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get a witness? Or any kind of evidence at all?”
    “No sir.”
    “Then we’ve got plenty of other stuff to work on,” Leaphorn said. “Find the kid. That’s the thing that’s pressing on us right now.” He got up and stood looking out the window, hands clasped behind him.
    “When we get that out of the way,” he said, talking to the glass, “I’d like to see what you can do with a vehicular homicide case. I’ll give you the file on it and you’re going to see it looks pretty hopeless.”
    “Which one?” Tribal law prohibited sale or possession of alcohol on the reservation, but bars flourished in the border towns and deaths caused by drunk drivers were common fare for the Navajo Tribal Police.
    “The victim was an old man named Victor Todachene. Lived near Crystal. Details are in the file,” Leaphorn said.
    “Okay,” Chee said.
    “What isn’t in the file is the chief’s interested in this one.” Leaphorn still seemed to be looking at something through the glass. “He was out at the Shiprock office when it got reported and he went out with the investigating officer. It was an unusually bad case.”
    “How?” In his relatively short tenure as a Navajo Tribal Policeman Chee had seen an infinite variety of vehicular homicide. All ugly. All bad. Badness was measured by the number of bodies.
    “Well,” Leaphorn said, “bad in a sense. The victim was a pedestrian. The vehicle sort of sideswiped him and then backed up—apparently to see what had happened—and then drove away and Mr. Todachene spent about two hours bleeding to death before the next driver came along.”
    “Oh,” Chee said.
    “I don’t think the chief has done a lot of work out on the road. I think it sort of shocked him.”
    It shocked Chee, too. Driving away turned an accident into murder. The worst sort of murder. Murder with no motive except keeping oneself out of trouble.
    “The Shiprock office has done all the regular stuff,” Leaphorn said. “Checking car repair places, sale of car paint, that sort of thing. It dead-ended. But the chief thinks we ought to solve it.”
    “So do I,” Chee said. “But we probably can’t.”
    “I guess you know that I think this job you got deserves the rank of sergeant,” Leaphorn said. “I haven’t been able to sell that yet. But the way the chief feels, if you solve this hit-and-run problem, making sergeant is a dead cinch.”
    Chee had no comment to that. He had been a sergeant once. Acting sergeant. But he hadn’t liked it much and it hadn’t lasted. He and the captain at Crownpoint hadn’t agreed on how an investigation should be handled.
    “Yes sir,” Chee said.
    “But first find the Kanitewa boy.”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Remember, the Sayesva homicide is absolutely none of our business.”
    Chee nodded and headed for the door, which, in Lieutenant Leaphorn’s office, was always open.
    “One more thing,” the lieutenant said. “Stay off of roofs.”

“THE FACT IS,” said Sergeant Harold Blizzard, “this Sayesva thing is none of your business. Your business ends at the Navajo Reservation boundary.”
    Blizzard was wearing his Bureau of Indian Affairs Law and Order uniform with a New York Yankees cap. He was talking slowly and looking straight over the steering wheel and out the windshield. Jim Chee had been reading a book of Margaret Atwood’s short stories he’d borrowed from Janet Pete, thinking it might impress her. He decided Miss Atwood would call Blizzard’s expression either “bleak” or “stolid.” Or maybe “wintry.” That fit the weather, too. It was cold for November, but Robin Marshment had assured them on her KRQE weathercast last night that the snowstorm hitting Utah would stay a little to the north.
    “I know the Sayesva thing is none of my business,” Chee said. “In fact, my lieutenant just told me that. He said to find the Kanitewa kid. Nothing else. He’s the grandson of a member of our Tribal Council. A woman. The lieutenant said get