Leaphorn abruptly clapped his hands together.
“Now you’ve given us the link that can fit the pattern together,” Leaphorn said, with rare exuberance. “Finally something to work with. I spent most of my time for months trying to think this case through and I didn’t come up with this. Emma was still healthy then, and she thought about it, too. And I’ve spent a lot of thought on it since then, even though we officially gave up. And in—how many days was it?—less than ten, you come up with the link.”
Chee found himself baffled. But Leaphorn was beaming at him, full of pride. That made it both better and worse.
63 of 102
15/03/2008 19:57
TheFallenMan
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Floop/Local%20Settings/Te...
“But we still don’t know who killed Hosteen Maryboy,” Chee said, thinking at least he didn’t know.
“But now we have something to work on,” Leaphorn said. “Another part of the pattern takes shape.” Chee said, “Umm,” and tried to look thoughtful instead of confused.
“Breedlove’s skeleton is found on Ship Rock,” Leaphorn said, holding up a blunt trigger finger. “Amos Nez is promptly shot.” Leaphorn added a second finger. “Now, shortly thereafter, just as arrangements are being made for another climb of Ship Rock, one of the last people to see Breedlove is shot.” He added a third finger.
“Yes,” Chee said. “If we have all the pertinent facts it makes for a short list of suspects.”
“I can add a little light to that,” Leaphorn said. “Actually, it’s what I came in to tell you. Eldon Demott told me some interesting things about Hal. The key one was that he’d quarreled with his father, and his family. He had decided to cut the family corporation out of the mining lease as soon as he inherited the ranch.”
“Did the family know that?”
“Demott presumed they did. So do I. He probably told them himself. Demott understood Hal had tried to get money out of his father, and got turned down, and came home defiant. But even if he tried to keep it secret, the money people seemed to have known about it. Hal was in debt. Borrowing money. And if the money people knew, I’m sure the word got back to the Breedlove Corporation.”
“Ah,” Chee said. “So we add George Shaw to the list of people who would be happy if Hal Breedlove died before he celebrated the pertinent birthday.”
“Or even happier to prove that Hal Breedlove was murdered by his wife, which would mean she couldn’t inherit. I would guess that would put the ranch back into probate. And the Breedlove family would be the heir.” They sat for a while, thinking about it.
“If you want a little bit more confusion, I turned up a possible boyfriend for Elisa,” Leaphorn said. “It turns out their climbing team was once a foursome.” He explained to Chee what Mrs. Rivera had told him of Tommy Castro and what Demott had added to it.
“Another rock climber,” Chee said. “You think he killed Hal to gain access to the widow? Or the widow and Castro conspired to get Hal out of the way?”
“If so, they didn’t do much about it. As far as we know, that is.”
“How about Shaw as the man who left Breedlove dying on the ledge? Or maybe gave him a shove?” Leaphorn shrugged. “I think I like one of the Demotts a little better.”
“How about the shootings?”
“About the same,” Leaphorn said.
They thought about it some more, and Chee felt himself being engulfed with nostalgia. Remembering the days he’d worked for Leaphorn, sat across the desk in the lieutenant’s cramped second-floor office in Window Rock trying to put the pieces of something or other together in order to understand a crime. Stressful as it had been, demanding as Leaphorn tended to be, it had been a joyful time. And damn little paperwork.
“Do you still have your map?” Chee asked.
If Leaphorn heard the question he didn’t show it. He said, “The problem here is time.” Lost again, Chee said, “Time?”
“Think how different things would be if Hal Breedlove’s thirtieth birthday had been a week after he disappeared, instead of a week before,” Leaphorn said.
“Yeah,” Chee said. “Wouldn’t that have simplified things?”
“Then the presumption that went with his disappearance would have been foul play. A homicide to prevent the inheritance.”
“Right,” Chee said.
Leaphorn rose, recovered his Cubs cap from Chee’s table.
“Do you think you can get Largo to make Ship Rock off limits to climbers for a few days?”
