Last Chants (24 page)

“I can talk to the place,” he insisted. “It's much less likely to lie than a person.”

“So's your subconscious, wouldn't you say?”

Of all the times for Edward to get flaky on me. “Where do you want to take—”

“Right, Arthur?” Edward held up a hand to shush me. “If we could get into your brain and play a movie of everything you saw when that guy handed you a gun? All the stuff you consciously forgot. Wouldn't it tell you something about who killed Billy? You know the two events have to be related.”

Arthur merely blinked. “But I'd planned to go to Bowl Rock . . . ”

“What are you talking about, Edward?” I demanded. “What's this crap about Arthur's subconscious?”

“Yours, too. I know a guy who's a hypnotist. He's going to
hypnotize you today. Tell us more about what happened in San Francisco.”

I didn't know how to feel about it. “Do you trust him? He won't call the police?”

“No, he won't. I guarantee it.”

Arthur looked uncomfortable. “I don't believe the brain is that type of structure, Edward. I don't believe consciousness is divided, you know, according to that Freudian paradigm. I don't believe it's like a suitcase, with a compartment for lingerie under the zipper. I see it as an access device, a way into an infinite number of realities.”

“Well, but Arthur,” Edward's patience seemed to be fraying. “None of that really matters. However it works, there are details you won't remember except under hypnosis. And they might be helpful. You guys can't be hiding out forever; we need a breakthrough. I'm just being practical.”

Arthur continued to look troubled. “I've done a lot of journeying, Edward, shamanic journeying. I don't want to let anyone into those places with me.”

Edward looked like he suddenly got it. “Oh, no; you have my word. He'll focus on what happened in San Francisco just before Wonder Woman here flew off with you.”

“It's not just that.”

“I'll make sure he backs away from anything personal. Honest.”

“The minute you enter someone else's reality, even to retrieve a stray detail . . . ” Arthur put his hand on Edward's shoulder. “I believe there's something in criminal law called the ‘plain view doctrine.'” Arthur had spent time in prison because of it. He'd met my father there. “When the police come to your house for a legitimate purpose, and they see evidence of a crime in plain view—”

“I'm familiar with the doctrine,” Edward assured him.

In Arthur's case, a policeman had seen a blowpipe containing a vision-quest snuff used in the Amazon. It led to a search that turned up LSD, which Arthur didn't know had been made illegal.

“I just don't want to have to worry about it for real,” Edward continued.

“I'm afraid we've made Edward an accessory after the fact,” I explained.

Arthur looked horrified. “But all he did was hide us.”

I watched Edward grin.

“That's the main definition of the crime, Arthur. Edward's right. We have to do something.”

“You don't understand the importance of what I
am
doing.” Arthur's tone was gentle.

“It's just that we were both freaked out Monday morning. Who knows what we might have noticed but not registered?”

Having to back up Edward put me at a disadvantage. I wasn't sure I wanted anyone poking through my memories, either.

“When would we return here?”

“How long will it take the hypnotist to do his number?” Edward redrafted the question, perhaps unwilling to promise we'd return. “Maybe an hour and a half, two hours.”

I felt panic rise. In a college town like Santa Cruz, someone might recognize Arthur.

“If they find Toni today, we can come back. Right, Edward?”

“Yes, we'll come back, won't we?”

Faced with my need for Toni to be all right and Arthur's need to commune with the mountain, Edward looked like a cornered parent.

And in fact, he said, “You kids will have to ask your mother about that.”

I
was nervous. We were in a tiny office with rattan furniture and a wall of windows overlooking a ravine. It had all the hallmarks of a therapist's office: a desk with a laptop computer and a big-numbered digital clock, a chair opposite a couch, and Kleenex on every end table.

I'd been in therapy a few months, stopping when it became unaffordable. I couldn't decide if it had helped or not. I preferred
not
discussing my problems on a regular basis. On the other hand, they weren't going away just because I was ignoring them.

