Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (45 page)

50

IT WAS A strange procession that made its way out of Julieta's corral: three women on horseback, two men walking behind. They
didn't hurry. The horses were content to amble, occasionally turning their heads aside to nip mouthfuls of sage. Joyce was
having a blast, sitting high astride Breeze with her jet-black hair rippling, eyes sparking; she'd borrowed a cowboy hat from
Julieta. Forty feet back, Joseph and Edgar were talking, but Cree couldn't hear what they were saying over the dull clump
of hooves. The rhythm of Madie's strides and the movements of her muscular shoulders felt good to Cree, and she wished she
wasn't too tired for anything more than a walk.

"Ellen called to invite us to the ceremony. She wanted to make sure you knew you were invited," Julieta said. "It starts on
Tuesday. Can you stay till then?"

"I wouldn't miss it," Cree told her. Right now, every bone in her body ached with exhaustion. But a few days of rest would
patch her together.

It was Friday afternoon. Behind them, the school was a buzz of activity as the kids milled between buildings. The five yellow
buses had parked in front of the dorms and soon most of the students would head home for the weekend. The night had been cold,
but the sun had brought warmth and now the air was a mild, cool caress, perfect for riding. To the east, the mesa rose with
walls of red-brown.

It looked obscure, Cree thought. Completely anonymous.

"Can I, you know, make him go faster?" Joyce asked.

"Breeze is a mare," Julieta told her. "A female horse. Just tap your heels and make a cluck or kissing noise. First comes
a trot, and you have to post—that's support yourself on your legs. Then a canter, what we call a lope, then a gallop."

"What do I do then?"

"You hang on for dear life."

Joyce was already off. Her hair streamed behind her as she cantered off ahead. Her cowboy hat fell back and hung by its cord
at her back. Cree smiled, realizing how much she would miss this wide-open land, the dry cleanliness of it.

"I talked to Tommy this morning," Julieta said. "He's doing fine. He's eating. Says his aunt is feeding him big meals, making
him drink Gatorade. He's drawing again and wants to come back to school."

The family had taken Tommy to Ellen's house in Burnham until the ceremony. Just the thought of Ellen made Cree smile. "She'll
fix him up in no time."

Julieta grinned and then got serious. "Cree. Did Peter . . . did he know he was a ghost?"

"Ordinarily, I'd say no. But I'm never really sure about ghosts' self-awareness. They're usually very confused by the discrepancy
between the world they were alive in and our current world. Especially when you intervene in their world dream, they experience
a conflict of realities that's fundamentally irreconcilable. Most of Peter's actions were a perseveration, practically just
a tape loop replaying his final hours. But whenever his hand moved on its own, I couldn't help feel that it had become the
instrument of a conscious being. I have no idea how that would work, Julieta. None. But when I was talking to Ellen about
it, she pointed out the parallels with something I should have thought of, the Navajo tradition of hand-trembling. Do you
know much about that?" Julieta shook her head.

"If I've got the traditional explanation right, the Hand-Trembler diagnoses the sick person with the assistance of some helping
spirits—not human ones, the four Gila monsters, kind of half gods. They animate the diagnostician's hand and reveal what's
wrong with the sick person. At least there's some precedent for the idea of such a selective possession, that . . . isolation
of consciousness in one limb. But I don't know how it might work. I just don't know." Cree blew through her lips in frustration.
Every case seemed to generate more possibilities and uncertainties than answers. And yet that gave her joy, too: world without
end. Infinite mystery. "But I was going to say—at the very end, I did get the sense Peter realized what he was, what was
going on. That it was time to let go. That he wanted to do as you asked."

"I think so, too," Julieta said softly. "I'd like to believe that. That he'd be so . . . graceful." She frowned, and Cree
knew what she would say next. It was a moment she'd dreaded.

After helping get Tommy to Burnham, they had returned to the school and had talked for a long time. Cree had given Julieta
a rough idea of what had happened after Garrett met Peter at the door. The burial in the ravine explained Nick's midnight
visit: After Lynn had told Nick and Donny of Cree's interest in the ravine, they had gotten worried that maybe she'd uncovered
some evidence. Nick had come back to see if anyone had been digging in the area.

