"Right."
"So it got there after Kinsman was hit."
"Right again. And probably not long after. It wasn't a very wet rain."
"I guess it's too early to have anything much from the crime lab about prints or—" Leaphorn paused. "Look, Lieutenant, I keep forgetting that I'm a civilian now. Just say no comment or something if I'm overstepping."
Chee laughed. "Mr. Leaphorn," he said. "I'm afraid you're always going to be Lieutenant to me. And they said they found a lot of prints everywhere matching the guy who stole the radio. But there was no old latent stuff in the obvious places. The steering wheel, gearshift knob, door handles—all those places had been wiped.
Very thoroughly."
"I don't like the sound of that," Leaphorn said. "No," Chee said. "Either she's on the run and wanted to leave the impression she'd been abducted, or she actually was taken by someone who didn't want to be identified. Take your pick."
"Probably number two if I had to guess. But who knows? And I guess it's way too early to know anything about the blood," Leaphorn said. "Way too early."
"Is there any chance you could find any samples of Pollard's blood anywhere? Was she a blood bank donor? Or was she scheduled for any surgery that she'd stockpile blood for?"
"That was one reason I was about to call you," Chee said. "We can get next of kin and so forth from her employer, but it would be quicker to call that woman who hired you. Was it Vanders?"
Leaphorn provided the name, address and telephone number.
"I'm going to call her right now and tell her the Jeep was found and to expect a call from you," Leaphorn added. "Anything you've told me that you want withheld?" A moment of silence while Chee considered. "Nothing I can think of," he said. "You know any reason we should?" Leaphorn didn't. He called Mrs. Vanders. "Give me a moment to get ready for this," she said. People who call early in the morning usually have bad news."
"It might be," Leaphorn said. "The Jeep she was driving has been located. It had been abandoned in an arroyo about twenty miles from where she said she was going. There was no sign of an accident. But some dried blood was found on the passenger-side seat. The police don't know yet how long the blood was there, whether it was hers or where it came from."
"Blood," Mrs. Vanders said. "Oh, my."
"Dried," Leaphorn said. "Perhaps from an old injury, an old cut. Do you remember if she ever told you of hurting herself? Or of anyone being hurt in that vehicle?"
"Oh," she said. "I don't think so. I can't remember. I just can't make my mind work."
"It's too early to worry," Leaphorn said. "She may be perfectly all right." This was not the time to tell her the Jeep had been wiped clean of fingerprints. He asked her if Catherine might have been a blood bank donor, if she had scheduled any surgery for which she would have stockpiled blood. Mrs. Vanders didn't remember. She didn't think so.
"You'll be getting a call this morning from the officer investigating the case," Leaphorn told her. "A Lieutenant Jim Chee. He'll tell you if anything new has developed."
"Yes," Mrs. Vanders said. "I'm afraid something terrible has happened. She was such a headstrong girl."
"I'm going now to talk to Mr. Krause," Leaphorn said. "Maybe he can tell us something."
Richard Krause was not in his temporary laboratory at Tuba City, but a note was thumbtacked to the door: "Out mouse hunting. Back tomorrow. Reachable through Kaibito Chapter House." Leaphorn topped off his gasoline tank and headed southwest—twenty miles of pavement on U.S. 160 and then another twenty on the washboard gravel of Navajo Route 21. Only three pickups rested in the Chapter House parking lot, and none of them belonged to the Indian Health Service. Discouraging news.
But inside Leaphorn found Mrs. Gracie Nakaidineh in charge of things. Mrs. Nakaidineh remembered him from his days patrolling out of Tuba City long, long ago. And he remembered Gracie as one of those women who always do what needs to be done and know what needs to be known.
"Ah," Gracie said after they had gotten through the greeting ritual common to all old-timers, "you mean you're looking for the Mouse Man."
"Right," Leaphorn said. "He left a note on his door saying he could be contacted here."
"He said if anyone needed to find him, he'd be catching mice along Kaibito Creek. He said he'd be about where it runs into Chaol Canyon."
That meant leaving washboard gravel and taking Navajo Route 6330, which was graded dirt circling up onto the Rainbow Plateau for twenty-six bumpy empty miles. Leaphorn avoided much of that journey. About eight miles out, he spotted an Indian Health Service pickup parked in a growth of willows. He pulled off onto the shoulder, got out his binoculars and tried to make out enough of the symbol painted on its dusty, brush-obscured door to determine "whether it was the Indian Health Service or something else. Failing that, he scanned the area for Krause.
A figure, clad head to foot in some sort of shiny white coverall, was moving through the brush toward the truck, carrying plastic sacks in both hands. Krause? Leaphorn couldn't even tell whether it was a man or woman. Whoever was wearing the astronaut's suit stopped beside the truck and began removing shiny metal boxes from the sacks, placing them in a row in the shade behind the vehicle. That done, he took one of the boxes to the truck bed, put it into another plastic sack, sprayed something from a can into the bag, and then began arranging a row of flat square pans on the tailgate.
It must be Krause on his mouse-hunting expedition, and now he was performing whatever magic biologists perform with mice. He was working with his back to Leaphorn, revealing a curving black tube that extended from a black box low on his back upward into the back of his hood. Here was what Mrs. Notah had seen behind the screen of junipers at Yells Back Butte. The witch who looked part snowman and part elephant.
As that thought occurred to Leaphorn, Krause turned, and as he took the box from the sack, sunlight reflected off the transparent face shield—completing Mrs. Notah's description of her skinwalker. He turned to watch Leaphorn approaching.
Leaphorn restarted the engine and rolled his truck down the slope. He parked, got out, slammed the door noisily behind him.
Krause spun around, yelling something and pointing to a hand-lettered sign on the pickup: IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU'RE TOO DAMNED CLOSE. Leaphorn stopped. He shouted: "I need to talk to you." Krause nodded. He held up a circled thumb and finger, and then a single finger, noted that Leaphorn understood the signals, and turned back to his work—which involved holding a small rodent in one hand over a white enamel tray and running a comb through its fur with the other. That job done, he held up the tiny form of a mouse, dangling it by its long tail, for Leaphorn to see. He dropped the animal into another of the traps, peeled off a pair of latex gloves, disposed of them in a bright red canister beside the truck. He walked toward Leaphorn, pushing back his hood.
"Hantavirus," he said, grinning at Leaphorn. "Which we used to call, in our days of cultural insensitivity, the Navajo Flu."
"A name which we didn't like any better than the American Legion liked your name for Legionnaire's disease."
"So now we give both of them their dignified Greek titles, and everybody is happy," Krause said. "And anyway, what I was doing was separating the fleas from the fur of a Peromyscus, actually a Peromyscus maniculatus, and ninety-nine-point-nine chances out of a hundred, when we test both fleas and mammal, the tests will show I have murdered a perfectly healthy deer mouse who never hosted a virus in his life. But we won't know until we get the lab work done."
"Are you finished here now?" Leaphorn asked. "Do YOU have time for some questions?"
"Some," Krause said. He turned and waved at the row of metal boxes in the shade. "But before I can peel off this uniform—which is officially called a Positive Air Purifying Respirator suit, or PAPR, in vector controller slang—I've got to finish with the mice in those traps. Separate the fleas and then it's slice and dice for the poor little deer mice."