The Influence (20 page)

“Spill it. We both know you can’t keep a secret and I’ll wear you down eventually. You might as well come out with it now.” 

Lurlene seemed about to argue, but then gave up. Reluctantly, she pulled out her phone. “I snapped a picture of it.” She pressed the power switch, then frowned. “Oh, I forgot. My phone’s not working.” 

“Mine isn’t either,” Lita said. “I’m not sure anyone’s is.” 

Lurlene looked as though she’d just figured something out. Something that scared her. 

“Lurlene,” Lita said firmly. 

Now that she’d committed herself to coming clean, the laundromat owner seemed less tense, and the expression on her face was one of relief, as though she’d been wanting to talk about this with someone but had not been able to do so. “First of all, no one’s tryin’ to keep anything from you,” Lurlene said. “I just assumed you knew. Prob’ly everyone else did, too. I thought
everyone
knew. It’s just that no one ever brings it up or mentions it.” 

“Mentions what?” 

“The angel.” 

Lita wasn’t sure she heard right. “The
what?” 

“It was an angel. Even Father Ramos said it was.” 

“An angel? I don’t believe in angels.” 

“I didn’t either. Until I saw it.” 

Lita was even more confused than she was skeptical. “Slow down, slow down. Start from the beginning. What are you talking about?” 

Lurlene took a deep breath. “New Year’s Eve. The party at Cameron’s. You and Dave left before midnight, so you missed it all, but you know what happens, you know how it goes. Jim Haack’s kids’ band was playin’ ‘Bloody Mary Mornin’—I guess they hadn’t practiced any New Year’s Eve music—and it’s almost time, and Cameron gets up there, takes the mike, and says he’s gonna count it down. So everyone takes out their guns— Cameron, too, and my Danny, too—and Cameron starts out with ‘Ten, nine, eight…’ And everyone’s pointin’ their guns up, and the rest of us are coverin’ our ears, and then he gets to ‘one’ and shouts out ‘Happy New Year’ and everyone starts firin’ into the sky. You know, I always worried about one of them bullets fallin’ back down and hittin’ someone—” 

“Me, too,” Lita said. “That’s one of the reasons we left early.” 

“But what happened this time was that they
hit
something. Everyone’s all whoopin’ it up and shootin’ into the air, and right then this
thing
fell down, came crashin’ out of the sky and landed behind everyone there in the yard, prob’ly would’ve crushed some people if they weren’t all gathered around the stage.” 

“That was the angel?” 

“It didn’t look much like an angel, to tell you the truth. It wasn’t a woman dressed all in white, it was more like…like a demon, actually. It was about twice as big as a person and kind of dark green. It did have wings, but they weren’t feathers, like you usually think of angels. They weren’t like bat wings, either. They were thin, kinda like construction paper, and you could see through them where they were torn by bullet holes. There were holes in the body and head, too. It must’ve been flying
right
above us when everyone started shooting.” 

“What made you think it was an angel?” 

“Like I said, it didn’t
look
like an angel. It was all dark and slimy looking. And that face...” Lurlene shivered. “I took a picture of it on my phone, but my phone ain’t working, so I can’t show you. I think a lotta people took pictures. I was scared, and I kept lookin’ up to see if there were more of ’em, but that seemed to be the only one. It was all dead and bleeding, and its blood was red but, like,
bright
red, glow-in-the-dark red. I never seen anythin’ like it. 

“We were all quiet. No one said nothin’. Not even those Haack kids. And then I noticed that there was sort of a light around the body. I don’t know if it was there before, because I didn’t notice it, but it was there now and it was gettin’ stronger, and all of a sudden I felt…good. Happy. Everyone did. We were all laughin’ and smilin’ at each other, and it was like…like…I don’t know. I felt like I did on Christmas when I was a kid. Sort of excited and happy all at the same time. I knew right then that it was an angel,
knew
it, and Father Ramos said that, too, and a whole buncha people started prayin’. The Catholics started doin’ that crossin’ thing they do over their hearts. I ain’t religious, so I didn’t know what to do, but I knew it was an angel and thought I should try to pray, too, but then I looked at all that blood soakin’ into the dirt of Cameron’s yard, and I thought,
We killed it
. It was an angel and we killed it, and when God found out, He was gonna be pissed. I think a lotta people had the same thought at the same time, because everyone started lookin’ around at each other, kinda frightened, and then Cameron, who was still at the microphone, said, ‘We need to hide the body.’ 