It was a horrible story, and Julieta had taken it hard. But thinking back, she said, there'd been little clues—a word dropped
by Garrett or Donny now and again, a smug and cruel look. Even Lynn Pierce seemed to know something about it. Just Wednesday,
the nurse had made veiled allusions to Julieta's past, to others knowing her secrets.

What concerned Cree now was Peter's call to Joseph. Julieta would be justified in blaming Joseph for deflecting him toward
Garrett's murderous rage. And that would ruin everything.

As if she'd read Cree's mind, Julieta turned to look back at the walking men. "Joseph. He'll blame himself."

"Yeah. But, more important, will
you?
"

Julieta shook her head. "There were so many bad choices that ended up there. All the big ones were
mine.
Trying to be a beauty queen. Marrying Garrett. Not divorcing him the moment I knew what was going on. Getting pregnant. If
I'd had my head on my shoulders
one goddamned time
—"

"Hey, Julieta. You want my advice?"

Cree's tough tone startled her, and she looked over wide-eyed.

"My advice is, screw the self-blame. If Garrett had been a halfway decent person, none of it would have happened. Neither
of you can take responsibility for what an impulsive, philandering, arrogant, violent man did!"

Julieta stared straight ahead. Cree could only hope she'd get there eventually.

Off to the west, Joyce was bucketing along and whooping for joy.
Who'd have guessed?
Cree asked herself.

"Did Peter know Tommy was his son?" Julieta asked.

" 'Know' isn't the right word. I doubt Peter knew he occupied anyone's body. Peter's ghost replayed its memory for fifteen
years, there in the ravine, until one day it came across a really compatible environment, a vehicle for the expression of
its compulsion. Obviously, there's some kind of natural resonance between kin. Maybe someday we'll figure out how it works.
But right now, I don't know."

"But . . . why out at the ravine? Why not back at the house?"

Cree hadn't told her the details, but there was no dodging it now. "He wasn't quite dead when Nick buried him. The rocks Nick
knocked down were what finally killed Peter."

Appalled, Julieta sagged. When she straightened again, her lips were pressed tight, white with rage.

This was another close passage for Julieta. If she became obsessed with retribution, no matter how richly deserved, her liberation
would not be complete. "I know exactly what you're feeling. But Joyce and Ed and I were talking about that last night. We
all agree there's not going to be any evidence of who killed Peter. Not fifteen years later. His bones will show he was murdered,
but there won't be any way to pin it on Garrett or Nick."

Cree looked over at Julieta and could see that it wasn't going down easy. She wondered if Julieta could get past this, relinquish
her rage over even so great an injustice. There was so much at stake. Julieta was just beginning life as a free person. Cree
was certain she and Joseph had already become lovers, but Julieta would have to leave a lot behind if the two of them were
to be happy. She could still be deflected back so easily.

But you could give someone only so much advice.

They were not far from the ravine now, and Julieta's small, private duty to the dead. They stopped their horses and waited
for the men to catch up.

Joyce was trotting back, cheeks bright with high desert air, stoned absolutely gonzo on so much light and space. "My behind
is going to be sore for a week and I won't regret a minute of it!" she sang. Then she remembered their errand and sobered
quickly.

Julieta and Joseph walked toward the mesa, hand in hand, getting smaller against the cliffs and then disappearing as they
went between the walls of the ravine. Cree tethered the horses to a clump of sagebrush and she and Joyce and Edgar sat on
the ground. The detailed debriefing would wait until they were back in Seattle, but they took out their canteens and talked
about Tommy, about the psychological state and environment that had primed him for the possession. They talked about the independent
hand, and what it suggested about the mechanics of possession. They tried to guess at the hypnotic or paralytic effect that
surrounded him when the ghost was resurgent; Ed theorized that maybe the antagonism between two different brain frequencies
created an electromagnetic field strong enough to affect others. For a while they talked about the role of blood relationship
in hauntings, ancestor spirits, the principle of blood to blood and like to like.

