The First Eagle

The First Eagle

A Leaphorn & Chee Navajo Tribal Police Mystery

Tony Hillerman

Since I began my fictional relationship with the Navajo Tribal Police, six of its officers have been killed while performing their duty. A small force covering a vast expanse of mountains, canyons, and desert, they must work primarily alone. In case of danger help is often hours away even if their radio calls for backup are heard. I dedicate this work to these six officers and their families. They gave their lives in defense of their people.

Burton Begay, Tuba City, 1975 Loren Whitehat, Tuba City, 1979 Andy Begay, Kayenta, 1987 Roy Lee Stanley, Kayenta, 1987 Hoskie Gene Jr., Kayenta, 1995 Samuel Redhouse, Crownpoint,

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All characters in this work are fictional. Especially let it be known that Pamela J. Reynolds and Ted L. Brown, vector control specialists of the New Mexico Department of Public Health, did not model for the two vector control characters in The First Eagle—being too amiable and generous for those roles. They did try to educate me on how they track the viruses and bacteria that plague our mountains and deserts and even modeled PAPRS for me. Thanks, too, to Patrick and Susie McDermott, Ph.D. and M.D. respectively in microbiology and neurology, who tried to keep my speculation about drug-resistant microbes close to reality. Dr. John C. Brown of the University of Kansas Department of Microbiology provided a reading list and good advice. Robert Ambrose, a falconer and trainer of raptors, informed me about eagles. My friend Neal Shadoff, M.D., helped make the medical professionals involved sound professional, and Justice Robert Henry of the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals advised me relative to the federal death penalty law. I thank them all.

Chapter One

THE BODY OF ANDERSON NEZ lay under a sheet on the gurney, waiting.

From the viewpoint of Shirley Ahkeali, sitting at her desk in the Intensive Care Unit nursing station of the Northern Arizona Medical Center in Flagstaff, the white shape formed by the corpse of Mr. Nez reminded her of Sleeping Ute Mountain as seen from her aunt's hogan near Teec Nos Pos. Nez's feet, only a couple of yards from her eyes, pushed the sheet up to form the mountain's peak. Perspective caused the rest of the sheet to slope away in humps and ridges, as the mountain seemed to do under its winter snow when she was a child. Shirley had given up on finishing her night shift paperwork. Her mind kept drifting away to what had happened to Mr. Nez and trying to calculate whether he fit into the Bitter Water clan Nez family with the grazing lease adjoining her grandmother's place at Short Mountain. And then there was the question of whether his family would allow an autopsy. She remembered them as sheep camp traditionals, but Dr. Woody, the one who'd brought Nez in, insisted he had the family's permission.

At that moment Dr. Woody was looking at his watch, a black plastic digital job that obviously hadn't been bought to impress the sort of people who are impressed by expensive watches.

"Now," Woody said, "I need to know the time the man died."

"It was early this morning," Dr. Delano said, looking surprised. It surprised Shirley, too, because Woody already knew the answer.

"No. No. No," Woody said. "I mean exactly when."

"Probably about two A.M.," Dr. Delano said, with his expression saying that he wasn't used to being addressed in that impatient tone. He shrugged. "Something like that."

Woody shook his head, grimaced. "Who would know? I mean, who would know within a few minutes?" He looked up and down the hospital corridor, then pointed at Shirley. "Surely somebody would be on duty. The man was terminal. I know the time he was infected, and the time he began registering a fever. Now I need to know how fast it killed him. I need every bit of information I can get on processes in that terminal period. What was happening with various vital functions? I need all that data I ordered kept when I checked him in. Everything."

Odd, Shirley thought. If Woody knew all that, why hadn't Nez been brought to the hospital while there was still some hope of saving him? When Nez was brought in yesterday he was burning with fever and dying fast.

"I'm sure it's all there," Delano said, nodding toward the clipboard Woody was holding. "You'll find it there in his chart."

Now Shirley grimaced. All that information wasn't in Nez's chart. Not yet. It should have been, and would have been even on this unusually hectic shift if Woody hadn't rushed in demanding an autopsy, and not just an autopsy but a lot of special stuff. And that had caused Delano to be summoned, looking sleepy and out of sorts, in his role as assistant medical superintendent, and Delano to call in Dr. Howe, who had handled the Nez case in ICU. Howe, she noticed, wasn't letting Woody bother him. He was too old a hand for that. Howe took every case as his personal mano-a-mano battle against death. But when death won, as it often did in ICU units, he racked up a loss and forgot it. A few hours ago he had worried about Nez, hovered over him. Now he was simply another of the battles he'd been fated to lose.

So why was Dr. Woody causing all this excitement? Why did Woody insist on the autopsy? And insist on sitting in on it with the pathologist? The cause of death was clearly the plague. Nez had been sent to the Intensive Care Unit on admission. Even then the infected lymph glands were swollen, and subcutaneous hemorrhages were forming their splotches on his abdomen and legs, the discolorations that had given the disease its "Black Death" name when it swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, killing tens of millions.

Like most medical personnel in the Four Corners country, Shirley Ahkeah had seen Black Death before. There'd been no cases on the Big Reservation for three or four years, but there were three already this year. One of the others had been on the New Mexico side of the Rez and hadn't come here. But it, too, had been fatal, and the word was that this was a vintage year for the old-fashioned bacteria—that it had flared up in an unusually virulent form.

It certainly had been virulent with Nez. The disease had gone quickly from the common glandular form into plague pneumonia. The Nez sputum, as well as his blood, swarmed with the bacteria, and no one went into his room without donning a filtration mask.

Delano, Howe, and Woody had drifted down the hall beyond Shirley's eavesdropping range, but the tone of the conversation suggested an agreement of some sort had been reached. More work for her, probably. She stared at the sheet covering Nez, remembering the man under it racked by sickness and wishing they'd move the body away. She'd been born in Farmington, daughter of an elementary schoolteacher who had converted to Catholicism. Thus she saw the Navajo "corpse avoidance" teaching as akin to the Jewish dietary prohibitions—a smart way to prevent the spread of illnesses. But even without believing in the evil chindi that traditional Navajos knew would attend the corpse of Nez for four days, the body under the sheet provoked unhappy thoughts of human mortality and the sorrow death causes.

Howe reappeared, looking old and tired and reminding her as he always did of a plumper version of her maternal grandfather.

"Shirley, darlin', did I by any chance give you a long list of special stuff we were supposed to do on the Nez case? One thing I remember was he wanted a bunch of extra bloodwork. Wanted measurement of the interleukin-six in his blood every hour, for one thing. And can't you just imagine the screaming fit the Indian Health Service auditors would have if we billed for that?"

"I can," Shirley said. "But nope. I didn't see any such list. I would have remembered that interleukin-six." She laughed. "I would have had to look it up. Something to do with how the immune system is working, isn't it?"

"It's not my field either," Howe said. "But I think you're right. I know it shows up in AIDS cases, and diabetes, and the sort of situations that affect immunity. Anyway, we shall let the record show that the list didn't reach your desk. I think I must have just wadded it up and tossed it."

"Who is this Dr. Woody anyway?" Shirley asked.

What's his specialty? And why did it take so long to get

Nez in here? He must have been running a fever for days."

"He's not a doctor at all," Howe said. "I mean he's not a practicing physician. I think he has the M.D. degree, but mostly he's the Ph.D. kind of doc. Microbiology. Pharmacology. Organic chemistry. Writes lots of papers in the journals about the immune system, evolution of pathogens, immunity of microbes to antibiotics, that sort of stuff. He did a piece for Science magazine a few months ago for the layman to read, warning the world that our miracle medicines aren't working anymore. If the viruses don't get us, the bacteria will."

"Oh, yeah," Shirley said. "I remember reading that article. That was his piece? If he knows so much, how come he didn't see that fever?"

Howe shook his head. "I asked him. He said Nez just started showing the symptoms. Said he had him on preventive doxycycline already because of the work they do, but he gave him a booster shot of streptomycin and rushed him right in."

"You don't believe that, do you?"

Howe grimaced. "I'd hate to," he said. "Good old plague used to be reliable. It'd poke along and give us time to treat it. And, yeah, that was Woody's article. Sort of don't worry about global warming. The tiny little beasties will get us first."

"Well, as I remember it, I agreed with a lot of it," Shirley said. "It's downright stupid the way some of you doctors prescribe a bunch of antibiotics every time a mama brings her kid in with an earache. No wonder—"

Howe held up a hand.

"Save it, Shirley. Save it. You're preaching to the choir here." He nodded toward the sheet on the gurney. "Doesn't Mr. Nez there just prove we're breeding a whole new set of drug-resistant bugs? The old Pas-teurella pestis, as we used to call it in those glorious primitive days when drugs worked, was duck soup for a half dozen antibiotics. Now, whatever they call it these days, Yersinia pestis I think it is, just ignored everything we tried on Mr. Nez. We had us a case here where one of your Navajo curing ceremonials could have done Nez more good than we did."

"They just brought him in too late," Shirley said. "You can't give the plague a two-week head start and hope to—"

Howe shook his head. "It wasn't two weeks, Shirley. If Woody knows what the hell he's talking about, it was more like just about one day."

"No way," Shirley said, shaking her head. "And how would he know, anyway?"

"Said he picked the flea off of him. Woody's doing a big study of rodent host colonies. National Institutes of Health money, and some of the pharmaceutical companies. He's interested in these mammal disease reservoirs. You know. Prairie dog colonies that get the plague infection but somehow stay alive while all the other colonies are wiped out. That and the kangaroo rats and deer mice, which aren't killed by the hantavirus. Anyway, Woody said he and Nez always took a broad-spectrum antibiotic when there was any risk of flea bites. If it happened, they'd save the flea so he could check it and do a follow-up treatment if needed. According to Woody, Nez found the flea on the inside of his thigh, and almost right away he was feeling sick and running a fever."

"Wow," Shirley said.

"Yeah," Howe agreed. "Wow indeed."

"I’ll bet another flea got him a couple of weeks ago," she said. "Did you agree on the autopsy?"

"Yeah again," Howe said. "You said you know the family. Or know some Nezes, anyway. You think they'll object?"

"I'm what they call an urban Indian. Three-fourths Navajo by blood, but I'm no expert on the culture." She shrugged. "Tradition is against chopping up bodies, but on the other hand it solves the problem of the burial."

Howe sighed, rested his plump buttocks against the desk, pushed back his glasses and rubbed his hand across his eyes. "Always liked that about you guys," he said. "Four days of grief and mourning for the spirit, and then get on with life. How did we white folks get into this corpse worship business? It's just dead meat, and dangerous to boot."

Shirley merely nodded.

"Anything hopeful for that kid in Room Four?" Howe asked. He picked up the chart, looked at it, clicked his tongue and shook his head. He pushed himself up from the desk and stood, shoulders slumped, staring at the sheet covering the body of Anderson Nez.

"You know," he said, "back in the Middle Ages the doctors had another cure for this stuff. They thought it had something to do with the sense of smell, and they recommended people stave it off by using a lot of per fume and wearing flowers. It didn't stop everybody from dying, but it proved humans have a sense of humor."

Shirley had known Howe long enough to understand that she was now supposed to provide a straight line for his wit. She wasn't in the mood, but she said: "What do you mean?"

"They made an ironic song out of it—and it lived on as a nursery rhyme." Howe sang it in his creaky voice:

"Ring around with roses, pockets full of posies. Ashes. Ashes. We all fall down."

He looked at her quizzically. "You remember singing that in kindergarten?"

Shirley didn't. She shook her head.

And Dr. Howe walked down the hall toward where another of his patients was dying.

Chapter Two

ACTING LIEUTENANT JIM CHEE of the Navajo Tribal Police, a "traditional" at heart, had parked his trailer with its door facing east. At dawn on July 8, he looked out at the rising sun, scattered a pinch of pollen from his medicine pouch to bless the day and considered what it would bring him.

He reviewed the bad part first. On his desk his monthly report for June—his first month as administrator in charge of a Navajo Police subagency unit—awaited him, half-finished and already overdue. But finishing the hated paperwork would be fun compared to the other priority job—telling Officer Benny Kinsman to get his testosterone under control.

The good part of the day involved, at least obliquely, his own testosterone. Janet Pete was leaving Washington and coming back to Indian country. Her letter was friendly but cool, with no hint of romantic passion. Still, Janet was coming back, and after he finished with Kinsman he planned to call her. It would be a tentative exploratory call. Were they still engaged? Did she want to resume their prickly relationship? Bridge the gap? Actually get married? For that matter, did he? However he answered that question, she was coming back and that explained why Chee was grinning while he washed the breakfast dishes.

The grin went away when he got to his office at the Tuba City station. Officer Kinsman, who was supposed to be awaiting him in his office, wasn't there. Claire Dineyahze explained it.

"He said he had to run out to Yells Back Butte first and catch that Hopi who's been poaching eagles," Mrs. Dineyahze said.

Chee inhaled, opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. Mrs. Dineyahze would have been offended by the obscenity Kinsman's action deserved.

She made a wry face and shook her head, sharing Chee's disapproval.

"I guess it's the same Hopi he arrested out there last winter," she said. "The one they turned loose because Benny forgot to read him his rights. But he wouldn't tell me. Just gave me that look." She put on a haughty expression. "Said his informant was confidential." Clearly Mrs. Dineyahze was offended by this exclusion. "One of his girlfriends, probably."

"I'll find out," Chee said. It was time to change the subject. "I've got to get that June report finished. Anything else going on?"

"Well," Mrs. Dineyahze said, and then stopped.

Chee waited.

Mrs. Dineyahze shrugged. "I know you don't like gossip," she said. "But you'll probably hear about this anyway."

"What?"

"Suzy Gorman called this morning. You know? The secretary in the Arizona Highway Patrol at Winslow. She said one of their troopers had to break up a fight at a place in Flagstaff. It was Benny Kinsman and some guy from Northern Arizona University."

Chee sighed. "They charge him?"

"She said no. Professional courtesy."

"Thank God," Chee said. "That's a relief."

"May not be over, though," she said. "Suzy said the fight started because Kinsman was making a big move on a woman and wouldn't stop, and the woman said she was going to file a complaint. Said he'd been bothering her before. On her job."

"Well, hell," Chee said. "What next? Where's she work?"

"It was Catherine Pollard," Mrs. Dineyahze said. "You know? Works out of that little office the Arizona Health Department set up here after those two bubonic plague cases. They call 'em vector control people." Mrs. Dineyahze smiled. "They catch fleas."

"I've got to get that report out by noon," Chee said. He'd had all the Kinsman he wanted this morning.

Mrs. Dineyahze wasn't finished with Kinsman. "Did Bernie talk to you about Kinsman?"

"No," Chee said. She hadn't, but he'd heard a rumble on the gossip circuit.

"I told her she should tell you, but she didn't want to bother you."

"Tell me what?" Bernie was Officer Bernadette Manuelito, who was young and green and, judging from gossip Chee had overheard, had a crush on him.

Mrs. Dineyahze looked sour. "Sexual harassment," she said.

"Like what?"

"Like making a move on her."

Chee didn't want to hear about it. Not now. "Tell her to report it to me," he said, and went into his office to confront his paperwork. With a couple of hours of peace and quiet he could finish it by lunchtime. He got in about thirty minutes before the dispatcher buzzed him.

"Kinsman wants a backup," she said.

"For what?" Chee asked. "Where is he?"

"Out there past Goldtooth," the dispatcher said. "Over near the west side of Black Mesa. The signal was breaking up."

"It always does out there," Chee said. In fact, these chronic radio communication problems were one thing he was complaining about in his report. "We have anyone close?"

"Afraid not."

"I'll take it myself," Chee said.

A few minutes after noon, Chee was bumping down the gravel trailing a cloud of dust looking for Kinsman. "Come in, Benny," Chee said into his mike. "I'm eight miles south of Goldtooth. Where are you?"

"Under the south cliff of Yells Back Butte," Kinsman said. "Take the old Tijinney hogan road. Park where the arroyo cuts it. Half mile up the arroyo. Be very quiet."

"Well, hell," Chee said. He said it to himself, not into the mike. Kinsman had gotten himself excited stalking his Hopi poacher, or whatever he was after, and had been transmitting in a half-intelligible whisper. Even more irritating, he was switching off his receiver lest a too-loud response alert his prey. While this was proper procedure in some emergency situations, Chee doubted this was anything serious enough to warrant that sort of foolishness.

"Come on, Kinsman," he said. "Grow up."

If he was going to be backup man on whatever Benny was doing, it would help to understand the problem. It would also help to know how to find the road to the Tijinney hogan. Chee knew just about every track on the east side of the Big Rez, the Checkerboard Rez even better, and the territory around Navajo Mountain fairly well. But he'd worked out of Tuba City very briefly as a rookie and had been reassigned there only six weeks ago. This rugged landscape beside the Hopi Reservation was relatively strange to him.

He remembered Yells Back Butte was an outcrop of Black Mesa. Therefore it shouldn't be too difficult to find the Tijinney road, and the arroyo, and Kinsman. When he did, Chee intended to give him some very explicit instructions about how to use his radio and to behave himself when dealing with women. And, come to think of it, to curb his anti-Hopi attitude.

This was the product of having his family's home site added to the Hopi Reservation when Congress split the Joint Use lands. Kinsman's grandmother, who spoke only Navajo, had been relocated to Flagstaff, where almost nobody speaks Navajo. Whenever Kinsman visited her, he came back full of anger.

One of those scattered little showers that serve as forerunners to the desert country rainy season had swept across the Moenkopi Plateau a few minutes before and was still producing rumbles of thunder far to the east. Now he was driving through the track the shower had left and the gusty breeze was no longer engulfing the patrol car in dust. The air pouring through the window was rich with the perfume of wet sage and dampened earth.

Don't let this Kinsman problem spoil the whole day, Chee told himself. Be happy. And he was. Janet Pete was coming. Which meant what? That she thought she could be content outside the culture of Washington's high society? Apparently. Or would she try again to pull him into it? If so, would she succeed? That made him uneasy.

Before yesterday's letter, he had hardly thought about Janet for days. A little before drifting off to sleep, a little at dawn while he fried his breakfast Spam. But he had resisted the temptation to dig out her previous letter and reread it. He knew the facts by heart. One of her mother's many well-placed friends reported that her job application was "favorably considered" in the Justice Department. Being half-Navajo made her prospects for an assignment in Indian country look good. Then came the last paragraph.

"Maybe I'll be assigned to Oklahoma—lots of legal work there with that internal fight the Cherokees are having. And then there's the rumble inside the Bureau of Indian Affairs over law enforcement that might keep me in Washington."

Nothing in that one that suggested the old pre-quarrel affection. It had caused Chee to waste a dozen sheets of paper with abortive attempts to frame the proper answer. In some of them he'd urged her to use the experience she'd gained working for the Navajo tribe's legal aid program to land an assignment on the Big Rez. He'd said hurry home, that he'd been wrong in distrusting her. He had misunderstood the situation. He had acted out of unreasonable jealousy. In others he'd said, Stay away. You'll never be content here. It can never be the same for us. Don't come unless you can be happy without your Kennedy Center culture, your Ivy League friends, art shows, and high-fashion and cocktail parties with the celebrity set, without the snobbish intellectual elite. Don't come unless you can be happy living with a fellow whose goals include neither luxury nor climbing the ladder of social caste, with a man who has found the good life in a rusty trailer house.

Found the good life? Or thought he had. Either way, he knew he was finally having some luck forgetting her. And the note he'd eventually sent had been carefully unrevealing. Then came yesterday's letter, with the last line saying she was "coming home!!"

Home. Home with two exclamation points. He was thinking of that when Kinsman's silly whispering had •jarred him back to reality. And now Kinsman was whispering again. Unintelligible muttering at first, then: "Lieutenant! Hurry!"

Chee hurried. He'd planned to pause at Goldtooth to ask directions, but nothing remained there except two roofless stone buildings, their doorways and windows open to the world, and an old-fashioned round hogan that looked equally deserted. Tracks branched off here, disappearing through the dunes to the right and left. He hadn't seen a vehicle since he'd left the pavement, but the center track bore tire marks. He stayed with it. Speeding. He was out of the shower's path now and leaving a rooster tail of dust. Forty miles to the right the San Franciscos dominated the horizon, with a thunderstorm building over Humphrey's Peak. To the left rose the ragged shape of the Hopi mesas, partly obscured at the moment by the rain another cloud was dragging. All around him was the empty wind-shaped plateau, its dunes held by great growths of Mormon tea, snake weed, yucca, and durable sage. Abruptly Chee again smelled the perfume that showers leave behind them. No more dust now. The track was damp. It veered eastward, toward mesa cliffs and, jutting from them, the massive shape of a butte. The tracks leading toward it were hidden behind a growth of Mormon tea and Chee almost missed them. He backed up, tried his radio again, got nothing but static, and turned onto the ruts toward the butte. Short of the cliffs he came to the washout Kinsman had mentioned.

