That required some sort of partnership, not a sudden panicky impulse. Leaphorn's imagination couldn't produce a motive for such a conspiracy. But he came up with another possibility. No cinch, but a possibility. He started the engine and drove off in search of Richard Krause.
A stopoff at Tuba showed Krause's office still empty with the same note on the door. Leaphorn refilled his gasoline tank and started driving. Krause wasn't at Inscription House. The woman who responded to Leaphorn's knock at the Navajo Mission office door said the Health Department man had left about thirty minutes earlier. Going where? He hadn't said.
So Leaphorn made the long, long drive back to Tuba City, writing off the day as a loser, watching the sunset backlight the towering thunderheads on the western horizon and turn them into a kind of beauty only nature can produce. By the time he reached his motel, he was more than ready to call it quits. Calling Mrs. Vanders could wait. Tomorrow he'd rise earlier and catch Krause before he left his office.
Wrong again. The note on the door the next morning suggested that Krause would be working in the arroyo west of the Shonto Landing Strip. An hour and sixty miles later Leaphorn spotted Krause's truck from the road, and Krause on his knees apparently peering at something on the ground. He heard Leaphorn coming, got to his feet, dusted off his pant legs.
"Collecting fleas," he said, and shook hands.
"It looked like you were blowing into that hole," Leaphorn said.
"Good eye," Krause said. "Fleas detect your breath. If something is killing their host mammal and they're looking for a new host, they're very sensitive to that. You blow into the hole and they come to the mouth of the tunnel." He grinned at Leaphorn. "Some say they prefer garlic on your breath, but I like chili." He stared at the tunnel month. Pointed. "See 'em?"
Leaphorn squatted and stared. "Nope," he said.
"Little black specks. Put your hand down there. They'll jump on it."
"No thanks," Leaphorn said.
"Well, what can I do for you?" Krause said. "And what's new?"
He removed a flexible metal rod from the pickup bed and unfurled the expanse of white flannel cloth attached to the end of it.
"I'd like you to take a look at this list of stuff found in the Jeep," Leaphorn said. "See if it's missing anything that should be there, or if there's anything on it that tells you anything."
Krause had folded the flannel around the rod. Now he pushed it slowly into the rodent hole, deeper and deeper. "Okay," he said. "I'll just give 'em a minute to collect on the flannel. Then when I pull it out, the flannel pulls off the rod and folds over the other way and traps a bunch of fleas."
Krause slipped the flannel off the rod, dropped it into a Ziploc bag, closed it, then checked himself for fleas, found one on his wrist, and disposed of it.
Leaphorn handed him the list. Krause put on a pair of bifocals and studied it. "Kools," he said. "Cathy didn't smoke so those must be from somebody else."
"I think it notes they were old," Leaphorn said. "Could have been there for months."
"Two shovels?" Krause said. "Everybody carries one for the digging we do. Wonder why she had the other one?"
"Let me see it," Leaphorn said, and took the list. Under "on floor behind front seat" it listed "long-handled shovel." Under "rear luggage space," it also listed "long-handled shovel."
"Maybe a mistake," Krause said, and shrugged.
"Listing the same shovel twice."
"Maybe," Leaphorn said, but he doubted it. "And here," Krause said. "What the hell was she doing with this?" He pointed to the rear luggage space entry, which read: "One small container of gray powdery substance labeled 'calcium cyanide.'"
"Sounds like a poison," Leaphorn said. "It damn sure is," Krause said. "We used to use it to clean out infected burrows. You blow that dust down it and it wipes out everything. Pack rats, rattlesnakes, burrowing owls, earthworms, spiders, fleas, anything alive. But it's dangerous to handle. Now we use the pill. It's phostoxin, and we just put it in the ground at the mouth of a burrow and it gets the job done."
"So where would she get this cyanide stuff?"
"We still have a supply of it. It's on a shelf back in our supply closet."
"She'd have access to it?"
"Sure," Krause said. "And look at this." He pointed to the next entry: "'Air tank with hose and nozzle.' That's what we used to use to blow the cyanide dust back into the burrow. It was in the storeroom, too."
