The First Eagle

Krause's expression changed again. Immense relief. 'It wasn't her blood?'

'That brings us to my question. Do you have any idea where we might find a sample of Miss Pollard's blood? Enough for the lab to make a comparison?'

'Oh,' Krause said. 'So you just don't know yet? But who else could it belong to? There was no one with her.'

'You sure of that?'

'Oh,' Krause said again. 'Well, no, I guess I'm not. I didn't see her that morning. But she didn't say anything in the note about having company. And she always worked alone. We often do on this kind of work.'

'Any possibility that Hammar could have been with her?'

'Remember? Hammar said he was doing his teaching work back at the university that day.'

'I remember,' Leaphorn said. 'That hasn't been checked yet as far as I know. When the lab tells the police it's Miss Pollard's blood in the Jeep, then the alibis get checked.'

'Including mine?'

'Of course. Including everybody's.'

Leaphorn waited, giving Krause time to amend what he'd said about that morning. But Krause just stood there looking thoughtful.

'Had she cut herself recently? Donated any blood? Any idea where some could be found for the lab?'

Krause closed his eyes, thinking. 'She's careful,' he said. 'In this work you have to be. Hard as hell to work with, but skillful. I don't ever remember her cutting herself in the lab. And in a vector control lab getting cut is a big deal. And if she was a blood donor, she never mentioned it.'

'When you came in that morning, where did you find her note?'

'Right on my desk.'

'You were going to see if you could find it. Any luck?'

'I've been busy. I'll try,' Krause said.

'I'll need a copy,' Leaphorn said. 'Okay?'

'I guess so,' Krause said, and Leaphorn noticed that some of his cordiality had slipped away. 'But you're not a policeman. I'll bet the cops will want it.'

'They will,' Leaphorn said. 'I'd be satisfied with a Xerox. Can you remember exactly what it said? Every word of it?'

'I can remember the meaning. She wouldn't be in the office that day. She was taking the Jeep and heading southeast, over toward Black Mesa and Yells Back Butte. Working on the Nez plague fatality.'

'Did she say she'd be trapping animals? Prairie dogs or what?'

'Probably. I think so. Either she said it or I took it for granted. I don't think she was specific, but she'd been working on plague. She still hadn't pinned down where Mr. Nez got his fatal infection.'

'And that would have been from a prairie dog flea?'

'Well, probably. That Yersinia pestis is a bacteria spread by fleas. But some of the Peromyscus host fleas, too. We got two hundred off one rock squirrel once.'

'Would she have had a PAPR with her?'

'She carries one with her stuff in the Jeep. Was it still there when they found the vehicle?'

'I don't know,' Leaphorn said. 'I'll ask. And I have one more question. In that note, did she tell you why she planned to quit?'

Krause frowned. 'Quit?'

'Her job here.'

'She wasn't going to quit.'

'Her aunt told me that. In a call Pollard made just before she disappeared, she said she was quitting.'

'Be damned,' Krause said. He stared at Leaphorn, biting his lower lip. 'She say why?'

'I think it was because she couldn't get along with you.'

'That's true enough,' Krause said. 'A hardheaded Ionian.

Chapter Twenty-one

SUMMER HAD ARRIVED with dreadful force in Phoenix, and the air conditioning in the Federal Courthouse Building had countered the dry heat outside its double glass windows by producing a clammy chill in the conference room. Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney J. D. Mickey had assembled the assorted forces charged with maintaining law and order in America's high desert country to decide whether to go for the first death penalty under the new congressional act that authorized such penalties for certain crimes committed on federal reservations.

Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police was among those assembled, but being at the bottom level of the hierarchy, he was sitting uncomfortably in a metal folding chair against the wall with an assortment of state cops, deputy sheriffs, and low-ranking deputy U.S. marshals. It had been clear to Chee from the onset of the meeting that the decision had been long since made. Mr. Mickey was serving on some sort of temporary appointment and intended to make the most of it while it lasted. The timing of the death of Benjamin Kinsman opened a once-in-a-lifetime window of opportunity. National—or at least congressional district regional—publicity was there for the grabbing. He'd go for the historic first. What was happening here was known in upper-level civil