“It sounds important to me,” Louisa said.
“Well, yes. It makes it terribly lethal if one is infected. But what we have here is still a blood-to-blood transmission. It requires a vector—such as a flea—to spread it from one mammal to another. If this evolution converted it directly into an aerobic form—a pneumonic plague spread by coughing or just breathing the same air—we’d have cause for panic.”
“No panic then?”’
Woody laughed. “Actually, the epidemic trackers might even be happier with this form. If a disease kills its victims fast enough, they don’t have time to spread it.”
Louisa’s expression suggested she took no cheer from this. “What is important then?”
Woody opened the door of a bottom cabinet, extracted a wire cage, and displayed it. A tag with the name CHARLEY printed on it was tied to the wire. Inside was a plump brown prairie dog, apparently dead.
“Charley, this fellow here, and his kith and kin in the prairie dog town where I trapped him, are full of plague bacteria—both the old form and the new. Yet he’s alive and well, and so are his relatives.”
“He looks dead,” Louisa said.
“He’s asleep,” Woody said. “I took some blood and tissue samples. He’s still recovering from the chloroform.”
“There’s more to it than this,” Leaphorn said. “You’ve known for years that when the plague sweeps through it leaves behind a few towns where the bacteria doesn’t kill the animals. Host colonies. Or plague reservoirs. Isn’t that what they’re called?”
“Exactly,” Woody said. “And we’ve studied them for years without finding out what happens in the one prairie dog’s immune system to keep it alive while a million others are dying.” He stopped, sipped scotch, watched them over the rim of his cup, eyes intense.
“Now we have the key.” He tapped the cage with his finger. “We inject this fellow’s blood into a mammal that has resisted the standard infection and study the immune reaction. We inject it into a normal mammal and make the same study. See what’s happening to white blood cell production, cell walls, so forth. All sorts of new possibilities are open.”
“And what you learn from the rodent immune system applies to the human system.”
“That’s been the basis of medical research for generations,” Woody said. He put down his cup. “If it doesn’t work this time, we can quit worrying about global warming, asteroids on collision courses, nuclear war, all those minor threats. The tiny little beasties have neutralized our defenses. They’ll get us first.”
“That sounds extreme,” Louisa said. “After all, the world has had these sweeping epidemics before. Humanity survived.”
“Before fast mass transportation,” Woody said. “In the old days a disease killed everybody
in an area, then died out because there was nobody left to pass it around. Now airlines can have it spread planetwide before the Centers for Disease Control knows it’s happening.”
That produced a moment of thoughtful silence, which Woody ended after mixing another drink.
“Let me show you what had me so excited when you drove up,” he said after Louisa declined a refill. He pointed to the larger of his two microscopes. Louisa looked first.
“Notice the clusters of ovoid cells, very regular shapes. Those are the Yersinia. See the rounder ones? They’re darker because they take the dye differently. They look a lot like what you find in a gonorrhea victim. But not quite. They also have some of the Yersinia characteristics.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me,” Louisa said. “When I look into one of these things, I always think I’m seeing my eyelashes.”
Leaphorn took his turn. He saw the bacteria and what he guessed were blood cells. Like Louisa, they told him nothing except that he was wasting time. He had come up here to find out what had happened to Catherine Pollard.
“Very interesting,” Leaphorn said. “But we’re taking too much of your time. About two or three more questions and we’ll go. I guess Lieutenant Chee told you that Miss Pollard was trying to find the source of Mr. Nez’s infection. Did Nez work for you?”
“Yes. Part-time for several years. He’d put out the traps, and check them, and collect the rodents. Take care of all such things.”
“I understand you checked him into the hospital. Did you tell the people there where Nez was infected?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Not even a general idea?”
“Not even that,” Woody said. “He’d been in several places. Here and there. Fleas get into people’s clothing. You carry them around. You’re not sure when you get bit.”
