“Jim,” Janet said. “What do you think? Do you think they’re sort of being—that I’m getting sort of led into something?” She was looking down at her hands, gripped tightly in her lap. “What do you think?”
Jim Chee thought the way she had changed that question was interesting. He thought it was interesting that she didn’t ever actually pronounce the name of John McDermott. He wanted to say “Led by whom?” and force her at least to put some sort of name to it—if only the name of the law firm.
“I think something’s going on,” Chee said.
“And I think we should go somewhere quiet, and eat dinner and talk it over.” He glanced at her. “Maybe even hold hands. I could use a little handholding.”
She had been looking down at her hands. Now she gave him a quick sidelong glance, and then turned away. “I can’t tonight,” she said. “I promised John I would meet him. Him and the man from Tano.”
“Well, then,” Chee said. “I’ll ask you another question. Has Highhawk said anything more to you about this crime that hasn’t been committed yet? You remember that? You mentioned it when you called me at Shiprock. I think it was sort of vague. Some reference to needing a lawyer in the future for something that hadn’t yet happened. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Janet said, looking at her hands again. “And tonight it’s really law firm business. John arranged to have Tamana come. He said he wants to get me involved in how to handle the problem. He wants me to talk to Tamana. So I could hardly get out of it.”
“Of course not,” Chee said. He was disappointed. He had counted on this evening stretching on. But it was more than disappointment. There was resentment, too.
Janet sensed it. “I guess I could,” she said. “I don’t know how long this man’s going to be in Washington. But I can try to call John and cancel it. Or leave a message for him at the restaurant.”
“No, no,” Chee said. “Business is business.” But he didn’t want to think about Janet and John McDermott having dinner and about what would happen after dinner. If I was honest with her, he thought, I would tell her that of course McDermott was using her. That he had probably used her when she was his student in law school, and ever since, and would always use her. He had never seen McDermott, but he knew professors who used their graduate students. Used them for slave labor to do their research, used them emotionally.
“Back to my question,” Chee said. “Did you ever ask Highhawk what he meant by that reference to the uncommitted crime? Did he ever explain what he meant by that?”
Janet seemed happy to shift the subject. “I said something like I hoped he wasn’t intending to dig up any more old bones. And he just laughed. So I said—frankly, this whole thing bothered me, so I said I didn’t think it was laughable if he was planning to commit a felony. Something stuffy-sounding like that. And he laughed again and said he didn’t intend to be guilty of making his attorney a co-conspirator. He said the less I knew the better.”
“He seems to know something about the law.”
“He knows a lot about a lot of things,” Janet agreed. “Nothing wrong with the man’s mind.”
“Except for being crazy.”
“Except for that,” Janet agreed.
“Can you arrange for me to see him again?” Chee said. “And I’d like to get a look at that genuine Tano fetish figure. You think that’s possible?”
“I’m sure there’s no problem seeing Highhawk. About the fetish, I don’t know. It’s probably stored somewhere in a basement. And the Smithsonian must be pretty selective about who has access to what.”
“Maybe because I’m a cop,” Chee said, wondering as he said it what in the world he could say to make anyone believe the Navajo Tribal Police had a legitimate interest in a Pueblo Indian artifact.
“More likely because you’re a shaman,” Janet Pete said. “You still are, aren’t you?”
“Trying to be,” Chee said. “But being a medicine man doesn’t fit very well with being a policeman. Don’t get much business.” Even that was an overstatement. The curing ceremonial Chee had learned was the Blessing Way. In the four years since he had declared himself a
Janet looked shocked. “The famous Leaphorn? Grouchy Joe? I thought he was—” She searched for the word to define Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. “Agnostic. Or skeptical. Or—what is it? Anyway, I didn’t think he believed in curing ceremonials and things like that.”
“He wasn’t so bad,” Chee said. “We had worked together on a case. People were digging up Anasazi graves and then there were a couple of homicides. But I think he asked me to do it because he wanted to be nice.”
“Nice,” Janet said. “That doesn’t sound like the Joe Leaphorn I always used to hear about. Seems like I was always hearing Navajo cops bitching about Leaphorn never being quite satisfied with anything.”
But it had, in fact, been nice. More than nice. Beautiful. Everything had gone beautifully. Not many of Leaphorn’s relatives had been there. But then the old man was a widower and he didn’t think Leaphorn had much family. Leaphorn was a Red Forehead Dinee and that clan was pretty much extinct. But the curing itself had gone perfectly. He had forgotten nothing. The sand paintings had been exactly correct. And when the final singing had been finished Old Man Leaphorn had, in some way difficult for Chee to define, seemed to be healed of the sickness that had been riding him. The bleakness had been gone. He had seemed back in harmony. Content.
“I think he just always wants things to be better than they naturally are,” Chee said. “I got used to him after a while. And I’ve got a feeling that all that talk about him being a smart son of a bitch is pretty much true.”
“I used to see him in court there at Window Rock now and then, and in the police building, but I never knew him. I heard he was a real pragmatist. Not a traditional Navajo.”
And how about you, Janet Pete? Chee thought. How traditional are you? Do you believe in what Changing Woman taught our ancestors about the power we are given to heal ourselves? How about you leaving Dinetah and the Sacred Mountains because a white man wants you to keep him happy in Washington? But that was none of his goddamn business. That was clear enough. His role was to be a friend. No more. Well, why not? For that matter, he could use a friend himself.
