Whirlwind (6 page)

Mulder didn't have to be outside to know it was hot and getting hotter, even though it was just past ten. Even with sunglasses, the sun's glare was almost too much, and to stare at the passing scenery too long made it jump and shimmer, showing him things he knew weren't there.

There were no clouds, no signs of rain. It was hard to believe there ever was.

He rode with Scully in the back seat of Sheriff Sparrow's dusty blue-and-white cruiser, Garson up front on the passenger side. It was evident from their conversation that the two men had known each other for a long time, using shorthand
gestures and single-word answers, mostly grunts. As far as Mulder could tell, the gist of it was, there had been no further incidents since the death of the boy, except for a drunk driver who claimed to have been forced off the road by an invisible, or incredibly short, vehicle.

“It brings out the nuts, this kind of thing,” the sheriff said, lifting his gaze to the rearview mirror. “You find that, too, Agent Mulder?”

He nodded. It was true. Just as it was true that Chuck Sparrow was laying on the western sheriff routine a little thick, constantly hitching his gunbelt, chewing a wad of gum that was supposed to simulate tobacco, getting a deeper drawl in his voice every time he opened his mouth. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it made him wonder why the act at all. Garson would have already filled the man in, and it was the sheriff who had finally asked the FBI for help.

It didn't sit right.

Like not wearing a suit and tie, like wearing running shoes.

He knew Garson was right—wearing his usual clothes out here would have been ludicrous as well as stupid; still, like the sheriff, it didn't sit right.

The Sandias passed them on the right as Interstate 25 left the Albuquerque suburbs behind. And although other ranges broke the horizon,
there was nothing out there now but the high desert.

And the sun.

“Cult,” Sparrow said then, raising his voice to be heard over the air conditioning.

“What?” Scully, startled out of a reverie, asked him to repeat it.

“Cult. You know…cult. One of them Satanist things, probably. Look hard enough, betcha them poor folks were all involved somehow.”

“A seventeen-year-old boy?” Mulder asked skeptically.

“Hey, that ain't no rare thing, you know what I mean? You got your heavy-metal crap with all that subliminal stuff, you got your rap stuff telling kids to kill cops, shit like that…drugs and sex…” He lifted a hand off the wheel, palm up. “What more do you want?”

Mulder saw his eyes in the mirror, watching him, gauging.

“Maybe,” he answered reluctantly.

“No maybe about it, son, no maybe about it.”

Fifteen miles later, at a speed Mulder thought would soon launch them into orbit, the cruiser slowed, pulled onto the right shoulder, and crossed a narrow wooden bridge. A two-lane paved road led into the desert.

Sparrow pointed with a thumb. “What you got up there, them hills there about ten miles along, is what they call the Konochine Wall.” He
scratched under his hat. “Kind of like a jagged outline of a lightbulb lying on its side. Fat part, it's pointing toward the Sandias back there to the south. The base part, it crosses the road onto the ranch where we're going. Unless you want to climb the hills, the only way in or out is a gap where the road is.”

Mulder watched a barbed-wire fence blur past on his left. Beyond it was desert, and he couldn't imagine how anyone could raise anything out here, much less cattle. When he had asked at breakfast, Garson only told him to hold onto his horses, he didn't want to spoil the surprise.

“Do the Konochine fit in here?” Scully asked. “This case, I mean.”

Sparrow shrugged one broad shoulder. “Who the hell knows? Doubt it myself. Their place isn't like the other pueblos, see. It's a res and all, but they don't like tourists, they don't like Anglos, they don't like other Indians…” He laughed. “Hell, I don't think they much like each other a whole hell of a lot.” He yanked at an earlobe, then scratched vigorously behind it. “Some of them, mostly the young ones, they've been trying for years to change things. Most of the time it don't work, though, and they leave, don't come back.”

“And the ones who do?”

“Well…” He glanced at Garson. “Nick Lanaya, right?”

Garson nodded agreement and half-turned so he wouldn't have to yell. “Nick's a good guy. He went off to college, and came back with enough ideas to fill a canyon. Because of his family, he's on the Tribal Council, so he has to be heard. And he is, believe me. Trouble is, not a lot are listening.”

“So why does he stay?”

Garson thought a moment before saying, “Because they're his people.”

Sparrow chuckled, sarcasm, not humor. “Doesn't hurt he's making a few bucks, Red.”