Leaphorn weighed that against his own experience. He had been bitten by fleas more than once. Not very painful, but something you noticed.
“When did you notice he was sick?”
“It would have been the evening before I checked him in. He had driven in that morning to do some things, and after we ate our supper he said he had a headache. No other symptoms and no temperature, but you don’t take chances in this business. I gave him a dose of doxycycline. Next morning, he still had a headache, and he was also running a temp. It was a hundred and three. I took him right to the hospital.”
“How long does it usually take between the infected flea bite and those sort of symptoms?”
“Usually about four or five days. The longest I know of is sixteen days.”
“What was the shortest?”
Woody thought. “I’ve been told of a two-day case, but I have my doubts. I think an earlier flea bite caused that one.” He paused. “Here,” he said. “Let me show you another slide.”
He opened a filing case, pulled out a box of slides, selected one and inserted it into the microscope.
“Take a look at this.”
Leaphorn looked. He saw the ovoid cells of the plague bacteria and the rounder specimens of the evolved bacteria. Only the blood cells looked different.
“It looks almost the same,” he said.
“You have a good eye,” Woody said. “It is almost the same. But this slide is from a blood sample I took from Nez when I took his temperature.”
“Oh,” Leaphorn said.
“Two things are important here. From the onset of the fever to death was less than three days. That’s far too short a time for the standard Yersinia bacteria to kill. And the second—” Woody paused for effect, grinning at Leaphorn.
“Charley is still alive,” he said.
It had taken Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee about a year to learn the three ways of getting things done in the Navajo Tribal Police. Number one was the official system. The word, neatly typed on an official form, worked its way up through the prescribed channels to the correct level, and then down again to the working cops. In number two, the midlevel bureaucrat whom Chee had now become telephoned friends at the Window Rock headquarters and the various substations, explained what he needed done, and either called in IOUs or asked for a favor.
Chee learned quickly that number three was the fastest. There, one outlined the problem to the proper woman in the office and asked her for help. If the asker had earned the askee’s respect, she would get the really savvy folks at work on the project—the female network.
Since racing back to his Tuba City office from his meeting with the Legendary Lieutenant Leaphorn, Chee was using all three systems to make sure that if Catherine Pollard’s missing Jeep could be found, it would be found in a hurry. Until it was—in fact, until Pollard herself was found—Chee knew he wouldn’t have a comfortable moment. He’d be haunted by the thought that he might be hanging Jano for a crime he hadn’t committed. Jano had done it, of course. He’d seen him do it. Or practically had, and there was no alternative. But what had been an open-and-shut case in his mind now had a crack in it. He had to dose it.
Therefore, when he walked into the Tuba City station, he went directly to the office of Mrs. Dineyahze and explained to her how important it was to find the vehicle. “All right,” she said, “I’ll call around
. Get some people off their rear ends.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Chee said. He didn’t explain to Mrs. Dineyahze what should be done, which was one of the reasons she liked him.
He hadn’t noticed that Officer Bernadette Manuelito had come through the open door of the secretary’s office and was standing behind him.
She said, “Can I help?” which was exactly what Bernie often said. Nor did how she looked surprise him, which was shirt wrinkled, hair sort of disheveled, lipstick slightly askew and— despite all that—very feminine and very pretty.
Chee looked at his watch. “Thanks, but you’re off-duty now, Bernie. And tomorrow’s your day off.”
He didn’t think that would have much effect, since Bernie did pretty much what she wanted to do. But he could hear the telephone clamoring for attention in his office, and so was the stack of paperwork he’d abandoned this morning. He headed for the door.
“Lieutenant,” Bernie said. “My family is having a kinaalda starting next Saturday for Emily— that’s my cousin. Over at Burnt Water. You’d be welcome.”
“Golly, Bernie, I’d like to. But I don’t think I can get away from here.”
Bernie looked downcast. “Okay,” she said.