Kinsman's patrol car was parked by a cluster of junipers, and Kinsman's tracks led up the arroyo. He followed them along the sandy bottom and then away from it, climbing the slope toward the towering sandstone wall of the butte. Kinsman's voice was still in Chee's mind. To hell with being quiet. Chee ran.

Officer Kinsman was behind an outcrop of sandstone. Chee saw a leg of his uniform trousers, partly obscured by a growth of wheatgrass. He began a shout to him, and cut it off. He could see a boot now. Toe down. That was wrong. He slid his pistol from its holster and edged closer.

From behind the sandstone, Chee heard the sound boots make on loose gravel, a grunting noise, labored breathing, an exclamation. He thumbed off the safety on his pistol and stepped into the open.

Benjamin Kinsman was facedown, the back of his uniform shirt matted with grass and sand glued to the cloth by fresh red blood. Beside Kinsman a young man squatted, looking up at Chee. His shirt, too, was smeared with blood.

"Put your hands on top of your head," Chee said.

"Hey," the man said. "This guy…"

"Hands on head," Chee said, hearing his own voice harsh and shaky in his ears. "And get facedown on the ground."

The man stared at Chee, at the pistol aimed at his face. He wore his hair in two braids. A Hopi, Chee thought. Of course. Probably the eagle poacher he'd guessed Kinsman had been trying to catch. Well, Kinsman had caught him.

"Down," Chee ordered. "Face to the ground."

The young man leaned forward, lowered himself slowly. Very agile, Chee thought. His torn shirt sleeve revealed a long gash on the right forearm, the congealed blood forming a curved red stripe across sunburned skin.

Chee pulled the man's right hand behind his back, clicked the handcuff on the wrist, cuffed the left wrist to it. Then he extracted a worn brown leather wallet from the man's hip pocket and flipped it open. From his Arizona driver's license photo the young man smiled at him. Robert Jano. Mishongnove, Second Mesa.

Robert Jano was turning onto his side, pulling his legs up, preparing to rise.

"Stay down," Chee said. "Robert Jano, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to…"

"What are you arresting me for?" Jano said. A raindrop hit the rock beside Chee. Then another.

"For murder. You have the right to retain legal counsel. You have the right—"

"I don't think he's dead," Jano said. "He was alive when I got here."

"Yeah," Chee said. "I'm sure he was."

"And when I checked his pulse. Just thirty seconds ago."

Chee was already kneeling beside Kinsman, his hand on Kinsman's neck, first noticing the sticky blood and now the faint pulse under his fingertip and the warmth of the flesh under his palm. He stared at Jano. "You sonofabitch!" Chee shouted. "Why did you brain him like that?"

"I didn't," Jano said. "I didn't hit him. I just walked up and he was here." He nodded toward Kinsman. "Just lying there like that."

"Like hell," Chee said. "How'd you get that blood all over you then, and your arm cut up like—"

A rasping shriek and a clatter behind him cut off the question. Chee spun, pistol pointing. A squawking sound came from behind the outcrop where Kinsman lay. Behind it a metal birdcage lay on its side. It was a large cage, but barely large enough to hold the eagle struggling inside it. Chee lifted it by the ring at its top, rested it on the sandstone slab and stared at Jano. "A federal offense," he said. "Poaching an endangered species. Not as bad as felony assault on a law officer, but—"

"Watch out!" Jano shouted.

Too late. Chee felt the eagle's talons tearing at the side of his hand.

"That's what happened to me," Jano said. "That's how I got so bloody."

Icy raindrops hit Chee's ear, his cheek, his shoulder, his bleeding hand. The shower engulfed them, and with it a mixture of hailstones. He covered Kinsman with his jacket and moved the eagle's cage under the shelter of the outcrop. He had to get help for Kinsman fast, and he had to keep the eagle under shelter. If Jano was telling the truth, which seemed extremely unlikely, there would be blood on the bird. He didn't want Jano's defense attorney to be able to claim that Chee had let the evidence wash away.

Chapter Three

THE LIMO THAT HAD PARKED in front of Joe Leaphom's house was a glossy blue-black job with the morning sun glittering on its polished chrome. Leaphorn had stood behind his screen door watching it—hoping his neighbors on this fringe of Window Rock wouldn't notice it. Which "was like hoping the kids who played in the schoolyard down his gravel street wouldn't notice a herd of giraffes trotting by. The limo's arrival so early meant the man sitting patiently behind the wheel must have left Santa Fe about 3:00 A.M. That made Leaphorn ponder what life would be like as a hireling of the very rich—which Well, in just a few minutes he'd have a chance to find out. The limo now was turning off a narrow asphalt road in Santa Fe's northeast foothills onto a brick driveway. It stopped at an elaborate iron gate.

"Is this it?" Leaphorn asked.

"Yep," the driver said, which was about the average length of the answers Leaphorn had been getting before he'd stopped asking questions. He'd started with the standard break-the-ice: gasoline mileage on the limo, how it handled, that sort of thing. Went from that into how long the driver had worked for Millicent Vanders, which proved to be twenty-one years. Beyond that point, Leaphorn's digging ran into granite.

"Who is Mrs. Vanders?" Leaphorn had asked.

"My boss."

Leaphorn had laughed. "That's not what I meant."

"I didn't think it was."

"You know anything about this job she's going to offer me?"

"No."

"What she wants?"

"It's none of my business."

So Leaphorn dropped it. He watched the scenery, learned that even the rich could find only country-western music on their radios here, tuned in KNDN to listen in on the Navajo open-mike program. Someone had lost his billfold at the Farmington bus station and was asking the finder to return his driver's license and credit card. A woman was inviting members of the Bitter Water and Standing Rock clans, and all other kinfolk and friends, to show up for a yeibichai sing to be held for Emerson Roanhorse at his place north of Kayenta. Then came an old-sounding voice declaring that Billy Etcitty's roan mare was missing from his place north of Burnt Water and asking folks to let him know if they spotted it. "Like maybe at a livestock auction," the voice added, which suggested that Etcitty presumed his mare hadn't wandered off without assistance. Soon Leaphorn had surrendered to the soft luxury of the limo seat and dozed. When he awoke, they were rolling down 1-25 past Santa Fe's outskirts.

Leaphorn then had fished Millicent Vanders's letter from his jacket pocket and reread it.

It wasn't, of course, directly from Millicent Vanders. The letterhead read Peabody, Snell and Glick, followed by those initials law firms use. The address was Boston. Delivery was FedEx's Priority Overnight.

Dear Mr. Leaphorn:

This is to confirm and formalize our telephone confirmation of this date. I write you in the interest of Mrs. Millicent Vanders, who is represented by this firm in some of her affairs. Mrs. Vanders has charged me with finding an investigator familiar with the Navajo Reservation whose reputation for integrity and circumspection is impeccable.

You have been recommended to us as satisfying these requirements. This inquiry is to determine if you would be willing to meet with Mrs. Vanders at her summer home in Santa Fe and explore her needs with her. If so, please call me so arrangements can be made for her car to pick you up and for your financial reimbursement. I must add that Mrs. Vanders expressed a sense of urgency in this affair.

Leaphorn's first inclination had been to write Christopher Peabody a polite "thanks but no thanks" and recommend he find his client a licensed private investigator instead of a former cop.

But…

There was the fact that Peabody, surely the senior partner, had signed the letter himself, and the business of having his circumspection rated impeccable, and—most important of all—the "sense of urgency" note, which made the woman's problem sound interesting. Leaphorn needed something interesting. He'd soon be finishing his first year of retirement from the Navajo Tribal Police. He'd long since run out of things to do. He was bored.

And so he'd called Mr. Peabody back and here he was, driver pushing the proper button, gate sliding silently open, rolling past lush landscaping toward a sprawling two-story house—its tan plaster and brick copings declaring it to be what Santa Feans call "Territorial Style" and its size declaring it a mansion.

The driver opened the door for Leaphorn. A young man wearing a faded blue shirt and jeans, his blond hair tied in a pigtail, stood smiling just inside the towering double doors.

"Mr. Leaphorn," he said. "Mrs. Vanders is expecting you." Millicent Vanders was waiting in a room that Leaphorn's experience with movies and television suggested was either a study or a sitting room. She was a frail little woman standing beside a frail little desk, supporting herself with the tips of her fingers on its polished surface. Her hair was almost white and the smile with which she greeted him was pale.

"Mr. Leaphorn," she said. "How good of you to come. How good of you to help me."

Leaphorn, with no idea yet whether he would help her or not, simply returned the smile and sat in the chair to which she motioned.

"Would you care for tea? Or coffee? Or some other refreshment? And should I call you Mr. Leaphorn, or do you prefer 'Lieutenant'?"

"Coffee, thank you, if it's no trouble." Leaphorn said. And it's mister. I've retired from the Navajo Tribal Police."

Millicent Vanders looked past him toward the door-. "Coffee then, and tea," she said. She sat herself behind the desk with a slow, careful motion that told Leaphorn his hostess had one or other of the hundred forms of arthritis. But she smiled again, a signal meant to be reassuring. Leaphorn detected pain in it. He'd become very good at that sort of detection while he was watching his wife die. Emma, holding his hand, telling him not to worry, pretending she wasn't in pain, promising that someday soon she'd be well again.

Mrs. Vanders was sorting through papers on her desk, arranging them in a folder, untroubled by the lack of conversation. Leaphorn had found this unusual among whites and admired it when he saw it. She extracted two eight-by-en photographs from an envelope, examined one, added it to the folder, then examined the other. A thump broke the silence—a careless pifion jay colliding with a windowpane fled in wobbling flight. Mrs. Vanders continued her contemplation of the photo, lost in some remembered sorrow undisturbed by the bird or by Leaphorn watching her. An interesting person, Leaphorn thought.

A plump young woman appeared at his elbow bearing a tray. She placed a napkin, saucer, cup, and spoon on the table beside him, filled the cup from a white china pot then repeated the process at the desk, pouring the tea from a silver container. Mrs. Vanders interrupted her contemplation of the photo, slid it into the folder, handed it to the woman.

"Ella," she said. "Would you give this, please, to Mr. Leaphorn?"

Ella handed it to Leaphorn and left as silently as she had come. He put the folder on his lap, sipped his coffee, the cup was translucent china, thin as paper. The coffee was hot, fresh, and excellent.

Mrs. Vanders was studying him. "Mr. Leaphorn," she said, "I asked you to come here because I hope you will agree to do something for me."

"I might agree," Leaphorn said. "What would it be?"

"Everything has to be completely confidential," Mrs. Vanders said. "You would communicate only to me Not to my lawyers. Not to anyone else."

Leaphorn considered this, sampled the coffee again, Put down the cup. "Then I might not be able to help you." Mrs. Vanders looked surprised. "Why not?"

"I've spent most of my life being a policeman," Leaphorn said. "If what you have in mind causes me to discover anything illegal, then—"

"If that happened, I would report it to the authorities," she said rather stiffly.

Leaphorn allowed the typical Navajo moments of silence to make certain that Mrs. Vanders had said all she wanted to say. She had, but his lack of response touched a nerve.

"Of course I would," she added. "Certainly."

"But if you didn't for some reason, you understand that I would have to do it. Would you agree to that?"

She stared at Leaphorn. Then she nodded. "I think we are creating a problem where none exists."

"Probably," Leaphorn said.

"I would like you to locate a young woman. Or, failing that, discover what happened to her."

She gestured toward the folder. Leaphorn opened it. The top picture was a studio portrait of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman wearing a mortarboard. The face was narrow and intelligent, the expression somber. Not a girl who would have been called "cute," Leaphorn thought. Nor pretty either, for that matter. Handsome, perhaps. Full of character. Certainly it would be an easy face to remember. The next picture was of the same woman, wearing jeans and a jean jacket now, leaning on the door of a Pickup truck and looking back at the camera. She had the look of an athlete, Leaphorn thought, and was older in this one. Perhaps in her early thirties. On the back of each photograph the same name was written: Catherine Anne.

Leaphorn glanced at Mrs. Vanders.

"My niece," she said. "The only child of my late sister."

Leaphorn returned the photos to the folder and »ok out a sheaf of papers, clipped together. The top one ad biographical details.

Catherine Anne Pollard was the full name. The birth-ate made her thirty-three, the birthplace was Arlington, Virginia, the current address Flagstaff, Arizona.

"Catherine studied biology," Mrs. Vanders said. "She specialized in mammals and insects. She was working r the Indian Health Service, but actually I think it's ore for the Arizona Health Department. The environment division. They call her a ‘vector control specialist.' I imagine you would know about that?"

Leaphorn nodded.

Mrs. Vanders made a wry face. "She says they actually call her a 'fleacatcher.'

"I think she could have had a good career as a tennis player. On the tour, you know. She always loved orts. Soccer, striker on the college volleyball team, hen she was in junior high school she worried about being bigger than the other girls. I think excelling in orts was her compensation for that." Leaphorn nodded again.

"The first time she came to see me after she got this, I asked for her job title, and she said 'fleacatcher.'" Vanders's expression was sad. "Called herself that, I guess she doesn't mind."

"It's an important job," Leaphorn said.

"She wanted a career in biology. But 'fleacatcher'?" Mrs. Vanders shook her head. "I understand that she and some others were working on the source of those bubonic plague cases this spring. They have a little laboratory in Tuba City and check places where the victims might have picked up the disease. Trapping rodents." Mrs. Vanders hesitated, her face reflecting distaste. "That's the flea catching. They collect the fleas from them. And take samples of their blood. That sort of thing." She dismissed this with a wave of the hand.

"Then last week, early in the morning, she went to work and never came back."

She let that hang there, her eyes on Leaphorn.

"She left for work alone?"

"Alone. That's what they say. I'm not so sure."

Leaphorn would come back to that later. Now he needed basic facts. Speculation could wait.

"Went to work where?"

"The man I called said she just stopped by the office to pick up some of the equipment she uses in her work and then drove away. To someplace out in the country where she was trapping rodents."

"Was she meeting anyone where she was going to be working?"

"Apparently not. Not officially anyway. The man I talked to didn't think anyone went with her."

"And you think something has happened to her. Have you discussed this with the police?"

"Mr. Peabody discussed it with people he knows in the FBI. He said they would not be involved in something like this. They would have jurisdiction only if it involved a kidnapping for ransom, or"—she hesitated, glanced down at her hands—"or some other sort of felony. They told Mr. Peabody there would have to be evidence that a federal law had been violated."

"What evidence was there?" He was pretty sure he knew the answer. It would be none. Nothing at all.

Mrs. Vanders shook her head.

"Actually, I guess you would say the only evidence is that a woman is missing. Just the circumstances."

"The vehicle. Where was it found?"

"It hasn't been found. Not as far as I have been able to discover." Mrs. Vanders's eyes were intent on Leap-horn, watching for his reaction.

Had they not been, Leaphorn would have allowed himself a smile—thinking of the hopeless task Mr. Peabody must have faced in trying to interest the federals. Thinking of the paperwork this missing vehicle would cause in the Arizona Health Department, of how this would be interpreted by the Arizona Highway Patrol if a missing person report had been filed, of the other complexities. But Mrs. Vanders would read a smile as an expression of cynicism.

"Do you have a theory?"

"Yes," she said, and cleared her throat. "I think she must be dead."

Mrs. Vanders, who had seemed frail and unhealthy, now looked downright sick.

"Are you all right? Do you want to continue this?" She produced a weak smile, extracted a small white container from the pocket of her jacket and held it up.

"I have a heart condition," she said. "This is nitro-glycerin. The prescription used to come in little tablets, but these days the patient just sprays it on the tongue. Please excuse me. I'll feel fine again in a moment."

She turned away from him, held the tube to her lips for a moment, then returned it to her pocket.

Leaphorn waited, reviewing what little he knew about nitro as a heart medication. It served to expand the arteries and thus increase the blood flow. Neither of the people he'd known who used it had lived very long. Perhaps that explained the urgency Peabody mentioned in his letter.

Mrs. Vanders sighed. "Where were we?"

"You'd said you thought your niece must be dead."

"Murdered, I think."

"Did someone have a motive? Or did she have something that would attract a thief?"

"She was being stalked," Mrs. Vanders said. "A man named Victor Hammar. A graduate student she'd met at the University of New Mexico. A fairly typical case, I'd guess, for this sort of thing. He was from East Germany, what used to be East Germany that is, with no family or friends over here. A very lonely man, I would imagine. And that's the way Catherine described him to me. They had common interests at the university. Both biologists. He was studying small mammals. That caused them to do a lot of work in the laboratory together. I suppose Catherine took pity on him." Mrs. Vanders shook her head. "Losers always had a special appeal to her. When her mother was going to buy her a dog, she wanted one from the pound. Something she could feel sorry for. But with that man…" She grimaced. "Well, anyway, she couldn't get rid of him. I suspected she dropped out of graduate school to get away from him. Then, after she took the job in Arizona, he would turn up at Phoenix when she was there. It was the same thing when she started working at Flagstaff."

"Had he threatened her?"

"I asked her that and she just laughed. She thought he was perfectly harmless. She told me to think of him as being like a little lost kitten. Just a nuisance."

"But you think he was a threat?"

"I think he was a very dangerous man. Under the right circumstances anyway. When he came here with her once, he seemed polite enough. But there was a sort of—" She paused, looking for the way to express it. "I think a lot of anger was right under that nicey-nicey surface ready to explode."

Leaphorn waited for more explanation. Mrs. Vanders merely looked worried.

"I told Catherine that even with kittens, if you hurt one it will scratch you," she said.

"That's true," Leaphorn said. "If I decide I can be of any help on this, I'll need his name and address." He thought about it. "And I think finding that vehicle she was driving is important. I think you should offer a reward. Something substantial enough to attract attention. To get people talking about it."

"Of course," Mrs. Vanders said. "Offer whatever you like."

"I'll need all the pertinent biographical information about her. People who might know her or something about her habits. Names, addresses, that sort of thing."

"All I have is in the folder you have there," she said. "There's a report about what a lawyer from Mr. Peabody's office found out, and a report from a lawyer he hired in Flagstaff to collect what information he could. It wasn't much. I'm afraid it won't be very helpful."

"When was the last time she saw this Hammar?"

"That's one reason I suspect him," Mrs. Vanders said. "It was just before she disappeared. He'd come out to Tuba City where she was working. She'd called to tell me she was coming to see me that weekend. That Ham-mar man was there at Tuba City when she called."

"Did she say anything that made you think she was afraid of him?"

"No." Mrs. Vanders laughed. "I don't think Catherine's ever been afraid of anything. She inherited her mother's genes."

Leaphorn frowned. "She said she was coming to see you but she disappeared instead," he said. "Did she say why she was coming? Just social, or did she have something on her mind?"

"She was thinking of quitting. She couldn't stand her boss. A man named Krause." Mrs. Vanders pointed at the folder. "Very arrogant. And she disapproved of the way he ran the operation."

"Something illegal?"

"I don't know. She said she didn't want to talk about it on the telephone. But it must have been pretty serious to make her think about leaving."

"Something personal, you think? Did she ever suggest sexual harassment? Anything like that?"

"She didn't exactly suggest that," Mrs. Vanders said. "But he was a bachelor. Whatever he was doing it was bad enough to be driving her away from a job she loved."

Leaphorn questioned that by raising his eyebrows.

"She was excited by that job. She's been working for months to find the rodents that caused that last outbreak of bubonic plague on your reservation. Catherine has always been obsessive, even as a child. And since she took this health department job her obsession has been the plague. She spent one entire visit telling me about it. About how it killed half the people in Europe in the Middle Ages. How it spreads. How they're beginning to think the bacteria are evolving. All that sort of thing. She's on a personal crusade about it. Almost religious, I'd say. And she thought she might have found some of the rodents it spreads from. She'd told this Hammar fellow about it and I guess he used that as an excuse to come out."

Mrs. Vanders made a deprecating gesture. "Being a student of mice and rats and other rodents, that gives him an excuse, I guess. She said he might go out there with her to help her with the rodents. Apparently he wasn't with her when she left Tuba City, but I thought he might have followed her. I guess they trap them or poison them or something. And she said it was a hard-to get-to place, so maybe she would want him to help her carry in whatever they use. It's out on the edge of the Hopi Reservation. A place called Yells Back Butte."

