The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (7 page)

“But not on the drugs?” Matthew asked.

“No. On these drugs, the world is heavy and dull, like you’ve covered it up with a carpet.”

“So why do you take them?”

“They say otherwise they’d have to lock me up. And my parents are responsible to see I take them, so if I don’t they could be locked up, too, for child abuse or something.”

“Gilbert was bright, happy to be alive,” Marquita fumed. “Now he shuffles around like an old man. They say Gilbert is crazy, dangerous, but the Indian people don’t believe this is a disease, do they?” she said, turning her plea to Emilio. “People finding out when they’re
teen-agers that they can have these visions? Gilbert never hurts no one. He just goes off into the other world for a while.”

“You’re right, Marquita.” Emilio wasn’t a large man, but he commanded respect with his calm and dignified bearing. “Among our people, as you know, this calling to see visions is considered a gift. Some young men seek the visions, they fast, and pray for them. That’s not to say the gift can be ignored. Anything that’s powerful can become dangerous if it’s ignored. If the visions come all the time, even when they’re not wanted, it can make life difficult. The young man can feel like an outcast. That’s where the healer has his work. Usually, by following the proper path, the apprentice can be taught how to summon the visions only when they’re needed. It’s not about losing the visions, but being able to call them at will.”

“You’d be willing to teach Gilbert?”

“Maybe. But there could be a better way. Am I right, that he’s the grandson of Dona Solana of the San Carlos?”

Marquita hung her head. “Yes. But my mother and me don’t talk so much, anymore.”

“Then maybe this is a message that it’s time to talk again.”

“I left the Res, Emilio. I wanted to get as far away as I could. Everyone there is so poor. What kind of chance would Gilbert have there?”

“What you say is true. The best and the brightest often leave. I myself left the People for a ver’ long time.”

“You did?”

“I lived in New York and did my pottery. I rode with the motorcycle people. We carried guns. Oh, we was mighty bad.” Emilio laughed, his eyes crinkling up. “I don’t condemn you for leaving, and taking your boy, Marquita. To live in both worlds, to walk among the White Men but not forget who you are and where you come from, it’s a hard thing. But now, once again, the whites want to turn this Indian boy into a white, or lock him up for being crazy. But he’s not crazy, is he? All of us here can see that. He’s a bright lad. All families have their troubles, Marquita, but Dona Solana is a respected
curandera,
a
healer. And her apprentice died not so long ago. As far as I know, she has no apprentice. And now this sign comes to her grandson. In the end the decision must be Gilbert’s. But I think it would be unwise to ignore this sign.”

“I’d like to go to my grandmother, to throw away these drugs,” said Gilbert. “But what would happen to my mom? They talk about putting her in jail.”

This time they looked to Matthew.

“That’s nonsense. If that’s what you decide, we’ll inform them that Gilbert has left the district, has left their jurisdiction, that he’s gone to live with his grandmother in Arizona. This happens with hundreds of kids every year, it’s routine. Tell them he took his bottle with their wonderful pills with him. These social workers and school psychiatrists have dozens of files, hundreds. You give them a way to close a file and cut down their workload, they should be happy. If they do cause trouble, I know an attorney who’s an expert on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. You tell them Gilbert is of 50 percent Indian blood.”

“I’m not sure —” Marquita interrupted.

“I assure you,” Matthew insisted. “Gilbert is of 50 percent Indian blood.”

“He is of the Nde,” Emilio agreed. “That is all they need to be told.”

“And then you ask them what number your attorney should call to discuss the Religious Freedom Restoration Act with them.”

“Lawyers cost money,” said Marquita, hanging her head.

“Not this one. He owes me a favor. Give me your phone number, I’ll have him call you tomorrow.”

“I was going to leave tomorrow,” said Emilio. “I can wait an extra day if Gilbert needs that time to pack. Depending on what he decides, of course. I’d be happy to take him with me to stay with his grandmother, if that’s what Gilbert and his mother want.”

“I don’t want him to think we’re sending him away, but these drugs are no good for Gilbert.”

“And you, Bucky?” Matthew asked.

The black man took a moment to resettle himself in his chair. He hadn’t expected to be asked. He was thoughtful.

