Wild Wild Death (19 page)

So I was glad. Who wouldn’t be? And I was al set to leave, which is why you saw me out in the parking lot with my suitcase. But I couldn’t. Leave, that is. Not when I thought about Dan and how if I don’t help him, nobody wil , and then that note came and I thought it was my big break in the case, so I went out to Wind Mountain and Arnie got kil ed and…”

It was pretty impressive, actual y, not having to take a breath al that time, but my lungs final y gave out and so did my voice. Jesse reached over to the table by the side of the bed and handed me a bottle of water. Nice gesture, and I ful y expected it was the last thing he’d do before he grabbed his clothes, and gave me the ol’
hasta la vista, baby
. That is, after he told me I was nuts.

I glugged down a gulp of water while he turned to give me a careful look. “It makes sense,” he said.

“It does?” The bottle was at my lips and I froze.

That is, until reality came crashing down around me. I capped the bottle and set it down. “No,” I said. “It real y doesn’t. None of it makes sense, and I wouldn’t believe it myself if someone told me what I just told you. It’s weird. And creepy. Aberrant behavior. That’s what Dan used to cal it, and I never admitted it then, but I’l admit it now: he was right.” I admitted it then, but I’l admit it now: he was right.” I threw my hands in the air, and when the blanket dipped, I tucked it back into place. “Don’t you get it?

I just told you I see dead people, and you just said—”

“You’re the raven.” He pursed his lips and nodded. “That’s what Strong Eagle, the shaman, told me. He told me you see the living, and you see the dead. He knew. Even before I met you.”

“And you believed him?”

He slid his gaze to mine. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s crazy.”

A smile sparkled in his eyes. “It is.”

“And you’re a cop. Cops are—”

“Logical. Rational. Reasonable.”

“Logical, rational, reasonable people don’t believe in ghosts.”

“You do.”

“Which might mean I’m not logical, rational, or reasonable.”

He considered the possibility. “You know good boots when you see them. And you’ve got great taste in men.” The sparkle made it al the way to his lips. “Sounds reasonable to me.”

“But—”

“Welcome to the Great Southwest. The skies are wide open, and so are our minds. Anglos have been in these parts for a few hundred years. They’re stil getting used to the altitude, and the attitude. But my tribe has been here for much, much longer. Think how enlightened we are by now.”

“That’s great. But I just said—”

“That you walk with the dead. Yeah, I heard that part.”

“And you just said—”

“That I believe you. There’s no reason I shouldn’t.

You’re an honorable woman. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Bet you wouldn’t have swiped Goodshot’s bones, either.

What you did, you did for a friend.”

“But most people just don’t come right out and admit—”

“Most people don’t have your kind of Gift. And if they do, I think most of them aren’t comfortable enough with it to tel anyone. You’re honest and you’re open and you trust me enough to share what’s obviously a huge part of your life. Thank you.”

I leaned forward, the better to give him a careful look. “If you’re just saying this to get me back in bed

—”

“You’re already in bed.” He leaned closer and the kiss he gave me was long and slow and searching. It curled my toes. When he was done, he sat back. “I’m saying it because it’s true. It makes sense. And I believe you. What you just told me explains what you’re doing here. It doesn’t explain…” His mouth thinned. “Why didn’t you just tel me in the first place?

I don’t care what kinds of cases you’ve investigated in the past, you can’t just head out looking for kidnappers on your own. It’s crazy, and it’s dangerous. And you’re not doing your friend Dan any favors. The smart thing to do from the start was to get law enforcement involved.”

Quinn’s face flashed before my eyes. “I haven’t had much luck with law enforcement, not when it comes to explaining about this stupid Gift of mine.”

“Is it?” Jesse chuckled. “Stupid? In my tribe, we’d consider it a great honor.”