Now, sitting on this couch, Kleenex at hand, I felt a Pavlovian need to whine. Or maybe it was because Edward sat beside me.

His therapist/hypnotist friend, an outdoorsy-looking man about our age, sat in the desk chair, which he'd rolled around to face the chair opposite the couch. He and Arthur sat almost knee to knee. He was holding up a device that flashed light, almost like a tiny strobe light. He also played an ocean-waves audiotape with, we were told, subliminal commands to relax.

He had warned us, after Edward's sotto-voce to pass the popcorn, not to say anything or make any noise, and to keep our movements to an absolute minimum. He usually preferred complete privacy, he told us pointedly.

Edward's response had been, “Yeah, yeah, Fred, let's get on with it.”

We'd been sitting there several minutes already, watching Arthur watch the light. It seemed to me his facial muscles had grown flaccid. Though he'd doubted he could be hypnotized, he looked pretty well zombified to me.

But it was a little longer before Fred said, in that soothing therapist voice, “Can you hear me, Arthur?”

Arthur's face remained blank, his eyelids half-lowered. “Yes,” he replied.

“Can you tell us your name and date of birth?”

I was surprised to learn the two of us had the same birthday.

“Can you tell us where you are now?”

“With you,” he said dully.

“And where are we both?”

“In your office.”

“Fine.” He clicked off the audiotape. “Now we're going to go back into your recollections. Can you recall last Monday morning?”

A slight hesitation. “Yes.”

“Tell us about waking up that morning, Arthur.”

“Pain. Arthritis in my neck. I shouldn't fall asleep in a chair; it's painful when I rise.”

“Where is this chair? Are you at your home?”

“No,” Arthur replied. “I might have had a home with Nina, but the regret has settled into my bones as arthritis. That was a long time ago.”

Fred looked startled. I wondered if he was used to more direct answers from the subconscious mind. “Where is your home now, Arthur?”

“Ah, I wish I knew.”

Fred showed a spark of ingenuity: “Where are your books and papers?”

“In storage. New Haven, Connecticut.”

“And things you've acquired since leaving Yale?”

“Vancouver Island.”

Fred kept the frustration on his face out of his voice. “And your daily necessities? Change of clothes, toiletries?”

“My hotel.”

“What hotel is that?”

“In San Francisco. On Stockton Street.”

Edward had gotten the address his first night with us. He'd made sure the hotel wasn't adding daily charges to Arthur's credit card. No one looking for Arthur would be led there based on this week's credit transactions.

“Did you awaken in your hotel room Monday morning?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “On a wing chair.”

“Tell us what you did then.”

“I bathed. I ordered eggs and toast. The coffee was very weak. I dressed.”

“Where were you going Monday morning?”

It was difficult not to sit forward. Arthur had always been vague about this, saying only that he'd had no particular business, that he'd been strolling.

“To the place the dove specified.”

Fred glanced at us, brows raised. His cheeks were sun- or wind-burned, with goggle-shaped whiteness around the eyes. “And who is the dove?”

“My power animal.”

“Can you explain?”

I looked at Edward. He had agreed to keep the hypnotist out of Arthur's shaman stuff. But Edward just sat there, chewing the inside of one cheek.

“I was advised while journeying. I was told I would meet someone on the street.”

“When did this journey take place, Arthur?”

“Billy and I were in the rock.”

“What day was this?”

“It was Saturday.”

“Saturday, two days before that Monday morning?”

“Yes.” Arthur's face remained slack, his speech relatively uninflected. It was almost as if a ventriloquist spoke for him.

“What time of day on Saturday were you inside the rock with Billy?”

I wondered how well Edward had prepped Fred. Obviously well enough for him to follow up on this.

“Sunrise.”

“Why were you there together, Arthur?”

“We sensed a transition. A loss and a gain. Powerful forces at play. We had questions.”

“Can you tell us more about this?”

I nudged Edward. We'd promised not to let Fred intrude. But Edward cast me a cranky glance, shaking his head.

