Huan Ji, a math teacher at Ship Rock High School, is seen speeding away in a white Jeep from the rocky outpost where Officer Chee finds his colleague Delbert Nez dead. An ex-CIA operative from the Vietnam era, Ji claims that he saw nothing of the crime.

Long Nguyen is a film and television actor who has appeared on the TV series John Doe and Chicago Hope and in the made-for-TV movie Into Thin Air: Death on Everest. His feature film work includes Missing Brendan, Apsara, Power Elite, Green Dragon, Six Days Seven Nights, Operation Dumbo Drop, Death Match, Red Sun Rising, and Heaven & Earth.

In Hillerman's words:
Mr. Huan Ji stood beside his desk, his back to the class and his profile to Chee, staring out the classroom window. He was a small man, and thin, rigidly erect, with short-cropped black hair and a short-cropped mustached showing gray. He wore gray slacks, a blue jacket, and a white shirt with a tie neatly in place and looked, therefore, totally misplaced in Ship Rock High School.

Coyote Waits, Chapter 6