The First Eagle jlajc-13 Read online

  A few minutes after noon, Chee was bumping down the gravel trailing a cloud of dust looking for Kinsman. "Come in, Benny," Chee said into his mike. "I'm eight miles south of Goldtooth. Where are you?"

  "Under the south cliff of Yells Back Butte," Kinsman said. "Take the old Tijinney hogan road. Park where the arroyo cuts it. Half mile up the arroyo. Be very quiet."

  "Well, hell," Chee said. He said it to himself, not into the mike. Kinsman had gotten himself excited stalking his Hopi poacher, or whatever he was after, and had been transmitting in a half-intelligible whisper. Even more irritating, he was switching off his receiver lest a too-loud response alert his prey. While this was proper procedure in some emergency situations, Chee doubted this was anything serious enough to warrant that sort of foolishness.

  "Come on, Kinsman," he said. "Grow up."

  If he was going to be backup man on whatever Benny was doing, it would help to understand the problem. It would also help to know how to find the road to the Tijinney hogan. Chee knew just about every track on the east side of the Big Rez, the Checkerboard Rez even better, and the territory around Navajo Mountain fairly well. But he'd worked out of Tuba City very briefly as a rookie and had been reassigned there only six weeks ago. This rugged landscape beside the Hopi Reservation was relatively strange to him.

  He remembered Yells Back Butte was an outcrop of Black Mesa. Therefore it shouldn't be too difficult to find the Tijinney road, and the arroyo, and Kinsman. When he did, Chee intended to give him some very explicit instructions about how to use his radio and to behave himself when dealing with women. And, come to think of it, to curb his anti-Hopi attitude.

  This was the product of having his family's home site added to the Hopi Reservation when Congress split the Joint Use lands. Kinsman's grandmother, who spoke only Navajo, had been relocated to Flagstaff, where almost nobody speaks Navajo. Whenever Kinsman visited her, he came back full of anger.

  One of those scattered little showers that serve as forerunners to the desert country rainy season had swept across the Moenkopi Plateau a few minutes before and was still producing rumbles of thunder far to the east. Now he was driving through the track the shower had left and the gusty breeze was no longer engulfing the patrol car in dust. The air pouring through the window was rich with the perfume of wet sage and dampened earth.

  Don't let this Kinsman problem spoil the whole day, Chee told himself. Be happy. And he was. Janet Pete was coming. Which meant what? That she thought she could be content outside the culture of Washington's high society? Apparently. Or would she try again to pull him into it? If so, would she succeed? That made him uneasy.

  Before yesterday's letter, he had hardly thought about Janet for days. A little before drifting off to sleep, a little at dawn while he fried his breakfast Spam. But he had resisted the temptation to dig out her previous letter and reread it. He knew the facts by heart. One of her mother's many well-placed friends reported that her job application was "favorably considered" in the Justice Department. Being half-Navajo made her prospects for an assignment in Indian country look good. Then came the last paragraph.

  "Maybe I'll be assigned to Oklahoma—lots of legal work there with that internal fight the Cherokees are having. And then there's the rumble inside the Bureau of Indian Affairs over law enforcement that might keep me in Washington."

  Nothing in that one that suggested the old pre-quarrel affection. It had caused Chee to waste a dozen sheets of paper with abortive attempts to frame the proper answer. In some of them he'd urged her to use the experience she'd gained working for the Navajo tribe's legal aid program to land an assignment on the Big Rez. He'd said hurry home, that he'd been wrong in distrusting her. He had misunderstood the situation. He had acted out of unreasonable jealousy. In others he'd said, Stay away. You'll never be content here. It can never be the same for us. Don't come unless you can be happy without your Kennedy Center culture, your Ivy League friends, art shows, and high-fashion and cocktail parties with the celebrity set, without the snobbish intellectual elite. Don't come unless you can be happy living with a fellow whose goals include neither luxury nor climbing the ladder of social caste, with a man who has found the good life in a rusty trailer house.

  Found the good life? Or thought he had. Either way, he knew he was finally having some luck forgetting her. And the note he'd eventually sent had been carefully unrevealing. Then came yesterday's letter, with the last line saying she was "coming home!!"

  Home. Home with two exclamation points. He was thinking of that when Kinsman's silly whispering had •jarred him back to reality. And now Kinsman was whispering again. Unintelligible muttering at first, then: "Lieutenant! Hurry!"

  Chee hurried. He'd planned to pause at Goldtooth to ask directions, but nothing remained there except two roofless stone buildings, their doorways and windows open to the world, and an old-fashioned round hogan that looked equally deserted. Tracks branched off here, disappearing through the dunes to the right and left. He hadn't seen a vehicle since he'd left the pavement, but the center track bore tire marks. He stayed with it. Speeding. He was out of the shower's path now and leaving a rooster tail of dust. Forty miles to the right the San Franciscos dominated the horizon, with a thunderstorm building over Humphrey's Peak. To the left rose the ragged shape of the Hopi mesas, partly obscured at the moment by the rain another cloud was dragging. All around him was the empty wind-shaped plateau, its dunes held by great growths of Mormon tea, snake weed, yucca, and durable sage. Abruptly Chee again smelled the perfume that showers leave behind them. No more dust now. The track was damp. It veered eastward, toward mesa cliffs and, jutting from them, the massive shape of a butte. The tracks leading 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," Che
e 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.

  "My boss."

  Leaphorn had laughed. "That's not what I meant."

  "I didn't think it was."

  "You know anything about this job she's going to offer me?"

  "No."

  "What she wants?"

  "It's none of my business."

