The First Eagle

by Tony Hillerman

  “I wanted to thank you for the help,” Chee said.

  Leaphorn nodded. “I thank you in return. It was mutual. Like old times.”

  “Anyway, if I can ever—”

  But now he was talking over a promo for what the Phoenix station called a news break. A pretty young man was telling them there had been a startling development in the Ben Kinsman murder case and he would take them to Alison Padilla, who was “live at the federal building.”

  Alison was not as pretty as the anchorman, but she seemed competent. She told them that Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney J. D. Mickey had called a press conference a bit earlier. She would let him speak for himself. Mr. Mickey, looking stern, got right to the point.

  “The Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken into custody a suspect in the homicide of Officer Benjamin Kinsman and in the death of an Indian Health Service employee who has been missing for several days. The FBI has also developed information which verifies statements made by Robert Jano, who had previously been arrested by the Navajo Tribal police and charged with the Kinsman murder. Charges against Mr. Jano will now be dismissed. More information will be released as details become available.”

  While Mickey was reading this, Officer Bernadette Manuelito walked in. Chee waved her over, pointed to a seat. Mickey was now waving off questions and ending the conference, and the camera switched back to Ms. Padilla, who began providing background information.

  “Lieutenant,” Officer Manuelito said. “Mrs. Dineyahze asked me to tell you the U.S. Attorney’s office is trying to reach you.” She pointed to the screen. “Him.”

  “Okay,” Chee said. “Thanks.”

  “And the U.S. Public Defender Service. They said it was urgent.”

  “Okay,” Chee said again. “And, Bernie, you remember Mr. Leaphorn, don’t you? From when we were both working at Shiprock? Have a seat. Join us.”

  Bernie smiled at Leaphorn and said she had to get back to the station. “But did you hear what that man said? I think that’s awful. He made it sound like we screwed up.”

  Chee shrugged.

  “It’s not fair,” she said.

  “They tend to do that,” Leaphorn said. “That’s why a lot of the real cops resent the federals.”

  “Well, anyway, I just think—” Bernie paused, looking for the words to express her indignation.

  Chee wanted to change the subject. He said:

  “Bernie, when did you say they were having the kinaalda for your cousin? Now that we have the FBI handling the Kinsman case, I’m not going to be so busy. Would it still be okay if l came?”

  The beeper in her belt holster made its unpleasant noise. “It would be okay,” Bernie said, and hurried out the door.

  Leaphorn picked up his check, looked at it, fished out his wallet and dropped a dollar tip on the table. “That drive from here to Window seems to get longer and longer,” he said. “Got to get moving.”

  But at the door he paused to shake hands with a woman coming in and chat for a moment. He pointed back into the room and disappeared. Janet Pete had arrived from Phoenix.

  She stood in the doorway a moment, scanning the tables. She wore boots and a long skirt with a patterned blouse, and her silky hair was cut short like the chic women on the television shows wore theirs these days. She looked tired, Chee thought, and tense, but still so beautiful that he closed his eyes for a moment and looked away.

  When he looked again, she was walking toward him, her expression saying she was glad she had found him. But it revealed nothing else.

  Chee stood, pulled back a chair for her and said: “I guess you got the message.”

  “The message, but not the meaning.” She sat, adjusted her skirt. “What does it mean?”

  Chee told her how they had found Pollard’s body, about Woody’s confession that he had killed Kinsman when Kinsman found him burying the woman, about Woody’s desperate sickness. She listened without a word.

  “Mickey was just on television announcing the murder charge against your client is being dropped,” Chee said. “Nothing left now but the ‘poaching an endangered species’ charge. It’s a second offense, done while on probation for the first one. But under the circumstances I’d imagine the judge will just sentence Jano to the time he’s already spent locked up waiting for the big trial.”

  Janet was looking at her hands folded on the table in front of her. “Nothing left but that,” she said. “That and the wreckage.”

  He waited for an explanation. None came. She simply looked at him quizzically.

  “Let me get you a cup,” Chee said. He pushed back his chair, but she shook her head. “I got your call about the eagle being tested,” Chee said. “I intended to call you back, but things got too busy. How did it come out? Mickey made it sound like they found blood.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “Well, sure,” Chee said. “It would be nice to know Mr. Jano wasn’t lying to us.”

  “I haven’t seen the report yet,” Janet said.

  He sipped his coffee, watching her. The ball was in her court.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Jim. How long had you known about this Woody? That he’d killed Kinsman?”

  “Not very long,” Chee said, wondering where this was leading.

  “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.

