Skinwalkers. Part 8

"I think we better go talk to Bistie again," Leaphorn said. "In fact, I think we better pick him up, and lock him up until we get this sorted out a little better." Leaphorn imagined trying to persuade Dilly to file the complaint. Dilly Streib would be hard to persuade. Dilly had been FBI too long not to care about his batting average. The Agency didn't like cases it didn't win. Still ...

Leaphorn swiveled in his chair and looked at his map. A line of bone beads now connected two of his dots. And Roosevelt Bistie must know how they connected. And why.

"We can charge him with attempted murder, or attempted a.s.sault, or hold him as a material witness."

"Umm," Chee said. A sound full of doubt.

"I'll call the feds," Leaphorn said. He glanced at his watch. "Can you meet me in an hour at ..." He looked at the map again, picking the most practical halfway point between Window Rock and Shiprock for their drive into the Chuskas. "At Sanostee," he concluded. "Sanostee in an hour?"

"Yes, sir," Chee said. "Sanostee in an hour."

> 13 <>

SANOSTEE WAS HARDLY a halfway point, but it was convenient for where they were going. For Chee it was fast-twenty miles south on the worn pavement of U.S. 666 to Littlewater, and then nine miles westward, into the teeth of the gusting, dusty wind, up the long slope of the Chuska range to the trading post. For Leaphorn it was triple that distance-from Window Rock to Crystal and over Washington Pa.s.s to Sheep Springs, then north to the Littlewater intersection. When Leaphorn reached Sanostee it was sundown, the copper-colored twilight of one of those days when the desert sky is translucent with hanging dust. a halfway point, but it was convenient for where they were going. For Chee it was fast-twenty miles south on the worn pavement of U.S. 666 to Littlewater, and then nine miles westward, into the teeth of the gusting, dusty wind, up the long slope of the Chuska range to the trading post. For Leaphorn it was triple that distance-from Window Rock to Crystal and over Washington Pa.s.s to Sheep Springs, then north to the Littlewater intersection. When Leaphorn reached Sanostee it was sundown, the copper-colored twilight of one of those days when the desert sky is translucent with hanging dust.

Chee was sitting under his steering wheel, feet out the door, drinking an orange crush. They left Leaphorn's car and took Chee's. Leaphorn asked questions. Chee drove. They were astute questions, intended to duplicate as much of Chee's memory in Leaphorn's as was possible. At first the focus was on Bistie, on everything he'd said and how he'd said it, and then on Endocheeney, and finally on Janet Pete.

"I had a little mixup with her last year," Leaphorn said. "She thought we'd roughed up a drunk-or said she did."

"Had we?"

Leaphorn glanced at him. "Somebody had. Unless the officer was lying about it, it was somebody else."

The road that wandered northward from Sanostee had been graded once, and graveled at some time in the dim past when this part of the Chuskas had elected an unusually fierce advocate to the Tribal Council. The perpetual cycle of January snows and April thaws had swallowed the gravel long ago, and the highway superintendent for that district had solved the problem by erasing the road from his map. But it was still pa.s.sable in dry weather and still used by the few families who grazed their sheep in this part of the highlands. Chee drove it carefully, skirting washouts and avoiding its washboard pattern of surface erosion when he could. Sunrays from below the curve of the planet lit cloud banks on the western horizon and reflected red now, converting the yellow hue of the universe into a vague pink tint.

"I've been wondering who called her in on this," Chee said. "When we told Bistie he could call a lawyer, he wasn't interested."

"Probably his daughter," Leaphorn said.

"Probably," Chee agreed. He remembered the daughter standing in the yard of Bistie's house. Would she have thought of calling a lawyer? Driven back to Sanostee to make the call? Known whom to call? He amended the "probably." "Maybe so," he said.

