“Was that Ji’s son?”
“Right,” Roanhorse said. “Name’s Taka. Something like that.”
“He okay?”
“Looked like somebody hit him with a club when Rostik told him,” Roanhorse said.
Taka Ji was sitting stiffly on the edge of a recliner chair. Rostik was facing him, perched on the arm of the sofa. Largo leaned against the wall, his round, dark face devoid of expression. Leaphorn stopped just inside the door. Rostik glanced at him, looked irritated, chose to ignore him, continued his questioning.
He was good at it, Leaphorn noticed. Young, obviously. Probably inexperienced. But well trained in the job, and smart. Some of the questions replowed old ground from new angles. Some were new. Huan Ji’s son, still looking as if he had been hit by a club, answered them tersely.
He had not seen his father since he’d driven to school with him in the Jeepster. Right?
Taka nodded. “Yes,” he said. His voice was so small that Leaphorn could barely hear him.
And how had he gotten the Jeepster?
“My father, he said I could use it after school. He would walk home. He liked to walk. So after my biology class, I got it from the parking lot.”
“The key was left in it?”
“I have a key. My father has a key. I have one.”
“And where did you go?”
“I drove out toward Ship Rock. I am taking pictures out there. Photographs.”
“Pictures of who?”
Taka was looking straight ahead, seeing something in the wallpaper across the room. His face was pale. He closed his eyes. “I take pictures of landscapes,” he said.
“Who was with you?”
Leaphorn thought Taka hadn’t heard the question. But he had. Finally he said: “No one. I go alone.”
A Vietnamese in a Navajo school. A long time ago Leaphorn had been a Navajo in white Arizona State University. He understood what Taka had not quite said. What was it that Colonel Ji had written on the wall in his own blood? “Help Taka.” Something like that.
Rostik changed the subject.
“Did your father have enemies?”
Taka shrugged. “He was a man,” he said. “A long time ago he was a colonel in the army.” He looked up at Rostik. “The Army of the Republic of Vietnam.”
“But do you know of any enemies? Had he received any threats?”
Again it seemed Taka wouldn’t answer. Then he tilted his head, frowned. “I don’t think he would have told me.” This knowledge seemed to surprise him.
“No threat you know of then?”
“No.”
“Do you know anyone named Chee?”
“Like I told you, there is a boy on the basketball team. There is a girl in my history class.”
“Does your father have any friends named Chee? Any enemies?”
“I don’t know,” Taka said. “There is a teacher. In junior high school. Her name I think is Miss Dolores Chee.”
“A friend of your father’s?”
“I don’t think so,” Taka said. “There are lots of Chees.”
Leaphorn glanced at Captain Largo and found Captain Largo glancing at him. Largo made a wry face.
And so it went. Leaphorn listened and watched. He assessed Rostik, and reassessed him. A smart young man. He assessed Taka as best he could. This was not the normal Taka. This was a stunned teenager. The death of his father was still unreal, an incredible but abstract fact. Rostik now was covering yesterday. How had Taka’s father behaved? What had he said? Leaphorn noticed the boy was shivering.
Leaphorn interrupted.
“Mr. Rostik,” he said. “Just a moment, if you don’t mind.” And he turned to Taka.
“Son. Do you have any relatives here? Anybody to go to?”
“Not here,” the boy said. “Not here at Ship Rock.”
A stranger alone in a strange land, Leaphorn thought. He asked: “Where?”
“My aunt and uncle. They live in Albuquerque.”
“Are they the ones you are closest to?” As he asked it, Leaphorn thought how different this would be for a Navajo boy. He would be smothered by family. But maybe it would have been that way for Taka Ji, too, if his people had not been uprooted by war. Perhaps the Vietnamese had not, like the biligaana, lost the value of the family.
