Threepersons Hunt (8 page)

“No, but I can find it.”

“He owns the station. He lives in the house right behind it.”

“I didn't know Joe had such prosperous relatives.”

She didn't have anything to say to that. Watchman said, “What's your name?”

“Lisa Natagee,” she said and it shot his mind into another orbit so that he had to bring it back by force.
Lisa
…

He went without hurry down the hall and found a door near the end with a wooden plaque screwed onto it,
LEGAL DEPARTMENT.
He stopped with his hand on the knob and looked back along the corridor at the girl who was fitting a card into a plastic Wheeldex. Her head was bowed with concentration so that the black hair had swung forward to hide her face. He thought of his own Lisa in slender fair-haired images and took his eyes off the overweight black-haired girl at the desk, and went into the law office.

5.

Faded blond hair fell limply over Dwight Kendrick's ears; he was an imposing bear of a man, huge and pale with great butcher's shoulders and an improbably lean waist, as if he spent a good part of his life lifting weights in gymnasiums. It was hard to judge his age; he had to be at least forty. He had a penetrating but superficial voice and that was a little surprising in view of his spectacular courtroom reputation.

Kendrick's fingers were very long and thin and moved like sea fans as he spoke, opening and closing with carnivorous sensuality. “I don't know what the hell they expect. The unsavory record of the Indian Bureau—Christ they make the first American the last American at the trough. Nothing extraordinary about Joe, I can tell you that much. It's only what you've got to expect when you raise a man by filling his head that his own people are dirty savages whose extermination is required for the purification of the democratic republic. Of
course
he's got a temper. Of
course
he behaves irrationally. What the hell else can they expect of him?”

“We don't all behave the way he behaves,” Watchman murmured. “But right now I'm more interested in where I might find him.”

“I'm sorry,” Kendrick snapped. “I don't think it's incumbent upon me to help you crucify Joe.” It wasn't as if everybody else didn't also call Threepersons by his first name but Kendrick pronounced it with a kind of offhand familiarity which implied ownership. It grated on Watchman.

Kendrick sat back, crossed his legs at right angles and laced his hands together behind his head. “Look, I imagine legally he's still my client. Certainly if he were to come to me I'd continue to act in his behalf—I'm not the kind to betray a man just because he's in some kind of trouble. Now you're supposed to be an officer of the law, you ought to know as well as I do that there's a privileged relationship here. Even if I knew exactly where you could lay your hands on him, I'd be under no obligation to tell you.” Kendrick generally looked away at neutral objects while he was talking but at intervals his pale eyes would flash up to make sure he had been understood.

“If you knew where he was,” Watchman replied, “I hope you'd have the good sense to advise him to turn himself in.”

“What for? Another dose of white justice?”

“The longer he stays loose the worse it'll go for him.”

“Suppose he stays loose forever?”

“Do you think he's smart enough?” Watchman said, and studied him for a response.

Kendrick smiled a little as he might smile to a small child who had asked him a question about the universe, but Watchman got no audible answer to his question and so he tried another. “You're supposed to be an officer of the court. You're supposed to have some kind of duty to advise him to give himself up.”

“All right, I'll admit I've been playing a little game. I don't know where he is. I haven't heard from him. It was all a harmless exercise to find out how tough you'd get about it. Frankly I find it rather rancid that they'd pick out their token red man to handle this assignment. It stinks of television politics to me. I don't know why the hell you put up with it, if you've got any guts at all.”

“Mr. Kendrick, I'm a police officer, it's my job to enforce the laws.”

“I Would have assumed that with an assignment as delicate as this one they must have given you the option of turning it down.”

“I didn't see any reason to.” The interview was getting out of hand, the interrogator becoming the interrogated. He made an effort to get it back where it belonged. “It would help if you could tell me about him. Who his friends were, where he used to hang out.”

