The Witch's Tongue (16 page)

Not long after Charlie Moon left officer Jim Wolfe in the Bear Claw Bar, Felix Navarone was released from the tribal jail in Ignacio.

Despite Moon’s stern warning to stay clear of the man he had threatened to kill, Wolfe felt compelled to follow the jubilant exprisoner’s 1957 Chevrolet pickup out of town. From long experience, the policeman knew that tailing was an iffy proposition. Blink an eye, your ninety-year-old grandmother would lose you in a half-empty Wal-Mart parking lot. And if your target suspected he was being followed, you might as well forget it and go home. This being so, Officer Wolfe was properly cautious.

A few miles south of Bayfield, Navarone turned off the paved highway onto a gravel road. From time to time, the pickup’s taillights would disappear over a ridge. This made Wolfe uneasy; he kept his distance at a good quarter mile. But when he topped a particular rise, Wolfe was confronted with an unexpected complication—a fork in the road. There was not even a distant puff of dust to indicate which direction the Indian had chosen.
Well, this is just dandy
. On a hunch, Wolfe took the right branch of the fork, goosing his Subaru Forester to speeds that were reckless on the gravel.
If he’s up ahead, I’ll spot him pretty quick
. But after several miles there was no sign of Navarone’s pickup. Cursing his bad luck, Jim Wolfe did a sliding U-turn, raced back to take the other fork. He doggedly spent an hour searching for a trace of the ancient Chevy pickup. It was no use. The Apache had slipped away.

He considered the situation. The left and right branches of the fork had multiplied into a multitude of smaller lanes, and most of these ended at isolated dwellings or locked gates. As far as he could tell, there was no through road on either branch. Which meant that Navarone must eventually return to the split in the road. But when? Tonight? Tomorrow? Sometime next week?

Having nothing better to do, Jim Wolfe decided to wait for a few hours. He parked his car a few yards off the road in the concealment of a clump of willow bushes. He slipped a Judy Collins disk into the CD player, settled down, watched. There was only a dribble of traffic. When Ms. Collins had played out, he substituted Emmylou Harris. As twilight came and went, he watched the blood-red sun slip behind a distant mesa—then go in free fall to the bottom of the world. When the darkness was complete, he shut the CD player off. The occasional sound of an approaching automobile would arouse his interest, but mostly he listened to crickets chirp and wished a hundred times that he had taken the left fork.

Shortly past midnight, he decided to give it up.
Wherever that Apache is, he’s holed up for the night. I might come back in the morning—

He was startled by the whine of an engine. As the vehicle got closer, it began to take shape in the moonlight. Wolfe strained to see whether it might possibly be an old Chevrolet pickup. It was. Looked like a 1957. The off-duty cop laughed out loud and muttered to himself, “Navarone—you are dead meat.” He cranked the Subaru’s engine. Leaving the lights off, he slipped quickly behind his prey.

After a mile or so, the pickup in front of him slowed to a crawl.

FELIX NAVARONE
leaned forward to look through the ’57 Chevy pickup’s sand-blasted windshield. He squinted to make out the little-used dirt lane that led out to the natural gas field near Butterfield Mesa.

JIM WOLFE
adjusted his speed to match the Apache’s truck.
What now, Navarone?

The Chevrolet pickup came almost to a stop. Started again. Moved slowly, as if searching for something. Turned off the gravel road. Moved slowly into the brush. Vanished.

Wolfe passed the location where the pickup had turned, took a hard right, bumped down the shoulder into a dry streambed. He shifted to low, snailed along for a hundred yards. When he saw no sign of the pickup’s headlights, it occurred to him that Navarone might have already stopped.
If he has, he might hear my engine
. Wolfe switched off the ignition, removed the bulb from the dome light. He checked his sidearm, opened the car door as silently as possible, did not close it. He walked slowly toward where he thought the pickup might be, taking care not to step on a dry twig that might snap. Juniper and piñon cast black shadows in the silvery moonlight.

