'I am going to tell you who the witch is,' Chee said. 'First I am going to throw out the keys to my truck. You take 'em and unlock the glove box in the truck, and you will find my pistol there. I said I had it in here with me because I was afraid. Now I am not afraid any more. Go and check, and see that I don't have my pistol with me. Then I want you to come in here where it is warm, and out of the rain, and where you can look at my face while I tell you. That way you can tell whether I speak the truth. And then I will tell you again that I am not a witch who harmed your child. And I will tell you who the witch is that put this curse on you.'
Silence. The sound of gusting rain. And then a metallic clack. The woman doing something with the shotgun.
Chee's right arm was numb again. With his left hand he extracted his truck keys, slid back the latch, and eased the door toward him. As he tossed the keys through the opening, he waited for the shotgun. The shotgun didn't fire. He heard the sound of the woman walking in the mud.
Chee exhaled a gust of breath. Now he had to hold off the pain and the faintness long enough to organize his thoughts. He had to know exactly what to say.
Chapter 21
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the patrol car of Officer Leonard Skeet, born to the Ears Sticking Up Clan, the man in charge of law and order in the rugged vacant places surrounding Pinon, was parked in the rain outside the subagency police station. The station, a double-width mobile home, stood on the bank of Wepo Wash. It also served as home for Leonard Skeet and Aileen Beno, his wife. Leaphorn pulled off the asphalt of Navajo Route 4 and into the mud of Skeet's yard, tapped on Skeet's door, and collected him.
Skeet had seen no sign of Chee's pickup. His house was located with a view of both Navajo 4 and the road that wandered northwestward toward the Forest Lake Chapter House and, eventually, to the Goldtooth place. 'He was probably already past here long before I got home,' Skeet said. 'But he hasn't come back through. I would have seen his truck.'
At Emma's car, Skeet hesitated. 'This isn't good for mud, and maybe I oughta drive,' he said, looking at Leaphorn's cast. 'You probably oughta give that arm some rest.'
Under the cast, the arm arched from wrist to elbow. Leaphorn stood in the rain, common sense wrestling with his conditioned instinct to be in control. Common sense won. Skeet knew the road. They switched to Skeet's patrol car, left the tiny scattering of buildings that was Pinon behind, left asphalt for gravel, and soon, gravel for graded dirt. It was slick now and Skeet drove with the polished skill of an athletic man who drives the bad back roads every working day. Leaphorn found himself thinking of Emma and turned away from that. Skeet had asked no questions and Leaphorn's policy for years had been to tell people no more than they needed to know. Skeet needed to know a little.
'We may be wasting our time,' Leaphorn said. He didn't have to tell Skeet anything about the attempt on Chee's life—everyone in NTP knew everything about that and everyone, Leaphorn guessed, had a theory about it. He told Skeet about Chee being invited to the Goldtooth place to talk about doing a sing.
'Uh huh,' Skeet said. 'Interesting. Maybe there's some explanation for it.' He concentrated on correcting a rear-end skid on the muddy surface. 'He didn't know nobody lives there,' Skeet said. 'No way he could have, I guess. Still, if somebody was shooting at me…' He let the statement trail off.
Leaphorn was riding in the back, where he could lean against the driver-side door and keep the cast propped along the top of the backrest. Despite the cushioning, the jolts and jarring of the bumpy road communicated themselves to the bone. He didn't feel like talking, or like defending Chee. 'No IQ test required for the job,' he said. 'But maybe I'm just overnervous. Maybe there's an explanation for having the meeting there.'
'Maybe so,' Skeet said. His tone was skeptical.
Skeet slowed at an oddly shaped outcrop of volcanic basalt. 'If I remember right, the turn-offs here,' he said.
Leaphorn retrieved his arm from the backrest. 'Let's take a look,' he said.
On a clear evening, this lonely landscape would still have been lit by a red afterglow. In steady rain, the dark was almost complete. They used their flashlights.
'Some traffic,' Skeet said. 'One out pretty recently.'
The rain had blurred the track of the tires without erasing them. And the depth of the rut in the softer earth at the juncture showed the vehicle had passed after the moisture had soaked in. And these fresher tracks had partly overlapped earlier, shallower tracks which the rain had almost smoothed away.
'So maybe he's come and gone,' Skeet said. But as he said it he doubted it. At least two vehicles had gone in. One had come out since the rain became heavy.
Their headlights reflected first from the rain-slick roof of a truck, then they picked up the windows of the Goldtooth house. No lights visible anywhere. Skeet parked fifty yards away. 'Leave 'em on?' he said. 'What do you think?'
'Turn 'em off for now,' Leaphorn said. 'Until we make sure that's Chee's truck. And find out who's here.'
They found a wealth of half-erased, rain-washed tracks but no sign of anyone outside. 'Check the truck,' Leaphorn said. 'I'll take the house.'
Leaphorn pointed his light at the building, holding it gingerly in his left hand, as far from his body as was practical. 'Kicked once, double careful,' his mother would have told him. And in this case, they might be dealing with a shotgun. Leaphorn thought, wryly, that he should have a telescoping arm, like Inspector Gadget in the television cartoon.
The house door was open. The beam of Leaphorn's light shined through it into emptiness. In front of the door, on the wet, packed earth, it lit a small red cylinder. Leaphorn picked it up, an empty shotgun shell. He switched off the light, sniffed the open end of the cartridge, inhaled the acrid smell of freshly burned powder. 'Shit,' Leaphorn said. He felt bleak, defeated, conscious of the cold rainwater against his ribs.
Skeet splashed up behind him.
'Truck unlocked,' Skeet said. 'Glove box open. This was on the seat.' He showed Leaphorn a .38 caliber revolver. 'That his?'
'Probably,' Leaphorn said. He checked the cylinder, sniffed the barrel. It hadn't been fired. He shook his head,
