"Before you told me about catching the eagle?"
"No. Not until this morning." She looked down at her hands again. Calculating all this, he thought. Adding it up. Searching for a conclusion. She found it.
"I want to know why you told me you'd taped Reynald's telephone call."
"Why not?"
"Why not!" The anger showed in her face as well as her voice. "Because as you certainly knew I am a sworn officer of the court in this case. You tell me you have committed a crime." She threw up her hands. "What did you think I would do?"
Chee shrugged.
"No. Don't just kiss it off. I'm serious. You must have had a reason for telling me. What did you think I would do?"
Chee considered that. By traditional Navajo ethical standards he wouldn't be required to tell the absolute truth unless she asked the question a fourth time. This was time two.
"I thought you'd either push the FBI to get the eagle tested or you'd handle it yourself."
"That's not what I meant. What would I do about the taped call? And for that matter about the agent in charge asking you to destroy evidence."
"I thought the information would be useful. Give you leverage if you needed it," Chee said, thinking: That's the third time.
She stared at him, sighed. "You're not good at pretending to be naive, Jim. I know you too well. You had a reason—"
Chee held up his hand, ending this just short of the fourth question. Why make her ask it? He spoke carefully.
"I thought you would go to Mickey and tell him that you had learned Jano's first eagle had been caught, that the FBI declined to test it on grounds that it would be a waste of time and money and had ordered the eagle disposed of. I presumed that if you did this, Mickey would tell you he agreed with the FBI. He would suggest that you, a rookie member of the federal justice family, should be part of the team and drop the issue. Then you would either agree or you would defy Mickey and tell him you would have the eagle tested yourself."
He paused, then drew a deep breath, looked away.
Janet waited.
Chee sighed. "Or you might start by telling Mickey that you had become aware of a potential risk to the case. The Navajo Police had caught the eagle, the FBI agent representing Mickey had ordered it destroyed and the telephone call during which he had done this had been taped. Therefore you would urgently recommend that he order the first eagle tested immediately and make the results public."
Janet's face was flushed. She looked away from him, shook her head, looked back.
"And what would I say when Mickey asked who had made this unauthorized felonious tape? And what would I tell the grand jury when Mickey called it to investigate?"
"He wouldn't call a grand jury," Chee said. "That would drag Reynald in, Reynald would pass the buck back to Mickey, and then Mickey's political hopes are down the tube. Besides, he'd have no trouble at all figuring out who taped the telephone call."
"And you certainly knew that. So what did you do? You deliberately wrecked your career in law enforcement. You put me in an intolerable position. What happens if there is a grand jury? What do I testify?"
"You'd have to tell the simple truth. That I had told you I had illegally taped Reynald's call. But Mickey will never call the jury."
"And what if he doesn't? There's still the fact that you admitted a felony to me and I, also an officer of the court, failed in my duty to report it."
"And the FBI knows you failed to report it. But the FBI knew it, too, and didn't report it either."
"Not yet," she said.
"They won't."
"And if they do, what then?"
"You say that Jim Chee told you he had, without authorization, taped a telephone call from Agent Reynald." Chee paused. "And that you had believed him."
She stared at him. "Had believed him?"
"Then you say that after you had reported this to the assistant U.S. attorney, Jim Chee informed you that while Reynald had made the remarks exactly as reported, Chee had no such tape."
Janet was rising from her chair. She stood looking down at him. How long? Five or six seconds, but memory doesn't operate on conscious time. And Chee was remembering the happiest day of his life—the moment when their romance had become a love affair. He had imagined their love could blend oil and water. She would become a Navajo in more than name and work on the reservation. She would forget the glitter, power, and prestige of the affluent Washington society that produced her. He would set aside his goal of becoming a shaman. He would become ambitious, compromise with materialism enough to keep her content with what he knew she must see as poverty and failure. He'd been young enough to believe that. Janet had believed it, too. Believed the impossible. She could no more reject the only value system she'd ever known than he could abandon the Navajo Way. He hadn't been fair to her.
"Janet," he said, and stopped, not knowing what else to say.
She said: "Damn you, Jim," and walked away.
Chee finished his coffee, listened to her car starting up and rolling across the parking-lot gravel. He felt numb. She had loved him once, in her way. He knew he'd loved her. Probably he still did. He'd know more about that tomorrow when the pain began.
Also by TONY HILLERMAN
The Fallen Man
Finding Moon
Sacred Clowns
Coyote Waits
Talking God
A Thief of Time
Skinwalkers
The Dark Wind
People of Darkness
Listening Woman
Dance Hall of the Dead
The Fly on the Wall
The Blessing Way
The Boy Who Made Dragonfly (for children)
<NONFICTION>
Hillerman Country
The Great Taos Bank Robbery
Rio Grande
New Mexico
The Spell of New Mexico Indian Country