“Did you report finding that mine to the Bureau?”
“Yes,” Chee said.
Silence. Leaphorn had expected more than that.
“What’s being done about it? Do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Leaphorn’s tone said he couldn’t believe that.
“That’s right,” Chee said. He realized he was playing the same childish game with Leaphorn that he had played with Cabot. He didn’t like the feel of that. He admired Leaphorn. Leaphorn, he had to admit it, was his friend. So he interrupted the silence.
“The Special Agent involved said they’d already searched that mine. Nothing in it but animal tracks and mice droppings. He handed me back the photos I’d taken, and they sent me on my way.”
“Be damned,” Leaphorn said. Chee could hear him breathing for a while. “Did he say when they did their search?”
“He said right after the truck was found. He said they searched the whole area. Everything.”
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “How much structure was left on top of the mesa?”
“Some stone walls, partly fallen down, roof gone from part of it. Then there was a framework of timbers, sort of a triangle structure, sticking out of it.”
“Sounds like the support for the tipple to lift the coal out and dump it.”
“I guess so,” Chee said, wondering about the point of all this. The feds had looked, and nobody was home.
“Searched the whole area, you said? That day?”
“Yeah,” Chee said, sensing Leaphorn’s point and feeling a faint stir of illogical optimism.
“Didn’t Deputy Dashee say they found the truck about middle of the day?”
“Yeah,” Chee said. “And they’d be searching the Timms place, house, barns, outbuildings, and all those roads wandering around to those Mobil Oil pump stations, and -' Chee ran out of other examples. Casa Del Eco Mesa was huge, but it was almost mostly empty hugeness.
“The best they would have had time to do would be to give it a quick glance,” Leaphorn said.
“Well, yes. Wouldn’t that be enough to show it was empty?”
“I think I’ll take a drive up there and look around for myself. Is that area still roadblocked?”
“It was yesterday,” Chee said. Then he added exactly what he knew the Legendary Lieutenant hoped he would add. “I’ll go with you and show ’em my badge.”
“Fine,” Leaphorn said. “I’m calling from Two Grey Hills. Professor Bourebonette is with me, but she’s run into a couple of her fellow professors dickering over a rug. Hold on. Let me find out if they can give her a ride back to Flagstaff.”
Chee waited.
“Yep,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll pick you up soon as I can get there.”
“Right. I’ll be ready.”
Bernadette Manuelito was staring at him. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Go where with whom? You can’t go anywhere with that ankle. You’re supposed to keep it elevated. And iced.”
Chee relaxed, closed his eyes, recognized that he was feeling much, much better. Why did talking to Joe Leaphorn do that for him? And now this business with Bernie. Worrying about his ankle. Bossing him around. Why did that make him feel so much better? He opened his eyes and looked up at her. A very pretty young lady even when she was frowning at him.
Chapter Twenty-six
Sergeant Jim Chee kept his ankle elevated by resting it on pillows on the rear seat of Officer Bernie Manuelito’s battered old Unit 11. He kept it iced with a plastic sack loaded with ice cubes. The ankle was feeling better, and so was Chee. Going to the clinic and having it expertly wrapped and taped had done wonders for the injury. Having his old boss showing him some respect had been good for bruised morale.
Bernie was tooling westward on U.S. 160, past the Red Mesa School, heading toward the Navajo 35 intersection at Mexican Water, Chee was behind her, slumped against the driver’s side of the car, watching the side of Leaphorn’s graying burr haircut. The lieutenant was not nearly as taciturn as Chee remembered him. He was telling her of the names
