FINDING THE REVEREND SLICK NAKAI had not been easy. At the Nageezi site Chee found only the trampled place where the revival tent had stood, and the trash left behind. He asked around, learned that Nakai was known at the Brethren Navajo Mission. He drove to Escrito. The belagana at the mission there knew of Nakai but not his whereabouts. If he had scheduled a revival around there, they hadn't heard of it. Must be a mistake. Chee left, sensing that he wasn't alone in his disapproval of Slick Nakai. At Counselors Trading Post, where people tend to know what's happening on the north side of the Checkerboard Reservation, he hung around until he found someone who knew of a family not only fervently following the Jesus Road, but doing so as prescribed by the tenets of Nakai's sect. It was the family of Old Lady Daisy Manygoats. The Manygoats outfit, unfortunately, lived way over by Coyote Canyon. Chee drove to Coyote Canyon, stopped at the chapter house, got directions down a road that was bad even by reservation standards, and found nobody at home at the Manygoats place except a boy named Darcy Ozzie. Yes, Darcy Ozzie knew about the Reverend Slick Nakai, had in fact gone to his recent revival over at Nageezi.
'They say he was going to preach over between White Rock and Tsaya, over there by the mountains,' the boy said, indicating west in the Navajo fashion by a twist of his lips. 'And then when he was finished there, he was going way over into Arizona to have a revival over there by Lower Greasewood. Over there south of the Hopi Reservation.'
So Chee drove up the Chuska Valley toward Tsaya, with the Chuska Range rising blue to his left and autumn asters forming two lines of color along the opposite sides of the cracked old asphalt of U.S. 666, and snakeweed and chamisa coloring the slopes mottled tan-yellow-gold and the November sky dark blue overhead.
He had quit thinking of Slick Nakai about halfway between Nageezi and Coyote Canyon, having exhausted every possible scenario their meeting might produce. Then he considered Mary Landon. She loved him, he concluded. In her way. But there was love, and then there was love. She would not change her mind about living her life on the reservation. And she was right. Lacking some very basic change in Mary, she would not be happy raising their children here. He wanted Mary to neither change nor be unhappy. Which led him back to himself. She would marry him if he left the reservation. And he could do that. He'd had offers. He could go into federal law enforcement. Work somewhere where their children could go to school with white kids and be surrounded by white culture. Mary would be happy. Or would she? He could still be a Navajo in the sense of blood, but not in the sense of belief. He would be away from family and the Slow Talking Dineh, the brothers and sisters of his maternal clan. He would be outside of Dineh Bike'yah -- that territory fenced in by the four sacred mountains within which the magic of the curing ceremonials had its compulsory effect. He would be an alien living in exile. Mary Landon would not enjoy life with that Jim Chee. He could not live with an unhappy Mary Landon. It was the conclusion he always eventually reached. It left him with a sense of anger and loss. That, in turn, moved his thoughts to something else. He thought of Janet Pete, trying to work what little he knew of her character into the solution she would find to her own problem. Would she allow her lawyer to convert her into an Indian maiden? Not enough data to be sure, but he doubted if Janet Pete would ever buy that.
Who killed Nails and Etcitty? Find the motive. There lies the answer. But there could be a dozen motives and he had no basis for guessing. Leaphorn, obviously, believed Slick Nakai somehow fit into that puzzle. But then Leaphorn knew a lot more about this business than Chee. All Chee knew was that Nakai bought pots from Etcitty--or perhaps was given them. That Etcitty was one of Nakai's born-again Christians. That Leaphorn believed Nakai sold pots to the woman missing from Chaco Canyon. That was the focus of Chee's assignment. Leaphorn's voice on the telephone had sounded tired. 'You want to stick with me a little longer on this Friedman-Bernal business?' he asked. 'If you do, I can arrange it with Captain Largo.'
Chee had hesitated, out of surprise. Leaphorn had identified the pause as indecision.
'I should remind you again that I'm quitting the department,' Leaphorn had interjected. 'I'm on terminal leave right now. I already told you that. I tell you now so if you're doing me a favor, remember there's no way I can return it.' Which, Chee had thought, was a nice way of saying the reverse--I can't punish you for refusing.
'I'd like to stay on it,' Chee had said. 'I'd like to find out who killed those guys.'
'That's not what we're working on,' Leaphorn had said. 'They're connected, I guess. They must be connected. But what I'm after is what happened to the woman missing from Chaco. The anthropologist.'
'Okay,' Chee had said. It seemed an odd focus. Two murders, apparently premeditated assassinations. And Leaphorn was devoting his leave time, and Chee's efforts, to a missing person case. Same case, probably, the way it looked now. But going at it totally backward. Well, Lieutenant Leaphorn was supposed to be smarter than Officer Chee. He had a reputation for doing things in weird ways. But he also had a reputation for guessing right.
At Tsaya, Chee found he'd missed Slick Nakai, but not by much. Nakai had canceled his planned revival there and headed north.
'Just canceled it?' Chee asked.
He was asking a plump girl of about eighteen who seemed to be in charge of the Tsaya Chapter--since she was the only one present in the chapter house.
'He sort of hurried in, and said who he was, and said he had to cancel a tent meeting that was supposed to be for tonight,' she said. 'It's over there on the bulletin board.' She nodded toward the notices posted by the entrance.
'NOTICE!' Nakai had scrawled at the top of a sheet of notepaper:
Due to an unexpected emergency
Reverend Nakai is forced to cancel his revival for here. It will be rescheduled later if God wills it.
-- Reverend Slick Nakai
'Well, shit!' said Jim Chee, aloud and in English, since Navajo lends itself poorly to such emotional expletives. He glanced at his watch. Almost four-thirty. Where the devil could Nakai have gone? He walked back to the desk where the girl was sitting. She had been watching him curiously.
'I need to find Nakai.' Chee smiled at her, happy that he hadn't worn his uniform. A good many people her age looked upon Navajo Tribal Police as the adversary. 'Did he say anything else? Like where he was going?'
'To me? Nothing. Just borrowed a piece of paper for his note. You one of his Christians?'
'No,' Chee said. 'Matter of fact, I'm a hata-thali. I do the Blessing Way.'
'Really?' the girl said.
Chee was embarrassed. 'Just beginning,' he said. 'Just did it once.' He didn't explain that the one time had been for a member of his own family. He fished out his billfold, extracted a business card, and handed it to
