The Shaman Laughs (29 page)

"I assume you'll take care of that right away."

"Little problem there," Simpson said. "Dr. Addison is attending a symposium in Egypt. Then he's off to Pakistan. Won't be back for five or six weeks. Thought you might want to know… unofficially… before he eventually returns, reexamines the remains, and files the amended report."

"Will you be notifying the FBI?"

"No can do. Not my case. And I expect you to treat this in strictest confidence. Theoretically, my esteemed colleague may decide not to modify his FBI report. It's entirely up to him."

"I'll have to tell Charlie Moon."

"I never agreed to let you pass this on."

"I never agreed not to."

Simpson scowled. "Your daddy must have been a damned Philadelphia lawyer."

"Don't fret," Parris said, "Charlie's the soul of discretion. He'll keep mum until the amended report is submitted. I guarantee it."

"He damn well better, or I'll never do you a favor like this again."

"You still haven't told me how Nightbird died."

"It would appear," Simpson said, "that he died of suffocation."

Parris pushed himself away from the table and got to his feet. "He swallow his tongue?" After trauma to the head, it wasn't all that unusual.

"Quite some time after the man was clubbed on the head," Simpson said, "the 'perp,' as you cops call them, shoved something down his throat, blocking his air passage. Victim may have been unconscious, but he was definitely alive."

"What," Parris asked slowly, "did you find in his throat?"

Simpson opened his refrigerator, searched the shelves that were crammed with a dozen varieties of pickles, moldy cold cuts, and months-old cartons of milk. "Aha," he said, "here it is, behind the cheese." He brought an opaque plastic carton to the table. The medical examiner popped the lid off the plastic box and shoved it across the oil cloth in a casual fashion, as if he were inviting his friend to sample a box of chocolates. "You know what this is?"

Parris leaned over cautiously. He inspected the contents of the box. For a moment, he was baffled. Then, the policeman understood. He felt his stomach churn.

Moon was two-finger typing a report on a drunk he had hauled in. The unfortunate man had been reported for exposing himself in the women's rest room at the Sky Ute Lodge. The thoroughly inebriated man insisted that he had thought he was in the men's room. Moon believed him. The Ute looked up to see Scott Parris, who appeared to be lost in thought. "You kind of snuck up on me, pardner." The Ute had heard the worn valves clicking in the Volvo engine before Parris turned into the parking lot.

Parris sat down onto a wooden chair that squeaked. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through a wisp of thinning hair. "I've been up to Granite Creek."

Moon continued his hunt-and-peck style of typing. "You go up there to check on your boys at the station? Bet you thought they couldn't do without you."

"Lieutenant Leggett is doing a bang-up job in my absence. You know my dispatcher, Clara Tavishuts?"

"I better know her, she's my second cousin."

"Clara tells me Leggett's straightened out the files, streamlined the computer booking system. The lieutenant even talked the city government out of enough money to buy two new squad cars."

"Sounds like they get along pretty well without you."

Parris sighed. "By the time I get back, they won't remember my name."

"Sounds fair to me," Moon said. "That why you look so down in the mouth?" The Ute knew it was something else. Nancy Beyal had told him about the urgent summons from the medical examiner.

"I've picked up some information… relating to the Arlo Nightbird murder. Strictly on the q.t. We'll need to keep mum about it till the FBI gets the official amended M.E. report."

Moon lost interest in the typewriter. Parris wouldn't look at him; that wasn't a good sign.

"Doc Simpson checked the Nightbird remains. The substitute M.E. made an error."

"I don't think I like the sound of this," Moon said.

"Mr. Nightbird didn't die of his fractured skull. His ears and balls weren't chewed off by animals."

Moon felt a coldness ripple along his spine. "You sure about this?"

"It's from the horse's mouth. Simpson is one of the best M.E.s in Colorado." Now he looked at Moon. "You haven't heard the worst part."

"Give it to me."

"Mr. Nightbird died from suffocation."

"What'd he do, swallow his tongue?"

"Not his tongue," Parris said. "Whoever cut his balls off…"

Moon closed his eyes. "You don't mean… like the V.C. did to our guys in 'Nam?"

Parris nodded. "Whoever performed the castration shoved his balls down his throat and… he couldn't breathe."

Moon pushed his big frame up from the chair. He stalked back and forth behind the desk. Finally, he stopped and stared blankly out the window. A lone raven sat on a cot-tonwood branch; the bird stared back at the Ute. "Arlo Nightbird wasn't anything to brag about," he said, "but he didn't deserve to go that way."

"Nobody does," Parris said. "How do you figure it went down?" He wondered if Moon would finally face the obvious.

'"There is the explanation you suggested from the beginning. While Gorman hauls… his daughter to the hospital, she tells him everything. He goes back, finds Arlo half alive. Gorman remembers his threat, castrates Arlo and…"

"I get the picture," Parris said. "But what about the missing ears? You figure Mr. Sweetwater clipped off the ears to make it look like the bull mutilator did the job on Night-bird?"

"I wouldn't figure Gorman had that much imagination. But one thing you learn in this business," Moon said slowly, "is you don't really know people." He was staring at the blue-black raven, which had spread its left wing in the sunlight. "Not even old friends."

"So," Parris asked, "what do we do now?"

"Until there's a new M.E. report," Moon said, "we do nothing." But he would keep a close watch on Gorman Sweetwater.

