Read Online The Sinister Pig - 15 by Tony Hillerman - Free Book Online

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