Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (17 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries
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Maureen arched her back where she sat on Dale’s office floor, a stack of folders piled to either side of her. She felt as if she were invading his personal space, and the monumental task of going through his records was just beginning to dawn on her. They’d been at this for four hours already, and barely made it through the first file drawer. Everything had to be read, and Dale had added notes in the margins over the years, correcting his early observations and interpretations of the archaeology based on later discoveries. More important still, he had mentioned people in the scrawled notations. Which left them wondering, if a witch were mentioned, how would they know?
Dusty sat at the desk with his elbows propped on two separate files. He stroked his beard thoughtfully as he read. “I can’t believe Dale saved all this. I mean, look here. This is his first undergraduate paper at Harvard. Twenty pages on the history of Ramses II for Intro to Western Civilization.”
“You know, there’s a Ph.D. dissertation in these old reports,” she said, closing another of the files. “It’s like
an education in anthropological theory. I just finished a critique on why Piltdown had to be real.”
“That’s the great hoax, right?”
“Correct, Dawson’s ‘Dawn Man’ who turned out to have a thirteen-thousand-year-old skull atop a well-filed orangutan jawbone. It was debunked in the late fifties.”
Dusty pulled open the next file and frowned at the papers. “I think these are his lecture notes from a class. Should I can them?”
“Better not.” Maureen shook her head.
“You’re right.” Dusty flipped through them, scanning page after page.
Maureen opened another file and started down the page. This was a collection of field notes from an excavation in Maryland. She passed through a series of level records from a shell midden test pit dug in the fifties, and stopped short. “Dusty?”
“What did you find?”
“Listen to this: ‘June seventh, 1957. Accokeek 3-A. Dr. Mason assigned a new girl to work with us today. Her name’s Ruth Sullivan. What a dish! Blond, blue-eyed, a sailor would have pinned her picture to a locker and never looked twice at Marlene Dietrich.’”
Dusty reached for the folder and Maureen watched his forehead line as he read the entry. “Dale knew her before my father did?”
“I haven’t seen a reference to Samuel yet.” She picked up another of the folders. “What did Dale tell you?”
“Not much. He always said things like, ‘When I first met your father,’ or ‘When your father and I were young.’ You know, nothing really specific.” He riffled through the notes … and abruptly stopped, his eyes glued to a page.
“What’s wrong?” Maureen asked.
“Nothing, it’s just … this is my mother’s handwriting.”
“You know her handwriting?”
His gaze remained on the page, but the lines around his mouth tightened. “When I was a boy, she used to write me letters. You know, when she was away working on a site. I read them over and over. I kept every one until my father committed suicide. Then I shoved them in Dale’s barbecue and burned them.”
Maureen shuffled through the mess of papers in front of her, as though organizing them. “What was she writing about?”
“On page thirty-seven, she started taking the field notes.” He scowled. “Not much in her report, either. Just more cooked clam shells.”
Maureen finished the last of the folders and began stacking them, thankful for the opportunity to stand up and circulate blood to her legs. Dusty was staring absently at the file, lost in thought.
“Did you ever try and contact her?” Maureen asked casually as she refiled the folders.
“No,” he said through a taut exhalation and shrugged.
Maureen pulled open the next drawer and found another stack of manila folders, each packed with pages. Out of curiosity she closed it and opened another, and another of the drawers, just to get an idea of the amount of material they were going to have to sift through.
The bottom drawer defied her. “Dusty? This one’s locked.”
He looked up from the Accokeek file. “Locked? I didn’t know any of them were locked.”
She tugged at the drawer, but it wouldn’t open. “Definitely locked. Have you even seen what’s in here?”
Dusty shook his head. “No. These are Dale’s personal files.” He pointed down the line of file cabinets to a newer model. “I filed stuff, sure, but over there. You know, reports from the eighties and nineties.”
“Where would he have left the key?”
Dusty thought for a moment, then pulled open the
desk drawer and rummaged through pencils, pens, note cards, isolated artifacts without provenience, and knickknacks. “No key here.” He shoved out of his chair. “Wait. Come on.”
He led the way down the hallway to Dale’s bedroom. Maureen shot a sad glance at the rumpled bed, partially made, awaiting the return of a man who would never sleep there again. Had Dale known when he left for Chaco that everything was about to end? Did he have the slightest hint that he would never return to this bed?