"Yells Back Butte," Leaphorn said.

"It seems a strange name," Mrs. Vanders said. "I suspect there's some story behind it."

"Probably," Leaphorn said. "I think it's a local name for a little finger sticking out from Black Mesa. On the edge of the Hopi Reservation. And when was she going out there?"

"The day after she called me," Mrs. Vanders said. "That would be a week ago next Friday."

Leaphorn nodded, sorting out some memories. That would be July 8, just about the day—No. It was exactly the day when Officer Benjamin Kinsman had his skull cracked with a rock somewhere very near Yells Back Butte. Same time. Same place. Leaphorn had never learned to believe in coincidences.

"All right, Mrs. Vanders," Leaphorn said, "I'll see what I can find out."

Chapter Four

CHEE WAS NOT STANDING at the waiting room window just to watch the Northern Arizona Medical Center parking lot and the cloud shadows dappling the mountains across the valley. He was postponing the painful moment when he would walk into Officer Benjamin Kinsman's room and give Benny the foredoomed official "last opportunity" to tell them who had murdered him.

Actually, it wasn't murder yet. The neurologist in charge had called Shiprock yesterday to report that Kinsman had become brain-dead and procedures could now begin to end his ordeal. But this was going to be a legally complicated and socially sensitive process. The U.S. Attorney's office was nervous. Converting the charge against Jano from attempted homicide to murder had to be done exactly right. Therefore, J. D. Mickey, the acting assistant U.S. attorney charged with handling the prosecution, had decided that the arresting officer must be present when the plug was pulled. He wanted Chee to testify that he was available to receive any possible last words. That meant that the defense attorney should be there, too.

Chee had no idea why. Everybody involved had the same boss. As an indigent, Jano would be represented by another Justice Department lawyer. Said lawyer being—Chee glanced at his watch—eleven minutes late. But maybe that was his vehicle pulling into the lot. No. It was a pickup truck. Even in Arizona, Justice Department lawyers didn't arrive in trucks.

In fact, it was a familiar truck. Dodge Ram king cab pickups of the early nineties looked a lot alike, but this one had a winch attached to the front bumper and fender damage covered with paint that didn't quite match. It was Joe Leaphorn's truck.

Chee sighed. Fate seemed to be tying him to his former boss again, endlessly renewing the sense of inferiority Chee felt in the presence of the Legendary Lieutenant.

But he felt a little better after he thought about it. There was no way the murder of Officer Kinsman could involve Leaphorn. The Legendary Lieutenant had been retired since last year. As a rookie, Kinsman had never worked for him. There were no clan relationships that Chee knew about. Leaphorn would be coming to visit some sick friend. This would be one of those coincidences that Leaphorn had told him, about a hundred times, not to believe in. Chee relaxed. He watched a white Chevy sedan, driving too fast, skid through the parking lot gate. A federal motor-pool Chevy. The defense lawyer finally. Now the plugs could be pulled, stopping the machines that had kept Kinsman's lungs pumping and his heart beating for all these days, since the wind of life that had blown through Benny had left, taking Benny's consciousness on its last great adventure.

Now the lawyers would agree, in view of the seriousness of the case, to ignore the objections the Kinsman family might have and conduct a useless autopsy. That would prove that the blow to the head had caused Benny's death and therefore the People of the United States could apply the death penalty and kill Robert Jano to even the score. The fact that neither the Navajos nor the Hopis believed in this eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the white men would be ignored.

Two floors below him the white Chevy had parked. The driver's-side door opened, a pair of black trouser legs emerged, then a hand holding a briefcase.

"Lieutenant Chee," said a familiar voice just behind him. "Could I talk to you for a minute?"

Joe Leaphorn was standing in the doorway, holding his battered gray Stetson in his hands and looking apologetic.

So much for coincidences.

Chapter Five

"SOMEPLACE QUIETER, MAYBE," Leaphorn had said, meaning a place where no one would overhear him. So Chee led him down the hall to the empty orthopedic waiting room. He pulled back a chair by the table and motioned toward another one.

"I know you just have a minute," Leaphorn said, and sat down. "The defense attorney just drove up."

"Yeah," Chee said, thinking that Leaphorn not only had Managed to find him in this unlikely place but knew why he was here and what was going on. Probably knew more than Chee did. That irritated Chee, but it didn't surprise him.

"I wanted to ask if the name Catherine Anne Pollard meant anything to you. If a missing persons report was filed on her. Or a stolen vehicle report? Anything like that?"

"Pollard?" Chee said. "I don't think so. It doesn't ring a bell." Thank God Leaphorn wasn't involving himself in the Kinsman business. It was already complicated enough.

"Woman, early thirties, working with the Indian Health Service," Leaphorn said. "In vector control. Looking for the source of that bubonic plague outbreak. Checking rodents. You know how they work."

"Oh, yeah," Chee said. "I heard about it. When I get back to Tuba I'll check our reports. I think somebody in environmental health or the Indian Health Service called Window Rock about her not coming back from a job and they passed it along to us." He shrugged. "I got the impression they were more worried about losing the department's Jeep."

Leaphorn grinned at him. "Not exactly the crime of the century."

"No," Chee said. "If she was about thirteen you'd be checking the motels. At her age, if she wants to run off somewhere, that's her business. As long as she brings back the Jeep."

"She didn't, then? It's still missing?"

"I don't know," Chee said. "If she returned it, APH forgot to tell us."

"That wouldn't be unusual," Leaphorn said.

Chee nodded, and looked at Leaphorn. Wanting an explanation for his interest in something that seemed both obvious and trivial.

"Somebody in her family thinks she's dead. Thinks somebody killed her." Leaphorn let that hang a moment, made an apologetic face. "I know that's what kinfolks usually think. But this time there's a suspicion that a would-be boyfriend was stalking her."

"That's not unusual either," Chee said. He felt vaguely disappointed. Leaphorn had done some private detecting right after he'd retired, but that had been to tie up a loose end from his career, close out an old case. This sounded purely commercial. Was the Legendary Lieutenant Leap-horn reduced to doing routine private detective stuff?

Leaphorn took a notebook out of his shirt pocket, looked at it, tapped it against the tabletop. It occurred to Chee that this was embarrassing Leaphorn, and that embarrassed Chee. The Legendary Lieutenant, totally unflappable when he'd been in charge, didn't know how to handle being a civilian. Asking favors. Chee didn't know how to handle it either. He noticed that Leaphorn's burr-cut hair, long black-salted-with-gray, had become gray-salted-with-black.

"Anything I can do?" Chee asked.

Leaphorn put the notebook back in his pocket.

"You know how I am about coincidences," he said.

"Yep," Chee said.

"Well, this one is so strained I hate to even mention it-" He shook his head.

Chee waited.

"From what I know now, the last time anyone heard of this woman, she was heading out of Tuba City checking on prairie dog colonies, looking for dead rodents. One of the places on her list was that area around Yells Back Butte."

Chee thought about that a moment, took a deep breath, thinking he'd been too optimistic. But "that area around Yells Back Butte" didn't make it much of a coincidence with his Kinsman case. That "around" could include a huge bunch of territory. He waited to see if Leaphorn was finished. He wasn't.

"That was the morning of July eighth," Leaphorn said.

"July eighth," Chee said, frowning. "I was out there that morning."

"I was thinking that you were," Leaphorn said. "Look, I'm headed to Window Rock now and all I know now is from some preliminary checking a lawyer did for Pollard's aunt. I couldn't reach Pollard's boss on the telephone and soon as I do, I'll go to Tuba and talk to him. If I learn anything useful, I'll let you know."

"I'd appreciate that," Chee said. "I'd like to know some more about this."

"Probably absolutely no connection with the Kinsman case," Leaphorn said. "I don't see how there could be. Unless you know some reason to feel otherwise. I just thought—"

A loud voice from the doorway interrupted him.

"Chee!" The speaker was a beefy young man with reddish-blond hair and a complexion that suffered from too many hours of dry air and high-altitude sun. The coat of his dark blue suit was unbuttoned, his necktie was slightly loose, his white shirt was rumpled and his expression was irritated. "Mickey wants to get this damned thing over with," he said. "He wants you in there."

He was pointing at Chee, a violation of the Dine rules of courtesy. Now he beckoned to Chee with his finger—rude in a multitude of other cultures.

Chee rose, his face darkened a shade.

"Mr. Leaphorn," Chee said, motioning toward the man, "this gentleman is Agent Edgar Evans of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was assigned out here just a couple of months ago."

Leaphorn acknowledged that with a nod toward Evans.

"Chee," Agent Evans said, "Mickey is in a hell of a—"

"Tell Mr. Mickey I'll be there in a minute or so," Chee said. And to Leaphorn: "I'll call you from the office when I know what we have."

Leaphorn smiled at Evans and turned back to Chee.

"I am particularly interested in that Jeep," Leaphorn said. "People don't just walk away from good trucks. It's odd. Someone sees it, mentions it to someone else, the word gets around."

Chee chuckled. (More, Leaphorn suspected, for Evans's benefit than his own.) "It does," Chee said. "And pretty soon people begin deciding no one wants it anymore, and parts of it begin showing up on other people's trucks."

"I'd like to spread the word that there's a reward for locating that Jeep," Leaphorn said.

Evans cleared his throat loudly.

"How much?" Chee asked.

"How does a thousand dollars sound?"

"About right," Chee said, turning toward the door. He Motioned to Agent Evans. "Come on," he said. "Let's go."

Officer Benjamin Kinsman's room was lit by the sun pouring through its two windows and a battery of ceiling fluorescent lights. Entering involved slipping past a burly male nurse and two young women in the sort of pale blue smocks doctors wear. Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney J. D. Mickey stood by the windows. The shape of Officer Kinsman lay at rigid attention in the center of the bed, covered with a sheet. One of the vital signs monitors on the wall above the bed registered a horizontal white line. The other screen was blank.

Mickey looked at his watch, then at Chee, glanced at the doors and nodded.

"You're the arresting officer?"

"That's correct," Chee said.

"What I want you to do is ask the victim here if he can tell you anything about who killed him. What happened. All that. We just want to get it on the record in case the defense tries something fancy."

Chee licked his lips, cleared his throat, looked at the body.

"Ben," he said. "Can you tell me who killed you? Can you hear me? Can you tell me anything?"

"Pull the sheet down," Mickey said. "Off of his face."

Chee shook his head. "Ben," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't get there quicker. Be happy on your journey."

Agent Evans was pulling at the sheet, drawing it down to reveal Benjamin Kinsman's waxen face.

Chee gripped his wrist. Hard. "No," he said. "Don't do that." He pulled the sheet back in place.

"Let it go," Mickey said, looking at his watch again. "I guess we're done here." He turned toward the door.

Standing there, looking in at Chee, at all of them, was Janet Pete.

"Better late than never," Mickey said. "I hope you got here early enough to know all your client's legal rights were satisfied."

Janet Pete, looking very pale, nodded. She stood aside to let them pass.

Behind Chee the medical crew was working fast, disconnecting wires and tubes—starting the bed rolling toward the side exit. There, Chee guessed, Officer Benjamin Kinsman's kidneys would be salvaged, perhaps also his heart, perhaps whatever else some other person could use. But Ben was far, far away now. Only his chindi would remain here. Or would it follow the corpse into other rooms? Into other bodies? Navajo theology did not cover such contingencies. Corpses were dangerous, excepting only those of infants who die before their first laugh, and people who die naturally of old age. The good of Benjamin Kinsman would go with his spirit. The part of his personality that was out of harmony would linger as a chindi, causing sickness. Chee turned away from the body.

Janet was still standing at the door. He stopped. "Hello, Jim."

"Hello, Janet." He took a deep breath. "It's good to see you."

"Even like this?" She made a weak gesture at the room and tried to smile.

He didn't answer that. He felt dizzy, sick, and depleted. "I tried to call you, but you're never home. I'm Robert Jano's counsel," she said. "I guess you knew that?"

"I didn't know it," Chee said. "Not until I heard what Mr. Mickey said."

"You're the arresting officer, as I heard? Is that right? So I need to talk to you."

"Fine," Chee said. "But I can't do it now. And not here. Somewhere away from here." He swallowed down the bile. "How about dinner?"

"I can't tonight. Mr. Mickey has us all conferring about the case. And, Jim, you look exhausted. I think you must be working too hard."

"I'm not," he said. "And you look great. Will you be here tomorrow?"

"I have to drive down to Phoenix."

"How about breakfast then? At the hotel."

"Good," she said, and they set the time.

Mickey was standing down the hallway. "Ms. Pete," he called.

"Got to go," she said, and turned, then turned back again. "Jim," she said, "tired or not, you look fine."

"You, too," Chee said. She did. The classic, perfect beauty you see on the cover of Vogue, or on any of the fashion magazines.

Chee leaned against the wall and watched her walk down the hall, around the corner and out of sight, wishing he had thought of something more romantic to say than "You, too." Wishing he knew what to do about her. About them. Wishing he knew whether he could trust her. Wishing life wasn't so damned complicated.

Chapter Six

IT SEEMED OBVIOUS TO LEAPHORN that the person most likely to tell him something useful about Catherine Anne Pollard was Richard Krause, her boss and the biologist in charge of rooting out the cause of the reservation's most recent plague outbreak. A lifetime spent looking for People in the big emptiness of the Four Corners and several futile telephone calls had taught Leaphorn that Krause would probably be off somewhere unreachable. He had tried to call him as soon as he returned to Window Rock from Santa Fe. He'd tried again yesterday before driving back from Flagstaff. By now he had the number memorized as well as on the redial button. He picked up the telephone and punched it.

"Public Health," a male voice said. "Krause." Leaphorn identified himself. "Mrs. Vanders has asked me—"

"I know," Krause said. "She called me. Maybe she's right. To start getting worried, I mean."

"Miss Pollard's not back yet, then?"

"No," Krause said. "Miss Pollard still hasn't shown up for work. Nor has she bothered to call in or communicate in any way. But I have to tell that's what you learn to expect from Miss Pollard. Rules were made for other people."

"Any word on the vehicle she was driving?"

"Not to me," Krause said. "And to tell the truth, I'm getting a little bit concerned myself. At first I was just sore at her. Cathy is a tough gal to work with. She's very into doing her own thing her own way, if you know what I'm saying. I just thought she'd seen something that needed doing worse than what I'd told her to do. Sort of reassigned herself, you know."

"I know," Leaphorn said, thinking back to when Jim Chee had been his assistant. Still, as much trouble as Chee had been, it had been a pleasure to see him yesterday. He was a good man and unusually bright.

"You still think that might be a possibility? That Pollard might be off working on some project of her own and just not bothering to tell anyone about it?"

"Maybe," Krause said. "It wouldn't bother her to let me stew awhile, but not this long." He'd be happy to tell Leaphorn what he knew about Pollard and her work, but not today. Today he was tied up, absolutely snowed under. With Pollard away, he was doing both their jobs. But tomorrow morning he could make some time—and the earlier the better.

Which left Leaphorn with nothing to do but wait for Chee's promised call. But Chee would be driving back to Tuba City from Flag this morning, and then he wouldn't get into his files until he dealt with whatever problems had piled up in his absence. If Chee found something interesting in the files, he'd probably call after noon. Most likely there'd be no reason to call.

Leaphorn had never been good at waiting for the telephone to ring, or for anything else. He toasted two slices of bread, applied margarine and grape jelly, and sat in his kitchen, eating and staring at the Indian Country map mounted on the wall above the table.

The map was freckled with the heads of pins—red, white, blue, black, yellow, and green, plus a variety of shapes he'd reverted to when the colors available in pin-, heads had been exhausted. It had been accumulating pins on his office wall since early in his career. When he retired, the fellow who took over his office suggested he might want to keep it, and he'd said he couldn't imagine why. But keep It he had, and almost every pin in it revived a memory.

The first ones (plain steel-headed seamstress pins) he'd stuck in to keep track of places and dates where people had reported seeing a missing aircraft, the problem that then had been occupying his thoughts. The red ones had been next, establishing the delivery pattern of a gasoline tanker truck that was also hauling narcotics to customers on the Checkerboard Reservation. The most common ones were black, representing witchcraft reports. Personally, Leaphorn had lost all faith in the existence of these skinwalkers in his freshman year at Arizona State, but never in the reality of the problem that belief in them causes.

He'd come home for the semester break, full of new-won college sophistication and cynicism. He'd talked Jack Greyeyes into joining him to check out a reputed home base of skinwalkers and thus prove themselves liberated from tradition. They drove south from Shiprock past Rol-Hay Rock and Table Mesa to the volcanic outcrop of ugly black basalt where, according to the whispers in their age group, skinwalkers met in an underground room to perform the hideous initiation that turned recruits into witches. It was a rainy winter night, which cut the risk that someone would see them and accuse them of being witches themselves. Now, more than four decades later, winter rains still produced memorial shivers along Leaphorn's spine.

That night remained one of Leaphorn's most vivid memories. The darkness, the cold rain soaking through his jacket, the beginnings of fear. Greyeyes had decided when they'd reached the outcrop's base that this was a crazy idea.

"I'll tell you what," Greyeyes had said. "Let's not do it, and say we did."

So Leaphorn had taken custody of the flashlight, watched Greyeyes fade into the darkness, and waited for his courage to return. It didn't. He had stood there looking up at the great jumbled hump of rock. Suddenly he had been confronted with both nerve-racking fear and the sure knowledge that what he did now would determine the kind of man he would be. He'd torn his pant leg and bruised his knee on the way up. He'd found the gaping hole the whispers had described, shone his flash into it without locating a bottom, and then climbed down far enough to see where it led. The rumors had described a carpeted room littered with the fragments of corpses. He had found a drifted collection of blown sand and last summer's tumbleweeds.

That had confirmed his skepticism about skin-walker mythology, just as his career in the Navajo Tribal Police had confirmed his belief in what the evil skin-walkers symbolized. He'd lost any lingering doubts about that in his rookie year. He had laughed off a warning that a Navajo oil-field pumper believed two neighbors had witched his daughter, thus causing her fatal illness.

As soon as the four-day mourning period tradition decrees had ended, the pumper had killed the witches with his shotgun.

He thought about that now as he chewed his toast. Eight black pins formed a cluster in the general vicinity of that north-reaching outcrop of Black Mesa that included Yells Back Butte. Why so many there? Probably because that area had twice been the source of bubonic plague cases and once of the deadly hantavirus. Witches offer an easy explanation for unexplained illnesses. To the north, Short Mountain and the Short Mountain Wash country had attracted another cluster of black pins. Leaphorn was pretty sure that was due to John McGinnis, operator of the Short Mountain Trading Post. Not that the pins meant more witch problems around Short Mountain. They represented McGinnis's remarkable talent as a collector and broadcaster of gossip. The old man had a special love for skinwalker tales, and his Navajo customers, knowing his weakness, brought him all the skinwalker sightings and witching reports they could collect. But any sort of gossip was good enough for the old man. Thinking that, Leaphorn reached for his new edition of the Navajo Communications Company telephone directory.

The Short Mountain Trading Post number was not listed. He dialed the Short Mountain Chapter House. Was the trading post still operating? The woman lad picked up the telephone chuckled. "Well," she said, "I'd guess you'd say more or less."

"Is John McGinnis still there? Still alive?"

The chuckle became a laugh. "Oh, yes indeed," she said. "He's still going strong. Don't the bilagaana have a saying that only the good die young?"

Joe Leaphorn finished his toast, put a message on his ring machine for Chee in case he did call, and drove his pickup out of Shiprock heading northwest across the Navaho Nation. He was feeling much more cheerful.

The years that had passed since he'd visited Short Mountain hadn't changed it much—certainly not for the better. The parking area in front was still hard-packed clay, too dry and dense to encourage weeds. The old GMC truck he'd parked next to years ago still rested wheelless on blocks, slowly rusting away. The 1968 Chevy parked in the shade of a juniper at the corner of the sheep pens looked like the one McGinnis had always driven, and a faded sign nailed to the hay barn still proclaimed THIS STORE FOR SALE, INQUIRE WITHIN. But today the benches on the shady porch were empty, with drifts of trash under them. The windows looked even dustier than Leaphorn remembered. In fact, the trading post looked deserted, and the gusty breeze chasing tumbleweeds and dust past the porch added to the sense of desolation. Leaphorn had an uneasy feeling, tinged with sadness, that the woman at the chapter house was wrong. That even tough old John McGinnis had proved vulnerable to too much time and too many disappointments.

