Ghost Dance (11 page)

Inside the stall was an open trap door. A staircase descended into a dark tunnel. On the opposite side of the staircase, knee-high rubber boots had been positioned carefully under a rough-hewn pine bench. A peach-colored rain slicker, with a few beads of water still clinging to it, hung on a peg next to a sweater woven of gray Icelandic wool. The cat sat on the bench, meowing and watching Gallagher.

‘C’mere, cat,’ he said again. The cat hesitated, then trotted toward him and he picked her up. She purred and rolled over in his arms. Playfully she batted at his cheeks with her paws.

‘Aren’t you a sweetie?’ Gallagher said, scratching her under the chin. She purred.

He took a step into the stall and happened to look away from the cat toward the staircase into the tunnel.

A piece of sketch paper had been stuck on a nail below the trap door. The figure of Charun had been drawn different from the first one. His head was cocked now in the direction of the viewer. A fingernail of white shone at the bottom of the black cavities of his eye sockets. One of the stitches that held his mouth shut hung loose. Surging up from between his legs was an enormous phallus painted rust-red. One taloned claw held it.

The monster was leering at Gallagher.

T
HE CAT SPRANG FROM
Gallagher’s arms. He bolted after it toward the barn door and was just about to exit when he saw Andie Nightingale coming down the two-track. The rain fell in sheets now. Her hood was up and angled toward the woods. He hesitated to go out because she had all but ordered him to leave the property. First Gallagher finds Potter’s body in the river. Then he finds another of the killer’s warped artifacts. Too much coincidence, he thought. Suspicion will logically fall on me.

So he watched Andie through the cracked door, hoping she’d wander away so he could sneak back to the car and wait for someone else to find the drawing. At the
Y,
Andie turned to briefly consider the barn. His stomach fluttered. She took the path toward the forest.

‘Keep going,’ he whispered.

She stopped after twenty yards. Another squall swept across the meadow and Andie dropped her head into it. She took another step. Her carriage stiffened. She moved quickly to her right, squatted, reached into the mire at the path’s edge and picked up an object Gallagher couldn’t make out.

Andie held it in her palm, studying it as if she couldn’t believe it. She chewed at her bottom lip and looked into her palm again, the incredulity in her expression changing clearly to dismay and men to fear.

She jammed whatever it was into the right pocket of her slicker, then stood there in the squall for several moments as if she could not decide what to do. At last she picked her head up. The cat scampered from under a bush back through the barn door and sat purring contentedly at Gallagher’s feet. Andie came toward the barn, clucking and calling, ‘Come here, Tess.’

Knowing he was caught, Gallagher simply stepped out.

Andie jerked to a halt. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I … I didn’t feel well after seeing … Mrs. Dawson,’ he faltered. ‘And I just went for a walk to get some air—’

‘I told you to leave.’

‘There’s mud on the floor inside,’ he blurted. ‘Fresh mud. It leads to a stall … there’s another one of Charun’s pictures. Those wounds on Olga’s body weren’t from heat!’

‘Olga?’ Andie said. Her face took on a dazed expression, as if she’d been wind-robbed by a punch to the solar plexus. Then her knees buckled and she collapsed into the mud. Two inches of gold chain now hung outside her raincoat pocket. She looked up at Gallagher, then down at the chain, and that alone seemed to bring her back from the brink. She reached into her other pocket and got out her gun shakily. ‘Get back,’ she ordered.

‘Hey, put that thing away!’ he cried.

‘Move!’

Gallagher took five steps backward. Andie came to her feet like a newborn colt and stuffed the rest of the chain into her pocket, watching him as a cornered animal might.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.

‘And what’s that?’

‘That I went in there to plant the picture.’

‘A mind reader, an anthropologist and a killer,’ she said. ‘You are talented.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ Gallagher said. ‘If I was the killer, wouldn’t I have left the drawing last night? How was I supposed to know that your truck would die and I would be allowed on the scene?’

Andie didn’t answer. Her attention was jumping from Gallagher to the barn and back again. And with each jump her expression gravitated toward that brink again. She blinked and rubbed at her eyes as if blinded by an invisible light.

Gallagher pleaded his case again. ‘Why would I wait until Mrs. Dawson’s farm is crawling with police officers to leave a calling card? I’d have to be an idiot.’

Andie hesitated, then dropped the gun to hip level, muzzle down. ‘Show me. You go first.’

