"Where were you before six-ten? Tell me about your day."

"I left my trailer about seven-thirty, had breakfast at the IHOP on Cerrillos Road, fixed a guy's car out on Agua Fria-that took all morning; I ate lunch at El Polio Loco; I got a call on my cell phone about a job off of San Mateo-a fan belt was all it was. I went to Pep Boys for the belt, then put it on the car. I always check out a car for other things wrong, so I pointed out a couple things to the owner, and I fixed those, so he'd pass his inspection test. I didn't have any other work for the day, so I stopped by the Gun Club for a beer around four-thirty and shot a couple games of pool, then I went home."

"Who saw you at the Gun Club?"

"The guy I played pool with, but I didn't know him; never seen him before. I took ten bucks off him, so he'd remember me. The bartender knows me; his name is Tupelo."

"From the Gun Club, it's a short drive home. Did you stop anywhere?"

"I picked up a bottle of bourbon at the drive-thru, that was all."

Eagle tapped the file again. "Says here they found your fingerprints on the shotgun and gunshot residue on your hands."

"It was my shotgun, so it would have my fingerprints on it, and I picked it up off the floor and set it on the kitchen counter, so I might have gotten some residue on my hands. When they tested me, they found it on my right palm."

"Nowhere else?"

"Nope."

"How fresh was the scene?"

"Not all that fresh; I couldn't tell you how long, but some of the blood had dried."

"Did you get any blood from the scene on yourself or your clothes?"

"No, sir; I backed right out of that bedroom when I saw the mess inside."

"Step in anything?"

"That's possible, but if I did, I didn't notice it."

"I'm going to need the names of the people whose cars you fixed."

"Look on the front passenger seat of my pickup. It's parked outside my trailer. I've got a plastic briefcase there, and there are two pads of receipts inside. There's one name on the last receipt in each of them; address, too."

"Anything else you want to tell me, Joe?"

"Can't think of anything. Any chance of getting out of here?"

"Let me check out your alibi, and we'll see. How much bail can you raise?"

"Not much."

"Well, if your alibi checks, you might not need bail, but I'd plan to spend the weekend in here." Eagle tossed the file and the pad into his briefcase, stood up and offered Big Bear his hand. "You'll be hearing from me."

"Okay," Big Bear said.

Eagle left the jail and went back to his car. Big Bear's story was simple enough to check out. If he wasn't lying, why hadn't he already been released?

Eight

ONE THING EAGLE COULD GET DONE BEFORE MONDAY: the Gun Club was no more than a quarter mile from the jail. He parked out front and went inside. It might as well have been midnight, for all the light in the place. It seemed entirely lit by beer signs. At the end of the bar, a sign over a doorway said, simply, hell. Eagle didn't want to go in there. The lunchtime crowds were digging into their beer and pork rinds, and the bartender was busy. Finally, he came to Eagle's end of the bar.

"What'll it be, sport?" Broad southern accent.

"You Tupelo?"

"Who's asking?"

"Name's Ed Eagle; I'm Joe Big Bear's lawyer."

"I already told the cops; you want me to tell you, too?"

"Please."

"Right. Joe got here Wednesday afternoon around four-thirty-something, shot some pool with a guy I'd never seen before, had a couple of beers and left around six o'clock."

"Describe the other pool player."

"Short, scrawny, dark hair under a baseball cap, couple days' beard."

"What did it say on the baseball cap?"

"Who knows?"

"How was he dressed?"

"Dirty jeans, checkered shirt."

"How'd he pay?"

"American dollars. We don't take nothing else."

"Anything you didn't tell the cops?"

Tupelo shrugged. "Did Joe waste those folks?"

"Not if you're telling the truth." Eagle gave him a card and a twenty-dollar bill. "Call me if you remember anything else. I'll be in touch. Appreciate your time." Eagle went back to his car, glanced at his watch and drove slowly toward the airport. He passed a liquor store with a drive-up window. Just for the hell of it he turned in and stopped.

"Yessir?" the clerk asked through a bulletproof glass window.

"A fifth of Knob Creek, please."

The clerk went away, came back with the bottle, stuffed it into a paper bag, took Eagle's fifty and gave him change through a slide-out cash drawer, like at a bank.

Eagle drove back to Airport Road and continued his journey. He turned left at the sign for the airport and noted the large automobile graveyard on his right, a sight he saw every time he drove out to visit his airplane. Just past that was a battered house trailer with a new-looking green pickup parked out front. He turned in. The trailer door was sealed with police tape. Eagle looked at his watch: eight minutes since he'd left the Gun Club. He got out of his car and into the unlocked pickup; the briefcase was there, just as Big Bear had said.

Eagle opened it and found the two pads. Apparently, one was for credit card payments, the other for cash. Joe was filing a tax return but not reporting everything. He also found a receipt from the liquor store with a date and time stamp that said last Wednesday, 6:06 p.m.

He broke out his cell phone and called both of Big Bear's Wednesday clients, taking the numbers from the receipts. The guy on Agua Fria backed Joe's alibi, and Eagle left a message on the other guy's answering machine. If he came through, his client was looking clean.

Still, he'd need the medical examiner's report on the time of death and the detectives' report. That wouldn't happen until Monday. He did some grocery shopping and drove home.

As he turned onto his road from Tesuque, he noticed a black car with darkened windows behind him, and when he turned into his drive, past the stone eagle that marked the entrance, the car followed him in.

Eagle got out of the car with his groceries and stood, waiting for his visitor to emerge from the black car. After a moment, the car door opened, and the driver got out. He was not a big man-maybe five-eight and a hundred and sixty pounds-and he was dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, silver belt buckle, black shirt and a flat-brimmed black hat, pinched at the top like a World War I campaign hat. The face under the hat was brown and smooth, the expression impassive.

"Ed Eagle?" The man asked.

"That's right."

"My name is Vittorio. You left me a message."

Ah, Eagle thought, the other P.I., the one he'd called when he'd thought Cupie Dalton was out of action. "Sure, come on in." He lead the way into the house and the kitchen and began putting things away.

"Can I get you a drink?"

The man set his hat on the kitchen counter and pulled up a stool. His thick, black hair was pulled straight back into a long ponytail and secured with a silver clip. He nodded at the bourbon bottle. "A taste of that would be good. Ice, if you've got it."

Eagle poured two drinks and handed him one. "There was an Apache chief named Vittorio back in the late nineteenth century."

"He was my great-great-grandfather."

"How did your great-grandfather survive the massacre in the Tres Castillas mountains?" Eagle knew that Vittorio had left the reservation and conducted a three-year offensive against the whites. He had been cornered in the mountains, and he and sixty of his men and a group of women and children had been slaughtered there by the New Mexico militia.

"His mother wouldn't let him fight; she made him hide in some rocks, where he saw the whole thing. When it was over, he scavenged the bodies for food and water, then he walked seventy miles to another Apache camp, where he was taken in. He was seven years old."