Finch’s face had also become a little redder through its windburn. The smile had gone away. He stared at Chee. Looked down at his boots. When he looked up he was grinning.
“Touché! I got a bad habit of underestimating folks. You say that woman cop with you noticed the fence posts had been dug loose. I missed that. Good-looking lady, too. You give her my congratulations, will you. Tell her any old time she wants to work alongside of me, or under me either, she’s more than welcome.”
Chee nodded, started his engine.
“Hold it just a minute,” Finch said, his smile looking slightly more genuine. “I didn’t stop you just to start an argument. Wondered if I could get you to be a witness for something.”
Chee left the motor running. “For what?”
“There’s five Angus calves at a feedlot over by Kirtland. Looks like they were branded through a wet gunnysack, like the wise guys do it, but they’re still so fresh they haven’t even scabbed over yet. And the fellow that signed the bill of sale hasn’t got any mother cows. He claimed he sold ’em off—which we can check on. On the other hand, a fellow named Bramlett is short five Angus calves off some leased pasture. I’m going over and see if there’s five wet cows there. If there is I call the feedlot and they bring the calves over and I turn on my video camera and get a tape of the mama cows saying hello to their missing calves. Letting ’em nurse, all that.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“It’d be a mostly Navajo jury, and the cow thief—he’s a Navajo,” Finch said. “Be good to have a Navajo cop on the witness stand.”
Chee looked at his watch. By now Teddy Begayaye would be at the office celebrating getting his requested vacation time, and Manuelito would be sore about it. Too late for any preventive medicine there. But he had, after all, ruined Finch’s trap. Besides, it would give him another hour away from the office and something positive for a change to report to Captain Largo on the cow-theft front.
“I’ll follow you,” Chee said, “and if you speed, you get a ticket.”
Finch sped, but kept it within the Navajo Tribal Police tolerance zone. He parked beside the fence at the holding pasture at just about nine A.M. It was bottomland here, a pasture irrigated by a ditch from the San Juan River, and it held maybe two hundred head of Angus—young cows and their calves—last spring’s crop but still nursing. Chee parked as Finch was climbing the fence, snagging his jeans on the barbed wire.
“I think I saw a wet one already,” he shouted, pointing into the herd, which now was moving uneasily away. “You stay back by your car.”
Wet one? Chee thought. He’d been raised with sheep, not cows. But “wet” must be what you called a cow with a painfully full udder. A cow whose nursing calf was missing. Finch had been right about cow memories. Their memory connected men on foot with being roped, bulldogged, and branded. They were scattering away from Finch. So the question was, how was Finch going to locate five such cows in that milling herd and know he hadn’t just counted the same cow five times?
Finch picked himself a spot free of cow manure, dropped to his knees, and rolled over on his back. He folded his arms under his head and lay motionless. The cows, which had shied fearfully away from him, stopped their nervous milling. They stared at Finch. He yawned, squirmed into a more comfortable position. A heifer, head and ears stretched forward, moved a cautious step toward him. Others followed, noses pointed, ears forward. The calves, with no memory of branding to inhibit them, were first. By eleven minutes after nine, Finch was surrounded by a ring of Angus cattle, sniffing and staring.
As for Finch, only his head was moving, and he made an udder inspection. He arose, creating a panic, and walked through the scattering herd, already dialing his portable telephone, talking into it as he climbed the fence. He closed it, walked up to Chee’s window.
“Five wet ones,” he said. “They’re going to bring the calves right out. I’m going to videotape it, but it’d help if you’d stick around so you can testify. You know, tell the jury that the calves ran right up to their mamas and started nursing, and their mamas let ’em do it.”
“That was pretty damn clever,” Chee said.
“I told you about cows being curious,” Finch said. “They’re scared of a man standing up. Lay down and they say, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ and come on over to take a look.” He brushed off his jeans. “Drawback is you’re likely to get manure all over yourself.”
“Well, it’s a lot quicker than chasing them all over the pasture, trying to get a look.”
Finch was enjoying this approval.
