The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries (14 page)

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

BOOK: The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries
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“It would seem so.”
Catkin moved around the pool, separating Browser’s and Redcrop’s tracks from those of the killers. She glimpsed her reflection in the water. Faint lines zigzagged across her forehead and etched the corners of her eyes. A slash of dirt smudged her turned-up nose. She had seen twenty-seven summers. Most of them had been happy. She had been married once to a man she’d loved deeply. She’d lost him to the coughing sickness over two sun cycles ago. Since that time, she’d only loved one man. Her eyes lifted to the burial party on the trail in the distance. Shadows dappled Browser’s tall body. He had barely looked at a woman since the death of his wife, though she had let him know she was there if he needed her.
Jackrabbit followed Catkin as she searched the pool area, his steps calculated to stay on the rocks so he didn’t disturb any of the sign. “When Stone Ghost said The Two had finally come home, did he mean Longtail village was their home?”
“Apparently.”
Straighthorn clutched his club. “I do not recall any murderers living in our village. I think we would have known.”
“It may have been long ago, Straighthorn. People have lived in this village off and on since the First People built it over a hundred sun cycles ago, but not always the same people. When did your clan come here?”
“Ten sun cycles ago. We were driven from our home in the south by the Starburst warriors.”
“The Two may have lived here long before you arrived.”
Straighthorn seemed to be thinking about that. “Did Stone Ghost say why they would wish to kill your Matron? She was a good woman. I never heard anyone speak ill of her, Catkin. She tried very hard not to hurt others.”
“He didn’t say.” She stretched her back. Though she’d slept six hands of time last night, she still felt numb, and exhausted. “But I can tell you that killers often have reasons that ordinary people cannot understand. I remember one old man who murdered little girls because he said their voices gave him headaches.”
She knelt to examine what appeared to be drag marks. The killer had hauled Flame Carrier by the feet; the Matron’s limp arms had scraped the sand. Here and there, gray hairs clung to rocks.
“The woman was alone when she dragged the Matron down. The man came later.”
Jackrabbit crouched beside her. “How can you tell?”
Catkin pointed to the sandal’s intricate weave recorded in the blood. “The Matron’s blood had dried enough on the stones that they took his large sandal prints clearly. He didn’t slip in the blood; his feet stuck.” She cocked her head and memorized the distinctive sandal pattern: one over, three under.
Jackrabbit bent forward to look more closely. “Catkin, why would two killers pursue us here? I can’t make sense of that.”
“I cannot say.” But she had to fight against the shiver that climbed her spine.
Straight Path Canyon. Everything returned to that. Like watching Father Sun rise in the morning. Nine moons ago, she and Browser had been searching the area around the fire pit where Hophorn had been attacked when he’d found a small wolf sculpture, exquisitely carved from turquoise.
“Blessed Spirits,”
Catkin had whispered in astonishment.
“Do you know what someone would do to possess that wolf?”
Steal, kill, wage war.
For uncounted hundreds of sun cycles, the First People had given turquoise wolves as gifts. But only to a few.
As they bravely climbed through the underworlds to get to this world of light, the First People had gained secret knowledge about those worlds. They had whispered that the paths were tangled and haunted by monsters. They’d told of traps and snares that lined the way, and the false paths leading to eternal torment. Their stories had terrified the Made People. Every soul had to travel through the underworlds to get to the Land of the Dead. How would they know which path to take unless the First People told them? Made People had once paid huge sums for the barest details of the journey.
The First People, however, never told anyone the whole truth. They always kept critical details hidden. They often forgot to mention a fork in the trail, or a landmark.
On very rare occasions the First People rewarded a special Made Person by giving him a magical Spirit Helper, a turquoise wolf in the form of a pendant to personally guide him through the maze to the Land of the Dead. A person didn’t need their secret knowledge if he had a Spirit Helper who knew the way.
Glorious stories surrounded these magical turquoise wolves, but until nine moons ago she had never known anyone who’d seen one, let alone held one of the wolves in her hand.
The killer must be desperate to get it back.
Catkin rose to her feet and started up the slope, following the drag marks.
“Catkin?” a warrior on the bank above called. “You will wish to see this!”
“What is it?” She trudged up the trail with Jackrabbit and Straighthorn close behind.
