The First Eagle

by Tony Hillerman

  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.

  The limo that had parked in front of Joe Leaphorn’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 Millicent Vanders certainly must be.

  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 I-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 conversation 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 well 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 wh
ites and admired it when he saw it. She extracted two eight-by-ten photographs from an envelope, examined one, added it to the folder, then examined the other. A thump broke the silence—a careless piñon jay colliding with a windowpane. It 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.

  “Of course I would,” she added. “Certainly.”

  “But if you didn’t for some reason, you understand that I would have to do it. Would you agree to that?”

  She stared at Leaphorn. Then she nodded. “I think we are creating a problem where none exists.”

  “Probably,” Leaphorn said.

  “I would like you to locate a young woman. Or, failing that, discover what happened to her.”

  She gestured toward the folder. Leaphorn opened it.

  The top picture was a studio portrait of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman wearing a mortarboard. The face was narrow and intelligent, the expression somber. Not a girl who would have been called “cute,” Leaphorn thought. Nor pretty either, for that matter. Handsome, perhaps. Full of character. Certainly it would be an easy face to remember.

  The next picture was of the same woman, wearing jeans and a jean jacket now, leaning on the door of a pickup truck and looking back at the camera. She had the look of an athlete, Leaphorn thought, and was older in this one. Perhaps in her early thirties. On the back of each photograph the same name was written: Catherine Anne.

  Leaphorn glanced at Mrs. Vanders.

  “My niece,” she said. “The only child of my late sister.”

  Leaphorn returned the photos to the folder and took out a sheaf of papers, clipped together. The top one had biographical details.

  Catherine Anne Pollard was the full name. The birthdate made her thirty-three, the birthplace was Arlington, Virginia, the current address Flagstaff, Arizona.

  “Catherine studied biology,” Mrs. Vanders said. “She specialized in mammals and insects. She was working for the Indian Health Service, but actually I think it’s more for the Arizona Health Department. The environment division. They call her a ‘vector control specialist.’ I imagine you would know about that?”

  Leaphorn nodded.

  Mrs. Vanders made a wry face. “She says they actually call her a ‘fleacatcher.’

  “I think she could have had a good career as a tennis player. On the tour, you know. She always loved sports. Soccer, striker on the college volleyball team. When she was in junior high school she worried about being bigger than the other’ girls. I think excelling in sports was her compensation for that.”

  Leaphorn nodded again.

  “The first time she came to see me after she got this job, I asked for her job title, and she said ‘fleacatcher.’” Mrs. Vanders’s expression was sad.

  “Called herself that, so I guess she doesn’t mind.”

  “It’s an important job,” Leaphorn said.

  “She wanted a career in biology. But ‘flea-catcher’?” Mrs. Vanders shook her head. “I understand that she and some others were working on the source of those bubonic plague cases this spring. They have a little laboratory in Tuba City and check places where the victims might have picked up the disease. Trapping rodents.” Mrs. Vanders hesitated, her face reflecting distaste. “That’s the flea catching. They collect the fleas from them. And take samples of their blood. That sort of thing.” She dismissed this with a wave of the hand.

  “Then last week, early in the morning, she went to work and never came back.”

  She let that hang there, her eyes on Leaphorn.

  “She left for work alone?”

  “Alone. That’s what they say. I’m not so sure.”

  Leaphorn would come back to that later. Now he needed basic facts. Speculation could wait.

  “Went to work where?”

  “The man I called said she just stopped by the office to pick up some of the equipment she uses in her work and then drove away. To someplace out in the country where she was trapping rodents.”

  “Was she meeting anyone where she was going to be working?”

  “Apparently not. Not officially anyway. The man I talked to didn’t think anyone went with her.”

  “And you think something has happened to her. Have you discussed this with the police?”

  “Mr. Peabody discussed it with people he knows in the FBI. He said they would not be involved in something like this. They would have jurisdiction only if it involved a kidnapping for ransom, or”—she hesitated, glanced down at her hands—“or some other sort of felony. They told Mr. Peabody there would have to be evidence that a federal law had been violated.”

  “What evidence was there?” He was pretty sure he knew the answer. It would be none. Nothing at all.

  Mrs. Vanders shook her head.

  “Actually, I guess you would say the only evidence is that a woman is missing. Just the circumstances.”

  “The vehicle. Where was it found?”

  “It hasn’t been found. Not as far as I have been able to discover.” Mrs. Vanders’s eyes were intent on Leaphorn, watching for his reaction.

  Had they not been, Leaphorn would have allowed himself a smile—thinking of the hopeless task Mr. Peabody must have faced in trying to interest the federals. Thinking of the paperwork this missing vehicle would cause in the Arizona Health Department, of how this would be interpreted by the Arizona Highway Patrol if a missing person report had been filed, of the other complexities. But Mrs. Vanders would read a smile as an expression of cynicism.

  “Do you have a theory?”

  “Yes,” she said, and cleared her throat. “I think she must be dead.”

  Mrs. Vanders, who had seemed frail and unhealthy, now looked downright sick.

  “Are you all right? Do you want to continue this?”

  She produced a weak smile, extracted a small white container from the pocket of her jacket and held it up.

  “I have a heart condition,” she said. “This is nitroglycerin. The prescription used to come in little tablets, but these days the patient just sprays it on the tongue. Please excuse me. I’ll feel fine again in a moment.”

  She turned away from him, held the tube to her lips for a moment, then returned it to her pocket.

  Leaphorn waited, reviewing what little he knew about nitro as a heart medication. It served to
expand the arteries and thus increase the blood flow. Neither of the people he’d known who used it had lived very long. Perhaps that explained the urgency Peabody mentioned in his letter.

  Mrs. Vanders sighed. “Where were we?”

  “You’d said you thought your niece must be dead.”

  “Murdered, I think.”

  “Did someone have a motive? Or did she have something that would attract a thief?”

  “She was being stalked,” Mrs. Vanders said. “A man named Victor Hammar. A graduate student she’d met at the University of New Mexico. A fairly typical case, I’d guess, for this sort of thing. He was from East Germany, what used to be East Germany that is, with no family or friends over here. A very lonely man, I would imagine. And that’s the way Catherine described him to me. They had common interests at the university. Both biologists. He was studying small mammals. That caused them to do a lot of work in the laboratory together. I suppose Catherine took pity on him.”

  Mrs. Vanders shook her head. “Losers always had a special appeal to her. When her mother was going to buy her a dog, she wanted one from the pound. Something she could feel sorry for. But with that man. . .” She grimaced. “Well, anyway, she couldn’t get rid of him. I suspected she dropped out of graduate school to get away from him. Then, after she took the job in Arizona, he would turn up at Phoenix when she was there. It was the same thing when she started working at Flagstaff”

  “Had he threatened her?”

  “I asked her that and she just laughed. She

  thought he was perfectly harmless. She told me to think of him as being like a little lost kitten. Just a nuisance.”

  “But you think he was a threat?”

  “I think he was a very dangerous man. Under the right circumstances anyway. When he came here with her once, he seemed polite enough. But there was a sort of—” She paused, looking for the way to express it. “I think a lot of anger was right under that nicey-nicey surface ready to explode.”

  Leaphorn waited for more explanation. Mrs. Vanders merely looked worried.

  “I told Catherine that even with kittens, if you hurt one it will scratch you,” she said.