'What?' he said. 'Keep it low.'
'What did Onesalt know?' he asked.
The hand gripped again. Yellowhorse looked surprised. 'I thought you had guessed,' he said. 'That day when you came and got the wrong Begay. Onesalt guessed. I figured you would. Or she would tell you.'
Chee mumbled against the palm. 'You gave us the wrong Begay. I wondered what had happened to the right one. But I didn't guess you were keeping him on your records.'
'Well, I thought you were guessing,' Yellowhorse said. 'I always knew you would guess sooner or later. And once you did, it would take time but it would be inevitable. You would find out.'
'Overcharging?' Chee asked. 'For patients who weren't here?'
'Getting the government to pay its share,' Yellowhorse said. 'Have you ever read the treaty? The one we signed at Fort Sumner. Promises. One schoolteacher for every thirty children, everything else. The government never kept any promises.'
'Charging for people after they were dead?' Chee mumbled. He simply could not keep his eyes open any longer. When they closed, Yellowhorse would kill him. Not immediately, but soon enough. When his eyes closed they would never open again. Yellowhorse would keep him asleep until he could find a way to make it look normal and natural. Chee knew that. He must keep his eyes open.
'Getting sleepy?' Yellowhorse asked, his voice benign.
Chee's eyes closed. He went to sleep, a troubled sleep, dreaming that something was hurting the back of his head.
Chapter 24
Contents - Prev
leaphorn parked right at the door, violating the blue handicapped-only zone, and trotted into the clinic. He'd made his habitual instant eyeball inventory of the vehicles present. A dozen were there, including an Oldsmobile sedan with the medical symbol on its license plate, which might be Yellowhorse's car, and three well-worn pickup trucks, which might include the one driven by the woman determined to kill Chee. Leaphorn hurried through the front door. The receptionist was standing behind her half-round desk screaming something. A tall woman in a nurse's uniform was standing across the desk, hands in her hair, apparently terrified. Both were looking down the hallway that led to Leaphorn's right, down a corridor of patients' rooms.
Leaphorn's trot turned into a run.
'She has a gun,' the receptionist shouted. 'A gun.'
The woman stood in the doorway four rooms down, and she did, indeed, have a gun. Leaphorn could see only her back, a traditional dark blue blouse of velvet, the flowing light blue skirt which came to the top of her squaw boots, her dark hair tied in a careful bun at the back of her head, and the butt of the shotgun protruding from under her arm.
'Hold it,' Leaphorn shouted, digging with his left hand for his pistol.
Aimed as the shotgun was into the room and away from him, the sound it made was muted. A boom, a yell, the sound of someone falling, glass breaking. With the sound, the woman disappeared into the room. Leaphorn was at the door two seconds later, his pistol drawn.
'The skinwalker is dead,' the woman said. She stood over Yellowhorse, the shotgun dangling from her right hand. 'This time I killed him.'
'Put down the gun,' Leaphorn said. The woman ignored him. She was looking down at the doctor, who sprawled face-up beside Jim Chee's bed. Chee seemed to be sleeping. Leaphorn shifted his pistol to the fingers that protruded from his cast and lifted the shotgun from the woman's hand. She made no effort to keep it. Yellowhorse was still breathing, unevenly and raggedly. A man in a pale blue hospital smock appeared at the door—the same Chinese-looking doctor who had been on duty when they delivered Chee. He muttered something that sounded like an expletive in some language strange to Leaphorn.
'Why did you shoot him?' he asked Leaphorn.
'I didn't,' Leaphorn said. 'See if you can save him.'
The doctor knelt beside Yellowhorse, feeling for a pulse, examining the place where the shotgun blast had struck Yellowhorse's neck at point-blank range. He shook his head.
'Dead?' the woman asked. 'Is the skinwalker dead? Then I want to bring in my baby. I have him in my truck. Maybe now he is alive again.'
But he wasn't, of course.
It took Jim Chee almost four hours to awaken and he did so reluctantly—his subconscious dreading what he would awaken to. But when he came awake he found himself alone in the room. Sunset lit the foot of his bed. His head still hurt and his shoulder and side ached, but he felt warm again. He removed his left hand from under the covers, flexed the fingers. A good strong hand. He moved his toes, his feet, bent his knees. Everything worked. The right arm was another matter. It was heavily bandaged elbow to shoulder and immobilized with tape.
Where was Yellowhorse? Chee considered that. Obviously he had guessed wrong about the doctor. The man hadn't killed him, as common sense said he should have. Apparently Yellowhorse had run for it, or turned himself in, or went to talk to a lawyer, or something. It seemed totally unlikely that Yellowhorse would come back now to finish off Chee. But just in case, he decided he would get up, put on his clothes, and go somewhere else. Call Leaphorn first. Tell him about all this.
Just about then it also occurred to Chee how he would solve the problem of the cat. He would put the cat in the forty-dollar case, and take it to the Farmington airport and send it off to Mary Landon. But first he would write her and explain it all—explain how this
Carefully, slowly, he turned himself onto his good side, swung his feet off the bed, pushed himself upright. Almost upright. Before he completed the move, weakness and faintness overcame him. He was on his side again, the back of his head throbbing, and a metal tray he'd tumbled from the bedside stand still clattering on the floor.
