Skinwalkers. Part 15

"Put down the gun," Leaphorn said. The woman ignored him. She was looking down at the doctor, who sprawled face-up beside Jim Chee's bed. Chee seemed to be sleeping. Leaphorn shifted his pistol to the fingers that protruded from his cast and lifted the shotgun from the woman's hand. She made no effort to keep it. Yellowhorse was still breathing, unevenly and raggedly. A man in a pale blue hospital smock appeared at the door-the same Chinese-looking doctor who had been on duty when they delivered Chee. He muttered something that sounded like an expletive in some language strange to Leaphorn.

"Why did you shoot him?" he asked Leaphorn.

"I didn't," Leaphorn said. "See if you can save him."

The doctor knelt beside Yellowhorse, feeling for a pulse, examining the place where the shotgun blast had struck Yellowhorse's neck at point-blank range. He shook his head.

"Dead?" the woman asked. "Is the skinwalker dead? Then I want to bring in my baby. I have him in my truck. Maybe now he is alive again."

But he wasn't, of course.

It took Jim Chee almost four hours to awaken and he did so reluctantly-his subconscious dreading what he would awaken to. But when he came awake he found himself alone in the room. Sunset lit the foot of his bed. His head still hurt and his shoulder and side ached, but he felt warm again. He removed his left hand from under the covers, flexed the fingers. A good strong hand. He moved his toes, his feet, bent his knees. Everything worked. The right arm was another matter. It was heavily bandaged elbow to shoulder and immobilized with tape.

Where was Yellowhorse? Chee considered that. Obviously he had guessed wrong about the doctor. The man hadn't killed him, as common sense said he should have. Apparently Yellowhorse had run for it, or turned himself in, or went to talk to a lawyer, or something. It seemed totally unlikely that Yellowhorse would come back now to finish off Chee. But just in case, he decided he would get up, put on his clothes, and go somewhere else. Call Leaphorn first. Tell him about all this.

Just about then it also occurred to Chee how he would solve the problem of the cat. He would put the cat in the forty-dollar case, and take it to the Farmington airport and send it off to Mary Landon. But first he would write her and explain it all-explain how this belagana belagana cat simply wasn't going to make it as a Navajo cat. It would starve, or be eaten by the coyote, or something like that. Mary was a very smart person. Mary would understand that perfectly. Probably better than Chee. cat simply wasn't going to make it as a Navajo cat. It would starve, or be eaten by the coyote, or something like that. Mary was a very smart person. Mary would understand that perfectly. Probably better than Chee.

Carefully, slowly, he turned himself onto his good side, swung his feet off the bed, pushed himself upright. Almost upright. Before he completed the move, weakness and faintness overcame him. He was on his side again, the back of his head throbbing, and a metal tray he'd tumbled from the bedside stand still clattering on the floor.

"I see you're awake," a female voice said. "Tell the lieutenant that Officer Chee is awake."

Lieutenant Leaphorn's expression, when he came through the door behind the nurse, could best be described as blank. He sat on the chair beside Chee's bed, resting his cast gingerly on the cover.

"Do you know her name? The woman who shot you?"

"No idea," Chee said. "Where is she? Where's Yellowhorse? Do you know-"

"She shot Yellowhorse," Leaphorn said. "Right here. Did a better job on him than she did on you. We have her in custody, but she won't tell us her name. Anything else, for that matter. Just wants to talk about her baby."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's dead," Leaphorn said. "The doctors say it's been dead for a couple of days." Leaphorn shifted his cast, which was generally grimy and had a streak of dried blue-black mud on its bottom side.

"She thought it was witched," Chee said. "That's why she wanted to kill me. She thought I was the witch and she could turn the witching around."

Leaphorn looked disapproving. "It had something they call Werdnig-Hoffmann disease," Leaphorn said. "Born with it. The brain never develops properly. Muscles never develop. They live a little while and then they die."

"Well," Chee said. "She didn't understand that."

"No cure for it," Leaphorn said. "Not even by killing skinwalkers like you."

"Do you know why Yellowhorse was doing all this?" Chee asked. "He told me he was trying to get the government to pay its share, or something like that, and Onesalt found out about it, or was finding out, and he figured sooner or later I would understand it too, because of what I knew." Chee paused, slightly abashed by the admission he would be making. "I guess he figured I'm smarter than I am. I guess I was supposed to figure out that he was turning in hospitalization claims on patients after they were dead. I guess that's why Onesalt was looking for those death dates."

"About right," Leaphorn said. "After they died, or long after they'd checked out and gone home. Dilly Streib is in the business office now. They're going through the billing records."

"I began to see how he was doing it," Chee said. "I couldn't see why. Wasn't he using a lot of his own money to run this place?"

"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "Mostly his own money. Through his foundation. And he had other private foundation money. And some tribe support. Medicare. Medicaid. Guess it wasn't enough. Not even with hiring immigrant doctors."

"I understand how he killed Endocheeney and Wilson Sam. How about why?"

"Streib thinks he's going to find they were out of here for months before Yellowhorse stopped billing for them," Leaphorn said. "I guess there were a lot of them like that. But they were the only two on Onesalt's list. After he shot Onesalt, it took the pressure off. No rush anymore. But I guess he figured that since you were with Onesalt, you'd know about the list and sooner or later you'd just naturally find out about it. Or if you didn't, somebody else would. So he decided to get rid of Sam and Endocheeney, and you too."

"He told me it balanced out," Chee said. "Onesalt was going to put an end to the clinic and it was saving more lives than those he had to kill."

Leaphorn had nothing to say to that. He raised his cast off the bed, grimaced, put it down again. "Anti'll," he said sourly, using the Navajo word for witchcraft.

Jim Chee just nodded.

"Pretty smart, really," Leaphorn added. "No hurry, so he could pick his people carefully. From desperate people. Like Bistie, who was dying. Or the woman he sent after you. People won't talk about witches, so there wasn't much risk of tracking anything back here."

"I guess he sent two after Endocheeney. Maybe Bistie was too slow and he thought he wasn't going to do it."

"Apparently," Leaphorn said. "And then he found out we'd arrested Bistie, so he had to kill him-just in case we did trick him into talking."

"I guess we could find them now," Chee said. "The one who killed Endocheeney. The one who killed Wilson Sam. Just work down through the records of the caseload here, looking at them the way Yellowhorse would have looked."

"I guess we could," Leaphorn said.

Chee considered that answer awhile. It was, after all, a federal problem.

"You think Streib will think of it?"

"I doubt it," Leaphorn said. He laughed a humorless laugh. "People say I hate witchcraft. Dilly, he hates to even think about witches."

"Doesn't matter, anyway," Chee said. "It's finished."

About the Author.

TONY HILLERMAN is past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received its Edgar and Grand Master Awards. His other honors include the Center for the American Indian's Amba.s.sador Award, the Silver Spur Award for the best novel set in the West, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award. He lives with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Credits Cover ill.u.s.tration by Peter Thorpe This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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