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

illegal?"
    "I don't know. She said she didn't want to talk about it on the telephone.
But it must have been pretty serious to make her think about leaving."
    "Something personal, you think? Did she ever suggest sexual harassment?
Anything like that?"
    "She didn't exactly suggest that," Mrs. Vanders said. "But he
was a bachelor. Whatever he was doing it was bad enough to be driving her away
from a job she loved."
    Leaphorn questioned that by raising his eyebrows.
    "She was excited by that job. She's been working for months to find the
rodents that caused that last outbreak of bubonic plague on your reservation.
Catherine has always been obsessive, even as a child. And since she took this
health department job her obsession has been the plague. She spent one entire
visit telling me about it. About how it killed half the people in Europe in the
Middle Ages. How it spreads. How they're beginning to think the bacteria are
evolving. All that sort of thing. She's on a personal crusade about it. Almost
religious, I'd say. And she thought she might have found some of the rodents it
spreads from. She'd told this Hammar fellow about it and I guess he used that
as an excuse to come out."
    Mrs. Vanders made a deprecating gesture. "Being a student of mice and
rats and other rodents, that gives him an excuse, I guess. She said he might go
out there with her to help her with the rodents. Apparently he wasn't with her
when she left Tuba City, but I thought he might have followed her. I guess they
trap them or poison them or something. And she said it was a hard-to get-to
place, so maybe she would want him to help her carry in whatever they use. It's
out on the edge of the Hopi Reservation. A place called Yells Back Butte."
    "Yells Back Butte," Leaphorn said.
    "It seems a strange name," Mrs. Vanders said. "I suspect
there's some story behind it."
    "Probably," Leaphorn said. "I think it's a local name for a
little finger sticking out from Black Mesa. On the edge of the Hopi
Reservation. And when was she going out there?"
    "The day after she called me," Mrs. Vanders said. "That would
be a week ago next Friday."
    Leaphorn nodded, sorting out some memories. That would be July 8, just about
the day—No. It was exactly the day when Officer Benjamin Kinsman had his skull
cracked with a rock somewhere very near Yells Back Butte. Same time. Same
place. Leaphorn had never learned to believe in coincidences.
    "All right, Mrs. Vanders," Leaphorn said, "I'll see what I
can find out."

Chapter Four
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    CHEE WAS NOT STANDING at the waiting room window just to watch the Northern
Arizona Medical Center parking lot and the cloud shadows dappling the mountains
across the valley. He was postponing the painful moment when he would walk into
Officer Benjamin Kinsman's room and give Benny the foredoomed official
"last opportunity" to tell them who had murdered him.
    Actually, it wasn't murder yet. The neurologist in charge had called
Shiprock yesterday to report that Kinsman had become brain-dead and procedures
could now begin to end his ordeal. But this was going to be a legally
complicated and socially sensitive process. The U.S. Attorney's office was
nervous. Converting the charge against Jano from attempted homicide to murder
had to be done exactly right. Therefore, J. D. Mickey, the acting assistant
U.S. attorney charged with handling the prosecution, had decided that the
arresting officer must be present when the plug was pulled. He wanted Chee to
testify that he was available to receive any possible last words. That meant
that the defense attorney should be there, too.
    Chee had no idea why. Everybody involved had the same boss. As an indigent,
Jano would be represented by another Justice Department lawyer. Said lawyer
being—Chee glanced at his watch—eleven minutes late. But maybe that was his
vehicle pulling into the lot. No. It was a pickup truck. Even in Arizona,
Justice Department lawyers didn't arrive in trucks.
    In fact, it was