When they reached the mud on the floor, Andie ordered Gallagher to take off his boots and stand against the wall. She picked up one mud clot and studied the design. His boots were chain-style, rubber-bottom boots. The clots on the floor had that Z design. She kicked off her own boots, then motioned Gallagher forward, warning him to be careful not to step on any of the remaining mud clumps. ‘Where’s the drawing?’

‘Last stall,’ he said. ‘It’s tacked to the frame under the trap door.’

‘How did you know there was a trap door in that stall?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t,’ he protested. ‘It was open when I got there.’

Gallagher led her to the stall, but remained outside on her orders. She put on latex gloves, went over to the boots under the pine bench, turned them over and inspected the tread. They and the Z clods were obviously the same.

‘She wasn’t in any condition to take a walk, especially at night,’ Andie mused, talking more to herself than to Gallagher. She crossed to the trap door.

‘Where does that staircase go?’ he asked.

But Andie only half heard. She was already transfixed by the drawing. She mumbled, ‘To a tunnel that runs under the yard to the house. Olga’s father-in-law built it back in the twenties so he could come out and tend to the cows in the winter.’

‘So could she have gone out?’

‘No, I … I don’t know,’ she said. She glanced over at Gallagher. ‘The drawing … the creature has a …’

He nodded.

‘He raped Olga before he killed her,’ Andie said. She snatched the drawing as if it were the vilest thing on earth. She seemed poised to shred it.

‘Don’t!’ Gallagher yelled.

There was a moment of absolute silence in the barn. ‘Don’t do it!’ he whispered.

‘Sergeant Nightingale?’ Lieutenant Brigid Bowman’s voice called from outside the barn door. ‘Are you in there?’

At the sound of the lieutenant’s voice, Andie let the drawing slip from her fingers, then staggered toward the bench and slumped onto it. Her sopping hair hung like tentacles over her face. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she moaned softly to herself.

By then Bowman and Chief Mike Kerris had entered the far end of the barn.

‘Take off your boots!’ Gallagher called to them, nervously casting his attention from them to Andie and back ‘Pull yourself together!’ he hissed. ‘The lieutenant’s coming. You can’t let her see you like this.’

Andie shook her head like a donkey Gallagher had once seen in the Sahara that had been whipped so hard it refused to move. He walked toward the law enforcement officials, pointing to the mud. ‘Sergeant Nightingale wants everyone to take their boots off. Charun was in here.’

‘Charun?’ Lieutenant Bowman’s forehead knotted.

Kerris groaned. He had changed his clothes since yesterday, but he looked worse. His posture was stooped. His ‘Chief baseball cap was on backward. And the bags under his stainless-steel eyes were larger than Gallagher’s.

‘Where is Sergeant Nightingale?!’ Bowman demanded.

‘In that last stall,’ Gallagher said, trying to figure out ways to delay them. ‘There’s another drawing.’

Kerris’ eyes darted about. He fumbled in his pocket for a lollipop. ‘I’m going to have to call my uncle about this.’

‘No one’s calling anyone until I say so,’ Bowman countered. She kicked off her rubber boots, watching Gallagher suspiciously. ‘Why are you in here, Mr Gallagher?’

‘I found the drawing, then went and showed it to Sergeant Nightingale.’

‘You found the … Chief, please make sure Mr Gallagher does not leave,’ Bowman ordered; then she moved past.

Gallagher tried to hurry after her, but Kerris grabbed him by the collar. Despite the obvious strain he was under, he was three inches taller and fifteen pounds of muscle heavier than Gallagher. Kerris spun Gallagher around neatly. His breath smelled of grape. The stick of the lollipop stuck out of his mouth. ‘Where do you think you’re going, bright boy?’ he asked.

‘Disney World,’ Gallagher said. ‘What’s it to you?’

Kerris’ upper lip arched. ‘Lawton doesn’t need your kind. Why don’t you just go back to New York or wherever it is you’re from?’

‘Look, Chief,’ Gallagher said. ‘I don’t know what your problem is, but I helped Sergeant Nightingale interpret the last letter. I thought I might be able to help with this one, too.’

‘I’ll bet you did.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

Kerris gave him a malevolent grin. ‘Andie Nightingale’s a damn fine-looking woman. But I wouldn’t get too close. She’s so cold she could be dangerous to your … mental health.’

