Chee said, “Well…” and then dropped it. Why try to instruct this knucklehead in the Pueblo culture? The patrol car rattled off the gravel road, onto the asphalt toward Albuquerque. Chee let his imagination wander. He saw himself scouting for the Seventh Cavalry, shooting Cheyennes. The satisfaction in that fantasy lasted a few miles. He rehearsed his report to Leaphorn. He thought about Janet Pete. He thought about how the tip of her short-cut hair curled against her neck. He thought about the funny way she had of letting a smile start, letting him get a glimpse of it, and then suppressing it – pretending she hadn’t appreciated his humor. He thought about her legs and hips in those tight jeans on the ladder above him at the Tano ceremonial. He thought about her kissing him, enthusiastically, and then catching his hand when…
“Why do you say she didn’t know?” Blizzard asked, frowning at the windshield. “You know these people better than I do. I’m a city boy. My daddy worked for the post office in Chicago. I don’t know a damn thing about this kind of Indians.”
“There’s a lot I don’t know, too,” Chee said. “Haven’t been around Tanos much.”
“Come on.” Blizzard was grinning at him. “I been here just two months. I need help.”
So do I, Chee thought, and you’ve been a pain in the butt. But, brother cop, brother Indian.
“Well,” Chee said. “In most pueblos Delmar would be old enough to be initiated. He’d belong to one of the religious fraternities and he’d have religious duties. The way I understand it, you keep the secrets of your fraternity – your kiva – because only the people who have to know these secrets to perform their duties are supposed to know them. If uninitiated people know them, it dilutes the power. Waters it down. So I guess Delmar was probably a member of Sayesva’s kiva. And whatever he brought his uncle was in some way religious. His mother wouldn’t ask about it because you just don’t ask about such things. And he wouldn’t tell her if she did ask. And if he had told her, she damn sure wouldn’t tell us.”
“Interesting,” Blizzard said. “Is it that way with you Navajos?”
“No,” Chee said. “Our religion is family business. Traditionally, the more who show up at a curing ceremonial and take part the better. Except for some of the clans that live next to Pueblo tribes. Some of them picked up the Pueblo idea.”
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t totally true. The
“Interesting,” Blizzard said, and starting telling Chee something about the Cheyenne religion. It was something to do with how, a long, long time ago, a delegation of Comanches had come north and brought a string of horses with them as gifts to the Cheyennes. But the Comanches had told the Cheyennes that if they accepted the horses, they would have to change their religion because the horses would totally change their lives. Blizzard was saying something about following the migrating buffaloes. But Chee had stopped listening. It occurred to him just then that he was going to marry Janet Pete. Or try to marry her. And he was thinking about that.
Chapter 4
LEAPHORN AND David W. Streib took the short way from Window Rock to Crownpoint and a conference with Lieutenant Ed Toddy, in whose reservation precinct Eric Dorsey had died. They followed old Navajo Route 9 past the Nazhoni Trading Post, Coyote Wash, and Standing Rock, and crossed that invisible line that separated the Big Rez from the Checkerboard. Special Agent Streib worked out of the Farmington office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Since the wrongful death of Eric Dorsey was clearly a felony committed on a federal reservation and therefore a federal offense, he was responsible for the investigation. But that didn’t make it particularly interesting to him. Streib could be described as a Bureau old-timer. He should have been in an assignment much loftier than a tiny office in northwestern New Mexico from which he dealt mostly with Indian reservation business. But the whimsical sense of humor that had earned Streib his nickname of Dilly had not earned him the confidence of those selected by J. Edgar Hoover to run his FBI. And while Hoover was now long gone, Hoover’s reign had lasted longer than Streib’s ambitions. Special Agent Streib had evolved into a laid-back, contented man with lots of friends in Indian Country.
One of them was Joe Leaphorn, which was fortunate on this day because even the short way from Window Rock to Crownpoint involved some seventy miles of mostly empty road. Plenty of time for conversation. They covered Streib’s plans for building a greenhouse behind his home when he retired from the Bureau. They rehashed cases they had worked together, skirted around the sensitive subject of what Leaphorn intended to do with his accumulated leave time, and covered an assortment of gossip about the small world of Indian Country law enforcement. Just as they passed the turnoff to the Nahodshosh Chapter House, they got to the question of why anyone would want to kill a Saint Bonaventure Mission School shop teacher. Theft was clearly the number one choice, since some silver ingot and other materials seemed to be missing from Dorsey’s shop. Trouble over a girlfriend made number two as the motive. Trouble with a student made number three. No number four suggested itself.
Finally, Streib brought up the sensitive subject.
“You going with the professor?”
Leaphorn was sure he didn’t want to open this subject to discussion. Not even with Dilly.
“Where? What do you mean?”
“To China with that professor from Northern Arizona University, goddammit,” Streib said. “Bourebonette’s the name. I heard that’s the plan. What are you being so goddam coy about?”
Leaphorn had never, ever discussed accompanying Bourebonette to China with Dilly or with anyone else that he could think of. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would discuss. But it didn’t occur to him to be surprised that Dilly knew. In empty country everybody knew everything about everybody. One’s inner thoughts seemed to transmit themselves through the clear, dry air without need for verbalizing.
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “That’s the plan.”
“That’s what I heard,” Streib said.
Leaphorn looked at his watch, a $13.99 Casio digital. He pushed the proper buttons and adjusted the seconds.
“I checked it when they gave the time on the radio,” he said. “It’s a little slow. Or maybe the radio is a little fast. Probably it was exactly right. Makes you wonder why anyone would pay a hundred bucks for a watch. Or one of those five-thousand-dollar jobs.”
Streib ignored this signal to change the subject.
“That’s a hell of a long ways to go,” Streib said. “All the way to China. If you got something going with the lady, why not just stay here? Nobody would care. You’re a widower. I think she’s single. That’s what I heard.”
“I always wanted to go to China.”
“Yeah,” Streib said. “Really. I’ll bet you did.”
The skepticism provoked Leaphorn. “I used to talk about it with Emma,” he said, irritated with himself for explaining this to Streib. “But she didn’t like to travel. She went to New York with me once. And once to Washington. But it was really just to keep me company. It made her nervous, being away from the reservation. Even when we just went to Albuquerque. Or Phoenix. She’d be anxious to get home.”
“I heard the lady was doing a research project in China. Quite a coincidence.” The tone remained skeptical. “Good thing she wasn’t doing research on Antarctica or you’d be telling me of your lifelong fascination with penguins.”
“Back when I was a grad student at Arizona State I got interested,” Leaphorn said. “We had an anthro professor who was into linguistics. The evolution of languages, that sort of thing. He’d ask me how my grandfather said things, and my relatives. And he’d show me the charts he’d accumulated about the Athabascan languages up and down the Pacific Coast, Canada, Alaska, and across the straits among some of the Siberian tribes. It got me interested.”
Leaphorn looked up, made a deprecatory gesture. “You know,” he said. “Where’s my homeland? Where’d the Dineh come from? Where are my roots?”
