Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 13] Read Online Free PDF

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