What is Navarone up to?
A possibility had been gnawing at the police officer.
He might have spotted me behind him and figured he’d suck me into an ambush. Well, my momma didn’t raise no fools
. Wolfe dropped to his hands and knees, crawled to the crest of a grassy ridge. He scooted along on elbows and belly until he could see what lay beyond—an open, almost flat valley, bisected by a deep arroyo. Towering above the valley was a broad mesa, with a split chimney towering from its crest. There was no sign of the old pickup. He cursed.
I’ve lost him again!
But as his eyes gradually adjusted to the moonlight, he saw a hint of parallel lines in the sand. The tire tracks ran along a barely discernible lane that snaked through the low brush. Wolfe got to his feet, fell into a crouching run, crossed a shallow arroyo. He found the pickup’s tire tracks but did not hear any engine sounds. And then he saw it—the truck was parked in a narrow neck of valley, between a gigantic pair of sandstone mesas. The Indian had taken no particular trouble to hide his wheels. Which could mean that he didn’t expect anyone to follow him into this wilderness. Or that he didn’t care if someone did. Someone whose name was Jim Wolfe. The troublesome thought pounded in his head.

Could be an ambush. I need to get to higher ground
.

He selected a knobby hill sprouted with sage and piñon, made his way to the top, and took up his position by a pillow-shaped outcropping of sandstone.

Nothing moved around the Indian’s truck.

Time passed without the ticks and tocks of mechanical clocks.

The lawman watched. Waited. Thought his troubled thoughts.

White-hot stars winked and sparkled. Unseen by the eye of man, a four-billion-year-old, pea-sized meteorite gleamed in the dark sky for one final glorious moment. Mindless of the mortal and his minuscule concerns, the Milky Way whirled ever so slowly—as spiral galaxies are required to do.

Somewhere out there in the faraway, a lonely coyote yip-yipped. There was an answering yodel from the crest of a craggy mesa. Then another.

An owl, hungry for her nightly mouse, began to hoot. She was joined by her mate.

A pleasant night breeze played with the juniper branches.

Presently, a heavy cloud skimmed across the heavens, cloaking the world of men in inky darkness.

Jim Wolfe was squinting, vainly attempting to see the pickup.
If I get my hands on that Apache, I’ll give him the beating of his life
.

There was a sharp prod against his spine.

Wolfe felt his entire body go taut.
Navarone has slipped up on me. I’m a goner
.

The English words were spoken in the characteristic choppy dialect of an Indian: “I know you’re packing, cop—so don’t you even move a whisker.”

The lawman felt the warmth of the man’s breath by his ear, the clumsy fumbling of a hand against his side.
He’s going to take my gun, then he’ll kill me. But I ain’t leaving this world without a fight!

In one motion, the desperate man twisted to elbow the Indian on the chin, jerk the heavy revolver from its holster, and empty the cylinder into the shadowy figure that was stumbling, turning away. The first five slugs smacked the ambusher’s thigh, hip, lower back, neck, and shoulder. The last hollow-point bullet entered the back of the Indian’s head.

Jim Wolfe stood over the prone figure, trembling with rage and fear, pulling the trigger on empty chambers. Click. Click. Click. When he lowered the revolver, his world was perfectly silent.

A half-dozen coyotes had ceased their canine conversation.

Unblinking owls held their breath.

Even the breeze was stilled.

All the off-duty policeman could hear was the rhythmic thump of the pulse in his temple. After a seven-second eternity, the dark cloud slipped away to unveil the pale face of the moon.

Jim Wolfe rolled the corpse over. The final .357 Magnum hollow point had done its job all too well. The top half of the Indian’s face was gone. His mouth was twisted into a knowing smirk. It took Wolfe a long moment to get hold of himself.
I need to be glad that it’s Navarone that’s dead, not me
. And Navarone was certainly as dead as men ever get.
Not only that, I killed him in self-defense
. But a search for his assailant’s gun proved fruitless. A horrifying possibility occurred to the lawman:
Maybe Navarone wasn’t armed…maybe this harebrained Indian poked a stick in my back
.

In the startling manner of a suddenly rising tide, the cold truth began to wash around the SUPD cop.
I have just hunted down a man I was warned to stay away from—a man I swore I’d kill. I’ve shot him six times—in the back. And him with no gun. Oh, God—I am in serious trouble
. He took a deep breath. Tried to think.
I’ll have to hide his body, then get out of here well before first light. If I keep my cool, I’ll be fine
. But fear and fury were not to be so easily dismissed. Those hideous twins returned, hand in hand.

Wolfe shook his fist at the dead man and shouted, “Navarone—this is all your fault!” He spat on the corpse. The gesture of contempt was considerably more than a mistake.

It was a mortal error.

