The Bone Man (17 page)

The governor’s son. I hadn’t guessed. What a loss he must be feeling. “And the old woman?”

“Katie Poblano. My auntie. Ben’s sister. Enough?”

“Thank you.”

The streets beneath my feet felt ancient. No longer a village of adobe, but the homes clustered together as if they were trying to accomplish what once consisted of the pueblo. We neared the church and bore left, and shadows darted like knives in the late afternoon. Above all, Corn Mountain, guardian, home, everything to Zuniland.

My feet ached from slapping the hard ground without shoes. Aric’s confident steps mocked my tentative ones, his running sneakers finding easy purchase on the uneven earth.

The Bone Man
. Talk about creepy. “Why the mystery?” I said. “The secrecy?”

He chewed his lip. “My father died when he was with you. We wanted to make sure you weren’t from them, particularly after Natalie. She was good people. You shouldn’t go back to Albuquerque. Not until you have what you came for.”

“I’m not sure what I came for,” I said. “At one point, your father asked me to come out here with him.”

My thighs ached as I climbed the wooden steps that led to the darkened house. Someone had carried wood to the crate left of the door, and a low fire burned in the kiva fireplace. I walked across the cool linoleum floor and warmed my hands by the fire.

Aric gestured me to the couch.

“Now what?” I said.

He stood before me, looking every inch the macho man. “We go. Soon. Find the skull.”

“Find my friend Didi’s killer,” I said. “Your father’s, too, I suspect. Natalie’s. An art dealer named Delphine. Too many more.”

He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “Yeah.”

“It’s a big job.”

“Be right back.” He left the room, and for a few minutes I allowed the fire to mesmerize me. I wished for the comfort of the familiar, for Hank and Penny and Carmen and Gert. For my apartment, The Grief Shop, Newbury Street.

I needed my bearings, and I wouldn’t find them here.

I turned away from the fire. I felt like crap, and not just physically.

Just beyond the fireplace, a door yawned wide. I didn’t remember it from earlier. I suspected I was too busy, too frantic. I slid off the couch and hobbled through the door. My feet killed.

Tools and rocks cluttered the narrow room. Dust covered every inch of every surface, including the large windows. So much dust that I couldn’t see outside to the rapidly setting sun.

If I’d seen this room earlier, I would have known I was in Zuni, for here was where Katie and her family made hundreds of Zuni fetishes every year. Here they carved the rock with powerful tools, sanded it so it was smooth and gleaming, wound rawhide or gut around the carvings and attached arrowheads and coral and turquoise and heishi bundles. Chunks of serpentine and marble and pipestone lay in a basket, and a fine piece of turquoise sat on a shelf beside a pack of Marlboro Lights.

It was hard and dirty work to create such beauty.

Someone had wiped a circle on the dust-covered window.
I peeked through and saw the mountain. I shouldn’t be surprised.

“Ready?” came the voice.

I spun around. Aric wore jeans and a button-down shirt and loafers.

“You could be a teacher at some Boston high school,” I said.

“I’m not,” he said.

“No. Right. I need to change. Shower. Get some shoes. My purse.”

He handed me a plastic bag. Inside were a few of my belongings clumped with a new toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, other toiletries, and a pair of slip-on sneakers.

I pulled the sneakers on, and he nodded. “Good.”

Aric’s face, so sad. “This is very hard on you,” I said.

He nodded.

“Your father, Natalie. My dad . . . I’ve been through it.”

Again, lips compressed. He nodded, said nothing.

I sighed, moved closer, studied his eyes, which met mine dead on. “I could help,” I said. “I’d like to. It’s what I do.”

“Let’s go.”

I assumed we were heading out to The Bone Man and the trading post, but instead, I followed him through winding streets and alongside homes until we arrived at a larger building. Bound by a fence, the two-story adobe building looked cozy and inviting. It was trimmed with bright red and turquoise paint and carved posts that supported the porch roof.

We walked around back to a flagstone courtyard. There, a dozen people sat on folding lawn chairs while women and men in native costume milled around. We took seats in the first row, and then Katie Poblano arrived and the crowd hushed.

She sat beside Aric and the older man I’d met earlier. She nodded, and the dancers, drummers, and chanters began.