“I'm sorry. Actually I never knew him all that well, he was only a client and I'd never met him prior to his arrest. But even if I could help you I'm not sure I would. Joe's got enough cards stacked against him. I understand Charlie Rand's been on the horn to Phoenix several times already, trying to get them to mobilize the National Guard to track him down or some such idiocy.”

“You know Rand, do you?”

“We're eyeballing each other across a legal fence. I'm handling the tribe's case against him.”

“What's it about?”

“Don't you read the newspapers?”

“I'd just as soon hear it from you. I keep remembering Joe Threepersons used to work for Rand. It was Rand's foreman who got killed.'

“It's cheap pettifoggery, that's all. I don't think it's got anything to do with Joe or that old murder.”

“The case was pending, even way back then. Wasn't it?”

“It was. But Joe was only a cowhand.”

“He's an Apache and he was working for a white man who seems to be regarded as the Apaches' number-one enemy. I find that a little hard to understand for openers.”

“Quite a few of his red brothers work for Rand. It's not unusual. In a labor market like this one you go where the jobs are. Rand's hiring and he doesn't ask questions about your politics.”

“Isn't that a little risky—for him?”

“He's a tough son of a bitch, or he thinks he is. I guess he likes to think he's welcoming the challenge.”

“This squabble's over water rights on the boundary of the Reservation, isn't it?”

Kendrick's eyes raked him. “In a nutshell, the Bonito River supplies the water along that side of the Reservation. There's a string of recreation reservoirs along the river and the tribe draws irrigation water out of them. Some years back Rand and his neighbors started drilling deep wells on their side of the line and they dug on a slant so that the wells bottomed out straight under the riverbed. It's diverting a lot of acre-feet from the Apache water supply and the tribe's having trouble finding enough water to irrigate the farms, and half those recreational facilities are closed down because the lakes are nothing but mud puddles. We've been trying to obtain an injunction to restrain Rand and his cronies from pumping out those wells. So far the Court of Appeals seems to be in Rand's pocket—Rand's lawyers claim there's no mention of water rights in the Fort Apache treaty. And they say even if there were, it wouldn't affect this issue because Rand's wells are on his own private property. Naturally we're claiming an analogy with mining law where you're not allowed to drill slant-shafts under your neighbor's claim. We're also arguing that water rights are implicit in the treaty even if they're not specified. We've got plenty of precedents and we'll win it, and Rand knows that. He's just being obstructionist.”

Kendrick lit a cigarillo and blew smoke at his match. “We're getting a little off the subject of Joe Threepersons, aren't we?”

“Maybe. But the better a picture I've got, the better a chance to find him. Did Joe have anything to do with any of these wells?”

“He wasn't a driller if that's what you mean. I suppose he must have ridden past them a thousand times on his rounds. He was a line rider, his job was to keep the fence in repair and look out for livestock in trouble.”

“Where'd he live?”

“Line shack at the northwest corner of the ranch.”

“With his wife and kid?”

“Of course. They were only two or three miles off the highway to Showlow. It wasn't a bad little house, I visited it once to interview his wife. Rand treats his employees pretty decently, he's no cotton farmer.”

“You talk as if you admire the man.”

“I respect his good points. It doesn't pay to underestimate your opponent.”

“You happen to know if anybody's living in that line shack now?”

“Somebody must be. It's twenty miles from the ranch headquarters—too far to commute on horseback. There's always somebody posted out there. Rand has four or five line shacks. Christ he runs better than a half million acres.”

“All of it cattle?”

“About half. He grows feed corn and alfalfa, and there's a lot of timber.”

“And that's what he needs the extra water for?”

“I gather it is. I'm no expert on farming.”

“Joe worked up there for better than three years. Did he have any especially close friends who might still be there?”

“You'd have to ask around. I don't know many of his friends. He's got a sister here in town, and an uncle by the name of Luxan.”

“Anybody else?”

“Not from me,” Kendrick said. Watchman heard the knock at the door and turned in his chair to look that way, and Kendrick lifted his head: “Yes?”