Jim Wolfe locked himself in his apartment, peeled to the skin. His hands trembled as he soaked his blood-splattered shirt in lighter fluid, burned the fabric to ashes in the fireplace. He stood under a hot shower for twenty minutes, used half a bar of soap in a fruitless attempt to wash away the stench and stain of his sins. The off-duty police officer dressed in crisply clean khaki trousers and a white T-shirt, ground a handful of Colombian beans, made a fresh pot of strong coffee, took a few sips—grimaced.
This tastes like rotten eggs!

He plopped onto the couch, turned on the television, stared at the talking heads without comprehension. Finally, he turned off the flickering screen, stretched out on the couch. Closed his eyes.

Sleep would not come near; even rest was denied him.

As noon came and went, he paced about barefoot in his small parlor, smoked a pack and a half of filtered cigarettes, relentlessly relived the insane events of the previous night. From time to time, he would stop to push a curtain aside, stare out the second-story window at a neat row of Russian olives lining the space between the parking lot and the sidewalk. The normal, sunny world outside his window was like that unattainable left-is-right realm on the other side of the mirror. Recalling what he had done only a few hours ago, he shuddered, touched the flame to another cancer stick, resumed his aimless pacing.

When the shadows had grown long and indistinct, he unlatched the door, went onto the porch. The air was fresh and clean. Crickets chit-chirped with others of their kind. Swallows flitted about in impossible accelerations. In Wolfe’s shattered mind, they were vain pretensions, fleeting shadows from other dimensions.

For a few minutes, it was as if he were emerging from a nightmare. A mere dream.

But a gray twilight signaled the swift approach of night.

Wolfe retreated into his den, switched on all the lights.

The darkness in his soul returned full force.

Feeling weak and light-headed from lack of food, he searched the refrigerator. The bachelor folded slices of Polish ham and Swiss cheese between thick slabs of rye bread. He smeared the meat with mustard, the cheese with mayonnaise. It was his favorite sandwich. The taste was sour and metallic. He felt an overpowering surge of nausea, ran to the bathroom, vomited into the toilet. Caught in a sickening cycle of shudders and shivers and dry heaves, the policeman turned off the lights, stumbled to his bed, crawled in between the sheets, pulled the quilt up to his chin. He was convinced he would never, never sleep again.

But shortly after eleven he fell into that bottomless abyss of unconsciousness. All who go there leave sanity behind. Living things grow cold. Dead things become alive. The imagined horror becomes real.

HE WAS
on a rocky hillock, alone in the wilderness
.

No…not
quite
alone
.

Someone pressed a cold barrel against his spine
. Now your time is at hand.

No. I will not die….
Wolfe turned, fired his weapon
.

The mortally wounded man bled buckets of blood, laughing all the while
.

Wolfe looked down, beheld the human being he had killed
.

While he watched, the corpse withered. Turned to ash
.

The ashes became a powder-fine dust
.

A dark, funereal wind came from the west, sighed, blew the dust away
.

The sleeper felt himself moving swiftly, to some distant upside-down place
.

Now Wolfe was stretched out on a coarse straw mat. Bleeding. He looked up at the ghost of his victim
.

The dead man’s features could not be seen. There was only an outline of his body. Blackened corpse flesh on star-studded sky. The half-moon sat precariously on the spirit’s shoulder
.

The dreamer floated up from the depths. Toward something much like consciousness. Opened his eyes
.

It
was still there
.

THE PHANTOM
stood just outside the sleeper’s bedroom window. Waiting for an opportunity to—

Wolfe made a muffled scream, instinctively raised his arms in a protective gesture. Looked again.

There was no one at the window.

Only an opalescent moon, floating in an arid, cloudless sky.

The sheets were wet with his sweat. Wolfe groaned.
I’m losing my mind. I’ve got to do something—anything but stay cooped up here
. The haunted man got out of bed, dressed himself. He stuck a fresh cigarette under his lip, pushed the revolver under his belt, went outside. He ambled aimlessly along empty sidewalks, across quiet streets, onto the cool grass of a small park, past a miniature playground, through a grove of cottonwood and willows, down to the rocky banks of a small stream. The eastern sky was flooded with a pale, frothy sea. On that faraway western shore, a million-million stars were washed away.

Wolfe sat on a rotting stump. Thought his sickly thoughts.
Maybe I’m not going crazy. Maybe Navarone’s ghost has come back to torment me. If he has, that Apache will never let me be. But what can I do about it?

At that moment the sun came up like lightning. Warming the land. Illuminating the man.

He knew exactly what he could do about it.