Leaphorn, caught in the process of raising his cup for another sip, said, 'Ah,' and put down the cup. He stared at Dashee for a moment. 'How do you know that?'
'I've been asking around,' Dashee said, and produced a bitter laugh. 'Something Jim should be doing.' He shook his head. 'He's a good man and a good cop. I'm asking you how I can I get him moving. If he doesn't, I think Jano could get the death penalty. And one day Jim's going to know they gassed the wrong man. And then you might as well kill him, too. Chee would never get over that.'
'I know something about Catherine Pollard,' Leaphorn said.
'I know,' Dashee said. 'I heard.'
'If she was there—and I understand that's where she was supposed to be going that day—how could she fit into this? Except, of course, as a potential witness.'
'I'd like to give Jim another theory of the crime, Dashee said. 'Ask him to look at it for a while as a substitute for Jano kills Kinsman to avoid arrest.' It goes like this: Pollard goes up to Yells Back Butte to do her thing. Kinsman is up there looking for Jano, or maybe he's looking for Pollard. One way, he runs across her. The other way, he finds her. Just a couple of nights earlier, Kinsman was in a bistro off the interstate east of Flag, and he saw Pollard and tried to take her away from the guy she was with. A fight started. An Arizona highway patrolman broke it up.'
Leaphorn turned the cup in his hand, considering this. No reason to ask Dashee how he knew this. Cop gossip travels fast.
Dashee was watching him, looking anxious. 'What do you think?' he said. 'Kinsman has a reputation as a woman-chaser. He's attracted and now he's angry, too. Or maybe he thinks she'll file a complaint and get him suspended.' He shrugged. 'They struggle. She whacks him on the head with a rock. Then she hears Jano coming and flees the scene. Does that sound plausible?'
'A lot would depend on whether you have a witness who would testify they saw her there. Do you? I mean, beyond that being where she told her boss she'd be working that day?'
'I got it from Old Lady Notah. She keeps a bunch of goats up there. She remembers seeing a Jeep driving up that dirt road past the butte about daylight that morning. I understand Pollard was driving a Jeep.' Dashee looked slightly abashed. 'Just circumstantial evidence. She couldn't identify the driver. Not even the gender.'
'Still, it was probably Pollard,' Leaphorn said. 'And I understand the Jeep is still missing. And so is Pollard.'
'Right again.'
'And you've been offering a thousand-dollar reward for anyone who can find it.'
'True,' Leaphorn said. 'But if Pollard did it, and Pollard was fleeing the scene, why didn't Chee see her? Remember, he got there just a few minutes after it happened. Kinsman's blood was still fresh. There's just that one narrow dirt road into there, and Chee was driving up it. Why didn't he—'
Dashee held up his hand. 'I don't know, and neither do you. But don't you think it could have happened?' Leaphorn nodded. 'Possibly.'
'I don't want to get out of line with this, or sound offensive, but let me add something else to my theory of the crime. Let's say that Pollard got out of there, got to a telephone, called somebody and told them her troubles and asked for help. Let's say whoever it was told her where to hide and they'd cover her trail for her.'
Leaphorn asked; 'Like who and how?' But he knew the answer.
'Who? I'd say somebody in her family. Probably her daddy, I'd say. How? By giving the impression that she's been abducted. Been murdered.'
'And they do that by hiring a retired policeman to go looking for her,' Leaphorn said.
'Somebody respected by all the cops,' Dashee said.
Chapter Twelve
THE ROCK UPON WHICH CHEE had so carelessly put his weight tumbled down the slope, bounced into space, struck an obtruding ledge, touched off a clattering avalanche of stone and dirt and disappeared amid the weeds far below. Chee shifted his body carefully to his right, exhaled a huge breath and stood for a moment, leaning against the cliff and letting his heartbeat slow a little. He was just below the tabletop of Yells Back Butte, high on the saddle that connected it with Black Mesa. It wasn't a difficult climb for a young man in Chee's excellent physical shape, and not particularly dangerous if one kept focused on what he was doing. Chee hadn't. He'd been thinking of Janet Pete, facing the fact that he was wasting his day off just because she'd implied he hadn't done a proper job of checking the Kinsman crime scene.
Now, with both feet firmly placed and his shoulder leaning into the cliff wall, he looked down at where the boulder had made its plunge and thought about that chronic problem of the Navajo Tribal Police—lack of backup. Had he not caught himself, he'd be down there in the weeds with broken bones and multiple abrasions and about sixty miles from help. He was thinking of that as he scrambled up the last fifty feet of talus and crawled over the rim. Kinsman would be alive if he hadn't been alone. The story was the same for the two officers killed in the Kayenta district. A huge territory, never enough officers for backup, never enough budget for efficient communications, never what you needed to get the job done. Maybe Janet had been right. He'd take the FBI examination, or accept the offer he'd had from the BIA law-and-order people. Or maybe, if all else failed, consider signing on with the Drug Enforcement Agency.
But now, standing on the flat stone roof of Yells Back Butte, he looked westward and saw the immense sky, the line of thunderheads building over the Coconino Rim, the sunlight reflecting off the Vermillion Cliffs below the Utah border, and the towering cauliflower shape of the storm already delivering a rain blessing upon the San Francisco Peaks, the Sacred Mountain marking the western margin of his people's holy land. Chee closed his eyes against that, remembering Janet's beauty, her wit, her intelligence. But other memories crowded in: the dreary skies of Washington, the swarms of young men entombed in three-piece suits and subdued by whatever neckties today's fashion demanded; remembering the clamor, the sirens, the smell of the traffic, the layers upon layers of social phoniness. A faint breeze stirred Chee's hair and brought him the smell of juniper and sage, and a chittering sound from far overhead that reminded him of why he was here.
At first glance he thought the raptor was a red-tailed hawk, but when it banked to repeat its inspection of this intruder Chee saw it was a golden eagle. It was the fourth one he'd seen today—a good year for eagles and a good place to find them—patrolling the mesa rim-rock where rodents flourished. He watched this one circle, gray-white against the dark blue sky, until it satisfied its curiosity and drifted eastward over Black Mesa. When it turned, he
