The First Eagle

by Tony Hillerman

  It came from the east, drifting over Black Mesa in lazy circles that brought it nearer and nearer. Through gaps in the blind’s brush roofing, Chee followed it through the binoculars, confirming the irregularity in its fan of tail feathers. He lifted the struggling rabbit out of the eagle cage, made sure the nylon cord on its leg was secure and waited until the bird’s hunting circle was taking it away. Then he put the rabbit on the roof, squirmed into his best watching position and waited.

  On its next circle it swept southward, lost altitude and patrolled over the rolling sagebrush desert away from the butte, disappearing from Chee’s view. He put the rifle in a handier place and waited, tense. A moment later, the eagle reappeared, rising on an updraft just a few yards above the rim of the butte and not fifty yards from the blind, then soared above him to the left.

  The rabbit had long since given up its struggles and sat motionless on the roof. Chee stirred the brush supporting it with the rifle barrel. Startled, it scrambled to the end of the cord, jerked at it, sat again. The eagle turned, tightened its circle directly overhead. Chee jerked the cord, provoking a fresh flurry of struggles.

  And then the eagle produced a raucous whistle and swept down.

  Chee pulled the rabbit back toward the center of the blind. As he did, the eagle struck it with a crash, blanking out the sky with extended wings. Chee tugged at the cord, pulling against the thrust of beating wings, reaching for the eagle’s legs.

  He was lucky. When it struck, the eagle had locked both sets of talons, one through the rabbit’s back, the other on its head. Chee grabbed both legs and brought bird, rabbit and much of the brush roof falling down on him. He dragged his jacket over the eagle, folded it over head and wings and inspected the bird’s legs. He saw fresh blood on its talons. At the base of the ruff feathers on its left leg, he found something black and brittle. Dried blood. Old rabbit blood, perhaps. Or Jano’s. The lab would decide. Either way, Chee could rest now.

  He pushed bird, rabbit and jacket into the eagle cage and secured the door. Then he leaned back against the stone, poured himself the last of the coffee, and inspected the damage to himself. It was minimal—just a single cut across the side of his left hand, where the eagle’s beak had caught him.

  The eagle extricated itself from his jacket, unlocked its talons from the rabbit, and battled frantically against the stiff metal wires that formed the cage.

  “First Eagle,” Chee said. “Be calm. Be peaceful. I will treat you with respect.” The eagle stopped its struggles and fixed Chee with an unblinking stare. “You will go where all eagles go,” Chee said, but he was sad when he said it.

  Back at the Tuba City police station, Chee parked in the shade. He brought the eagle cage in and put it beside Claire Dineyahze’s desk.

  “Wow,” Claire said. “He looks mean enough. What’s he charged with?”

  “Resisting arrest and biting a cop,” Chee said, displaying the cut on his hand.

  “Ugh. You ought to put some disinfectant on that.”

  “I will,” Chee said. “But first I’ve got to report this capture to the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude in Phoenix. Could you get ’em for me?”

  “Sure.” She started dialing. “On line three.”

  He picked up the telephone on the adjoining desk.

  The receptionist at the FBI office said that Agent Reynald was busy and would he leave a message.

  “Tell him it concerns the Benjamin Kinsman case,” Chee said. “Tell him it’s important.” He waited.

  “Yes,” the next voice said. “This is Reynald.”

  “Jim Chee,” Chee said. “I want to tell you we have the other eagle in the Jano case.”

  “Who?”

  “Jano,” Chee said. “The Hopi who—”

  “I know who Jano is,” Reynald snapped. “I mean who is the person I’m talking to.”

  “Jim Chee. Navajo Tribal Police.”

  “Oh, yes,” Reynald said. “Now what’s this about an eagle?”

  “We caught him today. Where do you want him delivered for the blood testing?”

  “We already have the eagle,” Reynald said. “Remember? The arresting officer impounded it when he took the perp into custody. It tested negative. No blood was on it.”

  “This is the other eagle,” Chee said.

  Silence. “Other eagle?”

