Sgt Jim Chee: sergeant in the Navajo Tribal Police, who recently began work at the Crownpoint, NM office. His college degree is from U of NM in anthropology. He is training to be a yataalii . He received an offer to work for the FBI as the story opens, needing to reply in a few weeks.
Trixie Dodge: Officer of Navajo Tribal Police at the Crownpoint office
Henry Becenti: retired NTP whose position Chee now fills; he explains the past relationship with Sena.
Lawrence‘Gordo’ Sena: Sheriff of Valencia County and involved in Valencia County policing for nearly 30 years. He has a long time interest in the oil field explosion in the early 1948 because his older brother was killed by it. His anger, rooted in his grief at the loss of his brother when the six Navajo men survived, impedes his success in solving the crime of 1948.
Mrs. Rosemary Vines: Second wife of B. J. Vines who asks Jim Chee to find a stolen box before her husband returns from medical treatment.
Mr B. J. Vines: very wealthy man in his fifties with full white beard; he gained his wealth by selling leases to Anaconda for uranium rights on his land he acquired as a ranch about 30 years prior. He suffered a stroke and uses a wheel chair, and is a collector of trophies and mementos. In younger days, once he became wealthy, he was a big game hunter.
Carl Lebeck: geologist present at the oil field when the explosion occurred in the early 1948 where so many were killed, his job to log the core samples taken in the search for oil at that spot. Returns to the area as B. J. Vines.
Dillon Charley: Navajo worker on the Vines ranch, buried on the present estate since 1953. He started a sect of the Native American Church during the 1940s that used peyote as part of the religious rites, though it was at that time banned on the Navajo reservation. Later US Supreme Court Decision allowed the religious use of peyote.
Emerson Charley: Son of Dillon, continued as head of church started by father, reviving it recently. In this novel, he is dying of leukemia at the University of New Mexico hospital. After he dies, Wolf steals his body and buries it in a landfill.
Tomas Charley: Navajo son of Emerson and his Acoma wife, who took the box of rocks and medals from the Vines mansion. He is murdered by Wolf.
Rudolph Charley: Younger brother to Tomas, and head of the peyote church after Tomas dies. He held a ceremony to honor his brother after his death, where Chee and Mary Landon met Mrs. Musket.
Five Navajo men: men who died young of leukemia or another cancer, but were spared death on the day of the oil field explosion, being advised by Dillon Charley, their supervisor as roustabouts for that project, that something bad would happen that day. All carried amulets given as gifts by Vines. Roscoe Sam, Joseph Sam, Woody Begay, Rudolph Becenti, and Windy Tsossie are the five men.
Mrs. Fannie Kinlicheenie: sister to Woody Begay, who knows when he died and where he is buried She was active in the church with her brother. When the Enemy Way ceremonial did not cure her brother, she knew there was a witch involved, and the evil would turn back on him. She believed the witch was Dillon Charley, who died after her brother.
Dr. Sherman Huff: Doctor at the UNM cancer hospital who explains cancer to Chee and the mentions the local cancer clusters. He finds four of the six Navajos on the state's cancer registry.
Mrs. Romana Musket: sister-in-law to Windy Tsossie. She knows when he died and where he was buried, near the Bisti, where Chee and Mary Landon go to see his remains for signs of cancer. They see the growth on the bones near the amulet he wore in life.
Colton Wolf: blond haired man with a knack for making his own mechanical devices, including guns and silencers, a true loner. He works as a hired hit man getting his directions via post office box from a person known only as Boxholder to him. He longs to know the name of his real father and find his mother; he was known as Colton Fry in his childhood. He wants to know who has been hiring him.
Boxholder: Codename for the person who hires Colton Wolf these many years for contract murders by many means.
Mary Landon: school teacher from town near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a white woman or Anglo who now teaches in Crown Point; she and Chee meet at a local rug auction.
Martin: FBI agent who tells Chee of the trail of crimes over ten years tied to this man, and that he and Mary are the first known by Wolf to witness him in the commission of a crime, and survive.
Sergeant Hunt: agent from the Albuquerque NM police department in charge of unsolved homicides, where the cancer research hospital is located, and where the pick-up truck exploded. He shows Chee a sketch of the man who shot him, based on the earlier crime in Albuquerque, where an employee observed Wolf, unknown to him.
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