When she crested the bank, she gazed out through the sun-mottled cottonwoods and saw Skink and Water Snake kneeling over what appeared to be a fallen branch. Skink stood twelve hands tall and had a face like a bobcat, flat, with heavily lashed eyes and chin-length hair. He wore a plain doehide cape that hung to his knees. Water Snake stood a hand shorter than Skink and had the lean, feral face of a weasel. He’d twisted his black hair into a bun at the base of his head.
As she approached, they rose and gazed at her with their hands clenched at their sides.
“Well?” she said.
Water Snake just pointed to the ground.
Catkin’s gaze took in the knotted cloth, the yucca cords, the bloody pieces of wood.
Straighthorn worked into the circle and swallowed as if his mouth had suddenly gone dry.
The sand told the story. Four holes marked the places where Flame Carrier’s hands and feet had been staked down. Her killer had probably used the bloody cords to tie her wrists and ankles to the stakes, then she’d shoved the blood-soaked cloth into Flame Carrier’s toothless old mouth and taken her time beating Flame Carrier
with a variety of makeshift clubs, branches broken from trees, driftwood collected from the river. Finally, the murderer had skinned Flame Carrier’s face.
What kind of a person would brutalize an old woman?
An unpleasant stinging sensation filtered through Catkin’s body. She slowly walked around the torture site. Two sets of prints marked the ground, Flame Carrier’s and the woman’s. The man hadn’t been present for the torture either.
If these were the same two who had terrorized the people in Straight Path Canyon, then Catkin knew him.
He
had captured her on the cliff above Talon Town and turned Catkin over to his daughter to kill. Catkin never saw him, but she knew his voice. He’d sounded so much like Browser that she’d been distracted long enough for someone to club her from behind.
The next morning while she lay tied on the ground, her vision blurry, her head throbbing, Browser had sneaked into the snowy camp and shot an arrow through her masked assailant’s chest. He’d saved Catkin’s life—and killed his own wife: Two Hearts’ daughter.
Catkin looked up into Skink’s eyes. “Where did she come from? Did you follow her tracks out of the trees?”
“We followed the Matron’s tracks down to the river from Longtail village. Her murderer met her just over there”—he pointed to a place across the river in the thickest cottonwoods—“but the murderer came from nowhere, Catkin. Her steps disappear about fifty body lengths up the river. It is as if she flew down from the trees, and flew up again.”
Murmurs filtered among the warriors. They shifted from foot to foot, casting nervous glances at each other. Witches often disguised themselves as birds and flew about doing mischief, spying on people, killing those they hated.
She said: “These are humans we hunt. Humans who murdered our clan Matron and skinned her face!”
Straighthorn glanced up at Catkin from beneath long lashes, then quickly looked away.
Skink refused to meet her eyes.
They didn’t believe her.
Catkin said, “I must return to tell the War Chief what we’ve found, but in my absence Skink will lead the search party.”
He looked up. “Me? But, Catkin, I—”
“Split your warriors into two groups. I wish them to search both sides of the river until there’s no longer enough light to see. Run as far as you can before darkness. The murderers left tracks somewhere.
Find them.
”
“Yes, Catkin.” He backed away and trotted for his warriors.
Catkin turned. “Straighthorn, you are the best tracker in the village. You will lead one of the groups.”
His brows lifted as if in warning. He whispered, “Skink will not like this, Catkin. I am much younger than he, and, well, he imagines himself to be the best tracker.”
Catkin sought out Skink where he stood with his warriors in the cottonwoods. “Skink?” His cape whirled as he turned. “I wish Straighthorn to lead one of the search parties and you to lead the other. You understand?”
Skink glanced distastefully at Straighthorn, but nodded. “Yes, Catkin. It will be done.”
“Good. If I am asleep when you return, wake me. I will wish to know of your discoveries immediately.”
“I understand.” He returned to his conversation.
Straighthorn said, “Catkin, when you get back to the village, could you tell Redcrop that I will be away until late tonight, but that I will come to see her when I return?”
Catkin nodded. “I will, but remember that you can help her most by finding the people who killed our Matron.”
A swallow went down his throat. “I will work very hard to do that, Catkin.”
“I know you will. Now go. Darkness will come sooner than you realize.”
He trotted toward Skink. Jackrabbit followed.
