Lona didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Why didn’t you tell me about the man who was killed by the car bomb?”
“You asked me about Aza Palmer and I told you he wasn’t hurt. The bombing is an ongoing federal investigation. I don’t remember if the man had died yet when we talked.”
Lona’s irritation had transformed into audible sorrow. “Why did you keep it a secret? I thought we were friends.”
Stay professional, Bernie told herself. “Calm down. I didn’t have the identity of the victim when I talked to you.” She took a breath. “I didn’t know he was dead, and how could I have guessed that it would matter to you?”
“He was my relative. The son of my younger sister.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“But why is he dead, and Aza’s still alive?” Lona stopped talking. Bernie heard her blowing her nose. She came back to the conversation more composed. “I can’t believe he’s gone and just when he’d turned his life around. He wasn’t an angel, but he had no reason to try to kill Aza even if he could have figured out how to build a bomb. That guy was an artist, not a chemist.”
Bernie said, “The FBI man who went with me to talk to Mrs. Nez doesn’t think your nephew was linked to the bombing.”
“Thank goodness.” Bernie heard Lona sigh. “I shouldn’t have lost it with you. I’m shocked and frustrated by all this. And angry. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Lona sniffed. “Go ahead.”
“Do you know why your nephew would have been out there when the bomb went off?”
“How would I?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to make sense of this.”
Another sniffle. “I’m glad you’re working on this, Bernie. I remember watching you during those basketball games. You were the one with the most determination.”
“I was the shortest one out there. I had to be determined.”
“If anyone can find out why my nephew is dead, it’s you.”
After Lona hung up, Bernie went back to the registration desk.
“No callback yet.” The young man winked at her. “Next time, you ought to tell your boyfriend you’re coming.”
“Next time, you ought to keep your opinion to yourself. Where is the meeting about the Grand Canyon development?” Bernie knew she sounded irritated and she didn’t care.
“Oh, that.” The clerk gave her directions.
She walked outside into the cold, switched on the car’s engine, and drove to the meeting. She thought, It’s a good thing driving while grumpy isn’t illegal.
11
Joe Leaphorn awoke from his nap clearheaded and with a mission.
He grabbed his cane and went to his office, thinking about Bernie and her drive to Tuba City but mostly thinking about the questions she asked. She’d given him a challenge.
Back before he retired, he’d seen the cool gray eyes of advancing technology racing toward him and backed away as fast as he could. He resisted buying his first telephone answering machine, one of those with the little tapes he could erase until they got so scratchy he couldn’t understand the messages on them. He’d learned what he had to know about computers and nothing more when the Navajo Division of Public Safety in Window Rock brought them in. He couldn’t help noticing how technology had changed the face of law enforcement, making it easier to search records and keep track of details that could lead to solving crime. And when they went down for unexplainable reasons, computers made it nearly impossible to do what used to be called paperwork.
After he’d left his job as a police detective and begun his work as an investigator and consultant, technology moved ahead even faster. Officers drove units with cameras to record their encounters with the world. In some parts of the country, cops wore body cameras. Maybe it was good, Leaphorn thought, or maybe it was a distraction from the heart of police work, people helping people to make the world a little safer.
Back when he’d first become a cop, nobody thought of suing anybody, especially not on the reservation. And no one sued the police. No one had a lawyer except the big-time politicians who got caught spending the tribe’s money as they shouldn’t.
He’d resisted having a computer in his office at the police headquarters, but he knew he was swimming upstream. Once he got used to it, he liked it as long as it worked and didn’t lose things. When he retired, the chief let him buy it, saying it was obsolete. He made a place for it in his home office, and it had worked fine. Even though Bernie and Chee thought the machine belonged in a computer museum, he was content. With anything electronic, his philosophy was: “If it works, leave it be.”
But now, because of getting shot, he had a new computer: smarter, smaller, faster, friendlier. To his surprise, he loved it. If his brain hadn’t been hurt, he would have argued with Louisa about spending the money. He would have stayed loyal to the dinosaur on his desktop. But she didn’t ask. She bought it for him as a gift.
Louisa. Her support after his accident had been vital to his recovery. But she still fussed over him, babied him, and did things for him he could have done for himself. Her kindess felt suffocating. He avoided arguments by keeping quiet, and when she barraged him with questions he’d remind her that he wasn’t one of her interview subjects.
He walked to the filing cabinet. When the department decided to move its files onto computer storage, around the time he was considering retirement, he asked if he could have the paper folders with some of the cases he’d worked.
“Take what you want,” the chief told him. “It saves us the trouble of shredding them.”
So Leaphorn had a collection of the more intriguing and complicated crimes he’d solved and criminals and situations he’d found especially interesting or puzzling. He added a few unsolved cases that had baffled him, the department, and the federal agencies that had been part of the team. A file that had something to do with a Mrs. Nez and a boy named Horseman hid in the cabinet somewhere.