In The Falling Light (30 page)

Headlights washed across the window and he
climbed back onto the bunk, seeing two cars roll into the
hard-packed yard. The dead deputy’s car stopped against the side of
the garage, the other pulling up near the officer door, the engine
still running. The tall man got out of the first car and walked in
front of the headlights, wiping at his brow and walking slowly out
of view. The sheriff watched him go, then removed the shovels from
his car and returned them to the garage. Thomas heard the squeal of
a pump, and a few minutes later the sheriff walked in and switched
on a single, overhead bulb. He carried a pistol belt in one hand
and a tin cup in the other.

“Here.” He handed the cup through the bars,
water sloshing over the rim, and Jumping Crow took it at once,
draining it.

“Thank you,” he choked, but the sheriff had
turned his back and was putting the pistol belt in the locker
across the room. Thomas saw that he no longer wore his uniform
shirt, and his white undershirt was brown with sweat and dirt, his
hands and arms filthy. He didn’t smell good.

The sheriff walked to the desk, pulling the
deputy’s six pointed star from a pants pocket and tossing it inside
a drawer. He moved slowly, his eyes turned down, then approached
the cell and produced the handcuffs once more, passing them through
the bars.

“Put them on. Make them click.”

Thomas did as he was told, locking the steel
on his wrists. The sheriff opened the cell door and guided Thomas
by the arm out to the running car and put him in the back seat. A
minute later they were headed out of town, the evening sky shifting
from purples to a deeper blue out over the desert.

His chills made him tremble, and now the
bones in his shoulders and arms began to ache as the transformation
to wings began. He wondered if his clothing would simply fall down
around him when it was over? Or would he turn into some hideous,
man-sized crow creature, tearing the sheriff apart with a massive
beak. He hoped not. He didn’t want to hurt anyone else.

In the front seat, Bybee seemed not to
notice the change coming over his prisoner, driving in silence with
both hands gripping the wheel, eyes forward where the headlights
bathed the asphalt. After half an hour the sheriff turned off onto
a rough track which wound back into the hills, the springs bouncing
over the rough surface.

“
We don’t harm the flock because of the
wolf,”
Bishop Johnson had said when they drove out here
earlier.
“We get rid of the wolf.”

“
But Glen Parsons is already dead,”
Bybee replied.

The sheriff’s Pontiac came to a stop near a
cluster of high, sandstone rocks with clumps of rabbit brush at
their base. Bybee shut off the engine, had Jumping Crow step out of
the back, then took him by the arm and walked beside him through a
narrow gap between the rocks. Above, starlight began poking through
a deepening blue curtain, and a cooling wind rustled the sage.
Still the sheriff didn’t speak, and Jumping Crow was afraid to,
fearing it would come out as a screech. His entire body was
shuddering now, and he knew the skinwalker was about to appear.

Please
, he asked the Holy Ones,
do
not let me hurt this man.

The desert holds many secrets, Jumping Crow
thought. No one knew this better than the Navajo. Beyond the rocky
gap was a small sandy clearing where fresh earth had been turned in
two places off to the left, and to the right a large rectangular
hole yawned in the earth. Sheriff Bybee walked him to the edge,
stopping him before it.

“
Yes,”
the bishop had said,
“Glen
Parsons is dead, Sheriff. But he isn’t the only wolf who poses a
threat to our flock.”

Jumping Crow felt a whirlwind of energy
explode inside him, a force he was powerless to resist as the
skinwalker twisted away the last of his humanity and brought about
the change. His clothes did indeed fall away as he unfolded his
great, black wings, buffeting the air and taking flight with a
triumphant screech.

The Navajo stood still and silent before him
as Edgar Bybee slid the revolver from his holster, placing the
muzzle against the back of the man’s skull. He pulled the trigger,
then hung his head.

Jumping Crow didn’t feel the bullet, didn’t
feel his body fall into the grave. He didn’t hear the coyote
barking in the hills, making a sound like laughter.

His spirit was already soaring into an
evening sky filled with stars.

