Coyote Waits Read Online Free

this crime happened? What can you give him to give him a place to start looking?”
    Leaphorn paused, thinking he shouldn’t pull himself into this. It was not his case, not his business. Interfering was certain to cause offense in a department that wanted the death of a brother officer balanced with a conviction of his killer. He shouldn’t open the door he was about to open. He should simply tell these women he couldn’t help them. Which just happened to be the sad truth. Still, Mary Keeyani was Emma’s kin. And, still, there were some unanswered questions in that Nez business — as much as he knew about it.
    “As a matter of fact,” he said, “if you have any useful information — any witnesses, anything that would lead to concrete evidence that the FBI wouldn’t listen to — you can tell me. I’ll see to it that the Bureau pays the proper attention. Anything you know.”
    “We know he didn’t do it,” Bourebonette said. But the anger was used up now. She attempted a small, wan smile. “All we can tell you is
why
we know he couldn’t have killed the policeman, and that’s nothing more concrete than telling you about the kind of man Ashie Pinto is. Always has been.”
    But he did kill a man
, Leaphorn was thinking,
a long time ago. If I remember what I read in that report, he was convicted, years ago, went to prison for killing a man
.
    “Are you a relative?” he asked Bourebonette.
    “I am a friend,” Bourebonette said.
    Leaphorn looked at her over his glasses, waiting for more than that.
    “For twenty-five years,” she added. “At least.”
    “Ah,” Leaphorn said.
    Professor Bourebonette looked impatient, as if it probably wasn’t worth her time to explain. But she decided to.
    “My interest is in comparative mythology. The evolution of myth inside cultures. The evolution of myth as cultures meet and intermix. The relationship of a society’s mythology with its economic base. Its environment. Mr. Pinto has been one of my informants. For years.” She paused.
    Leaphorn glanced at her. Was she finished? No. She was remembering.
    “He wouldn’t kill anyone,” she added. “He has a great sense of humor. A great memory for the funny things. A great memory for everything.” She looked into Leaphorn’s eyes and said it slowly, as if he was the judge. As if he was the jury. Could whiskey not make a killer out of a funny man, just as it did of sad men and angry men?
    “He has a great sense of humor,” Bourebonette repeated.
    It didn’t prove anything, Leaphorn thought. But it was interesting. It was also interesting that she was telling him this. A long way to come, a lot of time used, a lot of money to be spent if she was serious about hiring an investigator. And a very flimsy explanation of why she was doing it.
    And so Leaphorn had asked the Turning Mountain woman and the professor to wait. He called downstairs and asked for the file marked HOMICIDE; DELBERT NEZ.
    He had been away when it happened, waiting in a motel room in Phoenix to be called as a witness in a case being tried on appeal in the federal court there. Even so, he remembered a lot of it. He had read about it every day in the Phoenix
Gazette
and the
Arizona Republic
, of course. He had called the Ship Rock subagency station and talked to Captain Largo about it. The Navajo Tribal Police included only about 110 sworn officers, making the murder of any one of them not only memorable but close and personal. He had barely known Delbert Nez and remembered him as a small, quiet, neat young officer. But, like Leaphorn, Nez had worked out of the Window Rock office and Leaphorn had seen him often. Nez had been trying to grow a mustache. That was not an easy task for Navajos, with their lack of facial hair, and his sparse growth had provoked teasing and ribald jokes.
    Leaphorn had known the arresting officer much better. Jim Chee. He had run across Chee several times on other investigations. An unusually bright young man. Clever. Some