Skinwalkers

'What do you think?' Leaphorn asked.

'Kennedy didn't seem to have any doubt Bistie was telling the truth. Said they were waiting at Bistie's house, and he drove up and saw they were cops, and right away said something about shooting Endocheeney.'

'Bistie speak English?'

'Navajo,' Streib said.

'Who'd we have along? Who interpreted?' What Streib was telling him seemed crazy. Maybe there had been some sort of misunderstanding.

'Just a second.' Leaphorn heard papers rustling. 'Officer Jim Chee,' Streib said. 'Know him?'

'I know him,' said Leaphorn, wishing he knew him better.

'Anyhow, I'll send you the paperwork on it. Thought you'd want to know it turned funny.'

'Yeah. Thanks,' Leaphorn said. 'Why did Bistie want to kill Endocheeney?'

'Wouldn't say. Flatass refused to talk about it at all. Kennedy said he seemed to think he might have missed the man, and then he was glad when he found out the guy was dead. Wouldn't say a word about what he had against him.'

'Chee did the questioning?'

'Sure. I guess so. Kennedy doesn't speak Navajo.'

'One more thing. Was it Chee on this from the beginning? Working with Kennedy, I mean, back when the investigation opened?'

'Just a sec,' Streib said. Papers rustled. 'Here it is. Yeah. Chee.'

'Well, thanks,' Leaphorn said. 'I'll look for the report.'

He clicked the receiver cradle down with a finger, got the file room, and ordered Chee's folder.

While he waited for it, he pulled open the desk drawer, extracted a brown pin with a white center, and carefully stuck it back in the hole where the Endocheeney pin had been. He looked at the map a minute. Then he reached into the drawer again, took out another brown-and-white pin, and stuck it at the p in 'Shiprock.' Four pins now. One north of Window Rock, one on the Utah borderlands, one on Chilchinbito Canyon, one over in New Mexico. And now there was a connection. Faint, problematical, but something. Jim Chee had investigated the Endocheeney killing before someone had tried to kill Chee. Had Chee learned something that made him a threat to Endocheeney's killer?

Leaphorn had been smiling, but as he thought, the smile thinned and disappeared. He could see no possible way this helped. Getting old, Leaphorn thought. He had reached the ridge and now the slope was downward. The thought didn't depress him, but it gave him an odd sense of pressure, of time moving past him, of things that needed to be done before time ran out. Leaphorn considered this, and laughed. Most un-Navajo thinking. He had been around white men far too long.

He picked up the phone and called Captain Largo at Shiprock. He told Largo he wanted to talk to Jim Chee.

'What's he done now?' Largo said. And he sounded relieved, Leaphorn thought, when Leaphorn explained.

The short route from Window Rock to Ship-rock, through Crystal and Sheep Springs, is a 120-mile drive over the hump of the Chuska Mountains. Leaphorn, who rarely broke the speed limit, drove it far too fast. It was mostly a matter of nerves.

And sitting here in the parking lot at Shiprock, he was still tense. Cumulus clouds climbing the sky over the Chuskas were tall enough to form the anvil tops that promised rain. But here the August sun glared off the asphalt beyond the small shade of Leaphorn's olive. He'd told Largo he'd be here by one, almost forty-five minutes away. Largo had said he'd have Chee on hand at one. Now Largo would be out to lunch. Leaphorn considered lunch for himself. A quick hamburger at the Burgerchef out on the highway. But he wasn't hungry. He found himself thinking of Emma, of the appointment he'd made with the neurologist at the Indian Health Service hospital in Gallup.

('Joe,' Emma had said. 'Please. You know how I feel about it. What can they do? It's headaches. I am out of hozro. I will have a sing and be well again. What can the belagana do? Saw open my head?' She'd laughed then, as she always laughed when he wanted to talk about her health. 'They would cut open my head and let all the wind out,' she'd said, smiling at him. He had insisted, and she had refused. 'What do you think is wrong with me?' she asked, and he could see that she was, for once, half serious. He had tried to say 'Alzheimer's disease,' but the words wouldn't form, and he had simply said, 'I don't know, but I worry,' and she had said, 'Well, I'm not going to have any doctor poking around in my head.' But he had made the appointment anyway. He inhaled, exhaled. Maybe Emma was right. She could go to a listener, or a hand trembler, or a crystal gazer like Yellowhorse pretended to be, and have a curing ceremonial prescribed. Then call in the singer to perform the cure, and all the kinfolks to join in the blessing. Would that make her any worse than she'd be when the doctors at Gallup told her that something they didn't understand was killing her and there was nothing they could do about it? What would Yellowhorse tell her if she went to him? Did he know the man well enough to guess? What did he know about him? He knew Yellowhorse was pouring his inherited money and his life into Badwater Clinic, feeding an obsession. He knew he was hiring foreign-trained refugee doctors and nurses—a Vietnamese, a Cambodian, a Salvadoran, a Pakistani—because he could no longer afford the domestic brand. So maybe the money was smaller than the obsession. He knew Yellowhorse was an adept politician. But he didn't know him well enough to guess what his prescription would be for Emma. Would he leave her to the singers or to the neurologists?)

The door of the station opened and three men in the khaki summer uniforms of Navajo Policemen emerged. One was George Benaly, who long ago had worked with Leaphorn out of Many Farms. One was a jolly-looking, plump young man with a thin mustache whom Leaphorn didn't recognize. The other was Jim Chee. The round brim of Chee's hat was tilted, shading his face, but Leaphorn could see enough of it to match the photo in Chee's personnel file. A longish, narrow face fitting a longish, narrow body—all shoulders and no hips. The 'Tuba City Navajo,' as some anthropologist had labeled the type. Pure Athapaskan genetics. Tall, long torso, narrow pelvis, destined to be a skinny old man. Leaphorn himself fell into the 'Checkerboard type.' He represented—according to this authority—a blood/gene mix with the Pueblo peoples. Leaphorn didn't particularly like the theory, but it was useful ammunition when Emma pressed him to get his weight and belt size down a bit.

The three officers, still talking, strolled toward their patrol cars. Leaphorn watched. The plump officer had not noticed Leaphorn's car parked under the olive tree. Benaly had seen it without registering any interest. Only Chee was conscious of it, instantly, aware that it was occupied, that the occupant was watching. Perhaps that alertness was the product of being shot at two nights earlier. Leaphorn suspected it was permanent—a natural part of the