Barbone fell silent. The silence extended long enough to signal that his account was finished. He had talked about an hour, Chee thought, but he resisted the impulse to confirm this with a glance at his watch. Into the silence Old Woman Mustache spoke.

“Too much talk about those father’s clans,” she said in a voice that was very old but surprisingly clear. “Remember in the Fourth World when the women got tired of the men and went across the river and pleasured themselves. Remember what the Holy People taught us then. That men have their things to do, and women have their things to do, and one of the woman’s things is the family. Remember what they taught us then. The mother’s clan, the clan you’re born for, that’s the one that is important.”

Having said that, with long pauses for breathing between sentences, Old Woman Mustache closed her eyes and rested. Gracie Cayodito spoke next.

She began with the self-effacing “They say,” by which traditional Navajos pass along information without making any personal claim to it. In the case of Gracie Cayodito the form did not represent any self-doubts. She took them through the histories of Chee’s two clans. Since her sources of data considered the Bitter Water Dinee’ one of the original four formed by Changing Woman herself, she took them back to the mythic days when the spirits called Holy People still walked the Earth surface world with the humans they had formed. Gracie Cayodito covered this history with relative speed, but digressed often into the heresies being committed by the contemporary shamans who violated the old rules of ritualism, and, with hard looks at Jim Chee, related the horrors produced by violations of the incest taboo.

“People who have sex with their sisters,” she said, looking at Chee. “That causes craziness. That causes people to jump into the fire.”

But, alas, when she had finally finished, whether Janet Pete was indeed his sister remained unclear in Chee’s mind. What was crystal-clear was that Cayodito felt even more strongly than Hosteen Barbone did about adapting ceremonials as old as the dawn of time to the terminal years of the twentieth century.

Then Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai spoke – not long, but long enough to underline the important points.

First, nobody could tell for sure whether or not this daughter of the man from the Hunger People was a clan sister of this son of the Slow Talking People and the Bitter Water Dinee’, and second, the Beauty Way of the Navajo people was being undermined by young shamans who were too lazy to learn the rules the Holy People had taught, or too willing to do ceremonies the wrong way and thus adapt them to the world of the bilagaani.

Chee parked his muddy pickup in the police cars only area at the office and waited for the place to officially open at 8 A.M. He would check in with Leaphorn and then… But no. He’d forgotten. Leaphorn would be gone. Off on his great China trip. Gone for a month. Chee felt a twinge of guilt. He should have checked in with the lieutenant yesterday. Should have told him good-bye and gotten his final instructions. Leaphorn would. He’d probably want him to do something about the Jimmy Chester-Ed Zeck telephone call. He’d probably want to talk about how they could get some evidence against Chester that could be used in court. Probably want to bring in Dilly Streib. Maybe help set up an FBI sting operation.

He glanced at his watch. Couple of more minutes and Virginia would be there. If he’d guessed right about the lieutenant, there’d be an envelope awaiting him, full of instructions on what to do and how to do it. He allowed himself a final review of what last night’s session meant to him. Whether Janet was his clan sister, even vaguely, remained in doubt. But, but, but… There was no doubt at all that for Hosteen Barbone and Gracie Cayodito and, much worse, Frank Sam Nakai, his own Little Father, mere absence of proof was not good enough.

And how about Old Woman Mustache? When Frank Sam Nakai had finished his summation they had all sat in silence for a while, watching the fire burn down under the smoke hole. And then the old woman had spoken:

“You have wasted words,” she said. “Too much talk of men and the man’s clan. Nothing matters but the mother’s clan.”

But what the devil did that mean to him? Janet’s mother was a white. There was no mother’s clan. He climbed out of the truck, and slammed the door behind him.

Virginia looked no happier than he felt.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Lieutenant Leaphorn was looking everywhere for you.”

“Took my days off,” Chee said. “Did he leave anything for me?”

“Not with me,” she said, and glared at him.

Nor, to Chee’s surprise, was there a fat envelope in his in-basket. There was absolutely nothing in it. Leaphorn’s office door was closed, which wasn’t unusual. It was locked. Unusual, but understandable under the circumstances. He wouldn’t want to leave it open for a month.

Chee trotted downstairs, past Virginia’s now-vacant desk, and out to his car. This felt odd. With Leaphorn in China for a month he was totally on his own. Well, not quite. He probably should report to the chief, as the lieutenant did. But that could wait until he had a little time to think. To do that he’d go home. Maybe he’d even get a little sleep.

He pulled his truck out of the lot, stopping to let the northbound traffic pass. The third car looked like Leaphorn’s. And Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn was driving it.

Chapter 25

WHEN JOE LEAPHORN realized that the dirty pickup truck tagging behind him belonged to Jim Chee and saw, through the mud-speckled windshield, that Chee was driving it, his instinctive reaction was to pull off on the shoulder and start asking questions immediately. But he resisted that impulse. He wanted more privacy. He turned down his own street, pulled into his driveway, and turned off the ignition. By the time Chee had parked on the street, Leaphorn was standing beside his truck.

“Where have you been?” Leaphorn asked, pleased that he’d kept the emotion out of his voice.

“I thought you’d gone to China,” Chee said. It was the wrong thing to say. Chee realized that instantly from Leaphorn’s expression. “I had some days off,” he added.

“You’ve been out of communication for two days,” Leaphorn said. “You know the rule about that.”

“Yes sir,” Chee said.

Leaphorn stared at him. “Are you telling me that since I was supposed to be in China you could take off without going through the procedure?”

“No sir,” Chee said. “I forgot. I had other things on my mind.”

“Like what?”

Like Janet Pete, Chee thought. Like not being able to be with her. Like hurting her by telling her she was taboo. But to hell with Leaphorn. That was none of his business. “Like I think I may have solved that Todachene hit-and-run case,” he said. And as soon as he said it, he regretted it. “And like what to do about Ed Zeck and Councilman Chester,” he added, hoping that would change the subject.

“Ed Zeck and Councilman Chester,” Leaphorn said, with a question in his voice.

“Yeah,” Chee said. “What did you think of that tape? The one I left in your tape player?”

Through years of police work, of questioning people to whom he didn’t want to show his reaction to their answers, Joe Leaphorn had learned to control his expression. He could hear the best news, or the worst, behind the same bland and neutral face. But not now. His cheeks flushed, blood rushed to his forehead, the lines around his mouth tightened.

Jim Chee was looking at an enraged Leaphorn.

But it only lasted a moment. Relief replaced fury. The veils of mystery had fallen away. He wasn’t the victim of some unknown malice, the target of a shrewd and secret enemy. He was a victim of simpleminded boneheadedness. No more suspension, or risk of dismissal, or hiring a lawyer to defend against a charge of conspiracy to suppress evidence. All of that could be fixed tomorrow morning. Leaphorn felt weak with relief. He leaned a hand against Chee’s truck. And then he remembered what this boneheadedness had cost him.