Pinto’s expression changed. “I cannot tell you that.”
“Could you tell me if Professor Tagert hired you to show him where it was?”
Hosteen Pinto stared at Chee. “When you arrested me that night, I could smell the fire in your clothing. I could smell where your flesh had burned. I said I was ashamed. I am still ashamed of that. But these things you ask me now, I cannot tell you.”
“What’s going on?” Janet asked.
Hosteen Pinto stood, limped toward the doorway, his old bones stiff from the sitting.
“Could you just tell me who gave you that whiskey?”
Hosteen Pinto tapped on the glass. The jailer was coming.
“Don’t say anything,” Janet said. Then to Chee, angrily, “So much for your promises.”
“I just want some of the truth,” Chee said. “Maybe the truth will make him free.” Chapter 15
JIM CHEE HAD not flown enough to learn to think creatively on an airplane. He spent the time on this Mesa Airlines turboprop flight looking down from his seat by the window at the early snow on the Jemez Mountain ridges below, and the great broken expanse of tan and gray of the Chaco Mesa country and finally, at the ribbon of fading yellow and black that marked the San Juan River Valley. His mind was on Janet Pete, who had been irritated with him?but not nearly as irritated as he had expected her to be. He decided, tentatively, that this was because Hosteen Pinto had told him nothing incriminating.
Still, she should have been furious because he’d tried to take advantage of her. That could be explained if Janet didn’t give a damn how he behaved. Chee didn’t like that explanation. It was true, perhaps, but he rejected it. More and more, he was giving a damn about Janet.
He retrieved his pickup from the airport parking lot and drove down off the mesa into the heavy after-work traffic on 550. He’d stop at the police station in Ship Rock and see if the captain was in. Largo had been around a lot longer than Chee and knew a lot more people in this part of the Reservation. He might have heard of the Tse A’Digash that Ashie Pinto had mentioned. It would be somewhere south of Ship Rock, Chee guessed. Somewhere in the volcanic outcrop country. Probably not too far from where he’d arrested the man. And if Largo didn’t know, he’d be likely to know some old-timer who would.
But Largo wasn’t at the station.
Angie was at the desk.
“Hey, man, how’s the hand?” she asked, grinning at him. And without waiting for an answer: “The captain’s been looking for you. Like he has something heavy on his mind.”
“What?” Chee asked, starting the automatic examination of conscience that such statements provoke. “I’m on sick leave.”
“I don’t know what. He didn’t say. But Lieutenant Leaphorn was with him. Up from Window Rock. And he looked pissed off.”
“Leaphorn?”
“Captain Largo,” Angie said. “Come to think of it, the lieutenant, too, I guess.”
“Was that today?”
Angie nodded. “They left here just a little bit ago.”
To hell with it, Chee thought. He’d see Largo when he saw him. The Leaphorn news disturbed him more. Leaphorn had been trying to reach Tagert. There could be just one explanation for that. The lieutenant, the supercop, had invited himself into the Pinto investigation. Not at the invitation of the FBI, Chee guessed. That wasn’t likely. More likely he’d guessed Officer Jim Chee had screwed it up. Well, to hell with Leaphorn.
“Angie, you’ve been here awhile. Do you know any places around this part of the Reservation that people call Tse A’Digash?”
Angie just looked at him.
Chee persisted. “A place with a bad reputation for witches? Sort of place people stay away from?”
“Sort of place people don’t talk about to strangers, either,” Angie said. “I’m from over near Leupp. Over on the southwest side of the Reservation. Three hundred miles from here.”
“I know,” Chee said. “But you’ve lived here ten or twelve years.”
Angie shook her head. “That’s not long enough,” she said. “Not to talk about skinwalkers with you.”
And it wasn’t. Chee knew that.
Chee drove home thinking about who, among his friends, was enough of a Ship Rock territory old-timer to know what he needed to know. He had three names in mind, with Largo the fourth. Largo was sore at him, apparently, at the moment. But that was not unusual. And Largo would tell him what he knew. He wondered what had upset the captain, and Lieutenant Leaphorn. And at the thought of Leaphorn, he was irritated himself.
As he tilted his pickup off gravel and onto the steep track that led downward through the rabbitbrush toward his trailer house, he saw he had a visitor. A car was just pulling away from the trailer, coming toward him. A Navajo Tribal Police patrol car.
It stopped, went into reverse, reparked just where Chee usually parked his pickup. He parked beside it.
Captain Largo was driving, another policeman beside him.
“Glad to see you,” Largo said, hoisting himself out. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“That’s what Angie said,” Chee said. “You want to come in?”
“Why not,” Largo said.
