User:Denwid/Skinwalkers
Long plot summary[edit]
Jim Chee had been a Navajo Tribal Policeman for seven years, but there were still parts of his job he knew he would never learn to like. One of them was having to talk to people that were not normal anymore. But he had to. He had to talk to Roosevelt Biestie and find out why he had killed a man called Dugai Endocheeney. But then it happened. Someone tried to shoot Chee and he became a victim himself. There was something going on and they had to find out as soon as possible what it was. The Navajo Tribal Police now had already three successful homicides and an attempted one. The first one was Irma Onesalt, the second one (two weeks later) Dugai Endocheeney and the last one Wilson Sam. What connected the three homicides was that there were no witnesses, no clues and no apparent motives. They didn’t know what to do and also Dr. Bahe Yellowhorse, who came to ask about the Endocheeney-case, was of no help. So they had to go on with the case and went to Roosevelt Bistie. Bistie admitted immediately having killed Endocheeney. But there was something that confused the policemen. Bistie told them that he had shot Endocheeney, but he actually had been stabbed with a butcher knife… Chee still tried to find out why he was shot at himself and who might have done it. What he didn’t know was, that there was this little, sick boy, whose mother thought Chee was a skinwalker. And skinwalker had to die so their victim could be healthy again…
There were four pins at Leaphorn’s map: at Window Rock, Utah borderlands, Chilchinbito Canyon and New Mexico. But until now the cases had no connection to each other.
Bistie had refused to tell them why he wanted to kill Endocheeney. The only reason Chee could imagine was that Bistie thought Endocheeney was a skinwalker and so he wanted him dead for the reason of witchcraft. But they didn't know anything about the real murderer who stabbed Endocheeney, not even whether he was Navajo or not. Not so in the Wilson Sam case. He was struck with a shovel and they found out that his murderer had to be a Navajo because of his behavior(the murderer didn’t step over the victim's body and didn’t walk where the water had run). They also found a human bone in Chees trailer, where he was shot at.
Everybody knew about Leaphorn that he hated bootleggers and had no tolerance for witchcraft. Chee on the contrary believes in all that. There was an complaint of Yellowhorse who claimed that Chee had interfered in the practice of his religion. Chee met a woman called Iron Woman and found out that Endocheeney became only one letter in his lifetime and that it came from the Social Services of Window Rock where Onesalt worked. Irma also told him that a corpse bone had been found in Endocheeney's body.
Then Leaphorn spoke with Dr. Jenks from the Badwater Clinic and he told him about Onesalt who had come to him once with a list of names and that she wanted to know the day of death of the people on that list. But Dr. Jenks couldn't remember having seen one of the homicide victim's names on that list.
Then Chee found out in a conversation with Iron Woman that Endocheeney had several hundred dollar’s worth of pawn and that he had broken a lag last summer and gotten his crutches from the Badwater Clinic. There were now two possible reasons for the death of Endocheeney: Either Endocheeney had witched somebody and the murderer wanted to kill him to reverse the witching or a witch had killed Endocheeney and had left the bone as its marker.
Chee goes to the prison and, arriving there, finds Janet Pete, a Navajo Lawyer who want's to defend Mr. Bistie. They she claims that the police have no right to keep Bistie at the prison. Chee ends up begging her to ask him for a conversation, and finally manages to talk to Bistie but in presence of Ms. Pete. He then asks him a few questions e.g. whether he owns a little piece of bone. When Janet leaves the room with her client, Chee searches Bisties bag and finds a little bone bead.
Leaphorn and Goreman invastigate at the murder scene of Wilson Sam. He is worried about his wife having alzheimer, so he tries to distract himself and we get to know what he did the whole morning: he wrote a letter to the health departments about Irma Onesalt's list they had found, leaves a note for Officer Chee and he read through the Wilson Sam file. Now they are at the murder scene and Leaphorn asks some questions and they find out the Wilson Sam must have been killed by a stranger.
