The Bone Man (20 page)

“Shit,” Aric said. “I’ll be back.” He pushed me forward.

I tried to catch myself, staggered, and fell.

I looked behind me. Aric was gone, and I was in the hands of some crazed redhead with a gun.

On my hands and knees, I stared at the floor. I hadn’t the energy to get up. I expected to be shot any second. Aric had just . . . left. How could he do that? I couldn’t quite believe it.

A shadow above me. I didn’t budge. Then hands reached beneath my arms and lifted me to my feet. Arms wrapped around me and pressed me close, where I fit perfectly beneath her chin.
Her
chin?

I knew that fit, had felt it a million times. “Hank? In drag? Why the hell are you dressed as a redhead? Oh, God, I’m so glad to see you. You shaved your mustache!”

The arms tightened, and I wrapped mine around him and squeezed tight.

He leaned down, kissed my head, my cheek. Oh, that felt great. Nothing had ever felt better.

“Tal,” he said, his voice soft and caressing. “Hon. I’m glad you survived, because I’m going to kill you.”

Not for the first time, I willed Hank to drive faster. I sat strapped into the seat of the rental car as we drove down a busy two-lane street near a golf course. Men and women were out swinging their irons on this chilly, blazing-blue day. My stomach flip-flopped, and it took all my energy not to ask him to speed up. I closed my eyes. Back home the skies would be lead gray, and the leaves would have
turned party colors, and people would be bustling in their light coats, chilled by gusts off the Charles, yet refusing to give in to down parkas just yet, not this early in October.

The car stopped. We were in the parking lot of the Red Rock Animal Hospital.

“Be right back,” Hank said. He slammed the door and marched into the vet’s sans wig and fake boobs and makeup. He hadn’t said a word on the way over. You’d think he’d be curious, but apparently he was just pissed.

I was glad to see him go, since he’d been taciturn and angry and altogether miserable to me. I trolled in my purse, but, no, my phone was gone. That’s right. Aric had trashed it. A whimper from the backseat. I turned, and was surprised to see Coyote’s nose peeking out of the blanket that covered him. How the heck had Hank gotten the dog? I couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to, actually.

Coyote was dreaming his doggie dreams. He whimpered and thrashed his legs, perhaps in pursuit of some illusive rabbit. I always wondered what dogs dreamed. Were people featured? Or were they all-animal dreams? Were there pictures? Sounds? Smells?

Coyote whimpered again, and I thought he might be back with his master, Old Man. I knew Hank would never hurt a dog.

My brain wasn’t working right. Why had Aric left me? He’d shot at Hank, but I believed he thought Hank was one of the bad guys. Why couldn’t I think straight? I’d momentarily seen Aric as the enemy. He wasn’t. I believed that. At least, I thought I did. Cripes. I wished nobody had given me the Percocet. Obviously that ship had sailed.

I flipped down the visor to look in the mirror.

Ohmigod!
Medusa hair out of control, milk-white face, zombie-like lips. Scratches and bruises and ugly stitches on Izod man’s cut.

I looked like an escapee from a Tim Burton movie.

Movement at the entrance to the vet’s. A white-coated
man—tall and stick thin—walked beside my bear of a lover. I sighed. He was like a bear, that Hank, but funny, too. I realized I was thirsty and groped for water. No luck.

Odd. Hank and the stick man were talking, and the stick man cradled something in his hand. I wished I could see better. I pushed myself up. Crap. Everything ached.

Oh, good, they were coming to the car. Except they walked right past me, and opened the back door. Hank reached for Coyote, and the dog growled, and then Stick Man jabbed him with a needle before I could even react.

“What are you doing?” I said.

Coyote wuffled a sigh, and his head lolled on Hank’s forearm.

“Did you kill him?” I said. “What did you do?”

“Stop barking, Tal,” Hank said. “He’s just asleep. He’s fine. Fine.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The men talked in murmurs, voices low and deep. Then Hank lifted a limp Coyote out of the car and carried him into the vet’s. I tried to follow, tugging at the door, finally getting it unlatched, pushing it open, which was really hard.

Had I ever ached so much? I staggered toward the entrance, and somehow I made it inside. Coyote was
my
responsibility, not Hank’s.

“What are you doing?” I said.