  “Remember?” Chee said, trying to include in

  the question the same measure of impatience that Reynald had used when he’d asked it. “The suspect’s case will be based in part on his claim that the slash on his arm was caused by a first eagle, which he then released,” Chee said, reciting it at about the rate a teacher might read a difficult passage to a remedial class. “Whereupon Jano claims he caught a second eagle, which he contends was the bird the arresting officer impounded. He contends that the blood—”

  “I know what he contends,” Reynald said, and laughed. “I didn’t dream you guys—or anybody, for that matter—was taking that seriously.”

  While Reynald was enjoying his laugh, Chee signaled Claire to listen and to flick on the recording machine.

  “Serious or not,” Chee said, “we have the eagle now. When the FBI lab checks it for human blood in the talon grooves or the leg ruff feathers, it’s either there or it isn’t. That takes care of that.”

  Reynald chuckled. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “You mean you fellas actually went out and caught yourself a bird to run through the lab? What’s that supposed to prove? The lab finds nothing, so you keep catching eagles until you run out of them, and then you tell the jury Jano must have made it up.”

  “On the other hand, if Jano’s blood—”

  But Reynald was laughing. “And then the defense attorney will say you missed the one he released. Or, better still, the defense catches one for itself, and they put some of Jano’s blood on it and present it as evidence.”

  “Okay,” Chee said. “But I want to be clear about this. How does the Federal Bureau of Investigation want me to dispose of this eagle I have here?”

  “Whatever you like,” Reynald said. “Just don’t dump it on me. I’m allergic to feathers.”

  “All right then, Agent Reynald,” Chee said. “It’s been a pleasure working with you.”

  “Just a second,” Reynald said. “What I want you to do with that bird is get rid of it. All it can possibly do is complicate this case, and we don’t want it complicated. You understand? Get rid of the damned thing.”

  “I understand,” Chee said. “You’re telling me to get rid of the eagle.”

  “And get to work on what you’re supposed to be doing. Are you making any progress finding witnesses who can testify that Jano wanted some revenge on Kinsman? People who can swear he was angry about that original arrest?”

  “Not yet,” Chee said. “I’ve been busy trying to catch that first eagle.”

  That out of the way, Chee called the federal public defender’s office and asked for Janet Pete. She was in.

  “Janet, we have the first eagle.”

  “Really?” She sounded incredulous.

  “At least I’m almost certain it’s the right one. A couple of its tail feathers are missing, which matches what Jano told us.”

  “But how did you get it?”

  “The same way Jano did. Used the same blind, in fact. Only the decoy rabbit was different.”

  “Has it gone to the lab yet? When will we know what they find?”

  “It hasn’t gone to the lab. Reynald didn’t want it.”

  “He what? He said that? When?”

  “I called him just a little while ago. He said what it boiled down to was nobody would believe Jano’s story and if we dignified it by checking another eagle for his blood, you’d just say we’d caught the wrong eagle and want us to go out and keep catching them. And so forth.”

  “The sonofabitch,” Janet said. There was silence while she thought about it. “But I guess I can see his logic. A negative find wouldn’t help his case. Finding Jano
’s blood on that bird might hurt it. So it would be either no help or a loss for him.”

  “Unless he wanted justice.”

  “Well, I don’t think he has any doubt Jano killed Kinsman. You don’t, do you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You do now? Really?”

  “I want to know if he’s telling the truth.”

  “You may have to let a jury decide.”

  “Janet, twist Reynald’s arm. Tell him you insist on it. Tell him if he won’t have the tests done you’ll petition the court to order it.”

  Long silence. “Who caught the eagle? How many people know it’s caught?”

  “I caught it,” Chee said. “Claire Dineyahze has it sitting beside her desk right now. That’s it.”

  “Was there dried blood on the feathers? Anywhere else?”

  “Not that I could be sure of,” Chee said. “Something dried on its feathers. Tell the bastard if he won’t order the lab work you’ll get it done yourself.”

  “Jim, it’s not that simple.”

  “Why not?”

