"Went to work where?"
"The man I called said she just stopped by the office to pick up some of the equipment she uses in her work and then drove away. To someplace out in the country where she was trapping rodents."
"Was she meeting anyone where she was going to be working?"
"Apparently not. Not officially anyway. The man I talked to didn't think anyone went with her."
"And you think something has happened to her. Have you discussed this with the police?"
"Mr. Peabody discussed it with people he knows in the FBI. He said they would not be involved in something like this. They would have jurisdiction only if it involved a kidnapping for ransom, or"—she hesitated, glanced down at her hands—"or some other sort of felony. They told Mr. Peabody there would have to be evidence that a federal law had been violated."
"What evidence was there?" He was pretty sure he knew the answer. It would be none. Nothing at all.
Mrs. Vanders shook her head.
"Actually, I guess you would say the only evidence is that a woman is missing. Just the circumstances."
"The vehicle. Where was it found?"
"It hasn't been found. Not as far as I have been able to discover." Mrs. Vanders's eyes were intent on Leap-horn, watching for his reaction.
Had they not been, Leaphorn would have allowed himself a smile—thinking of the hopeless task Mr. Peabody must have faced in trying to interest the federals. Thinking of the paperwork this missing vehicle would cause in the Arizona Health Department, of how this would be interpreted by the Arizona Highway Patrol if a missing person report had been filed, of the other complexities. But Mrs. Vanders would read a smile as an expression of cynicism.
"Do you have a theory?"
"Yes," she said, and cleared her throat. "I think she must be dead."
Mrs. Vanders, who had seemed frail and unhealthy, now looked downright sick.
"Are you all right? Do you want to continue this?" She produced a weak smile, extracted a small white container from the pocket of her jacket and held it up.
"I have a heart condition," she said. "This is nitro-glycerin. The prescription used to come in little tablets, but these days the patient just sprays it on the tongue. Please excuse me. I'll feel fine again in a moment."
She turned away from him, held the tube to her lips for a moment, then returned it to her pocket.
Leaphorn waited, reviewing what little he knew about nitro as a heart medication. It served to expand the arteries and thus increase the blood flow. Neither of the people he'd known who used it had lived very long. Perhaps that explained the urgency Peabody mentioned in his letter.
Mrs. Vanders sighed. "Where were we?"
"You'd said you thought your niece must be dead."
"Murdered, I think."
"Did someone have a motive? Or did she have something that would attract a thief?"
"She was being stalked," Mrs. Vanders said. "A man named Victor Hammar. A graduate student she'd met at the University of New Mexico. A fairly typical case, I'd guess, for this sort of thing. He was from East Germany, what used to be East Germany that is, with no family or friends over here. A very lonely man, I would imagine. And that's the way Catherine described him to me. They had common interests at the university. Both biologists. He was studying small mammals. That caused them to do a lot of work in the laboratory together. I suppose Catherine took pity on him." Mrs. Vanders shook her head. "Losers always had a special appeal to her. When her mother was going to buy her a dog, she wanted one from the pound. Something she could feel sorry for. But with that man…" She grimaced. "Well, anyway, she couldn't get rid of him. I suspected she dropped out of graduate school to get away from him. Then, after she took the job in Arizona, he would turn up at Phoenix when she was there. It was the same thing when she started working at Flagstaff."
"Had he threatened her?"
"I asked her that and she just laughed. She thought he was perfectly harmless. She told me to think of him as being like a little lost kitten. Just a nuisance."
"But you think he was a threat?"
"I think he was a very dangerous man. Under the right circumstances anyway. When he came here with her once, he seemed polite enough. But there was a sort of—" She paused, looking for the way to express it. "I think a lot of anger was right under that nicey-nicey surface ready to explode."
Leaphorn waited for more explanation. Mrs. Vanders merely looked worried.
"I told Catherine that even with kittens, if you hurt one it will scratch you," she said.
"That's true," Leaphorn said. "If I decide I can be of any help on this, I'll need his name and address." He thought about it. "And I think finding that vehicle she was driving is important. I think you should offer a reward. Something substantial enough to attract attention. To get people talking about it."
"Of course," Mrs. Vanders said. "Offer whatever you like."
"I'll need all the pertinent biographical information about her. People who might know her or something about her habits. Names, addresses, that sort of thing."
"All I have is in the folder you have there," she said. "There's a report about what a lawyer from Mr. Peabody's office found out, and a report from a lawyer he hired in Flagstaff to collect what information he could. It wasn't much. I'm afraid it won't be very helpful."
"When was the last time she saw this Hammar?"
"That's one reason I suspect him," Mrs. Vanders said. "It was just before she disappeared. He'd come out to Tuba City where she was working. She'd called to tell me she was coming to see me that weekend. That Ham-mar man was there at Tuba City when she called."
"Did she say anything that made you think she was afraid of him?"
"No." Mrs. Vanders laughed. "I don't think Catherine's ever been afraid of anything. She inherited her mother's genes."
Leaphorn frowned. "She said she was coming to see you but she disappeared instead," he said. "Did she say why she was coming? Just social, or did she have something on her mind?"
"She was thinking of quitting. She couldn't stand her boss. A man named Krause." Mrs. Vanders pointed at the folder. "Very arrogant. And she disapproved of the way he ran the operation."
"Something illegal?"
"I don't know. She said she didn't want to talk about it on the telephone. But it must have been pretty serious to make her think about leaving."
"Something personal, you think? Did she ever suggest sexual harassment? Anything like that?"
"She didn't exactly suggest that," Mrs. Vanders said. "But he was a bachelor. Whatever he was doing it was bad enough to be driving her away from a job she loved."
Leaphorn questioned that by raising his eyebrows.
"She was excited by that job. She's been working for months to find the rodents that caused that last outbreak of bubonic plague on your reservation. Catherine has always been obsessive, even as a child. And since she took this health department job her obsession has been the plague. She spent one entire visit telling me about it. About how it killed half the people in Europe in the Middle Ages. How it spreads. How they're beginning to think the bacteria are evolving. All that sort of thing. She's on a personal crusade about it. Almost religious, I'd say. And she thought she might have found some of the rodents it spreads from. She'd told this Hammar fellow about it and I guess he used that as an excuse to come out."
Mrs. Vanders made a deprecating gesture. "Being a student of mice and rats and other rodents, that gives him an excuse, I guess. She said he might go out there with her to help her with the rodents. Apparently he wasn't with her when she left Tuba City, but I thought he might have followed her. I guess they trap them or poison them or something. And she said it was a hard-to get-to place, so maybe she would want him to help her carry in whatever they use. It's out on the edge of the Hopi Reservation. A place called Yells Back Butte."
"Yells Back Butte," Leaphorn said.