Witch Dance (23 page)

Now, standing on the dance floor with his dreams vanished like dandelions in the wind, he found a shining nobility he hadn’t known he had. Obviously it had been meant for some ancient knight in King Arthur’s court and had missed its mark by several hundred years, but heck, he was smart. He’d grab whatever lifeline came his way.

“You know, Kate, I’m mighty glad you asked me to this shindig, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

She went still, watching his face.

“I mean . . . I’m as human as the next man. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to take you to for a romp in my bed.”

“I believe I was the one making that move.”

“Yeah, well, you nearly succeeded.” He grinned to take the sting out of his words. “But a man has his reputation to think of. Too many one-night stands and they won’t let me wear white at the wedding.”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you, Mark?”

“Going to Africa is leaving, Kate. Going to Ada just means I won’t be in your house. This business with the children is nearly over. I can do what needs to be done from Ada.” He chucked her under the chin. “But heck, kid, if you get hungry for my cooking, haul ass over here and let me rustle up some grub. You might even talk me into a movie.”

“Do you know how wonderful you are?” Kate cupped his face.

“Grandma told me that once.”

Kate kissed him softly on the cheek. He held her close for a moment then stood back, pasting a false, silly grin on his face.

“Thank you, Mark. For everything.”

He put his arm around her waist and led her from the dance floor, even pausing in the doorway so she could take one last look at Eagle, silhouetted against the French doors, dancing under the stars with Deborah.

Noble to the bitter end, Mark thought. He ought to get some kind of humanitarian of the year award.

 o0o

Melissa Colbert saw Kate leave. Standing at the punch bowl, surrounded by people who weren’t important to her, she gave a secret smile. The bitch had been so busy rubbing herself all over that man she was with, she hadn’t even noticed the visitor from Boston. Which was fine with Melissa. The element of surprise always had its advantages.

She wondered if the man Kate was seducing this time belonged to somebody else.

“We’re glad you’re here to continue Dr. Colbert’s altruistic work.” The speaker was Black something or other. She’d already forgotten their names, but it didn’t matter. “Everybody around here loved Clayton.”

At the mention of his name, a dark fog began to fall over Melissa, descending first over her chest so that she felt smothered. Fighting panic, she searched the room, looking for something, anything, to hold back the darkness.

And that’s when she saw him. He stood apart from the crowd, his handsome face dark and brooding, his stance relaxed and yet arrogant.

“Excuse me, please,” she said.

The man assessed her boldly as she approached, his eyes hooded and wary. “Hello, foxy lady.”

“Hello. I’m Melissa Sayers Colbert.”

“A woman with three names has to be important.”

“I am.”

“I’ve been watching you across the room.”

“And I’ve been watching you.”

“Do you like what you see?”

“I’ll have to reserve judgment on that.” Melissa held out her hand, and he took it. She felt the heat of him all the way to her toes. Oh, she liked what she saw, liked it very much indeed.

“Where are we going, Miss Foxy Lady with Three Names?”

“Do you care?”

“No. As long as I get what I want.”

Her long white limousine was waiting for them outside the door. She gave her chauffeur directions then settled back against the white leather cushions.

A beautiful copper-colored hand pushed her skirt aside.

“My name is Hal Lightfoot,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter, dear boy.”

He was young, so young. And so very necessary.

 o0o

The first snows had already fallen in the mountains and lay glittering like sugar over the tops of the trees and the roof of the hut. Its pristine beauty disguised the treachery of the mountain peaks and the jagged rocks that lay like sharks in the depths of the canyons.

Traveling in the darkness, a lesser man than Cole might have lost his life. But Cole knew the land, knew how to survive its treacheries. Neither the bitter winds nor the freshly falling snow nor the distant screaming of the screech owl deterred him. The mountains called to him in voices of beauty and the stars bent low to give him light.

His horse stepped into a hole drifted over with snow, but Cole knew he wouldn’t go down. Nothing could stop his quest.

The dark winds cried with the voices of the coyote and the bobcat, but onward Cole traveled, winding upward toward the shroud of mists that covered the tops of the mountain. The Great Spirit caught time in a dark velvet net and held it captive for the duration of Cole’s journey. Day and night ceased. Hunger and pain no longer existed. There was nothing except the shrouded peaks and the need. The urgent need.

