The Way of the Bear

Set in and around the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest, this novel in the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito mystery series follows Navajo Tribal Police officer Bernadette "Bernie" Manuelito and her husband, Lieutenant Jim Chee, as a trip to southeastern Utah's Bears Ears National Monument draws them into a web of fossil theft, murder, and betrayal.

Bernie and Chee travel to Bears Ears in December for personal and professional reasons. Chee has arranged a sweat lodge ceremony with Desmond Grayhair, a respected hatáálii (traditional Navajo healer), and has been assigned to meet a wealthy paleontologist named Chapman Dulles about a donation to the Fallen Officers Memorial Fund. Bernie, recently passed over for a detective promotion and carrying an unnamed personal grief, joins him. Grayhair senses her sadness and suggests she hike among the sandstone monoliths of Valley of the Gods.

During her hike, Bernie discovers potsherds that appear deliberately scattered, modern excavation tools near a cliff, and an unmarked trench she falls into. She finds petroglyphs whose faces have been scratched away, an act associated with witchcraft in Diné (Navajo) tradition. As she returns to the truck, a dark pickup with a cylinder-shaped object on its grille pursues her. A passenger fires a rifle, hitting the white jacket she discarded to avoid being a target. On her drive back to the motel in Bluff, she encounters Roper Black, a young Navajo man whose wife Hannah is in labor. Using Chee's first-aid kit, Bernie delivers a healthy baby girl.

That night, Jessica Johnson, a woman staying in the adjacent motel room, knocks on their door: Her husband Kyle, a paleontologist, left for the grocery store and has not returned. Chee advises her to wait until morning. A text informs him that a tribal coalition ceremony has been canceled due to an approaching blizzard.

The next morning, Bernie and Chee return to the site with Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Ranger Cassidy Kingsley, a recent transfer from Sacramento filling in for Ranger Ajax Becenti. The trench has been filled and the tools removed overnight. Kingsley is skeptical, but Chee identifies fresh tire tracks and boot prints. They find burlap scraps and chalky white powder. Chee theorizes the excavation targets fossils, not archaeological artifacts, and that the potsherds were scattered as a smokescreen. Kingsley authorizes further digging. Bernie pockets a small turquoise bear on a pink ribbon found during the dig.

A brief interlude reveals Jessica secretly meeting a partner to discuss a criminal scheme and plans to flee to the Cayman Islands. Near the site, Bernie meets Lilakai Zonnie, a local Navajo woman who explains that workers have blocked her family's road and that her niece Crystal received a threatening photograph beside the vandalized petroglyphs with the message "Stay away. Stay alive."

Meanwhile, Chee meets Black at a restaurant. Black, the young father from the roadside delivery, is also Dulles's sole security employee. He explains that Dulles, a PhD paleontologist, has grown tense since his girlfriend left and a deal with a fossil company called Dinostar collapsed. When Dulles's home alarm goes off, they rush to the house and find a shattered front door, blood on the driveway, and an unidentified dead man. Dulles's workshop has been ransacked: A laptop, files, and something heavy have been removed. Black reveals that Dulles recently discovered a rare fossilized skull he named Mary and considered priceless.

Ranger Becenti asks Bernie to help deliver death notification to Jessica: Kyle has been found dead. Jessica seems remarkably composed. On a drive to deliver food to the Zonnie family, Jessica reveals Kyle "might have been into something he shouldn't have been messing with." After returning to the motel, Chee tells Bernie by phone that Kyle was actually shot, a fact initially missed because his heavy clothing contained the blood.

Near the excavation site, Bernie and Jessica encounter Donray, whose dark truck with longhorn horns on its grille matches the vehicle from Bernie's attack. He confirms he works for Dulles through Dinostar. Jessica's business partner, Christopher McDouglas, later explains that Dinostar finds and sells commercial fossils. Through a call with Lilakai, Bernie learns Jessica was romantically involved with Dulles, contradicting Jessica's account of their relationship.

Sheriff Gillman asks Bernie to check a parked white Lexus in Valley of the Gods. There she finds Kingsley behaving nervously. When Donray arrives, Bernie arrests him. He claims Kingsley fired the rifle during her attack. Kingsley strikes Bernie from behind, and she wakes locked in the Lexus's trunk, being towed.

Chee borrows a vehicle and drives into the storm. He finds Bernie's truck on the road but no sign of her. Acting on information from Black about a cave where Dulles likes to hide, Chee hikes into the snowy hills and finds Dulles with a swollen ankle. Chris is also present, pressuring Dulles to share credit for Mary. Using a safe word Black shared, Chee confirms Dulles is in danger, then returns to search for Bernie.

On the road, Chee confronts Kingsley and Donray with the tow rig. When Donray begins to cooperate, Kingsley shoots him in the shoulder and fires at Chee. Chee kills Kingsley and frees Bernie from the trunk. Donray reveals that Chris ordered the trench filled and the petroglyphs vandalized at Jessica's suggestion to keep Navajos away. Chee hikes back to the cave, where Chris draws a gun. Chee disarms and subdues him.

Dulles reveals the full story. Kyle pressured him to let Dinostar profit from Mary. The man with missing fingers, Dev, whom Kyle or Jessica sent to break into Dulles's house, instead came to warn Dulles out of gratitude for a past rescue and was shot at the door. Dulles ended his relationship with Jessica after discovering she was still married to Kyle. Chris confesses that Jessica asked him to kill Kyle but he refused; Jessica killed Kyle herself with a gun stolen from Dulles's house.

As the men descend through the blizzard, Bernie drives Donray's truck toward the highway. Jessica, driving Chris's red Jeep, has slid off the road and refuses to abandon it because it contains what she believes is the stolen skull. Chee arrives wearing Dulles's lumberjack hat, and Jessica mistakes him for Dulles, pulling a gun and ranting that the skull is worth 12 million dollars. Bernie orders her to drop the weapon. When Jessica spins toward her with the gun raised, Bernie shoots and kills her.

Dulles tells Chee he will donate to the Fallen Officers Memorial Fund and reveals that Mary is safely locked in his gun safe. What Jessica stole was the plaster replica. Backup security footage later confirms Kingsley killed Dev at Dulles's house and stole the replica. Black and Hannah name their baby Bernadette, after the officer who delivered her.

At the Bluff Inn, Bernie steps outside to see the moon emerging from the clearing storm. She resolves to return the turquoise bear to Crystal the next day as a symbol of the girl's strength. She tells Chee she needs to share something important. Through tears, she reveals that she had hoped to give him news of a pregnancy but experienced a miscarriage, the grief she has carried throughout the trip. Chee sings a healing song beneath the moonlit sky. Bernie asks him to listen while she tells the full story, and they go inside together.