“There weren’t no arguing or nothin’. We all felt the same way. We knew it was what we had to do. I don’t…I don’t think there was even any talk about who would do what. Some of us just stepped back, and some moved forward, and some of Cameron’s farmhands went over to the barn to get blankets and such, gloves or what have you, and Cameron told the other ranchers and everyone to put the body in his smokehouse.” 

“Cameron
ordered
them? And they
obeyed
him? Cal Denholm? And Joe Portis?” 

“He wasn’t exactly orderin’ them. He was just sayin’ what everyone already kind of knew, although, lookin’ back on it now, he was prob’ly schemin’ to keep that angel for himself, knowin’ how he is. For all I know, he’s tryin’ right now to use it to help himself get more land or money or whatever. But that night, everyone was just ashamed that they’d shot it out of the sky, ashamed and scared and…and horrified, I guess, and we all just wanted to hide that angel’s body and pretend it hadn’t happened. Even Father Ramos. Even Vern Hastings and his crazy little churchies. So the farmhands brought out stuff to cover it up and pick it up with, and about ten or twelve guys brought it over to that smokehouse and put it inside. It looked real heavy, and it was still kinda bleedin’ but they got it in, and then afterward, a whole buncha people chipped in and got shovels and buried all the blood in the dirt, and then they closed and locked the smokehouse door, and that was it.” 

Lurlene exhaled heavily. “Boy, it feels good to talk about that.” 

“Maybe everyone should be talking about it.” 

“Everyone
should,”
Lurlene agreed. “But they won’t. That angel has…some kinda power, I think. And no one wants God to find out that we killed it. So everyone’s just pretendin’ it didn’t happen.” She looked at Lita. “I guess that’s what you picked up on, why you kinda felt outta the loop.” 

One of the washers had long since turned off, and Shelley Martin came back into the laundromat from wherever she’d gone and started taking her laundry out of the machine, putting it into an adjacent dryer. 

Lita leaned in closer so Lurlene could hear her above the noise. “Was she there?” Lita whispered, motioning toward Shelley. 

Lurlene nodded. “Yep.” 

Lita didn’t know Shelley well, but she’d seen her around and knew her by sight. She’d always thought Shelley was extremely pretty, but today the other woman looked tired, haggard and far older than her years.
That angel has…some kinda power,
Lurlene said, and Lita wondered if everyone who had been there that night had been affected by that power. It would certainly explain Darla’s and JoAnn’s recent odd behavior.  

She was glad she and Dave had decided to leave early. 

Although, Dave and Ross had been acting kind of strange themselves lately. And Ross hadn’t been there at all. 

She started examining her own thoughts and actions to see if she’d been behaving differently than normal. 

Lurlene tapped her on the arm, and Lita nearly jumped. “You all right?” her friend asked. 

“Yeah. I’m fine.” 

“You kinda spaced out there for a minute.” 

Lita looked at her. “Do you really think that was an angel?” 

Lurlene’s expression was deadly serious. “I
know
it.” 

“Do you think…I mean, there’re some weird things happening around here lately. Do you think…?” 

“Do I think it’s because we killed that angel?” Lurlene nodded. “Yes, I do. Is there anything we can do about it?” She shrugged. “According to Father Ramos, pray.” 

“Do you believe that?” 

“Not really.” Lurlene met her eyes. “But I’m doing it anyway.”  

Lita felt uneasy on the drive home. She wasn’t sure how much of what Lurlene had told her she bought, but she believed most of it, believed that something had been shot down on New Year’s Eve, even if it wasn’t an angel, and believed that its body was in Cameron Holt’s smokehouse. She recalled the black creature that had flown low over their truck on the way back from the party that night and shivered at the memory.  

She decided to tell Dave and Ross what she’d learned, and when she arrived home, she gathered them together in the kitchen. “Do you know about what happened at the New Year’s Eve party?” she asked. 

They both looked blank. “No. What?” Dave said. 