Dusty stopped before the dresser and lifted down a little black-on-white Tusayan style pot from a high shelf. It rattled as he upended it on the dresser and spilled out the contents: coins, a couple of bullets, buttons, several perforated pottery disks, and a ring of keys. Dusty swept the rest into his palm and poured it back into the pot. “It might be here,” he told Maureen, lifting the key ring.
She followed him back to the office and watched as Dusty tried each key, with no luck.
“Next idea?” she asked, studying the file drawer.
“Be right back,” he said and trotted out of the room. She heard the front door slam. In less than a minute, Dusty returned carrying a polaski, a sort of pickax archaeologists used for digging in cemented soil.
“A bit of overkill, don’t you think?”
He grinned. “Dale wouldn’t approve, Doctor, but one of the rules of archaeology is to use the tool appropriate to the task. You don’t use dental picks to remove several meters of overburden.”
She backed up. She had to hand it to Dusty. His years of training stood him in good stead. Within three whacks, he had the door sprung. He laid the pickax to one side and bent down. She watched as his back muscles tensed, biceps swelling under his tanned skin. The buckled drawer screeched and gave, sliding open to the light.
She leaned forward to look over his shoulder. A line
of bound books were stacked in a neat row, spine up. Each had a date pressed in the spine with gold leaf. “What are they?”
Dusty pulled out the one marked “1976” and opened it to the first page, reading: “God, what a hangover. Arrived early for the Society for Historical Archaeology meetings and ended up partying with the people from the Anthro dept at Missouri. What a bunch of animals. These kids! Where did they learn to drink like that? I will try to work on my paper for the Colonial New Mexico session—and avoid the ‘Missouri Mafia’ for the rest of the conference.”
Dusty looked up. “Maureen, these are his diaries.”
“I didn’t know he kept diaries.”
“Yeah. He said they made him think better.” Dusty stroked his beard thoughtfully. “He told me once that it was his way of talking to himself. God, I was never ever supposed to so much as touch them.”
Dusty reached for the latest, marked “2001,” and was in the process of pulling it out when the phone rang. He rose, the diary in hand. “Want to get that?”
She walked out into the hallway and picked up the phone before the answering machine could get it. “Dr. Robertson’s. May I help you?”
“Yes, is Dale there, please?”
“No, he’s not.” Maureen caught herself before she could gasp. She knew that voice, had heard it each time Dusty had replayed the answering machine for her and the FBI. The faintly New England accent, the perfectly articulated words.
“Could you tell me where I could reach him?”
“Excuse me, but who is this?”
Maureen could hear the hesitation on the other end of the line.
“I’m an old friend and colleague of his.
”
“Your
name
please,” Maureen added with emphasis.
The woman hung up.
Maureen was staring at the telephone, her stomach churning, when she heard a car pull into the driveway.
Preoccupied, she crossed to the front door in time to admit FBI agent Sam Nichols, who carried several folded newspapers under his left arm. He studied her with his good eye, noting her expression. “Something wrong, Dr. Cole?”
“We just had a phone call. I think it was the same woman on Dale’s answering machine.”
Nichols paused thoughtfully, then looked up to nod at Dusty as he emerged from the hallway with one of the diaries in his hands.
“Agent Nichols,” Dusty greeted. “What can we do for you?”
Nichols removed the folded newspapers from beneath his left arm and flipped the first one open. He tapped an underlined section. “Did you know about this?”
“What?” Dusty’s brows lowered as he read.
Maureen walked over to Dusty’s side. It was a copy of
Anthropology News,
the newsletter of the American Anthropological Association. Maureen knew the publication, but rarely read it.
Dusty closed the paper, handed it to Maureen, and stepped away. He ran a hand through his blond hair. He didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, he turned to Nichols. “No, I—I didn’t know about it.”
Nichols’s square jaw moved as though he were grinding his teeth, trying to decide whether or not to arrest Dusty. “I came over to tell you that we chased down the phone records for Dr. Robertson’s house and for your office. The one hangup was from a pay phone out at the airport.” He glanced back and forth between Dusty and Maureen.
“And the others?” Maureen asked.
“It’s time you told me everything you know about Carter Hawsworth.”