"What do you think it means—her having that in the Jeep?"
"First, it means she was breaking the rules. She doesn't take that stuff out without checking with me and explaining what she wants it for, and why she's not using the phostoxin instead. And second, she wouldn't be using it unless she wanted to really sterilize burrows. Zap 'em. Something big like prairie dogs. Not just to kill fleas." He returned the list to Leaphorn. "Anything else on there you'd wonder about?"
"No, but there's something that should be on that list that isn't. Her PAPR."
"You always have that with you?"
"No, but you'd damn sure have it if you were going ; to use that calcium cyanide dust." Krause made a wry face. "They say the warning is you smell almonds, but the trouble is, by the time you smell it, it's already too late."
"Not something you'd use casually then." Krause laughed. "Hardly. And before I forget it, I found that note Cathy left me. Made a copy for you." He fished out his wallet, extracted a much-folded sheet of paper, and handed it to Leaphorn. "I don't see anything helpful on it, though." The note was written in Pollard's familiar semi-legible scrawl:
"Boss—Heard stuff about Nez infection at Flag. Think we've been lied to. Going to Yells Back, collect fleas and find out—Will fill you in on it when I get back. Pollard."
Leaphorn looked up from the note at Krause, who was watching his reaction, looking penitent.
"Knowing what I know now, I can see I should have got worried quicker when she didn't get back. But, hell, she was always doing things and then explaining later. If at all. For example, I didn't know where she was the day before. She didn't tell me she was driving down to Flag. Or why." He shrugged, shook his head. "So I just thought she'd gone tearing off somewhere else."
"I wonder why she didn't tell you she was quitting," Leaphorn said.
Krause stared at him. "I don't think she was. Did she tell her aunt why?"
"I gather it was something about you."
Krause had spent too many summers in the sun to look pale. But he did look tense.
"What about me?"
"I don't know," Leaphorn said. "She didn't get specific."
"Well, we never did get along very well," Krause said, and began putting his equipment in the truck. The legend on his sweat-soaked T-shirt said, SUPPORT SCIENCE:
HUG A HERPETOLOGIST.
Chapter Twenty-six
TWO TELEPHONE NOTES were stuck on his spindle when Chee got to his office. One was from Leaphorn, asking Chee to call him at his motel. The second was from Janet Pete. It said: "The eagle's being tested today. Please call me."
Chee wasn't quite ready for that. He dialed Leaphorn's number first. Yesterday the Legendary Lieutenant had wanted to show Krause the list of stuff found in the Jeep. Maybe that had developed into something.
"You had breakfast?" Leaphorn asked.
"I'm not much for eating breakfast," Chee said. "What's on your mind?"
"How about joining me for coffee then at the motel diner? I want to go back out to Yells Back Butte. Can you get away? I think I should have an officer along."
An officer along! "Oh," Chee said. He felt elation, quickly tinged with a little disappointment. The Legendary Lieutenant had done it again. Had unraveled the puzzle of who had abandoned the Jeep. Had maintained the legend. Had again outthought Jim Chee. "Sure. I'll be there in ten minutes."
Leaphorn was sitting at a window table, putting butter on a stack of pancakes. He put the note on the table in front of Chee and smoothed it out.
"I showed the list to Krau
se," he said. "There were a couple or three surprises."
"Oh," Chee said, feeling slightly defensive. He hadn't noticed anything amiss.
"Mostly technical stuff way over our heads," Leaphorn said. "This blower here, for example, and the container of calcium cyanide. I figured that was just one of their flea killers. Turns out they don't use it these days except in some sort of unusual circumstances." He looked up at Chee. "Like, let's say they needed to wipe out a whole colony of prairie dogs."
Chee leaned back in his chair, understanding again why he admired Leaphorn instead of resenting him. The man was giving him a chance to figure it out for himself. And of course he had.
"Like, let's say, the colony Dr. Woody is working with."
