They reached the summit of the ridge. The shoulder was wide here, blocking their view of the formation. But they could see the Dineyahze place. It was built on the slope opposite them. The Dineyahze outfit included a small oblong of house with a tarpaper roof weighed down against windy weather by a scattering of old automobile tires, a hogan built of stone, a mobile home set on concrete blocks, and the usual brush arbors, corrals, and storage sheds.
“If I’m guessing right, the Ji boy took those photographs from the ridge above the house. He wanted the same view that Jenifer would have from her yard.” He glanced at Bourebonette, who was looking impressed.
“If I am guessing wrong,” he added, feeling sudden embarrassment, “then I have made myself look foolish.”
“Right or wrong,” Bourebonette said, “I’d say you have made yourself look like an innovative thinker. None of that occurred to me at all.”
The rock formation emerged slowly into view as the car moved along the ridge. And then they could see the paint.
Leaphorn stopped the car. He pulled on the parking brake. He stared.
Jubilation!
It wasn’t perfect from this perspective. But you could easily make it out. The white-against-black read:
I LOVE JEN
“Can you see it?” he asked. “Can you read it?”
“How about that?” Professor Bourebonette said. “Congratulations to you, Lieutenant Leaphorn.”
Her smile engulfed him with warm approval.
“I should have thought of it sooner,” he said. “I had all the information I needed. As soon as I knew where the girl lived, I should have guessed.”
“Modesty,” Bourebonette said. “I think that was right out of Sherlock Holmes.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m sort of proud of it myself,” he said.
“I wonder what the girl thinks?” Bourebonette said. “I think I’ll ask her.”
“I don’t see much need to bother her now,” Leaphorn said. “We were going to ask her if she had any idea what would be going on with Taka. Now we know.”
“We sure do,” Bourebonette said.
She was silent while he backed the car around. Then she said: “What we don’t know is why somebody shot his father.”
“No, we don’t,” Leaphorn said. But he was beginning to think he might know that, too. Chapter 18
CHEE HAD HOPED to catch Janet Pete before the federal court session convened. But there was the problem of finding a parking place in downtown Albuquerque. So he emerged from the elevator just in time to see the U.S. marshals ushering Hosteen Pinto into the courtroom.
“Jury selection today,” the receptionist at the Federal Public Defender’s office had told him. “She’ll be over in Judge Downey’s court in the new Federal Building. On Gold.”
“How long will that take?” Chee had asked, and the answer had been “Maybe all day. Maybe tomorrow. Probably you can catch her before it starts. If you hurry.”
He’d hurried, but not quite enough. Maybe, he thought, there would be a recess and he could talk to her then. He nodded to the bailiff at the door and started in.
“You’ll have to sit over by the wall, and about the fourth row,” the bailiff told him. “All the front rows are for the jury panel, and they use the back rows until their names get called.”
Chee sat against the wall in the fourth row and watched the panel being ushered in. There would be sixty of them if he remembered the procedure?men and women from around New Mexico with nothing much in common except that they lived in this judicial district and had registered to vote. Thus their names had been drawn for this duty.
When the last one was seated a middle-aged woman in a dark blue dress began spinning the bingo cage on a table beside the judge’s bench, pulling out names. An elderly Hispano named Martinez was first. He came down the aisle through the gate in the railing, turned right, and took the first chair in the row inside the railing.
“Mrs. Eloise Gibbons,” Blue Woman read, and a slender young woman in a gray pant-suit came down the aisle and took the chair next to Martinez.
“Mr. William Degenhardt,” Blue Woman said, and a conservative-looking man with a conservative haircut and a conservative gray suit took the chair to her right.
Blue Woman continued the litany, filling the row of chairs inside the railing, and then the two rows behind it. Slightly more women than men, Chee estimated. Altogether, seven Anglos and Hispanics, a Vietnamese or Cambodian, a middle-aged Navajo woman, a man who might be an Apache, and two who were clearly Pueblo Indians, although Chee couldn’t identify which of the Pueblos.
Janet Pete and a man who Chee guessed must be the federal prosecutor assigned to this case were standing in front of the high desk where the judge sat. The three were discussing something with her. Would that be an advantage? Woman judge, woman lawyer? Chee doubted it. It would be fairly common these days.
Chee felt tremendously drowsy. It was warm in the courtroom and he’d slept very little last night. He thought of his hand, which was itching under the bandage. How much use of it would he recover? He thought of what he wanted to tell Janet Pete?about Ji’s son being the driver of the car he’d seen the night Nez was killed. About Ji’s message on the wall. He thought of how Janet Pete looked. She was wearing something dark green with a skirt that came far below her knees. She had pretty knees, not that he’d seen them often, and pretty ankles.
Janet was standing facing the jury panel now and the judge was asking if any panelist knew her, knew her
