There are limitations to the safety that routine and rigorous planning can bring you when it comes to life. The unpredictability of things often wins against all our aims and schemes. And in that case, the only thing that truly helps a person fight the unpredictable is adaptability. That’s something that Leaphorn, Bern, and Chee are in dire need of in the 5th episode of the third season of Dark Winds. Nothing has worked out the way they expected. While Leaphorn strives to hide a truth he thought he wouldn’t have to face again, and Chee deals with the fallout of unreciprocated love, Bern has a difficult time accepting that, at Border Patrol, she’s not amongst friends.
Spoiler Alert
A wandering Leaphorn
Flashes of Leaphorn’s internal scream may be just the right way to communicate his emotional and spiritual state in the current circumstances. Lately, even when he’s close to a breakthrough, nothing seems to be working out for Leaphorn. Since Halsey was murdered right under the Navajo Police’s nose, it makes sense that the FBI is taking over the case. But that’s just as well. It’s not like Leaphorn’s days are going to be wide open. He’s about to be quite preoccupied with saving his own neck now that Special Agent Washington is convinced that he’s the prime suspect in the BJ Vines murder case. So far, she’s made all the right moves to corner him. But the smartest thing that Washington has done is avoid any sort of conflict with Leaphorn while she gathered enough evidence to nail him. She probably expected to have to spend a lot more time doing that before Vines’ widow walked into the station. Considering their marriage was the least stable thing about them, Rosemary doesn’t really have a clean alibi for the night of her husband’s disappearance. But Rosemary’s a survivor. She married the man who probably started the fire that killed her sister, who was also his wife, and has since lived a rather complicated life with Vines and the upper airway injuries she sustained. Yeah. She can look after herself. And it’s her survivalist nature that’s made her hold on to a crucial piece of information about her husband’s murder case.
What Rosemary has to say is all the confirmation that Washington needed to get a search warrant. Evidently, it wasn’t exactly a clean crime that Leaphorn committed on that terrible night. He was hardly thinking about anything else other than Joe Jr. and Vines, and he wasn’t making the smartest moves. Judging by what Rosemary has to say, Leaphorn didn’t know that Vines’ insomniac neighbor watched Vines get driven away in a police car. It’s really too bad for Leaphorn that his actions have really hurt the only person who could be his rock right now. It was foolish of him to think that Emma wouldn’t be touched by the darkness that latched on to him when he crossed that line. And Emma’s not wrong to feel spiritually violated by this act of her husband. Leaphorn hasn’t been the same himself since. Even the Navajo medicine woman gets a whiff of his spiritual turmoil when she comes to perform a cleansing ceremony at the station. But there’s no easy answer to the questions that keep Leaphorn up at night. When he asks the medicine woman about Ye’iitsoh and she doesn’t give him a definite answer, she’s trying to redirect him to the source of the monster he’s scared of. The pollen path that she mentions is the Navajo path to a person’s spiritual existence. Leaphorn has lost his way and opened himself up to the kind of darkness that could potentially destroy him. What he needs is introspection. And it looks like he’s going to have a lot more time alone. So whether or not he likes it, life’s made it impossible for him to avoid feeling his feelings. Emma’s asked him to leave. She may not mean to add to Leaphorn’s troubles, but their separation is bound to look bad now that Washington has shown up at their doorstep with a warrant. Washington doesn’t need to play nice anymore. But I doubt that she’ll find anything at his place. Either way, Leaphorn’s on his own now.