“You know where I learned that trick? I was in the dentist’s office at Farmington waiting to get a root canal. Picked up a New Yorker magazine and there was an article in there about a Nevada brand inspector name of Chris Collis. It was a trick he used. I called him and asked him if it really worked. He said sure.”
Finch fished his video camera out of the truck cab, fiddled with it. Chee radioed his office, reported his location, collected his messages. One was from Joe Leaphorn. It was brief.
A truck from the feedlot arrived bearing two men and five terrified Angus calves. Each was ear-tagged with its number and released into the pasture. Each ran, bawling, in search of its mother, found her, underwent a maternal inspection, was approved and allowed to nurse while Finch videotaped the happy reunions.
But Chee wasn’t paying as much attention as he might have been. While Finch was counting turgid udders, Chee had checked with his office. Leaphorn wanted to talk to him again about the Fallen Man. He said he was working for the Breedlove family now.
THE QUESTION NAGGING AT JIM CHEE wasn’t the sort he wanted to explore on the Tribal Police radio band. He stopped at the Hogback trading post, dropped a quarter in the pay phone, and called the number Leaphorn had left. It proved to be the Anasazi Inn in Farmington, but the front desk said Leaphorn had checked out. Chee dropped in another quarter and called his own office. Jenifer answered. Yes, Leaphorn had called again. He said he was on his way back from Farmington to Window Rock and he would drop by and try to catch Chee at his office.
Chee got there about five minutes faster than the speed limit allowed. Leaphorn’s car was in the parking lot. The man himself was perched, ramrod straight, on a chair in the waiting room, reading yesterday’s copy of Navajo Times.
“If you have a couple of minutes, I want to pass on some information,” Leaphorn said. “Otherwise, I can catch you when you have some time.”
“I have time,” Chee said, and ushered him into his office.
Leaphorn sat. “I’ll be brief. I’ve taken a retainer from the Breedlove Corporation. Actually, it’s really the family, I guess. They want me to sort of reinvestigate the disappearance of Hal Breedlove.” He paused, awaited a reaction. If he was reading Chee’s studiously blank expression properly, the young man didn’t like the arrangement.
“So it’s official business for you now,” Chee said. “At least unofficially official.”
“Right,” Leaphorn said. “I wanted you to know that because I may be bothering you now and then. With questions.” He paused again.
“Is that it?” Chee asked. If it was, he had some questions of his own.
“There’s something else I wanted to tell you. I think it’s pretty clear the family thinks Hal was murdered. If they have any evidence of that they’re not telling me. Maybe it’s just that they want it to be murder. And they want to be able to prove it. They want to regain title to the ranch.”
“Oh,” Chee said. “Did they tell you that?”
Leaphorn hesitated, his expression quizzical. What the devil was bothering Chee? “I was thinking that would be the most likely motive,” he said. “What do you think?”
Chee nodded noncommittally.
“Can you tell me who you made the deal with?” he asked.
“You mean the individual?” Leaphorn said. “I think private detectives are supposed to have a thing about client confidentiality, but I haven’t lea
rned to think like a private eye. Never will. This is my one and only venture. George Shaw handed me my check.” He laughed, and told Chee how he’d outsmarted himself, trying to learn how big a deal this was for the Breedlove Corporation.
“So Hal’s cousin signed the check, but the lawyer with him, you remember his name?”
“McDermott,” Leaphorn said. “John McDermott. He’s the lawyer handling it. He called me and arranged the meeting. Works for a Washington firm, but I think he used to have an office in Albuquerque. And—” He stopped, aware of Chee’s expression. “You know this guy?”
“Indirectly,” Chee said. “He was sort of an Indian affairs specialist for an Albuquerque firm. I think he represented Peabody Coal when they were negotiating one of the coal contracts with us, and a couple of pipeline companies dealing with the Jicarillas. Then he moved to Washington and is doing the same thing on that level. I think it’s with the same law firm.”
Leaphorn looked surprised. “You know a lot more about him than I do,” he said. “How’s his reputation? It okay?”
