The ticking stopped. She exhaled.
She hollered to Chee, “I did it. I’ll get my hands loose and then I’ll help you.”
It took a lifetime to scrape enough of the duct tape from her wrists against the edge of the metal garage door frame to pull her hands free.
She punched the button to silence Janis Joplin’s howling and found a sharp metal pottery tool in the rubble beneath the table.
“What first? Hands?”
He shook his head no.
“Mouth.”
He nodded.
Her fingers had gone from numb to excruciating pain, but she pried enough tape off the skin at his upper lip to grab an edge. “This will hurt.” She yanked hard, removing the tape as though it were a big, ultra-sticky Band-Aid.
She felt him flinch.
“Sorry. Are you okay?”
“I’ll make it.”
He kissed her, ever so gently. “Good thing I didn’t have a mustache. Now I never will.”
She cut the tape from his hands and left him with the tool to undo his legs while she looked for a stick or a pole to force up the garage door. She found Ellie’s gasoline-soaked purse. Ellie’s phone, in an outside pocket, still worked. Bernie called 911. Told the dispatcher to contact Agent Cordova, gave her their location. After that, she called Captain Largo.
Finally, Bernie heard a siren. The noise came close, closer, stopped. She heard a car door open, footsteps running toward the locker.
“Cuba police,” a male voice yelled. “You okay in there?”
“Yeah, fine,” Bernie shouted back. “Glad you made it.”
“The manager is right behind me, and he’ll have the lock off in a second. We’ll get you out of there. Need an ambulance?”
She looked at Chee, and he shook his head. Several times.
“No ambulance. Be careful. This place is full of gasoline.”
She heard the grate of metal on metal. A second siren. She heard more voices, probably the other renters, looky-loos attracted by the police commotion. Finally came the happy creaking of the garage door being raised.
The dry air had never smelled so fresh, or the sun’s light seemed so wonderfully intense. She helped Chee stand up, swaying, and steady himself.
“The FBI crime scene folks are on the way,” the deputy said. “I know they’ll want to talk to you.”
Bernie said, “The main thing is to catch the woman who did this.”
“Everyone’s looking for her,” he said. “You can’t shoot Joe Leaphorn and try to fry up a couple more cops without getting some attention.”
“Not only that,” Bernie said. “She stole my favorite backpack.”
The manager looked at Bernie. “I never would have made you for a cop.”
“Did you call for help?” she asked him. “It took long enough.”
“That what I was trying to tell you when you ran off. The office phone doesn’t work, so I had to go over to the gas station and have them call.”
The deputy studied Bernie’s wrists and Chee’s pallor. Chee said, “I’m fine. Really. Just a little shaky.”
Bernie said, “With all the times Davis must have Tasered you, it’s a wonder your heart is still beating.”
“You. That’s why.”
Cordova arrived within the next half hour, taking charge of the scene efficiently and, Bernie noticed, with a touch of humility. “Guess I was wrong about Jackson Benally and Leonard Nez,” he said. “We found Nez at a rodeo in Crownpoint. He didn’t even know we were looking for him. When we talked to him, it was clear he didn’t know Louisa, Leaphorn, anything about the shooting. Or much else except bronc riding.”
They walked through the gate, back to Louisa’s Jeep. Bernie extracted the keys from her pocket and clicked the doors open. Chee climbed in the passenger side. She started the engine and rolled down the window. She drove across the street to the service station, pulled up in front of the closest pump. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Need anything?”
“An aspirin or two would be good.”
When she got back, Chee was standing next to the car, his hands on the roof, taking some deep breaths. “Those fumes,” he said. “I never want to smell gasoline again. Or get Tasered, either.”
He noticed that instead of the blouse she’d been wearing, Bernie had on a clean blue T-shirt with the yellow New Mexico state flag on the pocket.
She handed him a T-shirt and a package of baby wipes. “Those will help with the gas smell. No pants in there, but I got lucky on these shirts. On sale for five bucks.”
“I got lucky,” he said. “You saved my life. You solved the case.”