“Do I tell him why?” Chee asked.
64 of 102
15/03/2008 19:57
TheFallenMan
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Floop/Local%20Settings/Te...
“Tell him that mountain climbers have this tradition of leaving a record behind when they reach a difficult peak. Ship Rock is one of those. On top of it, there’s a metal box—one of those canisters the army uses to hold belted machine gun ammunition. It’s waterproof, of course, and there’s a book in it that climbers sign. They jot down the time and the date and any note they’d like to leave to those who come later.”
“Shaw told you that?”
“No. I’ve been asking around. But Shaw would certainly know it.”
“You want to keep Shaw from going up and getting it,” Chee said. “Didn’t you tell me you were working for him?”
“He retained me to find out everything I could about what happened to Hal Breedlove,” Leaphorn said. “How can I learn anything I can depend on from that book if Mr. Shaw gets it first?”
“Oh,” Chee said.
“I want to know who was in that party of three who made the climb before Hal disappeared. Was one of them Hal, or Shaw, or Demott, or maybe even Castro? Three men, Hosteen Sam said. But how could he be sure of gender through a spotting scope miles away? Climbers wear helmets and they don’t wear skirts. Was one of the three Mrs. Breedlove? If Hal was one of them and he got to the top, his name will be in the book. If it isn’t, that might help explain why he went back after he vanished from Canyon de Chelly: to try again. If he got to the top that time, his name and the date will be there. I want to know when he made the climb that killed him.”
“It wasn’t in the first forty-three days after he disappeared,” Chee said.
“What?” Leaphorn said, startled. “How do you know that?”
Chee described Hosteen Sam’s ledger, his habit of rolling his wheelchair to the window each day after his dawn prayers and looking at the mountain. He described Sam’s meticulous entry system. “But there was no mention of a climbing party from September eighteenth, when he watched the three climb it and then complained to Maryboy about it, through the first week of November. So if Hal climbed it in that period he had to somehow sneak in without old Sam seeing him. I doubt if that’s possible, even if he knew Sam would be watching—which he wouldn’t—or had some reason to be sneaky. I’m told that that’s the starting point for the only way up.”
“I think we need to keep that ledger somewhere safe,” Leaphorn said. “It seems to be telling us that Breedlove was alive a lot longer than I’d been thinking.”
“I’ll call Largo and get him to stall off climbing for a while,” Chee said. “And I’ll call my office. Manuelito knows Lucy Sam. She can go out and take custody of that ledger for a little while.”
“You take care of yourself,” Leaphorn said, and headed for the door.
“Wait a second. If we get the climbing stopped, how are you going to get someone up there to look at the register?”
“I’m going to rent a helicopter,” Leaphorn said. “I know a lawyer in Gallup. A rock climber who’s been up Ship Rock himself. I think he’d be willing to go up with me and the pilot, and we put him down on the top, and he takes a look.”
“And brings down the book.”
“I didn’t want to do that. I’m a civilian now. I don’t want to tamper with evidence. We’ll take along a camera.”
“And make some photocopies?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s going to cost a lot of money, isn’t it?”
“The Breedlove Corporation is paying for it,” Leaphorn said. “I’ve got their twenty thousand dollars in the bank.” 22
THE KOAT-TV WEATHER MAP
the previous night had shown a massive curve of bitterly cold air bulging down the Rocky Mountains out of Canada, sliding southward. The morning news reported snow across Idaho and northern Utah, with livestock warnings out. The weather lady called it a “blue norther” and told the Four Corners to brace for it tomorrow. But at the moment it was a beautiful morning for a helicopter ride, if you enjoyed such things, which Leaphorn didn’t.
The last time he’d ridden in one of these ugly beasts he was being rushed to a hospital to have a variety of injuries treated. It was better to go when one was healthy, he thought, but not much.
However, Bob Rosebrough seemed to be enjoying it, which was good because Rosebrough had volunteered to climb down the 65 of 102
15/03/2008 19:57