I rol ed my eyes. “That’s because there aren’t dead people bugging you al the time. And bad guys shooting at you. Only”—I felt a stab of guilt, and I reached for his hand and squeezed it—“there was a bad guy shooting at you, and it was al my fault. You could have been hurt, or…” I couldn’t go there.

“Sorry.”

“Hey, it comes with the job description.” He twined his fingers through mine and his thumb played over the back of my hand. “So, what are we going to do?”

I patted the empty spot in bed beside me. “You want to—”

He gave me a quick kiss. “Yes, I want to. Later.

And tomorrow. And the day after that.” Another kiss and he got up and reached for his pants. “For now, we’ve got a kidnapping on our hands, and a lot of work to do.”

It may have been the kisses that muddled my brain like mint leaves in a mojito. Or maybe I just needed some time to adjust to anyone who could think so far out of the box. I watched Jesse get dressed, staring al the while. “You believe me?

Real y?”

“Like I said…” A shrug of those broad shoulders.

“Why shouldn’t I? You’re not the kind of woman who pretends things are real when they’re not. At least…”

He raised his eyebrows. “At least I hope not. Now get moving. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

get moving. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

* * *

I

t was something of a red-letter day—what with al that had happened in the wee smal hours of the morning, my confession to Jesse, and the not-so-insignificant fact that when I told him about the ghosts, he didn’t cal the nearest loony bin and tel them to bring a straitjacket and a net big enough to snare a five-foot-eleven woman. What al that means is that I wasn’t going to spend that particular day looking like a refugee from the New Mexican no-man’s-land. I showered and dressed in one of the V-neck tanks I’d brought from home (creamy colored and with lace edging), my new boots (of course), and those jeans I’d retrieved from Tom’s. Before we left the motel, Jesse insisted I take along a long-sleeve shirt and a jacket, too, and when I rol ed my eyes, he reminded me that there was no tel ing where we might end up.

Where we ended up first was the Taopi Pueblo.

Here’s the thing about pueblos, and it sure isn’t anything I knew before that day:
pueblo
is a sort of al -purpose word in those parts. For one, it’s a general name for the Native Americans in New Mexico. They’re cal ed Pueblo Indians. What they have in common with other Native Americans is that they were firmly established on the continent long before any Europeans showed up. What’s different about them as compared to other tribes is that they were never forcibly removed from their ancestral lands. They were, however, conquered and enslaved by the Spanish, who swept through a few hundred years ago, and until this day, most of them stil retain the Spanish surnames they were given at the time.

The good news is that the Taopi, like the other tribes in New Mexico, stil occupy lands that have been theirs since before recorded history.

So when I say
pueblo
, I’m talking about the however many thousands of acres that are owned by the Taopi tribe, but that same word—
pueblo
—is also used for the homes inside the original historic vil age. Think adobe condos, individual homes built side by side and some atop others. They have shared wal s, but not doorways. Like I said, condos.

Or cluster homes. The Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest were ahead of their times.

Yeah, I know, it’s al very confusing, and on our drive from Antonito back into New Mexico, I told Jesse so. When it came to history and a little lesson in Taopi culture, though, he was not going to let me off the hook so easily.

According to him, about two hundred or so Taopi actual y stil reside within the vil age where their ancestors lived for about a thousand years. As far I was concerned, this was pretty odd because, as he went on to explain, there is no electricity or running water al owed within the vil age. Go figure. Most of the tribe live in regular ol’ houses with regular ol’

electricity and (hal elujah!) running water, stil on tribal land, but outside the historic vil age.

That’s where the Taopi Tribal Police Station is, too, and when we pul ed into Jesse’s reserved parking space and got out of the car, I checked things out and headed right across the street to a string of boutiques where silver jewelry sparkled in windows and leather was worked into boots and purses, and brightly colored dresses were shown to perfection in chic window displays.

Civilization! I couldn’t have been happier. “Oh, shopping!”

Jesse caught me by the arm. “You can shop later.

Business first.”