The breeze was the product of a cloud Leaphorn had been watching build up over Black Mesa for the last twenty miles. It was too early in the summer to make a serious rain likely but—as bad as the road back to the highway was—even a shower could present a problem down in Short Mountain Wash. Leaphorn climbed out of his pickup to the rumble of thunder and hurried toward the store.

John McGinnis appeared in the doorway, holding the screen door open, staring out at him with his shock of white hair blowing across his forehead and looking twenty pounds too thin for the overalls that engulfed him.

"Be damned," McGinnis said. "Guess it's true what I heard about them finally getting you off the police force. Thought I had me a customer for a while. Didn't they let you keep the uniform?"

"Ya'eeh te'h," Leaphorn said. "It's good to see you." And he meant it. That surprised him a little. Maybe, like McGinnis, the loneliness was beginning to get to him.

"Well, dammit, come on in so I can get this door closed and keep the dirt from blowing in," McGinnis said. "And let me get you something to wet your whistle. You Navajos act like you're born in a barn."

Leaphorn followed the old man through the musty darkness of the store, noticing that McGinnis was more stooped than he had remembered him, that he walked with a limp, that many of the shelves lining the walls were half-empty, that behind the dusty glass where McGinnis kept pawned jewelry very little was being offered, that the racks that once had displayed an array of the slightly gaudy rugs and saddle blankets that the Short Mountain weavers produced were now empty. Which will die first, Leaphorn wondered, the trading post or the trader?

McGinnis ushered him into the back room—his living room, bedroom and kitchen—and waved him into a recliner upholstered with worn red velour. He transferred ice cubes from his refrigerator into a Coca-Cola glass, filled it from a two-liter Pepsi bottle, and handed it to Leaphorn. Then he collected a bourbon bottle and a plastic measuring cup from his kitchen table, seated himself on a rocking chair across from Leaphorn, and began carefully pouring himself a drink.

"As I remember it," he said while he dribbled in the bourbon, "you don't drink hard liquor. If I'm wrong about that, you tell me and I'll get you something better than soda pop."

"This is fine," Leaphorn said.

McGinnis held the measuring cup up, examined it against the light from the dusty window, shook his head, and poured a few drops carefully back into the bottle. He inspected the level again, seemed satisfied, and took a sip.

"You want to do a little visiting first?" McGinnis asked. "Or do you want to get right down to what you came here for?"

"Either way," Leaphorn said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm retired now. Just a civilian. But you know that."

"I heard it," McGinnis said. "I'd retire myself if I could find somebody stupid enough to buy this hellhole."

"Is it keeping you pretty busy?" Leaphorn asked, trying to imagine anyone offering to buy the place. Even tougher trying to imagine McGinnis selling it if someone did. Where would the old man go? What would he do when he got there?

McGinnis ignored the question. "Well," he said, "if you came by to get some gasoline, you're out of luck. The dealers charge me extra for hauling it way out here and I have to tack a little bit on to the price to pay for that. Just offered gasoline anyway to convenience these hard cases that still live around here. But they took to getting their tanks filled up when they get to Tuba or Page, so the gas I got hauled out to make it handy for 'em just sat there and evaporated. So to hell with 'em. I don't fool with it anymore."

McGinnis had rattled that off in his scratchy whiskey voice—an explanation he'd given often enough to have it memorized. He looked at Leaphorn, seeking understanding.

"Can't say I blame you," Leaphorn said.

"Well, you oughtn't to. When the bastards would forget and let the gauge get down to empty, they'd come in, air up their tires, fill the radiator with my water, wash their windshield with my rags, and buy two gallons. Just enough to get 'em into one of them discount stations." Leaphorn shook his head, expressing disapproval.

"And want credit for the gas," McGinnis said, and took another long, thirsty sip.

"But I noticed driving in that you still have a tank up on your loading rack. With a hand pump on it. You keep that just for your own pickup?"

McGinnis rocked a little while, considering the question. And probably wondering, Leaphorn thought, if Leaphorn had noticed that the old man's pickup was double-tanked, like most empty-country vehicles, and wouldn't need many refills.

"Well, hell," McGinnis said. "You know how folks are. Come in here with a dry tank and seventy miles to a station, you got to have something for 'em."

"I guess so," Leaphorn said.

"If you haven't got any gas to give 'em, then they just hang around and waste your time gossiping. Then they want to use your telephone to get some kinfolks to come and bring 'em a can."

He glowered at Leaphorn, took another sip of bourbon. "You ever know a Navajo to be in a hurry? You got 'em underfoot for hours. Drinking up your water and running you out of ice cubes."

McGinnis's face was slightly pink—embarrassment caused by his admission of humanity. "So finally I just quit paying the bills and the telephone company cut me off. I figured keeping a little gasoline was cheaper."

"Probably," Leaphorn said.

McGinnis was glowering at him again, making sure that Leaphorn wouldn't suspect some socially responsible purpose in this decision.

"What'd you come out here for anyway? You just got a lot of time to waste now you're not a cop?"

"I wondered if you ever had any customers named Tijinney?"

"Tijinney?" McGinnis looked thoughtful.

"They had a place over in what used to be the Joint Use Reservation. Over by the northwest corner of Black Mesa. Right on the Navajo-Hopi border."

"I didn't know there was any of that outfit left," McGinnis said. "Sickly bunch, as I remember it. Somebodyalways coming in here for me to take 'em to the doctor over at Tuba or the clinic at Many Farms. And they did a lot of business with old Margaret Cigaret and some of the other shamans, getting curing ceremonials done. They was always coming in here trying to get me to donate a sheep to help feed folks at the sings."

"You remember that map I used to keep?" Leaphorn asked. "Where I'd record things I needed to remember? I looked at it this morning and I noticed I'd marked down a lot of skinwalker gossip over there where they lived. You think all that sickness would account for that?"

"Sure," McGinnis said. "But I got a feeling I know what this is leading up to. That Kinsman boy the Hopi killed, wasn't that over there on the old Tijinney grazing lease?"

"I think so," Leaphorn said.

McGinnis was holding his measuring cup up to the light, squinting at the level. He poured in another ounce or two of bourbon. "Just think so'?" he said. "I heard the federals had that business all locked up. Didn't that young cop that used to work with you catch the man right when he did it? Caught him right in the act, the way I heard it."

"You mean Jim Chee? Yeah, he caught a Hopi named Jano."

"So what are you working on out here?" McGinnis asked. "I know you ain't just visiting. Aren't you supposed to be retired? What're you up to? Working the other side?"

Leaphorn shrugged. "I'm just trying to understand some things."

"Well, now, is that a fact?" McGinnis said. "I was guessing you were trying to find some way to prove that Hopi boy didn't do the killing."

"Why would you think that?"

"Cowboy Dashee was in here just the other day. You remember Cowboy? Deputy with the sheriff's office?"

"Sure."

"Well, Cowboy says the Jano boy didn't do it. He says Chee got the wrong fella."

Leaphorn shrugged, thinking that Jano was probably kinfolks with Dashee, or a member of his kiva. The Hopis lived in a much smaller world than the Navajos. "Did Cowboy tell you who was the right fella?"

McGinnis had stopped rocking. He was staring at Leaphorn, looking puzzled.

"I was guessing wrong, wasn't I? Are you going to tell me what you're up to?"

"I am seeing if I can find out what happened to a young woman who worked for the Indian Health Service.

She was checking on plague cases. Drove out of Tuba City more than a week ago and she still hasn't come back."

McGinnis had been rocking, holding his measuring cup in his left hand, left elbow on the rocker's arm, his forearm moving just enough to compensate for the motion—keeping the bourbon from splashing, keeping the surface level. But he wasn't watching his drink. He was staring out the dusty window. Not out of it, Leaphorn realized. McGinnis was watching a medium-sized spider working on a web between the window frame and a high shelf. He stopped rocking, pushed himself creakily out of the chair. "Look at that," he said. "The sonsabitches are slow learners."

He walked to the window, crumpled a handkerchief from his overalls pocket, chased the spider across the web with it, folded the cloth carefully around the insect, opened the window screen, and shook it out into the yard. Obviously the old man had a lot of practice capturing such insects. Leaphorn remembered once seeing McGinnis capture a wasp the same way, evicting it unharmed through the same window.

McGinnis retrieved his drink and lowered himself, groaning, back into his chair.

"Sonofabitch will be right back first time he sees the door open, "he said.

"I've known people to just step on them," Leaphorn said, but he remembered his mother dealing with spiders in the same way.

"I used to do that," McGinnis said. "Even had some bug spray. But you get older, and you look at 'em up close and you get to thinking about it. You get to thinking they got a right to live, too. They don't kill me. I don't kill them. You step on a beetle, it's like a little murder."

"How about eating sheep?" Leaphorn asked.

McGinnis was rocking again, ignoring him. "Very small murders, I guess you'd have to say. But one thing leads to another."

Leaphorn sipped his Pepsi.

"Sheep? I quit eating meat a while back," McGinnis said. "But you didn't drive all the way in here to talk about my diet. You want to talk about that Health Department girl that run off with their truck."

"You hear anything about that?" Leaphorn asked.

"Woman named Cathy something or other, wasn't it?" McGinnis said. "The Fleacatcher, the folks out here call her, because she collects the damned things. She was in here a time or two, asking questions. Wanted to get some gas once. Bought some soda pop, some crackers. Can of Spam, too. And it wasn't a truck, either, now I think of it. It was a Jeep. A black one."

"About that black Jeep. The family's offering a thousand-dollar reward to anybody who finds it."

McGinnis took another sip, savored it, stared out the window.

"That don't sound like they think she eloped."

"They don't," Leaphorn said. "They think somebody killed her. What sort of questions was she asking when she was in here?"

"About sick folks. Where they might have got the fleas on 'em to get the plague. Did they have sheepdogs? Anybody notice prairie dogs dying? Or dead squirrels? Dead kangaroo rats?" McGinnis shrugged. "Strictly business, she was. Seemed like a mighty tough lady. No time for kidding around. Hard as nails. And I noticed when she was walking around, she was looking at the floor all the time. Looking for rat droppings. And that pissed me off some. And I said, 'Missy, what are you looking for back there behind the counter? You lose something?' And she said, 'I'm looking for mice manure.'" McGinnis produced a rusty laugh and slapped the arm of his rocker. "Came right out with it without a blink and kept right on looking. Quite a lady she is."

"You heard anything about what might have happened to her?"

McGinnis laughed, took another sip of his bourbon. "Sure," he said. "It gives folks something to talk about. Heard all kinds of things. Heard she might have run off with Krause—that fellow she works with." McGinnis chuckled. "That'd be like Golda Meir running off with Yasser Arafat. Heard she might have run off with another young man who was out here with her a time or two. Some sort of student scientist, I think he was. He seemed kind of strange to me."

"Sounds like you don't think she and her boss got along."

"They was in here just twice that I remember," McGinnis said. "First time they never said a word to each other. I guess that's all right if you're stuck in the same truck all day. Second time it was snarling and snapping. Hostile-like."

"I'd heard she didn't like him," Leaphorn said.

"It was mutual. He was paying for some stuff he got, and she walked past him out the door and he said 'Bitch.'" Loud enough for her to hear him?" If she was listening."

"You think he might have knocked her on the head and dumped her somewhere?"

"I figure him for being hell on rodents and fleas, things like that. Not humans," McGinnis said. He thought about that for a moment and chuckled again. "Of course, couple of my customers figure the skinwalkers got off with her."

"What do you think of that?"

"Not much," McGinnis said. "Skinwalkers get a lot of blame around here. Sheepdog dies. Car breaks down. Kid gets the chicken pox. Roof leaks. Skinwalkers get the blame."

"I heard she had driven out toward Yells Back Butte to do some work out there," Leaphorn said. "There always seemed to be a lot of witching talk around there."

"Lot of talk about that place," McGinnis said. "Had its own legend. Old Man Tijinney was supposed to be a witch. Had a bucket of silver dollars buried somewhere. A tub full, the way some told it. When the last of that outfit died off people dug holes all around out there. Some of the city kids didn't even respect the death hogan taboo. I heard they dug in there, too."

"Find anything?"

McGinnis shook his head, sipped his drink. "You ever run into that Dr. Woody fella out there? He comes in here a time or two just about every summer. Working on some sort of a rodent research project here and there, and I think he has some sort of setup near the butte. He was in three or four weeks back to get some stuff and telling me another skinwalker story. I think it's a kind of hobby of his. Collects them. Thinks they're funny."

"Who's he get 'em from?" Leaphorn asked. It was a rare Navajo who'd pass along a skinwalker report to anyone he didn't know pretty well.

McGinnis obviously knew exactly what Leaphorn was thinking.

"Oh, he's been coming out here for years. Long enough to speak good Navajo. Comes and goes. Hires local folks to collect rodent information for him. Friendly guy."

"And he told you a fresh skinwalker story? Something that happened out near Yells Back?"

"I don't know how fresh it was," McGinnis said. "He said Old Man Saltman told him about seeing a skinwalker standing by a bunch of boulders at the bottom of the butte a little bit after sundown, and then disappearing behind them, and when he came out he turned into an owl and went flopping away like he had a broken wing."

"Turned from what into an owl?"

McGinnis looked surprised by the question. "Why, from a man. You know how it goes. Hosteen Saltman said the owl kept flopping around as if he wanted to be followed."

"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "And he didn't follow, of course. That's how the story usually goes."

McGinnis laughed. "I remember about the first or second time I saw you, I asked if you believed in skin-walkers, and you said you just believed in people who believed in 'em, and all the trouble that caused. Is that still the case?"

"Pretty much," Leaphorn said.

"Well then, let me tell you one I'll bet you haven't heard before. There's an old woman who comes in here after shearing time every spring to sell me three or four sacks of wool. Sometimes they call her Grandma Charlie, I think it is, but I believe her name is Old Lady Notah. She was in here just yesterday telling me about seeing a skinwalker."

McGinnis raised his glass in a toast to Leaphorn. "Now listen to this one. She said she was out looking after a bunch of goats she has over by Black Mesa—right on the edge of the Hopi Reservation—and she notices somebody down the slope messing around with something on the ground. Like hunting for something. Anyway, this fella disappears behind the junipers for a minute or two and then emerges, and now he's different. Now he's bigger, and all white with a big round head, and when he turned her way, his whole face flashed."

"Flashed?"

"She said like the flash thing on her daughter's little camera."

"What did the man look like when he quit being a witch?"

"She didn't stick around to see," McGinnis said. "But wait a minute. You ain't heard all of it yet. She said when this skinwalker turned around he looked like he had an elephant's trunk coming out of his back. Now how about that?"

"You're right," Leaphorn said. "That's a new one."

"And come to think of it, you can add that one to your Yells Back Butte stories. That's about where Old Lady Notah has her grazing lease."

"Well, now," Leaphorn said, "I think I might want to talk to her about that. I'd like to hear some more details."

"Me, too," McGinnis said, and laughed. "She said the skinwalker looked like a snowman."

Chapter Seven

THEY'D AGREED TO MEET FOR BREAKFAST, early because Janet had to drive south to Phoenix and Chee had to go about as far north to Tuba City. "Let's make it seven on the dot, and not by Navajo time," Janet had said.

There he was, a little before seven, waiting for her at a table in the hotel coffee shop, thinking about the night he'd walked into her apartment in Gallup. He'd been carrying flowers, a videotape of a traditional Navajo wedding and the notion that she could explain away the way she had used him, and—

He didn't want to think about that. Not now and not ever. What could change that she'd gotten information from him and tipped off the law professor, the man she'd told Chee she hated?

Before he'd finally slept, he decided he would simply ask her if they were still engaged. "Janet," he would say. "Do you still want to marry me?" Get right to the point. But this morning, with his head still full of gloomy thoughts, he wasn't so sure. Did he really want her to say yes? He decided she probably would. She had left her high-society inside-the-Beltway life and come back to Indian Country, which said she really loved him. But that would carry with it, in some subtle way, her understanding that he would climb the ladder of success into the social strata where she felt at home.

There was another possibility. She had taken her first reservation job to escape her law professor lover. Did this return simply mean she wanted the man to pursue her again? Chee turned away from that thought and remembered how sweet it had been before she had betrayed him (or, as she saw it, before he had insulted her because of his unreasonable jealousy). He could land a federal job in Washington. Could he be happy there? He thought of himself as a drunk, worthless, dying of a destroyed liver. Was that what had killed Janet's Navajo father? Had he drowned himself in whiskey to escape Janet's ruling-caste mother?

When he'd exhausted all the dark corners that scenario offered, he turned to an alternative. Janet had come back to him. She'd be willing to live on the Big Rez, wife of a cop, living in what her friends would rate as slum housing, where high culture was a second-run movie. In that line of thought, love overcame all. But it wouldn't. She'd yearn for the life she'd given up. He would see it. They'd be miserable.

Finally he thought of Janet as court-appointed defense attorney and of himself as arresting officer. But by the time she walked in, exactly on time, he was back to thinking of her as an Eastern social butterfly, and that thought gave this Flagstaff dining room a worn, grungy look that he'd never noticed before.

He pulled back a chair for her.

"I guess you're used to classier places in Washington," he said, and instantly wished he hadn't so carelessly touched the nerve of their disagreement.

Janet's smile wavered. She looked at him a moment, somberly, and looked away. "I'll bet the coffee is better here."

"It's always fresh anyway," he said. "Or almost always."

A teenage boy delivered two mugs and a bowl filled with single-serving-size containers labeled "non-dairy creamer."

Janet looked over her mug at him. "Jim."

Chee waited. "What?"

"Oh, nothing. I guess this is a time to talk business."

"So we take off our friend hats, and put on adversary hats?"

"Not really," Janet said. "But I'd like to know if you're absolutely certain Robert Jano killed Officer Kinsman."

"Sure I'm certain," Chee said. He felt his face flush—"You must have read the arrest report. I was there, wasn't I? And what do you do with it if I say I'm not sure? Do you tell the jury that even the arresting officer told you that he had reasonable doubts?"

He'd tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but Janet's face told him he hadn't managed it. Another raw nerve touched.

"I'd do absolutely nothing with it," she said. "It's just that Jano swears he didn't do it. I'll be working with him. I'd like to believe him."

"Don't," Chee said. He sipped his coffee and put down the mug. It occurred to him that he hadn't noticed how it tasted. He picked up one of the containers-. "'Non-dairy creamer,'" he read. "Produced, I understand, on non-dairy farms."

Janet managed a smile. "You know what? Doesn't this episode we're having here remind you of the first time we met? Remember? In the holding room at the San Juan County Jail in Aztec. You were trying to keep me from bonding out that old man."

"And you were trying to keep me from talking to him."

"But I got him out." Janet was grinning at him now.

"But not until I got the information I wanted," Chee said.

"Okay," Janet said, still grinning. "We'll call that one a tie. Even though you had to cheat a little."

"How about our next competition," Chee said. "Remember the old alcoholic? You thought Leaphorn and I were picking on him. Until your client pleaded guilty."

"That was a sad, sad case," Janet said. She sipped her coffee. "Some things about it still bother me. Some things about this one bother me, too."

"Like what? Like the fact Jano is a Hopi and the Hopis are peaceful people? Nonviolent?"

"There's that, of course," Janet said. "But everything he told me has a sort of logic to it and a lot of it can be checked out."

"Like what? What can be checked?"

"Like, for example, he said he was going to collect an eagle his kiva needed for a ceremonial. His brothers in is religious group can confirm that. That made it a religious pilgrimage, on which no evil thoughts are allowed."

"Such as thoughts of revenge? Such as getting even with Kinsman for the prior arrest? The kind of thoughts D.A. will want to suggest to the jury if he's going for malice, premeditation. The death penalty stuff."

"Right," she said.

"They would confirm why he was going for the eagle, and the prosecution would concede it," Chee said. |*But how do you prove that deep down Jano didn't want 1 even the score?" Janet shrugged.

"J. D. Mickey will probably state that in his opening. He'll say that Jano had gone onto the Navajo reservation to poach an eagle—a crime in itself. He'll say that Officer Benjamin Kinsman of the Navajo Tribal Police had previously arrested him doing the same crime last year and that Jano got off on some sort of technicality. He'll say that when he saw Kinsman was after him again, Jano was enraged. So instead of releasing the bird, getting rid of the evidence and trying to escape, he let Kinsman catch him, caught him off-guard and brained him."

"Is that the way Mickey is planning it?"

"I'm just guessing," Chee said.

