Dashee shifted into second as they rolled down a rocky slope where the track connected to what the map called ‘unimproved road.'
“If they planned to hole up in the canyons, I’ll bet you they knew what they were doing,” Dashee said.
“I guess so. But then how about Jorie getting out of the truck here and going right home. That’s a long way to walk.”
“Drop it,” Dashee said. “After I eat something and my stomach stops growling at me, I’ll explain it all to you.”
“I want to know how Lieutenant Leaphorn got those identities,” Chee said. “I’m going to find out.”
Chapter Thirteen
Chee scanned the tables in the Anasazi Inn dining room twice. He had looked right past the corner table and the stocky old duffer sitting there with a plump middle-aged woman without recognizing Joe Leaphorn. When he did recognize him on the second take, it came as a sort of a shock. He had seen the Legendary Lieutenant in civilian attire before, but the image he carried in his mind was of Leaphorn in uniform, Leaphorn strictly businesslike, Leaphorn deep in thought. This fellow was laughing at something the woman with him had said.
Chee hadn’t expected the woman—although he should have. When he’d called Leaphorn’s home the answering machine had said, “I’ll be in the Anasazi Inn dining room at eight.” No preamble, no good-bye, just the ten words required. The Legendary Lieutenant at his efficient best, expecting a call, unable to wait for it, rewording his answering machine answer to deal with the problem, handling an affair of the heart, if such it was, just as he’d handle a meeting with a district attorney. The woman dining with him he now recognized as the professor from Northern Arizona University with whom Leaphorn seemed to have something or other going. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking of Leaphorn in any sort of romantic situation. Nor to seeing him laughing. That was rare.
What wasn’t rare was the effect this man had on him. Chee had considered it on the drive down to Farmington, had decided he was probably over it by now. He’d had the same feeling as a boy when Hosteen Nakai began teaching him about the Navajo relationship with the world, and at the University of New Mexico when in the presence of the famed Alaska Jack Campbell, who was teaching him early Athabascan culture in Anthropology 209.
He’d tried to describe it to Cowboy, and Cowboy had said, “You mean like a rookie reporting for basketball practice with Michael Jordan, or like a seminary student put on a committee with the pope.” And, yes, that was close enough. And no, he hadn’t quite gotten over it.
Leaphorn spotted him, got up, waved him over, said, “You remember Louisa, I’m sure,” and asked him if he’d like something to drink. Chee, already wired with about six cups of coffee since breakfast, said he’d settle for iced tea.
“I figured out how you knew where to find me,” Leaphorn said. “You called my house, and got my machine, and it played you the message I’d subbed in to tell Louisa where I’d meet her.”
“Right,” Chee said. “And that saved me about a hundred miles of driving. Getting all the way down to Window Rock. Two hundred, because I’ve got to get back to Montezuma Creek in the morning.”
“We’ll be going in that direction, too,” Leaphorn said. “Professor Bourebonette’s been using me as translator. She’s interviewing an old woman over at the Beclabito Day School tomorrow.”
They talked about that until the time came to order dinner.
“Did the desk give you the message I left for you?” Chee said.
“You want to know what I can tell you about the Ute Casino business,” Leaphorn said. “Are you forgetting that I’m a civilian these days?”
“No,” Chee said, and smiled. “Nor am I forgetting how you used to make your good-old-boy network deliver. And I hear it was you who provided the identification of those guys to the FBI.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Got it from an Apache County deputy sheriff.”
Leaphorn’s expression suggested he knew which deputy.
“Anyway, it’s like most rumors,” Leaphorn said, and shrugged.
“You gentlemen want me to go powder my nose?” the professor asked. “Give you some privacy?”
“Not me,” Leaphorn said, and Chee shook his head.
“What you mean is that it’s partly true? According to the story I heard you went out to this Jorie fellow’s place, found him dead, called in to report he’d committed suicide and gave the feds the names of his accomplices. Could you tell me how much of that is true?”
“You’re working on this, I guess,” Leaphorn said. “How much have they told you?”
“Not much,” Chee said, and filled him in.
“They didn’t tell you about the suicide note?”
“No,” Chee said. “They didn’t.”
Leaphorn shook his head and looked disappointed. “Lot of good people work in the FBI,” he said. “Lot of dumb ones, too, and the way it works as a bureaucracy gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the dumber you are the higher you rise. They get caught up in the Washington competition, where knowledge is power. That gets them obsessed with secrecy.”
“I guess so,” Chee said.
“This obsession for secrecy,” Leaphorn said, shaking his head. “I used to work with a Special Agent named Kennedy,” he added, no longer grinning. “A great cop, Kennedy. He explained to me how it grew out of the turf wars in Washington. The Bureau, and the Treasury cops, and CIA, and the Secret Service, and U.S. Marshal’s Office, and the BIA, and Immigration and Naturalization cops, and about fifteen other federal law-enforcement agencies pushing and shoving each other for more money and more jurisdiction. 'Knowledge is Power,' Kennedy’d say, so you get conditioned not to tell anybody anything. They might steal the headlines, and the TV time, from your agency.”
Chee nodded. “This suicide note,” he said. “Anything in it I should know?” Leaphorn, he was thinking, must be showing his age, or too much living alone. He didn’t used to ramble off into such digressions.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But how do you know if you don’t know what’s in it?”
“Well, I do have a question about this Jorie. I’d like to understand how he got home from where he and his buddies left their truck. And I’d like to know, if he was going home anyway, why he didn’t just have them drop him off there?”
Leaphorn looked thoughtful.
“Just two men in the truck when it was abandoned, then? You found the tracks?”
“Not me,” Chee said. “I wasn’t back from vacation. Sheriff’s department people. Cowboy Dashee, in fact. You remember him?”
“Sure,” Leaphorn said. “And Cowboy said two sets of tracks around the truck?”
“He said two was all he found. He photographed them. One set of slick-soled boots with cowboy heels, one set that looked like those nonskid walking shoes.”
Leaphorn thought about that. “What else did Dashee find?”
“Around the truck?”
“Or in it. Anything interesting.”
“It was a stolen oil-field truck,” Chee said. “Had all that sort of stuff in it. Wrenches, oily rags, so forth.”
Leaphorn waited for more, made a wry, apologetic face.
“Remember how I used to be?” he said. “Always after you to give me all the details. Not leave anything out. Even if it didn’t seem to mean anything.”
Chee grinned. “I do,” he said. “And I remember I used to resent it. Felt like it meant I couldn’t do the thinking on my own. Come to think of it, I still do.”
“It wasn’t that,” Leaphorn said, his face a little flushed. “It was just that a lot of times I’d have access to information you didn’t have.”
“Well, anyway, I didn’t mention a girlie magazine in a door pocket, and some receipts for gasoline purchases, a broken radio in the truck bed, an oil-wipe rag and an empty Dr Pepper can.”