“I should have figured it out sooner,” she said. “All the clues were there.”
He took off his white shirt and saw the bloody places where the Taser probes had penetrated his skin. “I loved this shirt,” he said. “My best one. You think you can get it clean again?”
She looked at it. “Don’t worry about that now.”
When he was done, they climbed back into Louisa’s Jeep and Bernie pulled out a big bottle of water, a bottle of extra-strength ibuprofen, and a package of beef jerky from the shopping bag. “Here, I brought you something else.”
He took the pills and the water and gave her back the meat. “You have it,” he said. “My stomach isn’t there yet.” He smiled at her. “Davis took your backpack. How did you buy all this? And the gas?”
“The guy who runs the store just gave it to us when I told him my wallet had been stolen with my backpack. He’s the one who called for help. And I think he wanted me out of there quick because of the way I smelled.”
Chee took a sip of water and closed his eyes.
How odd, Bernie thought, to have no electronic communication. No phones. No police radio. They were halfway back to Santa Fe to pick up Chee’s truck and return Louisa’s Jeep before she felt like talking. Chee stared out the open window at the Rio Puerco Valley, the sandstone cliffs, and then the flatter, more desolate landscape that framed the sprawling community of Rio Rancho.
“If you’re up for it, we ought to make some notes about what happened back there,” she said. “Cordova is bound to have more questions.”
“I’ll start with what a fool I was to let her overpower me with that Taser at the museum. I knew she was guilty of something, I just hadn’t figured out what.”
“And I thought she was concerned about Leaphorn when she asked how he was doing. She wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to recover enough to tell us what had happened.”
“Yeah,” Chee said. “M is for Maxie. M is for murder.”
The nurse had messages for them on the way to Leaphorn’s room.
“Officer Chee? Agent Cordova from the FBI has been trying to reach you. Needs you to call him. He said to tell you, ‘We got her.’ You know what that means?”
“Yes,” Chee said. “It’s good news.”
“And here’s another message. I wasn’t sure I understood it, so I wrote it down.” She handed Chee the slip of paper. “What happened to your face?”
“Long story,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. I won’t have to shave for a year.”
The nurse looked at Bernie. “You look like you had a fall.”
“Yeah, I tripped over something,” Bernie said. “How’s the lieutenant?”
The nurse paused. “Not much change from this morning.”
In addition to Louisa, they found a middle-aged Navajo man in pressed jeans and a dress shirt in the lieutenant’s room. He introduced himself as Austin Lee.
“I’m the one you called for in Farmington,” he told Bernie. He pointed toward the hospital bed with his lips. “He’s been good to me. I’ll see if I can help him, working with his lady here.”
Leaphorn seemed about the same, Bernie thought, tied to the maze of tubes, lying still as death on his back.
“You both look kind of tired,” Louisa said.
Bernie said, “You look exhausted yourself.” Bernie had never thought of Louisa as old, but she seemed ancient today, used up.
Louisa told them what the doctor had told her. Leaphorn’s vital signs were slowly declining as a result of the pneumonia. Nothing dramatic or exciting, but a natural progression that often led to death. She started to cry. “I’m going to go outside for a minute or two, maybe get some soup or something.”
Austin Lee joined her.
“Take your time,” Bernie said. “We won’t leave until you get back.”
“I want to hear the details of where you’ve been and what happened,” Louisa said. “But later, okay?”
After Louisa and Austin left, Chee took the lieutenant’s hand and spoke in Navajo, telling Leaphorn how much he respected him, how much he had learned from him. “Not only about how to be a policeman. About how to be a man. How to walk in beauty despite the evil and disharmony that the world gives us. I thank you for all that.”
Bernie listened. Her husband was more than her friend and lover. He was the man she needed to remind her of what life was about—how to make a difference in the world and how to live with honor.
Bernie stood across from Chee and put her hand on top of the lieutenant’s chest. When Chee finished, she spoke. She called Leaphorn Uncle now, not Lieutenant. She told him she was grateful to him for encouraging her to follow her heart, and for somehow knowing that her heart would lead her to accept the love of Jim Chee.
