COUNCILMAN DENOUNCES LOBBYIST
Chester Claims Nature First Lawyer Aired Illegal Tape
The story beneath it said that employees at Navajo Tractor Sales had tentatively identified Roger Applebee, Santa Fe attorney and lobbyist for the environmental group, as the man who had walked in and broadcast the troublesome telephone call. It quoted Captain Dodge as saying that the investigation was continuing. Dodge said that a photograph of the lobbyist had been shown to employees at Navajo Tractor Sales, where the broadcast had originated. He said that the man who broadcast the tape “generally resembled the photograph of Applebee” except for the hair.
“The suspect might have been wearing a wig,” Captain Dodge said. Applebee, of course, “could not be reached for comment.”
Leaphorn examined the Applebee photograph that accompanied the story. He had caused Leaphorn a hell of a lot of trouble, but he was a decent-looking fellow. The only thing certain was that Dodge was doing his job, which was to get Councilman Chester cooled down and defused. Leaphorn was very much in favor of that. He also approved Dodge’s silence on the matter of the tape left in his tape player, on Leaphorn’s brief suspension, and on Jim Chee’s boneheadedness. Let the department lick its wounds away from the public gaze.
With even the want ads read, he’d unlocked Dorsey’s office and spent thirty minutes planning the methodical search he and Chee would make of everything Dorsey owned. But where was Chee?
Here was Chee now, driving onto the gravel of the visitors’ parking area, looking sheepish.
“I guess you stopped off for breakfast,” Leaphorn said. “Or had car trouble.”
“No sir,” Chee said.
Leaphorn looked at his watch.
“I had to detour over to Window Rock,” Chee said.
“Why?”
Chee hesitated. “I had to drop somebody off.”
“You pick up hitchhikers?”
“This was a lawyer,” Chee said. “Had some business at the courthouse in Aztec.”
“Which-” Leaphorn began, and then decided he didn’t need to ask which lawyer. He kept his expression absolutely neutral. “Let’s get to work,” he said, and ushered Chee into Dorsey’s cramped quarters.
“Dorsey’s trailer was originally searched by Dilly Streib and Lieutenant Toddy. They were looking for nothing in particular, just anything that would shed a little light. Then Toddy and I took a second look at it. We were specifically looking for anything that would explain why Dorsey made that Lincoln Cane. Here’s what we found.”
He handed Chee the sketch of the cane. “This was on top of Dorsey’s ‘unfinished business’ basket.”
Chee examined it, glanced up at Leaphorn. “Interesting,” he said.
Leaphorn nodded. “I’ve had time to do some checking. The genuine Pojoaque Pueblo cane seems to have disappeared back in the nineteenth century. So I’m told it could be sold to a collector if you found one whose conscience wasn’t too well developed.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Chee said. “Is that why you were thinking of Asher Davis?”
“But as you pointed out, he has an airtight alibi for the killing,” Leaphorn said. “And I’m told he has a gilt-edged reputation for integrity. His word is his bond. A lifetime of being the trustworthy trader.”
“All too rare,” Chee said. “As rare as the cane.”
“Which makes it valuable,” Leaphorn said. “The second one makes it all the more curious. It seems to have been a copy of the Tano cane. I guess you can sell anything, but the buyer would know it was stolen or, worse, a fake.”
“What we’re looking for in here is anything that will give us any hint of who hired Dorsey to make those things?” Chee asked. “No question it was the same man?”
“No question in my mind,” Leaphorn said. “You’d have to put more faith in coincidence than I can muster.”
Chee examined the sketch again. He saw nothing that Leaphorn hadn’t explained. He turned the sheet over. Dorsey had made his sketches on the back of an eight-by-eleven-inch poster, which proclaimed the Save the Jemez movement. It asked one and all to join a boycott of stonewashed blue jeans. The printed material explained that such jeans were faded with perlite from strip mines, and said strip mines were ruining the Jemez Mountain forests and the Jemez River. Nothing had been written in the margins unless the writer used invisible ink.
“You go through everything on the desk,” Leaphorn said. “See if I missed anything. I’ll start on the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and work upward.”
They worked. Twenty-five minutes passed. A bell rang somewhere followed by the sounds of kids running, yelling, laughing. Another bell. Silence descended. Chee had finished with the desk top, with Dorsey’s briefcase, with a careful shakedown of Dorsey’s meager wardrobe of shirts, jeans, underwear, and sweaters. Leaphorn was sitting beside the file cabinet, the middle drawer open.
“Nothing so far,” Chee said. “How about you?”
“Did you find that hit-and-runner?” Leaphorn asked.
“What?”
“The Todachene case. You told me you thought you had a line on him.”
“Oh, yeah,” Chee said. He laughed, and it sounded almost natural. “The witness at the radio station, the one who had a good look at his pickup truck, she said he smelled like onions. I went out to the onion warehouse at Navajo Agricultural Industries. But no such truck.”
Leaphorn leaned back in his chair, grunted, stretched his back, looked at Chee. “Onions. Did you try that produce place in Farmington? Or the grocery stores?”
“I checked the produce place.”
“Keep trying,” Leaphorn said. “That funny bumper sticker you told me about ought to make it easy.”
“Right,” Chee said. “If he doesn’t get the truck painted. Or something.”
Leaphorn arose and stretched. “Let’s take a break. Did you bring any coffee?”
Chee shook his head, which was aching from lack of sleep and caffeine deprival. He hadn’t had a cup of coffee since dinner last night. Dinner with Janet. Dinner with -
“You look happy,” Leaphorn said.
“Um,” Chee said. “If there’s a place to get a coffee in Thoreau I’ve never noticed it.”
“I should have brought my thermos,” Leaphorn said.
“They probably have a teachers’ lounge or something where they have a coffeepot and-” Chee’s voice trailed off. He turned back to the desk, recovered the sheet bearing the Lincoln Cane sketches, looked at it again, and handed it to Leaphorn.
“Was Dorsey an environmentalist?”
Leaphorn looked at the poster, and at Chee. “By God,” he said. “Do you know when this Save the Jemez thing was going on?”
“A couple of years ago,” Chee said. “I’d say about the right time.”
Leaphorn picked up the telephone, dialed the intercom office number. “Mrs. Montoya,” Leaphorn said. “Do you know if Eric Dorsey belonged to any environmental groups? Nature First, Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, any of those?”
He listened. “Do you know if he had any interest in that sort of thing?” Listened again. “Okay, thanks. Yes, I’d like to talk to him.”
Leaphorn waited. “Father Haines?” he said. “It’s Joe Leaphorn. I’d like to talk to you if you have the time.”
The glass coffeepot on Father Haines’s hot plate was about two-thirds full. He motioned them to chairs and said, “What’s up?”
“We have some more questions about Eric Dorsey,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe you can help us.”
“Sure,” Haines said. He noticed that Chee was staring at the coffeepot, face full of yearning. “But how about a cup of coffee first?”
“Not a bad idea,” Leaphorn said.
It took a moment for Haines to rinse two cups and do the pouring.
“I guess you noticed that Eric’s parents still haven’t claimed his possessions,” Haines said. He sighed. “Those poor people. The world is indeed full of sin and sorrow.”