Winsor chuckled. “It may not be so easy this time. She’s some sort of cop.”
19
The young woman who answered Leaphorn’s call to Jim Chee’s Shiprock office recognized neither his voice nor his name, making him aware of the passage of time, how old he was getting, how long he had been retired, how quickly one is forgotten, and other sad truths. But when he identified himself more clearly and told her the call was important, she said that while Sergeant Chee had indeed left for the day and wasn’t in his office, he still might be out in the parking lot. She went out to see.
A minute later, Chee was on the phone and asking what was up.
“Get comfortable, Jim,” Leaphorn said. “This takes a while to tell.”
Being Leaphorn, he had his thoughts about as well organized as this peculiar and disconnected affair allowed. He started with Mrs. Garza’s call.
“I think we know from the photo Henry took of Bernie Manuelito that all is not totally well with Customs operations down there,” Leaphorn said. “How else would the photograph get into the hands of the drug people down in Sonora? But why would they consider Miss Manuelito dangerous? It seems obvious, at least to me, that it had to do with her photographing whatever they’re building on the Tuttle Ranch. What do you think about it?”
“I don’t have any ideas,” Chee said. “I’m going down there and get her out of it.”
Leaphorn laughed. “Better take along a court order and your handcuffs. It always seemed to me that Bernie Manuelito pretty much made her own decisions.”
“Well, yes,” Chee said. “She does. But if I tell her—”
“There’s more I want to explain,” Leaphorn said. “I want you to take a look at an old map I dug up.”
Now Chee snorted. “A map! Have I ever discussed anything with you when you didn’t pull a map on me?”
“It’s a different one this time,” Leaphorn said. “I think the U.S. Geological Survey did it back in 1950 on the national energy distribution system. Pipelines and electrical transmission grids, all that.”
“Pipelines,” Chee said. “Ah. Are we getting into what happened to the Indian Trust Fund oil and gas royalty money?”
“Possibly,” Leaphorn said. “Could we get together? And where would be a good place for you?”
“I need to go to Window Rock, anyway,” Chee said. “How about this evening?”
When Professor Louisa Bourbonette answered the doorbell and ushered him into the kitchen, Leaphorn was sitting at the table. Two maps spread across it and more were stacked on a chair.
Leaphorn waved Chee to sit.
“Need I ask if you’d like coffee,” said Louisa. The pot was already steaming, and she took three mugs from the cabinet.
“Part of this I haven’t been able to work out yet,” Leaphorn said, pointing to the larger of the maps. “But the southern end works out beautifully.”
“Meaning what?” Chee said, pulling his chair closer and leaning in for a look.
“Here we have the location of that abandoned Mexican copper smelter,” Leaphorn said, tapping the map with his pencil. “San Pedro de los Corralles on this old map, and this symbol is—I should say was—the Anaconda Copper Corporation’s San Pedro smelter when this map was drawn. The newer maps”—he indicated the maps on the chair beside him—“they don’t show either the village or the smelter. Nor the pipe that brought the smelter its fuel from the San Juan Basin fields. However, look at the old map. And remember, abandoned pipelines are normally just left where they were buried. Digging them up costs more than they’re worth.”
Leaphorn glanced up at Chee as he said this, and put the pencil tip on a line of dashes that ran northward from the smokestack symbol of the smelter. The line was labeled “EPNG,” the acronym for El Paso Natural Gas Company. It followed a narrow valley east of the Guadalupe Mountain range in Mexico’s state of Sonora and crossed the U.S. border into the Playas Valley of New Mexico. Leaphorn ran the pencil tip along the route, following it through the Hatchet Gap, which separated the Big Hatchet Mountains from the Little Hatchets. In the Hatchita Valley east of the gap he marked a tiny “X” and looked up at Chee.
“Does that just about mark the place on the Tuttle Ranch where Bernie took those pictures?”
Chee nodded. “I’d think that would be awfully close to where Bernie saw them working.”
“Anyway,” Leaphorn said, “if this old map is accurate and if the folks in the county courthouses in Luna and Hidalgo Counties gave me the correct legal description of the Tuttle Ranch property, then the old pipeline runs right through that ranch.”
“This is getting very interesting,” Chee said. “Do you know anything about the Tuttle family background?”
“The county clerk at Deming said the ownership changed three years ago. Now the owner of record is a Delaware Corporation. Some sort of holding company, I guess. A.G.H. Industries. Ever hear of it?”
“Never,” Chee said. “So you’re thinking the folks Bernie saw working there were digging down to the old pipeline. Making some sort of connection. It would be empty, now, wouldn’t it? What would be the purpose?”
“Before I give you my guess at that let’s shift over to my new and updated copy of that Triple A Indian Country map.” Leaphorn pulled it over on top of the USGS map. Chee noticed he’d already marked an “X” on the Tuttle Ranch and another “X” up at the edge of the Jicarilla Reservation about where the body of the so-called Carl Mankin had been found.
“I see you’ve made the connection,” Chee said. “From a junked copper smelter down in Sonora all the way up to our Four Corners homicide. Aren’t we stretching that old pipeline too far?”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe we are. Anyway, it probably stretched that far once. Anaconda was using San Juan Basin gas to fire that smelter.”
“I’m guessing you’ve already done some checking on that historic end of it.”
“Some,” Leaphorn said. “I called an old Anaconda man down in Silver City. He said that before he retired they were getting their gas from EPNG out of the San Juan field. And now I’m told some construction is going on there, but not involving smelting copper.”
“So you’ve used the old pipeline to get the Mankin killing connected to whatever goes on at Tuttle Ranch and whatever’s happening down in Sonora.” Chee shook his head. “I’m way behind you on that connection.”
Louisa had poured their coffee, a mug for herself, joined them at the table, but had politely refrained from getting into this discussion. Now she cleared her throat.
“Of course he’s behind, Joe. Who wouldn’t be? Tell him about your pig theory.” She smiled at Chee. “As Joe sees this situation these are very sinister pigs.”
Leaphorn looked slightly embarrassed.
“Pig is the name pipeline maintenance people use for a device they push through the pipes to clean them out. First they were simply a cylinder that fit the dimensions of the pipeline and was short enough, or flexible enough, to make it around corners and ups and downs in the line. They were covered with pig bristle to brush away rust and deposits. These days they’ve gotten much more high-tech. Computer chips in them, sensing devices and transmitters so they can measure wear, find cracks, let management know where repairs need be made, so forth.”
Chee was considering this, surveying what he knew about pipelines, which was virtually nothing. He’d heard that the major lines sometimes were moving several products at the same time, like miles of crude oil, followed by refined gasoline, followed by methane gas, or something else. He presumed some sort of barrier was used to separate the products. But how? And how were these products moved along, and taken out? If it wasn’t gravity- driven, it must require some sort of pumping. Putting pressure in the line to push whatever was in it along. But he’d never really given it any thought.
“So,” he said, “are you thinking they’re using the old pipeline to smuggle something in. Like dope, perhaps. Or nuclear devices for Al Qaeda’s terrorism campaign, to slip radioactive stuff past radiation detectors. Or maybe to smuggle something out of the country.”
“Take your pick,” Leaphorn said. “Whichever it is, I think something illegal must be involved. And it’s pretty clear some very big money is operating here. Buying the ranch, paying for that construction, making some investments here and there to make sure the Mexican police aren’t interfering.”
“And big money makes it dangerous,” Chee said. “I mean for anyone who interferes. Like Bernie. You