Catkin started back up the trail toward Longtail village.
 
MY WHITE BUCKSKIN CAPE FLAPS IN THE WIND AS I
gracefully kneel behind the tan boulder on the hilltop.
Father lies in the currants and willows along the river’s edge, a bow shot below. The warriors do not see him.
He sees nothing but them.
I breathe in the damp earthy scent of the morning and wonder.
I have stood in awe watching death’s languid red rivers flow over my hands and understand the need to watch, to feel the warmth and taste the
metallic tang on my tongue. But I do not grasp his need to watch them come. He must see the search, hear the shouts and cries.
He keeps the death alive by watching.
He once told me, “We sit together, death and I, until only death remains.”
The warriors below close in around Father, moving, thrashing the willows, calling to each other.
I creep forward for a better look …
“Hungwy,” a voice whispers from behind me. “Where’s camp, Mother?” Tiny fingers slip into mine.
“Hungwy, Mother.”
Piper’s Song has seen eight summers. She has my beautiful mouth and nose, but deep black eyes. His eyes.
I pull her down to the dirt and hiss, “Look. Listen.”
In the desert I have often seen things very clearly that were not there. Someday, she will, too. Disembodied mountains floating in the sky with the Cloud People, cottonwoods singing in voices very pure and sweet.
Once, when I stood on a high mountain during a storm, brilliant threads of light flowed across the face of Our Grandmother Earth, connecting all living things in a single moment of blinding darkness.
That is what this child is.
A moment of darkness.
Another voice to torment Father.
T
HE FLIGHT ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS HAD BEEN spectacular, the little blue-and-gray prop plane droning its way over jagged peaks capped with brilliant new snow. The turbulence, however, hadn’t been so pleasant. Every nerve in Maureen Cole’s body tingled, her white fingers gripping the Norman Zollinger novel she’d picked up at the Benjamin Books in the Denver airport.
The little plane dipped and banked over wrinkled uplands carpeted with pines and junipers. She could see isolated roads, houses, and power lines. Here and there, bands of sandstone and shale stuck out of broken ridges. The plane dove down into the irregular valley and Maureen saw the airport. On approach, the plane hung for an eternal instant, then dropped like a rock, bumping and vibrating down the runway. The props roared as the pilot reversed them and deceleration threw Maureen forward. Buildings, construction equipment, and fences flashed past the shivering plane as it wheeled for the terminal.
After Maureen had claimed her baggage, she caught the shuttle bus, and within fifteen minutes, found herself standing at the registration desk in the Durango Doubletree Hotel. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. With Stewart, a roof, bed, and walls might have been the only criteria for comfort. What she found was a modern, airy hotel, with floral carpet patterns, oak wainscotting, lots of glass, polished brass, and gleaming chandeliers that cast light through white glass globes.
“Thank you, Dr. Cole. Enjoy your stay with us.”
Maureen took the plastic card key from the young dark-haired woman who stood behind the check-in counter. “Which way is my room?”
“Just walk to your right, take the first left, then the next right, and continue down the hall. You can’t miss it. Oh, wait! I almost forgot your cookie!”
The young woman walked a short distance away and reached beneath the counter.
“Cookie?” Maureen asked as she picked up her suitcase and hefted the strap of her field kit onto her shoulder.
“You betcha. It’s our trademark. We make the most delicious chocolate-chip cookies on earth.” She handed Maureen a brown paper bag. “Have a pleasant evening, Dr. Cole.”
“Thank you.”
Maureen strode down the length of the check-in counter, passed the telephones, turned left, went ten paces, and turned right. A middle-aged couple holding hands passed her heading in the opposite direction. She caught herself thinking about John, about all the things they’d planned to do when they were old and gray, and she suddenly missed him desperately. God, she was tired of being alone.
Maureen found her room, inserted the key, and opened the door. Nice. A king-sized bed sat against the wall to her right, and a table and chairs nestled in front of the large window in the rear. The view was gorgeous. A mixture of bare trees and red and gold aspens covered the mountainside behind the hotel.
She dropped her suitcase outside the bathroom, set the field kit on the floor, and tossed her purse onto the bed. Less than twenty meters from her window, a beautiful tree-lined river rushed over rocks. In the light from the hotel windows, the water looked golden.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She’d entered a different world, somehow wilder and more exotic than her own. The shuttle from the airport had passed classic Old West–style buildings with high Victorian false fronts and lots of delicate gingerbread architecture. Indians from a variety of southwestern tribes had walked the streets, smiling as they gazed into the store windows.