That concluded the conversation. They rode in silence. Leaphorn sat back straight against the seat, his eyes memorizing what he could see of the landscape in fading yellow light, his mind drawn to the intolerable problem of Emma's illness and then flinching away from that to escape into the merely frustrating puzzle of the four pins on his map. Chee rode slumped against the door, right hand on the wheel, a taller man and slender, thinking of the bone bead in Bistie's wallet, of what questions he might ask to cause the stubborn Bistie to talk about witchcraft to hostile strangers, of whether Leaphorn would allow him any questions, of how Leaphorn, the famous Leaphorn, the Leaphorn of tribal police legends, would handle this. And thinking of Mary Landon's letter. He found he could see the words, dark blue ink against the pale blue of the paper.

"Dad and I drove down to Madison last week and talked to an adviser in the College of Arts and Sciences. I will be able to get my master's degree-with a little luck-in just two more semesters ..."

Just two semesters. Only two semesters. Only two. Or, put another way, I will only take two long steps away from you. Or, I promised I would come back to you at the end of summer, but now I am going away. Or, rephrased again, former lover, you are now a friend. Or ...

The patrol car slanted up into the thicket of pinon and stunted ponderosa. Chee shifted into second gear.

"Just over this ridge," he said.

Just over the ridge, the light became visible. It was below them, still at least half a mile away, a bright point in the darkening twilight. Chee remembered it from the afternoon they had arrested Bistie. A single bare bulb protected by a metal reflector atop a forty-foot ponderosa pine stem, Bistie's ghost light. Would a witch be worried about ghosts? Would a witch keep a light burning to fend off the chindi chindi which wandered in the darkness? which wandered in the darkness?

"His place?" Leaphorn asked.

Chee nodded.

"He's got electricity out here?" Leaphorn sounded surprised.

"There's a windmill generator behind the house," Chee said. "I guess he runs that light off batteries."

Bistie's access route required a right turn off the road, b.u.mped over a rocky hummock and past a scattering of pinons, to drop again down to his place. In the harsh yellow light it looked worse than Chee had remembered it-a rectangular plank shack, probably with two rooms, roofed with blue asphalt shingles. Behind it stood a dented metal storage shack, a brush arbor, a pole horse corral, and, up the slope by the low cliff of the mesa, a lean-to for hay storage. Beyond that, against the cliff, the yellow light reflected from a hogan made of stacked stone slabs. Beside the shack, side by side and with their vanes turned away from the gusting west wind, were Bistie's windmill and his wind generator.

Chee parked his patrol car under Bistie's yard light.

There was no sign of the truck and no light on in the house.

Leaphorn sighed. "You know enough about him to do any guessing about where he might be?" he said. "Visiting kinfolks or anything?"

"No," Chee said. "We didn't get into that."

"Lives here with his daughter. Right?" Leaphorn said.

"Right."

They waited for someone to appear at the door and acknowledge the presence of visitors, delaying the moment when they'd admit the long drive had been for nothing. Delaying what would be either a return trip to Sanostee or a fruitless hunt for neighbors who might know where Roosevelt Bistie had gone.

"Maybe he didn't come back here when the lawyer got him out," Chee said.

Leaphorn grunted. The yellow light from the bare bulb above them lit the right side of his face, giving it a waxy look.

No one appeared at the door.

Leaphorn got out of the car, slammed the door noisily behind him, and leaned against the roof, eyes on the house. The door wouldn't be locked. Should he go in, and look around for some hint of where Bistie might be?

The wind gusted against him, blowing sand against his ankles above his socks and pushing at his uniform hat. Then it died. He heard Chee's door opening. He smelled something burning-a strong, acrid odor.

"Fire," Chee said. "Somewhere."

Leaphorn trotted toward the house, rapped on the door. The smell was stronger here, seeping between door and frame. He turned the k.n.o.b, pushed the door open. Smoke puffed out, and was whipped away by another gust of the dry wind. Behind him, Chee yelled: "Bistie. You in there?"

Leaphorn stepped into the smoke, fanning with his hat. Chee was just behind him. The smoke was coming from an aluminum pot on top of a butane stove against the back wall of the room. Leaphorn held his breath, turned off the burner under the pan and under a blue enamel coffeepot boiling furiously beside it. He used his hat as a potholder, grabbed the handle, carried it outside, and dropped it on the packed earth. It contained what seemed to have been some sort of stew, now badly charred. Leaphorn went back inside.

