sliding.
It was raining hard again, the cold drops splashing against his face. Then he was engulfed in the sickening black smoke of burning rubber, burning oil, burning upholstery. The driver’s-side window had been shattered. Chee fired the extinguisher through it, seeing the white foam stream through the smoke, and seeing through the smoke the dark shape of Nez slumped over the steering wheel.
“Del!”
Chee snatched at the door handle, barely conscious of the searing pain. He jerked the door open and found himself engulfed in a gust of flames. He jumped back, whacking at the fire burning his uniform shirt. “Del,” he shouted again. He sprayed the extinguisher foam into the car again, dropped the extinguisher, reached through the open door, clutched the arm of Officer Delbert Nez and pulled.
Nez was wearing his seat belt.
Chee fumbled for the catch, released it, pulled with all his strength, aware as he did that his palm was hurting in a way he had never experienced before. He tumbled backward into the driving rain, he and Delbert Nez. He lay for a moment, gasping, lungs full of smoke, conscious that something was wrong with the hand, and of the weight of Delbert Nez partly across him. Then he was aware of heat. His shirt sleeve burning. He put it out, struggled out from under the weight of Nez.
Nez lay on his back, arms and legs sprawled. Chee looked at him and looked away. He picked up the extinguisher, sprayed the burning places on the officer’s trousers. He used what was left in the tank to put out the fire. “Running on fumes,” Nez had said. That was lucky. Chee had seen enough car fires to know what a full tank would do. Lucky? Fumes had provided enough fire to kill Delbert Nez.
He was on the radio, calling this in to Ship Rock, asking for help, before he was fully aware of the pain of his own burns.
“There was blood, too,” Chee was saying. “He might have been shot. I think blood on the back of his shirt, and blood on the front, too.”
Captain Largo happened to be in, doing his perpetual paperwork. While Chee was saying that, Largo took over the radio in the Ship Rock dispatcher’s office.
“We’ll send all we have from here,” Largo was saying. “And from Window Rock, and we’ll see if anybody from Crownpoint is patrolling out your direction. Blood still fresh?”
Chee looked at his hand and grimaced. “It’s still sticky,” he said. “Somewhere between slick and sticky.” A chunk of skin had flapped off the palm of his hand. The door handle, he thought. That had done it. It felt like it had burned all the way to the bone.
“You saw no other car lights?”
“One car. Just as I was leaving Red Rock a white Jeepster was turning off 33 onto the road toward Biklabito. One man in it. I think it was that Vietnamese math teacher at Ship Rock High School. I think that’s his car, anyway.” Chee’s throat hurt. So did his lungs. So did his eyes. And his face. He felt with numb fingers. No eyebrows.
“We’ll handle that part then,” Largo said. “Save any looking for tracks for daylight. Do not mess anything up around the car. You got that?” Largo paused. “Do not,” he repeated.
“Okay,” Chee said. He wanted to end this. He wanted to go find whoever had killed Delbert Nez. He should have been with Nez. He should have gone to help him.
“You came down 33 from the west? From Red Rock? Get back on 33 and head east. All the way to 666. See if you can pick up anything that way. If the guy had a vehicle that’s the only way he could have gone.” Largo paused. “Unless he was your Vietnamese schoolteacher.”
Chee didn’t get all the way to U.S. Highway 666. Three miles east of the intersection, the high beams of his headlights reflected from the back of a man walking down the asphalt. Chee braked and stared. The man was walking erratically down the center of the westbound lane. He was bareheaded, his gray hair tied in a bun, his rain-soaked shirt plastered to his back. He seemed totally oblivious of Chee’s headlights, now just a few yards behind him. Without a backward glance, with no effort to move to the side of the road, he walked steadily onward, swinging something in his right hand, zigzagging a little, but with the steady, unhurried pace of a man who has walked great distances, who will walk great distances more.
Chee pulled up beside him, rolled down his window. The object the man was swinging was a squat bottle, held by the neck. “Yaa’eh t’eeh!” Chee shouted, the standard Navajo greeting. The man ignored him, plodding steadily down the asphalt. As he moved past the police car and back into the glare of the headlights Chee saw he had something bulky stuck under his belt in the back of his trousers. It looked like the butt of a pistol.
Chee unsnapped his own pistol, took it out of its holster, and laid it on the seat beside him. He touched the siren button, producing a sudden howling. The gray-haired man seemed not to hear it.
Chee picked up the mike, raised Ship Rock, gave his location. “I have a male, about five feet eight inches tall, elderly, gray-haired, walking down the westbound lane away from the Nez site. He has what appears to be a pistol stuck under his belt and what appears to be a whiskey bottle in his right hand and is acting in a peculiar manner.”
“Peculiar manner,” the dispatcher said.
“I think he’s drunk,” Chee said. “He acts like he doesn’t hear me or see me.”
“Subject is drunk,” the dispatcher said.
“Maybe,” Chee said. “I will apprehend him now.”
Which might be easier said than done, he thought. He pulled the patrol car past the walker and spun it around so its lights shone directly into the man’s face. He got out with his pistol in his hand. He felt dizzy. Everything was vague.
“Hold it right there,” Chee said.
The walker stopped. He looked intently at Chee, as if trying to bring him into focus. Then he sighed and sat on the pavement. He screwed the cap off the bottle, and took a long, gurgling drink. He looked at Chee again and said:
“Baa yanisin, shiyaazh.”
