving far too fast for the washboard road and watching in the rearview mirror.
'How were you able to hit Officer Kinsman on the head?' he asked. 'Why didn't he cuff you?'
'He was careless,' Woody said. 'I said, Aren't you going to put those handcuffs on me, and when he twisted around to reach for them, that's when I hit him.'
'Then when we left with Kinsman, you drove the Jeep out and abandoned it and poured the blood on the seat so it would look like a murder-kidnapping? Right? And took your bicycle along so you could ride it back from there? Is that right?'
But by then, Dr. Woody had drifted off into unconsciousness. Or perhaps he didn't think the answer mattered.
They met the ambulance about ten miles from Moenkopi, warned the attendants that Woody was probably in the final stages of bubonic plague and sent it racing off toward the Northern Arizona Medical Center. At his station, Chee fished out the note from Woody's wallet, left Leaphorn talking with Claire, and disappeared into his office to make the telephone call.
He emerged looking angry, flopped into a chair across from Leaphorn, wiped his forehead, and said: 'Whew, what a day.'
'Did you get the man?' Leaphorn asked.
'Yeah. Dr. Hovey said he'll fly out to Flagstaff today.'
'Quite a shock, I guess,' Leaphorn said. 'Learning your associate is a double murderer.'
'That didn't seem to bother him. He asked about Woody's condition, and his notes, and who was looking after his papers, and where he could pick them up, and were they being cared for, and how about the animals he was working with, and was the prairie dog colony safe.'
'Like that, huh?'
'Pissed me off, to tell the truth,' Chee said. 'I said I hoped we could keep the sonofabitch alive until we can try him for killing two people. And that irritated him. He sort of snorted and said: 'Two people. We're trying to save all of humanity.''
Leaphorn sighed. 'Matter of fact, I think Woody
Chapter Twenty-eight
FOR CHEE, the next hours were occupied by the work of wrapping it up. He called the Northern Arizona Medical Center, got the emergency room supervisor, and told the woman Woody was en route in an ambulance and what to expect. Then he called the FBI office in Phoenix. Agent Reynald was occupied. He got Agent Edgar Evans instead.
'This is Jim Chee,' he said. 'I want to report that the man who killed Officer Ben Kinsman is in custody. His name is Woody. He is a medical doctor, and a—'
'Hold it! Hold it!' Evans said. 'What're ya talking about?'
'The arrest this morning of the man who killed Kinsman,' Chee said. 'You better take notes because your boss will be asking questions. After being read his rights, Dr. Woody made a full confession of the assault on Kinsman to me, in the presence of Joe Leaphorn. He also confessed to the murder of Catherine Pollard, a vector control specialist employed by the Indian Health Service. Woody is critically ill and is now en route to the hospital at Flag in an amb—'
'What the hell is this?' Evans said. 'Some kind of joke?'
'In an ambulance,' Chee continued. 'I recommend you pass this information along to Reynald, so he can get it to Mickey, so Mickey can drop the charges against Jano,' Chee said. 'If you want to do a television spectacular with this, the Navajo Police office at Tuba City can tell you where you can find the Pollard body and the details you need about how you, the FBI, solved this crime.'
'Hold it, Chee,' Evans said. 'What kind of—'
'No time for silly questions,' Chee said, and hung up.
Next he worked his way down the list of law enforcement agencies put to work by J. D. Mickey on the Kinsman case and gave them the pertinent information. Then he called the Public Defender Service in Phoenix. He got the office secretary. Ms. Pete was not in. Ms. Pete had left about an hour ago en route to Tuba City. Yes, there was a telephone in her car. Yes, she would notify Ms. Pete that she should contact him at Tuba City to receive information critical to the Jano case.
'I think she was going to Tuba to talk to you, Lieu tenant Chee,' the secretary said. 'But this 'critical information.' She'll ask me about that.'
'Tell Ms. Pete she was right about the Kinsman case. I arrested the wrong man. Now we have the right
