Read Online Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] by The Fallen Man (v1) [html] - Free Book Online Page B

lot.”
    “He didn’t say where he was going?”
    “His wife came back then. He shut up about it.”
    “No, I mean did he say anything about where he was going to go that evening? After you came in out of the canyon.”
    “I remember they had some friends coming to see them. They were going to eat together.”
    “Not drinking, was he?”
    “Not drinking,” Nez said. “I don’t let my tourists drink. It’s against the law.”
    “So he said he was going to climb Tse’ Bit’ a’i’ the following spring,” Leaphorn said. “Is that the way you remember it?”
    “That’s what he said.”
    They sat a while, engulfed by sunlight, cool air, and silence. A raven planed down from the rim, circled around a cottonwood, landed on a Russian olive across the canyon floor, and perched, waiting for them to die.
    Nez extracted a pack of cigarettes from his shirt, offered one to Leaphorn, and lit one for himself.
    “Like to smoke while I’m thinking,” he said.
    “I used to do that, too,” Leaphorn said. “But my wife talked me into quitting.”
    “They’ll do that if you’re not careful,” Nez said.
    “Thinking about what?”
    “Thinking about why he told me that. You know, maybe he figured I’d say something and his woman would hear it and stop him.” Nez exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “And he wanted somebody to stop him. Or when spring came and he slipped off to climb it by himself, he thought maybe he’d fall off and get killed and if nobody knew where he was nobody would find his body. And he didn’t want to be up there dead and all alone.”
    “And you think he figured you’d hear about him disappearing and you’d tell people where to find him?” Leaphorn asked.
    “Maybe,” Nez said, and shrugged.
    “It didn’t work.”
    “Because he was already missing,” Nez said. “Where was he all those months between when he goes away from his wife here, and when he climbed our Rock with Wings?”
    Leaphorn grinned. “That’s what I was hoping you’d know something about. Did he say anything that gave you ideas about where he was going after he left here? Who he was meeting?”
    Nez shook his head. “That’s a long time to stay away from that good woman,” Nez said. “Way too long, I think. I guess you policemen haven’t found out where he was?”
    “No,” Leaphorn said. “We don’t have the slightest idea.”

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8
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    A MILD PRELUDE TO WINTER had come quietly during the night, slipping across the Arizona border, covering Chee’s house trailer with about five inches of wet whiteness. It caused him to shift his pickup into four-wheel drive to make the climb from his site under the San Juan River cotton-woods up the slope to the highway. But the first snow of winter is a cheering sight for natives of the high, dry Four Corners country. It’s especially cheering for those doing Chee’s criminal investigation division’s job. The snow was making extra work for the troopers out on the highways, but for the detectives it dampened down the crime rate.
    Lieutenant Jim Chee’s good humor even survived the sight of the stack of folders Jenifer had dumped on his desk. The note atop them said: “Cap. Largo wants to talk to you right away about the one on top but I don’t think he’ll be in before noon because with this snow he’ll have to get some feed out to his cows.”
    On the table of organization, Jenifer was Chee’s employee, the secretary of his criminal investigation unit. But Jenifer had been hired by Captain Largo a long time ago and had seen lieutenants come and go. Chee understood that as far as Jenifer was concerned he was still on probation. But the friendly tone of the note suggested she was thinking he might meet her standards.
    “Hah!” he said, grinning. But that faded away before he finished working through the folders. The top one concerned the theft of two more Angus calves from a woman named Roanhorse who had a grazing lease west of Red Rock. The ones in the