“Sent by whom?”
“Come on,” Leaphorn said, sounding defensive, remembering how he had felt as a rookie cop being grilled by his boss. “All I know is what a secretary at the paper remembered about it. Bernie Manuelito went in there to get me a copy of it. I have the obit at home, and I remember it ran just two years or so after the fire.”
“Okay, then,” Rostic said. “I am getting more and more interested. The obit mentioned burial in the Veterans Administration cemetery in Oklahoma City. You sure they have one there?”
“No,” Leaphorn said.
Rostic thought. “You know,” he said. “I think I’ll check on this.”
“It would be easy for you,” Leaphorn said. “Just call the FBI official there.”
“Hah!” Rostic said. “First they’d refer me to the agent in charge, and he’d want to know my name, identification details, whether I was still in the bureau, and was this my case, and the violation of which federal law was involved, and what was the bureau’s interest in it. Then, after about fifteen minutes of that, he’d tell me to send him a written report specifying the crime being investigated, and—” Rostic noticed Leaphorn’s expression and stopped.
“You see what I mean? I used to work out of that Oklahoma City office. It always went strictly by the book.
I’ll bet it still does.”
“I can understand that,” Leaphorn said. “I was thinking I might go back there myself. Or maybe get Bernie to go.” THE SHAPE SHIFTER
147
“Investigating a crime in Navajo jurisdiction? How do you explain that?”
“To tell the truth, Bernie’s sort of on administrative leave now, and she’s now Mrs. Jim Chee.”
“Sergeant Chee? Your assistant in the criminal investigation office?”
“Yes. They just got married. I’d ask her to do it sort of semi-unofficially, as a favor. Pay her travel expenses, and so forth.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Rostic said. “I have an old friend back there, a longtime reporter. Guy named Carter Bradley. He was manager of United Press operations in Oklahoma when I was with the bureau there. Sort of famous for knowing everybody who knew anything. Not just knowing who knew. That’s usually easy for reporters.
But Carter knew who would be willing to talk about it. I think he’d do it for me.”
“But if you knew him way back then, he’s probably retired by now.”
Rostic laughed. “Exactly. Just like us. Retired. Bored stiff. Wanting something interesting to do. Give me that obituary and I’ll call him, give him the situation, and tell him what we need to know.”
“I haven’t got it with me here,” Leaphorn said. “But I remember it. Which wasn’t much.”
“We’ll find out who paid his hospital bill. Who arranged to get him buried, if he had any criminal record back there in his home state, everything useful. Do it right now.”
Rostic had reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a cell phone, punched some buttons, said: “Yep.
Here he is. What do I ask him?”
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TONY HILLERMAN
“What I’d be happy to know,” Leaphorn said, “is whether Mr. Totter is actually dead.”
“Consider it done,” Rostic said, and began punching in numbers.
Leaphorn watched, reassessing his opinion of cell phones. But probably this wouldn’t work. He waited.
“Hello,” Rostic said. “Mrs. Bradley? Well, how are you? This is Ted Rostic. Remember? Special agent with the bureau way back when. Is Carter available?” Rostic nodded, grinned at Leaphorn, signaled the waiter for another coffee refill. So did Leaphorn. This would probably take a while.
It didn’t take very long. A few moments of exchanging memories of screwups and mistakes, a few comments of the travails of becoming elderly and the boredom of retirement, and then Rostic was explaining what he needed to know about the Totter death, giving Bradley his telephone number and asking Leaphorn for his.
“Ah, you mean my cell phone number?” Leaphorn asked. What was that number? Louisa, conscious of his attitude, had written it on a bit of tape and stuck it on the phone, but the phone was in the glove box of his truck. Leaphorn pondered a moment, came up with the number.
Rostic relayed it. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks, Carter.
No, it’s nothing terribly pressing, but the sooner the better.
Lieutenant Leaphorn and I are digging back into an old cold case. Very cold. Fine. Thanks again.” He clicked off, shut the telephone.
“Well, thank you for that,” Leaphorn said.
“Take my number,” Rostic said. “And, damn it, if he calls you first, don’t forget to call me. I’m getting interested in this thing, too.”
THE SHAPE SHIFTER
149
Leaphorn was pulling away from his parking spot at the diner before the unusual look of the Crownpoint school parking lot down the street caught his attention.
Unusual because it was crowded with vehicles. Unlike most school lots in urban areas of the West, most Navajo students got to school by school bus or on foot and there-fore did not jam school lots with student-owned
