Wicked Prayer (20 page)

It was a beautiful house, and more.

It was the home Emily had shared with her husband, Eldon.

It was the kind of home Dan had once dared to dream of for himself. . . and Leticia.

He had been here—alone, or with Leti—many times. Always at Dr. Carlisle’s invitation. Turned out the old desert rat was a damn fine cook: she specialized in southwestern fare, heavy on the chipotle chilies and mole.

Dan remembered those dinners together. The nights when the three of them had sat around the pine table in Emily’s kitchen, a cast iron pot of pinto beans simmering on the potbelly stove as the old woman wove stories about her adventures on the scorpion trail. Tales of grace and humor, daring and determination. He remembered Leti’s bright eyes and eager expression as she listened to stories she had heard from Emily’s lips a dozen times or more . . . but would never hear again.

Other memories waited here. Leti questioning Emily about the cottonwood New Mexican Santo in the kitchen window, always eager to explore another belief, always searching for another way to see the world . . . Leti quietly sharing her own Native American beliefs in her low, engaging voice.

Dan remembered all of it as if had happened just yesterday . . . the gleam of the polished copper pots and pans that hung on the walls . . . and the fragrant odor of drying herbs by the sink . . . and the pinon wood fire that warmed adobe walls the color of
palo
verde . . .
and the echo of Leti’s laughter.

Always the echo of Leti’s laughter.

But that laughter seemed hollow now. Unreal. To Dan it seemed as if the sound of Leti’s laughter, like the memories of those perfect nights, belonged not to him, but to some other person. Someone who could still believe in the existence of
love
and
hope
 
and
life.

Someone who was still alive.

Because now Dan Cody was
dead.

He didn’t have the sense to lie down, maybe,
but.
. .

Dead
was the simple truth of it.

Leti was dead, too. Buried in the cold hard ground of Cuervo Canyon, ninety-five miles south. Same place where Dan had buried those precious commodities—
love
and
hope
and
life.

Dan stepped out of the Apache, hesitant. He’d never dropped in on Dr. Carlisle before: four o’clock in the morning, dead and unannounced.

Emily, how ya doin’? Sorry to get you out of bed, but, hey. I’m in kind of a jam here. Leticia and me got ourselves wasted tonight by a devil woman and her gun-totin’ action-hero sidekick and well, things got kinda messy there for a little while. The black leather bitch cut Leti’s eyes right out of her head, and then she and her boyfriend blasted a few holes in my hide, and to make a long story short your favorite young couple ended up locked in a freezer in the county dump. . . .

No, really, Em, I’m all right. I’m just
dead.
And well, see, I have to borrow a couple guns . . . and by the way, I’ll need your car, too, because the talking bird who resurrected me is gonna lead me to those self-styled Starkweather and Fugate bastards, and then I’m gonna blow their murderin’ asses south of kingdom come.

Oh, yeah, Em ... I might be a little late for work tomorrow, too . . .

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

This was going to go over
real
well.

Dan could picture Emily’s face. By the time he was done with his impromptu
Tales From the Crypt
script she’d probably be wishing she’d done a
thorough
background check before hiring him. Had him fill out some forms. Any history of mental illness, Dan? Heavy drug use? Paranoid delusions? Video game abuse? Watching-the- Gulf-War-on-TV Syndrome? Maybe some cheap, movie-of-the week revenge fantasies with yourself cast in the starring role as the Avenging Hero?

Christ.
Maybe he should just
leave,
hot-wire a truck somewhere. Get the hell
out.

Right, and have the highway patrol snatch him a hundred miles down the road.

He didn’t have time for that. He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin, staring at Dr. Carlisle’s Dodge Durango. The shiny new black truck was parked in the driveway. Dan needed it. That, and a couple of her late husband’s guns.

Dan sighed. There was no way around it, really. He’d just have to make the best of a seriously fucked situation. Keep Dr. Carlisle out of it as much as he could. For her own protection—not only from the local law enforcement, who would probably contact her as soon as they discovered she knew both Leticia Hardin and Dan Cody, but from those two psychopathic supernatural-born killers.

No way would Dan ever let anything bad happen to Dr. Carlisle.

No way was he going to live through this night a second time.

Determined now, his footsteps echoed across the courtyard. He climbed the steps that rose beneath the corbel and came to the front door, a hand-hewn panel of stained ponderosa pine hung by simple wooden hinges.

A bleached white ram’s skull hung there on a nail, staring at him with empty eyes.

Some door knocker.

But Dan didn’t have to knock.

Because the door had already opened, spilling a square of yellow light across the courtyard.

Emily Carlisle stood on the portales in a cotton nightshirt, wrinkled jeans, and bare feet.

A tremble of surprise in her voice . . . and concern: “Dan . . . what in the world are you doing here?”

Dan opened his mouth, and for the first time in his life—or the first time in his
death
—he found himself saying three words he never thought he’d say.

The words did not come easy.

Dan stared at the woman who had already done so much for him.

“I need help,” he said.

“I still don’t believe it,” Emily said a half hour later.

They were sitting in the living room with its vaulted ceiling and amber-washed walls, Dan on a burnished cowhide sofa and Emily standing by the fireplace beneath a shield made of skinned animal hide.

The older woman was still dressed in her nightshirt and hastily donned jeans. She clutched a ragged shred of Kleenex in her right hand. Her eyes were haggard and hollow.

As Dan had expected, the news of Leti’s death had hit the woman at least as hard as the .357 slug he’d taken at the Spirit Song Trading Post. At the moment, Emily Carlisle looked every one of her sixty-seven years, and then some.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really didn’t want to have to bring you into this, Emily. I know how it must sound.”

