Cabot decided to ignore the remark.
“I’ll need the name of the company that was operating this aircraft.”
“No company, actually,” Chee said. “This was a federal-government helicopter.”
Cabot looked surprised.
“What agency?”
“It was a Department of Energy copter,” Chee said. “I believe it’s based at the Tonapaw Proving Grounds over in Nevada.”
“Department of Energy? What business do the energy folks have out here?”
Chee had decided he didn’t much like Special Agent Cabot, or his attitude, or his well-shined shoes and necktie, or perhaps the fact that Cabot’s paycheck was at least twice as large as his, plus all those government perks. He said, “I don’t know.”
Captain Largo glowered at him.
“I understand the Department of Energy had leased the copter to the EPA,” Chee said, and waited for the next question.
“Ah, let’s see,” said Cabot. “I will rephrase the question so you can understand it. What are the Environmental Protection people doing up here?”
“They’re hunting old mines that might be a threat to the environment,” Chee said. “Mapping them. Didn’t the Bureau know about that?”
Cabot, used to asking questions and not to answering them, looked surprised again. He hesitated. Glanced at Captain Largo. Chee glanced at
Largo, too. Largo’s almost-suppressed grin showed that he also knew what Chee was doing and wasn’t as upset by it as it had seemed a moment ago.
“I’m sure we did,” Cabot said, slightly flushed. “I’m sure if such mapping was in any way helpful to us in this case, it would be used.”
Chee nodded. The ball was in the FBI court. He outwaited Cabot, who glanced at Largo again. Largo had found something interesting to look at out the window.
“Sergeant Chee,” Cabot said, "Captain Largo told us you had some reason to suspect this particular mine might be used by the perpetrators of the Ute Casino robbery. Would you explain that, please?”
This was the moment Chee had dreaded. He could imagine the amused look on Cabot’s face as he tried to explain that the idea came from a Ute tribal legend, trying to describe a hero figure who could jump from canyon bottoms to mesa rims. He took a deep breath and started.
Chee hurried through the relationship of George Ironhand with the original Ironhand, the account of how the Navajos couldn’t catch the villain, the notion that since the man was called the Ute name for the badger he might have—like that animal—a hole to hide in with an exit as well as an entrance. As Chee had expected, both Cabot and his partner seemed amused by it. Captain Largo did not appear amused. No suppressed grin now. His expression was dour. Chee found himself talking faster and faster.
“So here was the EPA doing its survey, I hitchhiked a ride, and there it was. The old entrance on a shelf high up on the canyon wall and above it the ruins of the old surface mine. It made sense,” Chee said. “I recommended to Captain Largo that it be checked out.”
Cabot was studying him. “Let’s see now,” he said. “You think that the people digging coal out of the cliff down in the canyon decided to dig right on up to the top? If I know my geology at all, that would have them digging through several thick levels of sandstone and all sorts of other strata. Isn’t that right?”
“Actually, I was thinking more of digging down from the top,” Chee said.
“Can you describe the old mine structure?” Cabot asked. “The building?”
“I have pictures of it,” Chee said. “I took my Polaroid camera along." He handed Cabot two photos of the old structures, one shot from rim level and one from a higher angle.
Cabot looked at them, then handed them to his partner.
“Is that the one you thought it might be?” he asked.
“That’s it,” Smythe said. “We spotted that the day we found their truck. We put a crew in there that afternoon and searched it, along with all the other buildings on that mesa.”
“What did you find?” asked Cabot, who obviously already knew the answer. “Did you see any sign that people might be hiding in the mine shaft?”
Smythe looked amused. “We didn’t even see a shaft,” he said. “Much less people. Just lots of rodent dropping, old, old trash, odds and end of broken equipment, animal tracks, three empty Thunderbird wine bottles with well-aged labels. There was no sign at all of human occupancy. Not in recent years.”
Cabot handed Chee the photographs, smiling. “You might want these for your scrapbook,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-four
As was his lifelong habit, Joe Leaphorn had gone to bed early.
Professor Louisa Bourebonette had returned from her Ute-myth-collecting expedition late. The sound of the car door shutting outside his open window had awakened him. He lay listening to her talking to Conrad Becenti about some esoteric translation problem. He heard her coming in, doing something in the kitchen, opening and closing the door to what had been Emma’s private working space and their guest bedroom, then silence. He analyzed his feelings about all this: having another person in the house, having another woman using Emma’s space and assorted related issues. He reached no conclusions. The next thing he knew the sunlight was on his face, he heard his Mister Coffee making those strangling sounds signaling its work was done, and it was morning.
Louisa was scrambling eggs at the stove.
“I know you like ’em scrambled,” she said, "because that’s the way you always order them.”
"True,” Leaphorn said, thinking that sometimes he liked them scrambled, and sometimes fried, and rarely poached. He poured both of them a cup of coffee, and sat.
“I had a fairly productive day,” she said, serving the eggs. “The old fellow in the nursing home at Cortez told us a version of the Ute migration story I’ve heard before. How about you?”
“Gershwin came to see me.”
“Really? What did he want?”
“To tell the truth, I’ve been wondering about that. I don’t really know.”
“So what did he say he wanted? I’ll bet he didn’t come just to thank you.”
Leaphorn chuckled. “He said he’d had a threatening telephone call. Someone accusing him of tipping off the police. He said he was scared, and he seemed to be. He wanted to know what was being done to catch them. If the police had any idea where they were. He said he was going to move into a motel somewhere until this was over.”
“Might be a big motel bill,” Louisa said. “Those two guys from the 1998 jobs are still out there, I guess. I hear the FBI has quit suggesting they’re dead.”
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. He drank coffee, buttered his toast, ate eggs that were scrambled just a bit too dry for his taste and tried to decide what it was about Gershwin’s visit that was bothering him.
“Something’s on your mind,” Louisa said. “Is it the crime?”
“I guess. It’s none of my business anymore, but some things puzzle me.”
Louisa had consumed only toast and was cleaning up around the stove.
“I’m heading south to Flagstaff,” she said. “I’ll go through all these notes. I’ll take this wonderful old myth that has been floating around free as the air all these generations and punch it into my computer. Then one of these days I will call it up out of the hard disk and petrify it in a paper for whichever scholarly publication will want it.”
“You don’t sound very eager,” Leaphorn said. “Why not let that wait another day and come along with me?”
Louisa had made her speech facing the sink, where she was rinsing his frying pan. Pan in hand, she turned.
“Where? Doing what?”
Leaphorn thought about that. A good question. How to explain?
“Actually doing what I do sometimes when I can’t figure something out. I drive off somewhere, and walk around for a while, or just sit on a rock and hope for inspiration. Sometimes I get it, sometimes not.”