She was checking on plague cases. Drove out of Tuba City more than a week ago and she still hasn't come back."
McGinnis had been rocking, holding his measuring cup in his left hand, left elbow on the rocker's arm, his forearm moving just enough to compensate for the motion—keeping the bourbon from splashing, keeping the surface level. But he wasn't watching his drink. He was staring out the dusty window. Not out of it, Leaphorn realized. McGinnis was watching a medium-sized spider working on a web between the window frame and a high shelf. He stopped rocking, pushed himself creakily out of the chair. "Look at that," he said. "The sonsabitches are slow learners."
He walked to the window, crumpled a handkerchief from his overalls pocket, chased the spider across the web with it, folded the cloth carefully around the insect, opened the window screen, and shook it out into the yard. Obviously the old man had a lot of practice capturing such insects. Leaphorn remembered once seeing McGinnis capture a wasp the same way, evicting it unharmed through the same window.
McGinnis retrieved his drink and lowered himself, groaning, back into his chair.
"Sonofabitch will be right back first time he sees the door open, "he said.
"I've known people to just step on them," Leaphorn said, but he remembered his mother dealing with spiders in the same way.
"I used to do that," McGinnis said. "Even had some bug spray. But you get older, and you look at 'em up close and you get to thinking about it. You get to thinking they got a right to live, too. They don't kill me. I don't kill them. You step on a beetle, it's like a little murder."
"How about eating sheep?" Leaphorn asked.
McGinnis was rocking again, ignoring him. "Very small murders, I guess you'd have to say. But one thing leads to another."
Leaphorn sipped his Pepsi.
"Sheep? I quit eating meat a while back," McGinnis said. "But you didn't drive all the way in here to talk about my diet. You want to talk about that Health Department girl that run off with their truck."
"You hear anything about that?" Leaphorn asked.
"Woman named Cathy something or other, wasn't it?" McGinnis said. "The Fleacatcher, the folks out here call her, because she collects the damned things. She was in here a time or two, asking questions. Wanted to get some gas once. Bought some soda pop, some crackers. Can of Spam, too. And it wasn't a truck, either, now I think of it. It was a Jeep. A black one."
"About that black Jeep. The family's offering a thousand-dollar reward to anybody who finds it."
McGinnis took another sip, savored it, stared out the window.
"That don't sound like they think she eloped."
"They don't," Leaphorn said. "They think somebody killed her. What sort of questions was she asking when she was in here?"
"About sick folks. Where they might have got the fleas on 'em to get the plague. Did they have sheepdogs? Anybody notice prairie dogs dying? Or dead squirrels? Dead kangaroo rats?" McGinnis shrugged. "Strictly business, she was. Seemed like a mighty tough lady. No time for kidding around. Hard as nails. And I noticed when she was walking around, she was looking at the floor all the time. Looking for rat droppings. And that pissed me off some. And I said, 'Missy, what are you looking for back there behind the counter? You lose something?' And she said, 'I'm looking for mice manure.'" McGinnis produced a rusty laugh and slapped the arm of his rocker. "Came right out with it without a blink and kept right on looking. Quite a lady she is."
"You heard anything about what might have happened to her?"
McGinnis laughed, took another sip of his bourbon. "Sure," he said. "It gives folks something to talk about. Heard all kinds of things. Heard she might have run off with Krause—that fellow she works with." McGinnis chuckled. "That'd be like Golda Meir running off with Yasser Arafat. Heard she might have run off with another young man who was out here with her a time or two. Some sort of student scientist, I think he was. He seemed kind of strange to me."
"Sounds like you don't think she and her boss got along."
"They was in here just twice that I remember," McGinnis said. "First time they never said a word to each other. I guess that's all right if you're stuck in the same truck all day. Second time it was snarling and snapping. Hostile-like."
"I'd heard she didn't like him," Leaphorn said.
"It was mutual. He was paying for some stuff he got, and she walked past him out the door and he said 'Bitch.'" Loud enough for her to hear him?" If she was listening."
"You think he might have knocked her on the head and dumped her somewhere?"
"I figure him for being hell on rodents and fleas, things like that. Not humans," McGinnis said. He thought about that for a moment and chuckled again. "Of course, couple of my customers figure the skinwalkers got off with her."
"What do you think of that?"
"Not much," McGinnis said. "Skinwalkers get a lot of blame around here. Sheepdog dies. Car breaks down. Kid gets the chicken pox. Roof leaks. Skinwalkers get the blame."
"I heard she had driven out toward Yells Back Butte to do some work out there," Leaphorn said. "There always seemed to be a lot of witching talk around there."
"Lot of talk about that place," McGinnis said. "Had its own legend. Old Man Tijinney was supposed to be a witch. Had a bucket of silver dollars buried somewhere. A tub full, the way some told it. When the last of that outfit died off people dug holes all around out there. Some of the city kids didn't even respect the death hogan taboo. I heard they dug in there, too."
"Find anything?"
McGinnis shook his head, sipped his drink. "You ever run into that Dr. Woody fella out there? He comes in here a time or two just about every summer. Working on some sort of a rodent research project here and there, and I think he has some sort of setup near the butte. He was in three or four weeks back to get some stuff and telling me another skinwalker story. I think it's a kind of hobby of his. Collects them. Thinks they're funny."
"Who's he get 'em from?" Leaphorn asked. It was a rare Navajo who'd pass along a skinwalker report to anyone he didn't know pretty well.
McGinnis obviously knew exactly what Leaphorn was thinking.
"Oh, he's been coming out here for years. Long enough to speak good Navajo. Comes and goes. Hires local folks to collect rodent information for him. Friendly guy."
"And he told you a fresh skinwalker story? Something that happened out near Yells Back?"
"I don't know how fresh it was," McGinnis said. "He said Old Man Saltman told him about seeing a skinwalker standing by a bunch of boulders at the bottom of the butte a little bit after sundown, and then disappearing behind them, and when he came out he turned into an owl and went flopping away like he had a broken wing."
"Turned from what into an owl?"
McGinnis looked surprised by the question. "Why, from a man. You know how it goes. Hosteen Saltman said the owl kept flopping around as if he wanted to be followed."
"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "And he didn't follow, of course. That's how the story usually goes."
McGinnis laughed. "I remember about the first or second time I saw you, I asked if you believed in skin-walkers, and you said you just believed in people who believed in 'em, and all the trouble that caused. Is that still the case?"
"Pretty much," Leaphorn said.
"Well then, let me tell you one I'll bet you haven't heard before. There's an old woman who comes in here after shearing time every spring to sell me three or four sacks of wool. Sometimes they call her Grandma Charlie, I think it is, but I believe her name is Old Lady Notah. She was in here just yesterday telling me about seeing a skinwalker."
McGinnis raised his glass in a toast to Leaphorn. "Now listen to this one. She said she was out looking after a bunch of goats she has over by Black Mesa—right on the edge of the Hopi Reservation—and she notices somebody down the slope messing around with something on the ground. Like hunting for something. Anyway, this fella disappears behind the junipers for a minute or two and then emerges, and now he's different. Now he's bigger, and all white with a big round head, and when he turned her way, his whole face flashed."