The Demon Hunters (17 page)

“
I lay there panting in
what I saw was a Tunnel. Yes they must have brought the Water in
that way but now the sides were dry and coated with desiccated
Algae. The Well would be dry but for condensation forming in the
chill dank air. The tremendous exertion of lifting my Body the
strain on my Arms was suddenly apparent although I was not aware of
any strain until I rested. Above me the Grating shifted. My Savior
stood below. I twisted in the Tunnel and pulled myself back out
until I hung from the Entrance from the waist up. I dangled my Arms
down and called to him to jump. He turned his side to me and
reached up with one Arm to show me he could not touch even the tips
of my Fingers. I know he had the strength to leap and catch my hand
yet he refused to attempt that.

“
I called for Daddy to
help him and Mister Trencham replied they were trying. I urged them
to hurry. One edge of the Grating dropped a few inches. I wriggled
out a little farther. The Man in the Water frowned and shook his
head. He stepped away from the Wall out to the middle of the Well.
His eyes did not leave my Face. He looked up at me. Water dewed his
face and his long black Hair hung wet and heavy as the coat of a
Seal. His Face was terrible in its tranquility.

“
I screamed at Daddy to do
something. He replied that he would get me out and I was not to
worry. But I was no longer concerned for my own safety. Help him I
told Daddy.

“
He looked at me still
with a small smile. He was the most beautiful Man I had ever seen.
I heard a Noise a vibration in the walls and pulled myself into the
Tunnel to escape decapitation as the Grill dropped down past the
entrance.

“
I know that my last sight
of him an instant before the Grill hit the Water just as he ducked
beneath will HAUNT me for the rest of my li
fe.”

“
Whew!” I said around a wad
of steak.

“
Wow!” Mel said.

“
Interesting, but is it
supposed to mean something to you?” Jack asked. “Why aren’t you
trying to find out who sent it to you, and why?”

I turned the next page. “All but
impossible. Wrapped in plain brown paper, no return address,
remember?”

“
What about Elizabeth? Or
the expedition?”

Huh?
Then it clicked and I gave myself a mental slap. I am in a bad
way when a dead roomy is smarter than me.

I cleaned every morsel from my plate
and took it to the sink, then went up to my bedroom with Mel and
Jack trailing me. Getting comfy in the old swiveling office chair,
I lit up the computer and did a search.

No Elizabeth Hulme. No Edward Hulme,
nor Westerland, Beecher, Trencham or Carlin with a connection to a
nineteenth-century expedition to mysterious ruins in Burma. Which
didn’t mean the information didn’t exist, just it didn’t on the
Web. Or I wasn’t using the right search words.

I typed in
Nagka
and
Expedition
, which
immediately brought up a result: a listing of a library book, “The
Nagka Expedition,” written in 1951 by Hans Stadelmann. No
information on the content of the book, just a listing.

“
I told you so!” Jack
crowed, almost in my lap.

With feigned excitement, I leaned
closer the screen. “Wow! You’re right, Jack.” I jerked back, swung
my chair and he hopped out the way. “Absolutely right! That there
tells me everything I need to know about that little ol’
journal.”

“
You wouldn’t have that
much if not for me,” he grumbled.

Not a title to grab one’s interest,
unless you were specifically searching for it. The nearest copy
resided in the Clark County Library, in Las Vegas.

A search for Hans
Stadelmann found several entries, but they only told me he wrote
The Nagka Expedition in 1951, after which he returned to Myanmar to
continue his research.
What
research?

Could I have Stadelmann’s book sent to
my local library?

Before I made a decision, I tabbed up
another screen and logged on one of Royal’s search engines, and
looked for phone numbers and addresses for Hulme and Stadelmann. Of
course, I got a zillion for both. But a Janine Hulme lived in Las
Vegas.

Dare I phone her? Why not? I made cold
calls all the time. If she knew nothing of young Elizabeth, no harm
done.

