“Why?” Chee asked. “Actually about four or five whys. I think I can see some of the motives, but some of it’s hazy.”
“Jorie was one of these fellows who thrive on litigation. And being a lawyer and admitted to the Utah bar, he could file all the suits he liked without it costing him much. He had two suits pending against our man. He was even suing Timms. Claimed his little airplane panicked his cattle, causing weight loss, loss of calves, so forth. Another suit claimed Timms violated his grazing lease with that unauthorized landing strip. But Timms isn’t my choice of villains. Another one of Jorie’s suits was aimed at canceling our villain’s Bureau of Land Management lease.”
“We’re talking about Mr Gershwin, of course,” Chee said. “Aren’t we?”
“In theory, yes,” Leaphorn said.
“All right,” Chee said. “What’s next?”
“Now he has eliminated one of his two problems - the enemy and his troublesome lawsuits. But not the other one.”
“The money,” Bernie said. “You mean he’d only get a third of that?”
“In my theory, I think it’s a little more complicated,” Leaphorn replied. He looked back at Chee. “You remember in that suicide note, how he told the FBI where to find his two partners, how he stressed that they had sworn never to be taken alive. If they were caught, they wanted to go into history for the number of cops they had killed.”
“His plan to eliminate them,” Chee said, and produced a wry laugh. “It probably would have worked. If those guys were militia members, they’d have their heads full of how the FBI behaved at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Frankly, if I was going in with the SWAT team, I think I’d be blazing away.”
“There must have seemed to be a flaw in that plan, though. Our villain had to wonder how the suicide note would be found. No one had any reason to suspect Jorie. Not a clue to any of the identities. So our villain solved that by finding himself a not-very-bright retired cop who he could trust to tip off the FBI without getting him involved in it.”
“I’ll be damned,” Chee said. “I wondered how you happened to be the one who found Jorie’s body.”
“What was the rush?” Bernie asked. “Sooner or later Jorie would have been missed. Somebody would have gone out to see about him. You know how people out here are.”
“My theoretical villain didn’t think he could wait for that. He didn’t want to risk the cops catching his partners before the cops knew about their plan to go down killing cops. Captured alive, they’d know just exactly who’d turned them in. They’d even the score and get off easier by testifying against him.”
“Yeah,” Bernie said. “That makes sense.”
Chee was leaning forward now. He tapped Leaphorn’s shoulder. “Look. Lieutenant, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Like I thought you weren’t very bright.”
“Matter of fact I wasn’t. He got almost exactly what he wanted out of me.”
Which was true, but Chee let that hang.
“The only thing that went wrong was his partners must have smelled something in the wind. They didn’t go home like they were supposed to—safe in the notion that the police hadn’t a clue to who they were. They didn’t wait for the SWAT teams to arrive and mow them down. They slipped away and hid somewhere.”
“The old Mormon mine,” Chee said. “So why didn’t the FBI find them there?”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe they were somewhere else when the federal agent took a look. Maybe they went home, as our villain probably told them to do, and then got uneasy and came back to Ironhand’s dad’s hideaway, to wait and see what happened. Or maybe the federals didn’t look hard enough. They’d have had no way of knowing about the entrance down in the canyon.”
“That’s true,” Chee said. “You couldn’t see it from the bottom. And, of course, we don’t know if the bottom mine connects to the top.”
Bernie laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I like to believe in legends. Even if they’re Ute legends.”
“I’ve just been along for the ride,” Chee said. “Just giving my ankle an airing. Now I’m wondering what the plan is. I hope it’s not that we walk up to that mine and order Baker and Ironhand to come out with their hands up.”
“No,” Leaphorn said, and laughed.
“Bernie would have to handle that all by herself.”
Chee said. “You’re a civilian. I’m on sick leave or something. Let’s say I’m back on vacation.”
“But you did bring your pistol, I’ll bet,” Bernie said. “You did, didn’t you.?”
“I think I’ve got it here somewhere. You know the rules. Don’t leave home without it.”
“What I’d like to do is drop in on Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said. “I think we can get him to cooperate. And if he does, and if I’m guessing right, then Officer Manuelito gets on her radio and summons reinforcements.”
“Why couldn’t we call in for a backup and then -" Chee cut off the rest of that. He imagined Leaphorn explaining his theory to Special Agent Cabot - asking backup to check a mine the FBI had already certified free of fugitives. He imagined Cabot’s smirk. He switched to another question.
“Do you know Mr Timms?” he asked. Another stupid question. Of course he did. Leaphorn knew everyone in the Four Corners. At least everyone over sixty.
“Not well,” Leaphorn said. “Haven’t seen him for years. But I think we can get him to cooperate.”
Chee leaned back against the door and watched the desert landscape slide past. He imagined Timms telling them to go to hell. He imagined Timms ordering them off his property.
But then he relaxed. Retired or not, Leaphorn was still the Legendary Lieutenant.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Bernie let Unit 11 roll to a stop just in front of the Timms front porch, and they sat for the few moments required by empty-country courtesy to give the occupant time to get himself decent and prepare to acknowledge visitors. The door opened. A tall, skinny, slightly stooped man stood in the doorway looking out at them.
Leaphorn got out, Bernie followed, and Chee moved his ankle off the pillow and onto the floor. It hurt, but not much.
“Hello, Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said. “I wonder if you remember me.”
Timms stepped out onto the porch, the sunlight reflecting from his spectacles. “Maybe I do,” he said. “Didn’t you used to be Corporal Joe Leaphorn with the Navajo Police? Wasn’t you the one who helped out when that fellow was shooting at my airplane?”
“Yes sir,” Leaphorn said. “That was me. And this young lady is Officer Bernadette Manuelito.”
“Well, come on in out of the sun,” Timms said.
Chee couldn’t stand the thought of missing this. He pushed the car door open with his good foot, got his cane and limped across the yard, eyes on the ground to avoid an accident, noticing that the bedroom slipper he was wearing on his left foot was collecting sandburrs. “And this,” Leaphorn was saying, “is Sergeant Jim Chee. He and I worked together.”
“Yes sir,” Timms said, and held out his hand. The shake was Navajo fashion, less grip and more the gentle touch. An old-timer who knew the culture. And so nervous that the muscles in his cheek were twitching.
“Wasn’t expecting company, so I don’t have anything fixed, but I could offer you something cold to drink,” Timms said, ushering them into a small, dark room cluttered with the sort of old mismatched furniture one collects from Goodwill Industries shops.
“I don’t think we should accept your hospitality, Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said. “We came here on some serious business.”
“On that insurance claim,” Timms said. “I already sent off a letter canceling that. Already did that.”
“I’m afraid it’s a lot more serious than that,” Leaphorn said.
“That’s the trouble with getting old. You get so damned forgetful,” Timms said, talking fast. “I get up to get me a drink of water and by the time I get to the icebox I forget what I’m in the kitchen for. I flew that old L-19 down there to do some work, and then a fella offered me a ride home and I went off and left it and then we were hearing about the robbery on the radio and when I got home and saw the barn open and my airplane gone I just thought -"