Shaman Winter (20 page)

“But it's you he wants,” Rita said, her voice tremulous for a moment, then in anger she cursed Raven. “Damn that man! I wish he had never come into our lives!”

“Maybe your curse will stop him.” Sonny tried to smile.

“It won't.”

“So it's up to me.”

“How did he get from Bandelier to Taos?”

“Raven flies, remember? Anyway, he's out of the net they set around Los Alamos.”

“Come by here. I'll send a lunch with you.”

“Amor, you're too good to me. Don't worry, we can grab something there.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“To Taos and back, that's all.”

“Take care of yourself. I love you, cabrón.”

“I'll take care. You take care. See you this afternoon. Un beso.” He blew a kiss into the phone.

“Un beso,” she replied.

Am I doing the right thing? Sonny wondered as he clicked off the phone. Chasing after missing virgins. Raven's picking sixteen-year-olds. But where in the hell is he taking them? He needs transportation and a place to hide. He needs help, like the crazies who worked for him in the past, and those kind of locos don't work for free.

He got hold of enough money to buy the plutonium, and probably enough to pay the scientists he needs to assemble a bomb. Even ex-nuclear physicists from the former Soviet Union came with a price tag.

Money, he needs lots of money, and if Matt Paiz was right, the funds were coming from the extremists who wanted to create a nuclear “accident” to discredit the government.

This is not the kind of case where I hit the streets and dig for information, Sonny thought. I need to get into Los Alamos Labs, learn about the equipment they buy when they put a bomb together, find the names of scientists. Who is who in New Mexico nuclear technology? How come we never hear about these people? A computer! I need to get onto the Internet.

His thoughts were interrupted by Lorenza's arrival. She honked the van's horn once, then came inside. In jeans, a dark turtleneck, and black leather jacket, she looked ready for business.

“Buenos días.” She smiled and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “How do you feel today?”

“Great. And you look de aquellas.”

“Thank you. If I'm going to be chauffeuring the number one private investigator around, I'd better look decent.”

“I don't feel so number one. There's another girl missing.”

He told her about the dream and the phone call.

“Somehow the girls are part of a much bigger game Raven is playing. Why take the girls at the same time he's trying to build a bomb? And why call the press and tell them something's rotten at the Los Alamos Labs? Doesn't jibe.”

“It's his style. His trickster nature is to play games,” Lorenza replied. “The four girls he wants to kidnap have something to do with his grand design.”

“Four queens for his new universe. I think he's crazy!”

“He wants all of us to think that.”

“Yeah, you're right. Anyway, I have to move around a lot. I can't ask you to keep driving me—”

She interrupted. “Hey, I volunteered, so if I can help, I will. Rita can't—” She stopped short, moved her finger around the lip of the cup.

“Something's troubling her.”

“She's tired.”

“No wonder, taking care of me these past two months, and trying to run the café. I know it's been hard on her.”

“She needs rest. She promised to take off an hour every afternoon and go home and rest. I have her on some vitamins, a few herbs …”

Lorenza's voice trailed. Sonny didn't like the sound of it. Rita was tired, he had seen it in her eyes.

“She should see a doctor.”

“She has.”

“She didn't say anything—”

“She doesn't want to worry you. She's fine. She just needs to take it easy.”

“I just talked to her. I'll call her back—”

Lorenza touched his hand. “Sonny, I promised her not to tell you about the doctor's visit. It will only upset her.”

Sonny nodded. “Lord, I appreciate everything you do. I feel haunted. Like I don't know which way to turn. Now Rita—”

“Rita understands you have to take care of this. It's a matter of life and death, for the girls and for you. Let's stick to that.”

“I know, but Rita's not well—”

“You don't have a choice. You stay put and Raven will get at you. You don't have much time.”

Yeah, Sonny knew that. “The question is how? Can I stop him before he kidnaps another girl? Or do I just stay awake and quit dreaming? No dreams, no Raven kidnapping the grandmothers of my past.”

“You have to dream,” she said, her dark brown eyes staring at him over the lip of her coffee cup.

“Why?”

