'He told us he had to be out of jail in October to have that done.'
'Out? You picked him up?'
'We got a warrant. Searched his place and his truck. The truck seems to be clean, so far anyway, but there was dried blood on a shirt. He'd tried to wash it, but getting blood out isn't easy. Blood on a pair of pants, too. It's not Peshlakai's blood type, but it matches Doherty's. The forensic people are doing DNA checks now.'
Chee had taken a chair across from Osborne. He got up now, hesitated. Sat down again. He felt like a fool. And yet something still seemed wrong about this. One thing, specifically: No one is more conditioned against violence than those who spend years and years learning the curing ways of the Dineh.
'I guess he's held in the county jail?' Chee said. 'I'd like to talk to him.'
'Why not,' Osborne said. 'I hope you have better luck than we did.'
'Did he say he wanted a lawyer?'
'We told him the court would appoint him a public defender. All he said was something like it being a bad business. It wasn't good to talk about.'
'That's it?'
'Pretty much. Except we've found another slug in the sand out at that old placer site. It's the right caliber to match Peshlakai's rifle, but we don't have a report from the laboratory yet. And then he told us he had to be released in time for the sing, or whatever you call it.'
'The slug could have been shot at anything,' Chee said.
'Obviously,' Osborne said. 'They're looking for traces of blood, or bone, or fabric on it.'
'Have you learned anything about the cellphone?'
Osborne considered that a moment. He opened his desk drawer, extracted a pencil, tapped it on the desk, and said: 'Cellphone? Like what?'
'Like I was surprised he had one. Do you know where he got it? Or why?'
'The why looks obvious to me,' Osborne said. 'No telephone lines in there.'
'I meant, who would he be calling? Who would he know who'd have a telephone number. That sort of thing. I presume you checked his calling log.'
Osborne tapped with the pencil again, looking thoughtful.
Chee grinned. 'Let me guess what you're thinking. You're remembering that when you checked in here, you were warned that one of your predecessors got in trouble for saying some things that maybe he shouldn't have said to me, and it was generally believed I had unethically and illegally taped that call—or at very least had caused people to believe I had taped it. Therefore, you're being careful. I don't blame you. Part of that is true, or partly true. But we have a different situation here. We're on the same side of this one, in the first place. Besides, I don't have any way to tape this.'
Osborne was grinning, too.
'Since you're not wired, I'll admit I heard about that business, and I also heard it turned out you were right. We had the wrong guy in that one. But this time it looks like we have the right one. And if we don't, if the dna turns out wrong or we don't find other evidence, then he's free as a bird.'
He reopened the drawer, put the pencil away. 'So what are you asking me?'
'Who Peshlakai was calling on that cellphone.'
'Not much of anybody,' Osborne said. 'He had it a couple of years and only thirty-seven calls were logged in that time. Most of them to his daughter over at Keams Canyon. A couple of other kinfolks, a doctor in Gallup.'
'How about any calls to Wiley Denton?'
Osborne looked thoughtful. 'Denton?' he said. 'Now, why would Mr. Peshlakai be calling Mr. Denton?'
'How about like you'd call a taxi,' Chee said, swallowing a twinge of resentment at this game playing. 'Perhaps he wanted a ride home.'
'From where?'
'How about from where he'd parked Mr. Doherty's body in Mr. Doherty's pickup truck?'
Osborne laughed. 'I guess that would play,' he said. 'Why do all cops think so much alike?'
'Why don't you just tell me?'
'I don't know,' Osborne said. 'Yes, Peshlakai called Mr. Denton a total of thirteen times. Two of them were the first calls charged to the telephone and calls twelve and thirteen were recorded the day Doherty was killed.'
Chee considered this, remembering the conversation with Bernie, Leaphorn, and Professor Bourbonette at Leaphorn's home. He shook his head. As Bernie had said, now all they needed was a motive that fit a traditionalist shaman and a wealthy white man with a missing wife and an obsession with finding a legendary gold mine.
They knew Chee at the McKinley County Detention Center, of course, but that didn't help. The bureaucratic machinery had worked faster than usual. Someone named Eleanor Knoblock seemed to have been assigned as Hostiin Peshlakai's public defender, and Ms. Knoblock had signed an order providing that no one be allowed to interview her client without arranging it with her and speaking to Peshlakai in her presence. Chee jotted down her telephone number, but he decided to let things rest for the day. He'd already made his full quota of mistakes and had enough problems to worry about.
Chapter Twenty-Two
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When his telephone rang, Joe Leaphorn usually dropped whatever he was doing and hurried over to answer it—a habit he suspected was probably common with lonely widowers whose only conversation tends to be talking back to the television set. Having Professor Louisa Bourbonette adopt his guest room as her base of