Garson sighed dramatically, a wink at Mulder to signal what was obviously a long-standing argument. “Nick,” he explained, “has a deal with a local woman, an Anglo, Donna Falkner. He brings out some of the crafts the Konochine make, she sells them in town or up in Santa Fe, they each get a cut and the tribe gets the rest. Mostly jewelry,” he added. “Once in a while some incredible bowls and ceremonial-style plates, things like that. Every time he brings out a load, he has a fight with the other side, who claim he's selling their heritage down the river.”

“And every time he brings back the bucks to the Mesa,” Sparrow said sourly, “they line up with their goddamn hands out.”

“The mesa?” Scully said.

“Sangre Viento Mesa,” Garson explained. “It's in
the middle of the reservation. Their homes are at the base, their religious ceremonies are held up top.”

“What does that mean, Sangre Viento?”

Garson faced front. “Blood Wind. It means Blood Wind.”

 

Eventually the barbed wire gave way to a short stretch of well-maintained split rail. In its center was an open gate over which was a wide wood arch. Burned into the face was
Double-H.

Mulder sat up as Sparrow drove under the arch, onto a hard-ground road. He looked between the men in front and saw what surely had to be a mirage:

A wide expanse of impossibly green grass inside a blinding white fence; a long adobe and Spanish tile ranch house so simple in its design it looked prohibitively expensive; a stable and corral behind and to the left, with a small black horse plodding toward the shade of a tree he couldn't name; a two-car garage behind and to the right, the driveway curving around the fence to join the entrance road in front;
ristras
—strings of dried red chiles—hanging from vigas protruding from the walls beneath a porch that had to be fifty or sixty feet long.

“You want to be a millionaire and live like this, Scully?”

“I wouldn't mind.”

Sparrow parked in a cleared patch of ground beside the driveway, took off his hat and slicked his hair back. He opened the door, and paused as he leaned forward to slide out.

“I would appreciate it,” he told them, “if you wouldn't bother her too much. She only found the bodies. She didn't see anything else.”

From that unsubtle warning, Mulder fully expected a withered and frail woman to greet them, not the beautiful woman who came out of the double front doors and stood on the porch, shading her eyes and smiling.

Scully joined him while Sparrow fumbled with the gate latch, and as they approached the porch, a man and woman stepped out of the house and moved to one side, she in a simple white dress, he in work clothes. Their expressions were anything but friendly.

“Hey, Annie,” the sheriff called, and when they were close enough, he made the introductions.

Ann Hatch, Mulder thought as he shook her cool dry hand and looked down into those incredibly green eyes; so this is Ann Hatch.

As she waved them to seats around a wrought-iron table, it was clear Scully liked her at first sight. “You know,” she said, accepting a tall glass of lemonade from the woman in white, “this is like finding an oasis, it's so lovely.”

Annie's eyes widened in pleasant surprise. “Why, thank you. But it's just my home.”

She smiled broadly, and ten minutes later, the three of them were chatting as if they were old friends, long separated but never far from mind. Mulder didn't believe for a minute she was acting.

Another ten minutes passed before he sat back, abruptly sobered when she noted but didn't remark on the holster at his hip. She caught the change in his mood instantly, and took a deep breath.

“You want to know what I saw, and how.”

“If you don't mind, Mrs. Hatch.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God's sake, Agent Mulder, please call me Annie. And I don't mind at all.” Her gaze shifted to the improbable lawn and the desert beyond it. “They were newlyweds, you know. They were on their honeymoon.”

He knew; he had read the report so many times, he could have recited it word for word, footnote for footnote.

Doris and Matt Constella, from Kansas, twenty-five, in Albuquerque only four days, and, from all Garson could figure out, on a wandering drive around the county in a rented van. They had already stopped to visit at least two of the pueblos, and it was there, it was supposed, they had heard about the Konochine. There was no other reason why they'd be on that road. There were no signs, not for the road itself, and not for the ranch.

She explained how she had discovered their bodies, and how she had immediately ridden back to call the sheriff. “Near the gap,” she said sadly. “They were right by the gap.”

So much for the connection between them and the boy, Mulder thought.

“Mrs. Hatch,” Scully began, and cut herself off at the woman's chiding look. “Annie. Have you had any trouble with people from the reservation?”

Annie blinked once, slowly. “No.”

She's lying, Mulder thought, and looked to his left when he sensed movement. Nando Quintodo had taken a short step forward, one of his hands fisted at his side. When he saw Mulder look, however, he stopped, his face bland, his hand quickly relaxed.

“Why do you ask?” Annie said.

