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Chee let the question hang. He spent a fraction of a second reaching the answer, which was they could have if they wanted to try. Then he thought about the real reason Wells had kept him working late without a meal or a shower. Two sentences in Wells's report. One would note that the possibility the witness had been approached had been checked with local Navajo Police. The next would report whatever Chee said next. Wells would have followed Federal Rule One-Protect Your Ass.
Chee shrugged. "You want to hear the rest of my witchcraft business?"
Wells put his drink on the lamp table and untied his shoe. "Does it bear on this?"
"Who knows? Anyway there's not much left. I'll let you decide. The point is we had already picked up this corpse Emma Tso's son-in-law found. Somebody had reported it weeks ago. It had been collected, and taken in for an autopsy. The word we got on the body was Navajo male in his thirties probably. No identification on him."
"How was this bird killed?"
"No sign of foul play," Chee said. "By the time the body was brought in, decay and the scavengers hadn't left a lot. Mostly bone and gristle, I guess. This was a long time after Emma Tso's son-in-law saw him."
"So why do they think Begay killed him?" Wells removed his second shoe and headed for the bathroom.
Chee picked up the telephone and dialled the Kayenta clinic. He got the night supervisor and waited while the supervisor dug out the file. Wells came out of the bathroom with his toothbrush. Chee covered the mouthpiece. "I'm having them read me the autopsy report," Chee explained. Wilson began brushing his teeth at the sink in the dressing alcove. The voice of the night supervisor droned into Chee's ear.
"That all?" Chee asked. "Nothing added on? No identity yet? Still no cause?"
"That's him," the voice said.
"How about shoes?" Chee asked. "He have shoes on?"
"Just a sec," the voice said. "Yep. Size ten D. And a hat, and…"
"No mention of the neck or skull, right? I didn't miss that? No bones missing?"
Silence. "Nothing about neck or skull bones."
"Ah," Chee said. "Fine. I thank you." He felt great. He felt wonderful. Finally things had clicked into place. The witch was exorcised. "Jake," he said. "Let me tell you a little more about my witch case."
Wells was rinsing his mouth. He spit out the water and looked at Chee, amused. "I didn't think of this before," Wells said, "but you really don't have a witch problem. If you leave that corpse a death by natural causes, there's no case to work. If you decide it's a homicide, you don't have jurisdiction anyway. Homicide on an Indian reservation, FBI has jurisdiction." Wells gri
Chee looked at his boots, which were still dusty. His appetite had left him, as it usually did an hour or so after he missed a meal. He still hungered for a bath. He picked up his hat and pushed himself to his feet.
"I'll go home now," he said. "The only thing you don't know about the witch case is what I just got from the autopsy report. The corpse had his shoes on and no bones were missing from the base of the skull."
Chee opened the door and stood in it, looking back. Wells was taking his pyjamas out of his suitcase. "So what advice do you have for me? What can you tell me about my witch case?"
"To tell the absolute truth, Chee, I'm not into witches," Wells said. "Haven't been since I was a boy."
"But we don't really have a witch case now," Chee said. He spoke earnestly. "The shoes were still on, so the skin wasn't taken from the soles of his feet. No bones missing from the neck. You need those to make corpse powder."
Wells was pulling his undershirt over his head. Chee hurried.
"What we have now is another little puzzle," Chee said. "If you're not collecting stuff for corpse powder, why cut the skin off this guy's hands?"
"I'm going to take a shower," Wells said. "Got to get my Begay back to L. A. tomorrow."
Outside the temperature had dropped. The air moved softly from the west, carrying the smell of rain. Over the Utah border, over the Cococino Rim, over the Rainbow Plateau, lightning flickered and glowed. The storm had formed. The storm was moving. The sky was black with it. Chee stood in the darkness, listening to the mutter of thunder, inhaling the perfume, exulting in it.
He climbed into the truck and started it. How had they set it up, and why? Perhaps the FBI agent who knew Begay had been ready to retire. Perhaps an accident had been arranged. Getting rid of the assistant prosecutor who knew the witness would have been even simpler-a matter of hiring him away from the government job. That left no one who knew this minor witness was not Simon Begay. And who was he? Probably they had other Navajos from the Los Angeles community stealing cars for them. Perhaps that's what had suggested the scheme. To most white men all Navajos looked pretty much alike, just as in his first years at college all Chee had seen in white men was pink skin, freckles, and light-coloured eyes. And what would the impostor say? Chee gri
Chee drove into the rain twenty miles west of Kayenta. Huge, cold drops drummed on the pickup roof and turned the highway into a ribbon of water. Tomorrow the backcountry roads would be impassable. As soon as they dried and the washouts had been repaired, he'd go back to the Tsossie hogan, and the Tso place, and to all the other places from which the word would quickly spread. He'd tell the people that the witch was in custody of the FBI and was gone forever from the Rainbow Plateau.
MARCIA MULLER (b. 1944)
Marcia Muller has won her way into the record books of detective fiction as the creator of the first well-known, fully licensed, totally believable, hard-boiled female private investigator. While Muller has used two other women sleuths, both amateurs, Sharon McCone remains her best-known creation.
Muller was born in Detroit and studied English and journalism at the University of Michigan before moving to California, where she worked on the staff of Sunset magazine, as an interviewer in San Francisco for the University of Michigan 's Institute of Social Research, and as a partner in Invisible Ink, a consulting service for writers.
Although Maxine O'Callaghan introduced a female private eye, Delilah West, in a 1974 short story, Muller's first McCone mystery, «Edwin of the Iron Shoes,» published in 1977, is credited with establishing conventions for such characters that are still observed today. Muller provided her sleuth with a family of characters that includes professional associates at the All Souls Legal Cooperative in San Francisco. She also endowed her with a sense of humour, a mission to see justice prevail, and a concern for the powerless. Many of McCone's cases arise from problems faced by people whom she knows personally, and they take place in notably realistic settings, generally in California. The verbal skills-in particular, the interviewing expertise-that McCone employs are very significant to solving her cases, making verbal acuity another strength emulated by later writers.
Muller's two other series characters are Elena Oliverez, curator at the Museum of Mexican Arts in Santa Barbara, and Joa
In addition to producing fiction, Muller is an accomplished critic and anthologist having collaborated on a dozen books, including three detective novels written with her husband, Bill Pronzini. In «Double,» for instance, the story is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Muller's McCone and Pronzini's detective, Nameless.