Coyote Waits (18 page)

He paused to give Chee a chance to respond to that. Then drew a deep breath.

“These things I told Hosteen Professor. I think they wrote these things all down on paper. And you read that paper? Is that right?”

“Yes. I read it all.”

Pinto looked puzzled.

“And you know the Navajo Way?”

“I have studied it some,” Chee said.

Pinto’s expression was slightly skeptical, as if he wondered how much Chee had studied.

“They say there were many skinwalkers then,” Hosteen Pinto began. “Even more than now. Do you understand skinwalkers?”

“I know something about them,” Chee said. He settled himself in his chair. This was going to take a long time. Pinto would begin in the beginning and talk his way through it. And the longer he talked the better the chance that he’d cast some light on this murky business. If, that is, anything connected with anything.

“They teach us that everything has two forms,” Hosteen Pinto said, starting even further back than Chee had expected. “There is the mountain we see there beside Grants, the mountain the
biligaana
call Mount Taylor. That is the outer form. And then they say there is the inner form, the sacred Turquoise Mountain that was there with the Holy People in the First World, the Dark World at the very beginning. And First Man brought it up from the Third World and built it on his magic robe, and decorated it with turquoise. And then there is the yucca. We see the outer form all around us, but it is the inner form of yucca that we offer the prayer plume for when we dig its roots to make the soap to clean ourselves.”

He paused, studying Chee. “You understand?”

Chee nodded. This was basic Navajo metaphysics. But he wondered if Janet had ever heard it.

“Bluebird has two forms, and the deer and the beetle. Two forms. They have the form of the
yei
and they have the outer form that we see. All living things. You too. And I. Two forms.”

Hosteen Ashie Pinto leaned forward, tiny in the yellow coveralls of the county prisoner, intent on Chee’s understanding.

“And then there is Coyote,” he said. “Do you know about Coyote?”

“I know something about Coyote,” Chee said. He glanced at Janet Pete. She was focused on Pinto, concentrating on what he was saying. Wondering, Chee imagined, where all this was leading. “I know about his tricks. I have heard the stories. How he snatched the blanket and scattered the stars into the Milky Way. How he stole the baby of the Water Monster. How he tricked the sister of the bears into marrying him. How—”

The amusement on Pinto’s face stopped him.

“The children are told the funny stories about Coyote so they will not be afraid,” Pinto said. The amusement went away. Pinto smiled a tight, grim smile and launched into the explanation — as old as the culture of the People — of why Coyote was not funny. Chee listened, wishing, as he had come to wish many times in such sessions with old taletellers, that Navajos did not have to start everything at the very beginning. He glanced at Janet again. She looked bemused, probably wondering what the devil he was hoping to learn from all this — a wonder Chee was beginning to share. But at least she couldn’t accuse him of trying to learn anything incriminating. Unless, of course, the old man talked long enough to tell him what Chee had come here to learn.

Now Hosteen Pinto was talking about how the name for Coyote in the Fourth World was not
atse’ma’ii
, or First Coyote, but
atse’ hashkke
, or First Angry, and what that implied symbolically in an emerging culture in which peace and harmony were essential to survival. He talked of Coyote as the metaphor for chaos among a hungry people who would die without order. He talked of Coyote as the enemy of all law, and rules, and harmony. He talked of Coyote’s mythic power. He reminded Chee how Coyote always sat in the doorway of the hogan when the Holy People met in Council, neither quite part of these representatives of cosmic power, nor totally allied with the wilderness of evil outside. And finally he reminded Chee that other wise people, like the old men in the Hopi kiva societies, knew that there was a time when humans had two hearts. Thus they were able to move back and forth from one form to the other — from natural to supernatural.

“I think your uncle must have taught you about the power of skin,” Pinto said. He booked up for confirmation in Chee’s face and, seeing it, went on:

“They say that’s how Changing Woman created the first Navajos. From the skin rubbed from her breast, she formed the Salt People, and the Mud Clan, and the Bitter Waters and the Bead People. I have heard of your uncle, of Frank Sam Nakai. They say he is a great
hataalii
. He must have taught you how Coyote transformed First Man into a skinwalker by blowing his hide over him. You know about that? About how First Woman wouldn’t sleep with him because now he had all the evil ways of Coyote, smelled like coyote urine, licked himself and tried to lick her, and did all those dirty things that coyotes do. And how the Holy People cured First Man by passing him through the magic hoops to strip away his coyote skin. Your uncle taught you that?”