Chee is still at the Jail and he doesn't know what to do with the bonebead and with Bistie as a whole. After Ms. Pete and her client leave he returns to the police station and finds Leaphorns note and letter in which it says that Alice Yazzie wants him to sing the blessing way. Below, he finds another letter from Mary Landon and realises that she probably doesn't love him anymore, it doesn't surprise him. Then he calls Leaphorn.
Chee and Leaphorn talk on the phone about the case. They tell each other what they found out and decide to talk to Bistie again.
They meet at Sanostee and they talk again about Bistie but then change the subject to Janet Pete during their ride to Bistie. It's getting dark when they approach Bistie's Place and they wait in front of it, but nobody appears. They wonder where he might be. Leaphorn get's out of the car and smells something burning. They step into the house and find an aluminum pot on a burning butane stove. Someone must have left in a hurry. They walk around the place and find out that someone was probably dragged out of the house right before they arrived, and they find clothes smelling of blood. They decide to follor the lead, it's almost totally dark now. Out in the landscape, Leaphorn get's shot in the back, Chee returns the fire.
The "officer down" call goes out to everyone, the FBI arrives and a lot of other reinforcement, too. They search the surroundigs and find a body: It's Bistie. He has a little wound on his chest.
After Lieutenant Leaphorn had been shot at the Bistie`s house he awakes in the Indian Health Service Hospital. He`s got pain but the first thing he is able to think of is Emma. He is thinking about how life would be in the future, how he will be able to manage everything while Emma is getting worse and worse. Then he gets interrupted by the FBI-Agent Dilly Streib who`s coming to talk about what happened the night before and what they are going to do further. They discuss the different cases of homicide and their connection. Leaphorn tries to convince Streib of the idea that all that might have something to do with witchcraft or at least with the people`s belief in witchcraft. Leaphorn tells him that they`ve found a bone bead in Chee`s Trailer and one in Roosevelt Bistie`s wallet and that it might be that the pathologist who examined Endocheeny`s body has also found a bone bead in that body, so all these cases could be linked in a way with witchcraft. Streib agrees even though he doesn`t like the idea of witchcraft being the link of all this, but he also believes that the Onesalt case doesn`t belong to the other ones. But Leaphorn thinks different. He thinks that the letters Onesalt wrote from the office might play an important rule. But he doesn`t mention anything about this.
The morning after the incident at Roosevelt Bistie`s House Chee awakes in his trailer. Suddenly he starts to think what happened after they`ve found Bistie. He remembers talking to Bistie`s daughter. She told him that her father knew he had to die because of his liver. The hospital told him that he can`t be cured so the only way Bistie saw was to kill the skinwalker who witched him and gave him corpse sickness. The mystery of Roosevelt Bistie is neatly solved in one sentence. He was trying to kill a skinwalker and the skinwalker came and killed Bistie. The only question that remains is who it is. And who called the lawyer Janet Pete to get him out of jail? It wasn`t his daughter as she says, it was somebody who wanted him to be home instead of being safely jailed. So Chee goes to see Janet Pete to find out who called her. First she doesn`t want to tell him, what surprises Chee. But after he`s told her that it was Bistie who got killed the night before she tells him that the man who called her had been lying and that she doesn`t know who actually called her. Now she feels responsible for what happened because the killer used her and now Bistie`s dead. Then Janet Pete mentions Onesalt. Onesalt came to see her several times because she wanted some information. Janet Pete was sure Onesalt was after something but she wouldn`t tell her why. The only thing Onesalt noted was one question: How can people look so healthy after they`re dead?
Leaphorn is on the way to Old McGinnis who might know something about Wilson Sam. Leaphorn is again thinking about the homicides and this whole witchcraft thing. The more he thinks about it the surer he gets that witchcraft superstition is the reason for all that`s happening even though he doesn`t like this fact at all. As he arrives at McGinnis`s he asks him if something unusual had happened concerning Wilson Sam. There was something. Wilson Sam got a letter in the middle of the month which is quite unusual. The letter came from the Social Service written by Irma Onesalt and exactly at that time when Endocheeny got his letter from Onesalt too. It`s quite likely that the letter has been unofficial. Now for Leaphorn the circle was complete. The bone beads link Wilson Sam and Endocheeny and Jim Chee and Roosevelt Bistie. The letters link Onesalt into the pattern. Now he had what he needed to solve this puzzle. He had no idea how. But he knew he would solve it.
