'Dad and I drove down to Madison last week and talked to an adviser in the College of Arts and Sciences. I will be able to get my master's degree—with a little luck—in just two more semesters…'
Just two semesters. Only two semesters. Only two. Or, put another way, I will only take two long steps away from you. Or, I promised I would come back to you at the end of summer, but now I am going away. Or, rephrased again, former lover, you are now a friend. Or…
The patrol car slanted up into the thicket of pinon and stunted ponderosa. Chee shifted into second gear.
'Just over this ridge,' he said.
Just over the ridge, the light became visible. It was below them, still at least half a mile away, a bright point in the darkening twilight. Chee remembered it from the afternoon they had arrested Bistie. A single bare bulb protected by a metal reflector atop a forty-foot ponderosa pine stem. Bistie's ghost light. Would a witch be worried about ghosts? Would a witch keep a light burning to fend off the
'His place?' Leaphorn asked.
Chee nodded.
'He's got electricity out here?' Leaphorn sounded surprised.
'There's a windmill generator behind the house,' Chee said. 'I guess he runs that light off batteries.'
Bistie's access route required a right turn off the road, bumped over a rocky hummock and past a scattering of pinons, to drop again down to his place. In the harsh yellow light it looked worse than Chee had remembered it—a rectangular plank shack, probably with two rooms, roofed with blue asphalt shingles. Behind it stood a dented metal storage shack, a brush arbor, a pole horse corral, and, up the slope by the low cliff of the mesa, a lean-to for hay storage. Beyond that, against the cliff, the yellow light reflected from a hogan made of stacked stone slabs. Beside the shack, side by side and with their vanes turned away from the gusting west wind, were Bistie's windmill and his wind generator.
Chee parked his patrol car under Bistie's yard light.
There was no sign of the truck and no light on in the house.
Leaphorn sighed. 'You know enough about him to do any guessing about where he might be?' he said. 'Visiting kinfolks or anything?'
'No,' Chee said. 'We didn't get into that.'
'Lives here with his daughter. Right?' Leaphorn said.
'Right.'
They waited for someone to appear at the door and acknowledge the presence of visitors, delaying the moment when they'd admit the long drive had been for nothing. Delaying what would be either a return trip to Sanostee or a fruitless hunt for neighbors who might know where Roosevelt Bistie had gone.
'Maybe he didn't come back here when the lawyer got him out,' Chee said.
Leaphorn grunted. The yellow light from the bare bulb above them lit the right side of his face, giving it a waxy look.
No one appeared at the door. Leaphorn got out of the car, slammed the door noisily behind him, and leaned against the roof, eyes on the house. The door wouldn't be locked. Should he go in, and look around for some hint of where Bistie might be?
The wind gusted against him, blowing sand against his ankles above his socks and pushing at his uniform hat. Then it died. He heard Chee's door opening. He smelled something burning—a strong, acrid odor.
'Fire,' Chee said. 'Somewhere.'
Leaphorn trotted toward the house, rapped on the door. The smell was stronger here, seeping between door and frame. He turned the knob, pushed the door open. Smoke puffed out, and was whipped away by another gust of the dry wind. Behind him, Chee yelled: 'Bistie. You in there?'
Leaphorn stepped into the smoke, fanning with his hat. Chee was just behind him. The smoke was coming from an aluminum pot on top of a butane stove against the back wall of the room. Leaphorn held his breath, turned off the burner under the pan and under a blue enamel coffeepot boiling furiously beside it. He used his hat as a potholder, grabbed the handle, carried it outside, and dropped it on the packed earth. It contained what seemed to have been some sort of stew, now badly charred. Leaphorn went back inside.
'No one's here,' Chee said. He was fanning the residual smoke with his hat. A chair lay on its side on the floor.
'You checked the back room?'
Chee nodded. 'Nobody home.'
'Left in a hurry,' Leaphorn said. He wrinkled his nose against the acrid smell of burned meat and walked back into the front yard. With the butt of his flashlight, he poked into the still-smoking pan, inspected the residue it collected.
'Take a look at this,' he said to Chee. 'You're a bachelor, aren't you? How long does it take you to burn stew like this?'
Chee inspected the pot. 'The way he had the fire turned up, maybe five, ten minutes. Depends on how much water he put in it.'
'Or she,' Leaphorn said. 'His daughter. When you were here with Kennedy, they just have one truck?'
'That's all,' Chee said.
'So they must be off somewhere in it,' Leaphorn said. 'One or both. And they drove off the other way from the way we were coming. But if it was that way, why didn't we see their headlights? They would have just left.' Leaphorn straightened, put his hands on his hips, stretched his back. He stared into the deepening twilight, frowning. 'Just one plate on the table. You notice that?'