“Some of it,” Chee said. He remembered a little of it. It was something reenacted in part of the Ghostway ceremony — a cure for the most virulent form of witch sickness.

“So then you know why this fellow had to have the Ghostway sing,” Pinto said. “He had to have it because he had been with the
yenaldolooshi
.”

“No,” Chee said. “I don’t understand that.”

Janet Pete raised a hand. “Wait a minute. I don’t understand this either.
Yenaldolooshi
? That is the word for animals that trot, isn’t it?”

Chee nodded. “Animals that trot on four legs. But it is also used for skinwalkers. Witches.”

“Where is this conversation going?” she asked. “Are you leading Mr. Pinto into something? Do you remember what you promised?”

Pinto was watching, puzzled.

Janet Pete switched to Navajo. “I wanted to make sure that Mr. Chee was not trying to get you to say something that would hurt your chance in the trial,” she explained. “I want you to be careful about that.”

Hosteen Pinto nodded. “We are talking about something that happened a long time ago,” he said.

“I don’t understand, my uncle,” Chee said. “Why did they do the Ghostway sing for the one they called Delbito Willie when they did the Enemy Way for the others?”

“Because he went in there,” Hosteen Pinto said. His tone was patient. “He went in there — into Tse A’Digash. He went in there where the witches gather. He went in there among the corpses and the skinwalkers. He went in to the place where the
yenaldolooshi
do their ceremonies, where they do incest, where they kill their relatives.”

Silence. Chee thought about this. He frowned, glanced at Janet Pete. She was watching him. Well, he would ask it anyway.

“My uncle, would you tell me just where this Tse A’Digash is located?”

Pinto’s expression changed. “I cannot tell you that.”

“Could you tell me if Professor Tagert hired you to show him where it was?”

Hosteen Pinto stared at Chee. “When you arrested me that night, I could smell the fire in your clothing. I could smell where your flesh had burned. I said I was ashamed. I am still ashamed of that. But these things you ask me now, I cannot tell you.”

“What’s going on?” Janet asked.

Hosteen Pinto stood, limped toward the doorway, his old bones stiff from the sitting.

“Could you just tell me who gave you that whiskey?”

Hosteen Pinto tapped on the glass. The jailer was coming.

“Don’t say anything,” Janet said. Then to Chee, angrily, “So much for your promises.”

“I just want some of the truth,” Chee said. “Maybe the truth will make him free.”

JIM CHEE HAD not flown enough to learn to think creatively on an airplane. He spent the time on this Mesa Airlines turboprop flight looking down from his seat by the window at the early snow on the Jemez Mountain ridges below, and the great broken expanse of tan and gray of the Chaco Mesa country and finally, at the ribbon of fading yellow and black that marked the San Juan River Valley. His mind was on Janet Pete, who had been irritated with him — but not nearly as irritated as he had expected her to be. He decided, tentatively, that this was because Hosteen Pinto had told him nothing incriminating.

Still, she should have been furious because he’d tried to take advantage of her. That could be explained if Janet didn’t give a damn how he behaved. Chee didn’t like that explanation. It was true, perhaps, but he rejected it. More and more, he was giving a damn about Janet.

He retrieved his pickup from the airport parking lot and drove down off the mesa into the heavy after-work traffic on 550. He’d stop at the police station in Ship Rock and see if the captain was in. Largo had been around a lot longer than Chee and knew a lot more people in this part of the Reservation. He might have heard of the Tse A’Digash that Ashie Pinto had mentioned. It would be somewhere south of Ship Rock, Chee guessed. Somewhere in the volcanic outcrop country. Probably not too far from where he’d arrested the man. And if Largo didn’t know, he’d be likely to know some old-timer who would.

But Largo wasn’t at the station.

Angie was at the desk.

“Hey, man, how’s the hand?” she asked, grinning at him. And without waiting for an answer: “The captain’s been looking for you. Like he has something heavy on his mind.”

