operations for her oral history research had taken some of the edge off that problem, and this morning he wanted to think instead of talk. The solution to the riddle of Linda Denton and the odd and illogical business with Wiley Denton's affairs with gold-mine maps hung just at the edge of his vision—almost in sight, but always dancing away.
The phone rang again, and again. It occurred to Leaphorn that Louisa had taken her tape recorder up to Mexican Hat yesterday to capture the recollections of an elderly Mormon rancher. She'd returned long after he'd retired for the night, and this damned telephone was certain to awaken her. He picked it up, said a grumpy- sounding 'Hello.'
'It's Jim Chee, Lieutenant. Do you have time to listen to a report?'
'It's Mr. Leaphorn now, Jim,' Leaphorn said. 'Or just Joe.' He'd told Chee that a hundred times, but it didn't seem to stick. 'But go ahead.'
'I guess the bottom line is they've arrested Hostiin Peshlakai in the Doherty homicide. Found blood on his clothing that matched Doherty's type, and they're checking for a dna match. They also found another slug at the placer site that matches his caliber. Checking that for everything, too.'
'Be damned,' Leaphorn said. 'What does Peshlakai say?'
'He says he doesn't want to talk about it. Didn't ask for a lawyer, but they assigned him a public defender named Knoblock. A woman. Do you know her?'
'I've met her,' Leaphorn said. 'Long time ago. She's tough.'
'I couldn't get in to talk to Peshlakai,' Chee said.
Leaphorn chuckled. 'That doesn't surprise me. What do you think he'd tell you?'
'Probably not much. Also, the morning Doherty's body was found—I think before Bernie found it—Peshlakai contacted a singer and arranged to have a Big Star Way done for him.'
'Well, now,' Leaphorn said. 'That sounds a little like a confession, doesn't it?' He chuckled. 'But can you imagine the U.S. district attorney trying to understand that, and then trying to explain it to a jury in Albuquerque?'
'Not a confession, more like an implication. Now I'm getting to the part of this that will interest you. Remember that cellphone Bernie noticed in his hogan? Well, he called Wiley Denton on it twice the day Doherty was shot.'
That surprised Leaphorn. He said, 'Well, now.'
'Two calls. The first one was eleven minutes long. The second one, less than three minutes.'
Leaphorn sighed and waited. There would be more.
'Another interesting thing. He'd had the phone a couple of years. Made only thirty-seven calls. The first two he made after he got the phone were also to Wiley Denton.'
'Sounds like Wiley might have bought it for him, you think?'
'Yeah,' Chee said. 'But why?'
'I'll hand that one back to you, Jim. You met the man. Talked to him at his hogan. You think he could be on Denton's payroll for some reason or other?'
'Maybe,' Chee said. 'But, no, I don't think so. How about you? Do you think the two of them are involved in some sort of weird conspiracy?'
'Denton using the old man as a watchman? Maybe I've got to think about this.'
'Well,' said Chee, 'if you have any constructive ideas, I hope you'll tell me about them. I'm going to make another effort to talk to Peshlakai.'
'Good idea,' Leaphorn said. 'I think I'll go have another visit with Wiley Denton.'
But Denton's housekeeper said Mr. Denton was not home, and, no, he probably wouldn't be back very soon because he had gone over to the Jicarilla Reservation to look at one of the pump jacks he had on a well over there.
Leaphorn left a message asking Denton to call, that he needed to talk to him. Then he got out his notebook and the map he'd been sketching out of this complicated affair and went over the way his thinking had developed. At the end of the notes he'd jotted after his talk with the Garcias, he found 'Deputy Lorenzo Perez. Maybe he took wailing seriously. Is he the Perez I know?'
The woman who answered the telephone at the sheriffs office said Deputy Perez had retired a couple of years before. But, yes, Ozzie Price was in.
'You again, Joe?' Ozzie said. 'What now?'
'I'm looking for Lorenzo Perez,' Leaphorn said. 'Didn't he used to be undersheriff?'
'That's him,' Ozzie said. 'But that was under a different sheriff, and that was before his wife left him and he got into heavy drinking.'
'He's still in Gallup?'
'Oh, yeah,' Ozzie said. 'You want to talk to him?'
Leaphorn said he did, and waited. In a long minute, Ozzie provided three numbers. One was a street address, one was Perez's phone number there, and the third was the number of the Old 66 Tavern. 'Try that last one most evenings,' Ozzie said.
'Was he sent out on that Halloween call to Fort Wingate? The one we were talking about the other day?'
'He was,' Ozzie said. 'And he got all wrapped up in it. I think that was when he was having wife troubles, and maybe it gave him something else to think about. Anyway, he kept nagging at the sheriff to look into it more. He thought Denton had killed his wife out there. Kept thinking it even after it was so damned obvious Denton couldn't
