“Appreciate it,” Chee said, but the Burn Doctor didn’t notice the irony.
He used the pay telephone again. This time Janet Pete was out. She was in Santa Fe, the receptionist at the Federal Public Defender’s office told him. She was involved with picking a jury for a forthcoming trial. Would she be home this evening? The receptionist had no idea.
Chee called Professor Tagert’s office. Jean Jacobs answered. No, Tagert still hadn’t checked in.
“Can I come over? Do you have time to talk?”
“Sure,” Jacobs said. “About what?”
“Mr. Redd told us about Tagert’s interest in Butch Cassidy. He said Ashie Pinto had helped Tagert find what might be Cassidy’s trail. Out on the Reservation.”
“Okay,” Jacobs said. “I know he’s obsessed with Cassidy but I don’t know much about it.”
Chee walked, feeling disgruntled. Janet Pete knew he would be back in Albuquerque today. He’d written her a note, telling her. So, maybe she couldn’t avoid the Santa Fe duty. On the other hand, maybe she could have. Chee had been around long enough to know how priorities worked when there was a conflict between duty and desire.
He crossed the mall with fallen sycamore leaves blowing around his feet. His hand hurt. His fingers wouldn’t respond properly. He felt discouraged. Blue. Bored. Undecided. He found the door of Dr. Tagert’s office open. Jean Jacobs sat, elbows on desk, chin on hands, staring out the window. She looked blue, bored, and undecided.
“I’m glad to see you,” Jean Jacobs said. “I’ve got a million things to do.” She slapped an angry palm onto a pile of paperwork. “All this goddamn Tagert work, and all my own work and?oh, to hell with it.”
“Yeah,” Chee said. “Sometimes that’s about it.”
“So screw it all,” she said. “I hope you have just walked in here with something that is not only totally time- wasting but mysterious. We’ll figure out how to find the vanished professor of history.” She paused. “Even better, we’ll figure out where they hid the bastard’s body.”
“I guess he’s not back yet then,” Chee said. He decided she wasn’t going to ask him to sit down, even though she obviously expected him to stay. So he moved a stack of folders off a chair and sat.
“I think he’s dead,” Jacobs said. “I’ll bet your Mr. Pinto shot him the same time he shot the officer.”
“I think that’s possible,” Chee said. “But then, what happened to his body?”
Jacobs made a “who knows” gesture. “Did Odell tell you anything interesting? Or useful?”
“I’m not sure how useful. He told us all about Tagert’s disagreement about Butch Cassidy with that other professor. And he told us that Pinto knew an old story about Cassidy, or some other bandido, coming across the Reservation after a robbery in Utah and getting killed by some of us Navajos. Tagert thought that maybe he could find some proof of that. And he’d given up on trying to prove Cassidy died of old age.”
“I heard a little about that yarn,” Jacobs said. “Not much. But I think Tagert was excited about it. That was last summer.” She paused, looked at Chee, a shy look. “What did you think of him?”
“Of Redd? He seemed like a nice guy. He said you were a friend.”
“Ummm,” she said. “A friend.”
Her expression was so sad, so close to matching Chee’s own mood, that he said: “Having troubles?”
And she heard the sympathy in his voice.
“I’m just down today,” she said, and laughed a shaky laugh. “You too, I’ll bet. You didn’t look all that cheerful anyway when you walked in.”
“Yeah,” Chee said. “It hasn’t been one of my better days.”
“Hand hurt?”
“A little.”
“You look down,” Jacobs said. “Troubles?”
“Not really,” Chee said. He shrugged. “I was hoping to meet a friend. She had to go to Santa Fe.” He considered that. “At least she said she had to go to Santa Fe.”
Jacobs was frowning. “She didn’t go?”
“Oh, I guess she went. I meant maybe she didn’t really have to go.”
“Oh,” Jacobs said. She made a wry face. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Chee said.
“I was just guessing. With me, I think it’s more important for me to be with Odell than it is for Odell to be with me.”
“Okay,” Chee said. He laughed. “We’re on the same wavelength.”
“You’ve got a bad hand. You fly all the way in from Farmington or wherever, and your girlfriend thinks going to Santa Fe is more important.”
“Maybe she couldn’t get out of it. And she’s not exactly my girlfriend. We’re more just friends.”
“Uh-huh,” Jacobs said. “Like Odell said.”
Chee wanted to get off this subject.
“You work for Tagert. Part-time anyway. Did you ever notice anything in the paperwork that would give you any idea what he and Pinto were doing out there?”