Nichols tapped the paper in Maureen’s hand, and she shot a quick look to see if Dusty was about to self-destruct. He looked unnaturally pale.
“What about Hawsworth?” Maureen asked, quickly , thumbing through the pages.
Nichols shifted to look at her. “Who is he? How did he know Dr. Robertson?”
Dusty leaned a shoulder against the door frame. “My mother ran off with Hawsworth when I was six. Hawsworth was a colleague of Dale’s.”
Nichols peered at Dusty over his glasses and his black hair shone in the light. “You didn’t know
anything
about this squabble? Robertson
never
mentioned it?”
“No. I swear.”
Maureen found the section Nichols had underlined. She folded the newsletter back and read,
“Dr. Robertson’s article about cannibalism and witchcraft in the Southwest contains just the sort of ignorant allegations that make witches cast lethal spells. Perhaps that’s what it will take to force such ‘scholars’ to realize the impact their blind assertions have on living peoples. I, for one, plan to contact every witch I know and beg them to ‘witch’ him. He deserves our professional disdain as well as …”
Maureen lowered the newsletter and stared at the rug. “That’s Carter Hawsworth’s voice on the answering machine, isn’t it?”
“Correct, Dr. Cole,” Nichols replied. “He’s the man with the English accent.”
 
 
DUSTY PLACED THE diary on the couch beside him and nervously rubbed his hands together. Maureen had
gone to the kitchen for a freshly brewed cup of coffee, and now stood, one hip propped against the arched entry to the dining room. Her long braid hung down over her right shoulder, and she had a worried expression, as though she expected the world to end in the next few minutes.
Agent Nichols, who sat at the opposite end of the couch, opened his notebook and adjusted his glasses.
“How is it possible that you didn’t know about this academic squabble? Isn’t this the biggest anthropological organization in the world?” He pointed to the AAA newsletter.
Dusty shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t belong to it. I’m an archaeologist. I belong to the Society for American Archaeology. There are dozens of anthropological associations, Nichols. No one can afford to belong to all of them, or read all of the publications they produce.”
Nichols jotted something down, then said, “I want to know everything you remember about Carter Hawsworth.”
“I barely remember him at all,” Dusty said. “Just the way he talked. That English accent was unusual in the Southwest back then. Especially in the professional community. In that day and age most English anthropologists went to Africa.”
“You said he ran off with your mother?” Nichols asked.
Dusty nodded. “In the sixties. I was just a kid. Hawsworth was studying social structure at Zuni. Mom had worked there. She offered to introduce him to some of the elders and the influential people. At the time, Dad was up in Blanding, Utah, doing some kind of salvage work on a site that was going to be bulldozed by the Utah highway department.”
Dusty paused. “I knew something was wrong. I heard a man’s voice one night and thought it was Dad, home early.”
“But it was Hawsworth?” Nichols asked.
Dusty nodded.
Nichols studied him, clearly aware of Dusty’s sudden discomfort. “Stewart, I need to know whatever you do. Anything you can remember, or have heard over the years, might be helpful to this investigation. So far as we have determined, Robertson and Hawsworth had been writing bitter rebuttals to each other’s articles for over a year, but they had no direct contact prior to three days ago. If you know something, no matter how trivial, I need to hear it.”
Dusty took a deep breath. “Well, it’s ugly stuff. It was late one night. The bedroom door to my folks’ room didn’t close all the way. The foundation had shifted and the door didn’t latch. I stopped short when I heard that English accent. I knew it wasn’t Dad, so I didn’t push the door open. I just stood outside.”
He hadn’t thought it would be this hard to talk about it, but here he was, a grown man, blushing like he had when he’d been six years old. “I looked through the door slit and saw my mother. She was standing by the bed, her shirt off, and this man was … well, I ran away when he tossed her on the bed and crawled on top of her.”
Maureen’s eyes tightened.
“Did you ever tell anyone?” Nichols asked. “Your father? A teacher? Some friend?”
Dusty shook his head. “Not even Dale. But I think Dad knew. Maybe he could see it in my eyes. Maybe she told him. I remember them fighting the day she left. She told him she wanted a man in her life, not a boy.”
Nichols scribbled notes. “Thanks. It’s probably nothing, but it might be.”
Dusty nodded. “Sure.”
