“The other two? Did you recognize them?”
The boy shook his head.
“Could you, if you saw them again?”
“One of them, I think. The bigger one. I got a better look at him. The other one, I don’t know.”
“But the other one was a woman?”
“I don’t know. I think I thought that just because of the size. They had on a dark-colored felt hat, and a big jacket, and jeans.” Taka stopped, looking doubtful. His aunt said something terse in Vietnamese.
“Okay,” Taka said. “After that, they disappeared up into the rocks. I just stayed there awhile, where I was. I was thinking I should go, because I didn’t want anybody to know what I was doing.” He stopped, glanced at his Mrs. Ha, said something haltingly in Vietnamese.
She nodded, smiled at him, reached over and patted his knee.
“He said he was afraid people would think what he was doing was silly,” Janice Ha said. Her expression said she agreed with her cousin. They would think it was silly.
“I thought if I left now, they would maybe see me driving away. I always left the car down in the arroyo where nobody could see it, but they would see me driving away. So I decided I would wait until they left.” He stopped again.
“Go on,” Janice said. “Tell us what happened.” She looked at Chee. “We didn’t know anything about this either. He should have told the police.”
Taka flushed. “My father told me not to tell anybody. He said it sounded like something I should not be mixed up in. He said to just be quiet about it.”
“Well, better late than never,” Janice said. “Tell us.”
“I wondered what was happening over there, so I decided to get closer so I could see. I know that place real well by now, or the part of it where I was working anyway. It’s full of snakes. They come in there when the weather starts getting cold because those black rocks stay warm even in the winter and the field mice move in there too. And, normally, those snakes hunt at night because that’s when the kangaroo rats and the little mice come out to eat, but in the winter it’s cold at night and the snakes are coldblooded reptiles so they stay in their holes after
“
Taka had noticed Janice’s expression?impatient with this digression into natural science.
“Anyway,” he said hurriedly, “I know where to walk and how not to get snakebit. So I went over in the direction I had seen the three people go and in a little while I could hear voices. Talking up there in the rocks. So I moved around there?it was just beginning to get dark now and there was lightning up in the mountains. And then I saw the one who killed the policeman. He hadn’t gone up in there with the other two. He was sitting out by a pinon tree on the ground. I watched him awhile, and he didn’t do anything except once in a while he would drink out of a bottle he had with him.
I thought about that for a while and I decided that if that one was drunk, then when it got just a little darker, I could get down to the arroyo and get my car and slip away without being seen. I just sat there and waited a little while. I heard the two who went up into the rocks yelling. It sounded like they were really excited. I thought they had stirred up some of the snakes back in there.”
Taka Ji stopped, looked at his aunt, and at Janice, and finally at Chee. He cleared his throat.
“Then I heard a shot,” he said. “And I got out of there and got the car and went home.”
The boy looked around him again. Finished. Waiting for questions.
Janice Ha was looking startled. “A shot! Did you tell your dad? You should have told the police.”
Mrs. Ha said something in Vietnamese to Janice, got an explanation, responded to that. Then Janice said to her mother: “Well, I don’t care. We’re living in America now.”
“Where did the sound of the shot come from?” Chee asked.
“It sounded like from back in the rocks. Back in there where they had been yelling. I thought maybe they had shot at a snake.”
“Just one shot?”
“One,” Taka said.
“Were you still there when Officer Nez came?”
“I heard the car. I heard it coming. There’s a track that runs along there west of that rocky ridge where we were. It was coming along that. Toward us.”
“Did he have his siren going? His red light on?”
“No, but when I saw it, I saw it was a Navajo Tribal Police car. I decided I better go. Right away. I got away from there and went to the arroyo and got the car and went home.”
“Do you remember meeting me?”
“It scared me,” Taka said. “I saw your police car, coming fast, toward me.” He paused. “I should have stopped. I should have told you I heard the shot.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Chee said. But he was thinking that it might have saved Colonel Ji’s life.
Mrs. Ha was watching them, listening to every word. Chee thought that she must know a little English.
“I want you to give me some directions,” Chee said. “I have a big-scale map out in my truck. I want to show you that and have you mark on it exactly where those people were in that rock formation.”
