Leaphorn creates a large, color-coded map for his police work. It is an old auto club road map of the Four Corners area, Indian country. On this map he marks different kinds of crimes with different-colored pins - red-headed pins stand for alcohol-related crimes, including bootlegging as alcohol is illegal on the reservation, blue for sheep stealing, brown with a white center for the rare homicides and others for "white man crimes" like burglary, vandalism and robbery, which occurred mainly on the edges of the reservation. This process allows him to notice patterns that link various crimes together, and helps him solve them. This map is enhanced by notations, as well, noting places where roads have washed out in a heavy rain, places where witchcraft has been reported, and summer camps for sheep grazing for various Navajo families. In "Coyote Waits", Leaphorn's map is described as a photographic enlargement of an auto club map, posted up in his office; he used it trying to make sense of the murder by Ashie Pinto, but in that case most of the useful information comes from conversations with people who seek him out (the niece of Ashie Pinto), or who he seeks out (McGinnis, Kennedy), and his running internal conversations as if his wife were still alive to make useful observations on people, than from studying the map. It showed only how very far from home Ashie Pinto was arrested, with no explanation how he arrived at the scene of the murders.