  So Leaphorn dropped it. He watched the scenery, learned that even the rich could find only country-western music on their radios here, tuned in KNDN to listen in on the Navajo open-mike program. Someone had lost his billfold at the Farmington bus station and was asking the finder to return his driver's license and credit card. A woman was inviting members of the Bitter Water and Standing Rock clans, and all other kinfolk and friends, to show up for a yeibichai sing to be held for Emerson Roanhorse at his place north of Kayenta. Then came an old-sounding voice declaring that Billy Etcitty's roan mare was missing from his place north of Burnt Water and asking folks to let him know if they spotted it. "Like maybe at a livestock auction," the voice added, which suggested that Etcitty presumed his mare hadn't wandered off without assistance. Soon Leaphorn had surrendered to the soft luxury of the limo seat and dozed. When he awoke, they were rolling down 1-25 past Santa Fe's outskirts.

  Leaphorn then had fished Millicent Vanders's letter from his jacket pocket and reread it.

  It wasn't, of course, directly from Millicent Vanders. The letterhead read Peabody, Snell and Glick, followed by those initials law firms use. The address was Boston. Delivery was FedEx's Priority Overnight.

  Dear Mr. Leaphorn:

  This is to confirm and formalize our telephone confirmation of this date. I write you in the interest of Mrs. Millicent Vanders, who is represented by this firm in some of her affairs. Mrs. Vanders has charged me with finding an investigator familiar with the Navajo Reservation whose reputation for integrity and circumspection is impeccable.

  You have been recommended to us as satisfying these requirements. This inquiry is to determine if you would be willing to meet with Mrs. Vanders at her summer home in Santa Fe and explore her needs with her. If so, please call me so arrangements can be made for her car to pick you up and for your financial reimbursement. I must add that Mrs. Vanders expressed a sense of urgency in this affair.

  Leaphorn's first inclination had been to write Christopher Peabody a polite "thanks but no thanks" and recommend he find his client a licensed private investigator instead of a former cop.

  But…

  There was the fact that Peabody, surely the senior partner, had signed the letter himself, and the business of having his circumspection rated impeccable, and—most important of all—the "sense of urgency" note, which made the woman's problem sound interesting. Leaphorn needed something interesting. He'd soon be finishing his first year of retirement from the Navajo Tribal Police. He'd long since run out of things to do. He was bored.

  And so he'd called Mr. Peabody back and here he was, driver pushing the proper button, gate sliding silently open, rolling past lush landscaping toward a sprawling two-story house—its tan plaster and brick copings declaring it to be what Santa Feans call "Territorial Style" and its size declaring it a mansion.

  The driver opened the door for Leaphorn. A young man wearing a faded blue shirt and jeans, his blond hair tied in a pigtail, stood smiling just inside the towering double doors.

  "Mr. Leaphorn," he said. "Mrs. Vanders is expecting you." Millicent Vanders was waiting in a room that Leaphorn's experience with movies and television suggested was either a study or a sitting room. She was a frail little woman standing beside a frail little desk, supporting herself with the tips of her fingers on its polished surface. Her hair was almost white and the smile with which she greeted him was pale.

  "Mr. Leaphorn," she said. "How good of you to come. How good of you to help me."

  Leaphorn, with no idea yet whether he would help her or not, simply returned the smile and sat in the chair to which she motioned.

  "Would you care for tea? Or coffee? Or some other refreshment? And should I call you Mr. Leaphorn, or do you prefer 'Lieutenant'?"

  "Coffee, thank you, if it's no trouble." Leaphorn said. And it's mister. I've retired from the Navajo Tribal Police."

  Millicent Vanders looked past him toward the door-. "Coffee then, and tea," she said. She sat herself behind the desk with a slow, careful motion that told Leaphorn his hostess had one or other of the hundred forms of arthritis. But she smiled again, a signal meant to be reassuring. Leaphorn detected pain in it. He'd become very good at that sort of detection while he was watching his wife die. Emma, holding his hand, telling him not to worry, pretending she wasn't in pain, promising that someday soon she'd be w
ell again.

  Mrs. Vanders was sorting through papers on her desk, arranging them in a folder, untroubled by the lack of conversation. Leaphorn had found this unusual among whites and admired it when he saw it. She extracted two eight-by-en photographs from an envelope, examined one, added it to the folder, then examined the other. A thump broke the silence—a careless pifion jay colliding with a windowpane fled in wobbling flight. Mrs. Vanders continued her contemplation of the photo, lost in some remembered sorrow undisturbed by the bird or by Leaphorn watching her. An interesting person, Leaphorn thought.

  A plump young woman appeared at his elbow bearing a tray. She placed a napkin, saucer, cup, and spoon on the table beside him, filled the cup from a white china pot then repeated the process at the desk, pouring the tea from a silver container. Mrs. Vanders interrupted her contemplation of the photo, slid it into the folder, handed it to the woman.

  "Ella," she said. "Would you give this, please, to Mr. Leaphorn?"

  Ella handed it to Leaphorn and left as silently as she had come. He put the folder on his lap, sipped his coffee, the cup was translucent china, thin as paper. The coffee was hot, fresh, and excellent.

  Mrs. Vanders was studying him. "Mr. Leaphorn," she said, "I asked you to come here because I hope you will agree to do something for me."

  "I might agree," Leaphorn said. "What would it be?"

  "Everything has to be completely confidential," Mrs. Vanders said. "You would communicate only to me Not to my lawyers. Not to anyone else."

  Leaphorn considered this, sampled the coffee again, Put down the cup. "Then I might not be able to help you." Mrs. Vanders looked surprised. "Why not?"

  "I've spent most of my life being a policeman," Leaphorn said. "If what you have in mind causes me to discover anything illegal, then—"

  "If that happened, I would report it to the authorities," she said rather stiffly.

  Leaphorn allowed the typical Navajo moments of silence to make certain that Mrs. Vanders had said all she wanted to say. She had, but his lack of response touched a nerve.