“And that seems to be pretty much what went on,” Chee said.
“But why didn’t Nez take that pistol away from him? You guys have a sort of standard procedure for things like that, don’t you? For handling drunks?”
Chee had wondered about that himself. “He wasn’t arresting him,” he said. “We take drunks in for their own protection. So they don’t freeze. Or drown.” As Janet Pete knew very well.
She sipped her coffee. Her dark eyes looked skeptical over the rim.
“He didn’t take the pistol because he didn’t see the pistol,” Chee added. “The old man had it stuck in his belt, behind him.”
Janet sipped. “Come on,” she said. “Gimme a break. Isn’t that sort of a usual place to stick a pistol?”
Chee shrugged.
“So how did Pinto get there?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe the guy in the white car brought him,” Chee said. “You’ve seen the FBI report, haven’t you? What did they say?”
Janet had put her cup down. “White car? What white car?”
“When I was driving down from Red Rock, I met a white?anyway a light-colored vehicle. It was raining and getting dark. But I think I recognized it. It’s an old banged-up Jeepster that one of the teachers at Ship Rock drives. What’d they say about that in the report?”
“They didn’t mention it,” Janet said. “All news to me.”
“They didn’t run that down?” Chee said. He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can,” Janet said. “You gave them all they needed. Their suspect, arrested at the scene of the crime, holding the murder weapon. All that’s missing is the motive. Being drunk takes care of that. He doesn’t even deny he did it. So why waste time and complicate things by digging out all the facts?” The question sounded bitter.
“How about that fancy bottle he was carrying? Does the report show where that came from?”
“Nothing. I didn’t know it was fancy.”
“Like something you’d give a fancy drinker for Christmas. If you wanted to impress him. It wasn’t what a drunk would be buying.”
Janet finished her coffee, put down the cup, looked at him for a while.
“You know, Jim, you don’t have to do any of this. I know how you must feel. And I’m having trouble separating friend from lawyer when
“
He held up his right palm, interrupting her.
“When I think I’m hearing a lawyer, I’ll shut up,” he said. The thing about Janet Pete was that he could talk to her about things that were hard to talk about. She wasn’t Mary Landon. No soft, pale hair, no bottomless blue eyes, no talent for making him feel like the ultimate male. But by tomorrow, he thought, he could talk to her about listening to Delbert Nez laughing on the radio. He could talk to her about how the dreadful feeling grew as he sat over his coffee at the Red Rock Trading Post, and waited, and waited, and waited. He could tell her how long it had taken him to sense that he had made an unforgivable, irredeemable mistake. She would understand why, when Ashie Pinto was convicted, he would resign from the tribal police and find some job that he was fitted for. She would understand why he had to see the old drunk convicted. He hadn’t done his job. He hadn’t kept Delbert Nez alive. But at least he had arrested his killer. Done one thing right.
She’d have to defend the old man, get him a light sentence?or perhaps some sort of an insanity plea bargain that would put him in a hospital for a while. He had no problem with that. It didn’t matter to him if the old man was punished. That would do no possible good.
But he needed Janet Pete to understand that a verdict finding Pinto innocent would make Jim Chee doubly guilty. Chapter 5
JOE LEAPHORN STOOD at the door of Ashie Pinto’s house reexamining his understanding of what the law allowed in a criminal investigation. He was sure that only the most genial judge would tolerate what was going on here. It would be labeled as a search without a warrant, perhaps as downright breaking and entering. However, Mary Keeyani and Louisa Bourebonette had not been impressed with such niceties, nor with Leaphorn’s uneasiness.
“I thought we were just going to check around out here,” Leaphorn had said. “Ask some questions. See if anyone had seen anything. We don’t have any legal right to break into the suspect’s house.”
“He’s my uncle,” Mary Keeyani had said. She was using the tire tool from Professor Bourebonette’s car, prying at the padlock hasp that secured Ashie Pinto’s door.
“It’s not as if we were actually breaking in,” Bourebonette said. “We’re here for his own benefit.”
Joe Leaphorn wasn’t exactly sure why he was here. Partly curiosity, partly some irrational sense of responsibility to Emma’s clan sister?sort of a family gesture to soothe his conscience. Certainly he had no reason to be here that would sound either plausible or professional if this meddling into a federal homicide case caused any complications. True, that seemed extremely unlikely. But he stood aside as Mary Keeyani opened the violated door. The women filed in past him.
“He keeps his papers in a tin box,” Mary Keeyani said. “It’s in here somewhere if I can find it.”
Leaphorn left the women to their questionable task. He walked across the hard-packed earth behind Pinto’s house and inspected Pinto’s truck. It was a 1970-vintage Ford short-bed pickup with the left front tire flat, the left rear critically low, the glass missing from the driver’ s-side window, and chicken manure on the seat. He released the hood catch and raised it. The battery was missing?the first thing taken on the back side of the Reservation when a truck gets too worn out to fix. Obviously, Ashie Pinto hadn’t driven this truck for a long, long time.
He closed the hood and walked down the slope through the snakeweed to Pinto’s outhouse. The raw planks