It was two hours before first light. JoJo was certain that he could sense the presence of the deer. The image of fresh venison, roasting slowly over the glowing embers of his campfire, made the Ute's mouth water with anticipation. Years ago, during the last few weeks of his tour in Saudi and then southern Iraq, it was this vision that had kept him connected with home. Stalking the deer—silently, relentlessly—like the cougar. JoJo was a romantic. The slender man moved along through the darkness, inhaling the pungent fragrance of the pinon grove. He had found their droppings only last week, but by now he knew their movements by heart. Deer were much like people who got up and went to work, then came home to sleep. This group, less than a half-dozen, slept through most of the daylight hours in a tree-sheltered hollow on the top of Three Sisters Mesa. At dusk, they moved down into Snake Canyon to water at the small stream. There, they fed on the galleta grass that carpeted the low ground near the brook. Shortly before dawn, they would move up the steep trail on the side of Three Sisters Mesa, graze on the dry grasses for another hour or so, then bed down for the middle of the day. It would be easy to kill them where they slept, but one of the People would not stoop to that. Breaking hunting season laws that had been imposed on the Utes was another matter. The young man knew that the rules made sense, but he could not wait. He could almost taste the wild venison, see the yellow fat bubbling over his campfire. His hand trembled in anticipation of the small pressure on the Winchester trigger that would fulfill his fantasy.

It was at that moment that he heard the peculiar sound. It came from the Snake Canyon side of Three Sisters Mesa. JoJo was curious, but he was- wary about approaching the edge of the mesa. That might frighten the deer if they were already on their way up the trail. He leaned his carbine against the crotch of a juniper and waited, trying to dismiss the odd sound from his thoughts. Presently, he heard it again. Cursing silently in his frustration that the deer might have already been frightened away from their habitual path, he crawled to the edge of an overhang. He flattened himself out on his stomach, just as he had when he watched for the Iraqi tanks on the sun-baked alkali desert. The young man peered over the edge of the cliff into the sinuous meander of Snake Canyon. Because there was no moon, he expected to see nothing at all. But there was a tiny flickering light; it must be a campfire. "Damnation," he whispered prophetically. He wriggled out of his backpack and found the binoculars. He pressed the instrument to his eyes and rotated the focus knob until he could see clearly.

"No… oh no," he whimpered. The young Ute, who had felt little fear when he fought the thirst-crazed Iraqis in hand-to-hand combat, was so utterly terrified that he didn't realize that he had lost control of his bladder. He had seen what no mortal was meant to see… He would surely die.

Charlie Moon had listened to the sounds of the river for hours, but even the gentle lullaby of the Pinos was not enough. The Ute could not remember when this had happened before—-he could not sleep. Sunrise was still hidden behind the cloak of night when he finally gave up and rolled off the narrow bed. The tile floor was like ice under his feet. Moon pulled on his jeans and boots, then wrapped his shoulders in a tattered Truchas blanket that had belonged to his mother. He struck a kitchen match on his belt buckle and lit a kerosene lamp, adjusting the wick until the spultering flame was barely the size of his thumbnail. Moon touched the remains of the same match to a splinter of dry pine in the iron fireplace at the center of the room. Almost immediately, flames licked at the split logs. Soon, the roar of the fire was punctuated by pistol-shot snaps as glowing embers popped onto the rough brick hearth. He sat on a straight-backed wooden chair and warmed his hands as he surveyed the room that was to have been the center of his home. And of his world. With her.

He had built this circular adobe structure on a knoll inside a hairpin bend of the river. The Pinos provided natural evaporative cooling that was welcome on bright summer days, but at night the unheated house was like the bottom of a well. The stone chimney above the fireplace penetrated the conical roof at the exact center; massive redwood logs radiated out from this exit like spokes in a gigantic wagon wheel. A string of red chilies hung from this log, a small basket of onions from that, the kerosene lamp from another. He had planned to install a propane furnace and build two more rooms. A square kitchen on the north side, a circular bedroom on the south with a fine view of the rapids in the elbow of the river. There would be electricity and, when she came to be with him, a telephone. These ambitious plans seemed foolish now. Even pathetic. She would never live in this house. But some part of her was here, haunting him with dreams of what could have been. He covered his eyes with his hands. "Go away,
uru-ci
," he whispered. "You're not real." Benita's sorrowful ghost departed, but reluctantly. And with a soft promise to return with the next twilight.

Charlie Moon found the blue enameled pot which held the remains of last night's coffee. He placed it on the iron grate over the fire that was already reduced to a pile of crackling embers. This was an awfully lonely way to live. Especially the nights. This night had been filled with strange pictures that troubled his mind. A buffalo that disappeared without a trace. A mutilated Hereford bull with a cracked skull. Arlo, stretched almost naked under a bush—and missing private parts that an angry rancher had threatened to remove. A lovely girl with a swollen leg… who was gone. Gone.

And of course, there was always Aunt Daisy. The old woman who dreamed of a dark shadow that was transmuted into some kind of nocturnal bird that mutilated animals and men. And Oswald Oakes—the eccentric old man who, in an effort to graft some organization onto the dark chaos, had given name to the nameless shadow. Cain.

There was also, Moon mused bitterly, a Ute policeman without a clue. But something was there. A subtle hint, buzzing around his mind like a tiny mosquito. He could hear its annoying whine, but the thing remained just out of reach.

Somewhere, among all these things that he had seen and heard since Rolling Thunder vanished, there was a solution to this strange riddle. The answer was like a dim star that he could barely see out of the corner of his eye. When he looked directly at it, the star was not there.