It was a young Indian with long hair held back by a multicolored headband. His suit was tailored and hadn't come from stock and the patterned Justin boots were polished to a vicious shine. Late twenties, Watchman judged, and full of vinegar.

“I think we're about to nail down the figures on Hawkes Lake,” the intruder said as if Watchman weren't there.

It seemed to excite Kendrick. “About God damn time. How soon, do you think?”

“Tonight, if my boy comes through.” The young Indian looked at Watchman.

“Come on in, Tom. This man's name is Watchman, he's from the state police. My assistant, Tom Victorio.”

Victorio's grip was quick and firm and quickly withdrawn. Kendrick said, “Tom's a bit of a firebrand but he does the work of five lawyers and I expect to see him practicing before the Supreme Court before he's finished.”

It didn't appear to embarrass Victorio. Kendrick waved the cigarillo at Watchman. “He's on Joe Threepersons' trail.”

Watchman said, “Somebody's trying to convince us he was innocent of the Calisher murder. What would you say to that?”

Kendrick's eyes widened a little. “Who told you that?”

“Anonymous. We don't know.”

“But it wasn't Joe himself.”

It was a statement, not a question. Watchman said. “What makes you say that?”

“Joe confessed at the time of the murder. That was what made it so hard to get the charge reduced.”

“Then you don't think there's anything to this.”

“Look,” Kendrick said, “I'm in no position to come right out and state flatly that Joe was guilty. I was his attorney—still am, for that matter.”

Watchman said, “But you can't state flatly that he was
not
guilty.”

“On the strength of an anonymous tip to the police? I'd need a lot more evidence than that, wouldn't you?”

“I was just wondering if you might have any other evidence to back up the tip we got.”

“The tip didn't come from this office,” Kendrick said. “That's about all I can tell you about it.” He jabbed the cigarillo toward Tom Victorio. “I've about shot my wad on the subject of Joe Threepersons. Why don't you take Mr. Watchman down to your office?” A quick shift to Watchman: “Tom knew Joe better than I did. Which is not to say they were friends.”

“I wouldn't take the son of a bitch on a Christmas tree,” Victorio said. “You find him, you're welcome to him.”

6.

Victorio's office was a cubbyhole. Squeezing inside, Watchman said, “Then you wouldn't like to buy the idea that he might have been innocent.”

“I wouldn't know anything about that. I wasn't around here when he killed Calisher. I was still in law school. But if somebody told me Joe was innocent I'd have to laugh a little. Joe was born guilty.”

“Of murder?”

“He beat up on a lot of people. Calisher happened to be the first one who died from it.”

“He didn't beat Calisher up. Calisher was shot.”

“So?”

“It just makes you wonder,” Watchman said. “He always liked to use his fists, didn't he.”

“He's one hell of a shot with a rifle.”

“But he never shot at a man that you know of, did he?”

Victorio said, “Not that I know of, no.”

“Then why all of a sudden the gun?”

“According to the testimony it was because the gun was handy. Calisher had it on the wall. He had guns all over the wall.”

“I thought you weren't there.”

“I was at the trial. That was months after the murder.”

There was hardly room between the shelves of law texts for the tiny desk and two chairs. A work lamp hung from a cord above the desk. The small window was set high and the sky beyond was obscured by a tangle of mesquite branches. The wooden nameplate on the desk said
THOS. JEFFORDS VICTORIO
,
ATT
'
Y.
Watchman said, “That's a handful of a name.”

“I've thought about changing it.” Thomas Jeffords had been the white man who'd made peace with Cochise.

“You hate Joe,” Watchman said. “Why?”

“Look, if it wasn't for that stupid fool and his temper, Maria Poinsenay would be alive right now.”

“Maria Poinsenay—that's Joe's wife, her maiden name.”

“The son of a bitch talked her into marrying him when the whole tribe was against it.”

“Why were they?”