Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (29 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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“You are a fool, old man!”
“Well, allow me to explain. You see, she knows that she is one of the First People, and I cannot imagine who would have been foolish enough to tell her. Certainly no one I know. The only people who openly speak about their ancestry are the White Moccasins.”
“Hush! I don’t care if you get yourself killed, but I do not wish to accompany you to the Land of the Dead!”
Stone Ghost tucked his hands inside his cape for warmth, and listened to the darkness. An owl hooted
somewhere in the distance, but inside Kettle Town, Obsidian’s rapid breathing was the only sound.
“Was Ten Hawks your husband, or Shadow’s?”
She hesitated a long time, then said reluctantly, “Mine.”
He whispered, “Since your dead husband, Ten Hawks, was a member of the White Moccasins, I thought you might have seen the girl before. I was hoping you might know her parents.”
Obsidian hissed, “I don’t know anything about her!”
Stone Ghost moved again, and dust sifted down around him, falling from the mats. “I find it very odd that the two of you go out of your way to avoid each other. If the girl enters a room, you leave. If you walk into a room, she leaves. It seems to me …”
Clay Frog shifted. It was a subtle movement, the slightest tightening of her grip on her club.
Then Stone Ghost heard the footsteps in the long hallway outside.
Obsidian squeezed her eyes closed and buried her face in the fabric of her black cape.
Stone Ghost listened to their whispers as they closed in … and knew if he lived through this, he must speak with his nephew. He had to tell him the suspicions that were eating holes in his souls.
 
 
RUTH ANN SULLIVAN shoved her gloves into her purse and eyed the battered couch and the telephone peeking out of the shirt pile. A wry ghost of a smile crossed her lips. She walked into the old kitchen and
looked at the countertop and the table with its cigarette-scarred plastic surface, then shook her head at the black-and-white TV with its clothes-hanger antenna.
“I don’t believe it. It’s a goddamned time machine.” Her Bostonian accent sounded out of place. She glanced at the big pistol in Dusty’s hand, and stepped closer to look into his stunned eyes.
“Dear God,” she whispered, “so you’re my son.”
“I think of myself as Sam’s son,” Dusty answered curtly.
She pointed a slim white finger at the pistol. “Well, Sam would never have owned a gun. He was too much of a coward.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or am I misreading you, William? What does a gun mean to you? Is it a substitute for virility?”
Dusty placed the pistol on the kitchen counter. “What are you doing here?”
Ruth Ann gave him a clinical look. He might have been a subject in one of her experiments: the sort for which she could write another scholarly article.
“Why
are you here?” Dusty demanded to know.
When his mother didn’t answer, Maureen broke the deadlock. She walked closer to Ruth Ann and pointed at the dirt and leaves on her coat. “Is that a new East Coast fashion, or were you crawling around under the trailer?”
Ruth Ann looked down at her dirt-smudged coat. “When the light went on, I dived under your Bronco. It was the closest concealment I could find.”
Dusty’s jaws ached from clenching his teeth. He forced himself to relax. “Were you afraid of me, or the person in the car?”
Ruth Ann’s blue eyes pinned him, as if weighing what to tell him. “That was Carter,” she said in a brittle voice.
“Carter? Hawsworth?” Maureen asked.
“I think so,” Ruth Ann answered, and carefully scrutinized Maureen. “I don’t believe I know you.”
“Maureen Cole. We’ve met, actually. At the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’ meeting in Denver.”
“Really? Well. Let’s meet again. I’m Dr. Ruth Ann Sullivan.” She extended her hand.
Maureen crossed her arms. “Curious time of night for a visit, Dr. Sullivan.”
“I had my reasons,” Ruth Ann answered coldly as she withdrew her hand.
Dusty gripped the back of the chair. “Let’s hear them.”
Ruth Ann hesitated, betraying a flicker of vulnerability. “I thought I should talk to you, William. Find out what you knew.”
“Knew about what?”
Her control wavered. “About Dale. About his death. About Kwewur.”
“Kwewur?” Maureen asked. “What’s that?”
Dusty bent forward, a sudden gleam had entered his eyes. “The Wolf Katchina? Is that who you mean?”
Ruth Ann nodded. Despite her age, traces of her beauty remained. Not just in her looks, but in the way she carried herself.
“What about the Wolf Katchina?” Maureen asked.
Dusty said, “He’s one of the katchinas from Awatovi.”