“Marquita and I aren’t married yet, and even after we’re married this would still be her decision, hers and Gilbert’s. It’s really not my say. How I feel about it is, probably this is best for Gilbert, that he leave here for now and get off these drugs. I just wouldn’t want Gilbert to think I’m sending him away because I don’t want him here. Because that’s not true. I’d be happy to have him live with us, I’d be happy to have Gilbert come to work with me. Once these school district people close their file on him and he’s free to come and go as he pleases, then I hope we can all be together.”

“I’ll come back, Bucky,” Gilbert nodded, his eyes tearing up a little. “I think maybe I’m supposed to make this journey, now. I think that’s what the visions mean. As long as I know mom is safe till I can come back.”

Bucky smiled, put his hand on Gilbert’s knee. “Meantime, Marquita’s mom isn’t rich, and I don’t want Gilbert to arrive like a beggar. We’ll buy travelers checks for him, a thousand dollars.”

“Bucky!”

“The old truck will last till spring, honey. I wish it was more.”

“Well, Gilbert, the choice is up to you,” Matthew said. “But if you leave, no one is going to harm your mother or put her in jail. You have my word on that.”

It was decided. The young man would leave with old Emilio, morning after next. Everyone shook hands. Matthew had a final word with Emilio as the family left.

“You’ll let me know when the boy — or the grandmother — needs some more resources,” Matthew said.

“The best thing is that the family members help each other, as much as they can. But yes, Matthew, I’ll tell you if it becomes necessary to call on your generosity, which I know we can always count on.”

* * *

Matthew talked with Marian about setting up Internet searches for Worthy’s notebook.

“Anything hand-written by Lovecraft, obviously, though I wouldn’t hold out much hope for that. Problem is, what if he didn’t put his name on it?”

“Just searching ‘handwritten notebook or manuscript from the 1920s’ is too broad, we’d be swamped,” she frowned.

“And he might not even have dated it.”

“Are there keywords?” she asked.

“Yes. That’s your best hope. Any hand-written notebook or manuscript that mentions ‘resonator’ or ‘Annesley.’”

“The Annesleys are a pretty prominent family.”

“Run it and see what happens. If you’re still getting too much, just pare it back to ‘resonator.’”

“OK. I’ll talk to Les; maybe he can think of another keyword.”

“Good. Meantime, there’s something else, Marian.”

“Yes?”

“We’ve got too many books piling up, waiting for me to OK your pricing. If there are books where you’re coming up with too wide a range or you just can’t find any comparables and you’re at a loss, fine, jot a note and leave me the book and we can put our heads together.” This could particularly be a problem with hard-to-find non-fiction, which was three-quarters of the stock. Values for fiction were much better documented. “But you’ve got to screen them all to decide which ones to set aside, anyway. Except for those few where you have questions, why don’t you just go ahead and price anything up to two thousand. Would that be a problem?”

“No, Matthew, not at all.” Marian suppressed a smile. Of course piling books in Matthew’s office that should have been online or on the shelves or both was silly, waiting for a grownup to check her work while Matthew was away for weeks at a time. This would be much more efficient, and it was overdue. It finally put her in complete charge of 98 percent of the stock, leaving Matthew to deal with a
manageable number of high-end pieces that usually had to be hand-sold to known collectors, anyway.

“Good,” said Matthew, settling the matter.

With the Internet search turned over to Marian, the initial phone work was left to Matthew. There appeared to be a couple of bookstores in DeLand, Florida — an oddity given the modest size of the town. Still, it was a county seat and there was a college there, you never could tell. The first number Matthew tried was disconnected. The second worked.

“Hi, we’re looking for material related to Robert Hayward Barlow, 1918 to 1951.”

“He was an author?”

“He wrote a brief appreciation of his friend H.P. Lovecraft, called ‘The Wind That Is in the Grass.’”

“Oh, that Barlow. Yes, the University of Tampa published a collection of their letters.”

“Right.”

“That book’s not hard to find.”

“Do you ever see anything else come in that’s related to Barlow or his family? Books or papers that could have belonged to Robert Barlow? He grew up there in DeLand.”

