"We'll be glad to take you," Chee said. "But first we need to get answers to some questions."
"Sure," Woody said. "But later. After we get going. And one of you will have to stay here and take care of things." He leaned forward over the table and ran his hand over his face. Leaphorn now noticed a dark discoloration under his arm, spreading down the rib cage under the undershirt.
"Hell of a bruise there on your side," Leaphorn said. "We should get you to a hospital."
"Unfortunately, it's not a bruise. It's the capillaries breaking down under the skin. Releases the blood into the tissue. We'll go to the Medical Center at Flagstaff. But first I have to do some telephoning. And someone should stay here. Look after things. The animals in the cages. The files."
"We found the body of Catherine Pollard buried out there," Chee said, "Do you know anything about that?"
"I buried her," Woody said. "But, dammit, we don't have time to talk about that now. I can tell you about it while we're driving to Tuba City. But I've got to get there before I'm too sick to talk, and these cell phones won't work out here."
"Did you kill her?"
"Sure," Woody said. "You want to know why?"
"I think I could guess," Chee said.
"Silly woman didn't give me a choice. I told her she couldn't exterminate that dog colony and I told her why. They might hold the key to saving millions of lives." Woody laughed. "She said I'd lied to her once and that was all she allowed."
"Lied," Chee said. "You told her the rodents weren't infected. Was that it?"
Woody nodded. "She put on her protective suit and was getting ready to pump cyanide dust into the burrow when I stopped her. And then the cop saw me burying her."
"You killed him, too?" Chee said.
Woody nodded. "Same problem. Exactly the same. I can't let anything interfere with this," he said, gesturing around the lab. Then he produced a weak chuckle, shook his head. "But something is. It's the disease itself. Isn't that ironic? This new, improved, drug-resistant version of Yersinia pestis is making me another lab specimen."
He was reaching into a drawer as he said that. When his hand came out it held a long-barreled pistol. Probably .22 caliber, Chee guessed. The right size for shooting rodents, but not something anyone wanted to be shot with.
"I just don't have time for this," Woody said. "You stay here," he said to Leaphorn. "Look after things. I'll ride with Lieutenant Chee. We'll send somebody back to take over when I get to the telephone."
Chee looked at the pistol, then at Woody. His own revolver was in the holster on his hip. But he wasn't going to need it.
"I'll tell you what we're going to do," Chee said. "We're going to take Mr. Leaphorn with us. As soon as we get out of this radio blind spot, we'll call an ambulance to meet us. I'll send out a patrolman to take care of this place. We'll turn on the siren and get to Tuba City fast."
Chee stood and took a step toward the door and opened it. "Come on," he said to Woody. "You're looking sicker and sicker."
"I want him to stay," Woody said, and waved the pistol toward Leaphorn. Chee reached and grabbed the gun out of Woody's hand and handed it to Leaphorn. "Come on," he said. "Hurry."
Woody was in no condition to hurry. Chee had to half-carry him to the patrol car.
They raised the dispatcher just as they bounced away from the radio shadow of Yells Back Butte. Chee told him to send an ambulance down the road to Goldtooth and an officer to guard Woody's mobile lab at the butte. Leaphorn sat in the back with Woody, and Woody talked.
He'd found two fleas in his groin area when he awakened the day before and immediately redosed himself with an antibiotic, hoping the fleas, if infected at all, were carrying the unmutated bacteria. By this morning a fever had developed. He knew then that he had the form that resisted medication and had killed Nez so quickly. He had hurriedly compiled his most recent notes in readable form, put away breakable items, stored the blood samples he'd been working on in the refrigerator for preservation and started the engine. But by then he felt so dizzy that he knew he couldn't drive the big vehicle out. So he'd begun a note explaining where he stood in the project, to be passed along to an associate at the Center for Control of Infectious Diseases.
"It's there in the folder on the desk with his name on it—a microbiologist named Roy Bobbin Hovey. But I forgot to mention that he'll want an autopsy. The name and number are in my wallet in case I'm out of it before we get to a telephone. Tell him to do the autopsy. He'll know what organs to check."
"Your organs?" Leaphorn asked.
Woody's chin had dropped down to his breastbone. "Of course," he mumbled. "Who else?"
Chee was driving far too fast for the washboard road and watching in the rearview mirror.
"How were you able to hit Officer Kinsman on the head?" he asked. "Why didn't he cuff you?"
"He was careless," Woody said. "I said, Aren't you going to put those handcuffs on me, and when he twisted around to reach for them, that's when I hit him."
"Then when we left with Kinsman, you drove the Jeep out and abandoned it and poured the blood on the seat so it would look like a murder-kidnapping? Right? And took your bicycle along so you could ride it back from there? Is that right?"
But by then, Dr. Woody had drifted off into unconsciousness. Or perhaps he didn't think the answer mattered.
They met the ambulance about ten miles from Moenkopi, warned the attendants that Woody was probably in the final stages of bubonic plague and sent it racing off toward the Northern Arizona Medical Center. At his station, Chee fished out the note from Woody's wallet, left Leaphorn talking with Claire, and disappeared into his office to make the telephone call.
He emerged looking angry, flopped into a chair across from Leaphorn, wiped his forehead, and said: "Whew, what a day."
"Did you get the man?" Leaphorn asked.
"Yeah. Dr. Hovey said he'll fly out to Flagstaff today."
"Quite a shock, I guess," Leaphorn said. "Learning your associate is a double murderer."
"That didn't seem to bother him. He asked about Woody's condition, and his notes, and who was looking after his papers, and where he could pick them up, and were they being cared for, and how about the animals he was working with, and was the prairie dog colony safe."
"Like that, huh?"
"Pissed me off, to tell the truth," Chee said. "I said I hoped we could keep the sonofabitch alive until we can try him for killing two people. And that irritated him. He sort of snorted and said: 'Two people. We're trying to save all of humanity.'"
Leaphorn sighed. "Matter of fact, I think Woody was trying to save humanity."
Chapter Twenty-eight
FOR CHEE, the next hours were occupied by the work of wrapping it up. He called the Northern Arizona Medical Center, got the emergency room supervisor, and told the woman Woody was en route in an ambulance and what to expect. Then he called the FBI office in Phoenix. Agent Reynald was occupied. He got Agent Edgar Evans instead.
"This is Jim Chee," he said. "I want to report that the man who killed Officer Ben Kinsman is in custody. His name is Woody. He is a medical doctor, and a—"
"Hold it! Hold it!" Evans said. "What're ya talking about?"
"The arrest this morning of the man who killed Kinsman," Chee said. "You better take notes because your boss will be asking questions. After being read his rights, Dr. Woody made a full confession of the assault on Kinsman to me, in the presence of Joe Leaphorn. He also confessed to the murder of Catherine Pollard, a vector control specialist employed by the Indian Health Service. Woody is critically ill and is now en route to the hospital at Flag in an amb—"