Part 8 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+prock 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 s.h.i.+ngles. 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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.