Part 5 (1/2)

”She came back,” Jenks said. He looked thoughtful, running the tip of his thumb under the headband, adjusting it. ”Must have been a couple of weeks before she got killed. This time she wanted to know what sort of treatment would be indicated for two or three diseases, and how long you'd be hospitalized. Things like that.”

”What diseases?” Leaphorn asked, although when he asked it he couldn't imagine what the answer would mean to him.

”One was TB,” Jenks said. ”I remember that. And I think one was some sort of liver pathology.” He shrugged. ”Nothing unusual. Sort of routine ailments we deal with around here, I remember that.”

”And did she tell you then? I mean tell you why she wanted the dates those people died?” He was thinking of Roosevelt Bistie-the man who tried to kill Endocheeney-the man they had locked up at s.h.i.+prock, with not much reason to keep him, according to Kennedy's report. Roosevelt Bistie had something wrong with his liver. But so did a lot of people. And what the h.e.l.l could that mean, anyway?

”I was in a hurry,” Jenks said. ”Two of our staff were on vacation and I was covering for one of them and I was trying to get my own operation caught up so I could go on vacation myself. So I didn't ask any questions. Just told her what she wanted to know and got rid of her.”

”Did she ever explain it to you? In any way at all?”

”When I got back from vacation-couple of weeks after that-somebody told me somebody had shot her.”

”Yeah,” Leaphorn said. Shot her and left Leaphorn to guess why, since n.o.body else seemed to care a lot. And here might be the motive-this further example of Irma Onesalt in the role of busybody, to use the belagana belagana term for it. His mother would have called her, in Navajo, a ”one who tells sheep which weed to eat.” Onesalt's job in the Navajo Office of Social Services, obviously, had no more to do with death statistics than it did with the occupational hazards of the semiconductor plant or, to get closer to Leaphorn's own emotional scar tissue, with punis.h.i.+ng bad judgment in the Navajo Tribal Police. term for it. His mother would have called her, in Navajo, a ”one who tells sheep which weed to eat.” Onesalt's job in the Navajo Office of Social Services, obviously, had no more to do with death statistics than it did with the occupational hazards of the semiconductor plant or, to get closer to Leaphorn's own emotional scar tissue, with punis.h.i.+ng bad judgment in the Navajo Tribal Police.

”Do you think what she was working on had anything to do with why ...” Jenks didn't complete the sentence.

”Who knows,” Leaphorn said. ”FBI handles homicides on Indian reservations.” He heard himself saying it, his voice curt and unfriendly, and felt a twinge of self-disgust. Why this animus against Jenks? It wasn't just that he felt Jenks's att.i.tude was patronizing. It was part of a resentment against all doctors. They seemed to know so much, but when he gave them Emma, the only thing that mattered, they would know absolutely nothing. That was the princ.i.p.al source of this resentment. And it wasn't fair to Jenks, or to any of them. Jenks had come to the Big Reservation, as many of the Indian Health Service doctors did, because the federal loans that had financed his education required two years in the military or the Indian Health Service. But Jenks had stayed beyond the two-year obligation, as some other IHS doctors did-delaying the Mercedes, the country club members.h.i.+p, the three-day work week, and the winters in the Bahamas-to help Navajos fight the battle of diabetes, dysentery, bubonic plague, and all those ailments that follow poor diets, bad water, and isolation. He shouldn't resent Jenks. Not only wasn't it fair; showing it would hurt his chances of learning everything Jenks could tell him.

”However,” Leaphorn added, ”we know something about it. And from what we know, the FBI hasn't a clue about motive.” Nor do I, Leaphorn thought. Not about motive. Not about anything else. Certainly not about how to connect three and a half murders whose only connection seems to be an aimless lack of motive. ”Maybe this list Irma had would help. All Navajo names, you said. Right? Could you think of any of them?”

Jenks's expression suggested he was probing his brain for names. All the homicide victims were still alive when Jenks had seen the list, Leaphorn thought, but wouldn't it be wonderful and remarkable if ...

”One was Ethelmary Largewhiskers,” Jenks said, faintly amused. ”One was Woody's Mother.”

Leaphorn rarely allowed his face to show irritation, and he didn't now. These were exactly the sort of names he'd expect Jenks to remember: names that were quaint, or cute, that would provoke a smile at a c.o.c.ktail party somewhere when Dr. Jenks had become bored with Navajos-when too few of them drove wagons, and hauled drinking water forty miles, and slept in the desert with their sheep, and too many drove station wagons and got their teeth straightened by the orthodontist.

”Any others?” Leaphorn asked. ”It might be important.”

Jenks put on the expression of a man trying hard for a recall. And failing. He shook his head.

”Would you remember any, if you heard?”

Jenks shrugged. ”Maybe.”

”How about Wilson Sam?”

Jenks wrinkled his face. Shook his head. ”Isn't he that guy who got killed early this summer?”

”Right,” Leaphorn said. ”Was his name on the list?”

