[2] Joe Leaphorn (Wes Studi), a seasoned cop accustomed to the city ways of Phoenix, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, has returned to the Navajo reservation.

Leaphorn works with a partner Jim Chee (Adam Beach), an FBI Academy grad who is also training to be a traditional Navajo healer.

A local archeologist holds the key to the symbols he left behind, so Chee and Leaphorn pay him a visit at a nearby Anasazi ruins.

There, these partners find further clues indicating that the murderer may be a "skinwalker," a Navajo witch with the power to shape shift, or change from human to animal, move with lightning speed, and to kill with curses.

Fearing that his mentor, Wilson Sam (Saginaw Grant), will be next, Chee convinces the medicine man to hide in a nearby motel.