The First Eagle jlajc-13

by Tony Hillerman

  "Of course I would," she added. "Certainly."

  "But if you didn't for some reason, you understand that I would have to do it. Would you agree to that?"

  She stared at Leaphorn. Then she nodded. "I think we are creating a problem where none exists."

  "Probably," Leaphorn said.

  "I would like you to locate a young woman. Or, failing that, discover what happened to her."

  She gestured toward the folder. Leaphorn opened it. The top picture was a studio portrait of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman wearing a mortarboard. The face was narrow and intelligent, the expression somber. Not a girl who would have been called "cute," Leaphorn thought. Nor pretty either, for that matter. Handsome, perhaps. Full of character. Certainly it would be an easy face to remember. The next picture was of the same woman, wearing jeans and a jean jacket now, leaning on the door of a Pickup truck and looking back at the camera. She had the look of an athlete, Leaphorn thought, and was older in this one. Perhaps in her early thirties. On the back of each photograph the same name was written: Catherine Anne.

  Leaphorn glanced at Mrs. Vanders.

  "My niece," she said. "The only child of my late sister."

  Leaphorn returned the photos to the folder and »ok out a sheaf of papers, clipped together. The top one ad biographical details.

  Catherine Anne Pollard was the full name. The birth-ate made her thirty-three, the birthplace was Arlington, Virginia, the current address Flagstaff, Arizona.

  "Catherine studied biology," Mrs. Vanders said. "She specialized in mammals and insects. She was working r the Indian Health Service, but actually I think it's ore for the Arizona Health Department. The environment division. They call her a ‘vector control specialist.' I imagine you would know about that?"

  Leaphorn nodded.

  Mrs. Vanders made a wry face. "She says they actually call her a 'fleacatcher.'

  "I think she could have had a good career as a tennis player. On the tour, you know. She always loved orts. Soccer, striker on the college volleyball team, hen she was in junior high school she worried about being bigger than the other girls. I think excelling in orts was her compensation for that." Leaphorn nodded again.

  "The first time she came to see me after she got this, I asked for her job title, and she said 'fleacatcher.'" Vanders's expression was sad. "Called herself that, I guess she doesn't mind."

  "It's an important job," Leaphorn said.

  "She wanted a career in biology. But 'fleacatcher'?" Mrs. Vanders shook her head. "I understand that she and some others were working on the source of those bubonic plague cases this spring. They have a little laboratory in Tuba City and check places where the victims might have picked up the disease. Trapping rodents." Mrs. Vanders hesitated, her face reflecting distaste. "That's the flea catching. They collect the fleas from them. And take samples of their blood. That sort of thing." She dismissed this with a wave of the hand.

  "Then last week, early in the morning, she went to work and never came back."

  She let that hang there, her eyes on Leaphorn.

  "She left for work alone?"

  "Alone. That's what they say. I'm not so sure."

  Leaphorn would come back to that later. Now he needed basic facts. Speculation could wait.

  "Went to work where?"

  "The man I called said she just stopped by the office to pick up some of the equipment she uses in her work and then drove away. To someplace out in the country where she was trapping rodents."

  "Was she meeting anyone where she was going to be working?"

  "Apparently not. Not officially anyway. The man I talked to didn't think anyone went with her."

  "And you think something has happened to her. Have you discussed this with the police?"

  "Mr. Peabody discussed it with people he knows in the FBI. He said they would not be involved in something like this. They would have jurisdiction only if it involved a kidnapping for ransom, or"—she hesitated, glanced down at her hands—"or some other sort of felony. They told Mr. Peabody there would have to be evidence that a federal law had been violated."

  "What evidence was there?" He was pretty sure he knew the answer. It would be none. Nothing at all.

  Mrs. Vanders shook her head.

  "Actually, I guess you would say the only evidence is that a woman is missing. Just the circumstances."

  "The vehicle. Where was it found?"

  "It hasn't been found. Not as far as I have been able to discover." Mrs. Vanders's eyes were intent on Leap-horn, watching for his reaction.

