Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 04] Read Online Free PDF

placed a call to the Bernalillo County Medical Center. Two transfers later, he was talking to a nurse in the Cancer Research and Treatment Center.
    "I'm sorry," she said. "The patient can't have any visitors."
    "We're investigating a crime," Chee said. "Mr. Charley is the only one who can provide some information we need. It would be two or three quick questions."
    "Mr. Charley is not conscious," she said. "He's under sedation. He's in very critical condition."
    "It would only take a few seconds. I could come and wait for him to regain consciousness," Chee said.
    "I'm afraid that won't happen," the nurse said. "He's dying."
    Chee thought about that. It made the question he was going to ask sound absurd.
    "Can the hospital confirm that Emerson Charley didn't leave the hospital last Tuesday?"
    "We can confirm that Mr. Charley hasn't left his room for a month. He's being fed intravenously. He's too weak to move." The tone was disapproving.
    "Well, then," Chee said, "I'll need the name of his next of kin."
    He got it from the records office, and jotted it on his note pad. Tomas Charley, Rural Route 2, Grants. No telephone. A son, grandson of Dillon Charley. What would Tomas know of something that had happened about the time he was born? Probably not much. Perhaps nothing.
    Then who would know?
    One question, at least, Chee could find an answer for. What had caused the trouble between Sheriff Sena and Henry Becenti? He would locate Becenti and ask him. And then Chee would decide whether he would collect Mrs. Vines' three thousand dollars.

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Chapter Five
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    S ome of it's easy to remember," Henry Becenti said. "Hard not to. Six people killed. But hell. It was way back in '47 or '48. That's a long time ago."
    "I can just remember hearing somebody talking about it," Chee said. "But it was long before my time."
    "It was a little independent outfit," Becenti recalled. "Trying to do some drilling back in there northeast of Mount Taylor, and they had an explosion that wiped out the whole crew. That's how old Gordo and I got in trouble with each other."
    "Just an accident?"
    "Yeah," Becenti said. "You know anything about oil drilling? Well, this one was a dry hole. No oil. So they was going to shoot it. Perforate the casing." Becenti glanced at Chee to see if he understood. "They lower a tube of nitroglycerin down the well to the level where it looks best and they shoot it off. Idea is to shatter the rocks down there and get the oil running into the hole. Anyway, this time the nitro went off on the floor of the rig. Wiped everybody out. Little pieces of 'em scattered all over."
    A look of distaste crossed Becenti's face. He shook his head, shaking off the vividness of the memory. They were sitting on a shelf of stone that jutted from the slope above Henry Becenti's place. They were there because Chee's arrival had coincided with a visit from Becenti's mother-in-law to Becenti's wife. Changing Woman had taught the original Navajo clans that while the groom should join his bride's family, the mother in-law and son-in-law should scrupulously avoid all contact. In forty years, Old Woman Nez and Henry Becenti had never broken that taboo. Becenti had built his house at his in-laws' place, but away from the hogan of his bride's parents. When Old Woman Nez came to call, Becenti arranged to be elsewhere. This high ridge, which looked across the great valley of Ambrosia Lakes, was a favored retreat.
    "If it was an accident, what was bothering Sena?" Chee asked.
    "Sena's older brother was one of them," Becenti said. "He was one of the drillers. I think he was what they call the 'tool pusher.' And Sena got sort of crazy about it."
    Becenti shook a cigaret out of his pack, offered it to Chee, and then selected one for himself and struck a kitchen match to it. He sat smoking, looking at Mount Taylor, thirty miles to the east. The sun had dropped behind the horizon, but the top of the mountain, rising a mile above the valley floor, still caught