She told them, repeating the story Lurlene had related to her. “They think it’s an angel.” 

“Who thinks it’s an angel?” Ross asked. 

“Everyone, apparently.” She addressed Dave. “I think it’s that thing that nearly made us go into the ditch on the way home. Remember? The black flying thing that swooped over us?” 

“Of course I remember. But that sure as hell wasn’t an angel.” 

Ross had a weird look on his face. 

“Rossie?” she said.  

“I think I saw it, too. On Christmas night.” 

Her heart was pounding. “Really?” 

“Yeah, when you guys were gone. I was sitting out there at night, just looking up at the stars, and something flew over me, bigger than a bird but smaller than an airplane. I didn’t know what it was, but it was black and silent, and it kind of spooked me, so I went inside.” 

The three of them were silent for a moment. 

“Can something like that actually be real?” Dave wondered. 

“I’m pretty sure it is,” she said.  

“What do you think it could be?” 

None of them had an answer for that, and she thought about some of the things that had happened lately around Magdalena, some of the things she’d heard about, and she realized that the world was not as rational as she’d thought it was when she woke up this morning. And she knew that it never would be again. 

TWENTY 

Monday was free, no work lined up, so Jackass McDaniels did what he always did on such days—he worked his mine. 

Well, it wasn’t really a mine. It was more of a big hole in the desert behind his house. But he’d been digging that hole for over a decade now, and it
looked
like a miniature version of an open-pit. Roughly circular, big enough in diameter to swallow his home twice over, and wider at the top than it was at the bottom, it went down a good sixty feet. A series of ladders and ledges allowed him to reach the pit floor. Although several layers of earth had been uncovered—striations on the sides made it look like a miniature Grand Canyon—he hadn’t yet found what he was looking for. 

Gold. 

He knew what the geologists said, what other prospectors had told him. This wasn’t gold country. This wasn’t even copper country, although Clifton-Morenci was only an hour or so away and the Copper Queen lode in Bisbee had yielded high grade ore for nearly a century before petering out. 

But he had faith. He didn’t know why he was so sure when all signs pointed the other way, but he was and always had been, and it had kept him working on his mine for the past twelve years. 

McDaniels had always been a rockhound. Collecting rocks and minerals had come natural to him, and as a youngster he’d been obsessed with lost mines of the old west, especially the Dutchman. He’d found more than his share of pyrite in the hills and mountains hereabout, and one day, as a teenager, he’d looked at his collection of pyrite and thought that if that fool’s gold was real gold, he’d be a millionaire. So for a lot of years, when he’d had a regular job working for the Terry Brothers doing roofing and construction, he’d spent his vacations gallivanting around the state, looking for lost mines and the caches of gold that were supposed to still be there. Gradually, he came to realize that many of the desert ranges that were said to be home to those mines looked a lot like the Magdalena mountains, and he started to wonder if the land around here might not have some veins of gold running through it. No one had ever tried to look for gold around Magdalena and he decided to be the first. 

He’d been at it ever since, and though he’d never found so much as a single flake in a piece of rose quartz, he’d continued on, growing ever more certain as the prospects of finding the precious metal grew increasingly more unlikely. 

This morning, with no jobs scheduled, he’d come out here after breakfast with his pickaxe and his goggles, and he’d fired up the gas-powered sandblaster he kept at the bottom of the pit and started his mining operation. He’d been at it for nearly three hours, had sifted through a lot of loose rock and sand, and was about to quit for lunch, when a dazzling light hit his left eye. He was looking in a different direction, but it was bright enough to make him tear up and force him to close his eye against the glare, and he shifted position and saw that it was some sort of mirrored surface at the bottom of the pit reflecting back a powerful ray of the sun. 

Although he knew right away that it wasn’t just a “mirrored surface.”  

Dropping his tools, he ran over to the shiny object and picked it up, hefting it in his hand. 

It was a gold nugget, as big as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. 

McDaniels’ heart began beating crazily. Was it possible? Could it be real?  

Yes. He knew it was authentic without even testing it. Dusting off the nugget on his shirt, he held it up to examine it more carefully, acutely conscious of its weight in his hand. Were there more like this? Had he happened upon a deposit that would yield him not just ounces of gold but
pounds?