“It's routine,” Mulder answered before Scully, and grinned at her skepticism. “I know, it sounds like a line from a movie, but it's true. We've been told there's some trouble, and…” An apologetic gesture. “We can't afford not to ask.”

Scully echoed the procedure, and apologized as she took Annie through her story again. Mulder, meanwhile, stretching as if he were too stiff to sit, rose with a muttered apology and left the table. As soon as he took a step, Quintodo walked away from him, heading for the door.

Mulder spoke his name.

When the man turned, his hand was a fist again.

Mulder leaned against the porch rail and looked out over the lawn. He didn't raise his voice; he knew the man could hear him. “Tourists ever call you Tonto?”

“Not here. No tourists here.” Flat, unemotional. Careful.

“But sometimes.”

There was a pause.

Mulder waited.

“Yes. In town. Sometimes.” Still flat, still unemotional.

Mulder faced him, leaning back against the rail, one hand in his pocket. “You're from…?”

Quintodo's eyes shifted to the table, shifted back. “The Mesa.”

“Your wife, too?”

He nodded.

“So tell me, Mr. Quintodo. Why would a woman like that want to lie?”

The sheriff, mumbling something to Annie, stood.

Quintodo saw him, and Mulder couldn't miss the flare of hatred in his eyes.

“Why?” he repeated softly.

But Sparrow was already on his way over, a mirthless grin beneath dark glasses. “Why what?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his chest.

“Why would I want to visit the stable when I don't ride?” Mulder answered. “I'll tell you why—because I'm a city boy, and I'd like to be able to see manure firsthand.”

“Very well, Mr. Mulder,” Quintodo agreed before the sheriff could say anything. “I will show you everything. Mrs. Hatch, she has a pair of very fine horses. I think you will be impressed. Maybe you will learn something.”

He nodded politely to Sparrow and went inside without looking back.

The sheriff hitched up his belt, and spat over the railing. “This is a beautiful place.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Annie's been alone out here for a long time, you know. Some say too long.”

“I wouldn't know, Sheriff.”

Sparrow spat again. “Let me give you some advice, Agent Mulder.”

“Always ready to listen, Sheriff Sparrow. You're the expert around here, not me.”

Sparrow nodded sharply,
damn right.

“Okay, number one is, Nando there is a Konochine. You know that already, I assume. Don't trust him. He may live out here with Annie, but his heart's still over the Wall.”

Mulder said nothing.

“Second thing is…” He stopped. He took off his hat, wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm, and shook his head as he walked back to the table.

Mulder watched him.

The second thing, unspoken, was a threat.

The stable was gloomy, despite the open door. There were six stalls on either side, but most of them hadn't been used in a long time. A scattering of hay on the floor. Tack hung from pegs on the walls. When Mulder looked outside, all he could see was white light; the corral and the black horse were little more than ghosts.

Quintodo stood beside a chestnut, running a stiff brush over its flank. He hadn't looked up when Mulder walked in, didn't give a sign when Scully followed, unsure why Mulder had asked her to meet him out here.

Quintodo concentrated on his grooming. “You know what
tonto
means, Mr. Mulder?”

“My Spanish is—” A deprecating smile. “Lousy.”

“Stupid,” the man said, smoothing a palm over the horse's rump. “It means stupid.” He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a lump of sugar, handed it to Scully. “She won't bite. Just keep your hand flat, she won't take your fingers.”

Scully offered the treat, and the horse snorted and snapped it up, then nuzzled her for more.

“She's a pig,” Quintodo said, with a hint of smile. “She'll eat all you give her, then get sick.” A loving pat to the animal's side. “Tonto.”

With a look, Scully asked Mulder why they were here; he nodded a
be patient,
and put his back to the door. All he said was, “Why?”

Quintodo worked for several long seconds without speaking, the scrape of the brush the only sound. Then:

“She is one, you know.”

Mulder's head tilted slightly.

“Konochine. One of us. Her husband, Mr. Hatch, he met her in Old Town, in Albuquerque. She was fifteen, he was from Los Angeles. I don't know what they call it, looking for places to make a movie.”

“Scouting,” Scully said.

He nodded. “Yes,
gracias.
He told her about the movies, about being in them.” The smile finally broke. “All hell broke loose on the Mesa. But he was very persuasive, Mr. Hatch was. Very
handsome, very kind. Very young and…” He hesitated. “Dreamy. Before we knew it, she was gone. Making movies. Getting married.” He looked at Mulder over the horse's back. “They were very happy. Always.”

The smile slipped away.

“No children?” Scully asked.

“Not to be.”

