The next sighting was from an old man, again hurrying back to his hogan to avoid the ghosts which would be coming out in the gathering darkness. He had heard a thumping in the sky and had seen a wolf flying outlined black against the dim red afterglow on the stone face of a mesa wall. This, too, was south of the wildest zigzag of the line.
The others were similar. An old woman cutting wood, startled by a sound and a moving light overhead, and the noise returning four times from the four symbolic directions as she crouched in her hogan; a Dinnehotso schoolboy on a visit to a relative, watching a coyote on a cliff near the south shore of Lake Powell. He reported that the coyote disappeared and moments later he’d heard a flapping of wings and had seen something like a dark bird diving toward the lake surface and disappearing like a duck diving for a fish. And finally, a young man seeing a great black bird flying over the highway north of Mexican Water and turning itself into a truck as it passed him, and then flying again as it disappeared to the west. This report, picked up by an Arizona highway patrolman, bore the notation: Subject reportedly drunk at time.
Leaphorn marked each sighting location on the map with a tiny circle. The flying truck was close enough to the line to fit the pattern and the diving coyote/bird would fit if the line was extended about forty miles westward and jogged sharply northward.
Leaphorn yawned and slid the map back into the accordion file. Probably the helicopter had landed somewhere, refueled from a waiting truck, and flown through the covering night to a hiding place well away from the search area. He picked up the Atcitty-Tso homicide file, with a sense of anticipation. This one, as he remembered it, defied all applications of logic.
He read swiftly through the uncomplicated facts. A niece of Hosteen Tso had arranged for Mrs. Margaret Cigarette, a Listener of considerable reputation in the Rainbow Plateau country, to find out what was causing the old man to be ill. Mrs. Cigarette was blind. She had been driven to the Tso hogan by Anna Atcitty, a daughter of Mrs. Cigarettes sister.
The usual examination had been conducted. Mrs. Cigarette had left the hogan to go into her trance and do her listening. While she was in her trance, someone had killed the Tso and Atcitty subjects by hitting them on the head with what might have been a metal pipe or a gun barrel. Mrs. Cigarette had heard nothing. As far as could be determined, nothing was taken from either of the victims or from the hogan. An FBI agent named Jim Feeney, out of Flagstaff, had worked the case with the help of a BIA agent and two of Largos men.
Leaphorn knew Feeney and considered him substantially brighter than the run-of-the-mill FBI man. He knew one of the men Largo had assigned. Also bright. The investigation had been conducted as Leaphorn would have run it a thorough hunt for a motive. The four-man team had presumed, as Leaphorn would have presumed, that the killer had come to the Tso hogan not knowing that the two women were there, that the Atcitty girl had been killed simply to eliminate a witness, and that Mrs. Cigarette had lived because she hadn’t been visible. And so the team had searched for someone with a reason to kill Hosteen Tso, interviewing, sifting rumors, learning everything about an old man except a motive for his death.
With all Tso leads exhausted, the team reversed the theory and hunted for a motive for the murder of Anna Atcitty. They laid bare the life of a fairly typical reservation teen-ager, with a circle of friends at Tuba City High School, a circle of cousins, two and possibly three non-serious boyfriends. No hint of any relationship intense enough to inspire either love or hate, or motive for murder.
The final report had included a rundown on witchcraft gossip. Three interviewees had speculated that Tso was the victim of a witch and there was a modest amount of speculation that the old man was himself a skinwalker. Considering that this corner of the reservation was notoriously backward and witch-ridden, it was about the level of witchcraft gossip that Leaphorn had expected.
Leaphorn closed the report and slipped it into its folder, fitting it beside the tape cassette that held what Margaret Cigarette had told the police. He slumped down in his chair, rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, and sat trying to recreate what had happened at the Tso hogan. Whoever had come there must have come to kill the old man not the girl because it would have been simpler to kill her elsewhere. But what had caused the old man to be killed? There seemed to be no answer to that. Leaphorn decided that before he left for Short Mountain in the morning he would borrow a tape deck so that he could play back the Margaret Cigarette interview while he drove. Perhaps learning what Listening Woman thought had made Hosteen Tso sick might cast some light on what had made him die.
» 5 «
Listening Woman’s voice accompanied Joe Leaphorn eastward up Navajo Route I from Tuba City to the Cow Springs turnoff and then, mile after jolting mile, up the road to Short Mountain. The voice emerged from the tape player on the seat beside him, hesitating, hurrying, sometimes stumbling, and sometimes repeating itself. Leaphorn listened, his eyes intent on the stony road but his thoughts focused on the words that came from the speaker. Now and then he slowed the carryall, stopped the tape, reversed it, and repeated a passage. One section he replayed three times-hearing the bored voice of Feeney asking:
Did Tso tell you anything else? Did he say anything about anyone being mad at him, having a grudge? Anything like that?
And then the voice of Listening Woman: He thought maybe it could be the ghost of his great-grandfather. That’s because . . . Mrs. Cigarettes voice trailed off as she searched for English words to explain Navajo metaphysics. That’s because Hosteen Tso, he made a promise . . .
Made a promise to his great-grandfather? That would have been a long time ago. Feeney didn’t sound interested.
I think it was something they did with the oldest sons, Mrs. Cigarette said. So Hosteen Tso would have made the promise to his own father, and Hosteen Tsos father made it to his father, and
Okay, Feeney said. What was the promise?
Taking care of some sort of secret, Mrs. Cigarette said. Keeping something safe.
Like what?
A secret, Mrs. Cigarette said. He didn’t tell me the secret. Her tone suggested that she wouldn’t have been improper enough to ask.
Did he say anything about getting any threats from anyone? Have any quarrels? Did he Leaphorn grimaced, and pushed the fast forward button. Why hadn’t Feeney pursued this line of questioning? Because, obviously, the FBI agent didn’t want to waste time on the talk of great-grandfather ghosts during. a murder investigation. But it was equally obvious, at least to Leaphorn, that Mrs. Cigarette considered it worth talking about. The tape rushed squawking through ten minutes of questions and answers probing into what Mrs.
Cigarette had been told about Tsos relationship with neighbors and relatives. Leaphorn stopped it again at a point near the end of the interview. He pushed the play button.
. . . said it hurt him here in the chest a lot, Mrs. Cigarette was saying. And sometimes it hurt him in the side. And his eyes, they hurt him, too. Back in the head behind the eyes. It started hurting him right after he found out that somebody had walked across some sand paintings and they stepped right on Corn Beetle, and Talking God, and Gila Monster, and Water Monster. And that same day, he was climbing and he knocked a bunch of rocks down and they killed a frog. And the frog was why his eyes Feeneys voice cut in. But you’re sure he didn’t say anything about anybody doing anything to hurt him? You’re sure of that? He didn’t blame it on any witch out there?