The pathologist stood, brushed off his hands, and looked down at the man in the pointed shoes.
“What you see is where somebody who knows how to use a knife can kill somebody quick,” he said. “Like lightning. You stick it in that little gap between the first vertebra and the base of the skull. Cut the spinal cord.” He chuckled. “Zap.”
“That what happened?” Kennedy asked. “How long ago?”
“Looks like it,” the doctor said. “I’d say it was probably yesterday. But we'll do an autopsy. Then you'll have your answer.”
“One answer,” Kennedy said. “Or two. How and when. That leaves who.”
And why, Leaphorn thought. Why was always the question that lay at the heart of things. It was the answer Joe Leaphorn always looked for. Why did this man—obviously not a Navajo—have the name of a Navajo woman written on a note in his pocket? And the misspelled name of a Navajo’ ceremonial? The Yeibichai. It was the ceremonial in which the great mystical, mythical, magical spirits who formed the culture of the Navajos and created their first four clans actually appeared, personified in masks worn by dancers. Was the murdered man headed for a Yeibichai? As a matter of fact, he couldn't have been. It was weeks too early. The Yeibichai was a winter ceremonial. It could be performed only after the snakes had hibernated, only in the Season When Thunder Sleeps. But why else would he have the note?
Leaphorn pondered and found no possible answers. He would find Agnes Tsosie and ask her.
The Agnes Tsosie Leaphorn remembered proved to be—apparently—the right one. At least when Leaphorn inquired about her as the first step in what he feared would be a time-consuming hunt he learned the family was planning a Yeibichai ceremonial for her. He spent a few hours making telephone inquiries and decided he had struck it lucky. There seemed to be only three of the great Night Chant ceremonials scheduled so far. One would be held at the Navajo Nation Fair at Window Rock for a man named Roanhorse and another was planned in December over near Burnt Water for someone in the Gorman family. That left Agnes Tsosie of Lower Greasewood as the only possibility.
The drive from Leaphorn’s office in Window Rock to Lower Greasewood took him westward through the ponderosa forests of the Defiance Plateau, through the pinon-juniper hills which surround Ganado, and then southeast into the sagebrush landscape that falls away into the Painted Desert. At the Lower Greasewood Boarding School those children who lived near enough to be day students were climbing aboard a bus for the trip home. Leaphorn asked the driver where to find the Agnes Tsosie place.
“Twelve miles down to the junction north of Beta Hochee,” the driver said. “And then you turn back south toward White Cone about two miles and take the dirt road past the Na-Ah-Tee trading post, and about three-four miles past that, to your right, there’s a road that leads off toward the backside of Tesihim Butte. That's the road that leads up to Old Lady Tsosie's outfit. About two miles, maybe.”
“Road?” Leaphorn asked.
The driver was a trim young woman of perhaps thirty. She knew exactly what Leaphorn meant. She grinned.
“Well, actually, it’s two tracks out through the sage. But it's easy to find. There's a big bunch of asters blooming along there—right at the top of a slope.”
The junction of the track to the Tsosie place was easy to find. Asters were blooming everywhere along the dirt road past Na-Ah-Tee trading post, but the place where the track led off from the road was also marked by a post which the bus driver hadn’t mentioned. An old boot was jammed atop the post, signaling that somebody would be at home. Leaphorn downshifted and turned down the track. He felt fine. Everything about this business of learning why a dead man had Agnes Tsosie’s name in his pocket was working well.
“I don’t have no idea who that could be,” Agnes Tsosie said. She was reclining, thin, gray haired, propped up by pillows on a metal bed under a brush arbor beside her house, holding a Polaroid photograph of the man with the pointed shoes. She handed it to Jolene Yellow, who was standing beside the sofa. “Daughter, you know this man?”
Jolene Yellow examined the photograph, shook her head, handed the print back to Leaphorn. He had been in the business too long to show disappointment.
“Any idea why some stranger might be coming out here to your Yeibichai?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not this stranger.”
Not this stranger. Leaphorn thought about that. Agnes Tsosie would explain in good time. Now she was looking away, out across the gentle slope that fell away from Tesihim Butte and then rose gradually toward the sharp dark outline of Nipple Butte to the west. The sage was gray and silver with autumn, the late afternoon sun laced it with slanting shadows, and everywhere there was the yellow of blooming snake-weed and the purple of the asters. Beauty before her, Leaphorn thought. Beauty all around her.
But Agnes Tsosie’s face showed no sign she was enjoying the beauty. It looked strained and sick.
“We have a letter,” Agnes Tsosie said. “It’s in the hogan.” She glanced at Jolene Yellow. “My daughter will get it for you to look at.”
The letter was typed on standard bond paper.
September 13. Dear Mrs. Tsosie:
I read about you in an old issue of
I am one-fourth Navajo by blood. My grandmother told me she was all Navajo, but she married a white man and so did my mother. But I feel I am a Navajo, and I would like to see what can be done about becoming officially a member of the tribe. I would also like to come out to Arizona and talk to you about my family. I remember that my grandmother told me that she herself was the granddaughter of Ganado Mucho and that she was born to the Bitter Water People and that her father’s clan had been the Streams Come Together People.
Please let me know if I can come and visit you and anything you can tell me about how I would become a Navajo.
Sincerely,
