Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman Read Free Book Online Page A

this case. Cut yourself some slack. You’re a great officer. You did your best.”
    A wave of grief swept away her anger, grief not only for the lieutenant but for her own expectations of Officer Bernadette Manuelito, now proven to be an incompetent fraud.
    She turned away from him, climbed into her car.
    “Where are you going?”
    “To see Mama and Darleen,” Bernie said. “That’s what I always do on my day off.”
    “Good,” he said. “Don’t forget to get something to eat. I’ll call you later.”
    Bernie put her key in the ignition, rolled down the windows. Pulled out of the police parking lot. Tried the radio and turned it off again. Took a sip from her water bottle. Warm, of course. The problem with the Toyota’s air-conditioning, an expensive problem, couldn’t be tackled until she got the older bills paid off. By then it would be at least October. Cool again. Problem solved.
    As she headed toward Fort Defiance, she realized she should swing back by Leaphorn’s house. See if Louisa was there now, tell her what happened, get that job out of the way. Bernie made the detour, feeling the hot wind in her hair, thinking about the lieutenant. How few family photos he had in his house. No nieces or nephews, brothers or sisters. Leaphorn, she thought, never spoke of family except for Emma.
    Her own family was different. She had been wrapped in love by her grandmother, her mother, mother’s sisters, and maternal uncles. Her father’s family, too, had taken an interest in her. Her grandfather on that side had been a Code Talker, and there were plenty of marines in the mix, a modern incarnation of the warrior spirit. When she had decided to become a police officer, they understood and wished her well.
    She felt her cell phone vibrate, flipped it on.
    “We just got word that Leaphorn made it into Albuquerque.”
    She heard something in Chee’s voice that made her ask, “What else?”
    Silence. Then Chee said, “The neurology unit there is full. They may have to transfer him again, I’ll let you know.”
    “Bring the files home, and I’ll help you go through them.”
    “Thanks, honey. I’ll fix dinner.”
    She pulled in front of Leaphorn’s house and parked on the street in a patch of shade provided by a straggly Siberian elm. Officer Bigman’s department-issued pickup occupied the driveway, the only other vehicle in sight except for Leaphorn’s truck. Where was Louisa?
    She walked inside through the kitchen, calling to Bigman.
    “In here,” he yelled. “In the office.” The detective sat at Leaphorn’s desk, wearing latex gloves. The lights on Leaphorn’s computer blinked like Christmas. He pressed a cell phone to his ear.
    “No, that didn’t work either,” he said. “What if I just bring the hard drive down there?”
    Bernie looked at the big sunflower on the computer screen and a little box that read “Password.”
    “I’ll try that,” Bigman said into the phone. He typed something else, waited. “Nope.”
    A pause. Bigman laughed. Then he sneezed.
    “Not quite. It’s one of those big old-fashioned towers,” he said. “I’ll have to put it on the seat next to me with the seat belt around it. I wouldn’t trust it in the trunk bed. It would probably plot a revolution from back there.”
    He hung up, still smiling. Bernie noticed another light, red and flashing on a flat box beside the phone. Leaphorn must be one of the last few people in the universe who still used an honest-to-goodness answering machine.
    “Did you see that message machine?”
    “Yeah,” Bigman said. “I noticed it when I sat down here. Little cassette tapes and everything. Leaphorn isn’t exactly a high-tech guy, is he? That and this monster of a computer could be in a museum somewhere.”
    Bernie said, “He never gave anybody his cell number because he didn’t want to answer it.” She realized she’d used the wrong verb. The lieutenant, as far as anyone knew, was still breathing.
    “I mean, he never