A Thief of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

chairs, and two double beds. One seemed to be for sleeping—the covers carelessly pulled back in place after its last use. The other was work space—covered now with three cardboard boxes and a litter of notebooks, computer printouts, and other papers. Beyond this bed other boxes lined the floor along the wall. They seemed to hold mostly broken bits of pottery. “No way on God’s green earth of telling where she got any of this stuff,” Thatcher said. “Not that I know of. It might be perfectly legal.”
    â€œUnless her field notes tell us something,” Leaphorn said. “They might. In fact, if she collected that stuff as part of some project or other, they should tell exactly where she picked up every bit of that stuff. And it’s going to be legal unless she’s been selling the artifacts.”
    â€œAnd of course if she’s doing it for a project, it’s legal,” Thatcher said. “Unless she doesn’t have the right permit. And if she’s selling the stuff, she sure as hell ain’t going to write down anything incriminating.”
    â€œNope,” Leaphorn said.
    A man appeared at the apartment door. “Finding anything?” he asked. He walked past Leaphorn without a glance and into the bedroom. “Glad to see you people getting interested in this,” he said. “Ellie’s been missing almost three weeks now.”
    Thatcher put a fragment of pot carefully back into its box. “Who are you?” he asked.
    â€œMy name’s Elliot,” he said. “I work with Ellie on the Keet Katl dig. Or did work with her. What’s this Luna’s been telling me? You think she’s stealing artifacts?”
    Leaphorn found himself interested—wondering how Thatcher would deal with this. It wasn’t the sort of thing anticipated and covered in the law enforcement training Thatcher would have received. No chapter covering intrusion of civilian into scene of investigation.
    â€œMr. Elliot,” Thatcher said, “I want you to wait outside on the porch until we get finished in here. Then I want to talk to you.”
    Elliot laughed. “For God’s sake,” he said, in a tone that canceled any misunderstanding the laugh might have caused. “A woman vanishes for almost a month and nobody can get you guys off your butts. But somebody calls in with an anonymous…”
    â€œTalk to you in a minute,” Thatcher said. “Soon as I’m done in here.”
    â€œDone what?” Elliot said. “Done stirring through her potsherds? If you get ’em out of order, get ’em mixed up, it will screw up everything for her.”
    â€œOut,” Thatcher said, voice still mild.
    Elliot stared at him.
    Maybe middle thirties or a little older, Leaphorn thought. A couple of inches over six feet, slender, athletic. The sun had bleached his hair even lighter than its usual very light brown. His jeans were worn and so were his jean jacket and his boots. But they fit. They had been expensive. And the face fit the pattern—a little weather-beaten but what Emma would have called “an upper-class face.” A little narrow, large blue eyes, nothing crooked, nothing bent, nothing scarred. Not the face you’d see looking out of a truckload of migrant workers, or in a roofing crew, or the cab of a road grader.
    â€œOf course this place is full of pots.” Elliot’s voice was angry. “Studying pots is Ellie’s job….”
    Thatcher gripped Elliot at the elbow. “Talk to you later,” he said mildly, and moved him past Leaphorn and out the door. He closed the door behind him.
    â€œTrouble is,” Thatcher said, “everything he says is true. Her business is pots. So she’ll have a bunch of ’em here. So what the hell are we looking for?”
    Leaphorn shrugged. “I think we just look,” he said. “We find what we find. Then we think about