Skinwalkers

Bistie's Daughter glanced around her, looked nervously past Chee into the night. The state policeman's car—on its way back to paved highways—crunched through the weeds at the edge of the yard. Its headlights flashed across her face. She raised her hand against the glare. 'You can turn it around,' she said. 'I always heard you could do that.'

'You mean kill the witch and put the bone back in him?' Chee said. 'Is that what he was going to do?'

Bistie's Daughter looked at him silently.

'I talked to them already,' she said finally. 'To the other policemen. To the young belagana and the fat Navajo.'

Largo would hate hearing that 'fat Navajo' description, Chee thought. 'Did you tell them that's what your father was doing? When he went to the Endocheeney place?'

'I told them I didn't know what he was doing. I didn't know that man who got killed. All I know is that my father was getting sicker and sicker all the time. He went to see a hand trembler over there between Roof Butte and Lukachukai to find out what kind of cure he would need to have. But the hand trembler had gone off someplace and he wasn't home. He went over on the Checkerboard Reservation, someplace over there by the Nageezi Chapter House, and talked to a listener over there. He told him he had been cooking food over a fire made out of wood struck by lightning and he needed to have a Hail Chant.' Bistie's Daughter looked up at Chee with a strained grin. 'We burn butane to cook on,' she said. 'But he charged my father fifty dollars. Then he went to the Badwater Clinic to see if they would give him some medicine. He didn't come back until the next day because they kept him in the hospital. Made X-rays, I think. Things like that. When he came back he was angry. Said they told him he was going to die.' Bistie's Daughter stopped talking then, and looked away from Chee. Tears came abruptly but without sound.

'Why angry?' Chee asked, his voice so low she might have thought he meant the question only for himself.

'Because they told him he could not be cured,' Bistie's Daughter said in a shaky voice. She cleared her throat, wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. 'That man was strong,' she continued. 'His spirit was strong. He didn't give up on things. He didn't want to die.'

'Did he say why he was angry at Endocheeney? Why he blamed Endocheeney? Did he say he thought Endocheeney had witched him?'

'He didn't say hardly anything at all. I asked him. I said, 'My Father, why—' ' She stopped.

Never speak the name of the dead, Chee thought. Never summon the chindi to you, even if the name of the ghost is Father.

'I asked that man why he was angry. What was wrong. What had they told him at the Badwater Clinic? And finally he told me they said his liver was rotten and they didn't know how to fix it with medicine and he was going to die pretty quick. I told the other policemen all this.'

'Did he say anything about being witched?'

Bistie's Daughter shook her head.

'I noticed that he had a cut place on his breast.' Chee tapped his uniform shirt, indicating where. 'It was healing but still a little sore. Do you know about that?'

'No,' she said.

The answer didn't surprise Chee. His people had adopted many ways of the belagana, but most of them had retained the Dinee tradition of personal modesty. Roosevelt Bistie would have kept his shirt on in the presence of his daughter.

'Did he ever say anything about Endocheeney?'

'No.'

'Was Endocheeney a friend?'

'I don't think so. I never heard of him before.'

Chee clicked his tongue. Another door closed.

'I guess the policemen asked you if you know who came here to see your fath—to see him tonight?'

'I didn't know he was home. I was away since yesterday. In Gallup to visit my sister. To buy things. I didn't know he was back from being in jail.'

'After we arrested him, did you go and get the lawyer to get him out?'

Bistie's Daughter looked puzzled. 'I don't know anything about that,' she said.

'You didn't call a lawyer? Did you ask anyone else to call one?'

'I don't know anything about lawyers. I just heard that lawyers will get all your money.'

'Do you know a woman named Janet Pete?'

Bistie's Daughter shook her head.

'Do you have any idea who it might have been who came here and shot him? Any idea at all?'

Bistie's Daughter was no longer crying, but she wiped her hand across her eyes again, looked down, and released a long, shuddering sigh.

'I think he was trying to kill a skinwalker,' she said. 'The skinwalker came and killed him.'

And now, as Jim Chee finished the last slice of peach and mopped the residue of juice from the can with the bread crust, he remembered exactly how Bistie's Daughter had looked as she'd said that. He thought she was probably exactly correct. The Mystery of Roosevelt Bistie neatly solved in a sentence. All that remained was another question. Who was the skinwalker who came and shot Bistie? Behind that, how did the witch know Bistie would be home instead of safely jailed in Farmington?