 So even though ex-Lt. Joe Leaphorn has retired from the Tribal Police ("The Fallen Man", 1996), he’s back on the job, looking for Pollard at the request of her wealthy aunt.The murder case couldn’t seem simpler; Jano’s even gotten his blood obligingly mixed with his victim’s on both their clothing, and his claim that they were both nipped by an eagle isn’t borne out by the eagle on the scene, which doesn’t show a trace of blood itself.But Jano’s public defender—who just happens to be Chee’s off-again fiance Janet Pete, returned from hobnobbing in Washington, D.C., to the Rez, but not to Chee’s arms—insists that her client is innocent; Leaphorn’s crisscrossing investigation keeps turning up evidence that the murder and the disappearance are two sides of the same coin; and an ambitious prosecutor is so eager for a capital conviction that there’s got to be something funny.