Free Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] by The Fallen Man (v1) [html]

middle involved a drunken brawl at a girl dance at the Lukachukai chapter house, in which shots were fired and the shooter fled in a pickup, not his own; a request for a transfer from this office by Officer Bernadette (Bernie) Manuelito, the rookie trainee Chee had inherited with the job; a report of drug use and purported gang activity around Hogback, and so forth. Plus, of course, forms to be filled out on mileage, maintenance, and gasoline usage by patrol vehicles, and a reminder that he hadn’t submitted vacation schedules for his office.
    The final folder held a citizen’s complaint that he was being harassed by Officer Manuelito. What remained of Chee’s high spirits evaporated as he read it.
    The form was signed by Roderick Diamonte. Mr. Diamonte alleged that Officer Manuelito was parking her Tribal Police car at the access road to his place of business at Hogback, stopping his customers on trumped-up traffic violations, and using what Diamonte called “various sneaky tricks” in an effort to violate their constitutional protection against illegal searches. He asked that Officer Manuelito be ordered to desist from this harassment and be reprimanded.
    Diamonte? Yes, indeed. Chee remembered the name from the days when he had been a patrolman assigned here. Diamonte operated a bar on the margin of reservation land and was one of the first people to come to mind when something lucrative and illegal was going on. Still, he had his rights.
    Chee buzzed Jenifer and asked if Manuelito was in. She was out on patrol.
    “Would you call her? Tell her I want to talk to her when she comes in. Please.” Chee had learned early on that Jenifer’s response time shortened when an order became a request.
    “Right,” Jenifer said. “I thought you’d want to talk to her. I guess you know who that Diamonte is, don’t you?”
    “I remember him,” Chee said.
    “And you had a call,” Jenifer said. “From Janet Pete in Washington. She left a number.”
    Someday when he was better established Chee intended to talk to his secretary about her practice of deciding which calls to tell him about when. Calls from Janet tended to get low priority. Maybe that was because Jenifer had the typical cop attitude about defense lawyers. Or maybe not.
    He called the number.
    “Jim,” she said. “Ah, Jim. It’s good to hear your voice.”
    “And yours,” he said. “You called to tell me you’re headed out to National Airport. Flying home. You want me to pick you up at the Farmington Airport?”
    “Don’t I wish,” she said. “But I’m stuck here a little longer. How about you? The job getting any easier? And did you get a snowstorm? The weather girl always stands in front of the Four Corners when she’s giving us the news, but it looked like a front was pushing across from the west.”
    They talked about the weather for a moment, talked about love, talked about wedding plans. Chee didn’t ask her about the Justice Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs business that had called her away. It was one of several little zones of silence that develop when a cop and a defense lawyer are dating.
    And then Janet said: “Anything new developing on the Fallen Man business?”
    “Fallen Man?” Chee hadn’t been giving that any thought. It was a closed case. A missing person found. A corpse identified. Officially an accidental death. Officially none of his business. A curious affair, true, but the world of a police lieutenant was full of such oddities and he had too much pressing stuff on his desk to give it any time.
    “No. Nothing new.” Chee wanted to say, “He’s in the dead file,” but he was a little too traditional for that. Death is not a subject for Navajo humor.
    “Do you know if anyone ever climbed up there—I mean after the rescue party brought the bones down—to see if they could find any evidence of funny stuff?”
    Chee thought about that. And about Janet’s interest in it.
    “You know,” she continued, talking