Suddenly out of the mists came a vision, an ancient Spirit Talker wrapped in the buffalo robes. His bear-claw necklace gleamed in the moonlight.

“I knew you would come,” he said, holding out his hand. It was warm and soothing. “I’ve prepared for you.”

Smells of smoke mingled with the fragrances of medicinal herbs inside the small hut. Cole sat upon a bright red blanket while the old shaman covered him with the skin of a buffalo. He drew the tattered edges close and inhaled the scent of mold.

“A few more suns and I will vanish from these mountains just as the council fires and the curling smoke from our lodge fires have vanished,” the medicine man said. “Gone are the bark canoes and the thunder of buffalo and the songs of our women.” A heady, pungent smell filled the air as the shaman puffed on his pipe.

“I have had a vision,” he added. “In dreams filled with bending grasses and clear waters, the white buffalo came to me.”

He passed the pipe to Cole, who drew the mind-freeing drug deep into his lungs. Closing his eyes, he heard the thunder of the hooves as the Great Divine Presence showed himself once more, emerging from the darkness as white as the snow itself.

“I, too, see the buffalo.”

“It is good. It is a sign.” They passed the pipe between them once more, in perfect understanding. At peace at last, Cole lay upon his blanket and slept.

 o0o

The beauty of being maintenance engineer was that he had access to the building even with the plant shut down, and nobody was ever surprised to see him with his mops and buckets. Outside the door marked MANAGER, Hal mopped the same spot over and over. In the old, thin-walled building, every word Lacey Wainwright uttered was as clear as if it were being broadcast over a microphone.

“Dammit all to hell, Bruce, we’ve got to stop Eagle Mingo.”

“We can’t stop Eagle Mingo. He’s the governor, and in Chickasaw territory that translates as the law of the land.”

Bruce Graden was second in command, a skinny, whining man who looked as if he couldn’t run a public toilet, let alone a whole plant. What Wainwright needed was a real man, somebody with guts.

“He’s getting too close.” Wainwright smacked his fist against his desk. The blow reverberated in the hallway. “We can’t let him find out that we deliberately dumped toxic waste into the creek. Have you got your story straight?”

“Yes . . . but what would it cost to dispose of it correctly? I mean, it seems to me . . . with the lives of children at stake and all—”

“Bullshit! Hog-tie me with a bunch of regulations, and I might as well kiss all my profit good-bye. We’ve got a gold mine out here, and I’m not going to let anybody destroy that. Nobody. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” Bruce Graden headed for the door.

Bent over his mop, Hal did some serious scrubbing until Bruce was out of sight. Then he leaned his mop against the wall and slicked back his hair.

The rattlesnake hunt was over. It was time to move in for the kill.

Lacey Wainwright didn’t look too happy to see him. That would all change in about five minutes.

“Mr. Wainwright, I’m Hal Lightfoot.”

“I know who you are. What I don’t know is what in the hell you want.”

“What I want can wait. What I know is more important.” He sat in the chair without asking. Lacey Wainwright was not the kind of man who appreciated timidity.

Wainwright bit off the end of a big cigar, then lit up and sat back, blowing smoke. “And what is it you think you know?”

“I don’t think; I know. These walls have ears, and I’ve heard everything.” He winked. “We both know how Witch Creek got polluted, don’t we?”

Lacey’s jaw clamped over his cigar as he sized up Hal.

“And you want money. Is that it?”

“No. I want a promotion. Executive assistant sounds good to me. I can lie and cheat and steal with a straight face and a clear conscience, and as far as I’m concerned, Eagle Mingo is a man who hasn’t met his match.”

Wainwright blew smoke rings in his direction. Hal didn’t flinch.

“You’ve got balls. I like that.”

Melissa Sayers Colbert had liked them too. But that was a bit of information Hal intended to keep to himself. At least for the time being.

“Do we have a deal?” he asked.

The chair creaked as Wainwright stood up. Taking another cigar from the teakwood box on his table, he passed it to Hal.

