The Dark Wind

Lomatewa looked at Chee, frowning. 'You said that you and this Navajo policeman got the body. Didn't he see what had been done?'

'When we got the body, Grandfather, the ravens had been there for days, and the coyotes, and the vultures,' Cowboy said. 'You could only tell it had been a man and that he had been dead a long time in the heat.'

'Ah,' Lomatewa said. 'Well, his hands had been skinned.' Lomatewa threw out his hands, palms up, demonstrating. 'Fingers, palms, all. And the bottoms of his feet.' He noticed Cowboy's puzzled surprise and nodded toward Chee. 'If this Navajo respects his people's old ways, he will understand.'

Chee understood, perfectly. 'That's what the witch uses to make corpse powder,' Chee explained to Cowboy. 'They call it anti'l. You make it out of the skin that has the individual's soul stamped into it.' Chee pointed to the fingerprint whorls on his fingertips and the pads of his hands. 'Like on your palms, and fingers, and the soles of your feet, and the glans of your penis.' As he explained, it occurred to Jim Chee that he could finally answer one of Captain Largo's questions. There was more than the usual witchcraft gossip on Black Mesa because there was a witch at work.

Chapter Eleven

By the time chee drove back to Tuba City, typed up his report, and left it on Captain Largo's desk, it was after 9:00 p.m. By the time he let himself into his trailer house and lowered himself on the edge of his bunk, he felt totally used up. He yawned, scrubbed his forearm against his face, and slumped, elbows on knees, reviewing the day and waiting for the energy to get himself ready for bed. He had tomorrow off, and the day after. He would go to Two Gray Hills, to the country of his relatives in the Chuska Mountains, far from the world of police, and narcotics, and murder. He would heat rocks and take a sweat bath with his uncle, and get back to the job of mastering the sand paintings for the Night Chant. Chee yawned again and bent to untie his boot laces, and found himself thinking of John Doe's hands as the old Hopi had described them.

Bloody. Flayed. In his own mind the only memory he could recall was of bones, sinew, and bits of muscle ends which had resisted decay and the scavengers. Something about what the Hopi had said bothered him. He thought about it and couldn't place the incongruity, and yawned again, and removed his boots. John Doe had died on the fourth day before the Niman Kachina, and this year the ceremonial had been held on July 14. He'd confirmed that with Dashee. So John Doe's body had been dumped onto the path on July 10. Chee lay back on the bunk, reached out, and fished the Navajo-Hopi telephone book off the table. It was a thin book, much bent from being carried in Chee's hip pocket, and it contained all telephone numbers in a territory a little larger than New England. Chee found the Burnt Water Trading Post listed along with a dozen or so telephones on Second Mesa. He pushed himself up on one elbow and dialed it. It rang twice.

'Hello.'

'Is Jake West there?'

'This is West.'

'Jim Chee,' Chee said. 'How good is your memory?'

'Fair.'

'Any chance you remembering if Musket was at work last July eleventh? That would have been four days before the Home Dances up on Second Mesa.'

'July eleventh,' West said. 'What's up?'

'Probably nothing,' Chee said. 'Just running down dead ends on your burglary.'

'Just a minute. I don't remember, but I'll have it written down in my payroll book.'

Chee waited. He yawned again. This was wasting his time. He unbuckled his belt and slid out of his uniform pants and tossed them to the foot of the bed. He unbuttoned his shirt. Then West was back on the line.

'July eleventh. Let's see. He didn't show up for work July tenth or the eleventh. He showed up on the twelfth.'

Chee felt slightly less sleepy.

'Okay,' he said. 'Thanks.'

'That mean anything?'

'Probably not,' Chee said.

It meant, he thought after he had removed the shirt and pulled the sheet over him, that Musket might have been the man who killed John Doe. It didn't mean he was the one—only that the possibility existed. Drowsily, Chee considered it. Musket possibly was a witch. The killing of John Doe possibly was the reason Musket had departed from the Burnt Water Trading Post. But Chee was too exhausted to pursue such a demanding exercise. He thought instead of Frank Sam Nakai, who was his maternal uncle and the most respected singer along the New Mexico- Arizona border. And thinking of this great shaman, this wise and kindly man, Jim Chee fell asleep.

When he awakened, there was Johnson standing beside his bunk, looking down at him.

'Time to wake up,' Johnson said.

Chee sat up. Behind Johnson another man was standing, his back to Chee, sorting through the things Chee kept stored in one of the trailer's overhead compartments. The light of the rising sun was streaming through the open door.

'What the hell?' Chee said. 'What are you doing to my trailer?'

'Some checking,' Johnson said.

'Nothing here either,' the man said.

'This is Officer Larry Collins,' Johnson said, still looking at Chee. 'He's my partner on this case.' Officer Collins turned and looked at Chee. He grinned. He was perhaps twenty-five. Big. Unkempt blond hair dangled from under a dirty cowboy hat. His face was a mass of freckles, his eyes reckless. 'Howdy,' he said. 'If you got any dope hidden around here, I haven't come up with it. Not yet.'

Chee couldn't think of anything to say. Disbelief mixed with anger. This was incredible. He reached for his shirt,