'Look, Jim,' she said. 'I'm the man's defense attorney. Unless you can let me see how he—how justice would benefit by letting you cross-examine him, then I can't do it. Tell me what good it would do him.'
Chee sighed. 'We found the Jeep,' he said. 'The passenger-side seat was smeared with dried blood. There's evidence it was abandoned within an hour or so after Jano—after Kinsman was hit on the head.'
Silence. Then Janet said; 'Blood. Whose was it? But you haven't had time for any lab work yet, I guess. Is •Jano a suspect in this, too?'
'I don't see how he could be. I know exactly where he was when the Jeep was being abandoned.'
'Where was it?'
'About twenty miles southwest. Down an arroyo.'
'You think Jano might have seen something, or heard something, that would help you find Catherine Pollard?'
'I think he might have. Slim chance, but we don't have anything else to go on. Not now, anyway. Maybe we will when the crime scene crew and the lab people finish with the Jeep.'
'Okay then,' Janet said. 'You know the rules. I'm there, and if I cut off the questions, that ends it. You want to do it today?'
'Fair enough,' Chee said. 'And the sooner the better. I'll leave Tuba City as soon as I hang up.'
'I'll meet you at the jail,' she said. 'And, Jim, let's try not to make each other mad all the time.' She didn't wait for a response.
Janet was waiting in the interrogation room—a small dingy space with two barred windows looking out at nothing. She was sitting across a battered wooden table from Robert Jano. She talked quietly. Jano listened intently. Glanced up as Chee appeared in the doorway. Examined Chee with mild, polite curiosity. Chee nodded to him, suddenly aware that when he had caught Jano with his hands still red with Kinsman's blood he hadn't—in his shock and rage—really studied the man. He studied him now. This handsome, polite young killer whom Chee was trying to give a place in history. The first man strapped into a gas chamber under the new federal reservation death sentence law.
He nodded to Janet, said: 'Thanks.'
'You two have met,' Janet said, with no sign that she appreciated the irony of that. They nodded. Jano smiled, then seemed embarrassed that he had. 'Have a seat,' Janet said, 'and I'll go over the rules. Mr. Chee here will ask a question. And, Robert, you won't answer it until I say it's okay. All right?'
Jano nodded. Chee looked at Janet, who returned the look with no trace of warmth. She'd learned a lot, he thought, since he'd first met her in the interrogation room at the San Juan County Jail in Aztec. Many happy times ago. 'Okay,' Chee said. He looked at Jano. 'That morning I arrested you, did you see a young woman anywhere around there?'
'I saw—' he began, but Janet interrupted.
'Just a moment,' she said, and took a tape recorder from her purse, put it on the table, set up a microphone and switched it on. 'Okay,' she said.
'I saw a black Jeep,' Jano said. 'I didn't see who was driving it.'
'When did you see it, and where were you?' Jano looked at Janet. She nodded. 'I had climbed the butte and was walking along the rim to where I have a blind for catching eagles. I looked down and saw a black Jeep parked on that rise near the abandoned hogan.'
'No one was in it?'
Jano glanced at Janet. She nodded.
'No.'
'Did you see Officer Kinsman's car driving in?'
Jano glanced at Janet. 'What's the purpose of that question?'
'I want to find out if the Jeep was still there when Kinsman arrived.' Janet thought about it. 'Okay.'
'I saw him coming in, yes. And the Jeep was still there.'
Chee looked at Janet. 'So,' he said, 'if Pollard was the Jeep driver, she was in the vicinity when Kinsman was killed.'
'Injured,' Janet said. 'But yes, she was.'
'I intend to ask your client to just re-create what he saw and heard and did that morning,' Chee said.
She thought. 'Go ahead. We'll see.'
Jano said he arrived about dawn, parked his pickup, unloaded his eagle cage with the rabbit in it that he'd brought along as bait and climbed the saddle to the rim of the butte. He heard an engine sound, watched and saw the Jeep arriving, but he couldn't see who got out of it because of where it had been parked. He had settled himself into the blind and put the rabbit, secured with a cord on the brush, on top of it. Then he had waited about an hour. The eagle came circling over, in its hunting pattern. It saw the rabbit, dived, and caught it. He had caught the eagle by one leg and its tail. It had slashed his forearm with its other talon. 'Then I turned the eagle loose and—'
'Just a second,' Chee said. 'You had the eagle in the cage when I arrested you. The cage was beside the rocks, just a few feet away. Remember?'
'That was the second eagle,' Jano said. 'You're saying you caught an eagle, released it and then caught a second one?'
'Yes,' Jano said. 'Will you tell me why you released the first one?'
Jano looked at Janet.
