The Sinister Pig - 15 (7 page)

O’day stared out at the animals, still waiting on the hillside. “Kinda far away,” he said. “They’ll just be specks.”

“I’ve got a telescopic lens,” she said, tapping it, and got into her truck. “But I’ll drive a little ways up the hill there to get a better shot.”

“Well, now,” he said, looking doubtful.

“Just a few hundred yards,” Bernie said, starting the engine. “I want to get where I won’t have all this clutter in the picture. Make it look like I shot it in the wilds of Africa.”

[57] That seemed to satisfy O’day, but when she stopped a quarter mile up the hill he was still watching her. She focused on the largest oryx, which also seemed to be staring at her. Then she got another shot of Gonzales, also staring, and of his van, the shack, and the equipment around it. Why waste those last exposures on a thirty-six-frame roll?

O’day pointed her way through what he called “Hatchet Gap,” which led her to a road that actually had been graded and graveled, and on to County Road 9, and thence to Hatchita and the turn south toward Interstate Highway 10 and Eleanda’s little house in Rodeo. Straight road now, no traffic. She extracted Jim Chee’s letter from her jacket pocket. She spread it on the steering wheel and zipped through the introductory paragraphs to the terminal portion.

We now have a case that would interest you. It’s a very professional-looking homicide with the victim shot once in the back from a distance. Well-dressed man and I don’t mean by Farmington standards. Tailored shirt, even. Osborne said even the shoes were custom made. He was found out in the Checkboard Rez just south of Jicarilla Apache land. He was in an El Paso rent-a-car parked on the track leading to one of those Giant Oil pump stations and there was a bunch of stuff about welding and pipeline fixing, etc., in the car which didn’t seem to fit with the way he was dressed. No identification on him, but the car rental papers showed it had been signed to a welding/metal
[58]construction company down in Mexico. Now Osborne tells me the case has all of a sudden been taken away from the regional FBI, and he thinks it’s being run right out of Washington.

I’m hoping it will involve Customs violations in some way or another and maybe that would give me an excuse to get down there and look into it, and invite you out to dinner.

Sincerely,

Jim

Bernie made a face, refolded the letter back into her pocket.

“And sincerely to you, too, Sergeant Chee,” she said to the windshield, feeling sour, dusty, and exhausted. But by the time she saw the little cluster of buildings that formed Rodeo, she was thinking about the Mexican welding/metal construction connection. She’d want to talk about this with Mr. Henry. Make sure she knew what sort of checking she should do to find out if that famous North American Free Trade Agreement made all such traffic free and easy. And she’d want to talk with Jim Chee about the welding/metal construction company renting the car for his homicide victim.

Former Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, now retired, had his day pretty well planned. Professor Louisa Bourbonette was up on the Ute Reservation collecting her oral histories from the tribe’s elderly. She had left even earlier than usual, the sky visible through his east-facing window barely showing predawn pink when her bumping around in her bedroom awakened him.

He listened to the sound of her car fading, felt a twinge of loneliness, and considered for a moment bringing up the topic of marriage again, and then dismissed the idea. She’d tell him, as she always did, that she had tried that once and didn’t care for it. That would be followed by a few days of uneasiness between them and of his feeling a vague sort of guilt for even thinking of trying to replace Emma. The infection had killed her physically, but Emma lived on in his mind. Emma would always be his lover. But Louisa had become a confidante and a [60] friend. He was smart enough to see she cared for him, and the sentiment was mutual.

Hearing Louisa drive away left a sort of silence that made him remember too much. He had planned to use the quiet time to exercise his mind—gone rusty with retirement idleness. He’d accumulated a list of nine really tough Free Cell games he’d had to abandon unsolved on his computer. He consumed his breakfast coffee and toast, turned on his machine, called up game 1192, and was planning his first move when the telephone rang.

“Dan Mundy, Joe,” the voice said. “How’s retirement treating you? You keeping busy?”

Mundy, Joe thought. Yes. Prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Old-timer. Retired years ago.

“Can’t complain,” Leaphorn said. “How about you?”

“I’m bored with it,” Mundy said. “You doing anything important today?”

“Working on a puzzle on my computer.”

“How about me coming by? I want to introduce you to a fellow.”

Leaphorn had been retired long enough to know that when such casual semifriends called it was always to ask a favor. But why not? Perhaps it would offer some variety. Anyway, what could he say?

Joe said: “OK. I’ll have some coffee made.”

Mundy looked exactly as Leaphorn had remembered him. White hair, sharp blue eyes, precisely clipped goatee. “Joe,” he said. “This is Jason Ackerman. Known him since we both cribbed our way through law school. But he’s still practicing. Big office in Washington. Jase, this is Lieutenant [61] Joe Leaphorn, retired. Out here they call him the ‘Legendary Lieutenant.’ I’ve told you about him.”

Jason shifted the briefcase he’d been holding to his left hand and offered Leaphorn the right one. With the hand shaking done, Leaphorn motioned his visitors to sit and brought in Louisa’s tray with its array of saucered cups, sugar bowl, creamer, spoons, and napkins. Coffee was poured, pleasantries exchanged.

“And now,” Leaphorn said. “What brings you to Window Rock?”

This produced a moment of hesitation, a sipping of coffee by Mundy. Ackerman was waiting for him to answer.

“I guess officially and formally, it’s none of our business. We’re just being nosey,” Mundy said. “But we’re sort of curious about that murder case. That fellow shot up there just off the southwest edge of the Jicarilla Reservation.”

“Which murder case?”

Mundy laughed, shook his head. “Come on, Joe. You don’t have that many.”

“You mean the recent one? Victim unidentified?”

“And why wasn’t he identified?” Mundy asked. “I heard he got there in a rental car. They don’t let those cars go without knowing who they’re renting them to. That should be easy to track.”