"I have no doubt at all that Mickey will go for death. It would be the first one since the 1994 Congress allowed federal death penalties and there would be a media coverage circus." Janet doctored her coffee with the nondairy creamer, tasted it. "Mickey for Congress," she intoned. "Your law-and-order candidate."

"That's the way I see it," Chee said. "But the courts would have to rule that Kinsman was a federal officer."

"People in criminal justice say he was." Chee shrugged. "Probably."

"Which led the U.S. Department of Justice to unplug him from the various life support machines," Janet said. "So Benjamin Kinsman could hurry up and be a murder victim instead of the subject of criminal assault. Thereby simplifying the paperwork."

"Come on, Janet," Chee said. "Be fair. Ben was already dead. The machines were breathing for him, making his heart pump. Kinsman's spirit had gone away."

Janet was sipping her coffee. "You're right about one thing," she said. "This is good fresh Java. Not that weird perfumed stuff the yuppie bars sell for four dollars a cup."

"What else could be checked out?" Chee asked. "In Jano's version."

Janet raised her hand. "First something else," she said. "How about that autopsy? The law requires one in homicides, sort of, but a lot of Navajos don't like the idea and sometimes they're skipped. And I heard one of the docs saying something about organ donations?"

"Kinsman was a Mormon. So were his parents. He'd had a donor card registered," Chee said, studying her as he said it. "But you already knew that. You were changing the subject."

"I'm the defense attorney," she said. "You think my client is guilty. I've got to be careful what I tell you."

Chee nodded. "But if there's something that can be checked out that I'm missing, something that could help his case, then I ought to know about it. I'm not going to go out there and destroy the evidence. Don't you—"

He had started to say: "Don't you trust me?" But she would have said she did. And then she would have returned the question, and he had no idea how he could answer it.

She was leaning forward, elbows on table, chin resting on clasped hands, waiting for him to finish.

"End of statement," he said. "Sure, I think he's guilty. I was there. Had I been a little faster, I would have stopped it."

"Cowboy doesn't think he's guilty."

"Cowboy? Cowboy Dashee?"

"Yes," Janet said. "Your old friend, Deputy Sheriff Cowboy Dashee. He told me Jano is his cousin. He's known him since childhood. They were playmates. Close friends. Cowboy told me that thinking Robert Jano would kill somebody with a rock is like thinking Mother Teresa would strangle the Pope."

"Really?"

"That's what he said. His exact words, in fact."

"How come you got in touch with Cowboy?"

"I didn't. He called the D.A.'s office. Asked who'd be assigned to handle Jano's defense. They told him a new hire would be assigned to it, and he left a message for whoever that would be to give him a call. It was me, so I called him."

"Well, hell," Chee said. "How come he didn't contact me?"

"I don't have to explain that, do I? He was afraid you'd think he was trying—"

"Sure," Chee said. "Of course."

Janet looked sympathetic. "That makes it worse for you, doesn't it? I know you guys go way back."

"Yeah, we do," Chee said. "Cowboy's about as good a friend as I ever had."

"Well, he's a cop, too. He'll understand."

"He's also a Hopi," Chee said. "And some wise man once told us that blood's thicker than water." He sighed. "What did Cowboy tell you?"

"He said Jano had caught his eagle. He was coming home with it. He heard noises. He checked. He found the officer on the ground, head bleeding."

Chee shook his head. "I know. That's the statement he gave us. When he finally decided to talk about it."

"It could be true."

"Sure," Chee said. "It could be true. But how about the slash on his forearm, and his blood mixed with Ben's? And no blood on the eagle? And where's the perpetrator, if it wasn't Jano? Ben Kinsman didn't hit himself on the head with that rock. It wasn't suicide."

"The eagle flew away," Janet said. "And don't be sarcastic."

That stopped Chee cold. He sat for a long moment, just staring at her.

She looked puzzled. "What?"

"He told you the eagle flew away?"

"That's right. When he caught it, Jano was under some brush or something," she said. "A blind, I guess, with something on a cord for bait. He tried to grab the eagle by the legs and just got one of them, and it slashed him on the arm and he released it."

"Janet," Chee said. "The eagle didn't fly away. It was in a wire cage just about eight or ten feet from where Jano was standing over Kinsman."

Janet put down her coffee cup.

Chee frowned. "He told you it got away? But he knew we had it. Why would he tell you that?"

She shrugged. Looked down at her hands.

"And it didn't have any blood on its feathers. At least, I didn't see any. I'm sure the lab would check for it.

"If you think I'm lying, look." He held out his hand, displaying the still healing slash on its side. "I picked up the cage to move it. That's where its talon caught me. Ripped the skin."

Janet's face was flushed. "You didn't have to show We anything," she said. "I didn't think you were lying. I'll ask Jano about it. Maybe I misunderstood. I must have."

Chee saw Janet was embarrassed. "I'll bet I know what happened," he said. "Jano didn't want to talk about the eagle because it got too close to violating kiva secrecy rules. I think it would become a symbolic messenger to God, to the spirit world. Its role would be sacred. He just couldn't talk about it, so he said he turned it loose."

"Maybe so," she said.

"I'll bet he just wanted to divert you. To talk about something besides a touchy religious subject."

Janet's expression told him she doubted that.

"I'll ask him about it," Janet repeated. "I really haven't had much chance to talk to him yet. Just a few minutes. I just got here."

"But he told you he didn't kill Kinsman. Did he tell you who did?"

"Well," Janet said, and hesitated. "You know, Jim, I have to be careful talking about this. Let me just say that I guess whoever it was who had hit Officer Kinsman with the rock must have heard Jano coming and went away. Jano said it started raining about the time you got there. By the time you had him handcuffed in the patrol car, and called in for help, and tried to make Kinsman comfortable, any tracks would have been washed away."

Chee didn't comment on that. He had to be careful, too.

"Don't you think so? Or did you find other tracks?"

"You mean other than Jano's?"

"Of course. Did you have a chance to look for any before it started raining?"

Chee considered the question, why she had asked it and whether she already knew the answer.

"You want some more coffee?"

"Okay," Janet said.

Chee signaled the waiter, thinking about what he was about to do. It was fair, if her effort to get him to state that he hadn't looked for other tracks was fair.

"Janet, Jano told you how he got those deep slashes on his forearm. Did he mention exactly when he got scratched?"

The boy brought the coffee, refilled their cups, asked if they were ready to order breakfast.

"Give us another minute," Chee said.

"When?" Janet said. "Isn't that obvious? It would have been either while he was catching the eagle or when he was putting it in the cage. Or somewhere in between. I didn't quiz him about it."

"But did he say? Specifically when?"

"You mean in relation to what?" she asked, grinning at him. "Come on, Jim. Say it. The police lab people have told you that Jano's blood is mixed with Kinsman's on Kinsman's shirt. The lab is probably doing some of their new molecular magic to tell them if Jano's blood had been exposed to the air longer than Kinsman's, and how much longer, and all that."

"Can they do that now?" he asked, wishing he hadn't been pressing her on this, making her angry for no reason. "They probably would if they could, because the official, formal theory of the crime will be that Jano struggled with Kinsman and got his arm slashed on Kinsman's belt buckle."

"Can they do it? I don't know. Probably. But how can you get cut on a belt buckle?"

"Kinsman liked to bend the rules when he could. Put a feather in his uniform hat, that sort of thing. He put a fancy buckle on his belt to see how long it would be before I told him to take it off. Anyway, that's why the timing seems to be important."

"Well, go ahead then. Ask me. Just exactly to the minute, when did Jano get his arm slashed?"

"Okay," Chee said. "Exactly, precisely when?"

"Ha!" Janet said. "You're treading on client confidentiality."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"You know what I mean. I see J. D. Mickey with a new hundred-dollar haircut and an Italian silk suit addressing the jury. 'Ladies and gentlemen. The defendant's blood was found mixed with the blood of the victim on Officer Kinsman's uniform.' And then he gets into all the blood chemistry stuff." Janet raised her hand, dropped her voice—providing a poor imitation of Mickey's courtroom dramatics. "'But! But! He told an officer of this court that he suffered the cut later. After he had moved Officer Kinsman.'"

"So I guess you're not going to tell me," Chee said.

"Right," Janet said. She put down her menu, studied him. Her expression was somber. "A little while ago, I might have."

Chee let his expression ask the question.

"How can I trust you when you don't trust me?"

Chee waited.

She shook her head. "I'm not just a shyster trying for a reputation with some sort of cheap acquittal," she said. "I really want to know if Robert Jano is innocent. I want to know what happened." She put down her menu and stared at him, inviting a response.

"I understand that," Chee said.

"I respect—" she began. Her voice tightened. She paused, looked away from him. "When I asked you about the tracks, I wasn't trying to trick you," she said. "I asked because I think if somebody else had been there and left any traces you would have found them. That is, if anybody in the world could have found them. And if there weren't any, then maybe I'm wrong and maybe Robert Jano did kill your officer, and maybe I should be trying to talk him into a plea bargain. So I ask you, but you don't trust me, so you change the subject."

Chee had put down his menu to listen to this. Now he picked it up, opened it. "And now, once again, I think we should change the subject. How were things in Washington?"

"I'm really not going to have time for breakfast." She put down her menu, said, "Thanks for the coffee," and walked out.

Chapter Eight

"THERE'S JUST ONE THING I can tell you and feel absolutely certain about it," said Richard Krause without looking up from the box full of assorted stuff he was picking through. "Cathy Pollard didn't just run off with our Jeep. Something happened to her. But don't ask me what."

Leaphorn nodded. "That's what my client believes," he said. My client. It was the first time he'd used that term, and he didn't like the sound of it. Was this what he was making of himself? A private investigator?

Krause was probably in his late forties, Leaphorn guessed, big-boned, lean and gristly, probably an athlete in college, with a shock of blondish hair just showing signs of gray. He was sitting on a high stool behind a table in a faded green work shirt, dividing his attention between Leaphorn and stacks of transparent Ziploc bags that seemed to contain small dead insects—fleas or lice. Or maybe ticks.

"I guess you're working for her family," Krause said. He opened another bag, extracted a flea, and put it on a slide, which he placed in a binocular microscope. "Do they have any theories?"

"Ideas float around," Leaphorn said, asking himself if the ethics of private investigators, presuming they had them, allowed one to reveal the identity of clients. He'd deal with that when circumstances required. "The obvious ones. A sex crime. A nervous breakdown. A rejected boyfriend. Things like that."

Krause adjusted the microscope's focus, stared into the lenses, grunted and removed the slide. In its former existence this temporary lab had been a low-down-payment double-wide mobile home, and the heat of the summer sun radiated through its aluminum roof. The swamp-cooler fan roared away at its highest setting, mixing damp air into the dry heat. The rows of specimen jars on the shelf behind Krause were sweating. So was Krause. So was Leaphorn.

"I really doubt there's a boyfriend involved in this," he said. "She didn't seem to have one. Never talked about it anyway." He transferred the flea into another Ziploc bag, wrote something on an adhesive tag, and stuck it in place. "Of course, there could be a jilted one floating around somewhere in the past. That wouldn't be the sort of thing Cathy would have chatted about, even if she chatted. Which she didn't do much."

The cluttered, makeshift laboratory was reminding Leaphorn of his student career at Arizona State, which in those long-ago days required a mix of natural science courses even if your major was anthropology. Then he realized it wasn't as much what he was seeing as what he was smelling—those tissue-preserving, soap-defying chemicals that drove the scent of death deep into the pores of even the cleanest students.

"Cathy was a very serious lady. Focused. Just talked about business," Krause was saying. "She had a thing about bubonic plague. Thought it was downright criminal that we protect the middle-class urbanites from these communicable diseases and let the vectors do their thing out here in the boondocks where nobody gets killed except the working class. Cathy sounded like one of those old-fashioned Marxists sometimes."

"Tell me about the Jeep," Leaphorn said.

Krause stopped what he'd been doing, stared at Leaphorn, frowning. "The Jeep? What's to tell?"

"If there's foul play involved in this, the truck will probably be how the case gets broken."

Krause shook his head. Laughed. "It was just a black Jeep. They all look alike."

"It's harder to dispose of a vehicle," Leaphorn said.

"Than a body?" Krause said. "Sure. I see what you mean. Well, actually it was a pretty fancy model. We heard it was one of those seized by the DEA guys in a drug bust and turned over to the Health Department. Had a white pinstripe. Very hi-fi radio with special speakers. Telephone installed. The cowboy model. No top. Roll bars. Winch on the front. Tow-chain hooks and a trailer hitch on the back. I think it was three years old, but you know they don't change those models much. I drove it myself some until Cathy got it away from me."

"How'd that happen?"

"What Cathy wanted, Cathy got." He shrugged. "Actually, she had a good argument for it. Spent more time out in the bad country while I was doing the paperwork inhere."

"I'm trying to get the word around that there's a reward out for whoever finds that vehicle. A thousand dollars."

Krause raised his eyebrows. "The family sounds serious then," he said, grinning. "What if she just drives in here and parks it? Can I call in and collect?"

"Probably not," Leaphorn said. "But I'd appreciate the call."

"I'll be happy to let you know."

"How about a man named Victor Hammar?" Leaphorn asked. "I'm told they knew each other. You wouldn't put him in the boyfriend category?"

Krause looked surprised. "Hammar? I don't think so." He shook his head, grinning.

"One of the theories has it that Hammar was in love with her. The way it's told, she didn't share the sentiment, but she couldn't get rid of him."

"Naw," Krause said. "I don't think so. Matter of fact, she invited him out here a while back. He's working on his doctorate in vertebrate biology. He's interested in what we're doing."

"Just in what you're doing? Not in the woman who's doing it?"

"Oh, they're friends," Krause said. "And he probably feels those glandular urges. Young male, you know. And he likes her, but I think that was because she sort of gave him a little mothering when he was new in the country. He has a sort of funny accent. No friends in the department, I'll bet. From what I've seen of him, probably not many friends anywhere else either. So along comes Cathy. She's like a lot of these kids who grow up rich. They like doing good for the working-class losers. So she helped him along. Makes 'em feel less guilty about being part of the parasitic privileged class."

"When you think about it, though," Leaphorn said, "what you described is sort of typical of these stalker homicides. You know, the kindhearted girl takes pity on the poor nerd and he thinks it's love."

"I guess you could ask him. He's out here again and said he was coming in to get copies of some of our mortality statistics."

"Mortality?"

"In fact, he's late," Krause said, looking at his watch. "Yeah, mortality. Die-offs among mammal communities in plague outbreaks, rabbit fever, hantavirus, that sort of thing. How many kangaroo rats survive compared with ground squirrels, pack rats, prairie dogs, so forth. But my point is, it's the data that brings him out, not Cathy. Take today, for example. He knows Cathy's not here, but he's coming anyway."

"He knew she was missing?"

"He called a couple of days after she didn't show up. Wanted to talk to her."

Leaphorn considered this.

"How well do you remember that conversation?"

Krause looked surprised, frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You know: 'he said,' and 'I said,' and 'he said.' That sort of thing. How did he react?"

Krause laughed. "You're hard to convince, aren't you?"

"Just curious."

"Well, first he asked whether we'd wrapped up the work on the plague cases. I said no, we still didn't know where the last one got it. I told him Cathy was still working on that one. Then he asked if we'd found any live kangaroo rats up around the Disbah place. That's one of the places where a hantavirus case had turned up. I told him we hadn't."

Krause tore off a sheet from a roll of paper towels and swabbed the sheen of perspiration from his forehead. "Let's see now. Then he said he had some time and thought he'd come out and maybe go along with Cathy if she was still chasing down prairie dogs and plague fleas. He wanted to ask her if she'd mind. I said she wasn't here. He said when'll she be back. So I told him about her not coming to work. Couple of days I guess it was by then." Leaphorn waited. Krause shook his head. Went back to sorting through his bags. Now the chemical smell reminded Leaphorn of the Indian Health Service Hospital at Gallup, of the gurney rolling down the hallway carrying Emma away from him. Of the doctor explaining-He drew a deep breath, wanting to finish this. Wanting out of this laboratory.

"She didn't tell you she was taking off?"

"Just left a note. Said she was going back up to Yells Back to collect some fleas."

"Nothing else?"

Krause shook his head.

"Could I see the note?"

"If I can find it. It probably went in the wastebasket but I'll look for it."

"How did Hammar react to what you told him?"

"I don't know. I think he said something like, whaddaya mean? Where did she go? What did she tell you? Where'd she leave the truck? That sort of thing. Then he seemed worried. What did the police say? Was anybody looking for her? So forth."

Leaphorn considered. That response seemed normal. Or well rehearsed.

There was the sound of tires crunching over gravel, a car door slamming.

"That's probably Hammar," Krause said. "Ask him yourself."

Chapter Nine

ABOUT A MONTH INTO his first semester at Arizona State, Leaphorn had overcome the tendency of young Navajos to think that all white people look alike. But the fact was that Victor Hammar looked a lot like a bigger, less sun-baked weightlifter version of Richard Krause. At second glance Leaphorn noticed Hammar was also several years younger, his eyes a paler shade of blue, his ears a bit flatter to his skull, and—since cops are conditioned to look for "identifying marks"—a tiny scar beside his chin had defied sunburning and remained white.

Hammar showed less interest in Leaphorn. He shook hands, displayed irregular teeth with a perfunctory smile, and got down to business.

"Is she back yet?" he asked Krause. "Have you heard anything from her?"

"Neither one," Krause said.

Hammar issued a violent non-English epithet. A German curse, Leaphorn guessed. He sat on a stool across from Leaphorn, shook his head, and swore again—this time in English.

"Yeah," Krause said. "It's worrying me, too."

"And the police," Hammar said. "What are they doing? Nothing, I think. What do they tell you?"

"Nothing," Krause said. "I think they put the Jeep on the list to be watched for and—"

"Nothing!" Hammar said. "How could that be?"

"She's a full-grown woman," Krause said. "There's no evidence of any crime, except maybe for getting off with our vehicle. I guess—"

"Nonsense! Nonsense! Of course something has happened to her. She's been gone too long. Something happened to her."

Leaphorn cleared his throat. "Do you have any theories about that?"

Hammar stared at Leaphorn. "What?"

Krause said, "Mr. Leaphorn here is a retired policeman. He's trying to find Catherine."

Hammar was still staring. "Retired policeman?"

Leaphorn nodded, thinking Hammar would have no idea of what he knew and what he didn't and trying to decide how he would lead into this.

"Do you remember where you were July eighth? Were you here in Tuba then?"

"No," Hammar said, still staring.

Leaphorn waited.

"I'd already gone back. Back to the university."

"You're on a faculty somewhere?"

"I am just a graduate assistant. At Arizona State. I had lectures that day. Introduction to the laboratory for freshmen." Hammar grimaced. "Introduction to Biology. Awful course. Stupid students. And why are you asking me these questions? Do you—"

"Because I was asked to help find the woman," Leaphorn said, thereby violating his rule and Navajo courtesy by interrupting a speaker. But he wanted to cut off any questions from Hammar. "I will just collect a little more information and be out of here so you gentlemen can get back to your work. I wonder if Miss Pollard might have left any papers in the office here. If she did, they might be helpful."

"Papers?" Krause said. "Well, she had sort of a ledger and she kept her field notes in that. Is that what you mean?"

"Probably," Leaphorn said.

"Her aunt called me from Santa Fe yesterday and told me you'd come by," Krause said, shuffling through material stacked on a desk in the corner of the room. "I think her name is Vanders. Something like that. Cathy was planning to visit her last weekend. I thought maybe that's where she'd gone."

"You're working for old Mrs. Vanders," Hammar said, still staring at Leaphorn. "Here's the sort of stuff that might be useful," Krause said, handing Leaphorn an accordion file containing a jumble of papers. "She's going to need it if she comes back."

"When she gets back," Hammar said. "When."

Leaphorn flipped through the papers, noticing that most of the entries Catherine had made were in a small irregular scribble, hard to read and even harder for a layman to interpret. Like his own notes, they were a shorthand that communicated only to her.

"Fort C," Leaphorn said. "What's that?"

"Centers for Disease Control," Krause said. "The feds who run the lab at Fort Collins."

"IHS. That's Indian Health Service?"

"Right," Krause said. "Actually, that's who we're working for here, but technically for the Arizona health people. Part of the big, complicated team."

Leaphorn had skipped to the back.

"Lots of references to A. Nez," he said.

"Anderson Nez. One of the three fatalities in the last outbreak. Mr. Nez was the last one, and the only one we haven't found the source for," Krause said.

"And who's this Woody?"

"Ah," said Hammar. "That jerk!"