“We had learned to journey together. We'd guessed the significance of the rock.”

“And what is that, Arthur?”

“It's a boat.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“The Makah and the Salish and the Kwakiutl, the Haida, the Nootka, the Tsimshian, all of them hollowed logs to make vast canoes fit for rough seas. This was a stone canoe, used not by the local Costanoans, but by shamans who predated them: This was our feeling. It was a vessel for a particular spiritual quest. It's at the edge of a clearing shaped like an inlet, the best place from which to launch. But a dugout canoe can't be managed by oneself, not through rough water. So we tried together at sunrise.”

“This was last Saturday at dawn.”

“Yes.”

“And Monday—”

Edward waved to catch Fred's attention. Fred glanced over, scowling. He saw Edward shaking his head, and mouthing the word “Saturday.”

Fred seemed irritated.

Nevertheless, he said, “Arthur, tell us what happened on Saturday.”

“Our journey couldn't be completed.” Desolation changed his voice. “The water was rough. It boiled with an emotion, a spell cast upon us, a terrible jealousy.”

“Were you jealous of Billy, Arthur?”

“No.”

“He of you?”

“No.”

“Whose jealousy, then?”

“It was Hera.”

“And who is Hera?”

I was afraid I knew the answer.

Sure enough, Arthur told him, “The wife of Zeus.”

Fred cast Edward a glance that said, Satisfied?

“How long were you together in the rock, Arthur?”

“We got as far as we could. But we capsized. The dove and the raven came for us. The dove said someone waited for me in San Francisco. So I left Billy.” His brow crimped. His eyes, open only slightly, glinted with tears. “How strange of the raven to say nothing, to offer no warning. Why?” Arthur moaned. “Where's Billy now? Why can't I find him?”

Fred's glance at Edward was furious.

“Let's go back to Monday, Arthur, this last Monday morning. You've eaten breakfast in your hotel room. Now what do you do?” He waited a moment for Arthur's response. Then he repeated, “It's last Monday, after breakfast.”

“I check my clock, and I see it's time. So I leave my hotel.”

“What is your destination, Arthur?”

“Montgomery Street. I've been told to follow the morning river to the Banker's Heart.”

“Who told you this?”

“The dove.”

“And what did you take it to mean, Arthur?”

“Montgomery Street.”

I noticed Edward's smile. The Banker's Heart was a huge hunk of black marble set by some ironic sculptor in the Bank of America Plaza. On Montgomery Street.

“I had gone there Sunday morning,” Arthur said softly. “And I'd found it deserted. The pedestrian river flows only on weekdays.”

“So you went there again on Monday?”

“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “To meet the person.”

“Can you recall the moment that you reached Montgomery Street?”

“Yes.” Arthur sounded surprised. “A blue car honked at me when I crossed in front of it. A woman looked at me as if she knew my face. And there was a young man eating a brownie.”

“That's excellent, Arthur. Can you describe what you see as you continue walking?”

Arthur's narrative rambled: an attractive woman, a man with an interesting umbrella, eyeglasses similar to ones he'd owned years ago, an unusual flower in a planter box. He listed things as if choosing them at random from a movie of his walk.

“That's fine, Arthur. That's excellent. Can you go now to the moments just before someone handed you a gun?”

Edward shook his head slightly. Did he consider this a leading question? Did he doubt Arthur's story?

“I had been walking quite a while, up and back. Not doubting—but I was slowing down. I was looking more particularly. People passed by me. A woman in a green raincoat, a man in pinstripes, they flowed past. Behind me, someone muttering; that's when . . . ”

“Go on, Arthur.”

“He handed me the gun.”

“Why don't we slow down just a bit. Let's go back a few minutes before you feel the gun in your hand, Arthur. Can you go back to that approximate moment?”

Arthur didn't say anything. He frowned, a tic developing in the corner of his eye.

“Are you back in that moment, Arthur?”

“Yes.”

“Can you freeze it in your mind as if you were pausing a film?”