Chee was thinking about the dinner and how it had ended, and what happened then. Had she gone to his room with him? Had she spent the night there? Probably. The thought hurt. It hurt a lot. That surprised him.
'I shouldn't let things like this drag on,' she said. 'I should decide.'
'We let ours drag on. Mary and I. And I guess she decided.'
He had released her hand when lunch arrived. Now she reached over and put hers on his. 'I have your napkin,' she said. 'Slightly damp but still' -- she looked at it, a rumpled square of pale blue paper -- 'usable in case of emergency.'
He realized instantly that this was her bid to change the subject. He took the napkin, dropped it in his lap.
'Have you realized how lucky you are to have been brought to the only cafe in Shiprock with napkins?'
'Noted and appreciated,' she said. Her smile seemed almost natural. 'And how are things going with you?'
'I told you about the Backhoe Bandit. And Etcitty?'
She nodded. 'That must have been gruesome. How about finding the woman?'
'How much did I tell you about that?'
She reminded him.
He told her about Houk, about the note left for Leaphorn, about Eleanor Friedman-Bernal's pistol and how it was the same caliber used in the killings, about Leaphorn's obsessive interest in finding the Utah site to which Friedman's long-lost potter seemed to have moved.
'You know you have to file for a permit to dig sites like that on the reservation. We have an office in Window Rock that deals with it,' Janet Pete said. 'Did you check that?'
'Leaphorn might have,' Chee said. 'But apparently she was trying to find out where the stuff was coming from. You'd have to know that before you could file.'
'I guess so. But I think they're all numbered. Maybe she would just guess at it.'
Chee grinned and shook his head. 'Back when I was an anthropology student, I remember Professor Campbell, or somebody, telling us there were forty thousand sites listed with New Mexico Laboratory of Anthropology numbers. That's in New Mexico alone. And another hundred thousand or so on other registries.'
'I didn't mean just pick a number at random,' she said, slightly irked. 'She could describe the general location.'
Chee was suddenly interested. 'Maybe Leaphorn already looked into it,' he said. He was remembering that probably he would be hearing from Leaphorn soon. He'd left word with the switchboard to relay the call here. 'But would it take long to check?'
'I could call,' she said, looking thoughtful. 'I know the man who runs it. Helped him with the regulations. I think, to dig on the reservation, I think you have to apply to the Park Service and the Navajo Cultural Preservation Office both. I think you have to name a repository for whatever you recover, and get the archive system approved. And maybeâŚ'
Chee was thinking how great it would be if, when Leaphorn called, he could tell him the map coordinates of the site he was looking for. His face must have showed his impatience. Janet stopped midsentence. 'What?' she said.
'Let's go back to the station and call,' he said.
The call from Leaphorn was waiting when they walked in. Chee gave him what he'd learned from the Madison police and from Bates at the San Juan County Sheriff's Office. 'They're expecting a report from the Utah State Police,' Chee added. 'Bates said he would call when he gets it.'
'I've got it,' Leaphorn said. 'It was twenty-five-caliber, too.'
'Do you know if Friedman applied for a permit to dig that site you're looking for?'
Long silence. 'I should have thought of that,' Leaphorn said finally. 'I doubt if she did. The red tape takes years and it's a double filing. Park Service clearance plus tribal clearance, and all sorts of checking and screwing around gets involved. But I should have checked it.'
'I'll take care of it,' Chee said.
The man to call, Janet Pete said, was T. J. Pedwell. Chee reached him just back from lunch. Had he had any applications from Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal to dig on a reserved Anasazi site on the reservation?
'Sure,' Pedwell said. 'Two or three. On Checkerboard land around Chaco Canyon. She's that ceramics specialist working over there.'
'How about over on the north side of the reservation? Up in Utah.'
'I don't think so,' Pedwell said. 'I could check on it. Wouldn't know the site number, would you?'
`'Fraid not,' Chee said. 'But it might be somewhere near the north end of Many Ruins Canyon.'
'I know that place,' Pedwell said. 'Helped with the Antiquities survey all up through that part of the country.'
'You know the canyon the local people call Watersprinkler?'
'It's really Many Ruins,' Pedwell said. 'It's full of pictographs and petroglyphs of Koko-pelli. That's the one the Navajos call the Watersprinkler yei. '
'I have a description of the site, and it sounds unusual,' Chee said. He told Pedwell what Amos Whistler had told him.
`Teah,' Pedwell said. 'Sounds familiar. Let me check my files. I have photos of most of them.'
Chee heard the telephone click against something. He waited and waited. Sighed. Leaned a hip against the desk.
'Trouble?' Janet Pete asked.
Pedwell's voice was in his ear before he could respond.
'Found it,' Pedwell said. 'It's N.R. 723. Anasazi. Circa 1280-1310. And there's two other sites right there with it. Probably connected.'
'Great!' Chee said. 'How do you get there?'
'Well, it ain't going to be easy. I remember that. We packed into some of them on horseback. Others we floated down the San Juan and walked up the canyon. This one I think we floated. Let's see. Notes say it's five point seven miles up from the mouth of the canyon.'
'Dr. Friedman. She apply to dig that one?'
'Not her,' Pedwell said. 'Another of those people out at Chaco did. Dr. Randall Elliot. They working together?'
'I don't think so,' Chee said. 'Does the application say he was collecting St. John's Polychrome pots?'
'Lemme look.' Papers rustled. 'Doesn't sound like pots. Says he is studying Anasazi migrations.' Mumbling sounds of Pedwell reading to himself. 'Says his interest is tracing genetic patterns.' More mumbling. 'Studying bones. Skull thickness. Six-fingeredness. Aberrant jaw formation.' More mumbling. 'I don't think it has anything to do with ceramics,' Pedwell said, finally. 'He's looking at the skeletons. Or will be if your famous Navajo bureaucracy, of which I am a part, ever gets this processed. Six-fingeredness. Lot of that among the Anasazi, but hard to study, because hands don't survive intact after a thousand years. But it sounds like he's found some family patterns. Too many fingers. An extra tooth in the right side of the lower jaw. A second hole where those nerves and blood vessels go through the back of the jaw, and something or other about the fibula. Physical anthropology isn't my area.'
'But he hasn't gotten his permit yet?'
'Wait a minute. I guess we weren't so slow on this one. Here's a carbon of a letter to Elliot from the Park Service.' Paper rustled. 'Turndown,' Pedwell said. 'More documentation needed of previous work in this field. That do it?'
'Thanks a lot,' Chee said.
Janet Pete was watching him.
'Sounds like you scored,' she said.
'I'll fill you in,' he said.
'On the way back to my car.' She looked embarrassed. 'I'm normally the usual stolid, dull lawyer,' she said. 'This morning I just ran off in hysterics and left everything undone. People coming in to see me. People waiting for me to finish things. I feel awful.'
He walked to the car with her, opened the door.
'I'm glad you called on me,' he said. 'You honored me.'
'Oh, Jim!' she said, and hugged him around the chest with such strength that he caught his breath. She stood, holding him like that, pressed against him. He sensed she was about to cry again. He didn't want that to happen.
He put his hand on her hair and stroked it.
'I don't know what you'll decide about your Successful Attorney,' he said. 'But if you decide against him, maybe you and I could see if we could fall in love. You know, both Navajos and all that.'