The Ghostway

beginning of one of those wry clicks of sympathy or surprise or sorrow, but Grayson stopped it. He brought his hands out from under the table, rubbed his face with the right one. The left one lay on the table, limp and empty. 'Why would anyone want to kill that old man?' Grayson said.

'Your uncle,' Chee said.

Grayson stared at him.

'We know who you are,' Chee said. 'It saves time if we get that out of the way. You're Leroy Gorman. You're in the Department of Justice Witness Protection Program under the name of Grayson. You're living here under the Grayson name until it's time to go back to Los Angeles to testify in federal court.'

The man who was Leroy Gorman, older brother of Albert Gorman, nephew of Ashie Begay, stared at Chee, his expression blank. And bleak. And Chee thought, What is his real name? His war name? The name his maternal uncle would have given him, privately and secretly when he was a child, the name he would have whispered through the mask at the Yeibichi ceremonial where he changed from boy to man? The name that would label his real identity, that no one would know except those closest to him, what was that? This Los Angeles Navajo doesn't have a war name, Chee thought, because he doesn't have a family. He isn't Dinee. He felt pity for Leroy Gorman. Part of it was fatigue, and part of it was pity for himself.

'So much for the goddam promises,' Leroy Gorman said. 'Nobody knows but one guy in the Prosecutor's office and your fbi guardian angel. That's what they tell you. Nobody else. Not the local fuzz. Not nobody, so there's no way it can leak.' He rapped his hand sharply on the Formica tabletop. 'Who'd they tell? They have something about it on TV? Front page of the Times? On the radio?'

'They didn't tell anybody as far as I know,' Chee said. 'The postcard you wrote gave you away. The one you sent to your brother.'

'I didn't write any postcard,' Gorman said.

'Let me see your camera,' Chee said.

'Camera?' Gorman looked surprised. He stood, opened the overhead cabinet behind him, and extracted a camera from its contents. It was a Polaroid model with a flash attachment. Chee inspected it. It was equipped with an automatic tinier.

'Not exactly a postcard,' Chee said. 'You set this thing up, and took a picture of yourself and this trailer house, and sent it to your brother.

Whatever you wrote on it, it caused him to come running out here to Shiprock looking for you. And when Old Man Begay saw it, something on it, or something Albert told him, caused him to send it along to his granddaughter to tell her to stay away.'

Gorman was looking at him, thinking. He shook his head.

'What did you write on it?' Chee asked.

'Nothing, really,' Gorman said. 'I don't remember, exactly. I just figured Al would be worried about me. Just wrote a little note. Like wish you were here.'

'Did you say where 'here' was?'

'Hell, no,' Gorman said.

'Just a little note,' Chee said. 'Then what do you think it was that brought your brother running?'

Gorman thought. He clicked his tongue. 'Maybe,' he said, 'maybe he heard something I need to know about.'

'Like what?' Chee said.

'I dunno,' Gorman said. 'Maybe he heard they were looking for me. Maybe he heard they knew where to find me.'

That had a plausible sound. Albert had heard Leroy's hiding place had leaked. When Leroy's card arrived, he'd seen the Shiprock postmark and had hurried here to warn his brother and hadn't quite made it. And then someone had been sent to make sure that Albert Gorman didn't survive his gunshot wound. How had Albert Gorman really died? The coroner had said gunshot wound, which was obvious and what they'd expected, and what they'd have looked for. But if they were looking for something else, what would they have found? That Albert Gorman had been suffocated, or something like that, which didn't show but would hurry the death from the gunshot wound along? Or had whoever had come to the hogan found him already dead and killed Ashie Begay because of what Albert might have told him? It didn't really matter. Chee's head ached, his eyes burned. He was thinking maybe Albert Gorman died outside the hogan after all. Maybe he hadn't stepped through the corpse hole into a chindi hogan. Maybe he wasn't contaminated with ghost sickness. But that didn't matter either. The ghost sickness came when he made the step—out of hozro and into the darkness. Out of being a Navajo, into being a white man. For Chee, that was where the sickness lay.

'Any idea who killed him,' Leroy Gorman asked, 'or why?'

'No,' Chee said. 'Do you?'

Gorman was slumped back in his chair, his hands on the table in front of him, looking over them at nothing. He sighed, and the wind outside picked up enough to remind them both of the storm. 'Could be just meanness,' Gorman said. He sighed again. 'Did you find that girl?'

'Not exactly,' Chee said.

'I don't guess she'll be coming here,' Gorman said. 'Didn't you say her grandfather told her to stay away? Something dangerous?'

'Yeah,' Chee said. 'But it didn't stop her the first time.'

'What did he tell her?' Gorman was still looking past his hands, his eyes on the door. The wind pressed against it, letting in the cold. 'She know I'm a car thief?'

'I don't know what he told her,' Chee said. 'I intend to find out.'

'She's kinfolk of mine,' Gorman said. 'I don't have many. Not much family. Just Al and me. Dad run off and our mother was sickly and we never got to know nobody. She's my niece, isn't she? Begay's granddaughter. That'd be