Part 12 (2/2)

”From where?”

”How about from where he'd parked Mr. Doherty's body in Mr. Doherty's pickup truck?”

Osborne laughed. ”I guess that would play,” he said. ”Why do all cops think so much alike?”

”Why don't you just tell me?”

”I don't know,” Osborne said. ”Yes, Peshlakai called Mr. Denton a total of thirteen times. Two of them were the first calls charged to the telephone and calls twelve and thirteen were recorded the day Doherty was killed.”

Chee considered this, remembering the conversation with Bernie, Leaphorn, and Professor Bourbonette at Leaphorn's home. He shook his head. As Bernie had said, now all they needed was a motive that fit a traditionalist shaman and a wealthy white man with a missing wife and an obsession with finding a legendary gold mine.

They knew Chee at the McKinley County Detention Center, of course, but that didn't help. The bureaucratic machinery had worked faster than usual. Someone named Eleanor k.n.o.block seemed to have been a.s.signed as Hostiin Peshlakai's public defender, and Ms. k.n.o.block had signed an order providing that no one be allowed to interview her client without arranging it with her and speaking to Peshlakai in her presence. Chee jotted down her telephone number, but he decided to let things rest for the day. He'd already made his full quota of mistakes and had enough problems to worry about.

22.

When his telephone rang, Joe Leaphorn usually dropped whatever he was doing and hurried over to answer it-a habit he suspected was probably common with lonely widowers whose only conversation tends to be talking back to the television set. Having Professor Louisa Bourbonette adopt his guest room as her base of operations for her oral history research had taken some of the edge off that problem, and this morning he wanted to think instead of talk. The solution to the riddle of Linda Denton and the odd and illogical business with Wiley Denton's affairs with gold-mine maps hung just at the edge of his vision-almost in sight, but always dancing away.

The phone rang again, and again. It occurred to Leaphorn that Louisa had taken her tape recorder up to Mexican Hat yesterday to capture the recollections of an elderly Mormon rancher. She'd returned long after he'd retired for the night, and this d.a.m.ned telephone was certain to awaken her. He picked it up, said a grumpy-sounding ”h.e.l.lo.”

”It's Jim Chee, Lieutenant. Do you have time to listen to a report?”

”It's Mr. Leaphorn now, Jim,” Leaphorn said. ”Or just Joe.” He'd told Chee that a hundred times, but it didn't seem to stick. ”But go ahead.”

”I guess the bottom line is they've arrested Hostiin Peshlakai in the Doherty homicide. Found blood on his clothing that matched Doherty's type, and they're checking for a DNA match. They also found another slug at the placer site that matches his caliber. Checking that for everything, too.”

”Be d.a.m.ned,” Leaphorn said. ”What does Peshlakai say?”

”He says he doesn't want to talk about it. Didn't ask for a lawyer, but they a.s.signed him a public defender named k.n.o.block. A woman. Do you know her?”

”I've met her,” Leaphorn said. ”Long time ago. She's tough.”

”I couldn't get in to talk to Peshlakai,” Chee said.

Leaphorn chuckled. ”That doesn't surprise me. What do you think he'd tell you?”

”Probably not much. Also, the morning Doherty's body was found-I think before Bernie found it-Peshlakai contacted a singer and arranged to have a Big Star Way done for him.”

”Well, now,” Leaphorn said. ”That sounds a little like a confession, doesn't it?” He chuckled. ”But can you imagine the U.S. district attorney trying to understand that, and then trying to explain it to a jury in Albuquerque?”

”Not a confession, more like an implication. Now I'm getting to the part of this that will interest you. Remember that cellphone Bernie noticed in his hogan? Well, he called Wiley Denton on it twice the day Doherty was shot.”

That surprised Leaphorn. He said, ”Well, now.”

”Two calls. The first one was eleven minutes long. The second one, less than three minutes.”

Leaphorn sighed and waited. There would be more.

”Another interesting thing. He'd had the phone a couple of years. Made only thirty-seven calls. The first two he made after he got the phone were also to Wiley Denton.”

”Sounds like Wiley might have bought it for him, you think?”

”Yeah,” Chee said. ”But why?”

”I'll hand that one back to you, Jim. You met the man. Talked to him at his hogan. You think he could be on Denton's payroll for some reason or other?”

”Maybe,” Chee said. ”But, no, I don't think so. How about you? Do you think the two of them are involved in some sort of weird conspiracy?”

”Denton using the old man as a watchman? Maybe I've got to think about this.”

”Well,” said Chee, ”if you have any constructive ideas, I hope you'll tell me about them. I'm going to make another effort to talk to Peshlakai.”

”Good idea,” Leaphorn said. ”I think I'll go have another visit with Wiley Denton.”

But Denton's housekeeper said Mr. Denton was not home, and, no, he probably wouldn't be back very soon because he had gone over to the Jicarilla Reservation to look at one of the pump jacks he had on a well over there.

Leaphorn left a message asking Denton to call, that he needed to talk to him. Then he got out his notebook and the map he'd been sketching out of this complicated affair and went over the way his thinking had developed. At the end of the notes he'd jotted after his talk with the Garcias, he found ”Deputy Lorenzo Perez. Maybe he took wailing seriously. Is he the Perez I know?”

The woman who answered the telephone at the sheriff's office said Deputy Perez had retired a couple of years before. But, yes, Ozzie Price was in.

”You again, Joe?” Ozzie said. ”What now?”

”I'm looking for Lorenzo Perez,” Leaphorn said. ”Didn't he used to be undersheriff?”

”That's him,” Ozzie said. ”But that was under a different sheriff, and that was before his wife left him and he got into heavy drinking.”

”He's still in Gallup?”

”Oh, yeah,” Ozzie said. ”You want to talk to him?”

Leaphorn said he did, and waited. In a long minute, Ozzie provided three numbers. One was a street address, one was Perez's phone number there, and the third was the number of the Old 66 Tavern. ”Try that last one most evenings,” Ozzie said.

”Was he sent out on that Halloween call to Fort Wingate? The one we were talking about the other day?”

”He was,” Ozzie said. ”And he got all wrapped up in it. I think that was when he was having wife troubles, and maybe it gave him something else to think about. Anyway, he kept nagging at the sheriff to look into it more. He thought Denton had killed his wife out there. Kept thinking it even after it was so d.a.m.ned obvious Denton couldn't have done it.” Ozzie laughed. ”Denton was busy at home killing McKay.”

Now Leaphorn's phone call found Lorenzo Perez at home, and Perez remembered Lieutenant Leaphorn.

”Hey,” he said. ”Hey, now. Talking to you takes me back a ways. You remember that time we caught that rustler that had rebuilt his house trailer so he could drive calves into it?”

Leaphorn remembered it, but he managed to steer Perez into the Halloween call. ”They say you took the call on that one. It always seemed funny to me. Like more than a prank.”

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