“The Hopi village destroyed by other Hopi because it was full of witches?” Maureen said. “Yes, I read Lomatuway’ma’s book last summer. Is Kwewur the same—”
“As the Wolf Witch?” Dusty smiled grimly. “I don’t know.”
He turned to his mother, battling to keep his emotions in hand. This was the woman who had abandoned him when he was six. How did he handle this? What did he say to her? Dusty took a deep breath. “What do you know about Kwewur?”
“Apparently more than you do.” She lifted her purse.
“Coming here was a mistake. A big mistake.” She turned and reached for the door latch.
Dusty blocked the door. “You’re not leaving. Not yet.”
She glared at him. “Let me go, William.”
“No,
Mother.”
The word sounded alien on his tongue. “Sit down. What’s it been? Thirty-one years? I didn’t even get a postcard from you, then Dale is murdered by a witch, and you suddenly show up asking me about the Wolf Katchina?” He shook his head. “You’re going to sit right here and tell me everything you know.”
A cold smile bent her thin lips. He could see the fine wrinkles around her mouth, the age lines that hardened at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t owe you a thing, William. And you sure as hell can’t make me tell you anything I don’t want to.” She gestured toward the door. “Now, move out of my way.”
Maureen said, “Dr. Sullivan, do you know the FBI is looking for you?”
Dusty saw the ripple of fear before she hid it. His mother said, “I’ll talk to them when I’m ready.”
Dusty pointed to the phone. “Maureen, please dial Agent Nichols’s number.”
She took a half step before Ruth Ann raised her hand in defeat. “Wait.”
Ruth Ann Sullivan met Dusty’s hard stare and said, “All right, William, what do you want to know?”
“Did you kill Dale?”
“No.”
“Did you steal his journals?”
He could see the confusion when she said, “What journals?”
“Dale’s journals. He kept a record of his life. Someone took them before we could read past 1963. He wrote a great deal about you. And him.”
She was calculating again, trying to read his motives. Her stony expression stirred something deep inside
him, as though he remembered that look from a time when she had actually been his mother. Dusty could hear a little boy crying inside him, and a memory almost surfaced, of darkness and cold, but then it slipped away.
“Why would I want to steal his journals?”
Dusty reached over and pulled out one of the chairs. “Sit down. Maybe we can figure that out.”
Maureen walked to the kitchen. “I think I’ll make us coffee. This may be a long night.”
Ruth Ann Sullivan seated herself awkwardly on the old worn kitchen chair and laid her purse to one side. Then she shrugged out of her coat and threw it over the back. She wore a gray wool dress belted at her slim waist. The sterling silver clip holding her ponytail glimmered. She shook her head as she looked at the scarred tabletop. “What on earth are you still doing in this rat trap? What is it, some sort of museum? A monument to Sam?”
“It’s my home,” Dusty said. He turned a chair around, sat down, and propped his arms on the chair back. “The only thing he left me.”
“But, my God, it looks the same as it did last time I was here! Well, the television’s new, but I served breakfast on this same rickety table.” She smoothed her hair back and said, “All right, what do you want from me, William? Some declaration? What?”
His stomach tightened. “I want to know what happened to Dale. Other than that, I don’t give a
damn
about you.”
She smiled then, relaxing. “Thank God for that. All right, here’s what I know. A couple of weeks ago I received a fax. Just a short note that said something about the second cycle of the moon coming and we would dance as we once had, our bodies entwined under the stars.”
“What did that mean?”
“I didn’t have the foggiest idea. I thought it was a
prank from a colleague or a student. I threw it away. Then, several days later, I received another fax. That one said, ‘The cycles are coming full. I have never stopped loving you. This time I shall have your body and soul. This time, I shall devour all of you.’” She frowned down at her hands. “I thought it was a gentleman I had been seeing, but when I joked with him about it, it was apparent that he wasn’t the sender.”
“That’s when you called Dale?” Maureen asked as she set the coffeepot on the burner.
“No. I didn’t call Dale until the third fax came in. It read: ‘We will meet at the center place where the ancestors climbed from
Shipapu
into this world. In the corner house on the night when the dead live. Two cycles of the moon have come full. It is time to end what the four of you began. On the night of masks, at midnight, you shall make the journey. The wolf returns to its beginning.’”
Dusty massaged his brow. “The wolf returns to its beginning?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, and it was signed Kwewur. That was my first clue that the faxes were tied to the Southwest—to my past. So I naturally assumed it was Dale. But when I talked to him that night, I could tell he didn’t know anything about it.”
