Central Kansas Library System

PI Joe Leaphorn of Arizona investigates the murder of an Indian policeman for which an eagle poacher has been arrested. Leaphorn thinks someone else did it. By the author of The Fallen Man.

While the collision of airliners central to the plot of this book was real and triggered the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration and its flight safety rules, the story and all of its characters are purely fictional. However, several of these fictional folks use names borrowed from generous donors to fund to assist children stricken with cancer.

Nothing had seemed complicated about the old "Golden Calf" case. A con game had gone sour. Wealthy old Wiley Denton had shot the swindler, called the police, confessed, and done his short prison time. No mystery there, except why did the rich man's bride vanish? And now, papers found by Sergeant Jim Chee and Officer Bernie Manuelito in a new homicide case connect the victim to Denton and to the mythical Golden Calf Mine.

The victim, well dressed but stripped of identification, is found at the edge of the vast Jicarilla Apache natural gas field just inside the jurisdiction of the Navajo Tribal Police, facing Sergeant Jim Chee with a complex puzzle. Why did the Washington office of the FBI snatch custody of this case from its local agents, cover it with secrecy, and call it a hunting accident? What was the victim seeking among the maze of pipelines and pumping stations...

A Navajo girl unravels a day's weaving on a rug whose completion, she believes, will mean the death of her grandmother.