Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] Read Online Free PDF Page A

circumstantial. Again, the planning had been perfect. “Oh, well,” Largo said. He removed his glasses, frowned at them, ran his tongue over the lenses, polished them quickly with his handkerchief, and put them on again. He lowered his chin and peered at Leaphorn through the upper half of the bifocals. “Here they are,” he said, sliding the accordion files and the folder across the desktop. “Old heroin case, old homicide, old missing aircraft, and new “herd the tourist” job.”
    “Thanks,” Leaphorn said. “For what?” Largo asked.
    “Getting you into trouble? You know what I think, Joe? This isn’t smart at all, this getting personal about this guy. That ain’t good business in our line of work. Whyn’t you forget it and go on over to Window Rock and help take care of the Boy Scouts? We’ll catch this fellow for you.”
    “You’re right,” Leaphorn said. He tried to think of a way to explain to Largo what he felt. Would Largo understand if Leaphorn described how the man had grinned as he tried to kill him?
    Probably not, Leaphorn thought, because he didn’t understand it himself. “I’m right,” Largo said, “but you’re going after him anyway?” Leaphorn got up and walked to the window. The thunderhead was drifting eastward, trailing rain which didn’t quite reach the thirsty ground. The huge old cottonwoods that lined Tuba City’s single paved street looked dusty and wilted. “It’s not just getting even with him,” Leaphorn said to the window. “I think a guy that laughs when he tries to kill someone is dangerous. That’s a lot of it.” Largo nodded. “And a lot of it is that it doesn’t make sense to you. I know you, Joe. You’ve got to have everything sorted out so it’s natural. You got to know how come that guy left his car there and headed north on foot.” Largo smiled and made a huge gesture of dismissal. “Hell, man. He just got scared and ran for it. And he didn’t show up today hitchhiking because he got lost out there.
    Another day he’ll come wandering up to some hogan begging for water.”
    “Maybe,” Leaphorn said. “But nobody’s seen him. And his tracks didn’t wander. They headed due north—like he knew where he was going.”
    “Maybe he did,” Largo said. “Figure it this way. This tourist … What’s the name of the Mercedes owner? This Frederick Lynch stops at a bar in Farmington, and one of those Short Mountain boys wanders out of the same bar, sees his car parked there, and drives it off. When you stopped him, he just dumped the car and headed home on foot.”
    “That’s probably right,” Leaphorn said. On the way out, Leaphorn met the plump clerk coming in. She had two reports relayed by the Arizona State Police from Washington and Silver Spring, Maryland. Frederick Lynch lived at the address indicated on his car registration form, and was not known to Silver Spring police.
    The only item on the record was a complaint that he kept vicious dogs. He was not now at home and was last reported seen by a neighbor seven days earlier. The other report was a negative reply from the stolen-car register. If the Lynch Mercedes had been stolen in Maryland, New Mexico or anywhere else, the crime had not yet been reported.
    There is no way that one man, or one thousand men, can search effectively the wilderness of stony erosion which sprawls along the Utah-Arizona border south of the Rainbow Plateau. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn didn’t try. Instead he found Corporal Emerson Bisti.
    Corporal Bisti had been born at Kaibito Wash and spent his boyhood with his mother’s herds in the same country. Since the Korean War, he’d patrolled this same desert as a Navajo policeman. He went over Leaphorn’s map carefully, marking in all the places where water could be found. There weren’t many. Then Bisti went over the map again and checked off those that dried up after the spring runoff, or that held water only a few weeks after rainstorms. That left only eleven. Two