The horse stamped impatiently, and Quintodo murmured at it before resuming his grooming.

“She is special, Mr. Mulder,” he said at last. “She hears the wind.”

Scully opened her mouth to question him, and Mulder shook his head quickly.

Quintodo swallowed, second thoughts making him pause.

When he did speak again, he spoke slowly.

“We have priests, you know.” The horse stamped again; a fly buzzed in the stifling heat. “Not the Catholic ones, the padres. Konochine got rid of them a long time ago. Our own. Seven, all the time. They…do things for us.
Comprende?
You understand? Today they are all men. It happens. Sometimes there are women, but not now. Priests are not…” He frowned, then scowled when he couldn't find the word. “They live like us, and then they die. When one dies, there is a ceremonial, and the dead one is replaced.”

A two-tone whistle outside interrupted him. Mulder heard hoofbeats trot across the corral.

The chestnut didn't move.

“They know their call,” Quintodo explained. “That was for Diamond.”

“And the ceremonial?” Mulder prodded quietly.

Quintodo lowered his head, thinking.

“There was one now. Like the others, it lasted six days. No one is allowed to see it. But the wind…the wind carries the ceremony to the four corners. Sometimes you can hear it. It talks to itself. It carries the talk from the kiva. The songs. Prayers. Mrs. Hatch…” He inhaled slowly, deeply, and looked up at Mulder. “Sometimes you think you hear voices on the wind, yes? You think it's your imagination, no?” He shook his head. “No. But only some, like the kiva priests, can understand. Mrs. Hatch too can understand. We knew this recently, Silvia and I, we could tell because Mrs. Hatch was very nervous, very…” He gestured helplessly.

“Afraid?” Scully offered.

“I'm not…no. She didn't like what she heard, though.” His voice hardened. “Never once since she came back from the movies has she been to the Mesa. Never once. She turned them down, you see. An old man died, and they wanted her to be in his place, and she turned them down. She had a husband, she said, and she had a way of her own. She would not go, and they never talked to her again.”

“They don't have to,” Mulder said, moving closer to the horse, keeping his voice low. “She hears them on the wind.”

Quintodo stared at him, searching for mocking, for sarcasm, and his eyes narrowed when he didn't find it.

“These dead, Mr. Mulder, they didn't start until the ceremonial started.”

Scully sidestepped nervously when the chestnut tried to nuzzle her again, upper lip momentarily curled to expose its teeth. “What are you saying, Mr. Quintodo? That these priests killed those people out there? And the cattle? For a…for some kind of—”

“No.” He kept his gaze on Mulder. “Six days and six nights they stay in the kiva. Praying with the man who is to join them. Taking visions from the spirits to be sure they have made the right choice, and to show them the way until the next time. When they do all this, soon the wind blows.” He made a rapid spinning motion with his free hand. “whirlwind, Mr. Mulder. You know what I mean?”

Mulder didn't, and the man spat dryly in disgust at himself.

“Sangre Viento, Mr. Mulder. There are some who say they make the Sangre Viento.”

 

A knock on the front door sounded thunderbolt-loud. Donna sat at her desk, a small secretary in the
living room, working on the accounts. They added up, but not fast enough. If she was going to leave soon, on her terms, there would have to be more.

She was tempted to ignore whoever it was, pretend she wasn't home, then realized with a roll of her eyes that she could be seen through the room's picture window. With a martyred sigh, she scooped the ledger and papers into a drawer, pushed at her hair, and opened the door.

She couldn't believe it. “What are you doing here? It's practically the middle of the day.”

“No. That's the wrong question. The right question is: have you been cheating me?”

A hand shoved her shoulder, hard, forcing her backward.

“Here's another one,
chica:
what do you think they would do if they found out?”

 

Mulder kept to himself on the way back to the Inn. They had declined Annie's invitation to lunch, promised to return for a nonofficial visit, and had visited the site where the couple had been murdered. It hadn't taken long; there wasn't much left to see, and when Sparrow asked, he only said it was too soon to make any kind of determination.

Once out of the car, Garson promising to see if he could set up an appointment with the hard-to-reach medical examiner, he went straight to the
front desk and arranged for a rental car to be delivered that afternoon.

“I don't like being chauffeured around,” he explained to Scully, leading her into the restaurant, complaining of imminent starvation. “Especially by him. He figures, but I don't know how yet.”

Scully said that was the easy part. The man was clearly fond of Annie. Just as clearly, he intended, somehow, to make sure she didn't spend the rest of her life living alone.