  Had they not been, Leaphorn would have allowed himself a smile—thinking of the hopeless task Mr. Peabody must have faced in trying to interest the federals. Thinking of the paperwork this missing vehicle would cause in the Arizona Health Department, of how this would be interpreted by the Arizona Highway Patrol if a missing person report had been filed, of the other complexities. But Mrs. Vanders would read a smile as an expression of cynicism.

  "Do you have a theory?"

  "Yes," she said, and cleared her throat. "I think she must be dead."

  Mrs. Vanders, who had seemed frail and unhealthy, now looked downright sick.

  "Are you all right? Do you want to continue this?" She produced a weak smile, extracted a small white container from the pocket of her jacket and held it up.

  "I have a heart condition," she said. "This is nitro-glycerin. The prescription used to come in little tablets, but these days the patient just sprays it on the tongue. Please excuse me. I'll feel fine again in a moment."

  She turned away from him, held the tube to her lips for a moment, then returned it to her pocket.

  Leaphorn waited, reviewing what little he knew about nitro as a heart medication. It served to expand the arteries and thus increase the blood flow. Neither of the people he'd known who used it had lived very long. Perhaps that explained the urgency Peabody mentioned in his letter.

  Mrs. Vanders sighed. "Where were we?"

  "You'd said you thought your niece must be dead."

  "Murdered, I think."

  "Did someone have a motive? Or did she have something that would attract a thief?"

  "She was being stalked," Mrs. Vanders said. "A man named Victor Hammar. A graduate student she'd met at the University of New Mexico. A fairly typical case, I'd guess, for this sort of thing. He was from East Germany, what used to be East Germany that is, with no family or friends over here. A very lonely man, I would imagine. And that's the way Catherine described him to me. They had common interests at the university. Both biologists. He was studying small mammals. That caused them to do a lot of work in the laboratory together. I suppose Catherine took pity on him." Mrs. Vanders shook her head. "Losers always had a special appeal to her. When her mother was going to buy her a dog, she wanted one from the pound. Something she could feel sorry for. But with that man…" She grimaced. "Well, anyway, she couldn't get rid of him. I suspected she dropped out of graduate school to get away from him. Then, after she took the job in Arizona, he would turn up at Phoenix when she was there. It was the same thing when she started working at Flagstaff."

  "Had he threatened her?"

  "I asked her that and she just laughed. She thought he was perfectly harmless. She told me to think of him as being like a little lost kitten. Just a nuisance."

  "But you think he was a threat?"

  "I think he was a very dangerous man. Under the right circumstances anyway. When he came here with her once, he seemed polite enough. But there was a sort of—" She paused, looking for the way to express it. "I think a lot of anger was right under that nicey-nicey surface ready to explode."

  Leaphorn waited for more explanation. Mrs. Vanders merely looked worried.

  "I told Catherine that even with kittens, if you hurt one it will scratch you," she said.

  "That's true," Leaphorn said. "If I decide I can be of any help on this, I'll need his name and address." He thought about it. "And I think finding that vehicle she was driving is important. I
think you should offer a reward. Something substantial enough to attract attention. To get people talking about it."

  "Of course," Mrs. Vanders said. "Offer whatever you like."

  "I'll need all the pertinent biographical information about her. People who might know her or something about her habits. Names, addresses, that sort of thing."

  "All I have is in the folder you have there," she said. "There's a report about what a lawyer from Mr. Peabody's office found out, and a report from a lawyer he hired in Flagstaff to collect what information he could. It wasn't much. I'm afraid it won't be very helpful."

  "When was the last time she saw this Hammar?"

  "That's one reason I suspect him," Mrs. Vanders said. "It was just before she disappeared. He'd come out to Tuba City where she was working. She'd called to tell me she was coming to see me that weekend. That Ham-mar man was there at Tuba City when she called."

  "Did she say anything that made you think she was afraid of him?"

  "No." Mrs. Vanders laughed. "I don't think Catherine's ever been afraid of anything. She inherited her mother's genes."

  Leaphorn frowned. "She said she was coming to see you but she disappeared instead," he said. "Did she say why she was coming? Just social, or did she have something on her mind?"