The telephone call was to remind him not to be late for a coordination meeting with people from the BIA Law and Order staff, the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office, the Arizona Highway Patrol, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency. While he listened, he could overhear Mrs. Dineyahze discussing the impending puberty ceremonial with Bernie—Mrs. D. sounding cheerful, Ms. Manuelito sounding sad. As for Chee, he felt repentant. He hated hurting Bernie’s feelings.
When he returned from the coordination meeting about sundown, his IN basket held a report from Mrs. Dineyahze with a note clipped to it. The report assured him that the right people in the state police and highway patrols of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado now had all the needed data on the missing Jeep. More important, they knew why it was needed. A brother cop had been killed. Finding that Jeep was part of the investigation. The same information had gone to police departments in reservation border towns and to sheriff’s offices in relevant county seats.
Chee leaned back in his chair, feeling better. If that Jeep was rolling down a highway anywhere in the Four Corners there was a fair chance it would be spotted. If a city cop saw it parked somewhere, there was a good chance the license plate would be checked. He unclipped the note, which was handwritten. By Mrs. Dineyahze’s standards, untyped meant unofficial.
“Lt. Chee: Bernie called the Arizona State motor pool and got all the specifications on the Jeep. It had been impounded in a drug bust and had a lot of fancy add-ons, which are listed below. Also note battery and tire types, rims, other things that Bernie thought might turn up at pawnshops, etc. She relayed the list to shops in Gallup, Flag, Farmington, etc., and also called Thriftway people in Phoenix and asked them to ask their stores on reservation to be alert.” This was signed “C. Dineyahze.”
Far below this signature, which made it not only unofficial but off the record, Mrs. Dineyahze had scrawled:
“Bernie is a good girl.”
Chee already knew that. He liked her. He admired her. He thought she was a very neat lady. But he also knew that Bernadette Manuelito had a crush on him, and almost everybody else in the extended family of the Navajo Tribal Police seemed to know it, too. That made Bernie a pain in the neck. In fact, that was how Chee, who wasn’t very good at understanding women, had come to notice Bernie had her eye on him. He’d started being kidded about it.
But there was no time to think of that now. Nor about her idea—which was smart. If the Jeep had been abandoned somewhere on the Big Rez or in the border country, the odds were fairly good that it would be stripped—especially since it had been loaded with expensive, easily stolen stuff. Now he was hungry and tired. None of the frozen dinners awaiting him in the little refrigerator in his trailer home had any appeal for him tonight. He’d go by the Kentucky Fried Chicken place, pick up a dinner with biscuits and gravy, go home, dine, kick back, finish Meridian, the Norman Zollinger novel he was reading, and get some sleep.
He was finishing a thigh and the second biscuit when the phone rang.
“You said to call you if anything turned up on the Jeep,” the dispatcher said.
“Like what?”
“Like a guy came into the filling station at Cedar Ridge last Monday and tried to sell the clerk a radio and tape player. It was the same brand that was in that Jeep.”
“They have an identification?”
“The clerk said it was a kid from a family named Pooacha. They have a place over on Shinume Wash.”
“Okay,” Chee said. “Thanks.” He looked at his watch. It would have to wait until morning.
By midafternoon the next day the Jeep was found. If you discount driving about two hundred miles back and forth, and some of it over roads far too primitive even to be listed as primitive on Chee’s AAA Indian Country road map, the whole project proved to be remarkably easy.
Since Officer Manuelito had provided the idea that made it possible, and had the day off anyway, Chee could think of no way to discourage Bernie from coming along. In fact, he didn’t even try. He enjoyed her company when she had her mind on business instead of on him. They drove first to the Cedar Ridge trading post, talked to the clerk there, learned the would-be radio salesman was a young man named Tommy Tsi, and got directions to the Pooacha place, where he lived. They took the dusty washboard gravel of Navajo Route 6110 westward to Blue Moon Bench, turned south on the even rougher Route 6120 along Bekihatso Wash, and found the track that wandered through the rocks and saltbush to the Pooacha establishment.
