family, had had any dealing with her. A very classy woman, Chee thought. He felt a wave of affection, and of chauvinistic Navajo pride in her. And more than that, he felt a hunger for her. And a sense of failure. Since the day she’d come to the hospital to see him he’d lost ground with her. He was sure of that. She liked him less now than she did that morning.
The prosecutor was standing, undergoing the same scrutiny from the jury panel. One man on the front row put up his hand, and said he knew the man. They were members of the same church. He was excused.
Then Ashie Pinto stood. The business suit issued by the Bernalillo County jail for this appearance was too large for him, making him look even thinner than Chee had remembered.
“Face the jury panel, please, Mr. Pinto,” the judge said.
Hosteen Pinto reacted to his name. He looked back at the judge, puzzled.
“Interpreter!”
The interpreter responded to the impatience in Judge Downey’s voice. He awoke from whatever had been occupying his thoughts, stood, said something in Navajo too low for Chee to understand.
Hosteen Pinto looked at the man, cupped a hand behind his ear.
“She wants you to look out at those people,” the interpreter said, much louder now. “So they can see you.”
Pinto looked out at them, his expression sometimes embarrassed, sometimes determined. Pinto’s eyes moved across the courtroom, hesitating a moment when they came to the Navajo panelist, hesitating another moment when they met the eyes of Jim Chee.
Chee looked away, down at his itching hand.
No one knew Hosteen Ashie Pinto. The whites didn’t know him, nor the Hispanics, nor the Apache, nor the Pueblos, nor the Asian. Nor Janet Pete, nor me. He is a shaman. He is a stranger to us all.
The prosecutor looked at his notes then looked up. “Mrs. Greyeyes, I believe you live at Nakaibito. On the Navajo Reservation. Is that correct?”
“Actually, closer to Coyote Canyon,” Mrs. Greyeyes said.
“But on the Reservation?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a Navajo?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any clan relationships with the defendant?”
“I don’t know what he is.”
The prosecutor looked at his notes.
“I have two clans written down here. Turning Mountain Dinee and the Bitter Water People.” He looked at the interpreter. “Is that right? Two clans?”
“Mother’s and father’s,” the interpreter said. “Two clans.”
“I am born to the Sage Brush Hill People,” the woman said. “And born for Towering House Clan.”
“So there is no connection? Correct?”
“We’re not kinfolks,” the woman said.
Judge Downey leaned forward and stared at the interpreter. “Miss Pete,” she said, “do you think your client should know what is going on here? Shouldn’t it be interpreted for Mr. Pinto?”
Janet Pete looked abashed.
“I would like to have it interpreted,” she said.
“So ordered,” said Judge Downey.
The interpreter was a man of perhaps forty with a disheveled look that was probably genetic. He explained in loud and precise Navajo the exchange between Mrs. Greyeyes and the prosecutor.
Chee began to doze. Snapped awake. The man with the conservative look was being questioned now by Janet Pete.
“Mr. Degenhardt, I want you to tell me if you have ever had or if anyone in your family, or even a close friend, has ever had any unpleasant experience involving a member of the Navajo Tribe. Have you ever been in a fight with a Navajo? Anything like that?”
Mr. Degenhardt thought about it.
The interpreter said: “She asked him if he ever been in a fight with a Navajo.”
Mr. Degenhardt shook his head. “No.”
“Can you think of any reason why you could not give this gentleman here, Mr. Pinto, a fair trial?”
“She say you be fair?” the interpreter said.
“No, Ma’am,” Degenhardt said.
“He say yes, he be fair,” the interpreter said.
Chee stopped listening. Who was the interpreter who translated Ashie Pinto’s words from the tape to the transcript? Had he been as lazy as this one? Skipping? Summarizing? Or, if he was a traditional Navajo, perhaps
