“Thanks,” she said, and looked at it. Officer Manuelito was watching her, sitting primly on the edge of her chair, cup in saucer, uncharacteristically quiet. It occurred to Chee that she looked like a pretty girl pretending to be a cop.
Elisa was frowning at the photograph. “It’s a picture of the page from the climbers’ ledger,” she said slowly. “But where—” She dropped the picture on the coffee table, said, “Oh, God,” in a strangled voice, and covered her face with her hands.
Officer Manuelito leaned forward, lips apart. Chee shook his head, signaled silence.
Elisa picked up the picture again, stared at it, dropped it to the floor and sat rigid, her face white.
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“Mrs. Breedlove,” Chee said. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head. Shuddered. Composed herself, looked at Chee.
“This photograph. That’s all there was on the page?”
“Just what you saw.”
She bent, picked up the print, looked at it again. “And the date. The date. That’s what was written?”
“Just as you see it,” Chee said.
“But of course it was.” She produced a laugh on the razor edge of hysteria. “A silly question. But it’s wrong, you know. It should have been—but why—” She put her hand over her mouth, dropped her head.
The noise the wind was making—rattles, whistles, and howls—filtered through windows and walls and filled the dark room with the sounds of winter.
“I know the date’s wrong,” Chee said. “The entry is dated September thirty. That’s a week after your husband disappeared from Canyon de Chelly. What should—” He stopped. Elisa wasn’t listening to him. She was lost in her own memory. And that, combined with what the picture had told her, was drawing her to some ghastly conclusion.
“The handwriting,” she said. “Have you—” But she cut that off, too, pressed her lips together as if to keep them from completing the question.
But not soon enough, of course. So she hadn’t known what had happened on the summit of Ship Rock. Not until moments ago when the forgery of her husband’s signature told her. Told her exactly what? That her husband had died before he’d had a chance to sign.
That her husband’s death, therefore, must have been preplanned as well as postdated. The pattern Leaphorn had taught him to look for took its almost final dismal shape. And filled Jim Chee with pity.
Officer Manuelito was on her feet.
“Mrs. Breedlove, you need to lie down,” she said. “You’re sick. Let me get you something. Some water.” Elisa sagged forward, leaned her forehead against the table. Officer Manuelito hurried into the kitchen.
“We haven’t checked the handwriting yet,” Chee said. “Can you tell us what that will show?” Elisa was sobbing now. Bernie emerged from the kitchen, glass of water in one hand, cloth in the other. She gave Chee a “How could you do this?” look and sat next to Elisa, patting her shoulder.
“Take a sip of water,” Bernie said. “And you should lie down until you feel better. We can finish this later.” Ramona appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a padded coat, her face red with cold. She watched them anxiously. “What are you doing to her?” she said. “Go away now and let her rest.”
“Oh, God,” Elisa said, her voice muffled by the table. “Why did he think he had to do it?”
“Where can I find Eldon?” Chee asked.
Elisa shook her head.
“Does he have a rifle?” But of course he would have a rifle. Every male over about twelve in the Rocky Mountain West had a rifle.
“Where does he keep it?”
Elisa didn’t respond. Chee motioned to Bernie. She left in search of it.
Elisa raised her head, wiped her eyes, looked at Chee. “It was an accident, you know. Hal was always reckless. He wanted to rappel down the cliff. I thought I had talked him out of it. But I guess I hadn’t.”
“Did you see it happen?”
“I didn’t get all the way to the top. I was below. Waiting for them to come down.” Chee hesitated. The next question would be crucial, but should he ask it now, with this woman overcome by shock and grief? Any lawyer would tell her not to talk about any of this. But she wouldn’t be the one on trial.
Bernie reappeared at the doorway, Ramona behind her. “There’s a triple gun rack in the office,” she said. “A twelve-gauge pump shotgun in the bottom rack and the top two empty.”
“Okay,” Chee said.
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“And in the wastebasket beside the desk, there’s a thirty-ought-six ammunition box. The top’s torn off and it’s empty.” Chee nodded and came to his decision.
“Mrs. Breedlove. No one climbed the mountain on the date by your husband’s name. But on September eighteenth three people were seen climbing it. Hal was one of them. You were one. Who was the third?”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” Elisa said. “I want you to go.”
“You don’t have to tell us anything,” Chee said. “You have the right to remain silent, and to call your lawyer if you think you need one. I don’t think you’ve done anything you could be charged with, but you never really know what a prosecuting attorney will decide.”
Officer Manuelito cleared her throat. “And anything you say can be used against you. Remember that.”
“I don’t want to say any more.”
“That’s okay,” Chee said. “But I should tell you this. Eldon isn’t here and neither is his rifle and it looks like he just reloaded it. If we have this figured out right, Eldon is going to know there is just one man left alive who could ruin this for him.” Chee paused, waiting for a response. It didn’t come. Elisa sat as if frozen, staring at him.
“It’s a man named Amos Nez. Remember him? He was your guide in Canyon de Chelly. Right after Hal’s skeleton was found on Ship Rock last Halloween, Mr. Nez was riding his horse up the canyon. Someone up on the rim shot him. He wasn’t killed, just badly hurt.”
Elisa sagged a little with that, looked down at her hands, and said, “I didn’t know that.”
“With a thirty-ought-six rifle,” Chee added.
“What day was it?”
Chee told her.
She thought a moment. Remembering. Slumped a little more.
“If anyone kills Mr. Nez the charge will be the premeditated murder of a witness. That carries the death penalty.”
“He’s my brother,” Elisa said. “Hal’s death was an accident. Sometimes he acted almost like he wanted to die. No thrills, he said, if you didn’t take a chance. He fell. When Eldon climbed down to where I was waiting, he looked like he was almost dead himself. He was devastated. He was so shaken he could hardly tell me about it.” She stopped, looking at Chee, at Bernie, back at Chee.
Waiting for our reaction, Chee thought. Waiting for us to give her absolution? No, waiting for us to say we believe what she is telling us, so that she can believe it again herself.
“I think you were driving that Land-Rover,” Chee said. “When police found it abandoned up an arroyo north of Many Farms they said there was a telephone in it.”
“But what good would it have done to call for help?” Elisa asked, her voice rising. “Hal was dead. He was all broken to pieces on that little ledge. Nobody could bring him back to life again. He was dead!”
“Was he?”
“Yes,” she shouted. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
And now Chee understood why Elisa had been so shocked when she learned the skeleton was intact—with not a bone broken. She didn’t want to believe it. Refused to believe it still. That made the next question harder to ask. What had Eldon told her of the scene at the top? Had he explained why Hal had started his descent before he signed the book? Why he falsified the register? Had he—