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.And he'd say,yeah, but what if the cop had arrested the very guy she was defending and wasa witness? What if she were cross-examining her own husband as a hostilewitness? And she'd fall back on her Stanford Law School lecture notes and tellhim that all she wanted to extract from anyone was the exact truth.And he'dsay, but sometimes the lawyer isn't after quite 100 percent of the truth, andshe'd say that some evidence can't be admitted, and he'd say, as an attorneyit would be easy for her to get a job with a private firm, and she'd remindhim he'd turned down an offer from the Arizona Department of Public Safety andwas a cinch for a job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs law-and-order divisionif he would take it.And he'd say, that would mean leaving the reservation,and she'd say, why not? Did he want to spend his life here? And that wouldopen a new can of worms.No.Tonight he'd let her change the subject.The waiter came.Janet ordered a glass of white wine.Chee had coffee."I went to Mancos to tell a widow that we'd found her husband's skeleton,"Chee said."Mr.Finch went along because it gave him an excuse to contemplatethe cows in the lady's feedlot.""All you found were dry bones? Her husband must have been away a lot.I'll bethe was a policeman," she said, and laughed.Chee let that pass."Was it the skeleton they spotted up on Ship Rock about Halloween?" she asked,sounding mildly repentant.Chee nodded."He turned out to be a guy named Harold Breedlove.He owned a bigranch near Mancos.""Breedlove," Janet said."That sounds familiar." The waiter came-a lanky,rawboned Navajo who listened attentively to Janet's questions about the wineand seemed to understand them no better than did Chee.He would ask the cook.About the trout he was on familiar ground."Very fresh," he said, and hurriedoff.Janet was looking thoughtful."Breedlove," she said, and shook her head."Iremember the paper said there was no identification on him.So how'd you gethim identified? Dental chart?""Joe Leaphorn had a hunch," Chee said.Page 26ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"The legend-in-his-own-time lieutenant? I thought he'd retired.""He did," Chee said."But he remembered a missing person case he'd worked onway back.This guy who disappeared was a mountain climber and an inheritancewas involved, and-""Hey," Janet said."Breedlove.I remember now."Remember what? Chee thought.And why? This had happened long before Janet hadjoined the DNA, and become a resident reservation Navajo instead of one inname only, and entered his life, and made him happy.His expression had aquestion in it."From when I was with Granger-hyphen-Smith in Albuquerque.Just out of lawschool," she said."The firm represented the Breedlove family.They had publicland grazing leases, some mineral rights deals with the Jicarilla Apaches,some water rights arrangements with the Utes." She threw out her hands tosignify an endless variety of concerns."There were some dealings with theNavajo Nation, too.Anyway, I remember the widow was having the husbanddeclared legally dead so she could inherit from him.The family wanted thatlooked into."She stopped, looking slightly abashed.Picked up the menu again."I'lldefinitely have the trout," she said."Were they suspicious?" Chee asked."I presume so," she said, still looking at the menu."I remember it did lookfunny.The guy inherits a trust and two or three days later he vanishes.Vanishes under what you'd have to consider unusual circumstances."The waiter came.Chee watched Janet order trout, watched the waiter admireher.A classy lady, Janet.From what Chee had learned about law firms as acop, lawyers didn't chat about their clients' business to rookie interns.Itwas unethical.Or at least unprofessional.He knew the answer but he asked it anyway."Did you work on it? The lookinginto it?""Not directly," Janet said.She sipped her water.Chee looked at her.She flushed slightly."The Breedlove Corporation was John McDermott's client.His job," she said."I guess because he handled all things Indian for thefirm.And the Breedlove family had all these tribal connections.""Did you find anything?""I guess not," Janet said."I don't remember the family having us intervene inthe case.""The family?" Chee said."Do you remember who, specifically?""I don't," she said."John was dealing with an attorney in New York.I guesshe was representing the rest of the Breedloves.Or maybe the familycorporation.Or whatever." She shrugged."What did you think of Finch, asidefrom him being so talkative?"John, Chee thought.John.Professor John McDermott.Her old mentor atPage 27ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlStanford.The man who had hired her at Albuquerque when he went into privatepractice there, and took her to Washington when he transferred, and made herhis mistress, used her, and broke her heart."I wonder what made them suspicious?" Chee said."Aside from thecircumstances.""I don't know," Janet said.Their trout arrived.Rainbows, neatly split, neatly placed on a bed of wildrice.Flanked by small carrots and boiled new potatoes.Janet broke off a tinypiece of trout and ate it.Beautiful, Chee thought.The perfect skin, the oval face, the dark eyes thatexpressed so much.He found himself wishing he was a poet, a singer ofballads.Chee knew a lot of songs but they were the chants the shaman sings atthe curing ceremonials, recounting the deeds of the spirits.No one had taughthim how to sing to someone as beautiful as this.He ate a bite of trout."If I had been driving a patrol car yesterday instead of my old pickup," hesaid, "I could have given a speeding ticket to a guy driving a white Porscheconvertible.Really flying.But I was driving my truck.""Wow," Janet said, looking delighted."My favorite car.I have a fantasy abouttooling around Paris in one of those.With the top down."Maybe she looked happy because he was changing the subject.Moving away fromunhappy ground.But to Chee the trout now seemed to have no taste at all.7JOE LEAPHORN, UNEASILY CONSCIOUS that he was now a mere civilian, had givenhimself three excuses for calling on Hosteen Nez and thereby butting intopolice business.First, he'd come to like the old man way back when he was picking his brain inthe Breedlove missing person case.Thus going to see him while Nez wasrecuperating from being shot was a friendly thing to do.Second, Canyon deChelly wasn't much out of his way, since he was going to Flagstaff anyway.Third, a trip into the canyon never failed to lift Joe Leaphorn's spirits.Lately they had needed a lift.Most of the things he'd yearned to do whenretirement allowed it had now been done-at least once.He was bored.He waslonely.The little house he and Emma had shared so many years had neverrecovered from the emptiness her death had left in every room.That was worsenow without the job to distract him.Maybe he was oversensitive, but he feltlike an intruder down at the police headquarters [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]