  About the Author

  TONY HILLERMAN is past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received its Edgar and Grand Master Awards. His other honors include the Center for the American Indian’s Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for the best novel set in the West, and the Navajo Tribe’s Special Friend Award. He lives with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF Tony Hillerman

  THE FIRST EAGLE

  “Tony Hillerman is a wonderful storyteller . . . . Surrendering to Hillerman’s strong narrative voice and supple storytelling techniques, we come to see that ancient cultures and modern sciences are simply different mythologies for the same reality.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “The First Eagle displays all the strengths of Hillerman’s writing: a vivid sense of place, nuanced characters, and a complex, engrossing plot.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Hillerman paints detailed verbal pictures of the Navajo land. . .. His characters are complicated and imperfect. They feel real. . . . His knowledge of the American Southwest, Indian culture, religion, customs, rituals and history give his work a depth found in few mysteries

  —USA Today

  “Tony Hillerman offers detectives with a difference. . . . There is good reason his novels are published int he height of summer.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Always absorbing . . . Hillerman is unique in his ability to reflect Navajo life and faith, extraordinary in his understanding of people and what makes them tick. And he writes beautifully. The First Eagle is pure delight for Hillerman fans.”

  —Anniston Star

  “Mr. Hillerman has created another bestseller . . . . He has brought to readers new understanding of the Indian way.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Hillerman’s trademark melding of Navajo tradition and modern culture is captured with crystal clarity in this tale of an ancient scourge’s resurgence in today’s world. The uneasy mix of old ways and new is articulated with resonant depth.”

  —Publisher’s Weekly

  “A fine pair are given a fine puzzle.”

  —Atlantic Monthly

  “We read Hillerman for his astute description of the land and people we know and love. He’s really good at it.”

  —The Independent (Gallup, N.M.)

  THE FALLEN MAN

  “Hillerman’s haunting new whodunit . . . burnished with desription of copper sunsets, trout streams, and the chirp of cedar waxwings, is a scenic ride through a land where police are more worried about cattle rustling than dope dealing, the men are ‘built of sun-scorched leather, bone, and gristle,’ and a cop who’s been shot doesn’t crave revenge—he wants harmony.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “It’s clear form page one that Hillerman has lost none of hi touch. all the elements that have made the previous novels so successful are here: the flawless plot, the deeply drawn major characters, the dead-on minor ones, the picture of reservation life at the Four Corners.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “There is only one Hillerman. . . . There is no second-best at re-creating the feel and the sights and sounds of the Navajo country as backdrop to crackling-good mysteries. . . . The Fallen Man, like Hillerman’s other novels, is more than just a mystery, and tells us more than merely whodunit.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “Hillerman has brought off another splendid yarn.”

  —Denver Post

  “At the top of his form, Sherlock Homes couldn’t solve more intelligently or slickly the puzzle of The Fallen Man than do Navajo tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. . . . As usual, the chief virtue Hillerman brings to this tangled narrative is that of pristine clarity, a quality so often needed, but rarely present in a literary work that strives for success on several levels—and achieves it magnificently.”

  —Buffalo News

  SACRED CLOWNS

  “This is Hillerman at his best, mixing human nature, ethnicity and the overpowering physical presence of the Southwest.”

  —Newsweek

  “There has never been anything ordinary about Hillerman’s crisply plotted, magically evocative tales. . . . Mingling taut, deceptively simple prose with shrewd psychological insight and a scholar’s understanding of Navajo culture and religion.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “[Hillerman’s] clowns are . . . every bit as raucous, profance, and funny as Shakespeare’s.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  COYOTE WAITS

  “As smoothly written and satisfying as any of its predecessors in this interesting and well done series . . . Mr. Hillerman conveys more genuine tension and suspense than are contained in any number of ammo-laden thrillers.”

  —Wall Street Journal

  “[Hillerman’s] talents are so immense that it’s difficult to put his books down. [He] is at the top of his form in Coyote Waits. It’s eay, enjoyable reading with just a hint of something deeper, even mystical.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Taut and well-constructed. . . . Hillerman’s books are more than just mystery stories. There’s even greater pleasure in the
ir evocation of the Navajo way, with its orderliness, elaborate courtesy and mysticism, and in the tension drawn at the intersection of tradition and the modern world”

  —Hartford Courant

  Books by Tony Hillerman

  FICTION

  The Wailing Wind

  Hunting Badger

  The First Eagle

  The Fallen Man

  Finding Moon

  Sacred Clowns

  Coyote Waits

  Talking God

  A Thief of Time

  Skinwalkers

  The Ghostway

  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

  Seldom Disappointed

  Hillerman Country

  The Great Taos Bank Robbery

  Rio Grande

  New Mexico

  The Spell of New Mexico

  Indian Country

  Credits

  Cover illustration by Peter Thorpe

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE FIRST EAGLE. Copyright © 1998 by Tony Hillerman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  “Leaphorn, Chee, and the Navajo Way” and “The Novels, As Annotated by T.H.” were adapted from www.tonyhillermanbooks.com. Copyright © 2001 by Tony Hillerman. Reprinted with permission.