'I need to know who it was,' Chee said. He was surprised. He hadn't expected any trouble with this. 'There's no confidentiality involved. Why be—'
'You have another homicide to work on now,' she said. 'Why not just leave Mr. Bistie alone. He didn't kill anyone. And he's sick. You should be able to see that. I think he has cancer of the liver. Another homicide. And no arrest made. Why don't you work on that?'
Janet Pete was leaning on the car door while she said this, and smiling slightly. But it wasn't a friendly smile.
'Where did you hear about the homicide?'
She tapped the car. 'Radio,' she said. 'Noon news, KGAK, Gallup, New Mexico.'
'They didn't say who was shot?'
''Police did not reveal the identity of the victim,'' she said, but the smile faded as she said it. 'Who was it?'
'It was Roosevelt Bistie,' Chee said.
'Oh, no,' she said. She sat down on the front seat again, wrinkled her face, closed her eyes, shook her head against this mortality. 'That poor man.' She put her hands across her face. 'That poor man.'
'Somebody came to his house last night. His daughter was gone. They shot him.'
Janet Pete lowered her hands to listen to this, staring at Chee. 'Why? Do you know why? He was dying, anyway. He said the doctor told him the cancer would kill him.'
'We don't know why,' Chee said. 'I want to talk to you about it. We're trying to find out why.'
They left Janet Pete's clean Chevy and got into Chee's unwashed patrol car. At the Turquoise Cafe, Janet Pete ordered iced tea and Chee had coffee.
'You want to know who called me. That's funny, because the man who called lied. I found out later. He said his name was Curtis Atcitty. Spelled with the
'Did he say who he was?'
'He said he was a friend of Roosevelt Bistie's, and he said Bistie was being held without bond and without any charges being filed against him, and that he was sick and didn't have any lawyer and he needed help.' She paused, thinking about it. 'And he said that Bistie had asked him to call DNA about a lawyer.' She looked at Chee. 'That's where he lied. When I told Bistie about it, he said he hadn't asked anybody to call. He said he didn't know anybody named Curtis Atcitty.'
Chee clicked his tongue against his teeth, the sound of disappointment. So much for that.
'When you left the jail, I saw you driving back into Farmington. Where did you go? When was the last time you saw him?'
'Down to the bus station. He thought one of his relatives might be there, and they'd give him a ride home. But nobody he knew was there, so I took him back to Shiprock. He saw a truck he recognized at the Economy Washomat and I left him out there.'
'Did he ever tell you why he tried to kill Old Man Endocheeney?'
Janet Pete simply looked at him.
'He's dead,' Chee said. 'No lawyer-client confidentiality left. Now it's try to find out who killed him.'
Janet Pete studied her hands, which were small and narrow, with long, slender fingers, and if her fingernails were polished it was with the transparent, colorless stuff. Nice feminine hands, Chee thought. He remembered Mary Landon's hands, strong, smooth fingers intertwined with his own. Mary Landon's fingertips. Mary Landon's small white fist engulfed in his own. Janet Pete's right hand now gripped her left.
'I'm not stalling,' she said. 'I'm thinking. I'm trying to remember.'
Chee wanted to tell her it was important. Very important. But he decided it wasn't necessary to say that to this lawyer. He watched her hands, thinking of Mary Landon, and then her face, thinking of Janet Pete.
'He said very little altogether,' she said. 'He didn't talk much. He wanted to know if he could go home. We talked about that. I asked him if he knew exactly what he was accused of doing. What law he was supposed to have broken.' She glanced at Chee, then turned her eyes away, gazing out the street window through the dusty glass on which THE TURQUOISE CAFE was lettered in reverse. Beyond the glass, the dry wind was chasing a tumbleweed down the street. 'He said he had shot a fellow over in the San Juan Canyon. And then he sort of chuckled and said maybe he just scared him. But anyway the man was dead and that was what you had him in jail for.' She frowned, concentrating, right hand gripping the left. 'I asked him why he had shot at the man and he said something vague.' She shook her head.
'Vague?'
'I don't remember. Something like 'I had a reason,' or 'good reason' or something like that—without saying why.'
'Did you press him at all?'
'I said something like 'You must have had a good reason to shoot at a man,' and he laughed, I remember that, but not like he thought it was funny, and I asked him directly what his reason was and he just shut up and wouldn't answer.'
'He wouldn't tell us anything, either,' Chee said.
Janet Pete had taken a sip from her glass. Now she held it a few inches from her lips. 'I told him I was his lawyer—there to help him. What he told me would be kept secret from anyone else. I told him shooting at somebody, even if you missed them, could get him in serious trouble with the white man and if he had a good reason for doing it, he would be smart to let me know about it. To see if we could use it in some way to help keep him out of jail.'
