Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (62 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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DUSTY SAT ON the kitchen counter in his Santa Fe trailer, his cowboy-booted feet dangling. He sipped a bottle of Guinness while he listened to his mother.

Maureen and Maggie sat at the table across from Ruth Ann. Maureen had worn her long hair loose, combed to a rich sheen. Her white sweater did nice things to Dusty’s imagination. Maggie had a strangely serene expression. A small cedar box sat on the table before her. On the couch, Yvette watched them. Over the last couple of weeks, Dusty and Yvette had come to share a warm but curious sort of relationship.

“Rupert said that we needed to talk, that he’d meet me at Casa Rinconada at nightfall.” Ruth Ann propped her fists on the table. Her black cashmere sweater accented her silver hair. “I assumed he wished to tell me something about Dale’s murder.”

“You weren’t afraid he was the murderer?” Maureen sipped at a cup of coffee.

“God no. Why would I be? For years he wrote me love letters. I mean, hell, what would it hurt to see him again?” Ruth Ann laced her fingers together primly on the table, intent on her story. “We had taken a walk up to the site you now call Owl House. We were sitting there, looking down into that kiva, and Rupert handed me a candy.” She smiled. “Hell, it was like old times. It was the sixties. Rupert and I used to go up on hilltops, drop a little acid, and watch the sun go down.”

“You knew it was LSD?” Dusty asked.

“What do you think I am? A blessed virgin? Of course, I knew. I’m telling you the same thing I told your friend, Agent Nichols, in my formal statement.”

“So you went down into the kiva?” Maureen asked, disbelief in her voice. “Knowing that Dale and Hawsworth had been murdered there?”

“In my state of mind, what did I care? Rupert and I pulled the tarp back and built a fire in that old hearth,” Ruth Ann whispered, seeing it all again, “and I swear something happened. Firelight in that hearth for the first time in over seven hundred years, flickering on those little pieces of bone and those two skeletons. We talked of old times, of things Rupert and I had done, of things Dale and Sam and I did, and people we both knew. Rupert asked me if I had it to do all over again, would I? I said, ‘God, yes. I’d sell my soul to be twenty-five again.’”

Ruth Ann paused, a gleam in her eyes. “That’s when he tied me up, put on the wolf mask, and left.”

Dusty contemplatively scratched off part of the label on his Guinness bottle. “It didn’t occur to you that he was Kwewur?”

“No. Why would it have? He sure as hell hadn’t made any threatening gestures.”

Yvette made a disgusted sound deep in her throat, and Ruth Ann glared at her.

“So, you just sat there?” Dusty demanded to know. “While he turned Casa Rinconada upside down trying to kill us?”

“Have you ever done acid, William?”

“No.”

“Well, you can just sit. It’s wonderful.” Ruth Ann smiled beatifically. “And I sat, feeling the night fall, talking to that young woman and the old man. The light was flickering on their bones. It was quite pleasant.”

“What about the gunshots?”

She spread her hands. “They were katchinas clapping their hands, making thunder in the night. You know, a mystical experience. I could have sat there until dawn, just me, and those two people.” She looked at Dusty. “I
would
have sat there if Reggie hadn’t
dragged me out of that kiva and untied me. He said he’d been working late and seen his grandfather’s truck parked in the lot beside Maggie’s and mine. He’d stopped to check on things, make sure everybody was all right, and that’s when he saw the firelight coming from that old kiva.” She twisted her hands on the table and regret tightened her mouth. “I wish I’d known why he told me to stay put. I would have.”

“But you didn’t. You wandered down the hill to Casa Rinconada,” Dusty said.

“Oh, come on, William. How was I to know I’d be walking into a maelstrom?”

Dusty ran his thumb down the side of his Guinness bottle. It felt cool and damp. He was so tired, he didn’t have the strength to hate her. But he would always wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t come walking in out of the night. Would Reggie have been able to talk Rupert out of the gun?

“Did those people tell you who they were?” Yvette asked. “The dead ones?”

“Just a man and his wife.” Ruth Ann sighed contentedly. “Delightful people raising a family. She had several children by him. It was his second marriage. His first wife was killed in a fall. From the cliffs just south of Rinconada. It was icy.”

Maureen arched an eyebrow as she met Dusty’s glance. But it was Yvette who looked ready to reach out and strangle Ruth Ann.

“And that’s it. That’s my statement.” Ruth Ann clapped her hands together. “Agent Nichols, after giving me a lecture about the use of controlled substances, has allowed me to plead guilty to a narcotics charge, a charge of criminal trespass, and a couple of misdemeanors. For that, I get two years of probation to be administered in Boston.”

Dusty had no idea what was going to happen to him. Nichols hadn’t arrested him. All the witnesses had said it was self-defense. But he’d killed his best friend’s
father. No matter what the courts did to him, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as what Dusty was going to do to himself over the next forty years.

Dusty squinted at his half-peeled label. “But you’d never been there before? In the witch kiva, I mean?”

“No. Why?” Ruth Ann frowned.

Dusty reached across the counter. He handed the photograph to his mother. “I came across this in Dale’s file cabinet while we were replacing the journals recovered from Reggie’s apartment.”

Ruth Ann took it, looked at it with expressionless eyes. “I remember this. The barbecue in Dale’s backyard. God, let’s see. ’Sixty-six, maybe? We had a sitter for little William. Sam and I were out for a night of big city living. I ended up passed out on Dale’s couch. My God, doesn’t Rupert look young and handsome.” She tossed the photo back to Dusty. “What’s your point?”