A spell draped me in mystery, one I would not repeat. Ever.

The old woman whispered in my ear, yet if I had to tell what she said, I couldn’t. Seeing the dance, smelling the sage, hearing the chants, the music—I was part of it now, the hunt for the evil. I had been woven into the fabric of events I hadn’t begun, but needed to end.

“Aric?” I said.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “All right?”

I wasn’t. But I’d stepped on a train that I couldn’t get off until the ride reached its appointed destination. Confusing.

So I watched and listened and smelled the spicy scents. I cried, but only a little.

Dust billowed around us, even as the temperatures rose into the sixties. I’d awaked refreshed, and yet I couldn’t say exactly what had happened the previous evening. I guessed it was a healing ceremony for Ben Bowannie, his aide and Natalie. All I knew was that I felt well for the first time in weeks and that I’d slept comfortably and long.

Aric Bowannie and I had left Zuni that morning, headed to the trading post and the Bone Man. On the way, Aric handed me my burnt cell phone, my wallet, and my can of pepper spray. We stopped in Gallup, where I bought two pairs of jeans, a broom skirt, some tops, a jacket, a purse, a pair of gloves, and a new cell, one of those untraceable prepaid ones. I did all of that with cash given to me by Aric, as he rightly cautioned me about leaving a credit card trail. He also warned me not to use the phone unless it was an emergency.

Now a blanket of stars and full moon made the desert seem like I was in a planetarium, which Aric found ironic, as did I. Outside the truck window, the desert glowed with cacti and sage and rock and sand and night creatures foraging for supper. I thought I spotted three coyotes, but couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t simply a rock formation, coupled
with my wishful thinking. And cows. Lots of cows. Home on the range and all that.

I opened the window, and the chilly night breeze fingered my hair. The pavement slid by as we rode farther and farther from Zuni to who-knew-where. I didn’t ask. Didn’t much care, as I felt the intensity of Ben Bowannie’s quest that was now mine, too.

“I’d like to tell you what happened in Boston,” I said.

Aric said nothing.

I explained about the re-creation that looked just like my missing friend, Delphine. I told him about Didi’s homicide, my adventures on the Vineyard, and the death of his father. He wanted every detail of his father’s death, and I told him all I knew.

I didn’t think about why I trusted him, other than I had to. But it felt right.

“Your father wanted the skull,” I said. “He didn’t believe it was an Old One, though. But he felt it mattered, and that it would cause trouble.”

He shrugged. “I’m not surprised he knew something else was going on. We always have problems. Drugs and booze coming in, pots and sacred stuff going out. Fake fetishes purported to be ours. And traders ripping us off, making a bundle where we only make a few pennies.”

“Not all,” I said.

“No. There are some good ones. But this illegal stuff. That’s bad. That, more than some old skull, was what my father was investigating.” More to himself than to me, he said, “I wish he’d told me more.”

“About the blood fetish?” I asked.

“What?”

“The blood fetish. Didi scrawled it on the floor. And the guy on the Vineyard was looking for a blood fetish, an old one, he said. Except . . . well, it’s as if I’m the only one who knows about it. It feels weird. Have you ever heard of it?”

He shook his head, flipped open a can of Beechnut
chewing tobacco, pinched a wad, and packed it into his cheek. He cracked the window. “Nope.”

“C’mon,” I said. “Really?”

“Really.”

But there was something. Maybe a hitch in his voice? A look in his eye? Something. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care what you believe,” he said. “You’re hunting the guy who killed your friend. Well, someone’s hunting you, lady.”

I flinched, looked in the rear-view mirror. The lonely road streamed behind us like a girl’s hair ribbon. I could see for miles, and no other cars were in sight. I breathed deep, calmed myself.

Maybe someone
was
hunting me. But why? What did I know? What had I seen that would make me a target. Sure, I was here looking for Delphine and Didi’s killer. But how did the killer know that? And why was I such a threat?

It had to do with some kind of pot thievery or fakery or . . . But, geesh, it felt like there were a dozen threads, none of which added up to much.