  “A lot of reasons. In the first place, I won’t even know about the eagle until Reynald tells me. If he doesn’t think it has any importance, he won’t.”

  “But there’s the evidence disclosure rule. Mickey has to tell the defense attorney what evidence he has.”

  “Not if it’s not important enough for him to use. Mickey will say he didn’t even intend to mention the eagle in connection with the blood on Kinsman. The defense can use it if it likes. He’ll say he considers it too foolish to require any response.”

  “All that’s probably right. So you tell him that you know the eagle was caught, tell him—”

  “And he says, How do you know this? Who told you?”

  “And you say a confidential informant.”

  “Come on, Jim,” Janet said impatiently. “Don’t sound naive. The federal criminal justice world is small and the acoustics are good. How long do you think it took me to know that Mickey had been warning you about leaking stuff to me? My confidential informant said she got it thirdhand, but she said Mickey called it ‘pillow talk.’ Did he?”

  “That’s what he called it. But do it anyway.”

  Chee listened while Janet outlined the sort of trouble this would cause for Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee. True, he wasn’t a federal employee, but the links between the U.S. justice system and the Tribal Justice operations were strong, close and often personal. And it meant a headache for her, too. She badly wanted to win this case, at the very least to save Jano from the death penalty. It was her first in this new job and she wanted it to be clean, neat and tidy, not a messy affair with her looking like an inept loose cannon who didn’t understand the system. And so forth. And while he listened, Chee knew what he had to do. And how to do it. And that the effects might change the direction of his life.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “You tell Mickey that you have access to a tape recording, with two credible witnesses to certify it’s genuine. Tell him that on this tape, the FBI agent whom Mr. Mickey put in charge of the Jano case can be clearly heard ordering a policeman to get rid of evidence that might be beneficial to the defense.”

  “My God!” Janet said. “That’s not true, is it?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Did you tape a telephone call with Reynald? When you told him you had the eagle? Surely he didn’t give you permission to tape something like that. If he didn’t, that’s a federal offense.”

  “I didn’t ask him,” Chee said. “I just taped it, with a witness listening in.”

  “That’s against the law. You could go to jail. You’ll surely lose your job.”

  “You’re being naive now, Janet. You know how the FBI feels about bad publicity.”

  “I won’t have anything to do with this,” Janet said.

  “That’s fair enough,” Chee said. “And I want to be fair with you, too. Here’s what I’ll have to do now. I’ll get on the telephone and find out how I can get the necessary laboratory work done. Maybe at the lab at Northern Arizona University or Arizona State. I have to be here at the office until noon tomorrow. I’ll check with you then-or you can call me here—so I’ll know what’s going on. Then I’ll take the bird on to the lab and I’ll have them send you a copy of their report.”

  “No, Jim. No. They’ll charge you with evidence tampering. They’ll think of something. You’re being crazy.”

  “Or maybe just stubborn,” Chee said. “Anyway, give me a call tomorrow.”

  Then he sat back and thought about it. Had he been bluffing? No, he’d do it if he had to. Leaphorn’s lady friend would know someone on the NAU biology faculty who could run the tests—and do it right so it would hold water in court. And if they found it wasn’t Jano’s blood, then maybe Jano was just a damn liar.

  But Chee wasn’t kidding himself about his motivation. One of the reasons he’d told Janet about the tape was to give her a weapon if she needed it. But part of that was purely selfish— the kind of reason Frank Sam Nakai had always warned him against. He wanted to find out how Janet would use this weapon he’d handed her.

  For that, he’d have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe a few days more, but he thought tomorrow would tell him.

  Chee slept fitfully, the darkness in his little trailer full of bad dreams. He got to his office early, thinking he would get a stack of paperwork out of the way. But the telephone was at his elbow and concentration was hard.

  It first rang at eighteen minutes after eight. Joe Leaphorn wanted to know if he could get a copy of the list of items found in Miss Pollard’s Jeep.

  “Sure,” Chee said. “We’ll Xerox it. You want it mailed?”

  “I’m in Tuba,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll pick it up.”

  “You on to something I should know about?”

