Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (46 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries
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Dusty shrugged. “I think I got to her more than she did to me.”
“Did you believe her when she said she’d slept out at Chaco in her Explorer?”
“Yeah, she looked it.”
“Then she didn’t leave the diary.”
Dusty’s voice softened. “She could have paid someone to leave it for us, Maureen. Who knows what that woman is capable of?”
He put his fork down and started massaging the muscles at the back of his neck. They really ached.
Maureen dried her hands on a paper towel and slid into the booth beside him. “Let me help you with that.”
Uneasy, Dusty turned slightly, and Maureen started massaging the muscles.
“Oh, my God, that feels good,” he sighed, and leaned into her hands.
“Well, don’t get any ideas, I’m just doing this because I can’t stand to hear the air crackle.”
Dusty could feel his anxiety seeping away, his headache even eased. “You’re good at this.”
Maureen smoothed away a lock of his blond hair. “I took a massage course in college. The same semester that I had macrame.”
“Tough load.”
She smiled. “For what it’s worth, Ruth Ann had the same effect on me. When she walked away from my table at the Loretto, I would have loved to have run after her and wrung her neck. I didn’t because I was surrounded by people, but out here, I might have.”
Dusty closed his eyes, and images of Dale flashed through his mind. The grief that he held locked deep inside him wriggled up and shot through his chest like tiny fiery lightning bolts. What had Dale ever seen in his mother? “Ruth Ann called you my girlfriend, the one with the black eyes and killer figure.”
“Well, I like the last part.”
He reached up to touch her right hand. “I told her we were friends. Only.”
Maureen patted his fingers and continued massaging his ironlike muscles. “I doubt that she believed you. She seems to think you’re some kind of Casanova.”
“She called me a leather rio.”
“That’s ‘lothario.’”
“Whatever.” He lowered his hand and wondered what he was going to do. Dale had been the center of his life, the one person he trusted. “I worried about you today. I’m not sure you should be mnning around alone—even to go to the grocery store. I kept wondering what it would be like if you didn’t come back, and it scared me.”
Maureen stopped massaging, hesitated, then leaned forward to wrap her arms around his broad shoulders. Dusty was afraid to move, afraid she might let go. “Are you all right?” she asked in a tender voice.
He exhaled the word “No,” then shook his head. “I don’t think I will be for a long time. I keep hearing Dale’s voice.”
Maureen tightened her hold. “What is he saying?”
“I can’t make out the words, but his tone is angry and frightened, as though I’m missing something right in front of my eyes, and he can’t understand why I’m so blind.”
Headlights cast white on the trailer windows as a vehicle pulled in beside the Bronco.
Dusty pulled away from Maureen. “If it’s Sylvia, I’m going to brain her.”
“We both will,” Maureen added with a smile.
The motor outside shut off and a door made a soft thump. Seconds later there was a knock at the door.
“William?” Ruth Ann’s voice called stridently. “May I come in?”
Dusty squeezed his eyes closed. “Oh, God.”
 
 
BROWSER SLID FORWARD on his belly and peered over the low rise at the two dark figures. They walked among the dead and wounded like silent specters.
“Let’s go get them,” Fire Lark whispered.
“Wait,” Browser cautioned. “We have just avoided one trap, let’s not walk into another.”
“Blessed Thlatsinas,” Yucca Whip whispered. “I wish it had been daylight.”
Browser hissed, “The losing side would have broken and run, knowing they were beaten. They were fighting in the dark, that’s why they slugged it out until only two were left standing.”
“But, to have—”
“Shhh!” Browser could barely see the two standing figures now. They had walked to the edge of the battleground and stood talking in low tones, gasping for breath as they turned and slowly began to walk northward toward the lumbering darkness of the cliff. In their wake, occasional groans and moans could be heard among the wounded.
Then a single scream rang out.
“Who’s there?” a frightened voice called. “Get away! Don’t—” The voice was choked off by the hollow thunk of a war club against a human skull.
Yucca Whip whispered, “Who is that out there? Is he going around killing the—”
Browser clapped a hand over his mouth, barely exhaling, “Silence,” as he struggled to see through the night.
They lay like the dead while the evening chill settled on their cold flesh. The wait seemed eternal as the faintest glow built on the eastern horizon and finally surrendered to Sister Moon.
Still, Browser wouldn’t allow them to rise. They shivered until their teeth began to chatter. Blow after blow silenced the cries of the wounded. Browser allowed a hand of time to pass before he tapped Yucca Whip on the shoulder and rose. He led them forward. At the edge of the road, he surveyed the dead.
“Who did this?” Fire Lark whispered. “I never saw anyone!”
Browser knelt by one of Blue Corn’s warriors. The man lay on his back, his half-open eyes gleaming in the moonlight. The arrow through his guts, though fatal, should have allowed him to linger for at least a day or two. The red stain on his chest, however, betrayed the wound that had killed him.