It sure was tough to get rid of that itch between my shoulders when I’d almost stepped inside a fake cop car. I clenched my hands to white-knuckle tight. “So what’s our agenda? And where did this paper, the Bone Man, come from?”

He hooked a sharp left, and I held on to the dangling strap inside the ancient Land Rover.

“You’re angry,” I continued. “Your father. His aide, who I’m guessing was your friend.”

Aric remained silent. His fury came from some deep and passionate source, I was sure, even beyond the death of his father. It chilled me.

In the distance, the land flattened more, and I saw blinking neon surrounded by nothing but desert, cactus, and cows.

“
Where
did the paper come from, Aric?”

“Natalie. It was in her pocket, inside an Altoids tin. The only thing that didn’t burn.”

We neared the neon, which read D
ESERT
D
REAMS
M
OTEL
. The clean blacktop and good paint job said “success.” I guessed I shouldn’t fear bedbugs. I couldn’t help scratching my arm.

Natalie. All I could see was the girl I’d met at the airport. Open faced and smiling. Warm. “These people have a lot to answer for,” I said. “A lot. When do we reach the trading post?”

He pulled into the parking lot in front of a sign that read
OFFICE
. A minute later, a potbellied man, unsmiling, cigarette dangling from lips, leaned against the driver’s side window. He held up a key, and Aric swiped it out of his hand in what seemed to be anger.

Smoking Man smirked. “Now
you
owe
me
, ma brother.”

I wished motel rooms smelled different. They all must use that same noxious disinfectant. They all seemed to have identical magazine subscriptions, too. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten to pick up a book to read in Gallup. I snagged the
New Mexico Magazine
on the bedside table. It was from the last century, which I found really annoying. I paged through the magazine while Aric moved around the room. He flicked on the TV and flipped through the channels to ESPN. Swell.

“Look at that face,” he said. “You don’t like sports?”

“Not a whole lot.”

“Can you live with it?”

Hadn’t I forever? “Sure.”

I smelled the tobacco when he stuffed it into his cheek.

“Gross,” I said.

“Tough.”

I found an article on Carlsbad Caverns and began to read. Good stuff. Aric finally went in to take a shower, which was when I called Gert about the potsherds. I hoped she’d been able to get them carbon dated.

“They’ve got ’em in evidence,” she said. “And they’re hangin’ fast. No luck so far.”

“What about Kranak?” I said. “He might go for the idea. That would have to do with evidence, the date of the pot.”

“Yup,” she said. “He’s tried. He would have to get some kind of court order. Carbon dating wrecks the object or something.”

Swell. “Thanks, Gertie. Keep me posted, okay?”

“How the hell can I when I don’t know where you—-”

“Tally?” Aric barked from the bathroom.

I covered the mouthpiece. “What?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Reading,” I hollered back. I closed the phone and slipped it back into my purse, picked the magazine back up, and sat on the chair just as Aric opened the door.

“What was I hearing?”

He leaned out of the bathroom, bare chested, towel around his waist. Whoooeee, he was pretty to look at.

“You heard me singing, I guess.” I smiled. “How about a sample? I can do
Oklahoma!
or
Brigadoon
or the Dixie Chicks.”

He lifted a towel to his head and began to dry his hair. “You’re full of shit. Go take a shower, lady, if you can pull yourself away from your concert.”

I walked with great dignity into the bathroom steamy from his shower. Boy, did I miss Hank.

When I opened the door outside the next morning, the sun had not yet risen. The stars had fled, and the sky was a murky blackish gray. Aric had gotten me up
way
too early. I’d asked the manager if I could take the
New Mexico Magazine
, as I wanted to finish the article on the caverns. His “whatever” meant I’d have something to read on the road.

I chewed on a stale bagel while Aric stuffed a fresh piece of chaw into his cheek. He was decked out all Western, from his Stetson to a pair of shiny cowboy boots.

“You look like a fake cowboy,” I said.

“Well, thank you, ma’am.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” I said.

“Yup.”

Two hours later, the sun yawned from the sky as we made yet another turn onto a desert dirt road that looked like a twin to the one we’d just left.

“How do you not lose your way out here?” I asked.

“It’s where I live.”

I imagined the streets of Southie and the North End and Beacon Hill and a hundred more places I knew by heart.