“If I wasn’t a scientist,” she said for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Christ, I sound like I just stepped out of some old sci-fi movie.” She stared at him, eyes wide. “Jesus, Dan. Am I
dreaming
this?”

“I wish you were. I wish
I
were. But it’s real. You know me, Emily. You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“No,” she said, after a moment’s consideration. “No, you wouldn’t.”

Emily sat down in the matching cowhide armchair next to Dan. The coffee table, like the front door, was an aged plank of ponderosa pine. Emily stared at the everyday things resting on top of it. Reading glasses, a cold cup of herbal tea. Scatter of professional journals and papers.
Physician’s Guide to Arthropods of Medical Importance. Biosystematics of the Hadrurus Hirsutus.
A beat-up Tony Hillerman paperback;
Dance Hall of the Dead.

She stared at the book numbly. Dan knew that Emily’s reality, as well as his own, had shattered into a million irretrievable pieces. In the wake of his visit, she would have many, many hard nights ahead of her, and Dan hoped that someday her heart would heal the wounds caused by Leti’s death—and his own.

“Leticia,” Emily said, as if reading Dan’s mind. “Oh, God, that sweet, beautiful—”

She started to choke up. Lapsed into silence.

“It’s all right,” Dan said. “It’s all right.”

“I hope ... I hope she didn’t suffer—”

“She never saw it coming,” Dan said. “It happened so fast, she couldn’t have felt a thing.”

His tongue told the lie, but his memory dredged up the truth.

Dan bit his lip, kept those memories inside.

That pain was private. He alone would carry it.

“Emily,” Dan said with real regret, “I really wish I could stay . . . but—”

“Of course,” she said. “You don’t need to say another word. I’ll get the guns.”

She disappeared through a double archway that led from the living room to her study. Dan knew where she was going. Emily kept her late husband Eldon’s antique firearms collection locked in a Colonial-style Mexican chest with a picture of the archangel San Miguel crushing a fiery red devil beneath his bare feet. Seemed like an appropriate archetypal image to Dan:

The forces of good . . . winning out against the forces of evil.

Emily had shown Dan the collection once: an assortment of Colt Army and Navy pistols dating back to the Civil War, some earlier pieces from the War of 1812. All of them cleaned, oiled . . . ready to go.

Dan sighed. Waited. Sat there in silence on the cool cowhide sofa and stared at the brightly painted shield over the fireplace. The traditional Crow shield was one of Julia Dreams the Truth’s contemporary re-creations. Leti had given it to Emily the previous Christmas.

The shield’s strength came from spiritual power,
Leti had told Dan.
The same power that created the earth. Sometimes young warriors would paint symbols on their shields, things they’d seen in visions.. . . Have you ever seen anything in a vision?

Yeah,
Dan thought grimly
.
It’s big, and it’s black, and it caws like a son of a
—

“I think these will do,” Emily said, returning with two guns: an antique Colt .45 and a sawed-off shotgun of considerably more recent vintage, the latter with a few boxes of shells.

“Just like Jesse James’s gun,” Dan said, taking the six-shooter.

“Not ‘just’ like. Eldon said that Jesse himself once carried that pistol.”

Dan raised an eyebrow. “You sure Eldon wasn’t exaggerating a little?”

“Who knows? But maybe the shade of that old outlaw will bring you luck, just the same.”

“Yeah, well, if I remember the story correctly, Jesse James got shot in the back.”

“So did you, Dan.”

An awkward pause.

And then laughter.

“I still can’t believe any of this. I just know I’m going to wake up in a minute, and then—”

“You’re awake, Emily.”

“I wish I wasn’t.” She handed him a set of keys. “To the Durango.”

“Thanks. I mean that.”

“I know. I hate losing you, Dan. Dead or alive, you’re one hell of a scorpion wrangler.”

He smiled awkwardly, felt tears pricking behind his eyes. “Better get going,” he said.

She reached out and took his hand. “You know, Dan, in the desert loneliness is a contagion. It’s not healthy.”

“I don’t need to worry about my health. I’m dead, remember? A healthy body is the last thing I need to worry about.”

“I’m not talking about you, Dan. I’m talking about me.”

Dan hesitated, not knowing what to say.

Emily said, “Remember that day I pressed you so hard, asked you all those questions? The day I told you Leticia’s name? You wanted to ask me some questions, too, but I wouldn’t let you.”

Dan remembered well enough. “You said that someday you’d tell me your story. But you don’t have to do that, Emily. I wouldn’t ask you to do that—”

“I want to, Dan . . . before you go.”

Dan didn’t say a word. Emily looked at him for a long moment, and then she looked at the front door.

“You know, there isn’t a day goes by, not one hour, not one minute, not one second I don’t think about Eldon Carlisle and the years we had together. We built this house stone by stone. Set that front door on its hinges ourselves. Opened up a whole new life for me. Nineteen fifty-five that was, and that door’s still there. Eldon picked me up in his arms and carried me over the threshold, and forty-five years later I watched
him
being carried over that same damned threshold, heading for a pine box. And I remember thinking:
This is it? This is all?

“For the longest time after that I thought I’d died, too. But then I came to the hard realization that a pine box doesn’t sleep
two . . .
just
one.
And like it or not, that’s just the way it is.

“I’ll tell you something, Dan Cody.” Emily smiled through her tears. “And you listen to this old desert rat. You find those sons of bitches who did this to you. You do what you have to do. But don’t do it just for Leti. Do it for
you,
Dan. Do it for your soul. Do it so you and Leti can be together, the way you were meant to be ... do it so you can find some kind of peace together, in the afterworld. Because that’s how I want to remember you both.”