“As a lawyer? I guess so. He used to be a professor.”
“He struck me as arrogant. Is that your impression?”
Chee shrugged. “I don’t know him. I just know a little about him.”
“Well, he didn’t make a good first impression.”
“Could you tell me when he called you? I mean made the first contact.”
The question obviously surprised Leaphorn. “Let’s see,” he said. “Two or three days ago.”
“Was it last Tuesday?”
“Tuesday? Let’s see. Yeah. It was a call on my answering machine. I returned it.”
“Morning or afternoon?”
“I don’t know. It could have been either one. But it’s still on the recording. I think I could find out.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Chee said.
“Will do,” Leaphorn said, and paused. “I’m trying to place the date. That would have been about the day after you got the skeleton identified. Right?”
Chee sighed. “Lieutenant Leaphorn,” he said, “you already know just what I’m thinking, don’t you?”
“Well, I’d guess you’re wondering how that lawyer found out so quickly that the skeleton had turned out to be somebody so important to his client. No announcement had been made. Nothing in the papers until a day or so later and I don’t think it ever made the national news. Just a little story around here, and about three paragraphs in the Albuquerque Journal, and a little bit more in the Rocky Mountain News.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Chee said.
“But you’re ahead of me on something else. I don’t know why it’s important.”
“You couldn’t guess,” Chee said. “It’s something personal.”
“Oh,” Leaphorn said. He ducked his head, shook it, and said, “Oh,” again. Sad, now. And then he looked up. “You know, they could have had this thing staked out, though. An important client. Maybe they had some law firm out here retained to tip them off if anything turned up that would bear in any way at all on this son-and-heir being missing. They knew he was a mountain climber. So when an unidentified body turns up . . . “ He shrugged. “Who knows how law firms operate?” he said, not believing it himself.
“Sure,” Chee said. “Anything’s possible.”
Leaphorn was leaving, hat in hand, but he stopped in the doorway and turned.
“One other thing that might bear on all this,” he said. He told Chee of Sergeant Deke’s account of the man with the binoculars and the rifle on the canyon rim. “Deke said he’s going up the canyon and warn Nez that somebody may still be trying to kill him. I hope we can figure this out before they do it.”
Chee sat for a moment looking at the closed door, thinking of Leaphorn, thinking of Janet Pete, of John McDermott back in New Mexico. Was he back in her life? Apparently he was. For the first time, the Fallen Man became more than an abstract tragedy in Chee’s mind. He buzzed Jenifer.
“I’m taking off now for Gallup,” he said. “If Largo needs me—if anybody calls—tell them I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Hey,” Jenifer said, “you have two meetings on the calendar for this afternoon. The security man from the community college and Captain Largo was—”
“Call them and tell them I had to cancel,” Chee said, forgetting to say please, and forgetting to say thanks when he hung up. Captain Largo wouldn’t like this. But then he didn’t particularly like Captain Largo and he sure as hell didn’t like being an acting lieutenant.
LOUISE GUARD’S FORD ESCORT was not in the driveway of the little house she shared with Janet Pete in Gallup. Good news, but not as good as it would have seemed when Jim Chee was feeling better about life. This evening his mood had been swinging back and forth between a sort of grim anger at the world that Janet occupied and self-contempt for his own immature attitude. It hadn’t taken long for Chee, who was good at self-analysis, to determine that his problem was mostly jealousy. Maybe it was 90 percent jealousy. But even so, that left 10 percent or so that seemed legitimate.
He gave the door of his pickup the hard slam required to shut it and walked up the pathway with the videotape of the traditional wedding clutched in one hand and the other holding a pot of some sort of autumn-blooming flowers he’d bought for her at Gallup Best Blossoms. It wasn’t a very impressive floral display, but what could you expect in November?