Maureen opened her brown paper bag and the entire room smelled like warm chocolate-chip cookies. She pulled the cookie out and took a bite as she walked toward the window.
“Um,” she said. “This
is
delicious.”
Her gaze drifted from the river to the trees, now mostly bare of leaves. In the short time since she’d landed, night had fallen.
Maureen took another bite of the warm, gooey cookie. On the plane three hours ago, she’d had a meal fit for a leprechaun: a piece of fish as big as her thumb, and a salad consisting of what looked like pre-chewed bits of lettuce. Perhaps more remarkably, the magicians
they hired as airline chefs had managed to make them taste exactly the same.
As she flipped the switch by the door, fluorescent light filled the room. Maureen gazed at herself in the big mirror. Her straight nose and full lips shone. Though she’d slept on the flight from Toronto, her large black eyes looked tired. Her braid draped her left shoulder, falling to her waist. She straightened her cream-colored turtleneck sweater and scrutinized her wrinkled black Levi’s. She didn’t feel like changing. Besides, Dusty Stewart wouldn’t notice anyway.
Maureen washed her hands and walked back into the room for her purse.
As she closed her door and headed down the hallway, she felt an odd sort of freedom. Her steps seemed lighter, her heart happier. In all her years of teaching, she had never taken a sabbatical, or even a vacation for that matter. When John had been alive, she’d never needed one. They’d spent each summer sitting on the porch of their home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, laughing and talking, discussing human evolution and the destiny of the species, planning their future together. All she’d had to do was look into John’s eyes and she was on holiday.
Maureen walked past the registration desk with its wooden pigeonholes, took a right past the French windows of the gift shop, and followed the signs to the Edgewater Lounge.
A tall, brown-haired man passed her, did a double take, and smiled. She made a point of not smiling back. There was no sense in giving him an excuse to try and keep her company. She’d been fighting off men her entire life. Most of them saw only her beauty; they didn’t care about anything else. In Maureen’s mind, the worst insult was to be thought of as a pretty face. And, good Lord, she was almost forty. Wouldn’t it ever end? That was one of the things that had drawn her to John. His eyes had looked straight through her exterior and into her soul.
Besides, she expected Stewart to be late. Archaeologists didn’t work on normal schedules. He might have unearthed something spectacular two seconds before he was supposed to leave the site and spent the next two hours digging by lantern light.
Maureen found the Edgewater Lounge and walked through the hallway with its artistic wooden relief, some of it carved, some sandblasted. She checked herself one last time in the mirror and entered. Three men sat on stools at the bar. Round acrylic-topped tables
lined the walls. The bartender gave her a welcoming nod. Short and stocky, his salt-and-pepper hair was held back in a ponytail. A white scar slashed his forehead. He wore granny glasses, and his name tag read BRUCE. She guessed he was about her age.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening,” Maureen answered, pausing. “I’m just going to have coffee, please.”
“Anything in that?” Bruce asked. “A little whiskey? Maybe some dark rum to warm you up on this cold night?”
“The only thing I’d like in it is plenty of coffee. Strong, please.” Americans tended to make coffee weak enough to be mistaken for water unless the light was just right.
“Yes, ma’am,” Bruce said. “Coming right up.”
Maureen walked to the rear and took a seat at a table. She checked her watch. Dusty was due in another twenty minutes.
Two of the three men at the bar turned in unison to look at her, then whispered something to each other and smiled.
Maureen stared at them as if she’d seen more appealing things under the rim of the toilet bowl. Their smiles faded; they turned back to their drinks.
Bruce edged from behind the bar, carrying a tray. As he set the steaming cup of coffee down before her, he said, “I brought sugar and cream in case you needed them.”
“Thanks. I drink it black, though.”
“Okeydokey. I’ll take the accessories back. Did you want to charge that to your room?”
Maureen looked up into his green eyes. The thick granny glasses made them look huge. She handed him a credit card. “Could I run a tab? I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Sure. No problem. Just give me a holler if you need anything else.”
“I will. Thank you.”
He walked back to the bar.
