Watchman glanced toward the door. “You think maybe Tom there might have had anything against Maria?”

“Maybe so, but that boy’s too young for witching. A man got to grow up before he get the power.” Limita found the car registration. “This is your paper.”

Watchman copied down the license number. “Thank you.”

“That boy Joe been that way since he was just a boy. Sometimes he drink all the time, even his baby go hungry. Even when folks give him money he spend it on drink. He was crazy to do things like that. You should watch out, I think. He took some cold beer out of my springhouse down there on the creek.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“You stay away, then. You get close to that boy he might hurt you.”

Watchman smiled; that had been what the old man was leading up to. They all had their own ways of telling him to leave Joe alone.

5.

Victorio was waiting in the Volvo. Watchman shook Rufus Limita’s hand and drove out of the yard. The shocks bottomed on the same bumps again. Pretty quick he was going to have to make a big decision: spend a small fortune renovating the old clunker or buy another car.

Victorio said, “Rifle like that, Joe sure as hell doesn’t aim to get caught alive.”

“That’s not why he took that gun.”

“No?”

“You said yourself it’s an assassin’s rifle.” Watchman steered onto the dirt road and headed down toward the fork. “He’s got it in mind to put somebody away.”

“Who?”

“Whoever killed Maria.”

“Killed Maria?”

“She was murdered.”

Victorio stared at him. “Maybe you’d better repeat that for the benefit of the West Coast audience.”

“Somebody fed her enough barbiturates to knock out five people.”

“I thought she crashed a car.”

“She crashed because the Seconals put her to sleep at the wheel.”

Either Victorio was a far better actor than he appeared to be or the news did come as a surprise to him.

Watchman said, “You were there that morning, weren’t you.”

“I was where?”

“Maria’s house. A little while before she died.”

“The hell I was. Who told you that?”

“Your car was there.”

“That’s a lie. This was last Tuesday?”

“Monday. Fourth of July. It was a holiday. You weren’t in your office.”

“Wrong. That’s exactly where I was. All morning. I had a brief to finish. And I had my car there and I’m pretty sure I had the keys in my pocket the whole time. You’re barking up the wrong tree—I never left Whiteriver that day. We had a rodeo that afternoon and I was there. I was one of the bronc handlers. You ask anybody.”

“That was afternoon. You had time to get back from Phoenix by then. Who saw you in the office?”

Victorio thought about it. “Nobody, I guess. Like you said it was a holiday. But somebody might have noticed my car. I always park it there between the council house and the trading post. Everybody knows my car.”

“Anybody else around here drive a blue VW?”

“Not that I know of. There’s a lot of them around but not right in town.”

“Well nobody’s arresting you yet,” Watchman said. “But somebody killed her. You’re right up at the head of the list.”

“If I’m such a hot suspect why are you telling me all this?”

“Think about it, you’ll figure it out.”

He turned the car onto the paved road and picked it up to forty-five heading back up toward the sawmill. Beside him in the bucket seat Victorio sat as tense as a runner in the starting chocks. “It’s a frame. A lousy frame. Somebody lied to you. I wasn’t anyplace Monday morning, I was in the office. I can show you the brief.”

“Sure.”

“I think I get it. You figure if I killed Maria then Joe’s gunning for me. I’m supposed to get scared and confess everything so you’ll put me in protective custody.”

“Well the idea crossed my mind,” Watchman agreed. “How about it?”

“I didn’t kill her. For Christ sake I’ve been in love with Maria since I was in pre-law.”

“You told me you were sore at her.”

“You murder everybody you get sore at?”

Watchman smiled with one side of his mouth. He saw Victorio’s right hand reach the dashboard handgrip and flex around it. Victorio said, “You know what worries me now? Suppose Joe heard the same lie about me and my car? Suppose he thinks it was me? Then he could be after me with that damn elephant cannon of Rufus’.”

“He sure could.”

“Son of a bitch,” Victorio breathed.

Watchman drove into town and made the turn at the corner by the council house and pulled into the lot behind it. He parked right beside the blue Volkswagen. Dwight Kendrick’s Corvette was farther back in the shade. Over against the trading post wall were parked several cars and one of them was Charles Rand’s high silver-grey Rolls Bentley.

Victorio said, distracted, “That’s Charlie Rand’s.”

“I know. Slumming?”

“He was due in today to talk a deal with the council.” Victorio sat with his hand tight on the grip even though the car was motionless.

“When’s the case due to come up in court?”

“It’s already been postponed a dozen times.”

“By Rand?”

“Usually. Sometimes we have to ask for a continuance ourselves.”

“I thought the tribe wanted to wrap it up as soon as possible.”

“Things aren’t that simple. It’s all juggling and maneuvering. You don’t want to go into court at a time that’s advantageous to the opposition. Hell a few months ago somebody rifled our files, we lost a lot of papers and practically had to start again from scratch. We’ve been stalling like mad until we can get the information together again.”

“What kind of information was it?”

“Nothing vital. Stuff like references to obscure cases that were tried seventy-five years ago in places like Montana and the Canal Zone. You have to marshal all the precedents. It’s boring as hell.”

“And somebody stole your notes?”

“Notes, briefs, transcripts, the whole mess.”

“Was the theft investigated?”

“Sure. The Agency cops and the County both. Somebody’d pried that window over there. They busted into the filing cabinets and took half a drawer of files.”

“Did they steal anything else or just the water-rights materials?”

“Just that stuff. They knew what to look for. It was Rand’s boys of course, but try proving that.” Victorio’s eyes came around to Watchman. He looked bleak. “I can’t help it, I keep thinking about that gamy son of a bitch out there lining up his crosshairs on the back of my neck.”

“Tell me something,” Watchman said. “How good was your alibi for the night Ross Calisher died?”

“Alibi? Why the hell should I need an alibi?”

“Because somebody killed him. It wasn’t Joe.”

“It wasn’t?”

“I’m pretty sure he was taking the rap for somebody else. Knowingly.”

Victorio stared at him, the expression not changing at all; as if his face were frozen. Finally he licked his lips. “So that’s how she got that money.”

“That’s the way I tote it.”

“You know that does make a morbid kind of sense.”

“Joe was in Cibecue the night Calisher was shot. Does that help?”

“You mean where was I? Hell I was in Tucson. Law school.”

“It’s only four, five hours’ drive from Tucson up to Rand’s ranch. Calisher was killed late at night. You could have driven up there, killed him, driven back to Tucson and made your morning classes.”

“Why the hell should I kill Calisher?”

“I have no idea,” Watchman said.

“Only an amateur tries to make facts fit a theory,” Victorio said. “You could be right that Joe didn’t kill him, but that doesn’t mean I did. Christ I don’t think I ever met Ross Calisher more than two or three times in my life, and those times it was only at rodeos up here.”

“The way you felt about Maria, you might have been just as jealous as Joe if you found out she was sleeping with Calisher.”