Joyce shook her head. "Here I've always bitched about how my mother is trying to live vicariously through me. But she's got
nothing on this Peter guy!

They all laughed at that.

"But what about these ghosts?" Joyce asked, tipping her head toward the ravine. "Here Ed and I did all that work, found out
about old Yil' Dezbah and her family, and then we find out they had nothing to do with it. But why did Tommy draw the faces
in the cliffs?"

"A period of acute sensitivity, triggered by his sudden invasion by Peter?" Cree proposed. "Or maybe Tommy's something of
a natural sensitive and subconsciously picked up on their presence. Or maybe just his . . . hunger to know his parents, his
forebears, had a role—primed him, made him more vulnerable." She shrugged. "Personally, I think that's one of the factors
that made him receptive to Peter's revenant."

"Which, of course, we'll never know," Edgar muttered.

Joyce sifted soil through her fingers. "So . . . you want to do some work on the ghosts here?"

Cree looked at the mesa, the lonely cleft in the rocks, and shook her head. "I can't, Joyce. I'm too beat. I'm so used up.
Julieta says she'll talk to the medicine man about them. Maybe he knows some ceremony that'll lay them to rest. But not me.
I'm shot."

They nodded understandingly. But Ed still looked a little downcast: Again, he'd missed the chance to probe the ghost with
his instruments. Measuring the electrical activity in Tommy's brain while possessed would have constituted a tremendous advance
in parapsychology, mapping the neurological mechanism of possession and quite possibly providing information that would be
instructive in other psychiatric maladies. But he'd never had the chance to use the FMEEG. And his inspection of the school's
electrical system in pursuit of clues about the flicker phenomenon had produced nothing. Ed sat on the dirt, absentmindedly
picking tufts of sage leaf, crushing them between his fingers, sniffing the pungent herb, tossing the crumbs away.

Cree smiled, hoping she could cheer him up. She had saved something for him.

"Ed. I have to tell you about a phenomenon I noticed up at the sheep camp. No electricity up there, right? Just Coleman lanterns,
firelight, starlight. So guess what?"

"What?" He looked at her suspiciously from beneath one raised eyebrow.

"We had
flicker!
When Tommy was in full swing, the light appeared to strobe, quite noticeably—natural light, Ed! Kerosene lamps! Meaning it's
an optical or neurological phenomenon. Not necessarily electrical!"

"No kidding!" Ed visibly perked up, his eyes changing as the implications hooked him.

"Nope."

"Which would argue for direct neural stimulus. Jeez, that
is
good!" He edged over and put his arm around Cree's shoulder. He squeezed her hard, looking at Joyce. "She's a sweetie, isn't
she? Making me feel better." He screwed off the top of his water bottle and raised it in a toast: "To DNS! The future of parapsychology."

They laughed, toasted, then quickly got serious as Julieta and Joseph emerged from the ravine. The two little figures slowly
made their way back.

Joyce tipped her head back to observe them thoughtfully. "Think they'll make it?"

Cree looked at them. "I think they already have. I think these two've paid their dues in advance, the good stuff starts now.
Like they say: Love will find a way."

"Sometimes it just takes a while," Ed added, getting distant again.

51

SO GOOD OF you to come all this way to see me," Donny said. His grin was self-satisfied.

"Well, Saturday's your day here. And I sure as heck wasn't driving to Albuquerque at your summons." Julieta's voice stayed
level, casual, but she couldn't keep the scorn out of it.

They were on the hill overlooking the mine headquarters, where they'd had their first run-in with Donny. Joyce had joined
Julieta and Cree for the ten-mile ride, wearing a cowboy hat again and managing Breeze with the confidence of an old hand.
Donny had come up in a company Jeep, accompanied by Nick Stephanovic, who now lounged against the hood thirty feet away. Below,
mine operations were in full swing, the machines grinding away, the boom of the distant dragline swinging ponderously. A light
plane droned in a slow arc across the cloudless sky to the west.

Saturday afternoon, clear and windless and warm. Five people feigning calm while the tension was thick enough to cut with
a knife.