Maureen picked up her cup and watched the steam rise in curlicues before she took a sip. She always felt odd sitting in a bar drinking coffee, but seeing the elderly couple in the hall had made it worse. Loneliness always intensified her desire for a drink.
It had been four years since she’d had anything alcoholic, but every day was a struggle. Four years, six months, and seven days ago she’d come home to find smoke billowing from their house, rife with the
smell of burning spaghetti sauce. She’d run through the front door like a madwoman, shouting John’s name. When she’d stumbled through the smoke and into the kitchen, gasping for breath, she’d seen him lying on his side on the floor, his sandy hair drenched in sweat, his mouth ajar. He’d had a surprised look in his wide dead eyes.
The doctors had tried to explain his unusual heart flaw to her, but Maureen had barely heard them. Somewhere deep inside her a small terrified voice had been screaming:
No, no, God, please. I’ll do anything.
She took a long drink of coffee. The day after the funeral, she’d poured herself a Scotch and stood alone at the window looking out at Lake Ontario. Every breath of wind had sounded like John’s voice. Every time the old wooden floors had creaked, she’d whirled around, praying to see him.
It had started out as a couple of drinks at night to help her sleep. Then she had needed four or five drinks to barricade her heart against the loneliness. Six months after John’s death, she’d found herself emptying the last drop of a freshly opened quart of whiskey into her Saturday morning coffee and heard John’s soft, concerned voice say,
“I finally understand what Hell is, Maureen. It’s having to stand by and watch someone you love destroy herself. I know you can’t hear me, but I wish you’d stop this.”
Maureen had staggered up from the table and spent the rest of the weekend throwing up. She’d never been certain if it had been the alcohol, or the idea that the living created the Hell their dead loved ones had to endure …
“Am I disturbing a private conversation between you and you?” a deep, familiar voice asked.
Maureen looked up.
Dusty Stewart stood in front of the table, tall, blond, deeply tanned. He wore a red-and-black checked wool shirt and jeans. His blue eyes went straight for her soul, nervously probing, measuring. In that way, he was much like John had been. He always seemed to be looking past her beauty to something deeper. It was one of the things she liked about him.
Maureen smiled. “Yes, you are, but sit down anyway. How are you, Stewart?”
“Fine, Doctor, thanks.” He dropped into a chair and propped his
elbows on the table. Sand trickled from his left sleeve onto the green leather upholstery of the chair.
Maureen’s brows lifted. “You came in straight from the field, didn’t you?”
“I can’t imagine how you could tell,” he said as he waved at the haze of dust that sifted down around him, sparkling in the dim light. “That’s why I’m ten minutes early. How was your flight?”
“Bumpy air between Denver and Durango. The man behind me filled his airsick bag and the aroma started a chain reaction across the plane.”
Dusty grimaced, and the lines around his eyes deepened. “Sounds exciting. How about you? Did you get involved in the show?”
“Me? I boil decaying human bodies for a living, Stewart. Nothing makes me sick.”
Bruce, the bartender, walked up in the middle of the sentence with an order pad in his hands. He stared at Maureen through squinted eyes. “What kind of work do you do, ma’am?”
Dusty smiled genially. “She’s the dinner coordinator for the annual Alfred Packer Day’s celebration up at the University of Colorado.”
Maureen gave Dusty a questioning look.
Bruce peered at her over the rims of his glasses. “I thought you people used fresh stuff.”
“Uh, well,” Maureen answered vaguely, “it depends on what the police bring us.”
“The police?” Bruce looked perplexed.
Dusty explained, “Authenticity is the key, buddy.”
Bruce just stared. “Yeah. Right. Okay. What can I get you?”
“Do you have a bottle of Guinness back there?”
“Absolutely. Anything else?”
“Yeah, how about an order of nachos smothered in fresh jalapeños? I haven’t eaten since noon.”
“No problem. Might take a few minutes, though. I’ll have to check with the kitchen. Last time I was in, they were really backed up.”
“I have time. I’m spending the night in town.”
“Great. I’ll bring your beer right out.”
Bruce headed back for the bar, and Dusty turned blue eyes toward Maureen. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over
his stomach. In the low light, his blond hair and beard shimmered silver.
The silence stretched into an awkward ten seconds, then Stewart said, “You’re looking well.”

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