Dusty lifted the photo. “When did you give up smoking?”

“Early seventies.” Ruth Ann cocked her head, as though trying to fathom his meaning.

Dusty took a deep breath. “In the picture Rupert is smoking Lucky Strikes.”

Ruth Ann shrugged, but she appeared uncomfortable. “Yes, so? He always smoked Lucky Strikes.”

Dusty frowned. “You told me once you liked to get the good stuff fast. You and Rupert opened that site together, didn’t you? You rolled the slabs off the witches, and Rupert took the wolf mask. That was your pack of cigarettes, and maybe even your beer can stuffed into the wall crypt. What did you do? Screw him in there, too? Right in front of the mask? In front of those skeletons?”

She watched him from the corner of her eye, thinking, calculating what he could know. After a long pause, she said, “What if I did, William? Are you going
to run back to Agent Nichols and have him add antiquities violations to my rap sheet?”

“You were the one who put Hawsworth together with Rupert, weren’t you?” Maureen asked. “‘Carter and his witch,’ you said at the Loretto that day. But you’d been doing a little studying on your own. After all, you’d been there.”

Ruth Ann smiled coldly. “Finding a witch was a rush. So I tried witchcraft. It didn’t work. What was the point of sticking with it?”

“What did you do to Dale? Did you use witchcraft to get him to Casa Rinconada that last time in sixty-nine? We read the journal yesterday. He drove out there to tell you that he never wanted to see you again. That he thought you were killing Sam. Dale even called you a witch in his diary. But the next day, the entry was:
‘Dear God, what have I done? There she was, standing naked in the firelight. God, forgive me.’”

Ruth Ann lifted her hands in a gesture of innocence. “Is it my fault that he couldn’t resist me? But for that night, Yvette wouldn’t be here.”

“Alas, Mum, I am,” Yvette said as she straightened.

Ruth Ann gazed at her, looking bored. “Well, I should be going.”

She started to rise.

“’Fraid not, Mum.” Yvette raised her voice. “Magpie?”

Dusty was watching Ruth Ann’s face as Maggie pushed the little cedar box across the table.

Maggie opened the box and said, “Let’s have it, Dr. Sullivan.”

“Have what?” Ruth Ann pulled away from the box.

“What you took from the female skeleton in Owl House,” Maggie told her.

Dusty crossed his arms and said, “Hand it over.”

“Hand what over?”

“The basilisk, Mum.” Yvette sat up on the couch and
shoved ash-blond hair behind her ears. “The one I saw in Dusty’s trailer.”

Maggie shoved the box closer, her eyes burning brilliantly, powered by an inner strength Dusty had never seen before. “Lift it off of your neck and drop it into the box.”

“I will not!”

“Yes, you will,” Dusty said. “That thing is filled with evil. Either the basilisk goes into the box, or you don’t leave this place alive. Think about it.”

Ruth Ann, for the first time, glanced fearfully around the room. “Oh, do be serious! You’d kill me for a silly pendant?”

Dusty slid off the counter and stood over her with his fists clenched. “I don’t want to rip it off your throat. But I will.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Dusty,” Yvette said, “she’s not going to cooperate, you may as well just kill her.”

Ruth Ann met his eyes, saw the resolve, and wavered. “Oh, what the hell.” She reached inside her blouse, lifted out the black stone pendant, and dropped it into the box.

Maggie snapped the box shut and reeled, as though in pain.

“What’s the matter?” Dusty asked.

“You should have heard it,” Maggie whispered hoarsely. “It screamed when it died.”

Ruth Ann Sullivan looked from one person to the next, then shoved to her feet. “Well, if you’re satisfied, William, I’m going.” She marched for the door.

Maggie and Dusty stood side by side on the rickety porch watching Ruth Ann Sullivan walk to her rental car. When she drove off into the late fall evening, Dusty didn’t even wave.

Maggie lifted the box and shook it. “Do you think
el basilisco
had any inkling that Ruth Ann would drop him into a mirror-lined box?”

Dusty leaned heavily against the door frame. “Thank God, it’s over.”

Yvette asked, “Is it? What happened to the mask?”

Dusty turned to look at her. He remembered the feel of the wolf mask, warm and tingly, as though it were alive and breathing on his hands. “I threw it in the fire at Casa Rinconada. I’d swear, as it burned, I saw the Shiwana dancing in the shadows it cast on the kiva walls.”

Yvette rose to her feet and stretched. “Well, that’s enough spooky stuff for me. Good night, all. I’m off to my hotel for a real night’s rest. I’ll see you in the morning.
Huevos
at eight, right?”

“Right. Good night, Yvette,” Dusty said.

“I’m out of here, too.” Maggie clutched the cedar box. “I think I might drive by the Rio Grande bridge west of Taos. It’s a long way down to the rocks below.”

“Take care,” Maureen said.

Maggie smiled and walked to her pickup.

As Maggie’s truck wound its way up the driveway to Canyon Road, Dusty’s stomach muscles suddenly clenched. He bent double and couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Maureen asked as she rushed to his side.

Dusty held up a hand, walked to the table, and eased down. All of the fear and desperation had seeped out of him, leaving a hollow shell. He started trembling for no reason.

“My God,” he whispered as he dropped his face in his hands. “Dale is dead, Maureen. Dale is dead.”

Maureen inhaled a deep breath. She didn’t speak for a time.

Finally, she said, “But we’re alive, Dusty. Let’s see if we can find the future together.”