of any one of them not only memorable but close and personal. He had barely known Delbert Nez and remembered him as a small, quiet, neat young officer. But, like Leaphorn, Nez had worked out of the Window Rock office and Leaphorn had seen him often. Nez had been trying to grow a mustache. That was not an easy task for Navajos, with their lack of facial hair, and his sparse growth had provoked teasing and ribald jokes.
Leaphorn had known the arresting officer much better. Jim Chee. He had run across Chee several times on other investigations. An unusually bright young man. Clever. Some good qualities. But he had what might be a fatal flaw for a policeman. He was an individualist, following the rules if and when they agreed with him. On top of that, he was a romantic. He even wanted to be a medicine man. Leaphorn smiled at the idea. A Tribal Policeman- Shaman. The two professions were utterly incongruous.
Leaphorn found himself wondering if he had been Chee’s first client. After a tough case, in the awful malaise that had followed Emma’s death, he’d hired Chee to do a Blessing Way for him. An impulsive decision?unusual for him. He’d done it partly to give the young man a chance to try his hand as a shaman and partly as a gesture toward Emma’s people. The Yazzies were Bitter Water clansmen and traditionalists. The ceremony would be sort of an unspoken apology for the hurt he must have caused them. He’d left Emma’s mother’s place on the second morning after they’d carried the body out into the canyon?unable to endure the full four days of silent withdrawal among her relatives that tradition required. It had been rude, and he’d regretted it. And so he had called Agnes and told her he’d hired a singer. He asked her to arrange the ceremony. She had gladly done it, not needing a reminder that his own clan, the Slow Talking Dinee, was now scattered and almost extinct, or that there was little left of his own family. He’d been uneasy around Agnes. Agnes had never married and, as Emma’s sister, he would have been expected to marry her under the old tradition.
He glanced up at the two women waiting patiently across the desk and then looked back at the report. But he was thinking of Officer Chee, his hair tied in a knot at the back of his head arranging his equipment on the swept earthen floor of the Yazzie hogan. Chee had been nervous, showing Leaphorn where to sit with his back against the west wall of the hogan, spreading a small rug in front of him. Then Chee had extracted from his deerskin jish the little leather sack that was his Four Mountain bundle, two pairs of “talking prayersticks,” a snuff can containing flint arrow points, and a half dozen pouches of pollen. He had solemnly formed the shape of footprints on the earth and marked on them with the pollen the symbols of the sunrays on which Leaphorn would walk. Beyond Chee, through the hogan doorway to the east he could see the rugged ramparts of the Carrizo Mountains reflecting the rosy twilight. He had smelled the pinon smoke from the cooking fires of Emma’s kinfolks and of his own friends who had come to join him in this venture into the spirit world of his people.
At that moment he had wished desperately for a way to call it all off. He was a hypocrite. He did not believe that the ritual poetry that Officer Jim Chee would chant, or the dry paintings he would form on the hogan floor, would control the powers and force them to restore Joe Leaphorn to a life with “beauty all around him.” The beauty had gone somewhere up in the canyon rocks with Emma’s body. Gone forever. He wanted only to follow her.
But there had been no way out of it. And on the second dawn, after the long night of chanting, he had sucked in the fout great ceremonial breaths of cold morning air feeling different than he had felt for weeks. It had not cured him, but it had started the healing. He could thank Shaman Jim Chee for that, he guessed. Or for part of it. But Officer Jim Chee was another matter. If Officer Chee had done his duty, Delbert Nez might still be alive.
“Shot high in the left chest,” the report said. “Apparently at very close range.”
Leaphorn glanced up at Mary Keeyani and the professor. “Sorry I’m taking so long,” he said.
“There is time enough,” Mary Keeyani said.
Captain Largo had told him that Chee wanted to resign after the homicide. Getting Nez out of the car, Chee had been burned on both hands, one arm, one leg, and the chest. Largo had gone to the hospital at Farmington to see him. Largo was an old friend. He’d told Leaphorn about it.
“He didn’t just offer to resign,” Largo had told Leaphorn. “He insisted on it. He gave me his badge. Said he’d screwed up. That he should have gone to assist Nez when he knew Nez was in pursuit. And of course he should have gone.”
“Why the devil didn’t he go?” Leaphorn had asked. “The silly son-of-a-bitch. What was his excuse?”
“He didn’t offer any excuses,” Largo had said, his voice resenting Leaphorn’s judgmental tone. “But I reminded him that his report showed Nez had been laughing. From what little he heard on the radio Nez wasn’t taking it seriously. Like it was a joke. And I told him he couldn’t resign anyway. He can’t resign until we get Pinto tried.”
Thinking of that conversation now as he turned the page in the report, Leaphorn remembered that Largo had some sort of vague clan kinship link with Officer Chee. At least he’d heard that. Navajo Tribal Police regulations prohibited nepotism in the chain of command. But the rules were just picked up from biligaana personnel regulations. The white rules didn’t recognize clan connections.
The next sheet was the report of Sergeant Eldon George. When George arrived he had found Chee sprawled in the front seat of his vehicle, half-unconscious from shock. Pinto was asleep on the back seat, handcuffed. George had attempted to treat Chee’s burns with his first aid kit. Another Navajo Police unit had arrived, and a San Juan County Sheriff’s car, and a New Mexico State Police patrolman and then the ambulance that Chee had called to pick up Nez. Instead, it had taken Officer Chee. Pinto had been transported to the county jail at Aztec and booked on an assault charge?the toughest rap possible for a crime committed on federal trust land until the federals got involved and filed their felony homicide complaint.
Leaphorn glanced up at Mrs. Keeyani. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, lower lip caught between her teeth, watching him.
“I must refresh my memory before I can tell you anything,” he said.
Mrs. Keeyani nodded.
The next page reminded Leaphorn that Ashie Pinto had not made a statement. When apprehended, he had said, according to the report:
“Officer, I have done something shameful.”
Sounded stilted. Leaphorn considered it. Pinto would have spoken to Chee in Navajo, probably. Chee, probably no better than half-conscious, would have passed along a translation to George. George had jotted it into his notebook, retyped it into his report. What had Pinto actually said?
According to the report, nothing else. He had admitted nothing, denied nothing, remained absolutely silent, refusing to answer any question except to confirm his identity with a nod, declining to call a lawyer, to name anyone who he might wish to be informed of his arrest. When asked to submit to the taking of a blood sample, “Subject Pinto was seen to nod in the affirmative.”
