Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman Page B

at his desk half done with the tedious job of checking the names from the prints against the lieutenant’s caseload, he was grumpy.
    He wanted to be out finding the Benally kid, not leaving it to the Gallup Police. He wanted to ask the young man why his car had so many fingerprints, where he was at the time of the shooting. Instead, he’d spent two hours comparing names of Navajos linked to the prints in the Benally car with names in the criminal reports database, and then with the names of people Leaphorn might have arrested. Looking for someone other than suspect number one, in case, as Bernie believed, Jackson Benally lacked a motive to shoot Leaphorn. Looking, but coming up with nothing except other fingerprints for which there was no match and no obvious tie to Leaphorn.
    Chee walked outside, away from the confusion, looked at the Shiprock substation parking lot and Shiprock itself, a black lava thumb against the blue sky. The wind had already started to blow, a soft breeze now, but a bad sign for more dust in the air as the day heated up.
    He went back to his desk, checked his e-mail, watched a brief video of a dog on a surfboard that his friend Cowboy Dashee had sent. Just when he could think of nothing else to delay resuming the inevitable, he felt the cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Bernie. He pulled out the phone, smiling, then remembered Bernie was driving to Santa Fe, passing through lonely country not defaced by cell phone towers. He looked at the number. Darleen.
    “Hello there,” he said. “How are you?”
    “Terrible. I can’t get Bernie on the phone,” Darleen said. “Did she take Mama somewhere?”
    “Bernie’s off to Santa Fe. There’s bad reception on that road. She’s by herself as far as I know. She wouldn’t take your mother, because she was going to see the officer who got shot.”
    “Mama’s gone,” Darleen said. “Mama’s gone.”
    “Gone? Did she pass away?”
    “Oh my God, I didn’t think of that. She could be dead. Maybe whoever kidnapped her killed her. Should I call the police? You are the police!” The words came in a torrent.
    Chee said, “Calm down. Tell me what happened. Start at the beginning. But first, take a breath or two.”
    Darleen rushed ahead. “Mama’s disappeared. Totally gone. She’s like nowhere. I looked all over the house, around outside, in the closets, in the bathroom. Everywhere, dude, every stinking where. Called for her really loud, screaming my stupid head off. Then I got in my car and drove around the neighborhood, yelling out the window like a madwoman. Nothing. She’s nowhere.”
    Chee thought about it. “Was she there when you got home last night?”
    A pause. “I guess she was asleep in her room. Ah. Um. I got in kinda late and then I did some drawings.” Another pause. “I didn’t feel so good this morning, so I didn’t get up until just now.”
    “Did you see her last night?”
    “Not exactly. The door to her room was closed. When I looked in this morning, her bed was empty, already made. She’s missing, dude. Missing. Person. Who would wanna kidnap an old lady?”
    “I don’t think she was kidnapped,” Chee said.
    “Maybe she just went for a walk and fell down somewhere,” Darleen said. “You think that coulda happened? The dog packs are bad out here.”
    Chee had handled cases in which feral dogs had attacked cattle and horses and killed sheep and lambs. He’d dealt with some incidents of wild dogs charging and biting people, too. “Is your mother’s walker there?”
    “Yes.”
    “Darleen, I’m going to give you some suggestions, places to check. Take your phone with you. Call back when you’re done.”
    He hung up, went back to his fingerprint files. Darleen’s distraction was good luck; he uncovered something interesting—a possible suspect.
    His phone vibrated ten minutes later.
    “Mama’s okay. I went to the Darkwaters’ house, like you said. She spent the night with Mrs. Darkwater. They were eating