Leaphorn was grinning. "That occurred to me, too." he said. "I don't think Woody would have wanted that to happen."
Chee nodded. And waited. He could tell from Leaphorn's expression that more was coming.
"And then there's this," Leaphorn said. "I asked Krause why there would be two of these long-handled shovels in that Jeep. He said everybody carried one because of the digging they do, besides getting stuck in the sand. But just one."
Chee leaned back again, considering that. "Be useful to have one if you wanted to dig a grave."
Leaphorn nodded. "That also occurred to me. Maybe toss it in, not knowing there was already one in the Jeep."
"So somewhere between Yells Back Butte and where the Jeep was left we might be checking on easy places to dig and looking for freshly dug dirt."
"I'd suggest that," Leaphorn said.
"I'm also asking people to check for bicycle tracks along the Goldtooth road. But there's not much chance they'll find any. Too dry."
This caused Leaphorn's eyebrows to rise. "Bicycle?"
"I noticed Woody had a bicycle rack bolted to the back of that mobile lab truck," Chee said. "There wasn't a bike on it."
Leaphorn slammed his hand on the tabletop, rattling his plate. "I must be getting old," he said. "Why didn't I think of that?"
"It wouldn't be a hard bike ride," Chee said, "from where the Jeep was left back to Yells Back. He could have stepped out of the Jeep onto rocks, lifted the bike out, and carried it back to the road."
"Sure," Leaphorn said. "Sure he could. But it would have been clumsy to carry the shovel, too. I've had my brain turned off."
Chee doubted that. It reminded Chee of watching the Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn on television. Seeing the big brother overlook an egg so the little kid could find it.
The waitress arrived and offered refills. But now both of them were in a hurry.
They took Chee's patrol car, roared down Arizona 264, turned right onto the road to Goldtooth, jolted over the washboard bumps.
"Seems like old times," Leaphorn said. "Us working together."
"You miss it? I mean, being a cop?"
"I miss this part of it. And the people I worked with. I don't miss the paperwork. I'll bet you wouldn't, either."
"I hate that part of it," Chee said. "I'm not good at it, either."
"You're acting now," Leaphorn said. "Usually after you've done that awhile, they offer you the permanent position. Would you take it?"
Chee drove for a while without answering. Clouds were building up already, fleets of great white ships against the dark blue sky. By late evening yesterday they had towered high enough to produce a few drops of rain here and there. By this afternoon the monsoon rains might actually begin. Long overdue.
"No," Chee said. "I guess not."
"When I heard you'd applied for the promotion, I sort of wondered why," Leaphorn said. Chee glanced at him, saw only a profile. Leaphorn was staring at the clouds. "I imagine you could make a pretty good guess. Part prestige, mostly the money's better."
"What do you need it for? You still live in that rusty old trailer, don't you?"
Chee decided to turn the cross-examination around.
"You think they'll offer me the job?"
Long silence. "Probably not."
"Why's that?"
"I suspect the powers that be will get the impression that you would not be a proper team player. You wouldn't cooperate well with other law enforcement agencies," Leaphorn said.
"Any agency in particular?"
"Well, maybe the FBI."
"Oh," Chee said. "What have you heard?"
"It has been said that the FBI would hesitate to handle sensitive business with you over the telephone."
Chee laughed. "Man, oh man," he said. "How fast the word does travel. Did you hear that this morning?"
"Last night already," Leaphorn said.
"Who?"
"Kennedy called me from Albuquerque. Remember him? We worked with him a time or two, and then the Bureau transferred him. He was asking me about a thing we were looking into just before I retired. He's retiring himself at the end of the year and he wanted to know how I liked being a civilian. Asked about you, too. And he said you had made yourself some enemies. So I asked him how you managed that."
"And he said I'd taped a telephone call without per mission," Chee said. "Thereby violating a federal statute."
"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "Did he have it right?"
Chee nodded.
"It's nice you don't want that promotion then," Leaphorn said. "Had you decided that before or after you turned on the tape recorder?"
Chee thought for a moment. "Before, I guess. But I didn't really realize it."