“Ah, Jim,” Janet said, and greeted him with such a huge and enthusiastic hug that it left him helpless—tape in one hand and flowerpot in the other. It also left him feeling guilty. What the devil was wrong with him? Janet was beautiful. Janet was sweet. She loved him. She was wearing a set of designer jeans that fit her perfectly and a blouse of something that shimmered. Her black hair was done in a new fashion he’d been observing on the nighttime soap opera shows. It made her look young and jaunty and like someone the muscular actor in the tank top would be laughing with at the fancy party in a Coca-Cola commercial.
“I’d almost forgotten how beautiful you are,” Chee said. “Just back from Washington, you should be looking tired.”
Janet was in the kitchen by then, watering whatever it was he’d brought her, opening the refrigerator and fixing something for them.
“It wasn’t tiresome,” she shouted. “It was lots of fun. The people in the BIA were on their very best behavior, and the people over at Justice were reasonable for a change. And there was time to see a show some German artist had going in the National Gallery. It was really interesting stuff. Partly sculpture and partly drawings. And then there was the concert I told you about. The one in the Library of Congress hall. It was partly Mozart. Really great.”
Yes. The concert. He’d thought about that before. Maybe too much. In Washington and at the Library of Congress it wouldn’t be a public event. It would be exclusive. Some sort of high-society fund-raiser. Shaking down the social set for some worthy literacy cause, probably. Almost certainly it would be by invitation only. Or just members and guests for the big-money patrons of library projects. She’d mentioned some ambassador being there. He had thought, once, that John McDermott might have taken her. But that was crazy. She detested the man. He had taken advantage of the leverage a distinguished professor has over his students. He’d seduced Janet. He’d taken her to Albuquerque as his live-in intern, had taken her to Washington as his token Indian. She had come back to New Mexico ashamed and brokenhearted when she realized what he was doing. There were a dozen ways McDermott could have learned the Fallen Man had been identified. Leaphorn, as usual, was right. McDermott’s firm probably had connections with lawyers in New Mexico. Of course they would. They would be working with Arizona and New Mexico law firms on Indian business. Anyway, he damn sure wasn’t going to bring it up. It would be insulting.
From the kitchen the sound of something clattering, the smell of coffee. Chee inspected the room around him. Nothing different that he could see except for something or other on the mantle over the gas-log
fireplace. It was made of thin stainless steel tubing combined with shaped Plexiglas in three or four colors held together by what seemed to be a mixture of aluminum wiring and thread. Most peculiar. In fact, weird. Chee grinned at it. Something Louise had found somewhere. A conversation piece. Louise haunted garage sales, and in Gallup, garage sales were always offering odd harvests.
Janet emerged with a cup of coffee for him—fragile china on a thin-as-paper saucer—and a crystal goblet of wine for herself. She snuggled onto the sofa beside him, clicked glass against cup, smiled at him, and said, “To your capture of a whole squadron of cattle rustlers, your promotion to commander in chief of the Navajo police, chief honcho of the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude, and international boss of Interpol.”
“You forgot my busting up the Shiprock graffiti vandals and election as sheriff of San Juan County and bureaucrat in chief of the Drug Enforcement Agency.”
“All that, too,” Janet said, raised her glass again, and sipped. She picked up the videocassette and inspected it. “What’s this?”
“Remember?” Chee said. “My paternal uncle’s niece was having a traditional wedding at their place north of Little Water. I got him to get me a copy of the videotape they had made.”
Janet turned it over and inspected the back, which was just as black and blank as the other side. “You want me to look at it?”
“Sure,” Chee said, his good feelings fading fast. “Remember? We talked about that.” They had argued a little, actually. About cultures, and traditions, and all that. It wasn’t that Janet was opposed, but her mother wanted a huge ceremony in an Episcopal cathedral in Baltimore. And Janet had agreed, or so he thought, that they would do both. “You said you had never been to a regular Navajo wedding with a shaman and the entire ceremony. I thought you’d be interested.”
“Louise described it to me,” Janet said, and put the videotape on the coffee table in a way that made Chee want to change the subject. Suddenly Louise’s peculiar purchase seemed useful.
The Fallen Man Page 11
