He'd persuaded Emma that she should marry him two days before he was to take the Graduate General Examination for his degree at Arizona State. The degree was in anthropology, but the dreaded GGE covered the spectrum of the humanities and he'd been brushing up on his weak points—which had led him into a quick scan of Shakespeare's "most likely to be asked about on GGE" plays and hence to Othello's discourse about Desdemona. He still remembered the passage, although he wasn't sure he had it quite right: "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them."
"Leaphorn, are you up? If you're not, your eggs are going to be overhard."
"I'm up," Leaphorn said, and got up, grabbed his clothes and hurried into the bathroom. The point Othello was trying to make, he thought, was that he loved Desdemona because she loved him. Which sounded simple enough, but actually was a very complicated concept.
Louisa's guest bathroom was equipped with a guest toothbrush, and Leaphorn, being blessed with the Indian's sparse and slow-growing beard, didn't miss a razor. ("No whiskers is proof," his grandfather had told him, "that Navajos are evolved further from the apes than those hairy white men.")
Despite the threat, Louisa had actually delayed cracking the breakfast eggs until he appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"I hope you meant it when you said you'd be happy to have me along today," she said as they started breakfast. "If you did, I can come."
Leaphorn was buttering his toast. He'd already noticed that Professor Bourebonette was not wearing the formal skirt and blouse that were her teaching attire. She was clad in jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt.
"I meant it," he said. "But it'll be boring, like about ninety-nine percent of this kind of work. I was just going to see if I could find this Woody, find out if he'd seen Catherine Pollard and if he could tell me anything helpful. Then I was going to drive back to Window Rock and call Mrs. Vanders, report no progress and—"
"Sounds all right," she said.
Leaphorn put down his fork. "How about your class?" THE FIRST EAGLE
It wasn't really the question he wanted to ask. He wanted to know what her plans were when the day's duties were done. Did she expect him to bring her back to Flagstaff? Did she intend to stay in Tuba City? Or accompany him home to Window Rock? And if so, what then?
"All I have today is one meeting of my ethnology course," Louisa said. "I'd already scheduled David Esoni to do his lecture on Zuni teaching stories. I think you met him."
"He's the professor from Zuni? I thought he taught chemistry."
Louisa nodded. "He does. And every year I get him to talk to my entry-level class about Zuni mythology. And culture in general. I called him this morning. The class expects him and he said he could introduce himself."
Leaphorn nodded. Cleared his throat, trying to phrase the question. He didn't need to.
"I'll drop off when we get to Tuba. I want to see Jim Peshlakai—he teaches the traditional cultural stuff at Grey Hills High School there. He's going to set up interviews for me with a bunch of his students from other tribes. Then he's coming down to Flag tonight for some work in the library. I'll ride back with him."
"Oh," Leaphorn said. "Good." *
Louisa smiled. "I thought you'd say that," she said. "I'll fix a thermos of coffee. And a little snack, just in case." •
So nothing remained but to check his telephone answering service. He dialed the number and the code.
Two calls. The first was from Mrs. Vanders. She still had heard nothing from Catherine. Did he have anything tot ell her?
The second was from Cowboy Dashee. Would Mr. Leaphorn please call him as soon as possible. He left his number.
Leaphorn hung up and listened to the noises Louisa was causing in the kitchen while he stared at the telephone, getting Cowboy Dashee properly placed. He was a cop. He was a Hopi. A friend of Jim Chee. A Coconino County deputy sheriff now, Leaphorn remembered. What would Dashee want to talk about? Why try to guess? Leaphorn dialed the number.
"Cameron Police Department," a woman's voice said. "How may I be of service?"
"This is Joe Leaphorn. I just had a call from Deputy Sheriff Dashee. He left this number."
"Oh, yes," the woman said. "Just a moment. I'll see if he's still here."
Clicking. Silence. Then: "Lieutenant Leaphorn?"
"Yes," Leaphorn said. "But it's mister now. I got your message. What's up?"
Dashee cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "It's just that I need some advice." Another pause.
"Sure," Leaphorn said. "It's free and you know what they say about free advice being worth what it costs you."
"Well," Dashee said. "I have a problem I don't know how to handle."
"You want to tell me about it?"
Another clearing of throat. "Could I meet you some place where we could talk? It's kind of touchy. And complicated."
"I'm calling from Flag and just getting ready to drive up to Tuba City. I'll be coming through Cameron in maybe an hour."
"Fine," Dashee said, and suggested a coffee shop beside Highway 89.
"I'll have an NAU professor with me," Leaphorn said. "Will that be a problem?"
A long pause. "No, sir," Dashee said. "I don't think so." But by the time they'd reached Cameron and pulled up beside the patrol car with the Navajo County Sheriff's
Department markings, Louisa had decided she should wait in the car.
"Don't be silly," she said. "Of course he'd say it would be no problem to have me listening in. What else could he say when he's asking you for a favor." She opened her purse and extracted a paperback and showed it to Leaphorn. "Execution Eve," she said. "You ought to read it. The son of a former Kentucky prison warden remembering the murder case that turned his dad against the death penalty."
"Oh, come on in. Dashee won't mind."
"This book's more interesting," she said, "and he would mind."
And of course she was right. When they parked, Leaphorn had seen Deputy Sheriff Albert "Cowboy" Dashee sitting in a booth beside the window looking out at them, his expression glum. Now, as he sat across from Dashee, watching him order coffee, Leaphorn was remembering that this Hopi had struck him as a man full of good humor. A happy man. There was no sign of that this morning.
"I'll get right to the point," Dashee said. "I need to talk to you about Jim Chee."
"About Chee?" This wasn't what Leaphorn had expected. In fact, he'd had no idea what to expect. Something about the Hopi killing the Navajo policeman, perhaps. "You two are old friends, aren't you?"
"For a long, long time," Dashee said. "That makes this harder to deal with."
Leaphorn nodded.
"Jim always considered you a friend, too," Dashee said. He grinned ruefully. "Even when he was sore at you."
Leaphorn nodded again. "Which was fairly often."
"The thing is, Jim got the wrong man in this Benjamin Kinsman homicide. Robert Jano didn't do it."
"He didn't?"
"No. Robert wouldn't kill anyone."