The other side of the border
A potential cocaine empire doesn’t make for very good pillow talk. But like Ivan just said, Bern never stops working. Now that Chee’s filled her in on Tom Spenser’s reach over the rez, she doesn’t want to waste any time waiting for more deaths. She wants to investigate Spenser independently, even if that means breaking a few Border Patrol rules. Ivan isn’t too happy about the fact that she wants them to go on a couple’s weekend/secret investigation in Mexico. But if he doesn’t get on board, she’ll just end up taking that giant risk by herself. Bern’s genuinely interested in Ivan. So much so that she trusts him enough to open up about her life. From what she says about how Leaphorn practically saved her life, it sounds like she’s molded herself in his image. Leaphorn is the source of the morals that make her this persistent and righteous. So no amount of danger will ever be enough for Bern to give up her faith in the sense of right and wrong. Bern and Ivan are absolutely on their own when they secretly take pictures of Spenser’s trucks and Budge at the AGS-owned oil refinery in Juarez. But Bern didn’t take on this challenge for nothing. She’s got intel from Chee about Budge’s possible involvement in the deaths around the rez. Even if she can’t get anything on Spenser yet, holding some power over Budge will come in handy. But the spot Bern and Ivan picked to snoop from doesn’t have the best cover. So when they’re inevitably caught, and they run for their lives, they know just how much better they need to get at covering their tracks if they want to survive this investigation. It’s a pretty unavoidable brush with death that Bern and Ivan dodged by a hair. Budge’s head of security isn’t that lucky. Something tells me that this is the point where things actually get real for Bern. She’s still got the time and the chance to save herself. But like she says to Ivan, she isn’t that kind of a cop. She’s going to keep at this despite the danger it poses to her life. She probably doesn’t expect Ivan to keep fighting by her side, but something happens when they’re packing that makes Bern look at Ivan with clear suspicion. To be honest, I can’t put my finger on what made Bern tense up so quick. But that’s only because Dark Winds doesn’t want to give it up just yet. It may just be that Bern figures something out when she looks at the Border Patrol badge on the nightstand. Whatever the case might be, Bern will only benefit from not trusting Ivan too much. There’s still no telling which side he’s batting for.
Why does George want to go to Reno?
Coming back to the topic of adaptability, it was Leaphorn who made me think of it in the first place. Each of our three protagonists are at significant crossroads in their lives. Bern’s just starting to figure out what it’s like to work around people she can’t trust. And Chee’s going on a bender to soothe his pain over losing Bern to another man. But when you look at Leaphorn, all you see is his search for clarity. No matter what he’s going through, Leaphorn’s approach to his personal demons is generally healthy. Even as he’s living out of his car, Leaphorn is determined to get things done. That’s the only thing that can keep his mind off his personal struggles. His persistence to find George Bowlegs and the man who killed Ernesto only proves just how deeply he cares about doing the right thing. Speaking of Ernesto’s killer, it looks like Halsey was telling the truth after all. When Leaphorn and Chee go over to the diner to find out if Halsey was there on the night of Ernesto’s mother, the waitress corroborates the claim. He really was at the diner when Ernesto was murdered. But he knew the man who’d killed him. This is where Budge comes in. The waitress remembers seeing someone who, by her description, sounds a lot like Budge. And Budge didn’t stick around with Halsey. He left pretty early, and possibly went to find Ernesto and kill him. If it wasn’t for Bern’s investigation, Chee would’ve had a very difficult time finding out who Roberto/Budge is. Turns out, he’s a highly skilled CIA operative who’s obviously gone rogue. The FBI’s looking for him. And I think that curious woman we see a glimpse of at the diner is the FBI agent looking for Budge. With all these people after him, Budge might have to go underground for a while. But he doesn’t seem like someone who likes to hide. So a brutal face off is likely afoot.
In the recap of the 4th episode, I talked about how Dark Winds amplifies the importance of the investigation by keeping us in the dark about things until one of our detectives crack it. In the 5th episode, the same opacity is at play when Leaphorn works on George’s case in his car. We see him writing, circling, and drawing connections between a lot of things. But all we really get to know at this stage is a whole lot of mostly vague information. Shorty thinks the police have his toolbox, his ex is somehow in the mix, and there was a complaint made to Reno police. We’ll come back to this later. Leaphorn dozes off and has this dream that looks a lot like a premonition.
In the ending of this week’s episode of Dark Winds, the dream basically comes true when Leaphorn sees Ye’iitsoh and follows him. Ye’iitsoh is always present at every single turn of Leaphorn’s investigation. Every time he makes a breakthrough, the winds whistle and alert Leaphorn of Ye’iitsoh’s presence. The breakthrough is pretty big this time around. George’s mom lives in Reno, and he wants to go live with his mom. That’s what Shorty was talking about when he was taking care of a very weepy Chee. Leaphorn remembers seeing Shorty’s toolbox in their barn. And because he was a spirited kid as well he knows how kids pawn off their dad’s tools for some quick cash. That’s what George must’ve been up to. He needed some cash to get to Reno, away from all this horror. Leaphorn’s theory proves to be right when the pawn shop owner identifies George as the kid who’s recently been frequenting the place. If you know Leaphorn, you know that he understands dirt better than anyone else. So the first thing he inquires about is the color of the dirt on George’s fingers. Pulling at that thread, Leaphorn reaches the coal mines, right where George has built a makeshift safe zone. George knows someone’s around when the horse goes haywire. If he runs, Leaphorn might meet another hitch in his pursuit. With Ye’iitsoh in the mix, there’s no telling.
