The Shaman Laughs (36 page)

"I don't see no fire," he said sullenly. As he spoke, a thin blue flame leaped up from the shaman's index finger. Billy was startled. Billy peed in his pants.

Albert braked the station wagon and glanced over his shoulder at the old woman. "This close enough to your destination? We don't mind taking you…" Daisy unbuckled the seat belt. "No. This'll do fine."

"Good-bye, dearie," Pamela said as she waved at Daisy's back. "Albert," she whispered, "how do you suppose she did that fire thing with her hands?"

He made an illegal U-turn. "Some kind of Native American magic, I suppose." The priest, who had watched the episode in his rearview mirror, smiled with satisfaction at the secret he shared with the hitchhiker. He had seen the old woman palm the plastic cigarette lighter.

Charlie Moon arrived barely two minutes before the fire engine; both were too late to make any difference in the outcome. The Economic Development Building was wrapped in flames. The scorching heat kept the curious onlookers well away. Moon was interviewing potential witnesses when he noticed a familiar face under a maple tree. He turned his task over to Sally Rainwater and made his way through a throng of onlookers to the solitary figure. Moon pushed his hat brim back a notch. "What brings you here, Aunt Daisy?" What, indeed.

The old woman looked up and blinked innocently. "Had to come to town. Things to do."

Moon had no doubt that his aunt had seen the
Drum
article. Daisy would have read about the Economic Development Board's decision to revive the late Arlo Nightbird's plans to convert
Canon del Espiritu
into a nuclear waste repository. Arlo's extensive files had been stored in the EDB building. Now, the valuable papers were ashes. Without the stacks of documents, the plans for the canyon were as good as dead. The policeman wanted to ask the question; the nephew didn't want to hear the answer.

The old woman watched the flames. She looked guilty. Extremely guilty. Moon turned to see the remains of the building collapse. "Good thing it happened so early in the day; nobody was inside." He cocked his head and stared down at his aunt. "Don't suppose," he said casually, "you have any secrets you want to share with your favorite nephew?"

"You want to learn yourself some secrets," she said with a poker face, "maybe you should go over to
Canon del

Espiritu
and have a long talk with the
pitukupf
."

"Maybe I'll drop by later and have a chat with the dwarf," Moon replied. "But in the meantime, I need to figure out how this fire got started. Anything you want to tell me?"

"Was on my way to the grocery store," she said. The shaman had learned this trick from the politicians she watched on television. Someone asked them an unwelcome question, they answered a
different
question with the intention of sowing confusion. It was a very clever ruse and it usually worked.

Moon's brow furrowed. "The grocery store's way over on Goddard Avenue. Isn't this stop a bit out of your way?"

And sometimes it didn't work. "Meat," she said darkly, "need to pick up some… fresh meat." Daisy had no intention of stopping at the grocery.

Moon grinned down at his aunt. "Don't suppose you brought any matches with you?"

Daisy closed her fingers over the plastic cigarette lighter in her pocket. "I read in the
Drum
that there's going to be a fishing contest at Capote Lake." Any mention of fishing always distracted her nephew.

"Uh-huh," Moon said absently. "Maybe I'll go wet a hook."

The fire chief waddled up in his oversized rubber boots. Abe Workman pushed his helmet back and wiped sooty sweat from his forehead. He nodded politely at Daisy Perika, then turned to the Ute policeman. "I got something for you, Charlie. Federal Express lady stopped next door to make a delivery. Navajo woman, her name's Martha George. Said she saw something… ahhh… somebody near the building right before she smelled the smoke."

Moon looked for the familiar van and didn't see it.

"Where is she?"

"Already took off. Had some deliveries to make in Bay-field."

Moon knew about this Martha George. The Navajo woman was rumored to be some kind of clairvoyant. Her father was a traditional Navajo healer… performed the Blessing Way. The policeman found his notebook. "She give you a description?"

"Not much. Except… she says the suspect was… uh… not more'n two feet tall." Workman blushed under Moon's stare. "Must have been somebody's kid, Charlie. Playin' with matches, maybe."

"Yeah. A kid." The policeman put his notebook in his shirt pocket.

Daisy's face was impassive. Reflections of the flames danced in her dark eyes.

His face, she thought, had a hollow look. Almost haunted.

Anne Foster frowned at the dark patches under his eyes. "You look absolutely exhausted." She caressed his hand. "You simply must take a few days off. Get away from the pressures at work."

"I'm fine." Scott Parris forced a smile, and it hurt his face. "All I need is a few hours of good sleep." Sleep without dreams.

But first there was work to do.

And promises to keep.

She knew that he was driving himself much too hard. Anne would have been astonished to know how he was spending every spare moment. But she would never know. No one would.

Not unless the dead knew.