A man with a Chihuahua on his lap stared at me, but no one said a word, not even the girl at the counter. Then her lips thinned, and her eyes grew wide. She looked frightened, which was really weird.

I took a seat and leaned to pet the Chihuahua. The man hugged his dog and inched away from me.

Boy, nobody was being very nice
.

I was too pooped to say anything, and so I let my lids drop and I slid into sleep.

I see Aric, his head and back sheathed in a white buffalo robe
with horns and a bonnet of feathers. His chest is naked but for jacklas of turquoise and orange spiny oyster shells that bounce as he dances. A weaving is wrapped from his waist to below his knees, met there by a circle of bells and soft moccasin boots. Brightly colored beaded bands surround his biceps, and turquoise and coral and silver adorn his wrists. He carries a lightning arrow, with points at each end, and a gourd that he rattles. He’s dancing and singing to a rhythm that’s more familiar than life. And I sway to the rhythm
.

He smiles at me. He holds out his hand. I take it
.

I join the dance, moving with that Zuni rhythm of the drums. It pours through me, and Aric smiles. And there’s his auntie, smiling, too, and his grandma, teeth missing, but grinning
.

Aric moves faster. I can’t keep up. His legs pump up and down, pistons, and when he twirls, the white fur fans out, like liquid platinum. And now we’re joined by Ben Bowannie and Natalie and Ben’s aide, and we’re all dancing, swirling, leaping to the rhythm that pulses faster, faster, faster
.

A cold shadow creeps across my shoulder. Fingers of ice. I shudder with fear. Aric shakes his head, waves to me, but . . . oh, I want to move, but I can’t
.

“Come,” Aric whispers
.

The chill crawls across my back and down my arms and up the back of my head and down my spine. An undulating wave of fear
.

“Come,” Aric says. And he’s twirling now, sweat beading, flying from his face, his chest
.

And I hear him even though his lips aren’t moving
.

His face, close to mine, but lips unmoving. A halo of white fur. I reach out to touch it, the tips of my fingers almost feeling the softness, the warmth
.

But the cold, like an evil lover’s arms, wraps around me. I can barely move
.

You must,
Aric says
. Chaco. Come. Come to Chaco.

I touch his face, warm as the sun from the dance
.

Chaco
.

And the cold envelops me
.

I shuddered in a breath. Let my head fall to my chest. Blinked myself awake. I knew something important. I did. Aric was neither evil nor the enemy. I had betrayed him by not believing in him, when all he’d done was help me. How could I have been so foolish? Where was that sense I so relied on? Now he was gone. I had no way to get in touch with him or apologize or anything. His father and cousin were dead.

What had I been thinking?

“C’mon, Tally.” Hank crouched in front of me. “We’ve got to go.” He helped me stand. “You’re in crummy shape.”

“Am I?”
I have to get to Chaco
.

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

Hank’s eyes, those wonderful caring eyes, wouldn’t meet mine.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

“Nothing, hon. Let’s just go.”

I pulled my arm from his hand. “Wait. What are you doing to Coyote?”

His lips thinned. “We’ve got to test the dog.”

I leaned against the wall so I wouldn’t fall on my ass. “Look, I may feel pretty woozy here, but I want to know what’s going on. Now.”

“You’re about to pass out. C’mon.” He moved forward.

I sat down, hard. “No. I’m not going anywhere. You are
not
my keeper.”

His lips thinned. “You need one.”

“Bite me.” I stood, wobbled, sat again. “Miss?” I called to the receptionist. “I need to talk to the vet about my dog.”

I squinted. She was looking at Hank, not me. I crossed my arms. “Fine. I feel so crappy, another hour or so won’t make a difference. I’m not leaving til—”

“The vet,” Hank said. “He’s sending the dog to Albuquerque to be tested for some stuff.”

“Oh, okay. Some blood tests?”

Hank’s chest billowed out and in. He sat beside me.

I slid my hand through the crook of his arm. “Thanks, hon. I need to know. He’s a good and faithful dog. What does the vet think is wrong with him? When will they know?”

“C’mon, Tal, you’re not feeling well. We should go.”

“
When
will they know what’s wrong with him?” I repeated.

The receptionist whimpered, and I turned to her. Her eyes were saucers, her face pale, her lips wobbly.

“What?” I said to her. “What is it?”

