Badger. Later, Leaphorn becomes attracted to an anthropologist named Louisa Bourebonette, whom he meets while working on a case in Coyote Waits. Louisa sometimes helps in collecting information to solve cases, as she interviews older Indians of several tribes, in her professional pursuits of documenting the origin stories of each tribe. Leaphorn is always in love with Emma, but he enjoys Louisa's sharp mind and her company. Professional life He is perhaps 40 and a lieutenant in the first novel (The Blessing Way), so the early days of his career as a policeman are revealed as stories of the past in the novels. Educated in assimilationist Indian boarding schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he is not as well versed in Navajo rituals as the younger officer Chee, though he has attended the usual ceremonies, and does so in the novels (e.g., attending the multi-day Kinaalda ceremony on two separate days while solving the case in Listening Woman). He is a police officer for the Navajo and he is a Navajo, fluent in that language and in English. In the first three novels of the series, he has no staff; he reports to superiors in the Navajo Tribal Police (Captain Largo) and works with officers of other tribes and often with agents of the FBI and other federal investigative agencies. Leaphorn's approach to his cases is informed by some Navajo, or Dine, tradition, but is also influenced by Anglo-European logic. In Skinwalkers, Leaphorn has responsibilities to assign officers where they are needed for specific situations. The attraction of police detective work for him is the freedom to follow his curiosity to solve problems. He is skilled in tracking in the desert country where it can be months between rainfalls, and tracks are unchanged unless another crosses the path. He seeks the logic of each situation. Leaphorn typically doesn't act as a leader in the ceremonies of his own culture and is resistant to some Navajo taboos. At the same time, he realizes that many traditional Navajo follow those beliefs and often act on them, in cases that result in violence. He holds a Navajo world view, with no expectation of heaven in the afterlife, instead a need to find his place in this life and lead his life well. He follows the rules of courtesy of the Navajo as to the ebb and flow of conversations, and his