  "She was thinking of quitting. She couldn't stand her boss. A man named Krause." Mrs. Vanders pointed at the folder. "Very arrogant. And she disapproved of the way he ran the operation."

  "Something illegal?"

  "I don't know. She said she didn't want to talk about it on the telephone. But it must have been pretty serious to make her think about leaving."

  "Something personal, you think? Did she ever suggest sexual harassment? Anything like that?"

  "She didn't exactly suggest that," Mrs. Vanders said. "But he was a bachelor. Whatever he was doing it was bad enough to be driving her away from a job she loved."

  Leaphorn questioned that by raising his eyebrows.

  "She was excited by that job. She's been working for months to find the rodents that caused that last outbreak of bubonic plague on your reservation. Catherine has always been obsessive, even as a child. And since she took this health department job her obsession has been the plague. She spent one entire visit telling me about it. About how it killed half the people in Europe in the Middle Ages. How it spreads. How they're beginning to think the bacteria are evolving. All that sort of thing. She's on a personal crusade about it. Almost religious, I'd say. And she thought she might have found some of the rodents it spreads from. She'd told this Hammar fellow about it and I guess he used that as an excuse to come out."

  Mrs. Vanders made a deprecating gesture. "Being a student of mice and rats and other rodents, that gives him an excuse, I guess. She said he might go out there with her to help her with the rodents. Apparently he wasn't with her when she left Tuba City, but I thought he might have followed her. I guess they trap them or poison them or something. And she said it was a hard-to get-to place, so maybe she would want him to help her carry in whatever they use. It's out on the edge of the Hopi Reservation. A place called Yells Back Butte."

  "Yells Back Butte," Leaphorn said.

  "It seems a strange name," Mrs. Vanders said. "I suspect there's some story behind it."

  "Probably," Leaphorn said. "I think it's a local name for a little finger sticking out from Black Mesa. On the edge of the Hopi Reservation. And when was she going out there?"

  "The day after she called me," Mrs. Vanders said. "That would be a week ago next Friday."

  Leaphorn nodded, sorting out some memories. That would be July 8, just about the day—No. It was exactly the day when Officer Benjamin Kinsman had his skull cracked with a rock somewhere very near Yells Back Butte. Same time. Same place. Leaphorn had never learned to believe in coincidences.

  "All right, Mrs. Vanders," Leaphorn said, "I'll see what I can find out."

  Chapter Four

  CHEE WAS NOT STANDING at the waiting room window just to watch the Northern Arizona Medical Center parking lot and the cloud shadows dappling the mountains across the valley. He was postponing the painful moment when he would walk into Officer Benjamin Kinsman's room and give Benny the foredoomed official "last opportunity" to tell them who had murdered him.

  Actually, it wasn't murder yet. The neurologist in charge had called Shiprock yesterday to report that Kinsman had become brain-dead and procedures could now begin to end his ordeal. But this was going to be a legally complicated and socially sensitive process. The U.S. Attorney's office was nervous. Converting the charge against Jano from attempted homicide to murder had to be done exactly right. Therefore, J. D. Mickey, the acting assistant U.S. attorney charged with handling the prosecution, had decided that the arresting officer must be present when the plug was pulled. He wanted Chee to testify that he was available to receive any possible last words. That meant that the defense attorney should be there, too.

  Chee had no idea why. Everybody involved had the same boss. As an indigent, Jano would be represented by another Justice Department lawyer. Said lawyer being—Chee glanced at his watch—eleven minutes late. But maybe that was his vehicle pulling into the lot. No. It was a pickup truck. Even in Arizona, Justice Department lawyers didn't arrive in trucks.

  In fact, it was a familiar truck. Dodge Ram king cab pickups of the early nineties looked a lot alike, but this one had a winch attached to the front bumper and fender damage covered with paint that didn't quite match. It was Joe Leaphorn's truck.

  Chee sighed. Fate seemed to be tying him to his former boss again, endlessly renewing the sense of inferiority Chee felt in the presence of the Legendary Lieutenant.

