Distracted by a false alarm, Officer Jim Chee allows a tractor trailer and backhoe to be stolen from the reservation motor pool. His search for the thief causes him to damage Janet Pete's new car and discover a link to the case of a missing pot hunter being investigated by Joe Leaphorn.

A member of the Saulteaux tribe from Manitoba, Canada, Adam Beach starred opposite Nicolas Cage in John Woo's World War II epic Windtalkers, about Navajo Marines who used a code based on their complex native language to send messages undecipherable to the Japanese. In 1998 Beach appeared in Chris Eyre's critically acclaimed Smoke Signals. He has also starred in Sawtooth, The Big Empty, Squanto, and Dance Me Outside, which earned him a Best Actor award from the American Indian Film Festival. On television, he has appeared in Third Watch, Everwood, Cowboys and Indians: The J.J. Harper Story, Lonesome Dove; Walker, Texas Ranger; The Rez; and many other series.

In Hillerman's words:
"He was wearing his off-duty work clothes -- greasy jeans and a Coors t-shirt with a torn armpit. His pistol was locked securely in the table beside the cot in his trailer in Shiprock, Not radio, in the Buick, of course. And it was no chase car. He would simply tag along, determine where the Backhoe Bandit, was going, take whatever opportunity presented itself."

A Thief of Time, Chapter 3