over.
'Have a seat,' Dr. Jenks said, and sat down himself beside the long table in the meeting room. He wore a headband of red fabric into which the Navajo symbol of Corn Beetle had been woven. His blond hair was shoulder length and under his blue laboratory jacket Leaphorn could see the uniform—a frayed denim jacket. Leaphorn, who resented those who stereotyped Navajos, struggled not to stereotype others. But Dr. Jenks fell into Leaphorn's category of Indian Lover. That meant he irritated Leaphorn even when he was doing him favors. Now Leaphorn was in a hurry. But he sat down.
Jenks looked at him over his glasses. 'The bead is made out of bone,' he said, checking for reaction.
Leaphorn was not in the mood to pretend surprise. 'I thought it might be,' he said.
'Bovine,' Jenks said. 'Modern but not new, if you know what I mean. Dead long enough to be totally dehydrated. Maybe twenty years, maybe a hundred—more or less.'
'Thanks for the trouble. Appreciate it,' Leaphorn said. He got up, put on his hat.
'Did you expect it to be human?' Jenks asked. 'Human bone?'
Leaphorn hesitated. He had work to do back at Window Rock—a rodeo that would probably be causing problems by now and a meeting of the Tribal Council that certainly would. Getting that many politicians together always caused some sort of problem. He wanted to confirm Emma's appointment before he left the hospital, and talk to the neurologist about her if he could. And then there were his three homicides. Three and a half if you counted Officer Chee. Besides, he wanted to think about what he had just learned—that the bone wasn't human. And what he had expected was none of Jenks's business. Jenks's business was public health, more specifically public health of the Navajos, Zunis, Acomas, Lagunas, and Hopis served by the U.S. Indian Service hospital at Gallup. Jenks's business, specifically, was pathology—a science that Lieutenant Leaphorn often wished he knew more about so he wouldn't be asking favors of Jenks.
'I thought it might be human,' Leaphorn said.
'Any connection with Irma Onesalt?'
The question startled Leaphorn. 'No,' he said. 'Did you know her?'
Jenks laughed. 'Not exactly. Not socially. She was in here a time or two. Wanting information.'
'About pathology?' Why would the Onesalt woman want information from a pathologist?
'About when a bunch of people died,' Jenks said. 'She had a list of names.'
'Who?'
'I just glanced at it,' Jenks said. 'Looked like Navajo names, but I didn't really study it.'
Leaphorn took off his hat and sat down.
'Tell me about it,' he said. 'When she came in, everything you can remember. And tell me why this bone bead business made you think of Onesalt.'
Dr. Jenks told him, looking pleased.
Irma Onesalt had come in one morning about two months earlier. Maybe a little longer. If it was important, maybe he could pin down the date. He had known her a little bit before. She had come to see him way back when the semiconductor plant was still operating at Shiprock—wanting to know if that kind of work was bad for the health. And he had looked stuff up for her a couple of times since.
Jenks paused, getting his thoughts in order.
'What kind of stuff?' Leaphorn asked.
Jenks's long, pale face looked slightly embarrassed. 'Well, one time she wanted some details about a couple of diseases, how they are treated, if hospitalization is needed, how long, so forth. And one time she wanted to know if an alcohol death we had in here might have been beaten.'
Jenks didn't say beaten by whom. He didn't need to say. Irma Onesalt would have been interested, Leaphorn suspected, only if police, and preferably Navajo Tribal Police, had been the guilty party. Irma Onesalt did not like police, particularly Navajo Police. She called them Cossacks. She called them oppressors of The People.
'This time she had a sheet of paper with her—just names typed on it. She wanted to know if I could go back through my records and come up with the date each one had died.'
'Could you?' Leaphorn asked.
'A few of them, maybe. Only if they had died in this hospital, or if we did the postmortem workup for some reason. But you know how that works. Most Navajo families won't allow an autopsy and usually they can stop it on religious grounds. I'd have a record of it only if they died here, and then only if there was some good reason—like suspicious causes, or the FBI was interested, or something like that.'
'She wanted to know cause of death?'
'I don't think so. All she seemed to want was dates. I told her the only place I could think of she could get them all was the vital statistics offices in the state health departments. In Santa Fe and Phoenix and Salt Lake City.'
'Dates,' Leaphorn said. 'Dates of their death.' He frowned. That seemed odd. 'She say why?'
Jenks shook his head, causing the long blond hair to sway. 'I asked her. She said she was just curious about something.' Jenks laughed. 'She didn't say what, but that little bone bead of yours made me think of her because she was talking about witchcraft. She said something about the problem with singers and the health situation. People getting scared by the singers into thinking a skinwalker has witched them, and then getting the wrong medical treatment, or treatment they don't need because they're not really sick. So when I saw your little bead I made the connection.' He studied Leaphorn to see if Leaphorn understood. 'You know. Witches blowing a little piece of bone into somebody to give 'em the corpse sickness. But she never said that had anything to do with her list of names and what she was curious about. She said it was too early. She shouldn't talk about it yet—not then, she meant—and she said if anything came of it she would let me know.'
'But she didn't come back?'