“Deal,” he said.

 o0o

Bruce Graden was not surprised to find the pink slip in his box. Wainwright didn’t even do him the courtesy of firing him in person.

He cleaned out his desk, careful not to leave even a scrap of paper that would benefit his successor. The janitor, of all people. News like that traveled fast.

It took him until five o’clock to get his belongings neatly boxed and stored in the trunk of his car. Then, as if he were finishing an ordinary day, he punched out and drove home.

His telephone would be safe, at least for a while. But one phone call was all he needed. He looked up the number and dialed. It was answered on the first ring.

“Eagle Mingo here.”

Bruce thanked his lucky stars for the governor’s open-door policy that made him accessible, even in his own home.

“I know how the toxic chemicals got into Witch Creek.”

“Who is this?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Governor.” No one would ever know. And by tomorrow he’d be so long gone that no one would ever find him. “Will you listen to what I have to say?”

“I’m listening.”

As Bruce Graden began to talk, he knew that he might be signing his own death warrant.

Chapter 27

Kate settled into an easy chair with a cup of coffee then switched on the ten o’clock news. A dark, angry face filled the screen, shouting, “Clip Eagle’s wings.”

Kate reached for the remote control to turn up the volume. Pickets milled around the governor’s office, waving signs and screaming.

“Who will feed our children?”

“Who will buy our shoes?”

“Eagle Mingo, unfair to labor.”

The camera panned the crowd, and Kate leaned forward, riveted. One dark man stood out in the crowd, a part of it and yet strangely remote from the bedlam.

The face was vaguely familiar, but before Kate could be certain, the camera had switched to Gracie Wood, reporter for ADTV. Bundled against the cold in a red wool coat and scarf, she stood outside the state house, holding a microphone in her gloved hands. Snow swirled around her.

“In what is perhaps the first unpopular decision of his career, Governor Eagle Mingo some weeks ago ordered the closing of the tool and die plant on Witch Creek. Rumors that the closure is permanent have fueled tempers and sparked the riots you see here at the state house. The governor is in his office in conference with attorneys, and we’re expecting him to emerge any minute.”

In the background the picketers shouted, “We want jobs. We want jobs.”

The camera panned back to Gracie Wood . . . and Eagle Mingo.

“Governor, the jobless are picketing your office. Would you care to comment?”

“I regret any hardships placed on the employees of the Witch Dance Tool and Die Plant, but I will not be moved by strong-arm tactics. The major concern of this office is cleaning up the toxic waste and ensuring that the tragic deaths that occurred this summer will never happen again.”

“Are you filing charges against Witch Dance Tool and Die?”

“No comment.”

“Two of the children were from your own family. Is that not correct, Governor?”

Stone Face, Eagle’s political enemies called him. But there was nothing stony about his face now. Pain etched his features and flickered briefly in his eyes.

Kate couldn’t bear to watch, couldn’t bear to listen. Quickly she flipped the TV off then went into the kitchen to find some food.

A head of wilted lettuce and two shriveled carrots stared back at her from the refrigerator. Though she had no appetite, she knew she had to eat. She couldn’t keep up her pace without food. Rummaging in the crisper, she found two slices of ham left over from the days of Mark Grant.

What was he doing now? Did he miss her? Did anybody miss her?

A wave of loneliness struck her so hard, she leaned her head against the refrigerator. Loneliness and anguish. All those little children, all those little graves. And it wasn’t over yet. Who knew how many children had played in Witch Creek, how many new cases would crop up over the next few months?

Sometimes she felt inadequate for the task she’d set for herself. She took two deep breaths to ward off the helpless, hopeless feeling.

“Snap out of it, Katie Elizabeth, or soon you’re going to be having a pity party.”

With her chin jutted out, she grabbed the ham and a jar of mayonnaise and marched to her bread box. Setting the ham on the kitchen counter, she lifted the lid. The jar of mayonnaise slid from her hand and crashed to the floor. Sticky goo spattered over her shoes, and a large shard of glass ricocheted off the floor and cut her leg.

Kate never noticed.

Inside the box lay a cloth doll with red hair. Its neck had been sliced and blood had been smeared on the front of its dress. With trembling hands Kate lifted the effigy. The blood was real . . . and the hair.