Former Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn was making a hurried effort to tidy up his living room. Someone named Mary Goddard was coming over to interview him. Not a visit he expected. He knew almost nothing about this woman except she worked for
“Why me?” Leaphorn had asked. “Didn’t you tell her I’m just a civilian. That it’s an FBI case anyway, and —”
Georgia Billie was the senior secretary in the NTP administration office, but she had never quite come to think of Lieutenant Leaphorn as legendary.
“Joe. Joe,” she said. “Of course I did. I told her you’d gotten old and grumpy and didn’t like to be bothered and you wouldn’t know anything about it anyway but she just grinned at me and said you were still the Legendary Lieutenant and she’d like to meet you anyway.”
That produced a moment of silence.
“You didn’t give her my number did you? Or my address?”
“She already had your address.”
Leaphorn sighed. Said: “Oh, well.”
“In fact, she’s on her way out there now. Instead of acting like you’re mad at me, you should be thanking me for the warning.” She laughed. “I’m giving you some time to sneak out the back door and hide.”
But he didn’t. His curiosity had kicked in. What was it about this homicide that had brought a reporter from the best of the national newsmagazines all the way to Window Rock? Maybe she knew something that would cast some light on this affair.
The Mary Goddard who introduced herself at his door did not resemble the smooth-faced, glossy women reporters television had taught Leaphorn to expect. She was short, sturdy, and obviously middle-aged. The heavy layers of makeup with which white women so often coated their faces were missing. Her smile, which looked to Leaphorn warm and friendly, revealed natural-looking teeth and not the chalk-white caps displayed by TV celebrities.
“I’m Mary Goddard,” she said, handing him a business card. “I’m a reporter, and I came here hoping you’ll have time to talk to me.”
“Come on in,” Leaphorn said, and pointed her to a chair. “If you like coffee, I have a pot brewed in the kitchen.”
“Please,” Ms. Goddard said. “Black.”
He remembered to put the cups on saucers as Emma would have done had she not left him a widower, or Professor Bourbonette would have had she not been up on the Southern Ute Reservation collecting oral history tales. He also brought in napkins and then seated himself across the coffee table from Goddard.
She sipped, made an approving face. Leaphorn sipped, trying to decide what Goddard’s first question would be. It would concern what progress was being made on the homicide investigation, and his answer would be that the FBI was handling it and he didn’t know anything about it.
She restored her cup to its saucer.
“Mr. Leaphorn,” she began, “I wonder how you managed to get an official of the Bank of America to ask questions in the bank’s credit card administration about a credit card issued to Carl Mankin. Could you tell me that?”
Far from what he’d expected. He looked at Ms. Goddard with sharply increased interest. He was dealing with a professional here.
“Did that happen?”
“It did,” she said. And waited.
Leaphorn chuckled, already enjoying this. “My turn now. How do you know? And what brought you to me?”
“You’re retired, aren’t you. Technically not involved in any way in any of this. But a sergeant who used to be your assistant had jurisdiction, or did, more or less, until the FBI took over. Is that right?”
“Right.”
“As I understand from my sources in Washington, this sergeant—Jim Chee, isn’t it?—he had someone in his local bank make inquiries about a Visa card held by someone killed in San Juan County, New Mexico. The inquiry ran into an FBI stop order and that ended that.” She combined a hand gesture with a change of expression to signify finality. Then smiled at Leaphorn and said: “However!”
Leaphorn smiled.
“However, not much later the same inquiry comes in from the important direction—from the top instead of the bottom. It hits the same federal roadblock. But this time the bank’s big shots are involved. The kind of folks not used to being told no by the FBI or anyone else. This gets chatted about at their two-martini lunches. One of the power brokers asks his lobby lawyer. People talk to a senator whose campaign they helped finance. Somebody calls the chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the Department of the Interior, and so it goes. About then I ask myself, What’s making this credit card such a big deal? Why are these busy moguls getting so interested in this homicide way out in San Juan County, New Mexico?”
Goddard picked up her cup, looked over the rim at Leaphorn, took another sip.
“That’s the same question I’m asking,” Leaphorn said. He looked at her business card.
Goddard clicked her cup back into the saucer.
“Murder, was it?”
“Well, now,” Leaphorn said. “I believe the last news account I’ve seen said the FBI reported it still under investigation. But the talk I’ve heard over my enchilada down at the Navajo Inn is about a stranger being shot in the back. Hard to call a back shot a suicide.”
Goddard nodded. “Yes. Even in Washington. But there they might rule it an accident.”
Leaphorn chuckled. “If the press gets after the U.S. District Attorney, I suspect that will be suggested.” He shrugged. “It might be true. But then he’d have to explain some—” He stopped, sipped his coffee, gestured toward her cup.
“No thanks,” she said. “But go on. Explain what? I don’t really know anything about the crime itself.”
“Should we exchange information?” Leaphorn asked. “If we do I need to make some rules. I want you in a position to tell a grand jury you promised your source confidentiality. That way, I don’t get called and have to protect my sources by being held in contempt and locked away for awhile.”
“And who are your sources?”
“Are we off the record?”
“How about I call you a source close to the Navajo Tribal Police?”
“How about I’m someone knowledgeable about law enforcement in the Four Corners?”
She nodded. “Deal,” she said. “Minor change in the syntax, but nothing that would single you out. Now tell me why it’s murder and not an accident.”
“Body stripped of all identification,” Leaphorn said. “Nothing in pockets except small change and keys to a rental car. Car found miles from the body. Too far to walk.”
“Murder,” she said, nodding. “Wallet gone, which brings us to the Visa card.”
“Found by a trash collector cleaning up a park on the Jicarilla Navajo Reservation. The card was used at one of those pay-outside filling stations, and tracked to one of the trash collector’s in-laws. And now we get to my question, still unanswered. What brought you out here?”
“Fair enough,” she said. “Now you have to understand that we’ll be talking about Washington. The big shots are trading information about what could be going on out in Indian country. What is causing someone with the clout to get it done to want to cause the FBI to cover up a shooting like this one. With the victim nobody in particular, and the crime done nowhere in particular. Doing that takes big political muscle. But who’s using that muscle? And why? So I start thinking there could be a big story there.”
She stopped, peered at Leaphorn. “Does that answer your question?”
Leaphorn considered. “Part of it, I guess.”
“Well then,” said Goddard, “I will add that I was already interested because a woman who works in the
