A Thief of Time Read Online Free

start looking into it.”
    â€œI guess we are now,” Leaphorn said. “More or less.”
    â€œWe have a complaint about her,” Thatcher said. “Or rather an allegation. But very detailed, very specific. About violations of the Antiquities Preservation Protection Act.”
    â€œDr. Friedman?” Luna said. “Dr. Friedman a pot hunter?” He grinned. The grin almost became a chuckle, but Luna suppressed it. “I think we better go see Maxie Davis,” he said.
    Luna did the talking as he drove them up the road along Chaco Wash. Thatcher sat beside him, apparently listening. Leaphorn looked out the window, at the late afternoon light on the broken sandstone surface of the Chaco cliffs, at the gray-silver tufts of grama grass on the talus slope, at the long shadow of Fajada Butte stretching across the valley. What will I do tonight, when I am back in Window Rock? What will I do tomorrow? What will I do when this winter has come? And when it has gone? What will I ever do again?
    Maxie is Eleanor Friedman’s neighbor, Luna was saying. Next apartment in the housing units for temporary personnel. And both were part of the contract archaeology team. Helping decide which of the more than a thousand Anasazi sites in Luna’s jurisdiction were significant, dating them roughly, completing an inventory, deciding which should be preserved for exploration in the distant future when scientists had new methods to see through time.
    â€œAnd they’re friends,” Luna said. “They go way back. Went to school together. Work together now. All that. It was Maxie who called the sheriff.” Today Maxie Davis was working at BC129, which was the cataloging number assigned to an unexcavated Anasazi site. Unfortunately, Luna said, BC129 was on the wrong side of Chaco Mesa—over by Escavada Wash at the end of a very rocky road.
    â€œBC129?” Thatcher asked.
    â€œBC129,” Luna repeated. “Just a tag to keep track of it. Too many places out here to dream up names for them.”
    BC129 was near the rim of the mesa, a low mound that overlooked the Chaco Valley. A woman, her short dark hair tucked under a cap, stood waist-deep in a trench watching. Luna parked his van beside an old green pickup. Even at this distance Leaphorn could see the woman was beautiful. It was not just the beauty of youth and health, it was something unique and remarkable. Leaphorn had seen such beauty in Emma, nineteen then, and walking across the campus at Arizona State University. It was rare and valuable. A young Navajo man, his face shaded by the broad brim of a black felt hat, was sitting on the remains of a wall behind the trench, a shovel across his lap. Thatcher and Luna climbed out of the front seat.
    â€œI’ll wait,” Leaphorn said.
    This was his new trouble. Lack of interest. It had been his trouble since his mind had reluctantly processed the information from Emma’s doctor.
    â€œThere’s no good way to tell this, Mr. Leaphorn,” the voice had said. “We lost her. Just now. It was a blood clot. Too much infection. Too much strain. But if it’s any consolation, it must have been almost instantaneous.”
    He could see the man’s face—pink-white skin, bushy blond eyebrows, blue eyes reflecting the cold light of the surgical waiting room through the lenses of horn-rimmed glasses, the small, prim mouth speaking to him. He could still hear the words, loud over the hum of the hospital air conditioner. It was like a remembered nightmare. Vivid. But he could not remember getting into his car in the parking lot, or driving through Gallup to Shiprock, or any of the rest of that day. He could remember only reviving his thoughts of the days before the operation. Emma’s tumor would be removed. His joy that she was not being destroyed, as he had dreaded for so long, by the terrible, incurable, inevitable Alzheimer’s disease. It was just a tumor. Probably