  “I doubt it,” Leaphorn said. “I want to show the list to Krause and see if he notices anything funny. Something missing that should be there. That sort of thing.”

  “Did you locate Mrs. Notah?”

  “No. I found some of her goats. Somebody’s goats, anyway. But she wasn’t around. After I waste some of Krause’s time this morning, I think I’ll go there and look again. See if she can add anything to what she told McGinnis about the skinwalker who looked like a snowman. Did the FBI pick up that eagle?”

  “They didn’t want it,” Chee said, and told Leaphorn what Reynald had said without mentioning taping the call.

  “I’m not too surprised,” Leaphorn said. “But you can’t blame the people. I’ve known a lot of good agents. It’s the system you get with political police. I’ll let you know if Mrs. Notah saw anything useful.”

  The next two calls were routine business. When call number four arrived, Claire didn’t just buzz him. She waved and wrote FBI in the air with her finger.

  Chee took a long breath, picked up the telephone, said, “Jim Chee.”

  “This is Reynald. Do you still have that eagle?”

  “It’s here,” Chee said. “What do—”

  “Agent Evans is en route to pick it up,” Reynald said. “He’ll be there about noon. Be there, because he’ll need you to sign a form.”

  “What are you—” Chee began, but Reynald had hung up.

  Chee leaned back in his chair. One question was now answered, he thought. Janet had told Reynald she knew about the eagle, prodding him into action, or she had told J. D. Mickey, who had told Reynald how to react. That solved the first part of the problem. The FBI would have the lab test the eagle. He would know sooner or later whether Jano had lied. That left the second question. How had Janet used the club he’d handed her?

  In the periods between his bad dreams the night before, he had worked out three scenarios for Janet. In the first, she would simply stand aside, as she had suggested she would, and see what happened. If nothing happened, when he appeared on the witness stand as Jano’s arresting officer, she would lead him to the eagle during cross-examination.

  “Lieutenant Chee,�
� she would say, “is it true that you were told by Mr. Jano that he had caught a second eagle after the first one slashed his arm, and that you made an attempt to recapture that first eagle?” To which he would have to say: “Yes.”

  “Did you capture it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you then take the eagle to the laboratory at Northern Arizona University and arrange for an examination to be made to determine if it had Mr. Jano’s blood on its talons or feathers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did that report show?”

  The answer to that, of course, would depend on the laboratory report.

  He could now rule out that scenario. She hadn’t stood aside. She had intervened. But how?

  In scenario two, the one for which he ardently longed, Janet went to one of the key federals, told him she had reason to believe the first eagle had been caught and demanded to see the results of the blood testing. Mickey or Reynald, or both, would evade, deny, argue that her request was ridiculous, imply that she was ruining her career in the Department of Justice if she was too stupid to understand that, demand to know the source of this erroneous leak, and so forth. Janet would bravely stand her ground, threaten court action or a leak to the press. And he would love her for her courage and know that he was wrong in not trusting her.

  In scenario three, the cause of the previous night’s bad dreams, Janet went to Mickey, told Mickey that he had a problem—that Lieutenant Jim Chee had gone out and captured an eagle that he insisted was the same eagle her client would testify had slashed his arm and he had then released. She would recommend that he take custody of said eagle and have tests done to determine if Jano’s blood was on it. Whereupon Mickey would tell her to just relax and let the FBI handle collection of evidence in its routine manner. Then Janet would say the FBI had decided against checking the eagle. And Mickey would ask her if Reynald had told her that. And she’d say no. And he’d say how did you find out then. And she would say lieutenant Chee had told her. And he’d say Chee was misleading her, trying to cause trouble. And about there Janet would realize that she had already caused career-blighting trouble in Mickey’s mind and the only way that could be fixed was by using Chee’s secret weapon. She would then pledge Mickey to secrecy. She would let him know that in telling Chee he wouldn’t get the eagle tested, Reynald had carelessly allowed his telephone conversation to be taped and that on that tape Agent Reynald could be heard imprudently ordering Chee to get rid of the eagle and thus the evidence.