Free The Sinister Pig - 15 by Tony Hillerman

Reservation. And, second, that some sort of cover-up was going on.”
    Chee made a deprecatory face. “Circumstantial evidence, anyway. But what’s being covered up?”
    “I’d call it awfully strong circumstantial evidence,” Leaphorn said. He was frowning, leaning forward in his chair. “They’ll have checked that wallet you found for prints by now. Osborne wouldn’t tell you if they found any that matched the body?”
    “I doubt they told Osborne,” Chee said, aware that Professor Bourbonette had been standing in the kitchen doorway, listening to all this. “It’s not Osborne’s case any longer,” he said, sort of explaining it to her. Then laughed. “It never was Chee’s case.”
    “Are you gentlemen ready to join me for lunch?” she asked, stood aside, and invited them to the table. “You haven’t asked my opinion,” Louisa said as she sat down, “but if you had I would recommend to Jim that he just be happy Great White Father in Washington wants to do his work for him. And Joe should be happy he’s retired and it’s none of his business.”
    “Come on, Louisa,” Leaphorn said. “Don’t tell me [72] you’re not curious about this. Who is this homicide victim? Why the secrecy?”
    “Can I guess? He was a special agent looking into something politically touchy. Instead of having a media circus about his assassination out here, raising all sorts of questions, the U.S. Attorney General decides just to ship him home, have the proper people announce that he died suddenly of stroke, and funeral services will be held next week.”
    “Could be,” Leaphorn said. “But how about the hard part. What was the touchy business he was looking into?”
    Louisa considered that a moment while she passed the pepper shaker to Chee.
    “How about that big lawsuit some of the tribes are filing against the Department of the Interior, claiming the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been stealing from their trust fund since about 1880?”
    “You wouldn’t find any clues to that out here,” Leaphorn said. “You’d be digging into dusty filing cabinets in accounting offices. Stuff like that. The stealing was probably done in the way oil and natural gas—and maybe coal— ‘ was accounted when it was taken from tribal lands.”
    “Maybe he was checking records out here,” Chee said. “His body was found out in oil and gas territory.”
    Louisa welcomed this support with a nod. “And don’t forget that the Four Corners field is the biggest source of natural gas in North America. Billions of bucks going down the pipelines.”
    Chee swallowed a bite of lamb chop and cut off another. “Maybe this guy was looking for ways the gas gauges are fixed to record the right kind of misleading information,” he said. “Maybe he found it.”
    [73] This produced a thoughtful silence. Chee extracted Bernie’s letter from his pocket.
    “From Bernie Manuelito,” he said, and spread the photos she’d sent on the table. “She’s with the Border Patrol now, learning how to track illegals.”
    “Joe told me about that,” Louisa said, giving Chee a look that was both curious and sympathetic. “I’ll bet you miss her.”
    Chee, not knowing exactly what to say, said: “Bernie was a good cop,” and pushed the most interesting picture toward Leaphorn. “She said she took this on that old Brockman Ranch, way down south of Lordsburg. Rich guy named Tuttle bought it. He’s trying to get a herd of North African mountain goats started down there. Ibex, I think they are. Or maybe oryx.”
    Leaphorn studied it. Louisa was examining another one. “Some of them on the slope here,” she said. “Oryx is right, but they’re not goats. They’re a breed of antelope.”
    “What am I looking for in this?” Leaphorn asked.
    “Notice the sign on the trailer behind the truck. ‘Seamless Welds.’ ”
    “Yeah. I see it.”
    “Our homicide victim listed El Paso Seamless Welds as his company on the rental agreement,” Chee