to make her think about leaving.'
'Something personal, you think? Did she ever suggest sexual harassment? Anything like that?'
'She didn't exactly suggest that,' Mrs. Vanders said. 'But he was a bachelor. Whatever he was doing it was bad enough to be driving her away from a job she loved.'
Leaphorn questioned that by raising his eyebrows.
'She was excited by that job. She's been working for months to find the rodents that caused that last outbreak of bubonic plague on your reservation. Catherine has always been obsessive, even as a child. And since she took this health department job her obsession has been the plague. She spent one entire visit telling me about it. About how it killed half the people in Europe in the Middle Ages. How it spreads. How they're beginning to think the bacteria are evolving. All that sort of thing. She's on a personal crusade about it. Almost religious, I'd say. And she thought she might have found some of the rodents it spreads from. She'd told this Hammar fellow about it and I guess he used that as an excuse to come out.'
Mrs. Vanders made a deprecating gesture. 'Being a student of mice and rats and other rodents, that gives him an excuse, I guess. She said he might go out there with her to help her with the rodents. Apparently he wasn't with her when she left Tuba City, but I thought he might have followed her. I guess they trap them or poison them or something. And she said it was a hard-to get-to place, so maybe she would want him to help her carry in whatever they use. It's out on the edge of the Hopi Reservation. A place called Yells Back Butte.'
'Yells Back Butte,' Leaphorn said.
'It seems a strange name,' Mrs. Vanders said. 'I suspect there's some story behind it.'
'Probably,' Leaphorn said. 'I think it's a local name for a little finger sticking out from Black Mesa. On the edge of the Hopi Reservation. And when was she going out there?'
'The day after she called me,' Mrs. Vanders said. 'That would be a week ago next Friday.'
Leaphorn nodded, sorting out some memories. That would be July 8, just about the day—No. It was exactly the day when Officer Benjamin Kinsman had his skull cracked with a rock somewhere very near Yells Back Butte. Same time. Same place. Leaphorn had never learned to believe in coincidences.
'All right, Mrs. Vanders,' Leaphorn said, 'I'll see what I can find out.'
Chapter Four
CHEE WAS NOT STANDING at the waiting room window just to watch the Northern Arizona Medical Center parking lot and the cloud shadows dappling the mountains across the valley. He was postponing the painful moment when he would walk into Officer Benjamin Kinsman's room and give Benny the foredoomed official 'last opportunity' to tell them who had murdered him.
Actually, it wasn't murder yet. The neurologist in charge had called Shiprock yesterday to report that Kinsman had become brain-dead and procedures could now begin to end his ordeal. But this was going to be a legally complicated and socially sensitive process. The U.S. Attorney's office was nervous. Converting the charge against Jano from attempted homicide to murder had to be done exactly right. Therefore, J. D. Mickey, the acting assistant U.S. attorney charged with handling the prosecution, had decided that the arresting officer must be present when the plug was pulled. He wanted Chee to testify that he was available to receive any possible last words. That meant that the defense attorney should be there, too.
Chee had no idea why. Everybody involved had the same boss. As an indigent, Jano would be represented by another Justice Department lawyer. Said lawyer being—Chee glanced at his watch—eleven minutes late. But maybe that was his vehicle pulling into the lot. No. It was a pickup truck. Even in Arizona, Justice Department lawyers didn't arrive in trucks.
In fact, it was a familiar truck. Dodge Ram king cab pickups of the early nineties looked a lot alike, but this one had a winch attached to the front bumper and fender damage covered with paint that didn't quite match. It was Joe Leaphorn's truck.
Chee sighed. Fate seemed to be tying him to his former boss again, endlessly renewing the sense of inferiority Chee felt in the presence of the Legendary Lieutenant.
But he felt a little better after he thought about it. There was no way the murder of Officer Kinsman could involve Leaphorn. The Legendary Lieutenant had been retired since last year. As a rookie, Kinsman had never worked for him. There were no clan relationships that Chee knew about. Leaphorn would be coming to visit some sick friend. This would be one of those coincidences that Leaphorn had told him, about a hundred times, not to believe in. Chee relaxed. He watched a white Chevy sedan, driving too fast, skid through the parking lot gate. A federal motor-pool Chevy. The defense lawyer finally. Now the plugs could be pulled, stopping the machines that had kept Kinsman's lungs pumping and his heart beating for all these days, since the wind of life that had blown through Benny had left, taking Benny's consciousness on its last great adventure.
Now the lawyers would agree, in view of the seriousness of the case, to ignore the objections the Kinsman family might have and conduct a useless autopsy. That would prove that the blow to the head had caused Benny's death and therefore the People of the United States could apply the death penalty and kill Robert Jano to even the score. The fact that neither the Navajos nor the Hopis believed in this eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the white men would be ignored.
Two floors below him the white Chevy had parked. The driver's-side door opened, a pair of black trouser legs emerged, then a hand holding a briefcase.
'Lieutenant Chee,' said a familiar voice just behind him. 'Could I talk to you for a minute?'
Joe Leaphorn was standing in the doorway, holding his battered gray Stetson in his hands and looking apologetic.
So much for coincidences.
Chapter Five
'SOMEPLACE QUIETER, MAYBE,' Leaphorn had said, meaning a place where no one would overhear him. So Chee led him down the hall to the empty orthopedic waiting room. He pulled back a chair by the table and motioned toward another one.
'I know you just have a minute,' Leaphorn said, and sat down. 'The defense attorney just drove up.'
'Yeah,' Chee said, thinking that Leaphorn not only had Managed to find him in this unlikely place but knew why