"That's Albert Woody," Krause said. "Al. He's into cell biology, but I guess you'd call him an immunologist. Or a pharmacologist. Microbiologist. Or maybe a—I don't know." Krause chuckled. "What's his title, Hammar? He's closer to your field than mine."

"He's a damned jerk," Hammar said. "He has a grant from the Institute of Allergy and Immunology, but they say

I he also works for Merck, or Squibb, or one of the other pharmaceutical firms. Or maybe for all of them."

"Hammar doesn't like him," Krause said. "Hammar was trapping rodents somewhere or other this summer and Woody accused him of interfering with one of his own projects. He yelled at you, didn't he?"

"I should have kicked his butt," Hammar said.

"He's on this plague project, too?"

"No. No. Not really. He's been working out here for years, since we had an outbreak in the nineteen-eighties. He's studying how some hosts of vectors—like prairie dogs, or field mice, and so forth—can be infected by bacteria or viruses and stay alive while others of the same species are killed. For example, plague comes along and wipes out about a billion rodents, and you've got empty burrows and nothing but bones for a hundred miles. But here and there you find a colony still alive. They carry it, but it didn't kill them. They're sort of reservoir colonies. They breed, renew the rodent population, and then the plague spreads again. Probably from them, too. But nobody really knows for sure how it works."

"It's the same with snowshoe rabbits in the north of Finland," Hammar said. "And in your Arctic Alaska. Different bacteria but the same business. It's a seven-year cycle with that, regular as a clock. Everywhere rabbits, then the fever sweeps through and nothing but dead rabbits and it takes seven years to build back up and then the fever comes and wipes them out again."

"And the drug companies are paying Woody?"

"Wasting their money," Hammar said. He walked to the door, opened it, and stood looking out.

"It's more like they're looking for the Golden Fleece," Krause said. "I just have a sort of hazy idea of what Woody's doing, but I think he's trying to pin down what happens inside a mammal so that it can live with a pathogen that kills its kinfolks. If he learns that, maybe it's just a little step toward understanding intercellular chemistry. Or maybe it's worth a mega-trillion dollars."

Leaphorn let that hang while he sorted through what he remembered of Organic Chemistry 211 and Biology 331 from his own college days. That was vague now, but he recalled what the surgeon who'd operated on Emma's brain tumor had told him as if it were yesterday. He could still see the man and hear the anger in his voice. It was just a simple staph infection, he'd said, and a few years ago a dozen different antibiotics would have killed the bacteria. But not now. "Now the microbes are winning the war," he'd said. And Emma's small body, under the sheet on the gurney rolling down the hallway, was the proof of that.

"Well, maybe that's exaggerating," Krause said. "Maybe it would be just a few hundred billion."

"You're talking about a way to make better antibiotics?" Leaphorn said. "That's what Woody's after?"

"Not exactly. More likely he'd like to find the way a mammal's immune system is being adjusted so that it can kill the microbe. It would probably be more like a vaccine."

Leaphorn looked up from the journal. "Miss Pollard seems to connect him to Nez," he said. "The note says: 'Check Woody on Nez.' Wonder what that would mean."

"I wouldn't know," Krause said.

"Maybe Nez was that guy Woody had working for him," Hammar said. "Sort of a smallish fellow, with his hair cut real short. He'd put out traps for Woody and help him take blood samples from the animals. Things like that."

"Maybe so," Krause said. "I know that over the years Woody has located a bunch of prairie dog colonies that seem to resist the plague. And he was also collecting kangaroo rats, field mice, and so forth. The sort of rodents that spread the hantavirus. Cathy said he's been working with one near Yells Back Butte. That might be why Cathy was going up there. If Nez had been working for Woody, maybe she was going up there to see if he knew where Nez was when he got infected."

"Could Mr. Nez have been bitten up there?" Leaphorn asked. "I understand there'd been a couple of plague victims from that area in the past."

"I don't think so," Krause said. "She had pretty well pinned down where Nez had been during the period he was infected. It was mostly up south of here. Between Tuba and Page."

Krause had been sorting slides while he talked. Now he looked up at Leaphorn. "You know much about bacteria?"

"Just the basic stuff. Freshman-level biology."

"Well, with plague, the flea just puts a tiny bit in your bloodstream, and then it usually takes five or six days, sometimes longer, for the bacteria to multiply enough so you start showing any symptoms, usually a fever. Or maybe if you get bitten by a bunch of fleas, or they're loaded with some really virulent stuff, then it's quicker. So you skip back a few days from when the fever showed up and find out where the victim's been from that date to maybe a week earlier. When you know that, then you start checking those places for dead mammals and infected fleas."

Hammar was still looking out the door. He said: "Poor Mr. Nez. Killed by a flea. Too bad the flea didn't bite Al Woody."

Chapter Ten

LEAPHORN BLAMED IT ON BEING LONELY—this bad habit he'd developed of talking too much. And now he was paying the price. Instead of waiting until he'd arrived at Louisa Bourebonette's little house in Flagstaff to tell her of his adventures, the empty silence in his Tuba City motel room had provoked him into babbling away on the telephone. He'd told her about his visit with John McGinnis after his talk with Krause. He had given her a thumbnail sketch of Hammar and asked if she could think of an easy, make-no-waves way to check on his alibi.

"Can't you just call the police in Tempe and have them do it? I thought that's what was done."

"If I was still a cop I could, providing we had any evidence a crime had been committed and some reason to believe Mr. Hammar was a suspect in this crime."

"Lieutenant Chee would do it."

"If he would, that would take care of problem one. We'd still have problems two and three," Leaphorn said. "How is Chee going to explain to the Tempe police why he wants them to poke into the life of a citizen when there's not even a crime to suspect him of committing?"

"Yeah," Louisa said. "I see it. Academics can be touchy about things like that. I'll handle it myself."

Which left Leaphorn merely breathing into the phone for a moment or two. Then he said: "What?"

"Hammar was supposed to be teaching a lab class July eighth, isn't that what he said? So I have a friend over in our biology department who knows people in biology down at ASU. He calls somebody in his good-old-boy network down at Tempe and they ask around and if Mr. Hammar cut his lab class that day—or got somebody to handle it—then we know it. That sound okay?"

"That sounds great," Leaphorn said. It would also have been a great place to end the conversation, just to tell Louisa he'd be there for dinner tonight and say goodbye. But, alas, he kept on talking.

He told her about Dr. Woody and his project. Even though Louisa's field was ethnology and, even worse, mythology—on the extreme opposite end of the academic spectrum from microbiology—Louisa had heard of Woody. She said the fellow she'd ask to make the call to Tempe for her sometimes worked with the man, doing blood and tissue studies in his microbiology lab at the NAU.

Thus the restful evening Leaphorn had yearned for with Louisa had turned into a threesome with Professor Michael Perez invited to join them.

"He's one of the brighter ones," Louisa had said, thereby separating him from a good many of the hard science faculty, whom she found too narrow for her taste. "He'll be interested in what you're doing, and maybe he can tell you something helpful."

Leaphorn doubted that. In fact, he was wondering if he would ever learn anything helpful about Catherine Pollard. He'd classified what McGinnis had told him as no higher than interesting, and yesterday had left him wondering why he was wasting so much energy on what seemed more and more like a hopeless cause. He'd spent weary hours locating the sheep camp where Anderson Nez resided during the grazing months. As expected, he found the Navajo taboo against talking about the dead adding to the usual taciturnity of rural folks dealing with a citified stranger. Except for a teenager who remembered Catherine Pollard coming by earlier collecting fleas off their sheepdogs, checking rodent burrows and quizzing everyone about where Nez might have been, he learned just about nothing at the camp beyond confirming what Hammar had told him. Yes indeed, Nez had worked part-time for several summers helping Dr. Woody catch rodents.

He arrived at Louisa's house just before sunset with the high dry-weather ice crystals dusted across the stratosphere reflecting red. The spot where he usually parked his pickup in her narrow driveway was occupied by a weather-beaten Saab sedan. Its owner was standing beside Louisa in the doorway as Leaphorn came up the steps—a lanky man with a narrow face and a narrow white goatee whose bright blue eyes were inspecting Leaphorn with undisguised curiosity.

"Joe," Louisa said. "This is Mike Perez, who'll tell us both more about molecular biology than we want to know."

They shook hands.

"Or about bacteria, or virology," Perez said, grinning. "We don't understand the virus end of it yet, but that doesn't keep us from pretending we do."

Louisa had presumed that Leaphorn, being Navajo, enjoyed mutton so the entree was lamb chops. Having been raised a sheep-camp Navajo, Leaphorn was both thoroughly tired of mutton and far too polite to say so. He ate his lamb chop with green mint jelly and listened to Professor Perez discuss Woody's work with rodents. Two or three questions early in the meal had established that Perez seemed to know absolutely nothing that would connect him to Catherine Pollard. But he knew an awful lot about the career and personality of Dr. Albert Woody.

"Mike thinks Woody's going to be one of the great ones," Louisa said. "Nobel Prize winner, books written about him. The Man Who Saved Humanity. A giant of medical science. That sort of thing."

Perez looked embarrassed by that. "Louisa tends to exaggerate. It's an occupational hazard of mythologists, you know," he said. "Hercules wasn't really any stronger than Gorgeous George, and Medusa just had her hair done in cornrows, and Paul Bunyan's blue ox was really brown. But I do think that Woody has a shot at it. Maybe one chance in a hundred. But that's better odds than Speed Ball lottery."

Louisa offered Leaphorn another chop. "Everyone in the hard sciences is making the headlines these days," she said. "It's 'breakthrough of the month' season. If it isn't a new way to clone toe-jam fungus, it's rediscovering life on Mars."

"I saw something about that life on Mars business," Leaphorn said. "It sounded like that molecules-in-the-asteroid discovery back in the sixties. Didn't the geologists discredit that?"

Perez nodded. "This one is a NASA publicity ploy. They'd been having their usual run of fiascoes and blunders, so they dug out an asteroid with the proper minerals in it and conned the reporters again. New generation of science writers, nobody remembered the old story, and it looked better on TV than the footage of astronauts demonstrating their bigger bubblegum bubbles, and that other sophomoric stuff they're always bragging about."

Louisa laughed. "Mike resents NASA because it siphons federal research money away from his microbiology research. It must have some purpose."

Perez looked slightly offended. "I don't resent our Clowns in Space program. It provides entertainment, what Woody's working on is dead serious."

"Like recording the blood pressure of prairie dogs," Louisa said.

Leaphorn watched her pass Perez the bowl of boiled new potatoes. He had decided to drop out of this conversation and be a spectator.

Perez took a small potato. Looked at Louisa thoughtfully. Took another one.

"I just read a paper this morning from one of the microbiologists at NIH," Perez said, pausing to sample the potato. "NIH." He grinned at Louisa. "For you mythologists, that's the National Institutes of Health."

Louisa tried to let that pass but didn't manage it. "Not affiliated with the UN then," she said. "For you biologists, that's United Period Nations."

Perez laughed. "Okay," he said. "Peace be with us all. My point is, this guy was reporting dreadful stuff. For example, remember cholera? Virtually wiped out back in the sixties. Well, there were almost a hundred thousand new cases in South America alone in the past two years. And TB, the old 'white plague,' which we finally eliminated about 1970. Well, now the world death rate from that is up to three million per annum again—and the pathogen is a DR mycobacterium."

Louisa gave Leaphorn a wry look. "I listen to this guy a lot and learn his jargon. He's trying to say the TB germ has become drug-resistant."

"What we'd call the perpetrator," Leaphorn said. "Great subject for dinner conversation," Louisa said. "Cholera and TB."

"More cheerful, though, than telling you about the summer-session papers I've been grading," Perez said. "But I'd like to hear from Mr. Leaphorn about this vanished biologist he's looking for."

"There's not much to tell," Leaphorn said. "She's a vector control person for the Indian Health Service, or maybe it's the Arizona Health Department. They sort of operate together. She's been working out of Tuba City. About two weeks ago she drove out in the morning to check on rodent burrows and didn't come back."

He stopped, waiting for Perez to ask the standard questions about boyfriend, stalker, nervous breakdown, job stress, et cetera.

"I'd guess that's why Louisa wanted me to find out whether the Hammar boy was teaching his lab on July eighth," Perez said. "Was that the day?"

Leaphorn nodded.

"Mike Devente handles those lab programs," Perez said. "He said Hammar was sick. Had food poisoning or something."

"Sick," Leaphorn said.

Perez laughed. "Or called in sick, anyway. With teaching assistants, sometimes there's a difference."

Perez sampled his second potato, said: "Is he a suspect?"

"He might be if we had a crime," Leaphorn said. "All we have is a woman who drove off in an Indian Health Service vehicle and didn't come back."

"Louisa said this Pollard lady was checking sources for this latest Yersinia pestis outbreak. Is that why you are interested in Woody?" THE FIRST EAGLE

Leaphorn shook his head. "I never heard of him before today. But they're both interested in prairie dogs, pack rats and so forth and in the same territory. Not many people are, so maybe their paths crossed. Maybe he saw her somewhere. Maybe she told him where she was going."

Perez looked thoughtful. "Yeah," he said.

"They're working in the same field, so he'd probably know about her," Leaphorn said. "But in such a big country it's not likely they'd meet, and if they did, why is she going to tell a virtual stranger that she's going to run off with a government vehicle?"

"Mutual interests, though," Perez said. "They cut pretty deep. How often do you find someone who wants to talk to you about fleas on prairie dogs? And Woody is a downright fanatic about his work. Run him into another human with any knowledge of infectious diseases, immunology, any of that, and he's going to tell 'em a lot more about it than they'll want to know. He's obsessed by it. He thinks the bacteria are going to eliminate mammals unless we do something about it. And if they don't get us, the viruses will. He feels this need to warn everybody about it. Jeremiah complex."

"I can sympathize with that," Leaphorn said. "I'm always talking about what's wrong with the War on Drugs. Until I notice everybody is yawning."

"Same problem with me," Perez said. "I'll bet you're not very interested in discussing molecular mineral transmission through cell walls."

"Only if you explained it so I could understand it." Leaphorn said. He wished he hadn't mentioned Woody to Louisa, wished she hadn't invited Perez, wished they could just be having a relaxing evening together. "And first I guess you'd have to explain why I should care about it."

It was the wrong thing to say, inspiring Dr. Perez to defend pure science and orate on the need to collect knowledge merely for the sake of knowledge. Leaphorn nibbled at the second chop. He down-rated his character for lacking the courage to refuse it. He examined his semihostile reaction to Perez. It had begun when he saw the Saab parked where he liked to park in Louisa's driveway and worsened when he saw the man standing beside her in the doorway, grinning at him. And it clicked up another notch when he noticed that Perez seemed to be looking upon him as a rival. Perez was jealous, he concluded. But then what about Joe Leaphorn? Was Joe Leaphorn jealous? It was an unsettling thought, and he took another bite of the lamb chop to drive it away.

Perez had completed his account of how pure science had led to the discovery of penicillin and the whole arsenal of antibiotics, which had pretty well wiped out infectious diseases. Now he digressed into how stupid misuse of those drugs had turned victory into defeat and how the killer bugs were mutating furiously into all sorts of new forms.

"Mom brings her kid in with a runny nose. The doc knows a virus is causing it, and antibiotics won't touch the virus, but the kid is crying, and Mom wants a prescription, so he gives her his pet antibiotic and tells Mama to give it to the kid for eight days. And then two days later, the immune system deals with the virus, and she stops the medicine. But two days of the antibiotic"—Perez paused, took a long sip from his wineglass, wiped his mustache—"has slaughtered all the bacteria in the kid's bloodstream except—" Perez paused again, waved his hand. "Except the few freaks who happened to be resistant to the drug. So, with the competition wiped out, these freaks multiply like crazy, and the kid is full of drug-resistant bacteria. And then—"

"And then it's time for dessert," Louisa said. "How about some ice cream? Or brownies?"

"Or maybe both," Perez said. "Anyway, just a few years ago about ninety-nine-point-nine percent of Staphylococcus aureus was killed by penicillin. Now it's down to about four percent. Only one of the other antibiotics works on the stuff now, and sometimes it doesn't work."

Louisa's voice came from the kitchen. "Enough! Enough! No more doomsday talk." She emerged, carrying dessert. "And now thirty percent of the people who die in hospitals die of something they didn't have when they came in." She laughed. "Or is it forty percent? I've heard this lecture before, but mythologists aren't good with numbers."

"It's about thirty percent," Perez said, looking miffed. A bowl of ice cream and two brownies later, Perez pleaded the need to finish grading papers and rolled his Saab out of Leaphorn's place in the driveway.

"An interesting man," Leaphorn said, stacking saucers on plates, and cutlery atop that, and heading for the kitchen.

"Have a seat," Louisa said. "I can take care of the cleanup."

"Widowers get awfully good at this. I want to demonstrate my skills." Which he did, until he noticed Louisa rearranging the plates he'd put into the washer.

"Wrong way?" he asked.

"Well," she said, "if you put them in with the food side facing inward, then the hot water spray hits that. It gets 'em cleaner."

So Leaphorn sat and wondered if Perez had actually been jealous of him and what that might imply, and tried to think of a way to bring up the subject. He drew a blank. A few moments later the clattering in the kitchen stopped. Louisa emerged and sat on the sofa across from him.

"Wonderful dinner," Leaphorn said. "Thank you."

She nodded. "Michael really is an interesting man," she said. "He was way too talky tonight, but that was because I told him you were interested in what Professor Woody was doing." She shrugged. "He was just trying to be helpful."

"I sort of got the feeling he didn't care too much for me."

"That was jealousy. He was showing off a little bit. The male territorial imperative at work."

Leaphorn had not the slightest idea how to react to that. He opened his mouth, took a breath, said "Aah," and closed it.

"We go way back. Old friends."

"Aah," Leaphorn said again. "Friends." He had left the question off the sound of that, but it didn't fool Louisa.

"He wanted to marry me once, long ago," Louisa said. "I told him I'd tried getting married once when I was young and I hadn't cared much for it."

Leaphorn considered this. Now was one of those times when you wished you hadn't quit smoking. Lighting up a cigarette gave you time for thought. "You never told me you'd been married," he said.

"There really wasn't any reason to," she said. "I guess not," he said. "But I'm interested." She laughed. "I really ought to tell you it's none of your business. But I think I'll put on a pot of coffee and decide what I'm going to say."

When she came back with two steaming cups, she handed one to Leaphorn with a broad smile.

"I decided I'm glad you asked," she said, sat down, and told him about it. They had both been graduate students, and he was big, handsome, and sort of out of it and always needed help with his classes. She'd thought that was charming at the time, and the charm had lasted about a year.

"It took me that long to understand that he'd been looking for a second mother. You know, somebody to take care of him."

"Lots of men like that," Leaphorn said, and since he couldn't think of anything to add to that, he switched the subject over to Catherine Pollard and his meeting with Mrs. Vanders. "I wondered why you decided to take that on," she said. "It sounds hopeless to me."

"It probably is," Leaphorn said. "I'm going to give it a couple more days and if it still looks hopeless, I'll call the lady and tell her I failed." He finished his coffee and stood. "It's eighty miles back to Tuba City—actually eighty-two to my motel—and I've got to get going."

"You're too tired to make that drive," she said. "Stay here. Get some sleep. Drive it in the morning."

"Um," Leaphorn said. "Well, I wanted to try to find this Woody and see if he can tell me anything."

"He'll keep," Louisa said. "It won't take any longer to drive it in the morning."

"Stay here?"

"Why not? Use the guest bedroom. I have a nine-thirty lecture. But if you want a real early start there's an alarm clock on the desk in there."

"Well," Leaphorn said, digesting this, and recognizing how tired he was, and the nature of friendship. "Yes. Well, thank you."

"There's some sleeping stuff in the chest. Nightgowns and so forth in the top drawer and pajamas in the bottom one."

"Men's?"

"Men's, women's, what have you. Guests can't be too Particular about borrowed pajamas."

Louisa, taking their empty cups into the kitchen, stopped in the doorway.

"I'm still wondering why you took the job," she said. "It surprises me."

"Me, too," Leaphorn said. "But I'd been thinking about that Navajo policeman killed up near Yells Back Butte, and it turns out Catherine Pollard disappeared the same day, and she was supposed to be going to check on rodent burrows about the same place."

"Ah," Louisa said, smiling. "And if I remember what you've told me, Joe Leaphorn never could believe in coincidence."

She stood holding the cups, studying him. "You know, Joe, if I didn't have to work tomorrow I'd invite myself along. I'd like to meet this Woody fellow."

"You'd be welcome," Leaphorn said.

