toward it were hidden behind a growth of Mormon tea and Chee almost missed them. He backed up, tried his radio again, got nothing but static, and turned onto the ruts toward the butte. Short of the cliffs he came to the washout Kinsman had mentioned.
Kinsman's patrol car was parked by a cluster of junipers, and Kinsman's tracks led up the arroyo. He followed them along the sandy bottom and then away from it, climbing the slope toward the towering sandstone wall of the butte. Kinsman's voice was still in Chee's mind. To hell with being quiet. Chee ran.
Officer Kinsman was behind an outcrop of sandstone. Chee saw a leg of his uniform trousers, partly obscured by a growth of wheatgrass. He began a shout to him, and cut it off. He could see a boot now. Toe down. That was wrong. He slid his pistol from its holster and edged closer.
From behind the sandstone, Chee heard the sound boots make on loose gravel, a grunting noise, labored breathing, an exclamation. He thumbed off the safety on his pistol and stepped into the open.
Benjamin Kinsman was facedown, the back of his uniform shirt matted with grass and sand glued to the cloth by fresh red blood. Beside Kinsman a young man squatted, looking up at Chee. His shirt, too, was smeared with blood.
'Put your hands on top of your head,' Chee said.
'Hey,' the man said. 'This guy…'
'Hands on head,' Chee said, hearing his own voice harsh and shaky in his ears. 'And get facedown on the ground.'
The man stared at Chee, at the pistol aimed at his face. He wore his hair in two braids. A Hopi, Chee thought. Of course. Probably the eagle poacher he'd guessed Kinsman had been trying to catch. Well, Kinsman had caught him.
'Down,' Chee ordered. 'Face to the ground.'
The young man leaned forward, lowered himself slowly. Very agile, Chee thought. His torn shirt sleeve revealed a long gash on the right forearm, the congealed blood forming a curved red stripe across sunburned skin.
Chee pulled the man's right hand behind his back, clicked the handcuff on the wrist, cuffed the left wrist to it. Then he extracted a worn brown leather wallet from the man's hip pocket and flipped it open. From his Arizona driver's license photo the young man smiled at him. Robert Jano. Mishongnove, Second Mesa.
Robert Jano was turning onto his side, pulling his legs up, preparing to rise.
'Stay down,' Chee said. 'Robert Jano, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to…'
'What are you arresting me for?' Jano said. A raindrop hit the rock beside Chee. Then another.
'For murder. You have the right to retain legal counsel. You have the right—'
'I don't think he's dead,' Jano said. 'He was alive when I got here.'
'Yeah,' Chee said. 'I'm sure he was.'
'And when I checked his pulse. Just thirty seconds ago.'
Chee was already kneeling beside Kinsman, his hand on Kinsman's neck, first noticing the sticky blood and now the faint pulse under his fingertip and the warmth of the flesh under his palm. He stared at Jano. 'You sonofabitch!' Chee shouted. 'Why did you brain him like that?'
'I didn't,' Jano said. 'I didn't hit him. I just walked up and he was here.' He nodded toward Kinsman. 'Just lying there like that.'
'Like hell,' Chee said. 'How'd you get that blood all over you then, and your arm cut up like—'
A rasping shriek and a clatter behind him cut off the question. Chee spun, pistol pointing. A squawking sound came from behind the outcrop where Kinsman lay. Behind it a metal birdcage lay on its side. It was a large cage, but barely large enough to hold the eagle struggling inside it. Chee lifted it by the ring at its top, rested it on the sandstone slab and stared at Jano. 'A federal offense,' he said. 'Poaching an endangered species. Not as bad as felony assault on a law officer, but—'
'Watch out!' Jano shouted.
Too late. Chee felt the eagle's talons tearing at the side of his hand.
'That's what happened to me,' Jano said. 'That's how I got so bloody.'
Icy raindrops hit Chee's ear, his cheek, his shoulder, his bleeding hand. The shower engulfed them, and with it a mixture of hailstones. He covered Kinsman with his jacket and moved the eagle's cage under the shelter of the outcrop. He had to get help for Kinsman fast, and he had to keep the eagle under shelter. If Jano was telling the truth, which seemed extremely unlikely, there would be blood on the bird. He didn't want Jano's defense attorney to be able to claim that Chee had let the evidence wash away.
Chapter Three
THE LIMO THAT HAD PARKED in front of Joe Leaphom's house was a glossy blue-black job with the morning sun glittering on its polished chrome. Leaphorn had stood behind his screen door watching it—hoping his neighbors on this fringe of Window Rock wouldn't notice it. Which 'was like hoping the kids who played in the schoolyard down his gravel street wouldn't notice a herd of giraffes trotting by. The limo's arrival so early meant the man sitting patiently behind the wheel must have left Santa Fe about 3:00 A.M. That made Leaphorn ponder what life would be like as a hireling of the very rich—which Well, in just a few minutes he'd have a chance to find out. The limo now was turning off a narrow asphalt road in Santa Fe's northeast foothills onto a brick driveway. It stopped at an elaborate iron gate.
'Is this it?' Leaphorn asked.
'Yep,' the driver said, which was about the average length of the answers Leaphorn had been getting before he'd stopped asking questions. He'd started with the standard break-the-ice: gasoline mileage on the limo, how it handled, that sort of thing. Went from that into how long the driver had worked for Millicent Vanders, which proved to be twenty-one years. Beyond that point, Leaphorn's digging ran into granite.
'Who is Mrs. Vanders?' Leaphorn had asked.