“The shaman dreams. That's his role—”

Sonny laughed. “Look, I'm no shaman, no brujo. I'm just me, Sonny Baca, your normal thirty-something Chicano who just wants to do his own thing. I—” He stopped short, looked intensely into Lorenza's eyes, the eyes that always fascinated because they held the knowledge of the owl.

“I keep resisting what I'm becoming,” he whispered, and cradled his head on his hands on the table. “I just want to be normal. Whatever that is.”

She gently touched his shoulder. “You are normal, but you also have a gift. It's the same gift don Eliseo has, and he's led a normal life. He married, he had children, he has neighbors, like the rest. But he also has the gift.”

Sonny looked up at her, arching an eyebrow. “His gift? He can fly?” Don Eliseo had never told him that, not in so many words.

“Yes, he can enter the dreamworld. That's how he helps people. By bringing harmony to fragmented souls.”

“Men who can fly, curanderos, brujos.… When did it start? Where did this power come from?”

“It's been here all along. For our healers it started when the Spaniards were about to arrive in the New World. Moctezuma, the ruler of Tenochtitlán, had many dreams. He saw houses sailing on the Gulf. He couldn't figure out what they were, so he asked his priests to gather. The priests also had the same dream. Perhaps we should say nightmares, for they knew the coming of the strangers meant an end to their way of life.”

“But the dream couldn't stop the course of history.”

“No, Moctezuma had his priests killed because they had bad dreams.”

“Like the messenger who brings bad news is killed. But I'm the messenger of my own dream. I am the dreamer. I have to be an actor in my dream, not just an observer.”

“It's what we all have to learn,” Lorenza said. “Owl Woman came to you for a reason. She is the Bearer of Dreams. Your dream, your destiny. Yours is the dream of your ancestors, the greater communal dream, the dream of humankind.”

“Bearer of Dreams. I like that.”

“Yes. Each of us has a spirit within that comes to reveal the pattern of our life, the reason for being—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Sonny smiled. “You're losing me. Bearer of Dreams, dream of mankind. I need to do a little research into this. Maybe some books on dreams.”

Lorenza looked at him in a strange way, shrugged, and Sonny knew he had taken a wrong turn.

“Not good?”

“Books can help, but the dream, or song line as it's called in some parts of the world, is specific for each sacred region.”

“What do you mean?”

“Each region is a sacred place on earth for the ancestors. For the Pueblo Indians, our ancestors, it's here. Their myths and dreamworld is connected to this place. The song line of the Maori is in New Zealand. It has to do with their place. The earth is the Mother Earth because she holds the dreams of all the tribes.”

“And there are sacred regions everywhere: the Holy Land, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, the mountains of Tibet. Each of these regions holds the dream for the people of the place. But why so much conflict in these places?”

“Both the negative and the positive are attracted to the sacred place. The Garden of Eden was a sacred place, and it attracted Satan. Good and evil exist side by side.”

“And it's that way here in our homeland.”

“The energy here is strong. The Spaniards who came with Oñate returned after the 1680 Indian revolt because they had felt the sacred in the earth. By that time they knew there was no gold, only the hard work of farming. But here, they realized, they could speak to God. Like the Pueblo Indians spoke to their gods. Here they had made a new covenant with the earth.”

“That's what the Bowl of Dreams signifies,” Sonny mused. “The new dream, a new awareness. And people still come for that. They come for the beauty of the landscape, desert, mountains, sunsets, sky, summer thunderstorms. The painters come, the poets. It attracts those who seek a spiritual way.”

“Yes. But the books will tell you very little about the dream of the region. Don Eliseo goes to the pueblo, where they still keep the dream alive, and perhaps a few poets describe the dream.”

Sonny sipped his coffee and listened.

“Dreams come from the spirit world. Raven can enter your dream because he's a sorcerer. Long ago everyone had the power to enter dreams, to create dreams. But there was so much power in the dreamworld that the sorcerers began to separate humans from their dreams. They began to tell people that the devil created dreams and frightened the people. People left their dreaming, forgot how to be masters of their dreams, and chaos came to the dreamworld. But dreams remained sacred, not evil. Dreams are the language of the soul, and they belong to the person who dreams. Each person had to take back his or her dreams from the sorcerer who was there in the heart. To become master of one's dreams means one exiles the sorcerer.”