I should be devoting everything I had
to the Borrego case, but Elizabeth’s narration called to
me.

The phone rang twice before a woman
answered, identifying herself as Janine.

I plunged right in. “Ms. Hulme? My
name is Tiff Banks. I’m a private investigator working out of
Clarion, Utah. I’ve also worked as a consultant for Clarion Police
Department. What might be evidence in a case has come into our
possession and I’m looking for the descendant of Elizabeth Hulme, a
fifteen-year-old who was part of an expedition to Burma in the
eighteen-hundreds.”

See, I didn’t tell a lie, not even a
tiny one.

“
But that’s me!” the voice
gushed. She sounded real excited. Jackpot! I looked up at Jack and
grinned.

“
What. . . . How. . . ? How
can Elizabeth be involved in a police case?” she continued,
exclamation marks in her voice.

I winked at Mel. “All I can
tell you is I have one of Elizabeth’s journals, which
may
be pertinent to our
case.”

“
A journal? I can’t imagine
how,” she replied in a calmer voice.

“
I’m on my way to Vegas,” I
said impulsively. Locals don’t like you abbreviating the name of
their city, but it slipped out. “To the Clark County Library in
fact, to look at Hans Stadelmann’s book on the expedition. Have you
read it?”

“
Naturally. I have a
copy.”

Should I skip the library and read her
copy? No. The more I knew before I met her, the better.

“
I’d like to come by and
talk to you while I’m there.” I dropped my tone conspiratorially.
“I’d rather not discuss this over the phone.”

I paused to let it sink in. I don’t
know what she thought, but if you let them, it’s surprising what
people come up with in their heads.

“
But can you tell me
which
of Elizabeth’s
journals you have?”

I narrowed my eyes at the little book.
“Um, it begins when she first arrives in Burma. She writes about
traveling to Nagka and what she sees in the city.”

Her voice came over hushed.
“Oh, my goodness! Miss Banks, I
must
have it! And I think it belongs
to me, her only living relative. If you can - ”

“
You’ll get it when we’ve
finished with it and I trust that won’t be long. So, you don’t mind
if I come by your place?”

“
I don’t mind at all,
although I still can’t - ”

I interrupted again. “I’ll be there
tomorrow morning. Will that be convenient?”

“
I’ll be home all day. My
address is - ”

“
It’s okay, Ms. Hulme, I
got it.” And I hung up.

“
You’re going to Vegas?”
Mel asked.

Peering at the monitor, I jotted
Janine’s address on a scrap of paper, tabbed up the second screen
and wrote down the address of the library. “Why not?” I got to my
feet. “I’m for the shower and an early night. See you guys in the
morning.”

“
You’re not going to call
that hunky Royal?”

I paused and pretended to think about
it. I hadn’t heard from Royal since our meeting with Gia and Daven.
They were so all-fired busy with their case, they didn’t need to
know about my obsession with an old journal. With luck, I could get
to Vegas and back before he knew. But to be on the safe side, I
would not call him till the morning. From Salt Lake City
Airport.

I smiled to myself. I would not call
his cell. I’d leave a message on his home answering machine. Tit
for tat.

***

Propped on one elbow, I lounged on my
bed with just the table lamp casting light over Elizabeth’s
journal.

“
I can not forget him. The
days pass in tedium and I remain in the Tent I share with Nester
trying to read or write herein or mend the rents which appear daily
in the Mens clothing. My Mind bursts with strange
thoughts.

“
I picture his Face and
his Body and the ripple of muscles as he stretched his hand to me.
I wonder what his Hair would feel like on my Face.