And more than welcome. He'd been dreading tomorrow, doing his duty, keeping a promise he'd made for no particular reason to an old woman he didn't even know without any real hope of learning anything useful.

Louisa still hadn't moved from the doorway.

"Would I be?"

"It would make my day," Leaphorn said.

Chapter Eleven

A HIGH-PITCHED METHODICAL whimpering sound intruded into Joe Leaphorn's dream and jerked him abruptly awake. It came from a strange-looking white alarm clock on a desk beside his bed, which was also strange—soft and warm and smelling of soap and sunshine. His eyes finally focused and he saw a ceiling as white as his own, but lacking the pattern of plaster cracks he had memorized through untold hours of insomnia.

Leaphorn pushed himself into a sitting position, fully awake, with his short-term memories flooding back. He .was in Louisa Bourebonette's guest bedroom. He fumbled with the alarm clock, hoping to shut off the whimpering before it awakened her. But obviously it was too late for that. He smelled coffee brewing and bacon frying—the almost forgotten aromas of contentment. He stretched, yawned, settled back against the pillow. The crisp, fresh sheets reminded him of Emma. Everything did. The morning breeze ruffled the curtains beside his head. Emma, too, always left their windows open to the outside air until Window Rock's bitter winter made it impractical. The curtains, too. He had teased her about that. "I didn't see window curtains in your mother's hogan, Emma," he'd said. And she rewarded him with her tolerant smile and reminded him he'd moved her out of the hogan, and Navajos must remain in harmony with houses that needed curtains. That was one of the things he loved about her. One of the many. As numerous as the stars of a high country midnight.

He'd persuaded Emma that she should marry him two days before he was to take the Graduate General Examination for his degree at Arizona State. The degree was in anthropology, but the dreaded GGE covered the spectrum of the humanities and he'd been brushing up on his weak points—which had led him into a quick scan of Shakespeare's "most likely to be asked about on GGE" plays and hence to Othello's discourse about Desdemona. He still remembered the passage, although he wasn't sure he had it quite right: "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them."

"Leaphorn, are you up? If you're not, your eggs are going to be overhard."

"I'm up," Leaphorn said, and got up, grabbed his clothes and hurried into the bathroom. The point Othello was trying to make, he thought, was that he loved Desdemona because she loved him. Which sounded simple enough, but actually was a very complicated concept.

Louisa's guest bathroom was equipped with a guest toothbrush, and Leaphorn, being blessed with the Indian's sparse and slow-growing beard, didn't miss a razor. ("No whiskers is proof," his grandfather had told him, "that Navajos are evolved further from the apes than those hairy white men.")

Despite the threat, Louisa had actually delayed cracking the breakfast eggs until he appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"I hope you meant it when you said you'd be happy to have me along today," she said as they started breakfast. "If you did, I can come."

Leaphorn was buttering his toast. He'd already noticed that Professor Bourebonette was not wearing the formal skirt and blouse that were her teaching attire. She was clad in jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt.

"I meant it," he said. "But it'll be boring, like about ninety-nine percent of this kind of work. I was just going to see if I could find this Woody, find out if he'd seen Catherine Pollard and if he could tell me anything helpful. Then I was going to drive back to Window Rock and call Mrs. Vanders, report no progress and—"

"Sounds all right," she said.

Leaphorn put down his fork. "How about your class?" THE FIRST EAGLE

It wasn't really the question he wanted to ask. He wanted to know what her plans were when the day's duties were done. Did she expect him to bring her back to Flagstaff? Did she intend to stay in Tuba City? Or accompany him home to Window Rock? And if so, what then?

"All I have today is one meeting of my ethnology course," Louisa said. "I'd already scheduled David Esoni to do his lecture on Zuni teaching stories. I think you met him."

"He's the professor from Zuni? I thought he taught chemistry."

Louisa nodded. "He does. And every year I get him to talk to my entry-level class about Zuni mythology. And culture in general. I called him this morning. The class expects him and he said he could introduce himself."

Leaphorn nodded. Cleared his throat, trying to phrase the question. He didn't need to.

"I'll drop off when we get to Tuba. I want to see Jim Peshlakai—he teaches the traditional cultural stuff at Grey Hills High School there. He's going to set up interviews for me with a bunch of his students from other tribes. Then he's coming down to Flag tonight for some work in the library. I'll ride back with him."

"Oh," Leaphorn said. "Good." *

Louisa smiled. "I thought you'd say that," she said. "I'll fix a thermos of coffee. And a little snack, just in case." •

So nothing remained but to check his telephone answering service. He dialed the number and the code.

Two calls. The first was from Mrs. Vanders. She still had heard nothing from Catherine. Did he have anything tot ell her?

The second was from Cowboy Dashee. Would Mr. Leaphorn please call him as soon as possible. He left his number.

Leaphorn hung up and listened to the noises Louisa was causing in the kitchen while he stared at the telephone, getting Cowboy Dashee properly placed. He was a cop. He was a Hopi. A friend of Jim Chee. A Coconino County deputy sheriff now, Leaphorn remembered. What would Dashee want to talk about? Why try to guess? Leaphorn dialed the number.

"Cameron Police Department," a woman's voice said. "How may I be of service?"

"This is Joe Leaphorn. I just had a call from Deputy Sheriff Dashee. He left this number."

"Oh, yes," the woman said. "Just a moment. I'll see if he's still here."

Clicking. Silence. Then: "Lieutenant Leaphorn?"

"Yes," Leaphorn said. "But it's mister now. I got your message. What's up?"

Dashee cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "It's just that I need some advice." Another pause.

"Sure," Leaphorn said. "It's free and you know what they say about free advice being worth what it costs you."

"Well," Dashee said. "I have a problem I don't know how to handle."

"You want to tell me about it?"

Another clearing of throat. "Could I meet you some place where we could talk? It's kind of touchy. And complicated."

"I'm calling from Flag and just getting ready to drive up to Tuba City. I'll be coming through Cameron in maybe an hour."

"Fine," Dashee said, and suggested a coffee shop beside Highway 89.

"I'll have an NAU professor with me," Leaphorn said. "Will that be a problem?"

A long pause. "No, sir," Dashee said. "I don't think so." But by the time they'd reached Cameron and pulled up beside the patrol car with the Navajo County Sheriff's

Department markings, Louisa had decided she should wait in the car.

"Don't be silly," she said. "Of course he'd say it would be no problem to have me listening in. What else could he say when he's asking you for a favor." She opened her purse and extracted a paperback and showed it to Leaphorn. "Execution Eve," she said. "You ought to read it. The son of a former Kentucky prison warden remembering the murder case that turned his dad against the death penalty."

"Oh, come on in. Dashee won't mind."

"This book's more interesting," she said, "and he would mind."

And of course she was right. When they parked, Leaphorn had seen Deputy Sheriff Albert "Cowboy" Dashee sitting in a booth beside the window looking out at them, his expression glum. Now, as he sat across from Dashee, watching him order coffee, Leaphorn was remembering that this Hopi had struck him as a man full of good humor. A happy man. There was no sign of that this morning.

"I'll get right to the point," Dashee said. "I need to talk to you about Jim Chee."

"About Chee?" This wasn't what Leaphorn had expected. In fact, he'd had no idea what to expect. Something about the Hopi killing the Navajo policeman, perhaps. "You two are old friends, aren't you?"

"For a long, long time," Dashee said. "That makes this harder to deal with."

Leaphorn nodded.

"Jim always considered you a friend, too," Dashee said. He grinned ruefully. "Even when he was sore at you."

Leaphorn nodded again. "Which was fairly often."

"The thing is, Jim got the wrong man in this Benjamin Kinsman homicide. Robert Jano didn't do it."

"He didn't?"

"No. Robert wouldn't kill anyone."

"Who did?"

"I don't know," Dashee said. "But I grew up with Robert Jano. I know you hear this all the time, but—" He threw up his hands.

"I know people myself who I just can't believe would ever kill anyone—no matter what. But sometimes something snaps, and they do it. Temporary insanity."

'You'd have to know him. If you did, you'd never believe it. He was always gentle, even when we were kids trying to be tough. Robert never seemed to really lose his temper. He liked everybody. Even the bastards."

Leaphorn could see Dashee was hating this. He'd pushed his uniform cap back on his head. His face was flushed. His forehead was beaded with perspiration.

"I'm retired, you know," Leaphorn said. "So all I get is the secondhand gossip. But what I hear is that Chee caught the man red-handed. Jano was supposed to be leaning over Kinsman, blood all over him. Some of the blood was Jano's. Some of the blood was Kinsman's. Was that about it?"

Dashee sighed, rubbed his hand across his face. "That's the way it must have looked to Jim."

"You talked to Jim?"

Dashee shook his head. "That's the advice I wanted. How do I go about that? You know how he is. Kinsman was one of his people. Somebody kills him. He must feel pretty strong about that. And I'm a cop, too. It's not my case. And being a Hopi. The kind of anger that's grown up between us and you Navajos." He threw up his hands again. "It's such a damned complicated situation. I want him to know it's not just sentimental bullshit. How can I approach him?"

"Yeah," Leaphorn said, thinking that everything Dashee had said did indeed sound like sentimental bullshit. "I understand your problem."

The coffee arrived, reminding Leaphorn of Louisa waiting outside. But she had the thermos they'd brought and she would understand. Just as Emma always understood. He sipped the coffee without noticing anything, except that it was hot.

"Did they let you talk to Jano?"

Dashee nodded. "How'd you manage that?"

"I know his lawyer," Dashee said. "Janet Pete."

Leaphorn grunted, shook his head. "I was afraid of that," he said. "I saw her at the hospital the day Kinsman died. The prosecution bunch was gathering and she showed up, too. I'd heard she's been appointed as a federal defender."

"That's it," Dashee said. "She'll do a good job for him, but it sure as hell won't make dealing with Jim any easier."

"They were about to get married once, I think," Leaphorn said. "And then she went back to Washington. Is that on again?"

"I hope not," Dashee said. "She's a city gal. Jim's always going to be a sheep-camp Navajo. But whatever, it's going to make him touchy as hell, being on opposite sides of this. He'll be hard to deal with."

"But Chee was always reasonable," Leaphorn said. "If it was me, I'd just go and lay it out for him. Just make the best case you can."

"You think it will do any good?"

"I doubt it," Leaphorn said. "Not unless you give him some sort of evidence. How could it? If what I hear at

Window Rock is right, Jano had a motive. Revenge as well as avoiding arrest. Kinsman had already nailed him before for poaching an eagle. He got off light then, but this would be a second offense. More important, I understand there was no other possible suspect. Besides, even you persuade Chee he's wrong, what can he do about it now?" Dashee hadn't touched his coffee. He leaned across the table. "Find the person who actually killed Kinsman," Dashee said. "I want to ask him to do that. Or help me do it."

"But as I understand the situation, only Jano and Kinsman were there, until Chee came along answering Kinsman's call for some backup."

"There was a woman up there," Dashee said. "A woman named Catherine Pollard. Maybe other people."

Leaphorn, caught in the process of raising his cup for another sip, said, "Ah," and put down the cup. He stared at Dashee for a moment. "How do you know that?"

"I've been asking around," Dashee said, and produced a bitter laugh. "Something Jim should be doing." He shook his head. "He's a good man and a good cop. I'm asking you how I can I get him moving. If he doesn't, I think Jano could get the death penalty. And one day Jim's going to know they gassed the wrong man. And then you might as well kill him, too. Chee would never get over that."

"I know something about Catherine Pollard," Leaphorn said.

"I know," Dashee said. "I heard."

"If she was there—and I understand that's where she was supposed to be going that day—how could she fit into this? Except, of course, as a potential witness."

"I'd like to give Jim another theory of the crime, Dashee said. "Ask him to look at it for a while as a substitute for Jano kills Kinsman to avoid arrest.' It goes like this: Pollard goes up to Yells Back Butte to do her thing. Kinsman is up there looking for Jano, or maybe he's looking for Pollard. One way, he runs across her. The other way, he finds her. Just a couple of nights earlier, Kinsman was in a bistro off the interstate east of Flag, and he saw Pollard and tried to take her away from the guy she was with. A fight started. An Arizona highway patrolman broke it up."

Leaphorn turned the cup in his hand, considering this. No reason to ask Dashee how he knew this. Cop gossip travels fast.

Dashee was watching him, looking anxious. "What do you think?" he said. "Kinsman has a reputation as a woman-chaser. He's attracted and now he's angry, too. Or maybe he thinks she'll file a complaint and get him suspended." He shrugged. "They struggle. She whacks him on the head with a rock. Then she hears Jano coming and flees the scene. Does that sound plausible?"

"A lot would depend on whether you have a witness who would testify they saw her there. Do you? I mean, beyond that being where she told her boss she'd be working that day?"

"I got it from Old Lady Notah. She keeps a bunch of goats up there. She remembers seeing a Jeep driving up that dirt road past the butte about daylight that morning. I understand Pollard was driving a Jeep." Dashee looked slightly abashed. "Just circumstantial evidence. She couldn't identify the driver. Not even the gender."

"Still, it was probably Pollard," Leaphorn said. "And I understand the Jeep is still missing. And so is Pollard."

"Right again."

"And you've been offering a thousand-dollar reward for anyone who can find it."

"True," Leaphorn said. "But if Pollard did it, and Pollard was fleeing the scene, why didn't Chee see her? Remember, he got there just a few minutes after it happened. Kinsman's blood was still fresh. There's just that one narrow dirt road into there, and Chee was driving up it. Why didn't he—"

Dashee held up his hand. "I don't know, and neither do you. But don't you think it could have happened?" Leaphorn nodded. "Possibly."

"I don't want to get out of line with this, or sound offensive, but let me add something else to my theory of the crime. Let's say that Pollard got out of there, got to a telephone, called somebody and told them her troubles and asked for help. Let's say whoever it was told her where to hide and they'd cover her trail for her."

Leaphorn asked; "Like who and how?" But he knew the answer.

"Who? I'd say somebody in her family. Probably her daddy, I'd say. How? By giving the impression that she's been abducted. Been murdered."

"And they do that by hiring a retired policeman to go looking for her," Leaphorn said.

"Somebody respected by all the cops," Dashee said.

Chapter Twelve

THE ROCK UPON WHICH CHEE had so carelessly put his weight tumbled down the slope, bounced into space, struck an obtruding ledge, touched off a clattering avalanche of stone and dirt and disappeared amid the weeds far below. Chee shifted his body carefully to his right, exhaled a huge breath and stood for a moment, leaning against the cliff and letting his heartbeat slow a little. He was just below the tabletop of Yells Back Butte, high on the saddle that connected it with Black Mesa. It wasn't a difficult climb for a young man in Chee's excellent physical shape, and not particularly dangerous if one kept focused on what he was doing. Chee hadn't. He'd been thinking of Janet Pete, facing the fact that he was wasting his day off just because she'd implied he hadn't done a proper job of checking the Kinsman crime scene.

Now, with both feet firmly placed and his shoulder leaning into the cliff wall, he looked down at where the boulder had made its plunge and thought about that chronic problem of the Navajo Tribal Police—lack of backup. Had he not caught himself, he'd be down there in the weeds with broken bones and multiple abrasions and about sixty miles from help. He was thinking of that as he scrambled up the last fifty feet of talus and crawled over the rim. Kinsman would be alive if he hadn't been alone. The story was the same for the two officers killed in the Kayenta district. A huge territory, never enough officers for backup, never enough budget for efficient communications, never what you needed to get the job done. Maybe Janet had been right. He'd take the FBI examination, or accept the offer he'd had from the BIA law-and-order people. Or maybe, if all else failed, consider signing on with the Drug Enforcement Agency.

But now, standing on the flat stone roof of Yells Back Butte, he looked westward and saw the immense sky, the line of thunderheads building over the Coconino Rim, the sunlight reflecting off the Vermillion Cliffs below the Utah border, and the towering cauliflower shape of the storm already delivering a rain blessing upon the San Francisco Peaks, the Sacred Mountain marking the western margin of his people's holy land. Chee closed his eyes against that, remembering Janet's beauty, her wit, her intelligence. But other memories crowded in: the dreary skies of Washington, the swarms of young men entombed in three-piece suits and subdued by whatever neckties today's fashion demanded; remembering the clamor, the sirens, the smell of the traffic, the layers upon layers of social phoniness. A faint breeze stirred Chee's hair and brought him the smell of juniper and sage, and a chittering sound from far overhead that reminded him of why he was here.

At first glance he thought the raptor was a red-tailed hawk, but when it banked to repeat its inspection of this intruder Chee saw it was a golden eagle. It was the fourth one he'd seen today—a good year for eagles and a good place to find them—patrolling the mesa rim-rock where rodents flourished. He watched this one circle, gray-white against the dark blue sky, until it satisfied its curiosity and drifted eastward over Black Mesa. When it turned, he noticed a gap in its fan of tail feathers. Probably an old one. Tail feathers aren't lost to molting.

Even with Janet's directions, it took Chee half an hour to find Jano's blind. The Hopi had roofed a crack in the butte's rimrock with a network of dead sage branches and covered that with foliage cut from nearby brush. Much of that was broken and scattered now. Chee climbed into the crack, squatted, and examined the place, reconstructing Jano's strategy.

He would have first assured himself that the eagle he wanted routinely patrolled this place. He would have probably come in the evening to prepare his blind—or more likely to repair one members of his kiva had been using for centuries. If he'd changed anything noticeable, he would have waited a few days until the eagle had become accustomed to this variation in his landscape. That done, Jano would have returned early on the morning he was fated to kill Ben Kinsman. He would have brought a rabbit with him, tied a cord to the rabbit's leg and put it atop the blind's roof. Then he would have waited, watching through the cracks for the eagle to appear. Since the eyes of raptors detect motion far better than any radar, he would have made sure the rabbit moved when the proper moment came. When the eagle seized it with its talons, he'd pull the rabbit downward, throw his coat over the bird to overpower it, and push it into the cage he'd brought.

Chee checked the ground around him, looking for any proof that Jano had been there. He didn't expect to find anything, and he didn't. The rock where Jano must have sat while he waited for his eagle was worn smooth. Anyone might have sat there that day, or no one. He found not a trace of the bloodstains Jano might have left here had the eagle gashed him. as he caught it. The rain might have washed blood away, but it would have left a trace in the grainy granite. He climbed out of the crack, bringing with him only a bedraggled eagle feather from the sandy floor of the blind and a cigarette butt that looked like it had weathered much more than last week's shower. The feather was from the body—not one of the strong wingtip or tail feathers valued for ceremonial objects. And neither the feather nor the butt showed any sign of bloodstains. He tossed them back into the blind. Chee spent another hour or so making an equally fruitless check around the butte. He came across another blind a half mile down the rim, and several places where stones had been stacked with little painted prayer sticks placed among them and feathers tied to nearby sage branches. Clearly the Hopis considered this butte part of their spiritual homeland, and it probably had been since their first clans arrived about the twelfth century. The federal government's decision to add it to the Navajo Reservation hadn't changed that, and never would. The thought made him feel like a trespasser on his own reservation and did nothing good for Chee's mood. It was time to say to hell with this and go home.

The desk work required of an acting lieutenant had not helped the muscle tone in Jim Chee's legs, nor his lungs. He was tired. He stood at the rim, looking across the saddle, dreading the long climb down. An eagle soared over Black Mesa and the shape of another was outlined against the clouds far to the south over the San Francisco Peaks. This was eagle country and always had been. When the first Hopi clans founded their villages on the First Mesa, the elders had assigned eagle-collecting territory just as they'd assigned cornfields and springs. And when the Navajos came along a couple of hundred years later they, too, soon learned that one came to Black Mesa when one's medicine bundle required eagle feathers.

Chee took out his binoculars and tried to locate the bird he'd seen against the cloud. It was gone. He found the one hunting over the mesa and focused on it—thinking it might be the one he'd watched earlier. It wasn't. This one had a complete fan of tail feathers. He swung the binoculars downward, focused on the place where he'd found Jano beside Ben Kinsman's dying body and tried to re-create how that tragedy must have happened. Jano might not have seen Kinsman below, because Kinsman would have concealed himself. But looking down from here, he could hardly have missed noticing Kinsman's patrol car where he'd left it down the arroyo. Jano had been arrested once for poaching an eagle. He would have been nervous, and careful.

So why climb down to be captured? Probably because he had no choice. But why not just release the eagle, hide the cage, climb down and tell the cop he was up here meditating and saying his prayers? Jano's faded red pickup had been parked below the low point of the saddle and Kinsman had left his patrol car near the arroyo maybe a half mile away. Even without binoculars, Jano would have seen that Kinsman had his escape route blocked.

