“They were here this morning,” Chee said. “The nurse wouldn’t let ’ em in. What do they want?”
“Past several years they’ve had a run of professional killings done a lot the same. People shot in the head with a.22. Nobody hears a shot. And then there was a couple of cases where they had one person hit with a.22 and one bombed. A couple of hoods in the construction union in Houston and witnesses in an extortion case in Philadelphia. Anyway, mostly the little silenced pistol and a couple of times with the bomb. And both times the bombs seem to have been the kind that get set off by tilting the package. That’s the kind of bomb he used here.”
“Tilting the package?”
“Clever as hell,” Hunt said. “It uses mercury to make the electrical connection. You just set the damn thing down and take off the safety gadget, and the next time the thing moves, or tilts, or shakes, the mercury slides and it goes off. No timer to screw you up, no wiring it up to the ignition. No fuss. No muss. If the driver doesn’t see it, it goes off when the car moves. If he does see it, it goes off when he picks it up.”
“Then what went wrong here?” Chee asked.
“Luck. Wrecker crew was going to haul off the truck,” Hunt said. “They started to hoist the rear end. Tilt. Boom. But that was sheer bad luck. It’s quite a gadget. Understand the CIA developed it.”
The FBI arrived as Hunt was leaving. His name was Martin. He was young. He wore a brown suit with a vest. His mustache was trim, and his haircut would not have offended the late J. Edgar Hoover. Being second to an Albuquerque policeman did not please him.
“The nurse told me you were asleep,” he said. It was more an accusation than a statement.
“No,” Chee said. “I was watching Hollywood Squares. I guess she didn’t want to interrupt. Ever watch ’em?”
Martin denied it. He wanted to talk about what the blond man looked like. And about why anyone would want Tomas Charley killed. And about the Vines burglary. It took Chee less than five minutes to exhaust all he knew about all three subjects and ten minutes more to go over it all twice more from slightly different angles.
“You find anything in the man’s car?” Chee asked. “It was a rental car, wasn’t it?”
“We haven’t recovered it yet,” Martin said. “We think it was rented from Hertz at the Albuquerque airport.” He fished a folder from his briefcase and extracted a copy of Hunt’s sketch.
“Your man look like this?”
“Pretty close,” Chee said.
“The Hertz people identified him as the man who rented a green-and-white Plymouth sedan. Now the car’s overdue. He gave his name as McRae and an Indiana address. It doesn’t check out.”
Chee didn’t comment. Talking to Hunt had tired him. His chest hurt. His ears were ringing. He wanted Martin to go away.
“When you get out of here, we want you to come down to the office,” Martin said. “We want you to look at mug shots and give us more details on the identification if you can.”
“Mug shots? You think you have a record on him?”
“Not really,” Martin said. “We think we have a ten-year accumulation of suspicions. We want you to look just in case. And we want you to spend a lot of time remembering everything you can about him. Everything.”
Chee said nothing. He just closed his eyes.
“It’s important,” Martin said. “This guy’s slick. That little pistol he used must be really silent. And he gets it in places where nobody sees anything. Apparently he scouts everything out very methodically, and then he likes to catch them alone for one quick close shot at the head. In the john is a favorite of his. We know of four found sitting on the john with the stall door closed. And a couple in telephone booths. Places like that. A quick shot and he just walks away. Never any witnesses. Not until the bombing. And now you and Miss Landon.”
Chee opened his eyes. “We’re the first witnesses?”
Martin was staring at him. “The first he knows about. He didn’t know anyone saw him putting the bomb in Charley’s truck. Medium-sized. Blond. So forth. You’re the only two who actually got a look at him and who could pin him to a killing.”
Chee’s head ached. He closed his eyes again.
“You know,” Martin said, “I think I’d be careful if I were you.”
Chee had already had that thought.
16
WHEN MARTIN LEFT, Chee spent the next ten minutes on the telephone. He got Mary Landon’s number from information, but no one answered when he called it. He remembered then that it was a school day and called the school. Miss Landon had taken the day off. He called his own office, explained the situation, and told Officer Dodge to see if she could find Mary and do what she could do to keep an eye on her. The doctor came in then – a young man with red hair and freckles. He inspected Chee’s ribs, replaced the dressing, said, “Take it easy,” and left. The nurse arrived, took his temperature, gave him two pills, watched while he took them, said, “This isn’t a police station. You’re supposed to be resting,” and left. Chee rearranged himself on the pillow and gazed out across the university campus. He thought about Mary, and about the peyote religion, and B. J. Vines’ keepsake box, and the ways of white men, and drifted off into an uneasy sleep. When he awoke it was late afternoon. The sun was slanting through his window and Mary sat in the bedside chair.
“Hello,” she said. “How’re you feeling?”
“Fine,” Chee said. He did feel fine. Vastly relieved.
“Boy,” she said. “You sure scared me. I thought you were dead. I waved down a truck, and he got that state policeman on his CB radio. And when we got back to you, you were just lying there.” She grimaced at him. “Like dead.”
Chee told her what he’d learned about the blond man. “You see the problem? There’s a chance he’s going to decide he needs to get rid of us.”
Even as he was saying them, the words sounded melodramatic to him. In this quiet, antiseptic room, the idea of anyone wanting to kill Jim Chee and Mary Landon seemed foolish.
“Don’t you think what he’d really do is just run?” Mary asked. “That’s what I’d do.”
“But you’re not a professional gunman,” Chee said.
“If that remark’s a reflection on my shooting, I want to remind you that it was you who screwed up the rear sight.”
“Be serious,” Chee said. “This guy kills people.”
The humor left Mary’s face. “I know,” she said. “But what can you do? It’s sort of like being struck by lightning. You can’t go around all the time hiding from clouds.”
“But you don’t stand under trees while it’s raining, either,” Chee said. “Why don’t you take a leave and go off and visit some relatives somewhere for a while and don’t tell anyone where you’re going?”
Mary’s expression shifted from somber to skeptical. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
“I would if I could,” Chee said. “But I’m a policeman. It’s my business.”
“No, it’s not,” Mary said. “You don’t even have jurisdiction. That’s what you told me. It’s FBI business. Or maybe the sheriff’s.”
“Legally,” Chee said. “But this sore rib sort of gives me a special interest. And besides, I’m a material witness.”
“So am I,” Mary said.
They argued about it, an uneasy, tentative sparring of two persons not yet sure of their relationship.
Mary changed the subject to his earlier visitors, to Sheriff Sena, to Sena’s obsession with the death of his brother in the oil well explosion. The conversation was oddly strained and uncomfortable.
“When I get out of here,” Chee said, “I’m going to dig into the newspaper files and learn everything I can about that oil well accident, and get some names, and see what I can find out.”