I didn’t grump—at least not too much. Instead, I went inside the modern, brightly lit police station, stood back, and watched Jesse in his element.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

That’s what it was al about. Everyone we ran across on our way to Jesse’s office was friendly, but the way they acted made it clear that he was the boss and they knew it, from the woman working the front desk, to the officers we passed in the hal way, to the maintenance man who greeted Jesse with a nod and me with an appreciative smile.

Inside his office, Jesse shut the door and changed into the clean uniform he kept there. When he was done, he sat down behind his gray metal desk, waved me into one of two guest chairs in front of it, and folded his hands together on the desktop in front of him.

“Explain,” he said. “From the beginning.”

I figured this was going to happen, and I was prepared. I hauled my purse onto my lap and took out the postcard I’d received back in Cleveland from Dan, the one with his picture on the front of it. I Dan, the one with his picture on the front of it. I handed the photo to Jesse.

“Dan,” I said. “And here that watchband that he’s…” I was already reaching into the box for the watchband that had arrived with the first ransom note, when Jesse stopped me.

“We’l want the evidence techs to take a look at that,” he said. “So leave that where it is. But this you got

in the mail, right?” He looked to me for confirmation before he took the picture out of my hands.

I knew he was sizing up Dan, and sizing up done, he looked back at me. “He’s a nerd, huh?”

“You can tel ? From the picture?” I couldn’t exactly argue the point so I gave in with the lift of one shoulder. “He’s a paranormal investigator. A sort of egghead researcher. I guess that makes him a nerd.”

“And he cozied up to you because he figured you could help him advance his research.”

Yeah, that was one of the reasons. The other was that Dan had the hots for me and I for him. At least for a while. Rather than get into al that, I simply said,

“You got that right.”

“So that’s how you got to know each other.”

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded, anyway. “And I got to know Dan’s wife, too. Only she was dead at the time, and a royal pain if ever there was one.

That’s the last I saw him, after we wrapped up that investigation. But then I ran into Brian—he’s the one I’m pretty sure kidnapped Dan—at a basebal game.

Brian is a ghost hunter, too. I met him when I was working on another investigation.” Jesse didn’t need to tel me to back up and explain; I figured he’d have questions. I went through the story as logical y as possible, and while I did, he scratched notes on a legal pad. I even told him how I broke into the mausoleum and… er… appropriated Goodshot’s bones.

That’s the point where he stopped writing it al down. “I’m going to ignore that part of the story,”

Jesse said. “At least for now. And when the Feds get here…” I guess the aforementioned G-men had an appointment because he glanced at his watch. “We have to cal in either the FBI or the Bureau of Indian Affairs when we’ve got a felony on our hands,” he explained. “And I guess we’re going to have to tel them about the bones. But let me do the talking, okay? I’l vouch for you and we can always chalk the whole thing up to extreme emotional upset. After al , you were worried about your friend.”

He took another look at the picture of Dan. “And you say you think they wanted Goodshot’s remains so they could rebury them here on the pueblo?”

“Wel , that’s what everyone in Cleveland was talking about the night I ran into Brian and Arnie and the rest of them. They said that Goodshot cursed the city and the only way to remove the curse was to take his bones back to the pueblo. The hardcore fans, they think it’s Goodshot’s fault our basebal team stinks.”

The somber expression on Jesse’s face never cracked. “I guess when you could stil see Goodshot, you should have just asked him to lift his curse.”

Rather than confess I’d never thought of it, I wrinkled my nose. “Goodshot wanted to come back to the pueblo.” There was a window behind Jesse’s desk, and it looked out over a panorama of mountains and, in the distance, those ancient pueblo condos he’d told me about earlier. The sky was a shade of vibrant blue I’d never seen back in Cleveland, the sun glinted against rock and coarse-grained dirt, and the air was clear. It was only because I wasn’t thinking about the dust, or the no electricity or running water thing. Or the coyotes. I mumbled, “I guess I can sort of see why.”