“There's a lot to think about,” Sonny whispered.

Like all other New Mexicans, he was heir to the Calendar of Dreams. The covenant was formed on the banks of the Río Grande when the Españoles and Mexicanos came into the Pueblo world. Owl Woman greeted them and offered her body and spirit as mother. Owl Woman was Sonny's Bearer of Dreams. Complicated things that needed to be resolved if he was going to save his ass. Save the girls Raven was kidnapping.

“More coffee?” Lorenza offered.

“No, I'm buzzed,” he replied. “No sense in just waiting around. Let's head out.”

“Pues, vamos.”

“I'll get my jacket.”

He pushed his chair into the bedroom, Chica trailing him. He reached under the pillow and took out the Zia medallion, pulled the chain over his head, and tucked the medallion under his shirt. Then he reached for the Colt .45.

The northern country would be cold, so he put on his heavy jacket with the sheepskin collar. He turned to Chica.

“Too cold for you to go with us. I don't know what we'll get into, so stay home and guard the house.”

Chica sat on her hind legs, barked, and scratched the air furiously with her front paws. She understood, but she wanted to go.

“I know you want to go, and I hate to leave you alone, but it's best you stay. You go keep don Eliseo company, okay?”

Sonny guided his chair outside, into the van, and they were on their way.

A cold wind swept across the valley as a new load of clouds scurried across the sky. The weather was still unpredictable as a new front moved in from the north.

The phone rang as they headed toward the interstate. Matt Paiz asked Sonny if he could come by the FBI office.

“I'm on my way out of town,” Sonny answered.

“It's important,” Paiz replied.

“Por qué no?” Sonny said. The man had some news, and the Federal Building was downtown, not far. And Sonny needed a favor from them.

“FBI,” he said to Lorenza.

“What do they want?”

“Don't know, but let's see.” Lorenza nodded and drove downtown, which was brightly decorated with Christmas lights. She found a handicapped parking space near the building.

Paiz and two agents, Mike Stewart and Eddie Martínez, the two who had chased Raven that summer, were sitting in Paiz's office when Sonny and Lorenza entered.

“You know each other,” Paiz said.

“Oh, yeah.” Sonny shook hands with the agents and introduced Lorenza.

“Damned sorry about—” Stewart motioned to the chair. He and Martínez knew about Sonny's encounter with Dr. Stammer, but they hadn't seen him since. They looked at him with some admiration, remembering how he had found the cocaine shipment in Stammer's office when everybody else including the DEA said no such shipment had come into the city.

“This is temporary.” Sonny smiled.

“You're not doing so bad,” Stewart said, looking at Lorenza. Sonny Baca always had an attractive woman at his side.

“You talked to Eric?” Paiz asked.

“This morning.”

“I see. I'll get to the point. We found Raven's four-by-four. We went over it with a fine-tooth comb. I'd like to share a few things we found with you.” He paused and looked at Lorenza.

“She's with me,” Sonny said. “You know that.”

Whatever Paiz had to reveal, Lorenza could hear.

It was clear Paiz felt uneasy about the arrangement, but he proceeded. “I need your help. You know Raven, so anything you can do to help us find him before—” He stopped. “Let me tell you what we found. Two things. First, traces of coke.”

Sonny nodded. He knew Raven used the stuff. For Raven it was just a plaything, something he used to draw his cult together.

“What else?” Sonny asked.

Again Paiz hesitated, briefly glancing at Lorenza. Then he reached into a desk drawer and took out a plastic baggie. Inside lay a crumpled note. Paiz removed it carefully and laid it on the desk in front of Sonny. On it was written a phone number.

“We traced the number,” he said, glancing at Stewart and Martínez. “It's Leif Eric's home number.”

Sonny drew a breath. Raven was carrying around the phone number of the director of Los Alamos Labs?