They weren’t convinced themselves.
However, the prosecution seemed to have little genuine evidence against Tuve. The fingerprints he’d left in the store proved only that he’d been there on the fatal day, and the witnesses could prove little more than the same thing.
Their chances of finding Tuve’s diamond donor, if he had ever existed, were minuscule.
“I guess we’re agreed, then,” Dashee said. “We’ll hope Ms. Craig finds herself a good canyon-bottom guide and turns up the diamond donor. And we’ll keep our eyes open for some sensible way to help Cousin Billy. And unless the FBI comes up with some sort of material evidence, we sort of doubt he’ll need help, anyway.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Chee said. “I’ll bet they have something substantial.”
Dashee grinned. “When in doubt, get some Hopis on the jury. We’re a kind-hearted tribe.”
“Generous, too,” Chee said, handing Dashee the lunch check and pushing back from the table. “I’ve got to get back to Shiprock now. Bernie wants me to go look at a couple of places she thinks might be right for us to live in.”
“What’s wrong with your trailer?” Dashee asked, trying to suppress a grin. “It’s really handy for you there. Right next to the Shiprock garbage dump, for example.”
“And right next to the San Juan River flowing by,” Chee said. “I think it’s a pretty place. I’m going to talk her into it. But first I’ve got to look at what’s she’s looking at.”
But when Chee parked under the cottonwood shading his front door from the setting sun, the old trailer looked shabby and disreputable, putting a dent in his cheerful mood.
The mood improved when he saw the light blinking on his answering machine. It would be Bernie. Just hearing her voice brightened the day. Alas, it wasn’t Bernie. It was the familiar voice of Joe Leaphorn, the legendary lieutenant, formally identifying himself as if he hadn’t known Chee about forever.
“I hear from some sheriff’s office people that you’re trying to help Cowboy Dashee’s cousin. If that’s true, you might want to call me. It turns out that Shorty McGinnis—You remember him. Grouchy old fellow. Ran Short Mountain Trading Post. Well, he has a diamond story a lot like the one your Billy Tuve tells. It might be helpful, if you’re interested.”
As usual, Leaphorn was right. Chee was interested. He glowered at the telephone, dealing with memories of other interesting calls from the legendary lieutenant. Most of them had come while he was working as Leaphorn’s gofer in his Criminal Investigation Office. They had tended to lead to trouble and always meant a lot of hard work. Some of it, admittedly, proved interesting and fruitful, but this was not the time for that. This was time to be with Bernie.
Chee walked away from the telephone, out into the shady side of the trailer to a favorite place of his—the remains of a fallen cottonwood tree the trunk of which had long since lost its bark and had been worn smooth by years of being sat upon. Chee sat upon it again and looked down at the San Juan flowing below. A coyote was out early, stalking something on the river’s opposite bank. He thought about Bernie and his future with her. A pair of mallards feeding in the shallows spotted the coyote and squawked into flight. But the coyote wasn’t hunting them. It continued its furtive way into a brushy growth of Russian olive. Stalking a rabbit, Chee guessed, or perhaps someone’s pet dog or a feral cat. That thought reminded him of the cat that had moved in with him once, in another time, when he’d sat on this old log and considered whether he should accept what amounted to a counteroffer from Mary Landon. Yes, she had said, she would marry him. She had already planned on that. She’d already rejected the contract renewal she’d been offered at the Crownpoint Elementary School and was preparing to move back to Wisconsin. He could accept that job offer he’d had from the FBI and they would raise their children wherever they put him until they could arrange a transfer to the Milwaukee office. About his dream of becoming a shaman, a medicine person among the Navajos? Surely he’d already outgrown that idea, hadn’t he?
The coyote was no longer visible to Chee. But there was a sudden flurry of activity in the brush and a dirty tabby cat scurried out of it and up an adjoining tree to safety. The coyote gave up the pursuit. Coyotes were too wise to engage in hopeless competitions.
And so are Navajos, Chee thought. Instead we endure, and we survive. But now Chee was thinking of another cat.
This one, skinny and ragged, had shown up around his trailer one autumn, attracted by food scraps he’d left out for squirrels. It wore a pretty collar—an animal raised as a pet, then abandoned with no survival skills and handicapped by pregnancy. He had put out food for the terrified beast and it quickly became a regular visitor. Then one of the neighborhood coyotes scented cat and began hunting it. Chee cut a cat-sized entry in his door and lured the animal through it with sardines. Soon the door flap became its emergency route to safety when a coyote prowled. Only when winter froze the San Juan and the snow began did it move in to spend the nights, still keeping a cautious distance from Chee. Thus they lived together, Chee serving as food provider, Cat operating as feline watchdog, bolting in with a clatter when a coyote (or any visitor) approached the trailer. Otherwise they ignored each other.
The relationship perfectly fit Chee Navajo traditionalism. Natural harmony required all species, be they human, hamster, hummingbird, snake, or scorpion, to respect each other’s roles in the natural world. He saw no more justification in pretending to own a “pet” than he did in human slavery. Both violated the harmony of the system and thus were immoral. However, this cat presented a problem. It had been spoiled for a career as a naturally feral cat, not having been taught to hunt its food by its mother or how to evade other predators. Worse, it had been declawed—a cruel and barbarious custom. It could no longer adjust to the world into which it had been left. Chee understood that. That, too, was natural. He could not adjust to the world of Wisconsin dairy farming which Mary Landon planned for him. And Mary could not imagine raising her blond, blue-eyed children in his world. And so when her letters began arriving from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, beginning “Dear Jim” instead of “Darling,” Chee put Cat in an airline-approved pet cage and sent it to her—out of the landscape of claw and fang, into a world in which animals were transformed from independent fellows into pets of their masters. With her Christmas card, Mary had sent him a picture of Cat on a sofa with her and her Wisconsin husband. Cat was now named Alice, and Mary was still so beautiful that he knew he would never quite forget her.
Chee rose from the log, went into his trailer, and retrieved the photograph from his desk drawer. He studied it, confirming his memory. Another moment of sorting produced a photograph of Janet Pete. Another sort of beauty. Not the soft, warm, sensual, farm-girl karma of Mary here. Janet was high-fashion, Ivy League law school chic. The word now was
Janet smiled at him now out of the photograph, dark eyes, dark hair beautifully framing a perfect face, slender,