When the bad news came, Deanna was at her
desk in her 27
^th
floor corner office. A view of the bay,
sparkling and blue in the summer sun, stretched beyond her floor to
ceiling windows. It was a large room, but a visitor would be
hard-pressed to find the carpeting or even a place to sit, since it
was choked with clothing racks, cardboard boxes and stacks of
catalogues and advertisements. Deanna was the senior executive west
coast buyer for Macys.

Her assistant told her she had an important
call, and closed the door on her way out. “Deanna Sansone,” she
answered.

There was a long pause. “D, it’s Shelly. Can
you talk?”

Deanna frowned, the tone in her friend’s
voice putting her instantly on guard. “I’m alone. What’s up?”

Another long pause. “Scotty is dead.”

Deanna blinked, processing.

“Are you still there?”

“How? What happened?” Scotty was a regional
vice president based in Miami. Deanna had dated him casually on and
off over the years since her divorce.

“Have you been watching TV?” Shelly asked.
Deanna could tell she’d been crying.

“I just got back from Taiwan yesterday, I’ve
been completely unplugged. Shell, what happened?”

“It’s all over. The news, the internet,
papers. Scott went crazy, D.” She started crying again. “The Miami
police caught him…caught him eating a homeless man’s face. While
the man was still alive. He was naked and in an alley and…eating a
person.”

Oh my God.

Shelly choked back a sob. “The cops shot him
three or four times in the arms and legs, but he wouldn’t stop.
They said he just growled at them and kept…doing it. They shot him
in the head to make him stop. The homeless man died too.” She was
snuffling and her voice was garbled. An Ugly Cry, Deanna had always
called it. “Oh, D, it’s on every channel.”

Deanna clenched her fists to keep her hands
from shaking, and her eyes welled up. “Do you know anything else?
About Scotty?”

“I talked to his boss, Bill Delloite. Bill
said Scotty had been missing a lot of work, and when he was there
he acted strange, distracted.” Another sob. “The news said Scotty
used some kind of file to sharpen his teeth, that he did it
himself, probably last night or this morning. Deanna, what
happened
to him?”

Deanna didn’t answer. She was still trying
to figure out how she felt about Scotty’s death. They had never
been a serious thing, didn’t even speak that often. It was just for
fun when one or the other was in town. He’d seemed fine the last
time they were together, but this? To die that way, doing
that
to another person while they were still alive…

“Shelly, I’ve got to go.”

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,
but…”

“It’s okay, I’m glad it was you. I’ll talk
to you soon.” Deanna disconnected and stared out at a perfect
afternoon. While she was overseas she’d heard the other stories
about cannibalism coming out of the U.S. this week; a man in
Montana eating his stepson, a woman dining on her own sister and a
gay porn star beheading and consuming one of his lovers. The media
was eating it up, and hadn’t
that
unintentional pun already
made the rounds? Of course those victims were already dead. Scotty
had attacked and tried to eat someone while they were alive. As if
that was any worse, she thought. It was too bizarre to get her head
around, and she felt the office walls closing in on her.

“Lenore, I’m gone for the day,” she told her
assistant on the way out, pocketbook over a shoulder. Minutes later
she was on the sidewalk, sunglasses hiding her wet eyes as she
headed down Geary. She needed a drink.

The street was crowded with cars and
sightseeing buses, cabs weaving among them, and the sidewalk
bustled as well. There were executives from the many business
towers and hotels, tourists, and the people she considered locals,
both the well-heeled shoppers and the regular folk who catered to
their needs. Deanna wore Gucci and Prada, and counted herself among
the former. The city, infamous for its large homeless population,
did a good job keeping the vagrants out of this part of downtown,
for which she was happy. It was bad for the high-end image, and an
annoyance for those who had to fend off their aggressive begging.
Thinking of vagrants made her think of Scotty and his victim, and
she wiped tears away under her sunglasses.

She loved this part of the city, and just
walking in it made her feel a little better. Before reaching the
enormous Macys up ahead, she crossed at the light and turned down
Powell, the trees of Union Square Park to her right. There was
Victoria’s Secret and the Westin St. Francis, and across the park
was Louis Vuitton. Neimans, Fendi, Donna Karan…temples of the
elite. She was known in all of them as a customer to be given
special attention. Deanna might have worked in the world of retail,
but her private life was one of money and exclusive privilege. A
hefty divorce settlement from her ex – a senior partner in one of
San Francisco’s top law firms – ensured she would never go without
the finer things. It made her Macys salary feel like pocket
change.