How strange that telling someone about it gave him an odd sense of relief.
Nichols stood. “There’s one other thing. This probably isn’t the time to tell you, but …”
When he hesitated, Dusty said, “What is it?”
Nichols tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket and gestured awkwardly with his hand. “The woman on Dr. Robertson’s answering machine is your mother, Ruth Ann Sullivan, the famous Harvard anthropologist and author.”
Dusty froze.
Nichols held up a hand. “Or at least someone placed several calls from her home in Boston to the phone on that table.” He pointed to Dale’s phone.
Dusty turned to look. “Why would she call Dale? After all these years? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Dusty remembered the tone in her voice, first angry, thinking Dale was playing some trick on her, then frightened. His gut twisted. What was going on here?
Nichols looked at Maureen. “You’re sure the woman who called today was the same woman who called earlier?”
Maureen clutched her coffee cup in both hands. “It was the same New England accent, mature, educated. I’d bet it was the same woman.”
For some unknown reason, Dusty had butterflies in his stomach. What was it about the past? Why did it keep creeping out of the hidden places in his mind where he’d buried it, and what, if anything, did it have to do with Dale’s murder?
“Is there anything else you want me to know about Hawsworth?” Nichols asked.
Dusty paced to the window and looked out at the street beyond. Two children in matching red stocking caps ran by. Winter had claimed the trees, leaving them bare and gray.
Dusty said, “Hawsworth and Sullivan were together for a while in the South Pacific. I’ve heard it was a nasty split. Lots of acrimony. He went back to England. I’ve seen his name every now and then in the journals but could never make myself read the articles. I guess he’s still in England.”
Nichols paused for a moment. “To your knowledge—with the exception of recent phone calls—he’s never tried to contact Dr. Robertson?”
“If he did, Dale never told me.” He cocked his head. “I guess you’ll have to ask Hawsworth.”
Nichols shoved his hands in his pockets. “He’s not home.”
“What do you mean?” Maureen asked. “You checked his place in London?”
“He leased his London home to his cousin, Georgia Swanson. She told me that Dr. Hawsworth has spent the last several years studying Navajo witchcraft. Right here in New Mexico. But he has no address here.”
Dusty peered at Nichols with hard unblinking eyes. “That’s impossible. I know every anthropologist working on the Navajo reservation.”
Nichols nodded. “I’m sure you do. Mrs. Swanson said he’d sworn her to secrecy. Apparently his work here is personal, not professional.”
“Then why did she tell you?” Maureen asked.
Nichols’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m the FBI. That scares people in foreign countries. Besides, I told her I was worried about his safety.”
Dusty massaged his forehead. “Hawsworth’s study of witchcraft is personal, not professional? I don’t like the sound of that.”
His memory replayed Hawsworth’s angry voice on the phone:
“Dale, you son of a bitch! I didn’t think even you could sink this low.”
Then he heard his mother’s voice, high and strained:
“I’m not kidding. Stop it, Dale!”
Both sounded like people who were afraid they were being witched. By Dale? What had happened to frighten them so much?
Dusty folded his arms. Was it possible that after Hawsworth’s last rebuttal in the AAA newsletter, Dale had decided to turn the tables on Hawsworth? That he had, as a joke, “witched” Hawsworth, and Hawsworth had taken it seriously?
Dusty looked up. “Have you contacted my mother?”
Nichols smiled, but it was a grim expression. “I will as soon as I can find her.”
 
 
MATRON BLUE CORN awoke to the sounds of shouts in the plaza below. She jerked upright on her sleeping pallet, tossed her warm blanket to one side, and clawed for her tunic.
Shoving her feet into her sandals, she tore her macaw-feather cloak from its peg and whipped it around her shoulders as she ducked past the door hanging into the cold morning.
The first tentative glow of dawn shimmered on the foothills east of the river. She could see her warriors milling before the Fire Dogs’ room block, passing in and out of the doorways, cursing, swinging their war clubs in frustration.
“What is happening?” she shouted above the din. “Are we being attacked?”
People rushed out of their rooms in various states of dress. Most were shouting, weapons clasped in their hands.
Rain Crow glanced up from the knot of warriors who had formed around him in the plaza. He waved for silence and called, “The Fire Dogs, Matron. They are gone! They slipped away in the night!”