"You sure you want to discuss business with these people here?" Donny said.

"Oh, I think we can trust them."

"Suit yourself. So—I understand you just lost one of your core staff members." Donny's world-weary eyes gloated.

"Lynn Pierce, yes. I had to let her go. But I understand she has a nice position waiting at McCarty Energy."

"Well, we go back a ways," Donny said. "And I'm a big believer in rewarding loyalty. She's a damned good nurse, too. As it
happens, we need medical personnel right here in Hunters Point."

"Let's get to it, Donny. I believe you were planning to threaten me?"

"That's an unfortunate way to phrase it. I'd say I wanted to make a trade. Things I know for things you know."

"What do you know?"

"I know you have a boy who's sick and that you're treating it as a supernatural issue. I know Dr. Black is here to exorcise
him. I know a medical professional formerly employed at your school who'll testify to how you've handled the situation and
who'll be glad to go to the newspapers to make sure the scandal gets good exposure. If that doesn't work, I've got three hundred
and seventy-four Navajo employees, which puts me in a great position to informally relay this news to the Navajo community."
Donny paused to pull a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. "
And
I have the names and phone numbers of some people named, let's see . . . MacPherson, in Boston, and an outfit called the Osbourne
Trust, and a couple of other philanthropic types known to give money to a certain local school. All of whom, I'm sure, would
be very interested. I'd think our keeping quiet would be worth quite a bit to you."

Donny was obviously having a blast. Back at the Jeep, Nick chuckled to himself. Under the circumstances, Cree thought, Julieta
was doing a remarkable job of keeping her cool.

"What do you want from me?" Julieta asked through her teeth. "Trade for what?"

"Sending Dr. Black and her friends packing, and then shutting up about whatever the hell you think you know. And then staying
out of my hair."

Julieta got a faraway look as she thought about that. After a moment, she turned to Nick. "Hey, Nicko. Did you know that Donny
once propositioned me? This was about two years after I divorced his father. I still laugh about it."

"The price is going up, Julieta," Donny said darkly. "Better make a deal now."

Nick eased himself off the Jeep and idled over to stand near Donny. He rolled his shoulders and looked around, enjoying the
nice weather.

Joyce had said nothing so far, but now she handed her reins to Cree, slipped off her horse, and stood across from the big
man. She'd admitted to Cree that she was hankering for some confrontation with him. Now she looked a little bored, preoccupied
with one of her fingernails. Cree knew the signs and they made her nervous. The little airplane snoozed back across the western
horizon.

Julieta backed Spence away a couple of steps. "Here's the deal, Donny. What I know is, your father shot Peter Yellowhorse
in early November 1986. Garrett's dead and can't get punished. But Nick was the one who finished Peter off by burying him
in the ravine near the school. He drove my Jeep to the top of the mesa and pushed rocks over the edge. You helped them, Donny,
and you helped conceal the crime."

Donny's jaw dropped. He made a dry croak, shot a glance at Nick. Nick hadn't moved, but his pretense of calm was gone in an instant.

"This is bullshit. Where do you come up with this stuff? Your psychic friend here?"

"We exhumed the bones," Julieta lied. "We identified the remains. His belt buckle was there. It's very distinctive—made by
one of his uncles."

"You'll never prove what happened," Nick said.

"Then why were you so worried that you came back to check the ravine Tuesday night?"

That got under Nick's skin. He began to move toward Julieta, but Joyce interposed herself. She didn't look so bored now. She
was less than half his weight and came up to his armpit, and Nick looked at her incredulously.

"There's nothing, Nick," Donny cautioned. "Not after sixteen years. She's bluffing us."

"Then there's the in situ uranium plant," Julieta went on. "You're under court injunction not to start building it. But you've
been going ahead anyway, over on Area Eighteen. You could get hit for millions in fines and have to tear it all down."

Donny chuckled. "There's no plant. There's no construction. And if you've trespassed on my land to find out different, it's
illegally gained information and inadmissible. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that."