“Stiletto,” Clay Frog said woodenly. “Someone went through and made sure.”
The hair at the back of Browser’s scalp started to prickle. He spun around, searching. “Yes, and if she’s not hunting us now, she will be soon.”
“Who, Blue Corn?” Clay Frog asked.
“No,” Browser replied. “Keep your eyes open.”
Slowly, painstakingly, he led them across the battlefield, weaving between the bodies. He almost tripped over a man who lay sprawled in a narrow drainage. Moonlight bathed the exposed arms and legs, each of which had been sliced open. Cuts of meat had been taken from the bone.
“Blessed Gods,” Clay Frog whispered, pointing at the head; like a broken pumpkin, the insides had been scooped out. “The killer took his brain, along with the steaks!”
Browser squinted into the darkness. She was out there, somewhere, maybe looking at him this instant. “She’s taking meat back to Two Hearts,” he said.
“By the Blue God,” Clay Frog whispered, one hand against her flat stomach. Her short black hair glinted in the moonlight. “And I thought that what she had done to Gray Thunder—”
“She didn’t need meat that night,” Browser replied grimly. “Come. Let’s go find the rest of our party.”
He hadn’t made three steps when he saw the man. Somehow in the darkness, Shadow had missed him. He had crawled away on his hands and knees. Browser could see that much from the scuffed soil and the blood trail he’d left.
Browser kicked the man’s foot and got a low groan.
“Watch him.” Browser grabbed the man’s foot and pulled him backward to see if he held a weapon. His hands were empty. Despite the clotted blood on the man’s face, Browser knew him. He knelt at the War Chief’s side and called, “Rain Crow? It’s Browser. Can you hear me?”
The War Chief murmured, his movements weak and aimless.
“Kill him.” Yucca Whip hefted his war club. “It will be a kindness. Sometimes, when men are hit in the head, their breath-heart souls flee.”
Browser hesitated and glanced around, unnerved by Shadow’s work. “No, we must bring him along. Let’s hurry. I don’t want to be out here longer than we have to.”
Catkin had gone to divert Rain Crow and his warriors. Where was she? Had she escaped the fighting on the cliff top? With a sudden desperation, he bent down, pulled one of Rain Crow’s arms over his own shoulders, and lifted.
“Here, War Chief.” Red Lark and Yucca Whip stepped forward. “You’ve done enough for the night. We will carry him.”
The memory of the dead warrior with moonlight shining into his empty brain case hovered about him like foul mist.
He tried not to think of Catkin, and what Shadow Woman would do if she caught her.
 
 
MY SOULS DANCE, twining up to spin as the Blue God laughs.
The party of warriors walks away, heading north. I lift my head and sniff the cool wind. I cannot smell them. The odors of blood, entrails, and death are too strong.
Then I turn back and run a slender finger along the side of his jaw, feeling the chill that has leached into his flesh.
“Didn’t I tell you I was the Summoning God, Bear Lance?”
I reach beneath his war shirt, and my fingernail traces a path around his testicles before I grip his cold penis. Unlike times past, he does not gasp and tense. Reluctantly I withdraw my hand and return to stroking his slack face. My dark hair spills over him.
The breath-heart soul lingers near the body after death, so I know he is watching me, hating me, but unable to do anything.
“You knew this would happen eventually,” I whisper. “Ordinary men cannot touch the flesh of the chosen and survive.”
I kiss his cold lips, then rise and sling my blood-soaked shirt, heavy with meat, over my shoulder.
 
 
MAUREEN LEANED AGAINST the kitchen counter, watching Ruth Ann and Dusty toy with their
coffee cups. They sat on opposite sides of the table, facing each other like predators over the carcass of a fatted calf. Ruth Ann tugged at her gray wool turtleneck. She appeared to have trouble breathing, and sweat shone on her bladelike nose. Fragments of grass dotted her silver hair. Had she been sleeping on the ground?
“I will make this succinct,” Ruth Ann began. “I came here because I did not kill Dale. I knew nothing about it until I heard it on the news. I am here because I was
summoned.”
“What does that mean?” Dusty asked. He held his coffee cup in both hands.
“I’m not entirely sure myself, William. I was halfway to the highway before I turned back.” She sipped her coffee, looked surprised, and sipped it again. “There’s something I need to ask you.”
“Why? What I thought has never mattered to you before.”
“No,” she said straightforwardly. “It certainly hasn’t, but it does now. These messages from Kwewur, Dale’s death, the missing journals—they all point to something long ago.” She cocked her head. “Are you sure that your father is dead?”