  But he felt a little better after he thought about it. There was no way the murder of Officer Kinsman could involve Leaphorn. The Legendary Lieutenant had been retired since last year. As a rookie, Kinsman had never worked for him. There were no clan relationships that Chee knew about. Leaphorn would be coming to visit some sick friend. This would be one of those coincidences that Leaphorn had told him, about a hundred times, not to believe in. Chee relaxed. He watched a white Chevy sedan, driving too fast, skid through the parking lot gate. A federal motor-pool Chevy. The defense lawyer finally. Now the plugs could be pulled, stopping the machines that had kept Kinsman's lungs pumping and his heart beating for all these days, since the wind of life that had blown through Benny had left, taking Benny's consciousness on its last great adventure.

  Now the lawyers would agree, in view of the seriousness of the case, to ignore the objections the Kinsman family might have and conduct a useless autopsy. That would prove that the blow to the head had caused Benny's death and therefore the People of the United States could apply the death penalty and kill Robert Jano to even the score. The fact that neither the Navajos nor the Hopis believed in this eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the white men would be ignored.

  Two floors below him the white Chevy had parked. The driver's-side door opened, a pair of black trouser legs emerged, then a hand holding a briefcase.

  "Lieutenant Chee," said a familiar voice just behind him. "Could I talk to you for a minute?"

  Joe Leaphorn was standing in the doorway, holding his battered gray Stetson in his hands and looking apologetic.

  So much for coincidences.

  Chapter Five

  "SOMEPLACE QUIETER, MAYBE," Leaphorn had said, meaning a place where no one would overhear him. So Chee led him down the hall to the empty orthopedic waiting room. He pulled back a chair by the table and motioned toward another one.

  "I know you just have a minute," Leaphorn said, and sat down. "The defense attorney just drove up."

  "Yeah," Chee said, thinking that Leaphorn not only had Managed to find him in this unlikely place but knew why he was here and what was going on. Probably knew more than Chee did. That irritated Chee, but it didn't surprise him.

  "I wanted to ask if the name Catherine Anne Pollard meant anything to you. If a missing persons report was filed on her. Or a stolen vehicle
report? Anything like that?"

  "Pollard?" Chee said. "I don't think so. It doesn't ring a bell." Thank God Leaphorn wasn't involving himself in the Kinsman business. It was already complicated enough.

  "Woman, early thirties, working with the Indian Health Service," Leaphorn said. "In vector control. Looking for the source of that bubonic plague outbreak. Checking rodents. You know how they work."

  "Oh, yeah," Chee said. "I heard about it. When I get back to Tuba I'll check our reports. I think somebody in environmental health or the Indian Health Service called Window Rock about her not coming back from a job and they passed it along to us." He shrugged. "I got the impression they were more worried about losing the department's Jeep."

  Leaphorn grinned at him. "Not exactly the crime of the century."

  "No," Chee said. "If she was about thirteen you'd be checking the motels. At her age, if she wants to run off somewhere, that's her business. As long as she brings back the Jeep."

  "She didn't, then? It's still missing?"

  "I don't know," Chee said. "If she returned it, APH forgot to tell us."

  "That wouldn't be unusual," Leaphorn said.

  Chee nodded, and looked at Leaphorn. Wanting an explanation for his interest in something that seemed both obvious and trivial.

  "Somebody in her family thinks she's dead. Thinks somebody killed her." Leaphorn let that hang a moment, made an apologetic face. "I know that's what kinfolks usually think. But this time there's a suspicion that a would-be boyfriend was stalking her."

  "That's not unusual either," Chee said. He felt vaguely disappointed. Leaphorn had done some private detecting right after he'd retired, but that had been to tie up a loose end from his career, close out an old case. This sounded purely commercial. Was the Legendary Lieutenant Leap-horn reduced to doing routine private detective stuff?

  Leaphorn took a notebook out of his shirt pocket, looked at it, tapped it against the tabletop. It occurred to Chee that this was embarrassing Leaphorn, and that embarrassed Chee. The Legendary Lieutenant, totally unflappable when he'd been in charge, didn't know how to handle being a civilian. Asking favors. Chee didn't know how to handle it either. He noticed that Leaphorn's burr-cut hair, long black-salted-with-gray, had become gray-salted-with-black.