Dusty frowned. “Who are ‘the four of you’?”
She touched the swirled plastic pattern in the tabletop. “I don’t know. Well, not for sure. I can only guess, but I think it might be me, Dale, Sam, and Carter.”
“With Dale gone, only you and Carter are left,” Maureen said thoughtfully. “Just what, exactly, did the four of you start?”
“I beg your pardon?” Ruth Ann looked up at Maureen.
“The fax said it was time to end what the four of you began. So, what did you begin?”
“We began a lot of things.” Her smile faded. “Lord knows, look at us. Sam killed himself. Carter and I hate
each other’s guts. Until recently, Dale and I haven’t so much as spoken to each other in thirty years. As to what we did back then that could have led to Dale’s murder … that eludes me.” She looked up, obviously perplexed. “It was such a long time ago. Ancient history. What would it serve to dredge it up now? What would it change?”
“You said that you thought Carter Hawsworth was in the car that left when Dusty turned on the light,” Maureen reminded. “Why is he here?”
Ruth Ann made an awkward gesture with her hand. “I think he followed me from the hotel.”
“How did you get here?” Dusty asked. “I didn’t see a car outside.”
“A cab. I had the hotel call one.” She shifted uncomfortably. “I wasn’t getting anywhere on my own. Just one dead end after another. Imagine my surprise when I looked in the phone book and found William Samuel Stewart living at the same address.” She looked around. “I would have thought you’d have hauled this wreck out, junked it, and built a real house. This is a nice piece of property.”
“Why would Carter Hawsworth follow you from the hotel?” Dusty asked.
Ruth Ann shrugged. “I’m not sure that was him, but it’s the only logical explanation. I’ve been so careful. I’m registered as Mr. and Mrs. George Davis. I even used George’s credit card. He’s a good friend, you see. I waited until this ungodly time of the night, sure that anyone watching would have given up and gone to bed.”
“But you were wrong.”
Her blue eyes had a bright savage glitter. “Apparently.” A pause. “You mentioned witchcraft in conjunction with Dale’s murder?”
“Yes.” Dusty outlined the grisly details, hardening his heart against the ache caused by the telling. To his surprise, Ruth Ann seemed genuinely disturbed. He
ended by asking, “Does that mean anything to you? The way he was treated?”
She stared into a distance only she could see, then slowly shook her head. “No, except …” She looked up. “Do you think Casa Rinconada could be the corner place where the ancestors climbed into this world through
Shipapu?”
Dusty glanced at Maureen who waited next to the perking pot. She lifted a shoulder. Dusty said, “What happened at Casa Rinconada two cycles of the moon ago? That’s a little over thirty-seven years.”
Her lips twitched. “How should I know? You’d just been conceived. I was pretty busy.”
He stared at her. “What’s Carter Hawsworth’s role in all of this? I know he’s been studying Navajo witchcraft.”
She gave him a condescending look. “Carter has always been interested in witchcraft. That’s what brought him here in the first place. He’s fascinated by the notion of being able to possess others, to turn their souls to his bidding. It’s a godlike power, and as insecure as Carter is, that’s like heroin to an addict.”
Maureen shifted the burbling coffeepot on the stove and asked, “If that’s the case, what did you ever see in him?”
Ruth Ann narrowed an eye. “I was a great deal younger then, and not so wise in the ways of the world. You’d be surprised what a young woman, trapped in a place like this, would agree to in order to escape.”
“Why didn’t you just go home.” Dusty didn’t care if she heard the venom in his voice.
“I couldn’t. But that’s another story. My parents had just been killed in a car accident. I was lost, young, rotting away, and missing the chance of a lifetime to use my brain for something besides changing diapers and washing clothes in dingy Laundromats in Tuba City. Not only that, I was just starting to hate archaeology. The whole thing was so tedious, kneeling for
months scraping away little layers of soil with a trowel. Ugh. I finally came to the conclusion that the only form of archaeology I would ever enjoy was one that involved a bulldozer and a backhoe. I wanted the good stuff quick, so I could get out of the dirt.”
Dusty just stared his disgust at her.
“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised that you disapprove,” Ruth Ann said. “Dale once told me that I’d never sunk a trowel properly. Anyway, I preferred ethnography. It’s cleaner. So was Carter when he came along. He didn’t smell like sweat and dust. He introduced me to new opportunities in anthropology. He offered to take me places I could only dream about.”

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