Chee scanned the valley again, picking up the ruins of what must have been the tumbled stones that once formed the walls of the Tijinney hogan, its sheep pens and its fallen brush arbor. Beyond the hogan site, a glint of reflected sunlight caught his eye. He focused on the spot. The side mirror of some sort of van parked in a cluster of junipers. What would that be doing up here? Two of last spring's plague victims had come from this quadrant of the reservation. The van might be Arizona Health Department people collecting rodents and checking fleas. He remembered Leaphorn had told him the woman he was looking for had come up this way working on a plague case.

On the opposite side of the saddle, away from the van, the Tijinney "death hogan" and the murder site, motion caught Chee's peripheral vision. He focused on it. A black-and-white goat grazing on a bush. And not just one. He counted seven, but there might be seventeen or seventy scattered through that rough area.

While counting them, he found the track. Actually, two tracks, probably formed by the vehicle of whomever held this grazing lease and drove in now and then to see about his flock.

It was not something even a sheep-camp Navajo would dignify by calling a road, but as Chee traced the track back toward the access road through his binoculars, he realized its importance. Jano did have a way out—a way to avoid capture without giving up his eagle. He could have slipped down the other side of the saddle, invisible to the officer waiting to arrest him. He could have left the eagle in some safe place, made the easy climb over the low point of the saddle with nothing to incriminate him. Then he could have recovered his Pickup truck, driven back to the gravel road, followed it a mile or two back toward Tuba City, and then circled back °n this goatherd's track to recover his captive bird.

Jano would have known about this track. These were his eagle-catching grounds. He could have escaped easily. Instead he chose the path that led him directly to where Kinsman was waiting.

Chee started his descent carefully, remembering the dislodged stone that had almost sent him tumbling down the slope. It had been a bad day so far. He'd climbed the saddle thinking that Jano was a man who had killed in what probably had been a frantic effort to avoid arrest and then made up unlikely lies to save himself from prison. At the foot of the saddle, Chee stood for a moment to catch his breath. He glanced at his watch. He'd locate the van now, find out if whoever was with it had been here on the fateful day and—if they had been—whether they'd seen anything. If they hadn't, that, too, could be useful as a sort of negative evidence.

When he'd climbed Yells Back Butte he had nursed a vague, ambiguous hope that maybe he could find something to suggest Jano wasn't lying, that Jano wouldn't have to face the death penalty or (worse, in Chee's opinion) life in prison. To be honest, he had wanted to discover something that would restore his prestige in the eyes of Janet Pete. But now he knew that the murder of Benjamin Kinsman had been a deliberate, premeditated, and savage act of revenge.

Chapter Thirteen

THE VAN WAS PARKED on the sandy bed of a shallow wash, partly shaded by a cluster of junipers and screened by a growth of four-winged saltbush. No one was visible, but what looked like an oversized air-conditioning unit was purring away on its roof. Chee stood on the fold-down step beside its door and rapped on the metal, then rapped again, and—harder this time—once again. No response. He tried the doorknob. Locked. He leaned his ear against the door and listened. Nothing at first, except the vibrations from the air conditioner, then a faint, rhythmic sound. Chee stepped back from the van and inspected it. It had a custom-made body mounted on a heavy GMC truck chassis with dual rear wheels. It looked expensive, fairly new and—judging from the dents and abrasions—heavily (or carelessly) used in rough country. Except for the lack of a door, nothing was different on the driver's side. Built against the rear was a fold-down metal ladder to provide access to the roof and a rack, which now held a dirt bike, a folding table and two chairs, a five-gallon gasoline can, a pick, a shovel, and an assortment of rodent traps and cages. There were no windows on the rear and the only side windows were high on the wall. Placed high, Chee guessed, to allow more space for storage cabinets.

He knocked again, rattled the knob, shouted, received no response, put his ear against the door again. This time he heard another faint sound. Something scratching. A tiny squeak, like chalk on a blackboard.

Chee folded down the access ladder, climbed onto the roof, dropped to his stomach, and secured a firm grip on the air-conditioner engine mount. Then he squirmed over the edge and leaned down to look into the high windows. All he saw was darkness and a streak of light reflecting from a white surface.

"Ho, there," a voice shouted. "Whatcha doing?" Chee jerked his head up. He looked down into a face staring up at him, expression quizzical, bright blue eyes, dark, sun-peeled face, tufts of gray hair protruding from under a dark blue cap that bore the legend SQUIBB. The man carried what looked like a shoebox containing what seemed to be a dead prairie dog inside a plastic sack. "Is that your car I saw back there?" the man asked. "The Navajo Tribal Police car?"

"Yeah," Chee said, trying to scramble to his feet without further loss of dignity. He pointed down to the roof under his boots. "I heard something in there," he stammered. "Thought I did, anyway. Something squeaking. And I couldn't raise anyone, so—"

"Probably one of the rodents," the man said. He put down the shoebox, extracted a key ring from a pocket and unlocked the doors. "Come on down. How about a drink of something."

Chee scrambled down the ladder. The man under the Squibb cap was holding the door open for him. Cold air rushed out.

"My name's Chee," he said, extending a hand. "With the Navajo Tribal Police. I guess you're with the Arizona Health Department."

"No," the man said. "I'm Al Woody. I'm working on a research project up here. For the National Institutes of Health, Indian Health Service, so forth. But come on in."

Inside Chee turned down a beer and accepted a glass of water. Woody opened the door of a built-in floor-to-ceiling refrigerator and brought out a bottle white with frost. He scraped away the ice crystals and showed Chee a Dewar's scotch label.

"Antifreeze," he said, laughing, and began pouring himself a drink. "But once I was preserving some tissue a*id turned the fridge down so low that even the whiskey froze up on me."

Chee sipped his water, noticing it was stale and had a slightly unpleasant taste. He searched his brain for a proper apology for trying to peek into the man's window. He decided there wasn't one. He'd just forget it and let Woody think whatever he wanted to think.

"I'm doing some back-checking on a homicide case we had up here," Chee said. "It was July eighth. One of our officers was killed. Hit on the head with a rock. You probably heard about it on the radio or saw it in the paper. We're trying to find any witnesses we might have overlooked."

"I heard about that," Woody said. "But the man down at the trading post told me you'd caught the killer right in the act."

"Who told you?"

"That grouchy old man at the Short Mountain Trading Post," Woody said, frowning. "I think his name was Mac something. Sounded Scotch. Did he have it wrong?"

"About as close as you can get," Chee said. "The smoking gun was a bloody rock."

"The old man said it was a Hopi and the cop had arrested the same guy before," Woody said, looking pensive. Then he nodded, understanding it. "But out here you'd get Hopis on the jury. So you're trying not to leave them any grounds for reasonable doubts."

"Yeah," Chee said. "I guess that about sums it up-Were you working up here that day? If you were, did you see anybody? Or anything? Or hear anything?"

"July eighth, was it?" He punched buttons on his digital watch. "That would make it a Friday," he said, and frowned, thinking about it. "I drove down to Flagstaff, but

I think that was Wednesday. I think I was up here Tuesday early, and then I drove over to Third Mesa. That's one of the prairie dog colonies I'm watching. Over there by Bacavi. That and some kangaroo rats."

"It rained that day," Chee said. "Thundershower. Little bit of hail."

Woody nodded. "Yeah, I remember," he said. "I'd stopped at the Hopi Cultural Center to get some coffee, and you could see a lot of lightning over that side of Black Mesa and southwest over the San Francisco Peaks, and it looked like it was pouring down at Yells Back Butte. I was feeling glad I got down that road before it got muddy."

"Did you see anybody when you were driving out? Meet anyone coming in?"

Woody had been unzipping the plastic bag while he talked, and a puff of escaping air added another unpleasant aroma to the room. Now he pulled out the prairie dog, stiff with rigor mortis, and laid it carefully on the tabletop. He stared at it, felt its neck, groin area and under the front legs. He looked thoughtful. Then he shook his head, dismissing some troublesome notion.

"Going out?" he said. "I think I saw that old lady that herds her goats over on the other side of the butte. I think that was Tuesday I saw her. And then, when I was turning out onto the gravel, I remember seeing a car corning from the Tuba City direction."

"Was it a police car?"

Woody looked up from the prairie dog. "It might have been. It was too far away to tell. But, you know, he never did pass me. Maybe he turned in toward the butte. Maybe that was your policeman. Or maybe the Hopi."

"Possibly," Chee said. "About when was it?"

"Morning. Fairly early."

Woody reclosed the bag, shook it vigorously, reopened it, and poured its contents onto a white plastic sheet on the table.

"Fleas," he said. He selected stainless-steel tweezers from a tray on a lab table, picked up a flea and showed it to Chee. "Now, if I'm lucky, the blood in these fleas is laced with Yersinia pestis and"—Woody poked the prairie dog with the tweezers—"so is the blood of our friend here. And if I'm very lucky, it will be Yersinia X, the new, modified, recently evolved fast-acting stuff that kills mammals much quicker than the old stuff." He redeposited the flea among its brethren on the plastic, grinned at Chee. "Then, if fortune continues to smile on me, the autopsy I'm about to do on this dog here will confirm what not finding any swollen glands suggests. That this fellow here didn't die of bubonic plague. He died of something old-fashioned."

Chee frowned, not quite understanding Woody's excitement. "So he died of what?"

"That's not the question. Could be old age, any of those ills that beset elderly mammals. Doesn't matter. The question is, why didn't the plague kill him?"

"But that's nothing new, is it? Haven't you guys known for years that when the plague comes through, it always leaves behind a colony here and there that's immune or something? And then the stuff spreads again, from them? I thought—"

Woody had no patience for this. "Sure, sure, sure," he said. "Reservoir colonies. Host colonies. They've been studied for years. How come their immune system blocks the bacteria? If it kills the bacteria, how come the toxin released doesn't kill the dog? If our friend here just has the original version of Pasteurella pestis, as we used to call it, then he just gives us another chance to poke around in the blind alley. But if he has—"

It had been a hard and disappointing day for Chee, and this interruption rankled him. He interrupted Woody: "If he has developed immunity to this new fast-acting germ, you can compare—"

"Germ!" Woody said, laughing. "I don't hear that good old word much these days. But yes. It gives us something to check against. Here's what we know about the blood chemistry of the dogs who survived the old plague." He suggested a big box with his hands. "Now we know this modified bacteria is also killing most of those survivors. We want to know the difference in the chemistry of those who survived the new stuff." Chee nodded. "You understand that?"

Chee grunted. He'd taken six hours of biology at the University of New Mexico to help meet the science requirement for his degree in anthropology. The teacher had been a full professor, an international authority on spiders who had made no effort to hide his boredom with basic undergraduate courses nor his disdain for the ignorance of his students. He'd sounded a lot like Woody. "That's easy enough to understand," Chee said. "So when you solve the puzzle, you develop a vaccine and save untold billions of prairie dogs from the plague."

Woody had done something to the flea that produced a brownish fluid and put a bit of it into a petri dish and a drop on a glass slide. He looked up. His face, already unnaturally flushed, was now even redder.

"You think it's funny?" he said. "Well, you're not the only one who does. A lot of the experts at the NIH do, too. And at Squibb. And the New England Journal of Medicine. And the American Pharmaceutical Association. The same damn fools who thought we won the microbe war with penicillin and the streptomycin drugs."

Woody slammed his fist on the countertop, his voice rising. "So they misused them, and misused them, and kept on misusing them until they'd evolved whole new variations of drug-resistant bacteria. And now, by God, we're burying the dead! By the tens of thousands. Count Africa and Asia and its millions. And these damn fools sit on their hands and watch it get worse."

Chee was no stranger to anger barely under control. He'd seen it while breaking up bar fights, in domestic disputes, in various other ugly forms. But Woody's rage had a sort of fierce, focused intensity that was new to him.

"I didn't mean to sound flippant," Chee said. "I'm just not familiar with the implications of this sort of research."

Woody took a sip of his Dewar's, his face flushed. He shook his head, studied Chee, recognized repentance.

"Sorry I'm so damned touchy about this," he said, and laughed. "I think it's because I'm scared. All the little beasties we had beaten ten years ago are back and meaner than ever. TB is an epidemic again. So is malaria. So is cholera. We had the staph bacteria whipped with nine different antibiotics. Now none of 'em work on some of it. And then there's the same story with viruses. Viruses. They're what makes this most important. You know that Influenza A, that Swine Flu that came out of nowhere in 1918 and killed maybe forty million people in just a few months. That's more than were killed in four years of war. Viruses scare me even more than bacteria."

Chee raised his eyebrows.

"Because nothing stops them except your immune system. You don't cure a viral sickness. You try to prevent it with a vaccine. That's to prepare your immune system to deal with it if it shows up."

"Yeah," Chee said. "Like polio."

"Like polio. Like some forms of influenza. Like a lot of things," Woody said. He refilled his whiskey glass. "Are you familiar with the Bible?"

"I've read it," Chee said.

"Remember what the prophet says in the Book of Chronicles? 'We are powerless against this terrible multitude that will come against us.'"

Chee wasn't sure how to take this. "Do you read that as an Old Testament prophet warning us against viruses?"

"As it stands now, they are a terrible multitude and we are damn near powerless against them," Woody said.

Not as well prepared as some of these rodents are anyway. Some of these prairie dogs here somehow have had their immune systems modified to deal with this evolved bacteria. And some of the kangaroo rats have learned to live with the hantavirus. We have to find out how."

Woody's discourse had restored his good temper. He grinned at Chee. "We don't want the rodents outlasting the humans."

Chee nodded. He slid off the stool, picked up his hat. "I'll let you get back to work. Thanks for the time. And the information."

"I just had a thought," Woody said. "The Indian Health Service has had people up here the last several weeks working through this area. Doing the vector control cleanup on that plague outbreak. You might ask them if they had anyone out there on that day."

"They did," Chee said. "I was just going to get into that. One of their people was supposed to be checking on rodents around here the day Kinsman was killed. I was going to ask you if you'd seen her. And then I was going to be on my way."

"A woman? Did she notice anything helpful?"

"Nobody even knows for sure if she got here. She's missing," Chee said. "So is the vehicle she was driving."

"Missing?" Woody said, startled. "Really? You think there could be some connection with the attack on your policeman?"

"I don't see how there could be," Chee said. "But I'd like to talk to her. I understand she's a sturdy-looking brunette, about thirty, named Catherine Pollard."

"I've seen some of those Arizona public health people here and there. That sounds like one of them, Woody said. "But I don't know her name."

"You remember the last time you saw her? And where she was?"

"Nice-looking woman, was she?" Woody said, and glanced up at Chee, not wanting to give the wrong impression. "I don't mean pretty, but good bone structure." He laughed. "Cute wouldn't be the word, but you might say handsome. Looked like she might have been an athlete."

"She was around here?"

"I think it was over at Red Lake that I saw her. Filling the gas tank on a Health Service Jeep, if that's the right woman. She asked me about the van, if I was the man doing rodent research on the reservation. She asked me to let them know if I saw any dead rodents. Let her know if I saw anything that suggested the plague was killing the rodents."

He pushed himself up from the cot. "By golly, I think she gave me a card with a phone number on it." He sorted through a box labeled OUT on his desk, said "Ah," and read: "'Catherine Pollard, Vector Control Specialist, Communicable Disease Division, Arizona Department of Public Health.'"

He handed the card to Chee, grinned, and said: "Bingo."

"Thanks," Chee said. It didn't sound like bingo to him.

"And, hey," Woody added. "If the time's important you can check on it. When I drove up there was a Navajo Tribal Police car there and she was talking to the driver. Another woman." Woody grinned. "That one you really could call cute. Had her hair in a bun and the uniform °n, but she was what we used to call a dish."

"Thanks again," Chee said. "That would be Officer Manuelito. I'll ask her."

But he wouldn't. The timing didn't matter, and if he asked Bernie Manuelito about it, he'd have to ask her why she hadn't reported that Kinsman had been hitting on her. That was a can of worms he didn't want to dig into. Claire Dineyahze, who as secretary in Chee's little division, always knew such things, had already told him. "She doesn't want to cause you any trouble," Claire had said. Chee had asked her why not, and Claire had given him one of those female "you moron" looks and said: "Don't you know?"

Chapter Fourteen

AS THEY DROVE NORTHWARD out of Cameron, Leap-horn explained to Louisa what was troubling Cowboy Dashee.

"I can see his problem," she said, after spending a while staring out the windshield. "Partly professional ethics, partly male pride, partly family loyalty, partly because he feels Chee is going to think he's trying to use their friendship for a personal reason. Is that about it? Have you decided what you're going to do about it?"

Leaphorn had pretty much decided, but he wanted to give it some more thought. He skipped past the question. "It's all of that, I guess. But it's even more complicated. And why don't you pour us some coffee while we're thinking about it."

"Didn't you just drink about two cups in there?" Louisa asked. But she reached back and extracted her thermos from the lunch sack.

"It was pretty weak," Leaphorn said. "Besides, I believe the caffeine helps my mind work. Didn't I read that somewhere?"

"Maybe in a comic book," she said. But she poured a cup and handed it to him. "What's the more complicated part that I'm missing?"

"Another friend of Cowboy Dashee's is Janet Pete. She's been assigned as Jano's public defender. Janet and Chee were engaged to be married a while back and then they had a falling-out."

"Ouch," Louisa said, and grimaced. "That does complicate matters some."

"There's more," Leaphorn said, and sipped his coffee.

"It's starting to sound like a soap opera," Louisa said. "Don't tell me that the deputy sheriff was the third party in a love triangle."

"No. It wasn't that."

He took another sip, gestured out of the windshield at the cumulus clouds, white and puffy, drifting on the west wind away from the San Francisco Peaks. "That's our sacred mountain of the west, you know, made by First Man himself, but—"

"He built it with earth brought up from the Fourth World in the usual version of the myth," Louisa said. "But if it 'wasn't that,' then what was it?"

"I was going to tell you that in the stories told out here on the west side of the reservation, some of the clans also call it 'Mother of Clouds.'" He pointed through the windshield. "You can see why. When there's any humidity, the west winds hit the slopes, rise, the moisture cools with altitude, the clouds form, and the wind drifts them, one after another, out over the desert. Like a cat having a litter of kittens."

Louisa was smiling at him. "Mr. Leaphorn, am I to conclude that you don't want to tell me what it was with Miss Pete and Jim Chee if it wasn't another man?"

"I'd just be passing along gossip. That's all I have. Just guesswork and gossip."

"You don't start something like that with someone and just leave it hanging. Not if you're going to be trapped in the front seat with them all day. They'll nag you. They'll get mad and surly."

"Well, then," Leaphorn said, "maybe I better make up some sort of a story."

"Do it."

Leaphorn sipped coffee, handed her the empty cup.

"Miss Pete's half Navajo. On the paternal side. Her dad's dead and her mother's a socialite rich lady. Ivy League type. Janet came out here to work for DNA after quitting a job with some big Washington law firm, which handled tribal legal work. Now we get to the gossipy part."

"Good," Louisa said.

"The way the gossips tell it, she and one of the big-shot lawyers were very good friends, and she quit the job because they had a breakup, and she was very, very, very angry with the guy. She was sort of his protegee from way back when he was a professor and she was his law student."

Leaphorn stopped talking and glanced at Louisa. He found himself thinking how much he had come to like this woman. How comfortable he felt with her. How much more pleasant this drive was because she was there on the seat beside him.

"You enjoying this so far?"

"So far, so good," she said. "But I wonder if it's going to have a happy ending."

"I don't know," Leaphorn said. "1 doubt it. But anyway. Out here, she and Jim meet because she's defending Navajo suspects and he's arresting them. They get to be friends and—" Leaphorn paused, gave Louisa a doubtful look. "Now this is about fifthhand. Pure hearsay. Anyway, the gossips had it that what Miss Pete had told Chee about her ex-boss and boyfriend had Jim hating the guy, too. You know, thinking he was a real gold-plated manipulative jerk who had simply used Janet. Understand?"

"Sure," Louisa said. "Probably true, too."

"Understand, it's just gossip."

"Get on with it," Louisa said.

"So Chee tells her some of the information he s learned in a case he's working on. It involved a client of her old Washington law firm and her old boyfriend. So she passes it along to her old boyfriend. Jim figures she's betrayed him. She figures he's being unreasonable, that she was just being friendly and helpful. No harm done, she says. Chee's just being jealous. They have an angry row. She moves back to Washington with no more talk of marriage."