Ava Walker is Professor Tagert's teaching assistant at the University of New Mexico, where they're at work on a theory that outlaw Butch Cassidy escaped ambush in Bolivia only to die in a shootout on the Navajo reservation. (In the book, Ava Walker is known as Jean Jacobs.)

Jenni Blong is a film and television actress who has appeared on the big screen in S1m0ne, Bad Dog, 200 Cigarettes, The Census Taker, and Cry-Baby, and on the small screen in Angel, The Guardian, NYPD Blue, and Strong Medicine.

In Hillerman's words:
Chee looked into a cluttered room, lit by two dusty windows, divided by two long desks placed back to back at its center. Books were everywhere, jamming bookcases that occupied the walls, stacked on chairs, tumbled out of untidy piled ion the desks. Behind the nearest desk, her back to Chee, was a woman typing... She was a plump woman in her late twenties, Chee guessed, with a round, good-natured face and short brown hair.

Coyote Waits, Chapter 8