'So we take off our friend hats, and put on adversary hats?'
'Not really,' Janet said. 'But I'd like to know if you're absolutely certain Robert Jano killed Officer Kinsman.'
'Sure I'm certain,' Chee said. He felt his face flush—'You must have read the arrest report. I was there, wasn't I? And what do you do with it if I say I'm not sure? Do you tell the jury that even the arresting officer told you that he had reasonable doubts?'
He'd tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but Janet's face told him he hadn't managed it. Another raw nerve touched.
'I'd do absolutely nothing with it,' she said. 'It's just that Jano swears he didn't do it. I'll be working with him. I'd like to believe him.'
'Don't,' Chee said. He sipped his coffee and put down the mug. It occurred to him that he hadn't noticed how it tasted. He picked up one of the containers-. ''Non-dairy creamer,'' he read. 'Produced, I understand, on non-dairy farms.'
Janet managed a smile. 'You know what? Doesn't this episode we're having here remind you of the first time we met? Remember? In the holding room at the San Juan County Jail in Aztec. You were trying to keep me from bonding out that old man.'
'And you were trying to keep me from talking to him.'
'But I got him out.' Janet was grinning at him now.
'But not until I got the information I wanted,' Chee said.
'Okay,' Janet said, still grinning. 'We'll call that one a tie. Even though you had to cheat a little.'
'How about our next competition,' Chee said. 'Remember the old alcoholic? You thought Leaphorn and I were picking on him. Until your client pleaded guilty.'
'That was a sad, sad case,' Janet said. She sipped her coffee. 'Some things about it still bother me. Some things about this one bother me, too.'
'Like what? Like the fact Jano is a Hopi and the Hopis are peaceful people? Nonviolent?'
'There's that, of course,' Janet said. 'But everything he told me has a sort of logic to it and a lot of it can be checked out.'
'Like what? What can be checked?'
'Like, for example, he said he was going to collect an eagle his kiva needed for a ceremonial. His brothers in is religious group can confirm that. That made it a religious pilgrimage, on which no evil thoughts are allowed.'
'Such as thoughts of revenge? Such as getting even with Kinsman for the prior arrest? The kind of thoughts D.A. will want to suggest to the jury if he's going for malice, premeditation. The death penalty stuff.'
'Right,' she said.
'They would confirm why he was going for the eagle, and the prosecution would concede it,' Chee said. |*But how do you prove that deep down Jano didn't want 1 even the score?' Janet shrugged.
'J. D. Mickey will probably state that in his opening. He'll say that Jano had gone onto the Navajo reservation to poach an eagle—a crime in itself. He'll say that Officer Benjamin Kinsman of the Navajo Tribal Police had previously arrested him doing the same crime last year and that Jano got off on some sort of technicality. He'll say that when he saw Kinsman was after him again, Jano was enraged. So instead of releasing the bird, getting rid of the evidence and trying to escape, he let Kinsman catch him, caught him off-guard and brained him.'
'Is that the way Mickey is planning it?'
'I'm just guessing,' Chee said.
'I have no doubt at all that Mickey will go for death. It would be the first one since the 1994 Congress allowed federal death penalties and there would be a media coverage circus.' Janet doctored her coffee with the nondairy creamer, tasted it. 'Mickey for Congress,' she intoned. 'Your law-and-order candidate.'
'That's the way I see it,' Chee said. 'But the courts would have to rule that Kinsman was a federal officer.'
'People in criminal justice say he was.' Chee shrugged. 'Probably.'
'Which led the U.S. Department of Justice to unplug him from the various life support machines,' Janet said. 'So Benjamin Kinsman could hurry up and be a murder victim instead of the subject of criminal assault. Thereby simplifying the paperwork.'
'Come on, Janet,' Chee said. 'Be fair. Ben was already dead. The machines were breathing for him, making his heart pump. Kinsman's spirit had gone away.'
Janet was sipping her coffee. 'You're right about one thing,' she said. 'This is good fresh Java. Not that weird perfumed stuff the yuppie bars sell for four dollars a cup.'
'What else could be checked out?' Chee asked. 'In Jano's version.'
Janet raised her hand. 'First something else,' she said. 'How about that autopsy? The law requires one in homicides, sort of, but a lot of Navajos don't like the idea and sometimes they're skipped. And I heard one of the docs saying something about organ donations?'
'Kinsman was a Mormon. So were his parents. He'd had a donor card registered,' Chee said, studying her as he said it. 'But you already knew that. You were changing the subject.'
'I'm the defense attorney,' she said. 'You think my client is guilty. I've got to be careful what I tell you.'
Chee nodded. 'But if there's something that can be checked out that I'm missing, something that could help his case, then I ought to know about it. I'm not going to go out there and destroy the evidence. Don't you—'
He had started to say: 'Don't you trust me?' But she would have said she did. And then she would have