Julieta raised her hand to point to the west. "Yeah, but your airspace is public. Overflight's perfectly legal. And that little
Cessna that's been circling for the last half hour? Dr. Edgar Mayfield, Dr. Black's associate, hired it from Gallup. He's
up there with a good camera and telephoto lens. He's an engineer and a physicist. Knows what to look for."

Donny whirled to look at the little plane, buzzing sleepily through another slow circle in the distance. Nick looked to him
for instructions, but Donny appeared speechless.

"One more thing, Donny. Your source at school is lying. There's no sick boy, and there's no exorcist. There's a consulting
clinical psychologist from Seattle, and there's a kid who's fully recovered from a temporary illness. That's all a matter
of record. If I hear any suggestion you're spreading rumors to the contrary, I'll have you in court so fast your head will
spin."

"What do you want, Julieta?" Donny croaked.

"I want a charitable donation to my school for a million dollars. I want construction on the in situ plant stopped and whatever's
there dismantled. And I want Nick turned in to the police with a confession. Afterward, I leave you alone and you leave me
alone."

"Not a chance," Donny said derisively. But his expression was anything but confident. He was making that gulping movement
in his throat again.

"Fine. We'll see how it shakes out." Julieta brought Spence around and made ready to leave.

"Nick, stop her horse! I need a minute to think this through."

Nick took a step and reached for Spence's bridle, but it was a mistake to take his eyes off Joyce. Cree had seen her use the
move in tae kwon do competition: She leapt up, lithe body spinning as her left leg slashed in a savage backward arc. The heel
of her boot hit the side of Nick's head with an awful sound. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Joyce landed like a ballerina and went to look down at him. Flat on his back, he goggled up at her, eyes wide, mouth moving
soundlessly.

Joyce gave him a lascivious smile and asked, "Oh, honey! Was that as good for you as it was for me?"

She turned disdainfully away, took Breeze's reins, boosted herself into the saddle. The three of them urged the horses away.

When Cree glanced back, Nick was still trying to get up. Donny didn't look too happy.

"Sorry," Joyce said ten minutes later. "I couldn't resist." The encounter had put her in a good humor. Cree shook her head,
unable to suppress a smile.

Julieta didn't share the mood. She rode with her head tipped down, shoulders slumped. "It's all a bluff, of course. I don't want to exhume Peter's bones, I want to leave him be. And I can't let anyone know about his murder, or about my past, it'll only hurt the school. And you're right, Joyce, after all these years there wouldn't be any evidence to implicate Nick or Donny. Donny's smart enough to figure all that out. He might stop construction on the in situ plant, but he'll never stop hassling me. They'll never have to pay for killing Peter." She rode on and added quietly, "And I don't need the past coming back anymore. I don't want an ongoing feud with Donny. I just want a new life. I have a chance to do things right now. I've already waited long enough."

Cree had no answer. She was glad Julieta saw her own path in the right way. But it was so wrong for them to go unpunished.
She felt Julieta's despondency come over her.

They rode in silence for a few minutes.

"You know," Joyce said to no one in particular, "I learned some interesting things while I was out poking around. A lot of
stuff on the McCartys and their mines, and some fascinating stuff about Navajo traditions. One of the old ceremonies is called
. . . what was it, something like Turning the Basket. It's used if the patient's suffering is inflicted by someone else, like
a bad person or a witch. The medicine man turns the evil back on the person who sent it. Rebounds it. It cures the sick person
and punishes the wrongdoer in one swell foop. Kind of got me thinking." Maybe it was just the lingering endorphin high from
her demolition of Nick Stephanovic, but her small sharklike grin never wavered.

Julieta nodded distractedly. Cree thought about whether such a ceremony might be of symbolic value for Tommy. But he'd been
put through a lot of curing, an endless month of fuss and bother. Sometimes you had to let it go, Cree thought. Sometimes
justice took the long way around, just like love. Sometimes peace of mind meant relinquishing things. It seemed intolerable
to let Nick and Donny get by without consequences, but there wasn't anything anyone could do about it.

Joyce looked over at her thoughtfully, seemed about to say more, but then clammed up for the rest of the ride.