Perhaps Chee had done better. An odd young man, Chee. Smart, apparently. Alert. But slightly⌠slightly what? Bent? Not exactly. It wasn't just the business of trying to be a medicine man--a following utterly incongruous with police work. He was a romantic, Leaphorn decided. That was it. A man who followed dreams. The sort who would have joined that Paiute shaman who invented the ghost dance and the vision of white men withering away and the buffalo coming back to the plains. Maybe that wasn't fair. It was more that Chee seemed to think an island of 180,000 Navajos could live the old way in a white ocean. Perhaps 20,000 of them could, if they were happy on mutton, cactus, and pinon nuts. Not practical. Navajos had to compete in the real world. The Navajo Way didn't teach competition. Far from it.
But Chee, odd as he was, would find Slick Nakai. Another dreamer, Nakai. Leaphorn shifted in the narrow seat, trying vainly for comfort. Chee would find Nakai and Chee would get from Nakai about as much information as Leaphorn would have been able to extract.
Leaphorn found himself thinking of what he would say to Emma about Chee. He shook his head, picked up a New Yorker, and read. Dinner came. His seatmate examined it scornfully. To Leaphorn, who had been eating his own cooking, it tasted great. They were crossing the Texas panhandle now. Below, the clouds were thinning, breaking into patches. Ahead, the earth rose like a rocky island out of the ocean of humid air that blanketed the midlands. Leaphorn could see the broken mesas of eastern New Mexico. Beyond, on the western horizon, great cloud-castle thunderheads, unusual in autumn, rose into the stratosphere. Leaphorn felt something he hadn't felt since Emma's death. He felt a kind of joy.
Something like that mood was with him when he awoke the next morning in his bed at Window Rock--a feeling of being alive, and healthy, and interested. He was still weary. The flight from Albuquerque to Gallup in the little Aspen Airways Cessna, and the drive from Gallup, had finished what reserves he had left. But the depression was gone. He cooked bacon for breakfast and ate it with toast and jelly. While he was eating the telephone rang.
Jim Chee, he thought. Who else would be calling him?
It was Corporal Ellison Billy, who handled things that needed handling for Major Nez, who was more or less Leaphorn's boss.
'There's a Utah cop here looking for you,' Billy said. 'You available?'
Leaphorn was surprised. 'What's he want? And what kind of cop?'
'Utah State Police. Criminal Investigation Division,' Billy said. 'He just said he wants to talk to you. About a homicide investigation. That's all I know. Probably told the major more. You coming in?'
Homicide, he thought. The depression sagged down around him again. Someone had found Eleanor Friedman-Bernal's body. 'Tell him ten minutes,' he said, which was the time it took for him to drive from his house among the pinons on the high side of Window Rock to police headquarters beside the Fort Defiance Highway.
The desk had two messages for him. One from Jim Chee was short: 'Found Nakai near Mexican Hat with a friend who says ruins is located in what the locals call Watersprinkler Canyon west of his place. I will stay reachable through the Shiprock dispatcher.'
The other, from the Utah State Police, was shorter. It said: 'Call Detective McGee re: Houk. Urgent.'
'Houk?' Leaphorn said. 'Any more details?'
'That's it,' the dispatcher said. 'Just call McGee about Houk. Urgent.'
He put the message in his pocket.
The door to the major's office was open. Ronald Nez was standing behind his desk. A man wearing a blue windbreaker and a billed cap with the legend LIMBER ROPE on the crown sat against the wall. He got up when Leaphorn walked in, a tall man, middle-aged, with a thin, bony face. Acne or some other scarring disease had left cheeks and forehead pocked with a hundred small craters. Nez introduced them. Carl McGee was the name. He had not waited for a call back.
'I'll get right to it,' McGee said. 'We got a homicide case, and he left you a note.'
Leaphorn kept his face from showing his surprise. It wasn't Friedman-Bernal.
McGee waited for a response.
Leaphorn nodded.
'Harrison Houk,' McGee said. 'I imagine you know him?'
Leaphorn nodded again, his mind processing this. Who would kill Houk? Why? He could see an answer to the second question. And in general terms to the first one. The same person who had killed Etcitty, and Nails, and for the same reason. But what was that?
'What was the message?'
McGee looked at Major Nez, who looked back, expression neutral. Then at Leaphorn. This conversation was not going as McGee had intended. He extracted a leather folder from his hip pocket, took a business card from it, and handed it to Leaphorn.
BLANDING PUMPS
Well Drilling, Casing, Pulling
General Water System Maintenance
(We also fix your Septic Tanks)
The card was bent, dirty. Leaphorn guessed it had been damp. He turned it over.
The message there was scrawled in ballpoint ink.
It said:
Tell Leaphorn shes still alive up
Leaphorn handed it to Nez, without comment.
'I saw it,' Nez said, and handed it back to McGee, who put it back in the folder, and the folder back in his pocket.
'What do you think?' he said. 'You got any idea who the `she' is?'
'A good idea,' Leaphorn said. 'But tell me about Houk. I saw him just the other day.'
'Wednesday,' McGee said. 'To be exact.' He looked at Leaphorn, expression quizzical. 'That's what the woman who works for him told us. Navajo named Irene Musket.'
'Wednesday sounds right,' Leaphorn said. 'Who killed Houk?'
McGee made a wry face. 'This woman he wrote you about, maybe. Anyway, it looks like Houk quit trying to find a place to hide to tell you about her. Sounds like you two thought she was dead. Suddenly he sees her alive. He tries to tell you. She kills him.'
Leaphorn was thinking that his terminal leave had five more days to run. Actually, only about four and two-thirds. He hadn't been in a mood to screw around like this for at least three months. Not since Emma got bad. He was in no mood for it today. In fact, he had never been tolerant of it. Nor for being polite to this belagana, who wanted to act as if Leaphorn was some sort of suspect. But he'd make one more effort to be polite.
'I've been away,' he said. 'Back east. Just got in last night. You're going to have to skip way back and tell me about it.'
McGee told him. Irene Musket had come to work Friday morning and found a note on the screen door telling her that Houk was in the barn. She said she found his body in the barn and called the Garfield County Sheriffs Office, who notified Utah State Police. Both agencies investigated. Houk had been shot twice with a small-caliber weapon, in the center of the chest and in the lower back of the skull. There were signs that Houk had been rearranging bales of hay, apparently into a hiding place. Two empty .25 caliber cartridge casings were found in the hay near the body. The medical examiner said either of the bullets might have caused death. No witnesses. No physical evidence found in the barn except the shell casings. The housekeeper said she found the back screen door lock had been broken and Houk's office was in disarray. As far as she could tell, nothing had been stolen.