She shouted, “Where were the guards? I ordered them watched at all times!”
Rain Crow answered, “The Fire Dogs cut a hole in the wall and escaped out the back. For all we know, they have been gone since nightfall. They could be anywhere. Perhaps perpetrating some outrage on one of the outlying towns.”
Blue Corn gripped her cape. What a fool she had
been. Of course they’d run. Their young prophet had been murdered, his body mutilated. She, too, would have slipped away at first chance.
Below her, warriors gathered around Rain Crow. All looked up, waiting for her orders. “Very well, send out our best trackers. Find out where they went. Meanwhile, send for Matron Cloudblower and that old fool, Stone Ghost. As soon as we discover where the Fire Dogs have gone we can decide what to do.”
“Where do you think they’ve gone?” a man asked from behind her.
Blue Corn turned to look at the skinny old man who leaned against the wall. His dark face might have been rawhide left in the sun for too many seasons. The crisscrossing wrinkles wrapped a fleshy nose and a brown slit of a mouth, but he had sharp eyes, and considerable spring to his step as he came toward her. A flowing cloak made of winter-white weasel hide hung down to his waist. His gray locks had been drawn into a tight bun at the back of his head.
“Pigeontail?” she said. “No one told me you were here.”
The old Trader stopped before her, his head cocked. “No, great Matron. You seem to have had your hands full of other concerns. I arrived yesterday, too late for all the excitement. But I have heard such tales since I have been here! Fire Dogs! A prophet talking of Poor Singer and Sternlight! Murder! Mutilation! And no idea who the culprit might be! Now what is this, the Fire Dogs, whom I traveled so far to see, have escaped?”
She studied him. Something about his eyes, a lighter brown than she had ever seen before, had always bothered her. “You came here to see the Fire Dogs?” Her voice dripped skepticism.
He shrugged, smiling disarmingly. “It would have saved me a trip far to the south. They could have carried the weight for me. I have pottery, precious stones,
superbly tanned hides of elk and buffalo. Things the Fire Dogs could use in the south.”
“I’m sure.” She looked down as Rain Crow sent his scouts out to cut for tracks. “Isn’t it amazing that you are always in the right place to take advantage of the unusual?”
“The Flute Player has always favored me,” he replied. “Or perhaps it is the times, Matron. One cannot go anywhere these days without seeing and hearing the
*
unusual. Just last night one of your people told me that the First People are not dead, and that their dreaded warriors, the White Moccasins, walk among us.”
“Did you believe it? Have you seen these White Moccasins with your own eyes?” A tightness seized her throat, almost choking her speech.
His odd sandy eyes fixed on hers, and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Yes. In fact, I came to warn you that they are hunting Made People for their stew pots and cooking fires, eating them as if they were deer or turkeys. Beware.”
Her spine prickled, but she said, “I have no time for such silly tales.”
She stepped onto the ladder, careful of the white coating of hoarfrost, and started down to the ground to talk to Rain Crow. As she climbed down, Old Pigeontail called, “Indeed, Matron, you have more important matters to attend to. The Rainbow Serpent might be sleeping, but her dreams still shake the four corners of the world.”
“Doddering old fool,” she said under her breath. What did he know of slumbering serpents? He should try walking in her sandals for a while.
When she stepped to the ground, she looked up and met his eyes. All it would take would be a word whispered in the right ear, and the old man could be dealt with, once and for all. She—
“Gods! Help me! Help!”
Blue Corn whirled, looking toward the last of the
low rooms where the Fire Dogs had quartered. “What is it?”
An ashen-faced boy burst from the doorway. Blood—appearing black in the filtered morning light—splotched his hands. “I fell on him!” the boy, a lad of no more than ten summers, screamed. “I fell over him! He’s all wet with blood!”
Rain Crow pushed past and stepped into the dark room. Blue Corn hurried after him. She blinked, seeing the darker figure of a man sprawled on the dirt floor. “Bring us a torch! We need light in here!”
Blue Corn reached down to touch the icy blood that had leaked from the body.
Rain Crow felt the victim’s face. “The body is cold. This happened some time ago.”
Dancing yellow light preceded the torchbearer as he leaned into the doorway. Blue Corn stared into the terror-fixed eyes of the dead. “White Spark,” she said. “Wasn’t he—?”

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