“
I confess Dear Journal I
have never seen an Englishmans body. One does not even in the
marriage bed not an English Gentlemans body. The nearest to that
was when Cynthia Moore and I peeked through holes in the Fence
separating the Mens and Womens bathing areas at Brighton Beach. The
Men wore decent combination garments so I did not see any actual
Skin but I think that an Englishman is rather narrow and flat
straight up and down with narrow Shoulders and thin Arms and no
Waist or Bottom to speak of. Certainly their Musculature is feeble
when compared to our Native Boys. Bulging muscles indicate manual
Labor something only Peasants do.

“
Mister Trencham is
somewhat muscular but Jimmy although quite handsome with his shock
of rich red brown Hair and rugged features is no taller than I and
as slim. Balding Ernest is a narrow whip of a Man.

“
One is allowed to look at
almost naked Native Men here in India because they are uncivilized
therefore to an Englishmans way of thinking not quite Human. Their
Bodies are quite brawny and sinuous. His Body was like that
although he was much taller than the Natives and his Face was not
theirs with only a hint of their predominant features.

“
Daddy would be both
embarrassed and angry if he read my musings herein.

I wonder what Physical
love with a Man is like. Why should I not. Many of the Girls I know
are already wed or will do so within two years.

“
They call it love but
Mothers description made it seem like nothing resembling love. Men
and Women copulate to bring Babies into the world and a Woman
submits to her husband from duty alone. But obviously there is much
more for the Man. Why else do young Men have illicit affairs or
seek out prostitutes if the sexual act is only to produce Children.
The last thing they want from their liaisons is a Child. Surely the
answer must be that they enjoy sexual congress. And if a Man finds
pleasure in the act why not a Woman. Are we not made to find
pleasure in the act of procreation.”

Chapter
Fourteen

I don’t like the heat in Las Vegas, it
sucks the moisture right out your body. I like the Strip’s solution
even less. Jets of air suffused with water shoot out from the
facades of many casinos at ground level. It’s like being stuck in a
giant swamp cooler. I believe I mentioned how much I like swamp
coolers.

The cab to the library cost me a
bundle. The librarian would not let a non-member see the book, and
I couldn’t get membership unless I lived in the area. I had to show
them my consultant’s badge and claim I worked for Clarion PD. Lord
help me if word got back to Mike Warren.

The faint smell of paper, card and old
leather surrounded me as I sat at a plastic table in the corner of
the main reading room near the Reference section, where many of the
older books reside in their towering shelves. The bank of tall
glass windows in the outer wall filtered the bright daylight, but
unrestrained golden beams shot through smaller windows up near the
ceiling, making pools and halos on the wood tables at the center of
the room.

I love the peace of a library,
unbroken but for a page turned here and there, a soft footfall, the
occasional low murmur. There is an atmosphere close to hallowed in
a library. The air-conditioning vent under which I sat sent a
wonderfully cool stream of air over me as I opened the small
hardcover book.

Stadelmann went to Nagka in 1947 and
stayed two years, exploring the area and talking to the locals.
Therefore, what he learned came from them. It could be the truth,
but equally could be embellishment or myth.

James Westerland and two
native guides hacked a trail through the jungle in Upper Burma and
found the city of Nagka in 1885. He
likened
its architecture to Angkor Thom in northern Cambodia, uncovered by
the French naturalist Henri Mouhot in 1860. This both puzzled and
elated him. He judged Nagka unlike any other ruin in the province,
in the entire country as far as he knew. Also unlike them in that
it appeared untouched. The natives had not taken the stones of
Nagka to build their homes and walls, which indicated they saw
Nagka as a place of great holiness, or great evil. Not that the
native folk would talk about Nagka. They refused, to the extent
they physically turned their backs on any inquiry. What ancient
civilization built eerily beautiful Nagka? Had its people, like
those of Angkor Thom, fled the onslaught of invading barbarians
more than four hundred years before?

Two years later, Westerland returned
to Nagka with renowned archeologist Edward Hulme, his assistant
Ernest Beecher, and the American archeologist Matthew Trencham.
Edward Hulme’s young daughter Elizabeth and her governess Nester
Carlin accompanied them.