“What?” Chee asked, starting the automatic examination of conscience that such statements provoke. “I’m on sick leave.”

“I don’t know what. He didn’t say. But Lieutenant Leaphorn was with him. Up from Window Rock. And he looked pissed off.”

“Leaphorn?”

“Captain Largo,” Angie said. “Come to think of it, the lieutenant, too, I guess.”

“Was that today?”

Angie nodded. “They left here just a little bit ago.”

To hell with it, Chee thought. He’d see Largo when he saw him. The Leaphorn news disturbed him more. Leaphorn had been trying to reach Tagert. There could be just one explanation for that. The lieutenant, the supercop, had invited himself into the Pinto investigation. Not at the invitation of the FBI, Chee guessed. That wasn’t likely. More likely he’d guessed Officer Jim Chee had screwed it up. Well, to hell with Leaphorn.

“Angie, you’ve been here awhile. Do you know any places around this part of the Reservation that people call Tse A’Digash?”

Angie just looked at him.

Chee persisted. “A place with a bad reputation for witches? Sort of place people stay away from?”

“Sort of place people don’t talk about to strangers, either,” Angie said. “I’m from over near Leupp. Over on the southwest side of the Reservation. Three hundred miles from here.”

“I know,” Chee said. “But you’ve lived here ten or twelve years.”

Angie shook her head. “That’s not long enough,” she said. “Not to talk about skinwalkers with you.”

And it wasn’t. Chee knew that.

Chee drove home thinking about who, among his friends, was enough of a Ship Rock territory old-timer to know what he needed to know. He had three names in mind, with Largo the fourth. Largo was sore at him, apparently, at the moment. But that was not unusual. And Largo would tell him what he knew. He wondered what had upset the captain, and Lieutenant Leaphorn. And at the thought of Leaphorn, he was irritated himself.

As he tilted his pickup off gravel and onto the steep track that led downward through the rabbitbrush toward his trailer house, he saw he had a visitor. A car was just pulling away from the trailer, coming toward him. A Navajo Tribal Police patrol car.

It stopped, went into reverse, reparked just where Chee usually parked his pickup. He parked beside it.

Captain Largo was driving, another policeman beside him.

“Glad to see you,” Largo said, hoisting himself out. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“That’s what Angie said,” Chee said. “You want to come in?”

“Why not,” Largo said.

The other policeman emerged from the passenger door, putting his uniform hat back on a head of short-cropped gray hair. Lieutenant Leaphorn.

“
Yaa’ eh t’eeh
,” Leaphorn said.

The afternoon sun still lit the high side of Ship Rock town but here in the cottonwoods beside the river Chee’s trailer had been in shadow for long enough to be cold. Chee turned on the propane heater, filled his coffeepot with water, got out three cups and three of the paper filters he was now using to brew the stuff right in the cups. Why had the captain been looking for him? Why was Leaphorn here, so far from his desk at Window Rock? Chee lit the fire under the coffeepot, conscious that he was more cautious with fire than he used to be. The captain and the lieutenant occupied his two chairs. Chee took a seat on the edge of his bunk.

“We have to wait until the water boils,” he said. “Just takes a few minutes.”

Largo cleared his throat, producing a rumble.

“We had a man killed here in Ship Rock today,” Largo said. “Shot.”

This was not anything like what Chee had expected.

“Shot? Who?”

“Fellow named Huan Ji,” Largo said. “You know him?”

“Wow,” Chee said. He sat stock still, digesting this. Digesting how he was learning it, too. “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t exactly know him, but I’ve talked to him. Once. Last week. It was his car I saw out there where Delbert was killed.” Then another thought. “Who shot him?”

He noticed Leaphorn sitting, arms folded across his chest, watching him.

“No suspects,” Largo said. “Apparently somebody came to his house this afternoon. It must have been very soon after he got home from school. Or maybe they were there waiting for him. Anyway, whoever it was shot him twice. Left him on the floor in the front room.”

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Chee said. “Any idea why anybody’d shoot him?”

“None,” Largo said. He was leaning his chair back against the wall, looking at Chee over his glasses. “How about you? Any ideas?”

“None,” Chee said.

“What did you talk to him about?”

“About what he might have seen that night Nez got killed.”