happened to him since the days after he had returned from Emma’s funeral. He had left her mother’s place out beyond Rincon Largo and come home with a sense of personal failure – rare for him and thus all the more disturbing. He had fled on the second day of what Emma’s clan called “the time of blackening” – when everyone wore at least a symbolic smudge of soot to make themselves invisible to the
It had simply not been possible for him to think of the wife of his lifetime as a malevolent ghost. Emma existed in his mind (and would always exist) as someone laughing, beautiful, gentle, full of joy – someone who loved him even when he least deserved it. And so he had fled, skipping two of the four days of silent, passive family grief which the tradition of Emma’s clan demanded. Its purpose was worthy – lending the thoughts of those who loved her to accompany Emma on her four-day journey into what someone had called “that last great adventure.” But he hungered for isolation to become acquainted with his own sorrow. To get it, he had been willing to suffer the disapproval of Emma’s very traditional people. It was a weakness he had always regretted and often remembered. He remembered it now as he stood beside the sink – reminded by the sound of his own footsteps in an empty kitchen.
He turned on the tap, watched it fill his glass, and took a small sip. The sound of crows overhead came through the window. They gathered each twilight in the cottonwoods around the Navajo Nation administrative offices for their nightly roost – a precise reminder of the earth’s turn away from the sun, of the inevitability of darkness. Where the devil was Jim Chee? He took another sip of the cool water. Supper could wait. He looked at his watch. The plane he would have taken had this Chester problem not developed would be landing in Los Angeles just about now. If all went on schedule Louisa would have a bit more than an hour and a half to get to the international terminal, show the proper people her passport, and whatever other formalities were required. She would call him. He had dialed her number again last night, heard her answering machine’s voice, and hung up. Probably she would call him from the terminal. Perhaps she would be angry at his desertion; perhaps she would be offended, her feelings hurt. He doubted that. She seemed a very sensible person. Logical mind. Practical. She would have understood that circumstances made it impossible for him to go. He stood by the sink, holding the half-empty glass, wishing he could remember exactly what he had said in that message. Had he been specific enough? That brought him to the question that he had been keeping buried somewhere. Why hadn’t she called him? Perhaps she had. He had been away from his office after he’d deposited his message on her machine and he hadn’t been back. If she’d called him at home, there was no machine to record it.
He put down the glass and walked into the living room. He would turn on the television and watch the news. He would not think of Louisa Bourebonette. Instead, he found himself watching a car dealership commercial and thinking of Chee. Had he and Emma had a son he might have been like Chee, a complicated mixture of intelligence, romanticism, logic, and idealism. If Emma had been his influence he would have been, like Chee, at least trying to maintain his traditionalism. Had he taken after his father, he would have been – like Chee seemed to be – incompetent to understand women. Clearly the boy had his troubles there. Clearly he was enamored of that young lawyer. Miss Pete. Judging from signs of unhappiness Chee had been showing, that must not be going well. Abruptly, it occurred to Leaphorn that this might explain Chee’s disappearance. Perhaps the rift had been healed and the lawyer and the cop were off somewhere enjoying each other’s company.
The doorbell rang.
That had been an unusual sound in this house for a long time. Who could that be? Maybe Dilly Streib had uncovered something he wanted to tell him. Maybe Virginia had suggested that Streib drop by. Or maybe, with the same circumstances, it was Jim Chee. Where had Chee been? He’d have to make sure this absence without explanation business didn’t happen again.
Janet Pete was standing at his door, her little Ford Escort parked on the street. Miss Pete looked tired, slightly disheveled, glum, and nervous.
“Well,” Leaphorn said. “Good evening. Come on in.”
She followed him into the living room. “I apologize for coming like this,” she said. “Intruding into your privacy, I mean. But I couldn’t get you at your office and Virginia said you might be here, and you wouldn’t mind.”
“It’s perfectly all right,” Leaphorn said.
He smiled at her. “Could I get you something to drink? Something legal, of course. Possession of which is not prohibited in the Navajo Nation. I think I have some sort of soda pop in the refrigerator. Or I could put on some coffee if you’d like it. And meanwhile, have a seat.”
“Oh, no,” Miss Pete said. “Nothing for me.” But she sat in the chair he indicated. “I can only stay a moment. Just long enough to represent a client.”
“Ah,” Leaphorn said, and sat across from her, thinking this was his week for guessing wrong. “Which client?”
“I represent Eugene Ahkeah,” she said.
“So I heard.”
“We had a long talk today,” Janet said. “Over at Crownpoint.” She hesitated.
“Does Mr. Ahkeah have something to tell me?” Leaphorn said.
“No,” she said. “Well, not exactly. I guess I do.” She laughed, shook her head. “Your assistant, Officer Chee, suggested that I tell you my client is innocent. After today, I’m sure he is. He didn’t kill Eric Dorsey. He didn’t steal all those items you found in the box under his house.”
“Chee said you should tell me Ahkeah was innocent? When? Did you see him today?”
“He was just joking,” she said, surprised at the intensity of his tone. “It was last week.”
“Not something he knew, then,” Leaphorn said, making a gesture of dismissal. “We’ve been working on separate things and I haven’t seen him for a few days. I thought perhaps you were bringing me a dispatch from wherever Chee is spending his time these days.”
Miss Pete looked faintly alarmed. “I think he has some days off,” she said.
“Correct,” Leaphorn said. “And he’s taking them.”
Miss Pete had collected herself. “This may sound unprofessional – my coming to you instead of going through the usual legal channels. But I know going to the U.S. attorney wouldn’t do any good, and I’m not sure what you will say and so the worst I can do is waste some of our time.” She paused, picked up the handbag she’d placed on the chair beside her, and put it in her lap.
Leaphorn waited.
“I realize you have a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Janet said. “The stolen materials under his house, principally, although no search warrant was issued as far as I can find out so far and that probably won’t be admitted in court. I guess you can probably place him at the scene of the homicide at about the right time, and perhaps you have some other evidence. But given time I think I’ll be able to show he was set up, that the crime was actually done by the man who made that anonymous telephone call about the box under Ahkeah’s house.”
She paused, awaited a Leaphorn reaction to all this, received a smile and a nod instead of the argument she’d expected, and hurried on.
“There’s simply no motive for Ahkeah to have done it. The prosecution will argue that the motive was theft. He needed to get money to buy whiskey. But he didn’t sell the stuff. He didn’t buy whiskey.”
She paused, waiting again for the counterargument.
Leaphorn nodded.
Miss Pete flushed slightly. She picked up the purse and put it on the chair beside her and cleared her throat.
“Totally aside from his innocence, Mr. Ahkeah is certainly no risk to become a fugitive. He has no connections off the reservation. He doesn’t have any money, no way to run and no place to hide. He doesn’t even speak very much English. There’s really no reason to hold him in a cell under a bond he can’t possibly raise.”
Miss Pete stopped, looked at him, waited for a response.
“What would you like me to do?”
“I came to ask you if you would ask Mr. Streib to recommend to the court that Mr. Ahkeah be released on his