Dusty jerked as though he’d been struck. He stared at her through hard unblinking blue eyes. “He was in a mental institution. I assume they know who occupies each room. He was examined by a coroner. There was a funeral, notices in the newspapers, along with articles about Dale going through the proceedings to be declared my legal guardian. If Dad faked his death, he did a damn fine job of it. And I would have heard from him.”
“I’m sure your childish mind thought you’d hear from me, too,” Ruth Ann countered. She looked around the trailer, as though cataloging every speck of dust. “William, I’m just trying to cover the bases here, that’s all.”
“Let me get this straight,” Dusty said, and leaned across the table. “You think Dad faked his death, then hid out all these years just to kill Dale. Why would he do that?”
“Sam was a very patient man, and Dale took everything Sam had.”
“Everything?” Maureen asked. “More than just you?”
Ruth Ann gave her a condescending look. “Everything means everything.”
“Ah,” Maureen said with a nod, and her stomach turned. “I see. You were married to Samuel, but you were still sleeping with other men, and Sam knew it.”
“I knew it, too,” Dusty said.
Ruth Ann didn’t even blink. “Well, don’t blame me. They called it erectile dysfunction, William. Sam was so desperate, he took off one weekend and went to Mexico. There was a surgeon down there. He told Sam that the problem was caused by scar tissue around a nerve, and performed some hocus-pocus procedure.”
Maureen closed her eyes. “What happened?”
Ruth Ann jiggled her coffee cup. “Absolutely nothing. I don’t know what the surgeon did, but Sam was completely incapable after that. That’s when he really went overboard with his archaeology. As if the harder he worked, the more we would have to share professionally, since we had nothing to share personally.”
“When did you get pregnant?” Maureen fit the pieces together. “Before or after Mexico?”
Ruth Ann shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. Neither did Sam. On occasion I tried things with him. Sad sort that I was, I thought it was partly my fault.”
“Wait a minute.” Dusty’s breathing had gone shallow. Maureen could see the truth sinking in as his blue eyes widened. “What are you saying?”
Ruth Ann held his stare. “You wanted to know why I stopped and looked down into Rinconada today? For
all I know, you might have been conceived there. I went there often enough.”
“When you weren’t at La Fonda,” Maureen pointed out.
“We only went there in the beginning.” Ruth Ann leaned back. “Santa Fe, especially in those days, was still a small town filled with gossip.”
Dusty looked as if someone had just kicked his guts out.
Maureen walked over and slid into the booth beside him.
Dusty stammered, “That’s why you think D-Dad might be alive? Because you—”
“If Carter didn’t kill Dale, Sam is the only other person who would have had a reason.”
Maureen leaned back. “Why have you dropped Hawsworth from the suspect list?”
“Who said I dropped him? Professional jealousy
might
be enough, even for Carter, and”—she lifted a finger—“I’ve heard him threaten to kill people for less reason than that. Unless he’s gone way overboard and begun to believe he really is a witch. In that case, Dale, who’s innocent for the most part, just got in the way. It’s me that Carter really wants dead.”
Maureen thought back to the conversation she’d had with Hawsworth. “But why would he be after you?”
“He has recently discovered that beyond the old reasons, he has ample new ones.” Ruth Ann shifted wearily. “Lord knows, he does.”
“Did you ever leave a man behind who didn’t hate you?” Dusty asked.
“It was the sixties,” Ruth Ann said, as if that was sufficient. “I don’t make any excuses for what I did or why I did it. I wanted to be an anthropologist, to step outside of the roles I’d been enculturated for. So, I did. I turned the tables on my culture and made my own way.”
Maureen returned to the subject at hand. “So Sam
said nothing. He claimed Dusty because not to would have exposed his impotence. But, tell me, did you ever tell Dale that Dusty might be his?”
“Of course not. First, I couldn’t be sure. Secondly, I didn’t want to. When I heard later that he had taken over legal guardianship of William, I was fairly sure that Dale believed the boy was his son. It made a great many things easier for me.”
Dusty’s voice was like silk. “You’re good at easy, aren’t you?”
Stiffly, she answered, “I don’t care for the censure in your voice, William.”
He burst to his feet, staring down into her startled eyes. “I don’t give a
damn
what you care for. You just waltzed in here to tell me that
Dale
was my father? Why?”
Ruth Ann leaned back, frightened by his physical presence. “I thought you’d like to know.”
Dusty felt a sudden weakness, as if all the nerves had been cut in his body. He straightened, and stepped away. “Damn it, this is going to take some time to get used to.”
“Time?” Ruth Ann asked, and laughed. “I hope you get it.”
The knock, when it came, was tentative. Nevertheless, it brought them to a sudden and complete silence. Maureen’s stomach knotted, adrenaline surging.
Dusty, the first to recover from the start, called, “Come join the party!”
Maureen was expecting Carter Hawsworth, not the young woman who opened the door and climbed up the aluminum steps.

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