“He's after her money?”

“I don't know. It's been known to happen. You could see he was protective; he just wasn't loving.”

They took a table in the far front corner, Scully facing the white-curtained window directly behind him. They ordered, and he watched her fuss with her silverware, fuss with her napkin before spreading it on her lap.

“What?”

She didn't hide her exasperation. “I know what you're thinking, and I'm not going to let you turn this into something it isn't.”

That, he thought sourly, was the problem with working with someone who knew you that well.

Still, there was no harm trying. More than once, she had saved him from making a total fool of himself, determined to keep him at least within screaming distance of reason.

“You heard what he said.”

She nodded. “And it might even be possible that that couple, the Constellas, saw something they weren't supposed to. It might even be possible they were killed for it. They wouldn't be the first to die because they'd witnessed a religious event meant to be secret.” She held up a knife like a finger. “Possible, I said, Mulder. Possible.”

“Okay. Possible.” And she smiled.

“Likely?”

He smiled back. “Don't push it. I'm still working on possible.”

She started to speak, changed her mind, then changed her mind again. “But what about Paulie Deven? Don't you think it's stretching things a little to assume he saw something, too? Which he would have had to do, if you're going to keep him with the Constellas.”

“Which means?”

“Mulder, it means there's no connection between the victims and the ceremony. A horrible coincidence, nothing more.”

“And the…” He stumbled several times, making her smile, before he managed, “Sangre Viento?”

He winced when he heard himself; his Spanish was still lousy.

The waiter brought their meal, and he stared at the strips of meat, the vegetables, the salsa in the side dish, practically feeling the heat of the spices without even getting close. He knew he would
regret this later, and after his first taste, knew he would have to stock up on a supply of heavy-duty antacids if he wanted to get any sleep. The trouble was, it was so good, there was no way he wouldn't eat it.

Scully, on the other hand, popped a small jalapeño into her mouth, plucked the stem from between her teeth, and said, “Not bad, not bad.”

The Sangre Viento aside for the moment, he was pleased to hear that her reaction to Sparrow was the same as his. Yet neither could think of a good reason for the act, nor could they believe the man actually thought he was fooling anyone with it. It was too broad, too born of bad movies and worse television. That led them to wondering, his feelings for Annie aside, if he was somehow involved, or just a lousy cop trying to cover his ass, make them feel sorry for him so whoever he had to answer to wouldn't take his badge.

“A little farfetched,” she judged when the table had been cleared and coffee served. “Not that we haven't seen it before.”

“This isn't it. I don't know what it is, but this isn't it.”

“Neither is that blood wind thing.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, picked up a spoon and tapped it lightly against his thigh. “How can you be so sure?” He propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and clasped his
hands in front of his mouth. “There are any number of recorded so-called unusual phenomena associated with meetings, especially religious, where the emotional intensity and concentration are abnormally high.”

“All of them recorded by the people who were there, not by outside observers.”

“They, these priests, were in a kiva. An underground chamber whose only exit and entrance, and source of air, is a single hole in the roof. There may have been herbal drugs, peyote maybe, something like that. Six days and six nights, Scully, and they all focus on a single thing—the man they're investing with their knowledge. Their history. With their power over the people they have to live with.” He rocked forward, hands dropping to the table. “Can you imagine what it must be like? Day in and day out? All that energy building up there?”

Scully didn't answer him for a long time. She sipped her coffee, stared out the window, glanced around the otherwise empty room. She was about to reply when a woman appeared in the archway entrance. Short, stocky, in a severe summer-weight suit; her graying black hair pulled back into a bun. Her left hand held a purse tight to her side.

Mulder watched her hesitate, then march across the room toward them, no nonsense, all business. When she reached the table, she nodded a greeting.

“You are the agents from Washington?”

“Yes,” Mulder answered. “And you are…?”

“Dr. Rios. Helen Rios. I performed the autopsies on those poor people.”

He stood immediately and offered her a chair while introducing her to Scully. When they were all seated again, he told her he was pleased to see her. Garson wouldn't have to make the appointment after all.

“He wouldn't have made it,” the woman said.

“I…what?”

“You read my report?” she asked Scully.

“I did. To be honest, there weren't a lot of—”

“It's wrong.”

Scully looked at the table, then back to Dr. Rios. “Excuse me?”

The woman opened her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “This is what I wrote first. What you read before is what I was told to write.”

Mulder couldn't believe it.

Nor could he believe it when Scully opened the paper, skimmed it, and said, “Oh my God.”