Chee dropped the match, stepped back, and fumbled out his flashlight. The man was wearing a dark-gray business suit with a vest and a neatly knotted blue necktie. His feet had slid from under him, leaving heel tracks in the sand and pulling up his trouser legs, so that white skin was bared above the top of black socks. In the yellow beam of Chee's flash he looked perhaps forty-five or fifty, but death and yellow light ages the face. His hands hung at his sides, resting on the sand. Between thumb and forefinger of his right hand he held a small white card. Chee knelt by the hand and focused his light on it. It was a card from the Hopi Cultural Center. Holding it by the edges, Chee slipped it out and turned it over. On the reverse side someone had written: 'If you want it back, check into here.' Chee slipped the card back between the fingers. This would be a federal case. Very much a federal case. None of this would be any of his business.
Chapter Five
Captain largo was standing at the wall map, making calculations.
'The plane's here,' he said, punching a stubby finger against the paper. 'And your car was parked here?' He touched the paper again. 'Maybe two miles. Maybe less.'
Chee said nothing. It had occurred to him about three questions back that something unusual was happening.
'And you called your first report in at twenty minutes after five,' the man named Johnson said. 'Say it takes forty minutes to walk to your car, that would leave another fifty minutes from the time you said the plane crashed.' Johnson was a tall, lean, red-haired man, his face a mass of freckles. He wore black cowboy boots of some exotic leather, and denims. His pale mustache was well trimmed and his pale-blue eyes watched
Chee. They had watched Chee since the moment he'd entered the office, with the impersonal unblinking stare policemen tend to develop. Chee reminded himself that it was one of several professional habits that he must try to avoid.
'Fifty minutes,' Chee said. 'Yeah. That sounds about right.'
Silence. Largo studied the map. Johnson was sitting with his chair tilted back against the wall, his hands locked behind his head, staring at Chee. He shifted his weight, causing the chair to creak.
'Fifty minutes is a lot of time,' Johnson said.
A lot of time for what? Chee thought. But he said nothing.
'You say before you got to the wreck you heard a car engine starting, or maybe it was a pickup truck, and somebody driving away. And then when you got there, you heard somebody climbing out of the wash behind the plane.' Johnson's tone made the statement into a question.
'That's what I say,' Chee said. He caught Largo glancing at him. Largo's face was full of thought.
'Our people turned in a report a lot like yours,' Johnson said. 'You don't count your own tracks, of course, so you were looking at four sets and they were looking at five. Someone climbing out of the wash, like you said.' Johnson held up one finger. 'And the smooth-soled, pointy-toed shoes of the stiff.' Johnson held up a second finger. 'And a set of waffle soles, and a set of cowboy boots.' Two more fingers went up. 'And the boot soles we now know were yours.' Johnson added his thumb to complete the count at five. He stared at Chee, waiting for agreement.
'Right,' Chee said, looking into Johnson's cold blue stare.
'It looked to our people—that's the fbi—that the cowboy-boot tracks stepped on your tracks some places, and in some places you stepped on them,' Johnson said. 'Same with the waffle soles.'
Chee considered what Johnson had said for about five seconds.
'Which would mean that the three of us were there at the same time,' Chee said.
'All together,' Johnson said. 'In a bunch.'
Chee was thinking he'd just been accused of a crime. And then he thought that someone had once said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and how well that axiom applied to reading tracks. Trackers tend to forget that people step on their own footprints. It was something his uncle had taught him to watch for—and to read.
'Any comments on that?' Johnson asked.
'No,' Chee said.
'You saying you weren't there at the same time as the other fellows?'
'Are you saying I was?' Chee said. 'What you seem to be saying is that the fbi hasn't had much luck finding somebody who can read tracks.'
Johnson's stare was totally unself-conscious.
Chee looked into it, curious about the man. The face was hard, intelligent, grim—a confident face. Chee had seen the look often enough to recognize it. He'd seen it in the Hopi boy who'd set the Arizona High School cross- country track record at the Flagstaff marathons, and on the face of the rodeo cowboy who won the big belt at Window Rock, and elsewhere in people who were very, very good at what they were doing, and knew it, and let a sort of arrogant confidence show in the careless way they used their eyes. Chee's experience with federal cops had not left him with any illusions of their competence. But Johnson would be another matter altogether. If Chee were a criminal, he would not want Johnson hunting him.
'You're sticking to your report, then,' Johnson said finally. 'Anything you can add that would help us?'
'Help you what?' Chee asked. 'Maybe I could help your man learn something about tracking.'
Johnson let the chair legs hit the floor, unlocked his hands, and stood.
'Nice to meet you folks,' he said. 'And, Mr. Chee, I'll probably be talking to you again. You going to be around?'
'Most likely,' Chee said.
The door closed behind Johnson. Largo was still examining the map.