She considered Scala’s Bistro another block
up, but decided she needed more privacy. Before reaching the end of
the block she stopped at a dark mahogany door with polished brass
fittings, flanked by a pair of dark leafy plants. A discrete bronze
plaque over the door read simply,
Society.
She started
towards it but was cut off by an Asian woman tugging on the arm of
a wailing and uncooperative five-year-old. Deanna’s frequent
overseas announced that the woman’s strange, barking language was
Vietnamese, though she couldn’t understand the words. Kids were
difficult in any language, and she was happy never to have had any.
She let them pass, and the pair went through an adjacent doorway.
Deanna pushed through the mahogany door and into darkness.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Sansone.” An attractive
young woman in a tight black dress and heels greeted her from a
small podium set with a brass reading lamp. She was pretty enough
to be a Vicky’s model herself.

“Hi, Cassandra,” she said.

“Tough day?” the girl asked, linking arms
with her and walking her inside. A sitting lounge with enormous
chairs and a fireplace was off to the right, a room which would be
at home in a gentleman’s club, and the clack of billiards came from
somewhere beyond. Cassandra steered her down a dark paneled
hallway.

“You can tell?” Deanna asked, and the girl
nodded with a sympathetic smile.

“Probably too early for dining,” Cassandra
said, “but I’ll bet you could use a cocktail.”

“Or four.”

A soft laugh. “Main room, or the back?”

Deanna took off her sunglasses, the red of
her eyes and smudged mascara mercifully hidden in the low light.
“Ladies room first, then I’ll go on back.”

The hostess gave her arm a reassuring
squeeze and left her in the hall, retreating to the podium. Minutes
later Deanna had fixed her makeup and felt at least presentable.
She continued down the hallway, passing a luxurious dining room and
a long polished bar, stopping at another mahogany door neatly
tucked in a corner. An electronic card reader was mounted beside
it, and over the reader was a brass plate, again with the word
Society.
From her purse Deanna extracted a small card wallet
and flipped through her black and platinum plastic, pulling out one
which was midnight blue,
Society
in raised silver lettering
down one side. The reader accepted it, and the door clicked
open.

Exclusive
, the operative word in
Deanna’s life. She was known and welcome in every VIP boutique,
nightclub room and private club worth visiting in the city, and
recognition alone was usually enough to get her past whatever
discrete attendant or security watched the door. The inner room of
Society was beyond exclusive, a members-only club where would-be
entrants had to be referred by a current member in good standing
before being subjected to an in-depth pre-screening and background
check. It was the kind of place which, if you didn’t know it
existed, you weren’t their kind of person to begin with.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Sansone,” said Dimitri,
a handsome thirty-something in a five thousand dollar suit, waiting
just inside the door. They exchanged a friendly kiss on the cheek,
and he also took her by the arm in the comfortable way of old
friends, leading her inside. “Are you joining anyone?”

“No. I think I’ll just sit at the bar.”

“Of course.” He took her past the tables,
and held a high-backed barstool for her while she sat. The
bartender, a man who could be Dimitri’s twin in youth, good looks
and rugged sex appeal, appeared at once.

“Peter, I’ll have a cosmo.”

“Right away, Ms. Sansone.”

Deanna pulled her iPhone from her
pocketbook, toyed with it for a moment, considering, then shut it
off and dropped it back into her bag. She didn’t want to look at
the news reports. She’d heard enough. The drink appeared, and Peter
moved away to give her some privacy. She raised the glass a little.
“Anthropophagy,” she said softly, and sipped.

The media was going crazy over cannibalism,
as if it was something new. Deanna knew differently. She’d met her
ex while she was getting her MBA at Yale, but the degree in
psychology came first. It was where she’d first encountered the
term anthropophagy, the practice of eating the flesh of other human
beings. She had done an extensive paper on it for her abnormal
psych class, fifty percent of the semester grade. There were many
lessons from college which she no longer remembered, or even cared
to, but this was a topic the years hadn’t been able to shake.