They turned up the track toward Yells Back Butte, circled around a barrier of tumbled boulders and found themselves engulfed in goats. And not just the goats. There, beside the track was an aged woman on a large roan horse watching them.
"Lucked out," Leaphorn said. He climbed out of the patrol car, said "Ya'eeh te'h" to Old Lady Notah and introduced himself, reciting his membership in his born to and born for clans. Then he introduced Jim Chee, by maternal and paternal clans and as a member of the Navajo Tribal Police at Tuba City. The horse stared at Chee suspiciously, the goats milled around, and Mrs. Notah returned the courtesy.
"It is a long way to Tuba City," Mrs. Notah said. "And I have seen you here before. I think it must be because the other policeman was killed here. Or because the Hopi came to steal our eagles."
"It is even more than that, mother," Leaphorn said. "A woman who worked with the health department came here the day the policeman was killed. No one has seen her since. Her family asked me to look for her."
Mrs. Notah waited a bit to see if Leaphorn had more to say. Then she said: "I don't know where she is." Leaphorn nodded. "They say you saw a skinwalker somewhere near here. Was that the day the policeman was killed?"
She nodded. "Yes. It was that day it rained. Now I think it might have been somebody who helps the man who works in that big motor home."
Chee sucked in his breath.
Leaphorn said: "Why do you think that?"
"After that day I saw that man come out of his place carrying a white suit. He walked way up the slope with it, and through the junipers, and then he put it on and put a white hood over his head." She laughed. "I think it is something to keep the sickness off of them. I saw something like that on television."
"I think that's right," Leaphorn said. And then he asked Mrs. Notah to try to tell them everything she had seen or heard around Yells Back Butte that morning. She did, and it took quite a while.
She had risen before dawn, lit her propane burner, warmed her coffee and ate some fry bread. Then she saddled her horse and rode there. While she was rounding up the goats, she heard a truck coming up the track toward the butte. About sunup, she had seen a man climb up the saddle and disappear over the rim onto the top of the butte.
"I thought it must be one of the Hopi eagle-catchers come to get one. They used to come out here a lot before the government changed the boundary, and I had seen this same man the afternoon before. Just looking around," she said. "That's the way they used to work. Then they would come back before daylight the next morning and go
up and catch one." Chee asked: "Did you tell anyone about this?"
"I was down by the road when a police car came by. I told him I thought the Hopis were going to steal an eagle again."
Chee nodded. Mrs. Notah had been Kinsman's confidential source.
Next in Mrs. Notah's narration was the arrival of the black Jeep.
"It was going too fast for those rocks," Mrs. Notah said. "I thought it would be the young woman with the short hair, but I couldn't see who it was."
"Why the woman with the short hair?" Leaphorn asked.
"I have seen her driving that car before. She drives too fast." Mrs. Notah emphasized her disapproval with a negative shake of her head. "Then I had to go get that goat there." She pointed at a black and white male that had wandered far down the track. "Maybe a half-hour later, when I moved the goats back up near the butte, I saw somebody moving behind the trees, and then I saw the thing in the white suit."
She paused, rewarded them with a wry smile. "I went away for a while then, and on the way back to the goats, I heard a car coming, very, very slowly, up the trail. It was a police car, and I thought, That policeman knows how to drive over rocks. When I came back to the goats, I saw the man who works in that motor home was over at the old Tijinney hogan. He was right in there, and I thought bilagaana don't know about death hogans, or maybe that's the skinwalker. A witch, well, he don't care about chindis."
"What was he doing?" Leaphorn asked. "I couldn't see much over the wall from where I was," she said. "But when he came out, I could see he was carrying a shovel."
Chee parked his patrol car on the hump overlooking the Tijinney place. They walked down together, Chee carrying the shovel from the trunk of his car, and stood looking over the tumbled stone. The hard-packed earthen floor was littered with pieces of the fallen roof, blown-in tumbleweeds, and the debris vandals had left. It was flat and smooth except for a half dozen holes and the filled-in excavation where the fire pit had been.
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