"No one's here," Chee said. He was fanning the residual smoke with his hat. A chair lay on its side on the floor.

"You checked the back room?"

Chee nodded. "n.o.body home."

"Left in a hurry," Leaphorn said. He wrinkled his nose against the acrid smell of burned meat and walked back into the front yard. With the b.u.t.t of his flashlight, he poked into the still-smoking pan, inspected the residue it collected.

"Take a look at this," he said to Chee. "You're a bachelor, aren't you? How long does it take you to burn stew like this?"

Chee inspected the pot. "The way he had the fire turned up, maybe five, ten minutes. Depends on how much water he put in it."

"Or she," Leaphorn said. "His daughter. When you were here with Kennedy, they just have one truck?"

"That's all," Chee said.

"So they must be off somewhere in it," Leaphorn said. "One or both. And they drove off the other way from the way we were coming. But if it was that way, why didn't we see their headlights? They would have just left." Leaphorn straightened, put his hands on his hips, stretched his back. He stared into the deepening twilight, frowning. "Just one plate on the table. You notice that?"

"Yeah," Chee said. "And the chair turned over."

"Five or ten minutes," Leaphorn said. "If you know how long it takes to incinerate stew, then we didn't scare him off. The truck was already gone. And the stew was already burning before we got here."

"I'll go in and look around again," Chee said. "A little closer."

"Let me do it," Leaphorn said. "See if you can find anything out here."

Leaphorn stood at the doorway first, not wishing to further disturb any signs that might have been left. He suspected Chee might be good at this, but he knew he was good. The floor was covered with dark red linoleum, seamed near the middle of the room. It was fairly new, which was good, and dusty, which was almost inevitable considering the weather, and absolutely essential considering what Leaphorn hoped to do. But before he did anything, he looked. This front room was used for cooking, eating, general living, and the woman's bedroom. One corner of the bed, a single wooden frame neatly made up, was visible behind a curtain of blankets which walled off a corner. Shelves loaded with canned goods, cooking utensils, and an a.s.sortment of boxes lined the part.i.tion wall. Except for the overturned chair, nothing seemed odd or out of place. The room showed the habitual neatness imposed by limited living s.p.a.ce.

But the floor was dusty.

Leaphorn squatted on the step and inspected the linoleum with his eyes just an inch or so above its surface. The pattern of dust newly disturbed by his footsteps, and Chee's, was easy enough to make out. He could easily separate the treads of Chee's bigger feet from his own. But the angle of light was wrong. Walking carefully, he went in and pulled the chain to turn off the light bulb. He clicked on his flashlight. Working the light carefully, squatting at first and then on his stomach with his cheek against the floor, he studied the marks left in the dust.

He ignored the fresh scuffs he and Chee had made-looking for other marks. He found them. Dimmer but fairly fresh and plain enough to an eye as experienced at this as Leaphorn's. Waffle marks left by the soles of someone who had apparently sat beside the table, someone who had pulled his feet back under the chair, leaving the drag marks of the toes. Also under the table, and near the fallen chair, another pattern, left by a rubber sole. Some sort of jogging or tennis shoes, perhaps. Smaller than the big-footed person who wore the waffle soles. Bistie and daughter? If so, Bistie's Daughter had large feet.

Leaphorn emerged from under the table, whacking his ear in the process. Behind the curtain of blankets, on a chest beside the bed, stood two pair of shoes. Worn tan squaw boots and low-heeled black slippers. They were narrow and about size six. He took a left slipper back to the table, relocated the track, and made the comparison. The slipper was far too small. Bistie had been entertaining a visitor not long before Leaphorn and Chee arrived.

But where the devil had they gone? And why had they left the stew to burn and the coffee to boil away?

