The Threepersons Hunt

“That remains to be seen.”

“Come off it, Rand.”

Rand’s eyes flicked at him irritably.

Watchman said, “The tribe’s got an axe to grind too. It would be pretty good if they could nail down proof that all these sneak murders had been committed by a white man. That kind of thing’s damned important to them. I imagine you’d find a more sympathetic ear in Whiteriver if you went partway down that road with them.”

Rand stared at him, half in disbelief. “I didn’t take you for a cheap politician, Trooper.”

“I’m not talking about a frame. If an Indian had been guilty of any of this we wouldn’t be here talking about it. I’m giving you an incentive for telling the truth.”

Rand watched him through half-lidded eyes that failed to convey the indifference he was trying to display.

Watchman said, “A few years ago the Tribal Council offered you a compromise, didn’t they?”

“One acre-foot in ten,” Rand grated. “It wasn’t enough. Not near enough.”

“There’s a few thousand Indians down here, Mr. Rand. How many mouths have you got to feed on your ranch? I imagine the tribe thought it was a damned generous offer.”

“They thought so. I didn’t.”

“Maybe it’ll look a little better to you now, since it’s going to be a choice of one-tenth or nothing at all.”

Rand just watched him.

“You’d have to quit irrigating some fields. But your cows wouldn’t go thirsty. I don’t know how your white mind works but if it was me I’d rather have one-tenth of that water than none of it.”

“Assuming what you say is true, why should the tribe offer to renew the compromise if they think they can win a hundred percent of it in court?”

“I think they’d go along with it. Provided they had your help convicting Kendrick.”

“Convicting him hell. You haven’t got a scrap of evidence.”

“That’s why we’re still here talking, Mr. Rand, and not on our way to the nearest county jail.” Watchman decided there had been enough of this; he changed his tone. “When he goes down you’ll go with him unless you do something to prevent it right now. Later’s too late. You follow me? If you don’t get off Kendrick’s ship right now you sink with it. The last lifeboat’s being lowered right here in this room. Right now. Nobody’s going to be able to keep your name out of it, nobody’s going to protect your public image. It’s too late for that. But you can avoid prosecution.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“You know damn well I’ll get enough on him to send him up for the Jimmy Oto murder. Somebody must have seen him drive out of town in the direction of Cuncon the day he sawed through Jimmy’s axle rod. He wouldn’t have snapped his mouth shut and started bleating about a search warrant if that hacksaw was out of sight and if he didn’t have a Seconal prescription that’ll match the contents of the dead woman’s stomach, and if he didn’t have those payments recorded in his private check stubs. And I’ll tell you one other thing. As soon as all this leaks out of this building and the word gets around the Reservation it won’t be just Joe Threepersons who’s out there gu

“You bastard. Whether you had any proof or not you’d throw me to the wolves just the same.”

“Because you and I both know I wouldn’t be throwing an i

“You’re a class-A son of a bitch. You’re supposed to operate according to certain rules, Trooper.”

“Oh I learned all about rules when I was a Navajo kid in a mission school, Mr. Rand. I learned exactly what you can do with the rules.”

“You’re a strange bastard to be a cop, that’s sure as God made little green apples, ain’t it.” Rand took a deep breath into his chest and held it there momentarily and let it out noisily. His attention bobbed around the cluttered cell and came back to rest against Watchman. Finally he spoke again. “Let’s put it in the form of a hypothesis. No admissions of fact.”

“Put it any way you want to,” Watchman said. “Just point me to the evidence.”

“Kendrick was having an affair with my wife. All right. Hypothesis. Suppose Ross Calisher stumbles across the two of them one night. He’s ignorant of this affair. He threatens to tell me what he knows—unless Gwen bestows the same favors on him that she’s been bestowing on Kendrick. You follow?”

“Go on.”

“Kendrick’s got a jealous streak a mile wide. It’s a fu

“There’s more than that.”

Rand nodded. “Hypothesis. Kendrick doesn’t know I’m already fully aware of his affair with Gwen. He knows if she goes to Nevada, say, and files for divorce, she won’t get much of a financial settlement out of me if I can file a countersuit and charge her with adultery and prove it. In a state that doesn’t recognize community property, adultery is grounds for getting cut off without a pe

“Here’s the next part of the comedy routine: he doesn’t know about the quit-claim Gwen signed, the deal she made when she married me. So Kendrick thinks he can’t afford to have Calisher be a witness to my wife’s adultery. He thinks it would cost him a lot of money if I had a witness like that. It’s damned fu

“Sure it is.”

“But now we get into a little trouble,” Rand said. His voice was getting smoother all the time. “I’d like to help you out but here’s the rub. Let’s finish the hypothesis. Let’s assume I caught Kendrick red-handed when he shot Calisher. Let’s assume I brought him up to the office and got the whole thing on tape. A conversation between Kendrick and me in which Kendrick admitted his crime. Now the problem is, I can’t allow that tape out of my hands, can I? It’s got my voice on it as well as Kendrick’s. If it goes into court there’s no way I come out of it with a clean record.”

“Lying,” Watchman said, “is getting to be a habit with you. You just don’t know when to quit.” He had no patience left for this. “If that was your evidence it wouldn’t have been any use to you. Kendrick would know you could never afford to give it to the police—it would take you right down with him as an accessory after the fact. Now let’s have the truth. You’re stalling and there’s nothing left to stall for. You’ve got evidence on him and it’s leakproof or you wouldn’t have kept him in your pocket all these years.”

Rand made a fist and opened it, empty. “All right. What the hell. I’ve got two things. One’s a paraffin test. I had a private lab do an analysis on Kendrick’s hand the morning after the shooting. It’s dated, bonded and notarized. It shows he’d fired a gun within the past twenty-four hours. The second thing’s his own signed confession. Holograph, all in his own handwriting. Dated the day after the murder. He put in every detail. Every single detail except the fact that I’d seen the shooting through the window. My name never appears in it except as Ross’s employer and Gwen’s husband. It’s in the form of a suicide note. If I ever decided to produce the thing I could always say I just found it and he must have written the note and gone out somewhere to kill himself but then changed his mind.”

“And where was the confession supposed to be hiding between then and now?”

“What difference does that make? I’ll produce it.”

“No good. It’s not admissible evidence unless we can show how we got it.”

“That’s your problem,” Rand said. “You asked for the evidence, I’m producing it. How you use it is your problem.”

“Maria,” Watchman said. “She could have had it.”