A moment of silence. “Well, I was the one buying the gas,” Chee said, sounding somewhat defensive, “but I wasn’t there until it had already happened. The perp was driving off as I drove up. But what’s interesting is that all the man wanted was a newspaper. He took one from the rack, and when the operator got there and found him digging through the trash barrel, he said he was just hunting a newspaper.”
Now it was Leaphorn’s turn for a moment of silence.
“Just a newspaper,” he said. “Just that. And he hadn’t taken anything from inside the station. Food, cigarettes, anything like that?”
“The station was still locked up. I thought maybe the guy had taken the operator’s keys after he hit him. Got in, looted the place, and then relocked it - silly as that sounds - but apparently not.”
“Well now,” Leaphorn said, sounding thoughtful. “He just wanted a newspaper out of the rack.”
“Or maybe another one. From what he’d scattered around out of the trash can, he was hunting something there, and he told the operator he was after a newspaper. I was guessing he wanted an older edition. One reporting earlier stuff about the manhunt.”
“Sounds reasonable. Where are you calling from?”
“My place in Shiprock. I hurt my ankle yesterday hunting the newspaper bandit. I took a fall, and I’m homebound until I get the swelling down. I called your place in Window Rock and got another of those messages you leave on your answering machine. That’s a good idea.”
“Just a minute,” Leaphorn said. He put his hand over the telephone and looked at Louisa, who was standing in the doorway, tape-recorder case over her shoulder, purse in hand, waiting and looking interested.
“It’s Jim Chee at Shiprock,” Leaphorn said. “You know that Chevron station robbery we were talking about. Chee said the only thing the man wanted was newspapers. Remember what I was saying about that broken radio -"
“That sounds strange,” Louisa said. “And look, unless you really want to come along and listen to this mythology cross-examination, why don’t you drive over to Shiprock and talk to Chee? I’ll ride with Mr Becenti.”
That was exactly the way Emma would have reacted, Leaphorn thought. And he noticed with a sort of joy that he could make such a comparison now without feeling guilty about it.
The door of Chee’s little house trailer was standing open as Leaphorn drove up, and he heard his ‘come on in’ shout as he closed the door of his pickup. Chee was sitting beside the table, his left foot propped on a pillow on his bunk. As they exchanged the required greetings, the words of sympathy, the required disclaimer and disclaimer response, Leaphorn noticed the table was bare except for a copy of the Indian Country Map, unfolded to the Four Corners canyon country.
“I see you’re ready for work,” he said, tapping the map.
“My uncle used to tell me to use my head to save my heels,” Chee said. “Since I have to save my ankle today, I’ll have to think instead.”
Leaphorn sat. “What have you come up with?”
“Nothing but confusion,” Chee said. “I was hoping you could explain it all to me.”
“It’s as if we have a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of the central pieces missing,” Leaphorn said. “But driving over from Farmington I began thinking how two of the pieces fit.”
“The broken radio producing the need to get a paper to find out what the devil has been going on,” Chee said. “Right?”
“Right. And that can tell us something.”
Chee frowned. “Like they don’t have another radio? Or any other access to news? Or something more than that?”
Leaphorn smiled. “I have an advantage in this situation, being able to sit by a telephone and tap into the retired-cops circuit while you’re out working.”
Chee leaned forward and readjusted his ice pack, engulfed in deja vu — a sort of numb feeling of intellectual inadequacy. He’d heard this sort of preamble from Leaphorn often enough before to know where it led. It was the Legendary Lieutenant’s way of leading into some disclosure without making Chee, the green kid who’d been assigned to be his gofer, feel more stupid than necessary. “To tell the truth, all this tells me is that these guys, without their radio, got desperate to find out what the devil was going on. They had to find out whether or not it was time to run.”
“Exactly,” Leaphorn said. “That’s my conclusion, too. But let me add a little bit of information that wasn’t available to you. I think I told you I might call Jay Kennedy to see if he could tell us what the FBI lab learned about that radio. Jay called back yesterday. He said his buddy back there told him the radio had been put out of commission deliberately.”
Chee lost interest in realigning the ice pack. He stared at Leaphorn. Leaphorn said he’d asked Kennedy to ‘tell us.'
“On purpose?” Chee said. “Why would they do that? Or, wait a minute. Let me restate that question. Make it which one did it, and why? And how could the Bureau determine it was done deliberately?”
“Never underestimate the Bureau’s laboratory people. They took the radio apart to see if they could pick up any prints. The sort someone might leave changing batteries, or whatever. They noticed that a couple of the wire connections inside had been pried apart with something sharp. Knife point maybe.”
Chee thought for a moment. “Fingerprints,” he said. “Did they find any?” If they had, they would be Jorie’s. Jorie, knowing he was being betrayed, doing a vengeful act of sabotage.
“Some partials,” Leaphorn said. “But they belonged to nobody they had any record of.”
Chee thought about that, noticed that Leaphorn was watching him, waiting his reaction. Whose prints would the FBI have on record? Jorie’s of course, since they had his body. Perhaps Ironhand’s, if they printed servicemen during the Vietnam War. Probably Baker’s. He’d been arrested on minor stuff more than once.
“It could still be Jorie who sabotaged the radio,” Chee said. “He could have had on gloves, used a handkerchief, been very careful with his knife.”
Leaphorn nodded, smiling.
He’s happy I thought it through, Chee thought. Maybe Bernie was right. Maybe Leaphorn does like me.
“I’d guess the prints don’t mean much,” Leaphorn said. “They’ll belong to some clerk at a Radio Shack who put the battery in. I was thinking about Jorie, too. He still looks like the logical bet.”
“He certainly had a motive. We have to presume he had access to the radio after he knew what they were planning.”
Leaphorn nodded. “If he had decided to turn them in, he wouldn’t want them to know the cops had them identified. Wouldn’t want them to hear anything on the radio.”
Chee nodded.
There’s a problem with that, though.”
“Yeah,” Chee said, wondering which problem Leaphorn saw. “Certainly a lot of unanswered questions left.”
“Jorie must have thought he knew what he was talking about when he told the police in that suicide note where to find them. At their homes, he said, or that place up north. FBI went to get them, and they weren’t there. Why not?” He looked at Chee to see if he would volunteer an answer.
“They didn’t trust him,” Chee said.
Leaphorn nodded. “They wouldn’t. Not when they were double-crossing him.” He tapped the map. “And next, why did they come up on this mesa?”
“I have two answers to that. Take your pick. One. I think they may have had a second escape vehicle hidden away someplace not far from where they ditched the pickup. Cowboy said they could find no trace of it, no tracks. Nothing. But in this country they could hide the tracks, knowing they had to, and taking their time to do it right.”