”I don't remember,” Jenks said. ”But he was still alive then. He didn't get killed until after Onesalt. If I remember it right, and I think I do because they did the autopsy at Farmington and the pathologist there called me about it.”

”You're right. I'm just fis.h.i.+ng around. How about Dugai Endocheeney?”

Jenks produced the expression that signifies deep thought. ”No,” he said. ”I mean no, I can't remember. Been a long time.” He shook his head. Stopped the gesture. Frowned. ”I've heard the name,” he said. ”Not on the list, I think, but ...” He paused, adjusted the headband. ”Wasn't he a homicide victim too? The other one that was killed about then?”

”Yes,” Leaphorn said.

”Joe Harris did the autopsy too, at Farmington,” Jenks said. ”He told me he got a dime out of one of the wounds. That's why I remembered it, I guess.”

”Harris found a dime in the wound?” Harris was the San Juan County coroner working out of the Farmington hospital. Pathologists, like police, seemed to know one another and swap yarns.

”He said Endocheeney got stabbed a bunch of times through the pocket of his jacket. In knifings we're always finding threads and stuff like that in the wound. Whatever the knife happens to hit on the way in through the clothing. b.u.t.tons. Paper. Whatever. This time it hit a dime.”

Leaphorn, whose memory was excellent, recalled reading the autopsy report in the FBI file. No mention of a dime. But there had been mention of ”foreign objects,” which would cover a dime as well as the more usual b.u.t.tons, thread, gravel, and broken gla.s.s. Could a knife punch a dime into a wound? Easily enough. It seemed odd, but not unreasonable.

”But Endocheeney wasn't on the list.”

”I don't think so,” Jenks said.

Leaphorn hesitated. ”How about Jim Chee?” he asked.

Dr. Jenks thought hard again. But he couldn't remember whether or not Jim Chee's name was on the death date list.

> 8 <>

IT WAS ALMOST dark when Chee pulled into the police parking lot in s.h.i.+prock. He parked where a globe willow would shade the car from the early sun the next morning and walked, stiff and weary, toward his pickup truck. He had left it that morning where another of the police department willows would shade it from the afternoon sun. Now the same tree hid it from the dim red twilight in a pool of blackness. The uneasiness Chee had shaken off at Badwater Wash and on the long drive home was suddenly back in possession. He stopped, stared at the truck. He could see only its shape in the shadows. He turned abruptly and hurried into the Police Building. dark when Chee pulled into the police parking lot in s.h.i.+prock. He parked where a globe willow would shade the car from the early sun the next morning and walked, stiff and weary, toward his pickup truck. He had left it that morning where another of the police department willows would shade it from the afternoon sun. Now the same tree hid it from the dim red twilight in a pool of blackness. The uneasiness Chee had shaken off at Badwater Wash and on the long drive home was suddenly back in possession. He stopped, stared at the truck. He could see only its shape in the shadows. He turned abruptly and hurried into the Police Building.

Nelson McDonald was working the night s.h.i.+ft, lounging behind the switchboard with the two top b.u.t.tons of his uniform s.h.i.+rt open, reading the sports section of the Farmington Times. Times. Officer McDonald glanced up at Chee, nodded. Officer McDonald glanced up at Chee, nodded.

”You still alive?” he asked, with no hint of a smile.

”So far,” Chee said. But he didn't think it was funny. He would later, perhaps. Ten years later. Crises past, in police work, tended to trans.m.u.te themselves from fear into the stuff of jokes. But now there was still the fear, a palpable something affecting the way Chee's stomach felt. ”I guess n.o.body noticed anyone tinkering around with my truck?”

Officer McDonald sat up a little straighter, noticing Chee's face and regretting the joke. ”n.o.body mentioned it,” he said. ”And it's parked right out there where everybody could see it. I don't think ...” He decided not to finish the sentence.

”No messages?” Chee asked.

McDonald sorted through the notes impaled on a spindle on the clerk's desk. ”One,” he said, and handed it to Chee.

”Call Lt. Leaphorn as soon as you get in,” it said, and listed two telephone numbers.

Leaphorn answered at the second one, his home.

”I want to ask you if you learned anything new about Endocheeney,” Leaphorn said. ”But there's a couple of other loose ends. Didn't you say you met Irma Onesalt just recently? Can you tell me exactly when?”

”I could check my logs,” Chee said. ”Probably in April. Late April.”

”Did she say anything to you about a list of names she had? About trying to find out what date the people on that list died?”

”No, sir,” Chee said. ”I'm sure I'd remember something like that.”

”You said you went to the Badwater Clinic and picked up a patient there and took him to a chapter meeting for her and they gave you the wrong man. And she was sore about it. That right?”

”Right. Old man named Begay. You know how it is with Begays.” How it was with Begays on the reservation is how it is with Smiths and Joneses in Kansas City or Chavezes in Santa Fe. It was the most common name on the reservation.

”She said nothing about names? Nothing about a list of names? Nothing about how to go about finding out dates of deaths? Nothing that might lead into that?”