Before Gallagher could reply, Lieutenant Bowman called out in an agitated voice, ‘Chief Kerris, would you escort Mr Gallagher up here, please?’

Gallagher feared finding Andie sprawled on the floor. But she was back on her feet. Her pallid, damp complexion, her sunken eyes and the visible tremor in her hand made it seem as if she had just gotten over a virus.

Lieutenant Bowman’s jaw was set hard. ‘Mr Gallagher I’m going to want to search your cabin. Will I require a warrant?’

‘No, go ahead. I’ve got nothing to hide,’ he said.

‘Chief Kerris will arrange it.’

‘If he’s involved, I’d like to be there, if you don’t mind.’

‘That’s your right,’ Bowman said. ‘In the meantime, I’d like you to look at this letter.’

‘You’re going to let a suspect look at the letter?’ Kerris barked incredulously.

The lieutenant shot the police chief a patronizing smile. ‘If Mr Gallagher is the killer, men he’s already seen it, hasn’t he? If not, he might be of help.’

Gallagher winked at Kerris, then went to the bench where Andie had laid out the piece of paper with the drawing and the note. Andie stepped to one side. Her breathing was asthmatic.

Angel was my Persephone,
the letter began. I
could not see. But like the old man and father, she said she knew the way. She said the little death would steer our boat.

I will have what Angel knows now for sure. And if more be rowed across the river until I have it, so be it. You condemned me, Lawton. Now I condemn you!

Angel said we all will die. We all will die. Will we see the other side?

The eerie madness of the letter worked its way up the back of Gallagher’s spine and centered, pounding, in his head. He recalled the drawing of the leering fiend on the other side of the note, shuddered, then forced himself to reread the words.

‘Well?’ Bowman asked.

‘We’re dealing with an intelligent but very sick mind.’

‘Takes one to know one,’ Kerris said.

‘That’s enough, Chief,’ Bowman said. ‘What else?’

‘He’s got a beef with Lawton, so he’s probably local, or was, and feels wronged by the community. Which counts me out, by the way.’

‘Not in my book,’ Kerris said.

‘Who’s Persephone? Who’s Angel?’ the lieutenant asked.

‘Both mythological figures, but they’re from different cultures,’ Gallagher said, ignoring Kerris’ glare. ‘Persephone’s from Greek mythology. Angels are Judeo-Christian figures.

‘Persephone was a daughter of the harvest goddess, Demeter,’ he went on. ‘She was raped and abducted by Hades, king of the underworld. While there, she ate three pomegranate seeds and was doomed to stay forever as Hades’ bride beneath the earth. Her mother, Demeter, sought her daughter everywhere, sorrowing and completely neglecting the crops. When the crops of the earth withered, winter appeared for the first time.

‘Humans beseeched the gods to intervene in the dispute and a compromise was reached. Persephone would spend half a year in Hades and the other half with her mother on earth,’ he added.

Andie’s voice was gravelly and high. ‘How did Persephone get back and forth between the underworld and earth?’

Gallagher thought about it and nodded soberly. ‘Charun would have been her boatman.’

‘And Persephone was raped by the king of the underworld?’ Andie asked the question as if a sharp bone had caught in her throat.

‘Yes.’

Kerris looked away, his face flushed. ‘If you ask me, it’s a bunch of nutso mumbo jumbo. Where’s the real evidence?’

‘That’s what I want to know, too,’ Bowman griped. ‘Mr Gallagher, did Charun have sexual relations with Persephone in the myths? The penis—it’s exaggerated.’

Gallagher shook his head. ‘Charun didn’t have any romantic relationships that I can remember. He’s a minor figure in the more major myths.’

‘What about this Angel?’ Bowman asked. ‘How does she fit in?’

Gallagher shrugged. ‘He’s jumbling these references. It doesn’t make sense. Unless … the meaning is his own.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Kerris asked warily.

‘Since the dawn of time, myths have been the way people explain the unexplainable to themselves,’ Gallagher replied. ‘To the early Greeks, the Persephone legend was a way to explain the cycle of winter and summer. But your killer is altering the telling, changing the meaning.’

‘To what?’ Bowman asked.

To suit his own experience,’ Gallagher said. ‘To make sense of the evil he’s done.’

‘Or is going to do,’ Andie mumbled.

She had been sitting on the bench during the last part of the conversation, looking vacantly at the trap door that led to the staircase. Now she cradled her stomach and rocked back and forth as a mad person might in a padded room.