“Two different reasons,” Mundy said. “You’re familiar with the trouble the Interior Department is in now. With both the Federal Appeals Court and the House Investigations folks getting interested in what happened to that Tribal Trust Fund royalty money.”
“Sure,” Leaphorn said. “The four-billion-dollar question. Or was it forty billion?”
“The Congressional Accounting Office says it’s closer to forty,” Mundy said, “and the new suit the tribal attorneys just filed says the government owes ’em a hundred and thirty-seven million dollars. That was starting to emerge when I was retiring and it got to be a serious thing with me. Somebody must have been making off with that royalty money. Or more likely, the oil and gas companies, or the pipeline people, just weren’t paying it at all. I wanted to know who, and how the cheating was handled. I still do.”
“Me too,” Leaphorn said. “I wish I could tell you.”
“We think you could help.”
“I’ll try by giving you my opinion. I think if you’re going to find the answer you’ll find it by sorting through about fifty years of paperwork in Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs offices back in Washington. And then you hire about a hundred more auditors and do the same thing with the books of a bunch of coal companies, copper companies, oil companies, pipeline companies, natural gas outfits, and ... Who am I leaving out?”
Ackerman was looking impatient. He cleared his throat.
“Mr. Leaphorn is right about that, of course,” Acker-man said. “But we think something connected with that problem must have been going on out here. Maybe part of the puzzle is here. Maybe not. But we’d like to know what.”
Leaphorn felt another increase in his interest in this visit, this one sharp.
“Connected? This sounds like you think this homicide fits into that. How could that be?”
“We’re hoping you could find out some things that would tell us that,” Ackerman said. “We think maybe somebody has a lot to gain, probably politically, by finding out what happened to that royalty money, and who got it, and so forth. And they were checking into that, and somebody who didn’t want the secret out shot the fellow they had looking into it for them.”
“Let’s see now,” Leaphorn said. “First thing you’d need to know is the identity of the victim. The FBI has his fingerprints, of course, and the prints on the rental vehicle. I’d say the Bureau has him named. Apparently the Bureau is not releasing that. Could I find out why not? I can’t see how I could out here at Window Rock. It suggests our victim was well connected—one way or another. Can you get all that?”
Mundy said, “You mean find out this dead guy’s identity. And who he was working for?” He looked at Ackerman. Ackerman shrugged, nodded.
Mundy said, “Probably. I’m sure we can find out his identity. Who he was. But who he was working for? That wouldn’t be so easy.”
“So what do you think I can do?”
“Find out what he was doing here. What he was looking for. Was he finding anything. Who he was talking to. What sort of questions he was asking them.”
Ackerman cleared his throat. “Everything he was asking about.”
Leaphorn considered this. “I’ll get you a refill,” he said. He went into the kitchen, emerged with the coffeepot, and poured.
“Now it’s time for you to tell the name of this murder victim and those little details that would make it possible to do anything for you. Start with the identification.”
Ackerman looked at Mundy.
“We don’t have the name yet,” said Mundy. “But I can get it for you in a day or two.”
Leaphorn gestured toward his telephone. “You can call from here.”
Mundy laughed. “Joe. I have to do this very quietly. You know how the Bureau can be out here. Well, in Washington it’s a lot worse. Somebody pretty big seems to be sitting on this homicide case. That’s one of the things we’re trying to learn. Who is the Bureau covering for.”
“Who do you think?”
Mundy glanced at Ackerman, who managed an almost imperceptible nod.
“Three possibilities on our list. One is a very senior U.S. senator who sits on a crucial subcommittee. Another is also a VIP heavy hitter on the Republican side of the aisle. Another is a distinguished and well-advertised corporation that has had huge holdings in the energy industry. Oil. Gas. Pipelines. Coal. Electricity.”
Leaphorn considered that a moment.
“If somebody hired our murder victim to dig up evidence for them, what would be their motive? Evidence of what?”
Ackerman sighed. “Maybe evidence to use in an election campaign. Proving the incumbent was a crook. Maybe evidence, to blackmail a chief executive officer. Maybe ... all sorts of uses for knowledge.” Ackerman laughed. “As is said in Washington, ‘Knowledge is power.’ ”
“I’ll tell you what,” Leaphorn said. “Get me the identity and everything else you can learn about our homicide victim and I’ll see if I can learn anything. But don’t count on it.”
8
Professor Louisa Bourbonette got involved more or less by accident. Chee had called the home of retired lieutenant Joe Leaphorn in Window Rock. Louisa had answered. Moved in with Joe until she finished her Southern Ute oral history research, she said, or until fall semester enrollment time at NAU, or until Leaphorn got tired of her cooking. Chee said he’d like to talk to Leaphorn if the Legendary Lieutenant was available. Louisa said she expected him in about an hour and could Leaphorn call Chee at his place in Shiprock? Chee said he was at the Navajo Tribal Police headquarters in Window Rock. Good, said Louisa. Why not just come over and join us for lunch. He had. Thus a nonpolice viewpoint, feminine and academic, was introduced into Jim Chee’s complex problem. On the surface, it involved what he should do about an obviously touchy murder case and what Leaphorn thought he should do, if anything, about some funny business he seemed to be finding out about a welding company. Most of all it concerned Bernie Manuelito’s vague connection with all this, and Bernie herself.
Chee had wanted this conversation to be very simple. He would explain his law enforcement puzzle with his former supervisor, seek his opinion on what caused an apparently unusually fierce federal interest in a Visa card, and so forth. He hoped to arouse Leaphorn’s interest and thus lead the Legendary Lieutenant into using his famed legendary network of good old boy cops to get some questions answered. Finally, and most important, he wanted to tell Leaphorn about a letter he’d received from Bernie this morning. It had included some photos that were not only worrisome, but might offer a legitimate reason for Chee to send himself down into the New Mexico bootheel to visit Bernie. It seemed to Chee that having Professor Bourbonette listening in on that would be sort of embarrassing.
But even as he was thinking this, the aroma of roasting lamb chops reached him from the kitchen. A prospect of a decent meal made this possible complication easy to tolerate.
“It’s true,” Leaphorn was saying. “We’re finally getting the thunderheads and the lightning, but the rains are way overdue. Anyway, I’ll bet weather’s not what you’re thinking about.”
“Well, no,” Chee said.
“I’d guess it’s that homicide you had up in the Checkerboard Reservation. You have an identification yet of the victim?”
Chee laughed. “I don’t. But if his name isn’t Carl Mankin, then we have two crimes instead of one. I was hoping you’d tell me what’s being talked about by your law enforcement friends over the morning doughnuts.”
Leaphorn looked surprised. He was sitting in his living room recliner, feet on the ottoman, TV on but just a background murmur. Now Leaphorn leaned forward and clicked off the set, looked at Chee, said: “They haven’t told you yet?”