She stopped talking and looked at Chee. The tears in his eyes matched her own.
Chee said, “I wanted you to know that Bernie found the woman who shot you. She found out why. It had to do with revenge and with greed.”
The lieutenant opened his eyes and looked at Bernie, then at Chee, then back at her. He made the sign again for a pencil.
Bernie found one that Louisa had been using and a slip of paper.
This time the lieutenant drew more slowly. A smaller picture. This time, it looked exactly like a heart. Then he closed his eyes. They stood in silence for a while on each side of his bed, watching his chest move up and down in the struggle to breathe against the force of pneumonia.
Then Chee started to sing, softly at first. The Bluebird Song, the song that traditionally greeted the day, the song that mothers taught their little ones. Bernie sang, too, surprised her voice cooperated. They didn’t care who heard them.
Leaphorn opened his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling and then to the left, toward Chee, and the right, toward Bernie. Then he gently closed them.
When she returned, Louisa said, “You two should get home. I’m staying here until, um, until it’s time for me to leave. I’ll call you with updates.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone here,” Bernie said.
“I’m not alone,” Louisa said. “Joe’s here. Austin Lee will be back. I’m surrounded by the staff. And by all your love.”
“Well, then,” Bernie said. “We’ll take care of your cat until you get back.”
“She’s not really our cat,” Louisa said. “She’s a stray. Joe started feeding her, then she figured out how to get in the house. Last week, he let her lick his bowl when we had vanilla pudding. That sealed the relationship.”
Chee said, “I’m sure she’s very annoyed at not being fed for twenty-four hours, but I left her plenty of water.”
“Chee bought an ice cream maker,” Bernie said. “He’s been threatening to try it out on me. When he does, we’ll invite you and the lieutenant and the cat to join us.”
Bernie reached in her pocket and handed Louisa the Jeep keys. “I parked it close to where you left it. I hung up that handicapped sign. I’m afraid I lost your gun, but we’ll get it back.”
“Don’t worry about that. After everything you did for Joe when I . . .” Louisa’s voice started to shake. “You’ll never know how much . . .”
Chee put his finger on her lips. She was crying now, and he wrapped her in his strong arms.
The nurse let Chee use the hospital phone to call Cordova.
“We arrested Davis back at the AIRC,” Cordova said. “Found the pots. Bernie’s backpack was in the Dumpster behind the place. Davis seemed really surprised to see us.”
“Did she resist?”
“We didn’t give her much chance after what happened to you two,” Cordova said. “Can I talk to Bernie a minute?”
Chee handed her the phone.
“John Collingsworth at the AIRC asked me to thank you,” Cordova said. “And I want to say you did great. Both you and Chee. Tell Chee I said so.”
“I will,” she said.
“Take care of yourself. Be safe out there.”
“Good advice,” Bernie said. “Same to you.”
Chee jiggled his truck keys. “Let’s go home,” he said.
“Your truck is still at the AIRC.”
“Nope,” he said. “I forgot to show you the message the nurse gave me.”
Chee extracted the note and read it to her: “Mark Yazzie says west lot last row near Dumpster.”
“What in the world?”
“I get it,” Chee said. “It’s a guy thing.”
They found the truck where Yazzie had parked it with a note inside: “More police came to the AIRC. They didn’t arrest me either. I saw your truck. Thought you might need it.”
Bernie laughed. “How did he break into it to drive it over here?”
“That is one of the beauties of an old truck,” Chee said. “Or one of the problems, depending on what side of the break-in you’re on.”
“One more question. What was that drawing about? The heart?”
“I think it was the bracelet,” Chee said. “The matching heart bracelets that Davis and Ellie had. I think he’d noticed it on Davis when he visited the AIRC and then again when she shot him.”
“Maybe,” Bernie said. “Or maybe that’s his way of saying he loves us.”
“Not a chance,” Chee said. “Well, maybe a tiny one.”