“You are ashamed?” Chee repeated. His voice choked. “Ashamed!” With his good hand he reached over the walker’s shoulder, jerked the pistol out of the man’s belt. He sniffed the muzzle of the barrel and smelled burned powder. He checked the cylinders. All six contained cartridges, but three of the cartridges were empty. They had been fired. He jammed the pistol under his belt, snatched the bottle out of the walker’s hand, and hurled it into the sagebrush beside the road.
“Dirty coyote,” Chee said in Navajo. “Get up.” His voice was fierce.
The man stared up at him, expression puzzled. The glare of the headlights reflected off the streaks of rainwater running down his face, dripping from his hair, from his eyebrows.
“Get up!” Chee screamed.
He jerked the man to his feet, hurried him to the patrol car, searched him quickly for another weapon, took a pocketknife and some coins from a front pocket and a worn wallet from his hip pocket. He handcuffed him, conscious of the man’s thin, bony wrists, conscious of the numbness in his own right hand, and the pain in his left palm. He helped the man into the backseat, closed the door behind him, and stood for a moment looking through the glass at him.
“Shiyaazh, ” the man said again. “Baayani-sin.” My son, I am ashamed.
Chee stood with his head bowed, the rain beating against his shoulders. He wiped the back of his hand across his wet face and licked his lips. The taste was salty.
Then he walked into the sagebrush, looking for the bottle. It would be needed as evidence. Chapter 3
THERE WAS NOTHING Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn dreaded more than this?this unpleasant business of pretending to help people he could not possibly help. But those involved today were a family in Emma’s clan, his in-laws, people from Bitter Water clan. By the Navajos’ extended definition of kinship, they were Emma’s brothers and sisters. He’d rarely heard Emma speak of them but that was beside the point. It was beside the point, too, that Emma would never have asked him to interfere. Certainly not in this case, with one of their own policemen murdered. She would have tried to help them herself, though. Tried very quietly?and she would have been no less impotent than Leaphorn. But Emma was dead now and that left only him.
“We know he didn’t kill that policeman,” Mary Keeyani had said. “Not Ashie Pinto.”
By the white man’s way of reckoning kinship, the Keeyani woman was Ashie Pinto’s niece. In fact, she was the daughter of Ashie’s sister, which gave her among the Turning Mountain People the same status as a daughter. She was a small, bony woman dressed in her old-fashioned, traditional, going-to-town best. But the long-sleeved velvet blouse hung on her loosely, as if borrowed from fatter times, and she wore only a single bracelet of narrow silver and a squash blossom necklace which used very little turquoise. She sat stiffly upright in the blue plastic chair across from Leaphorn’s desk, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable.
While Mary Keeyani explained her relationship to Ashie Pinto, and therefore to Hosteen Pinto’s problem, in the proper fashion of a traditional Navajo, Louisa Bourebonette had not explained herself at all. She sat next to Mary Keeyani, looking determined.
“There is absolutely no doubt that this is all some sort of mistake,” Louisa Bourebonette said in a slow, precise, slightly southern voice. “But we haven’t had any success talking with the FBI. We tried to talk to someone at the Farmington office and then we went to Albuquerque. They simply won’t discuss it. And we don’t know who to get to look for evidence to prove he’s innocent. We thought we could hire a private detective. We thought maybe you could recommend someone who would be reliable.”
Louisa Bourebonette had given Leaphorn her card. He picked it up now and glanced at it again.
LOUISA BOUREBONETTE, PH.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR,
AMERICAN STUDIES
NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY
FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA
This wasn’t the information he wanted. He wanted to know how this trim, gray-haired, sharp-eyed woman was connected to the sorrowful business of Delbert Nez, a young man murdered and an old man destroyed. It was partly the wisdom Leaphorn had accumulated in a long life of police work that people have reasons for whatever they do?and the more effort required, the stronger the reason must be. Among Navajos, family is an overpowering reason. Bourebonette was not Navajo. What she was doing required a lot of effort. He put the card in his desk drawer.
“Have you talked to Hosteen Pinto’s attorney?”
“She didn’t seem to know much,” Bourebonette said. She made a small, self-deprecatory face and shook her head. “Of course, they turned Mr. Pinto over to someone brand new in the job. She’d just moved in from Washington. Had just been hired. She told us the Federal Public Defender’s office had two investigators who might be helpful. But
“
Professor Bourebonette let the sentence trail off, intending to let the skepticism in her tone finish it. Leaphorn sat silently behind his desk. He glanced at her. And away. Waiting.
Bourebonette shrugged. “But I got the impression that she didn’t think they would be very helpful. I don’t think she knew them well yet. In fact, she didn’t give us much reason to believe that Mr. Pinto will be well represented.”
Leaphorn knew one of the federal defender cops. A good, solid, hardworking Hispano named Felix Sanchez. He used to be with the El Paso police department and he knew how to collect information. But there wasn’t much of anything Sanchez could do to help these women. And nothing Leaphorn could do, either. He could give them the names of private detectives in Farmington, or Flagstaff, or Albuquerque. White men. What could they do? What could anyone do? An old man had been turned mean by whiskey and had killed a policeman. Why waste what little money his family might have? Or this abrasive white woman’s money. How did she fit into this?
“If you hire a private detective it’s going to be expensive,” Leaphorn said. “He would want some money in advance as a retainer. I’d guess at least five hundred dollars. And you’d be paying his expenses. Mileage, meals, motels, things like that. And so much an hour for his fee.”
“How much?” Professor Bourebonette asked.