He found nothing interesting in the back room. Against the wall, a bedroll on which Bistie apparently slept was folded neatly. Bistie's clothing hung with equal neatness from a wire strung taut along the wall-two pairs of well-worn jeans, a pair of khaki trousers with frayed cuffs. A plaid wool jacket, four shirts, all with long sleeves and one with a hole in the elbow. Leaphorn clicked his tongue against his teeth, thinking, studying the room. He pushed his forefinger into the enamel washbasin on the table beside Bistie's bedroom, testing water temperature without thinking why. It was tepid. Exactly what one would expect. He picked up the crumpled washcloth beside the basin. It was wet. Leaphorn looked at it, frowning. Not what one would expect.

The cloth had been used to clean something. Leaphorn studied it in the flashlight beam. In three places the cloth was heavily smudged with dirt-as if to clean spots from the dusty floor. He held one of the spots to his nose and smelled it.

"Chee!" he shouted. "Chee!"

He examined the floor, moving the flash beam methodically back and forth, looking for a wiped place and seeing none. Perhaps it had been done in the front room. He squatted, holding the flash close to the linoleum, looking for tracks. He saw, instead, a path. It was fairly regular, possibly eighteen inches wide-a strip of the plastic surface wiped clean of dust. A pathway leading from the doorway into the front room, down the center of this back room, to the back door.

The back door opened and Chee looked in. "I think somebody, or maybe something, got dragged out of here," Chee said. "Drag marks leading up toward the rocks."

"Through here too," Leaphorn said. He drew the flashlight beam along the polished, dust-free path. "To the back door. But look at this." He handed Chee the damp cloth. "Smell it," he said.

Chee smelled.

"Blood," Chee said. "Smells like it." He glanced at Leaphorn. "Wonder what was in that stew. Fresh mutton, you think?"

"I doubt it," Leaphorn said. "I think we ought to find where those drag marks take us. I want to know what's being dragged."

"Or who's being dragged," Chee said.

Bare earth that has been lived on for years and as dry as drought can make it becomes almost as hard as concrete. From the back door, Leaphorn saw nothing until Chee's flashlight beam, held close to the earth, created shadows where something even harder had been pulled across its surface. Scratches. The scratches led past the windmill tower, past the metal storage building, and beyond. On the slope, where the earth was less pounded, the scratches became scuff marks between the scattering of wilted weeds and clumps of gra.s.s.

"Up toward the hogan," Leaphorn said. "It leads that way."

Even in the less compacted earth the drag marks were hard to follow. The twilight had faded into almost full dark now, with only a flush of dark red in the west. The wind had risen again, kicking up dust in front of Leaphorn. He walked with his flashlight focused on the ground, picking up the sign of dislodged earth and crushed weeds.

Even in retrospect, Leaphorn didn't remember hearing the shot-being aware first of pain. Something that felt like a hammer struck his right forearm and the flashlight was suddenly gone. Leaphorn was sitting on the ground, aware of Chee's voice yelling something, aware that his forearm hurt so badly that something must have broken it. The sound of Chee's pistol firing, the muzzle flash, brought him out of the shock and made him aware of what had happened. Roosevelt Bistie, that son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h, had shot him.

> 14 <>

THE "OFFICER DOWN" call provokes a special reaction in each police jurisdiction. In the Shiprock subagency of the Navajo Tribal Police, Captain A. D. Largo commanding, it produced an immediate call to Largo himself, who was home watching television, and almost simultaneous radio calls to all Navajo Police units on duty in the district, to the New Mexico State Police, and the San Juan County Sheriff's Office. Then, since the Chuska Mountains sprawl across the New Mexico border into Arizona, and Sanostee is only a dozen or so miles from the state boundary, and neither the dispatcher at Shiprock nor anyone else was quite sure in which state all this was happening, the call also went out to the Arizona Highway Patrol and, more or less out of courtesy, to the Apache County Sheriff's Office, which might have some legitimate jurisdiction even though it was a hundred miles south, down at St. Johns. call provokes a special reaction in each police jurisdiction. In the Shiprock subagency of the Navajo Tribal Police, Captain A. D. Largo commanding, it produced an immediate call to Largo himself, who was home watching television, and almost simultaneous radio calls to all Navajo Police units on duty in the district, to the New Mexico State Police, and the San Juan County Sheriff's Office. Then, since the Chuska Mountains sprawl across the New Mexico border into Arizona, and Sanostee is only a dozen or so miles from the state boundary, and neither the dispatcher at Shiprock nor anyone else was quite sure in which state all this was happening, the call also went out to the Arizona Highway Patrol and, more or less out of courtesy, to the Apache County Sheriff's Office, which might have some legitimate jurisdiction even though it was a hundred miles south, down at St. Johns.