“So I’d think,” Leaphorn said. He sampled his own coffee. “You know I’m retired now. It’s not my business.”

Ackerman shifted his briefcase in his lap. “We’d like to make it your business,” he said, smiling at Leaphorn.

“Now I’m curious,” Leaphorn said. “Why would you want to do that?”

[62] “We need to know more about that case,” Mundy said.

Leaphorn was beginning to enjoy this sparring. “Like what? Why would that be?”

“Two different reasons,” Mundy said. “You’re familiar with the trouble the Interior Department is in now. With both the Federal Appeals Court and the House Investigations folks getting interested in what happened to that Tribal Trust Fund royalty money.”

“Sure,” Leaphorn said. “The four-billion-dollar question. Or was it forty billion?”

“The Congressional Accounting Office says it’s closer to forty,” Mundy said, “and the new suit the tribal attorneys just filed says the government owes ’em a hundred and thirty-seven million dollars. That was starting to emerge when I was retiring and it got to be a serious thing with me. Somebody must have been making off with that royalty money. Or more likely, the oil and gas companies, or the pipeline people, just weren’t paying it at all. I wanted to know who, and how the cheating was handled. I still do.”

“Me too,” Leaphorn said. “I wish I could tell you.”

“We think you could help.”

“I’ll try by giving you my opinion. I think if you’re going to find the answer you’ll find it by sorting through about fifty years of paperwork in Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs offices back in Washington. And then you hire about a hundred more auditors and do the same thing with the books of a bunch of coal companies, copper companies, oil companies, pipeline companies, natural gas outfits, and ... Who am I leaving out?”

Ackerman was looking impatient. He cleared his throat.

[63] “Mr. Leaphorn is right about that, of course,” Acker-man said. “But we think something connected with that problem must have been going on out here. Maybe part of the puzzle is here. Maybe not. But we’d like to know what.”

Leaphorn felt another increase in his interest in this visit, this one sharp.

“Connected? This sounds like you think this homicide fits into that. How could that be?”

“We’re hoping you could find out some things that would tell us that,” Ackerman said. “We think maybe somebody has a lot to gain, probably politically, by finding out what happened to that royalty money, and who got it, and so forth. And they were checking into that, and somebody who didn’t want the secret out shot the fellow they had looking into it for them.”

“Let’s see now,” Leaphorn said. “First thing you’d need to know is the identity of the victim. The FBI has his fingerprints, of course, and the prints on the rental vehicle. I’d say the Bureau has him named. Apparently the Bureau is not releasing that. Could I find out why not? I can’t see how I could out here at Window Rock. It suggests our victim was well connected—one way or another. Can you get all that?”

Mundy said, “You mean find out this dead guy’s identity. And who he was working for?” He looked at Ackerman. Ackerman shrugged, nodded.

Mundy said, “Probably. I’m sure we can find out his identity. Who he was. But who he was working for? That wouldn’t be so easy.”

“So what do you think I can do?”

“Find out what he was doing here. What he was [64] looking for. Was he finding anything. Who he was talking to. What sort of questions he was asking them.”

Ackerman cleared his throat. “Everything he was asking about.”

Leaphorn considered this. “I’ll get you a refill,” he said. He went into the kitchen, emerged with the coffeepot, and poured.

“Now it’s time for you to tell the name of this murder victim and those little details that would make it possible to do anything for you. Start with the identification.”

Ackerman looked at Mundy.

“We don’t have the name yet,” said Mundy. “But I can get it for you in a day or two.”

Leaphorn gestured toward his telephone. “You can call from here.”

Mundy laughed. “Joe. I have to do this very quietly. You know how the Bureau can be out here. Well, in Washington it’s a lot worse. Somebody pretty big seems to be sitting on this homicide case. That’s one of the things we’re trying to learn. Who is the Bureau covering for.”

“Who do you think?”

Mundy glanced at Ackerman, who managed an almost imperceptible nod.

“Three possibilities on our list. One is a very senior U.S. senator who sits on a crucial subcommittee. Another is also a VIP heavy hitter on the Republican side of the aisle. Another is a distinguished and well-advertised corporation that has had huge holdings in the energy industry. Oil. Gas. Pipelines. Coal. Electricity.”

Leaphorn considered that a moment.

“If somebody hired our murder victim to dig up [65] evidence for them, what would be their motive? Evidence of what?”

Ackerman sighed. “Maybe evidence to use in an election campaign. Proving the incumbent was a crook. Maybe evidence, to blackmail a chief executive officer. Maybe ... all sorts of uses for knowledge.” Ackerman laughed. “As is said in Washington, ‘Knowledge is power.’ ”

“I’ll tell you what,” Leaphorn said. “Get me the identity and everything else you can learn about our homicide victim and I’ll see if I can learn anything. But don’t count on it.”

Professor Louisa Bourbonette got involved more or less by accident. Chee had called the home of retired lieutenant Joe Leaphorn in Window Rock. Louisa had answered. Moved in with Joe until she finished her Southern Ute oral history research, she said, or until fall semester enrollment time at NAU, or until Leaphorn got tired of her cooking. Chee said he’d like to talk to Leaphorn if the Legendary Lieutenant was available. Louisa said she expected him in about an hour and could Leaphorn call Chee at his place in Shiprock? Chee said he was at the Navajo Tribal Police headquarters in Window Rock. Good, said Louisa. Why not just come over and join us for lunch. He had. Thus a nonpolice viewpoint, feminine and academic, was introduced into Jim Chee’s complex problem. On the surface, it involved what he should do about an obviously touchy murder case and what Leaphorn thought he should do, if anything, about some funny [68] business he seemed to be finding out about a welding company. Most of all it concerned Bernie Manuelito’s vague connection with all this, and Bernie herself.