“They cut—”

“Don’t!” Hank shouted at her.

“Oh, yes, sorry,” she said.

The man with the Chihuahua mumbled some Spanish words and ran out of the lobby clutching his dog.

“Goddammit, you tell me the truth, Hank Cunningham.” I sounded drunk. But I folded my arms. I wasn’t budging until he fessed up.

Hank sat back, threaded his hands together. He still wouldn’t look at me. “The truth. Here it comes. That dog might have rabies. They have to cut off his head to learn whether he’s rabid or not.”

Hank lifted me by my upper arm and steered me toward the door. “Hospital.”

I gathered what little strength I had left and dug in. “No.”

“Yes.” He tugged.

I sat.

“Tally, dammit.”

“No one.
No one
is chopping off Coyote’s head.”

He peered down at me. “That’s the only way. Period.”

“You mean to tell me, there are no blood tests, no saliva tests, nothing else that can be done?”

He shook his head.

I whooshed out a breath, wrapped my arms around my bent knees. What could I do? Thinkthinkthink.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “I believe Coyote is a good animal. I also think that he’s probably been vaccinated for rabies. But I don’t know and we can’t find out.” My head spun and my stomach flip-flopped. Hank was right. I needed a hospital. I rubbed my eyes, tried to focus.

“So here’s my solution.” I smiled up at him. “We’ll have him boarded, keep him muzzled. And I’ll get the rabies shots.”

Hank rolled his eyes, walked away. He was ticked, for sure. He pulled me to my feet.

“We’ll talk about it on the way to the hospital,” he said.

I leaned against him. “Okay. But I’ll never forgive you if you kill him.”

“Whatever you say, Tal.”

I let him haul me out of the vet’s. I was too weak to fight.

After a flurry of the usual emergency room hooha, I found myself in a bed in some hospital in Gallup. All I wanted to do was sleep, except they kept fussing with my hand. “They” meaning the people behind the masks and wearing the latex gloves. It felt surreal.

They unwrapped my hand. I peeked, and saw it was swollen and angry and ugly. But someone else had done something to it that almost looked like packed dirt. They gently lifted the dirt off, and I couldn’t help watching. You know, sort of like watching a train wreck or something equally horrible.

I flexed my fingers. Didn’t hurt so much. Oddly, the hand wasn’t nearly as swollen as I’d expected. Someone—Aric?—had given me some care.

They rinsed it off and washed it with Betadine and I grew sleepy, and then, bada-bing, a bunch of shots.

“I am not a pincushion!” I tried to shout. It came out a mumble.

“You sure look like one, honey.”

And I fell asleep.

I peered around the room. At least this awakening, the lights were on and noises penetrated my membrane of wooziness. Right—a hospital. I had a window bed, a little plastic canister of water beside me, and someone snoring in the next bed who was unavailable for viewing due to the starched curtain hanging between us.

“Hank?”

Nowhere to be found, I guessed.

I lifted my right hand, the bandaged one. Not bad. Oh, it throbbed, but not bad at all.

I wheeled the IV cart with me and peed. Then I pulled it to the closet, where I found not a single stitch of my clothing.

Hank knew me too well. I’d bet he took my clothes. Then again, given the last few days, maybe he’d burned them.

I sat back down on the bed. I wanted out of there. Veda’s death had only worsened my loathing of hospitals.

My head throbbed a little, but I felt a thousand times better than when I’d entered the hospital. I buzzed the nurse, sat back, and waited.

A whirlwind varoomed in. “Yes? You buzzed?”

She wore her black hair in braids, bound to her head, and her face was gorgeous and exotic.

I smiled, tried to look pleasant. “Hi. I feel pretty good. I’d like you to help me shower, get dressed, and get out of here.”

She smiled. “The detective said you’d say that. Since you’re under arrest, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

I again saw the man, dead, in the trading post, the one who’d tried to kill me. How had the authorities found out I’d been there? And did they think we’d killed the old man, too?

Except . . .

“This detective, um, what’s his name?”

She blushed. “Lieutenant Cunningham.”

That bastard was flirting with the nurse to keep me here. “Of course.”

She turned, smiled. “Here’s the doctor. He’ll explain the shots and all.”

“Shots?”

She disappeared and was replaced by a round, balding man of indeterminate age. “Hello, hello, hello.”