The Farmington office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had ultimate jurisdiction when such a lofty crime is committed on an Indian reservation, got the word a little later via telephone. The message was relayed to Jay Kennedy at the home of a lawyer, where he was engaged in a penny-a-point rotating-partner bridge game. Kennedy had just won two consecutive rubbers and was about to make a small slam, properly bid, when the telephone rang. He took the call, finished the slam, added up the score, which showed him to be ahead 2,350 points, collected his $23.50, and left. It was a few minutes after 10 P.M. P.M.

A few minutes after 10:30, Jim Chee got back to the Bistie place. He had met the ambulance from Farmington at Littlewater on U.S. 666. While Leaphorn was being tucked away in the back, Captain Largo had arrived-Gorman riding with him-and had taken charge. Largo asked a flurry of questions, sent the ambulance on its way, and made a series of quick radio checks to ensure roadblocks were in place. He'd hung up the microphone and sat, arms folded, looking at Chee.

"Too late for roadblocks, probably," he said.

It had been a long day for Chee. He was tired. All the adrenaline had drained away. "Who knows," he said. "Maybe he stopped to fix a flat. Maybe he didn't even have a car. If it was Bistie himself, maybe he just went back to his house. If-"

"You think it might be somebody besides Bistie?"

"I don't know," Chee said. "It's his place. He shoots at people. But then maybe somebody doesn't like him any better than he likes other people, and they came and shot him and dragged him off into the rocks."

Largo's expression, which had already been sour, suggested he didn't like Chee's tone. He stared at Chee.

"How did it happen?" he asked. "One old man, sick, and two cops with guns?"

Largo obviously didn't expect an answer and Chee didn't attempt one.

"You and Gorman go back up there and see if you can find him," Largo said. "I'll have the state police and the sheriff's people follow you. Don't let 'em get lost."

Chee nodded.

"I'm meeting Kennedy here," Largo said. "Then we'll come along and join you."

Chee headed for his car.

"One more thing," Largo shouted. "Don't let Bistie shoot you."

And now, at 10:55, Chee parked beside Bistie's now-dark light pole, got out, and waited for the entourage to finish its arrival. He felt foolish. Bistie's truck was still absent. Bistie's shack was dark. Everything seemed to be exactly as they had left it. The chance of Bistie's hanging around to await this posse simply didn't exist.

There was a general slamming of doors.

Chee explained the layout, pointed up into the darkness to the hogan from which the shots had come. They moved up the slope, weapons drawn, the state policeman carrying a riot gun, the deputy carrying a rifle. What had happened here two hours before already seemed unreal to Chee, something he had imagined.

No one was at the hogan, or in it.

"Here's some bra.s.s," the state policeman said. He was an old-timer, with red hair and a freckled, perpetually sunburned face. He stood frowning down at a copper-colored metal cylinder which reflected the beam of his flashlight. "Looks like thirty-eight caliber," he said. "Who'll be handling the evidence?"

"Just leave it there for Kennedy," Chee said. "There should be another one." He was thinking that the empty cartridge certainly wasn't from a 30-30. It was shorter. Pistol ammunition. And, since it had been ejected, probably from an automatic-not a revolver. If Bistie had fired it, he seemed to have quite an a.r.s.enal.

"Here it is," the state policeman said. His flashlight was focused on the ground about a long step from where the first cartridge lay. "Same caliber."