At this intersection a cracked old boot was stuck atop the post beside the cattle guard.
“Well, good,” said Bernie, pointing to the boot. “Somebody’s home.”
“Somebody is,” Chee agreed, “unless the last one out forgot to take the boot down. And in my experience, when the road’s as bad as this one, the somebody who’s there isn’t the one you’re looking for.”
But Tommy Tsi, a very young Pooacha son-in-law, was home—and very nervous when he noticed the uniform Chee was wearing and the Navajo Tribal Police decal on his car. No, he didn’t still have the radio and tape player. It belonged to a friend who had asked him to try to sell it for him. The friend had reclaimed it, Tsi said, rubbing his hand uneasily over a very sparse mustache as he spoke.
“Give us the friend’s name,” Chee said. “Where can we locate him?”
“His name?” Tommy Tsi said. And thought a while. “Well, he’s not exactly a close friend. I
met him in Flag. I think they call him Shorty. Or something like that.”
“And how were you going to get his money back to him when you sold his stuff?”
“Well,” Tommy Tsi said. And hesitated again. “I’m not sure.”
“That’s a shame,” Bernie said. “If you could find him we want you to tell him we’re not much interested in the radio stuff. We want to find the Jeep. If he can show us where the Jeep is, then he gets to collect the reward.”
“Reward? For the Jeep?”
“A thousand bucks,” Bernie said. “Twenty fifty-dollar bills. The family of the woman who was driving the Jeep put it up.”
“Really,” Tsi said. “A thousand bucks.”
“For finding the Jeep. That’s what this guy did, you know. Found an abandoned vehicle. No law against that, is there?”
“Right,” Tommy Tsi agreed, nodding and looking much more cheerful.
“If he told you where the Jeep is, then you could take us there. We could arrange for you to get the money. Then if you can find him again, you could share it with him.”
“Yes,” Tsi said. “Let me get my hat.”
“Tell you what,” Chee said. “Bring the radio stuff along, too. We might need that for fingerprints.”
“Mine?” Tsi looked startled.
“We know yours are on
it,” Chee said. “We’re thinking of whoever drove it where you found it.”
And so they had jolted back down 6120, to 6110, to Cedar Ridge, and thence southward on the pavement past Tuba City and through Moenkopi, and back onto the dusty road past the abandoned Goldtooth trading post, and then a left turn over a cattle guard onto dirt tracks that led up the slope of Ward Terrace. Where the track crossed a shallow wash, Tommy Tsi said, “Here,” and pointed down it.
The Jeep had been left mid-wash around a bend some fifty yards downstream. They left Tsi in the car and walked along the edge of the streambed, careful not to mar any tracks that might still be there. There was no sign of foot traffic up the sand. Much of the Jeep’s tire marks had already been erased by the pickup Tsi had been driving, and the wind had softened the edges of what few remained. But enough had survived to add one bit of information. Bernie noticed it, too.
“That little rainstorm came through just after you found Ben, didn’t it?” And she pointed to a protected place where the Jeep tires had left their imprint in sand that obviously had been damp.
“How far is this from where that happened?”
“I’d say maybe twenty miles as the crow flies,” Chee said. “And no rain since. I think that tells us a little something.”
The Jeep itself told them little else. They stood back from it, examining the ground. The sand around the driver’s side had been churned, presumably by Tsi’s boots, as he got in and out looking for something easy to loot, and while he pried out the radio.
From the passenger’s door, one could step directly onto the stony slope of the arroyo bank. If the occupant had left that way, it made tracking this many days later virtually hopeless.
“What’s that stuff in the backseat?” Bernie asked. “I guess the equipment for the job.”
“I see some traps,” Chee said. “And cages. That canister is probably for poison they blow into burrows to kill the fleas.”
He took out his pocketknife, used it to depress the button to open the passenger-side door, then used it to swing the door open.
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