The coyote paused to sniff tentatively, interrupting a determined search for the scent of the cottontail. The hungry canine turned, orienting her sensitive ears toward the source of the barely audible sounds.
Scuff-scuff
, the sounds said. They would pause, then start again.
Scuff-scuff
. The clever animal, long acquainted with the threat of the two-legged creatures and their dogs, sensed that something far more sinister approached along the floor of the canyon. The coyote moved into a patch of dead chamisa and waited with apprehension as the source of the scuffing sounds approached. The animal tilted her head in puzzlement at first sight of the
thing
—this unnatural apparition that moved in undulating motion like a shadowy wave over the moonlit sand of the canyon floor. At first, the shape of the intruder was indistinct, an amorphous patch of dark fog floating over the ground. Then, as if it could change its shape at will, the presence seemed to take on substance. The thing paused, raised itself to a standing position… like a great bear. But it was not a bear… This creature had broad shoulders, no neck, and a peculiar, flattened head. The head had horns. And a single red eye. Now it would glow brightly, like an ember in a fire. Then it would dim, as if the creature had blinked. The coyote could not deal with abstract concepts, like Good and Evil. But there were primitive instincts deep within her breast that drummed an urgent warning: Be still, be still!

He had blood on his hands.

For the tenth time in an hour, he washed carefully, using a miniature brush to scrub his knuckles and cuticles. He examined his fingers carefully in the dim light—his hands appeared to be clean but he was certain that traces of blood remained. Patiently, he lathered his hands again with the yellow disinfectant soap and scrubbed with the brush until it seemed that the skin itself might slough off into the basin. He rinsed under the faucet, then dried his hands gently on a soft cotton towel.

As he locked the front door behind him, his thoughts were occupied with a bit of food and early to bed. But first, a walk. A long, quiet walk along the bank of the river. Contemplating his lonely evening, he didn't notice the small figure waiting in the quivering shadow of the willow.

"Hey," she said.

He paused in mid-stride, then leaned forward slightly to get a better look. "Yes?"

Daisy's back was to the street lamp, her face masked in shadow. "Need to talk."

He didn't like the sound of this, but he managed a casual tone. "Want to come inside?"

Daisy considered the dark windows. Like little square eyes in the flat face of the structure. The door was an open mouth. "No," she snapped.

"Well, then," he said, "What'll we talk about?"

The shaman realized that she had not prepared herself for this encounter. How could she say it? "It's about what you've been doing…" She paused, drawing a deep breath, "… to those animals."

He felt a warning premonition chill his blood. He tilted his head and blinked at this unwelcome visitor. "What… exactly," he asked, "do you want?"

She told him.

BURNT CREEK RANCH

POWDERHORN, COLORADO

The ranch foreman did not have cattle on his mind as he steered the battered Jeep pickup between ruts in the gravel road. Toby Aucliffe wasn't even thinking of rain or, more to the point, the lack of rain—the western rancher's eternal preoccupation. Toby, with a stub of a cigar clamped between his nicotine-stained teeth, had a woman on his mind. A particular woman who had skin as pink as a fresh slice of ham, a woman with a voice that was slow and sweet, like thick maple syrup dripping off a stack of hot buttermilk pancakes. Toby enjoyed his food almost as much as his women, and tended to compare and intermingle these two categories of pleasure in an almost seamless fashion. He let up on the accelerator and eased the little truck around a hairpin curve that hugged a deep arroyo.

He smelled the carcass before he saw it.

Toby slammed the pickup door, threw the unlighted cigar onto the gravel road and ground it savagely under his boot heel. Damn cows. Almost as bad as horses. Turn your back, and, just to spite you, they'd fall over deader'n a stone. In his view, the animals got sick or died just to annoy him, to ruin his plans for a Saturday night in town. He hesitated, then stomped across the dry meadow toward the still form in a patch of sage. From the road it looked like a boulder, but the cowman knew every boulder on his turf. This was a purebred Hereford, one of more than six hundred head on the Burnt Creek ranch. As he approached the carcass, he realized that this was a big animal. This was one of the bulls. Toby cursed silently. Purebred Hereford bulls cost serious money. The consortium of Dallas chiropractors who owned the ranch would demand a full report on this one. "A written report, listing all the pertinent details," he muttered aloud, imitating the whining tone of their bespectacled accountant. The barely literate cowman hated accountants almost as much as he hated beeves that croaked for no good reason. Toby cursed again, this time his fury directed toward the rich chiropractors who played at ranching.

When he was within a few feet of the remains, Toby Au-cliffe stopped suddenly, bouncing back like a drunk who had stumbled into a glass door. "Oh no…" He turned away in horror, closing his eyes to blot out the picture of the mutilation. Then, the hard case vomited up his breakfast.

The package arrived at the Granite Creek Police Department by United Parcel Service. Scott Parris read Nancy Beyal's return address; he cut the heavy tape with his pocket knife and unwrapped the brown paper. Inside, he found the paperback romance that the dispatcher had been reading on the day he arrived at the Southern Ute Police Station.

Parris smiled at the teasing note taped to the lurid cover of the Mexican romance novel.