'At the time I thought it had some symbolism,' he said.
Janet let the silence live, Navajo fashion. If he had more he wanted to say about Mary Landon and the cat, he would say it. He liked her for that. But he had nothing more to say.
'It was that cat you told me about? Last summer when you'd arrested that old man I was representing. The cat the coyote was after?'
Chee was stirring his coffee, head down but conscious that Janet Pete was studying him. He nodded, remembering. Janet Pete had suggested he provide his stray cat with a coyote-proof home and they had gone to a Farmington pet store and bought one of those plastic and wire cages used to ship pets on airliners. He had used it, eventually, to ship the abandoned white man's cat back to the white man's world.
'Symbolism,' Janet Pete said. Now she was stirring her coffee, looking down at the swirl the spoon made.
To the top of her head, Chee said: 'Belagana cat can't adapt to the Navajo ways. Starves. Eaten by coyote. My stray cat experiment fails. I accept the failure. Cat goes back to the world of the belaganas, where there's more to eat and the coyote doesn't get you.' It was more than Chee had intended to say. He was torn. He wanted to talk about Mary Landon, about the going away of Mary Landon. But he wasn't comfortable talking about it to Janet Pete.
'She didn't want to stay on the reservation. You didn't want to leave,' Janet Pete said. 'You are saying you understand her problem.'
'Our problem,' Chee said. 'My problem.'
Janet Pete sipped her coffee. 'Mine was a law professor. Assistant professor, to be technical.' She put the cup down and considered. 'You know,' she said, 'maybe it was the same symbolic cat problem. Let me see if I can make it fit.'
Chee waited. Like Mary Landon, Janet Pete had large, expressive eyes. Dark brown instead of blue. Now they were surrounded by frown lines as Janet Pete thought.
'Doesn't fit so well,' she said. 'He wanted a helpmate.' She laughed. 'Adam's rib. Something to hold back the loneliness of the young man pursuing his brilliant career at law. The Indian maiden.' The words sounded bitter, but she smiled at Chee. 'You remember. Few years ago, Indian maidens were in with the Yuppies. Like squash-blossom necklaces and declaring yourself to be part Cherokee or Sioux if you wanted to write romantic poetry.'
'Not so much now,' Chee said. 'I gather you agreed to disagree.'
'Not really,' she said. 'The offer remains open. Or so he tells me.'
'Fits in a way,' Chee said. 'I wanted her to be my Navajo.'
'She was a schoolteacher? At Crownpoint?'
'For three years,' Chee said.
'But didn't want to make a career out of it. I can see her point.'
'That wasn't exactly the problem. It was raising kids out here. More than that, too. I could leave. Had an offer from the FBI. Better money. Sort of a choice involved, as she saw it. Did I want her enough to quit being a Navajo?'
Outside the dusty front window of the Navajo Nation Cafe the dazzling late-day sunlight turned dark with cloud shadow. A Ford 250 pickup rolled past slowly, its front seat crowded with four Navajos, its rear bumper crowded by the van of an impatient tourist. Chee caught the eye of the waitress and got their coffees refilled. What would he say if Janet Pete pressed the question. If she said: 'Well, do you?' what would he say?
Instead, she stirred her coffee.
'How has the professor's brilliant career developed?' Chee asked.
'Brilliantly. He's now chief legal counsel of Davidson-Bart, which I understand is what is called a multinational conglomerate. But mostly involved with the commercial credit end of export-import business. Makes money. Lives in Arlington.'
Through the dusty window came the faint sound of thunder, a rumble that faded away.
'Wish it would rain,' Janet Pete said.
Chee had been thinking exactly the same thing. Sharing a Navajo thought with another Navajo. 'Too late to rain,' he said. 'It's October thirty-first.'
Janet Pete dropped him at the garage. He stopped at the station to call Lieutenant Leaphorn on his way back to the trailer.
'Largo told me you found the bodies of those pot hunters,' Leaphorn said. 'He was a little vague about what you were doing out there.'
He left the question implied and Chee thought a moment before answering. He knew Leaphorn's wife had died. He'd heard the man was having trouble coping with that. He'd heard-- everybody in the Navajo Tribal Police had heard--that Leaphorn had quit the force. Retired. So what was he doing in this affair? How official was this? Chee exhaled, taking another second for thought. He thought, quit or not, this is still Joe Leaphorn. Our legendary Leaphorn.
'I was looking for that fellow who stole that backhoe here at Shiprock,' Chee said. 'I found out he was a pot hunter now and then, and I was trying to catch him out digging. With the stolen property.'
'And you knew where to look?' Leaphorn, Chee remembered, never believed in coincidence.
'Some guessing,' Chee said. 'But I knew what gas company he worked for, and where his job would have taken him, and where there might be some sites in the places he would have been.'
The word that spread among the four hundred employees of the Navajo Tribal Police was that Joe Leaphorn had lost it. Joe Leaphorn had a nervous breakdown. Joe Leaphorn was out of it. To Jim Chee, Leaphorn's voice sounded no different. Neither did the tone of his questions. A kind of skepticism. As if he knew he wasn't being told all he needed to know. What would Leaphorn ask him now? How he knew the man would be digging last night?