On his day off Chee wants to go to AliceYazzie to do her the Blessing Way. But he decides to make a quick stop at the Badwater Clinic to see if he can learn something there. There was an incident a couple of weeks ago: Chee had to get a person named Frank Begay from Badwater Clinic to the chapter house because Onesalt wanted this guy to witness something. When they arrived there and the questions had been asked Frank Begay turned out to be the wrong Begay. Onesalt got very angry and went back to the Badwater Clinic to find out what was going on. There they told her that the only Begay who was in the hospital at this moment was Franklin Begay and so the sent him. Frank Begay however had been a patient of the clinic but died 6 months ago. But Oneslat insisted on having seen him on the list of patients who are in the hospital only a couple of weeks ago. So she wanted to see the list of patients who are in there again, but they refused to show her. Then she left very angry saying that she could get the list another way. Suddenly the list Leaphorn has been talking about the other day gets immensely important. The list with the names for which Irma Onesalt was seeking death certificate dates even though the persons on the list are still alive or were alive at this time. Both, Wilson Sam and Dugai Endocheeny are on this list. Now Jim Chee thinks to know why Irma Onesalt had died, and almost all the rest of it. All that remained was the question why someone tried to kill him.
Chee had to go to a client because of his job. As Leaphorn wanted to call Chee to inform him about the newest news he couldn’t reach him so leaphorn wanted to know where Chee is about to go. Leaphorn was very nervous, as he recognised that Chee is going to a place where nobody lives at the moment, he knew immediately that it was a trap so he took his car and drove to this empty place, hoping that it wasn’t too late. Chee drove his car to the place, where he had the meeting. As he opened the door of his car he saw a traditional navajo women who disappeared immediately in the house. Chee went out of his car and walked towards the little house as he recognised that something was strange. He thought about it and got a bit scared so he turned around and walked/trotted back to his car but it was too late, a shot had already hit him and two other shots followed. He rescued himself behind a door and shouted to the unknown person why she had shot him. After a moment she accused him to be a witch and that he was the reason why her baby was ill. After a converstation with the lady who shot him, he convinced her that he isn’t the man who is responsible for the hole disaster and he knew now who the real „Skinnwalker“ was, it had to be Yellowhorse. Leaphorn and another police officer went to the place where Chee had his meeting. They found an emty shotgun shell and after a little while they saw Jim Chee lying on the floor without any sign of life. They called the ambulance and brought Chee to the hospital where he could recover. As Leaphorn was back he was called by a women who told him, that his wife Emma doesn’t have Alzheimer’s disease. It was just a tumor and Emma will recover from this. He was very happy about that but with his thoughts he was by Chee. He drove back to the hospital and thought about the hole story and what Chee had told him before they brought him to the hospital. After a little while Leaphorn recognised that he has to be faster at the hospital than Dr. Yellowhorse, otherwise there would be another homicide. Chee woke up in the hospital. Slowly he could remember all the things which had happened before. He asked the nurses to call a police officer but it was too late, Dr. Yellowhorse was already in the hospital and came directly in his room. He gave Chee a medicine that he would fall asleep but Chee knew after closing his eyes Yellowhorse would kill him so he tried to stay awake. Yellowhorse told him everything about the story. He told him why he had done all this and apologised for that. Finally Jim Chee felt asleep.
Leaphorn arrived at the hospital and ran into it. But he wasn’t the only person who wanted to stop Yellowhorse. The women that had shot Chee had turned her mind and thought now that Yellowhorse was the skinwalker. She went into the room and shot Yellowhorse down. After this incidence Leaphorn sat down next to Chee, who survived, and talked with him about the hole story. They knew that there were still a few people who shot at somebody but haven’t been arrestet yet but they weren’t thinking about that because all the homicides are now finished.