“Gee, if the man died sixty, seventy years ago …”

“I know. We’re just covering our bases. Robert Barlow left home there in DeLand before the war, went to college in California, ended up teaching down in Mexico, he was still pretty young when he died. Sometimes in a case like that some papers and magazines get left in the parents’ house, years later the house gets cleared out, no one knows what to do with boxes of old papers.”

“Don’t I know it. We go to estate sales, we ask ‘Where are the old books and papers?’ People say, ‘Oh, we threw those out, no one would want those.’ Either that, or all they saved are the encyclopedias and the Kennedy assassination newspapers, which they’re convinced should be worth a fortune.”

“Welcome to my world. Are there still Barlows in DeLand?”

“Oh, sure. It’s a fairly common name, here.”

“Well, maybe I could give you our phone number, in case something should turn up. When he was a teen-ager, Barlow was a fan of Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, it’s possible he would have left behind a collection of pulp magazines from the twenties and thirties.”

“The ‘Weird Tales.’”

“Exactly.”

“No, I mean, there was a collection of ‘Weird Tales’ that came through when my dad ran the store. I was just a kid, but I remember the great cover art.”

“Were they Barlow’s?”

“I have no idea.”

“Would your dad remember?”

“Gone these many years, I’m afraid.”

“If someone was clearing out a house, different things can get jumbled into the same box. Sometimes there are a few magazines that can’t be sold because they got damp, missing pages, whatever, so the box hangs around. We’re looking for pretty much any handwritten material or notebooks that might relate to Barlow or Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard. Even unsigned fragments.”

“I can look, dad never threw anything away, but we’ve been trying to clear out the clutter.”

Matthew named a price he’d pay for any box of such material, plus shipping — not exorbitant but enough to be worth a few hours’ looking — and gave the nice lady his name and mailing address.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

ONE WEEK LATER …

Providence Police Sergeant Phil Robichaux had no doubt how it would go. He’d been through it with his union rep and then with Assistant Prosecutor Sturm Wolfson half a dozen times. There would be no cross-examination by any hostile attorney representing the deceased or his family, that was barred, and the judge’s instructions to the carefully screened coroner’s inquest jury would make it a slam dunk.

Still, it was all a pain in the ass. Weeks of worrying about this, when all he’d done was shoot one lousy nigger.

Technically, cops weren’t supposed to parade around in full dress uniform when they were off duty. After all, doctors didn’t generally testify in court in their Operating Room scrubs with a stethoscope around their neck; SCUBA divers didn’t flop up to the stand in their wet suits and tanks and swim fins. But that was easily taken care of — the department simply declared cops
were
on duty when required to testify in court — even if they were testifying about their having shot an unarmed citizen standing in the doorway to his own home. So Sergeant Robichaux was in his full dress parade regalia, complete with gold braid, as he entered Judge Crustio’s courtroom.

Judge Fidelio Crustio — who normally wouldn’t have pulled this duty — had taken over when the regular hearing officer had declared a conflict of interest. He ordered Phil sworn in. The prosecutor started by having him run through his years on the force, his promotions, commendations for bravery, and so on. No mention was made of his disciplinary problems or the ridiculous “anger management” classes,
or the four previous Internal Affairs investigations. Then Wolfson coached him soothingly through the day of the shooting, just like they’d rehearsed.

Perpetrator Leroy Johnson, who owned a local dry-cleaning business, had been a light-skinned black man. Johnson’s common law wife, who’d been breaking up with him and moving out, called police to report he was angrily throwing her possessions onto his front lawn.

Asked whether the subject Johnson had weapons, the woman answered yes, but they were legally owned and secured. No, she reported, he hadn’t been drinking.

Three officers and Sgt. Phil Robichaux responded. Johnson, on seeing them, retreated into his home, refusing to answer questions.

A few minutes later, Officer Stanley Thibodeau, a trained police negotiator, arrived, and as the four other policemen stood close behind him with weapons drawn, he began trying to coax Johnson out onto his front porch.

Johnson had been polite, but reluctant to leave his home, saying repeatedly he was frightened of being killed.

He said “I don’t want anybody to get hurt,” the negotiator told investigators a few months later. “I don’t want to get shot.”