by Paul W Papa
Mayer’s first call was to the shaman. He wanted to let Pierce know he had another window broken, but declined to speak with him when the shaman offered, not wanting to explain how he came about that particular piece of information. He left out the ghost and pretty much everything else except the broken window.
His next call was to Cassie.
“We need to talk,” she said after pleasantries.
“Not tonight,” Mayer said.
“First thing in the morning then. I’ve got news you’re going to want to hear.”
“You remember where Atomic Liquors is?”
“Don’t be cute.”
“My apartment’s right behind the place. Come in the morning, but not too early.” Mayer hung up before Cassi could answer. Stella was still occupied with guests and Mayer didn’t want to be there when she got free. It wasn’t that he was hiding from her. He just didn’t want to go into the whole mess right then; at least that’s what he told himself. His bed was calling like the sirens to Odysseus, only Mayer fully intended to answer the call.
He slammed down the rest of his drink, exited stage left, and went to his apartment, stopping only briefly at the Hornet to get the envelope he’d found in Pierce’s office. Once inside, he placed the envelope on the small table in the kitchenette, along with his lid. Then he pulled the cigarette case from his pants pocket and tossed it onto the bed.
In the kitchen he took a tin of salt and spread it across the panes of all his windows and refreshed it along the threshold of the only door leading out. Not having invited the thing in, he wasn’t as worried about the skinwalker as he was about Hawthorne. Ghosts didn’t need invitations. They also weren’t stopped by salt at doors and windows.
Mayer was beginning to suspect that Hawthorne wasn’t as tied to the cigarette case as he initially suspected. After all, the ghost didn’t appear in the car on the way to his apartment. It also hadn’t made an appearance at the shaman’s house while the case was there. Added to that was Pierce’s clear fear at seeing the ghost of his partner for the first time, yet he’d had the case in his pocket for days since the man’s demise. So while he was pretty sure the ghost wouldn’t make an appearance, Mayer surrounded the bed with a ring of salt just for good measure. He also kept another iron club by the head of the bed and a .45 under the pillow, just in case unexpected visitors came to call.
He removed his suit coat, holster, and shirt and placed them over the back of the chair. Then he kicked off his shoes, dropped his trousers, stepped over the ring of salt, and fell into bed. Sleep came fast that night, but it wasn’t one that gave Mayer any peace. The rum in his gut twisted his dreams into a hole too black to crawl out of and too bleak to stay in, as he wrestled with visions of a past that would never set him free.
Twenty-Five
“COME NOW PROMETHEUS, what are those tears for?” his mother asked, wiping his eyes with a gentle hand.
“But I don’t want you to go,” Mayer said, looking down at his socked feet hanging from the side of the bed. One was black and the other blue.
His mother smiled. She had the kindest smile—the type of smile that lit the entire face and made the eyes sparkle. The type that could make a young boy happy, no matter what the world cast at him. When the kids at school started calling him “Night Mayer,” it was his mother who calmed him down with her smile.
“Prometheus is a proud name,” she told him. “One of the Titans. The god of fire. Your name means forethought, and it was your namesake who gave man the gifts they needed to survive once they were formed from clay. It was Prometheus who fought alongside Zeus in the battle for the heavens.”
Of course it would be much later in life when Mayer would discover that it was, in fact, that same Prometheus—known as the clever trickster—who started that very battle and fought with the Titans against Zeus, eventually defecting to the other side when he grew irritated with the Titans’ refusal to use his tactics. But none of that mattered. When Mayer was with his mother, nothing in the world could hurt him.
“Why can’t I go with you?”
She lifted her son’s chin. “Now Prometheus, you know you can’t come with us. Your father and I have work to do. Besides, who would Helen and Stella have to play with if you left?”
“Will you come back?”
She rose, went to the window, and pulled the curtains aside. After a moment, she turned to him and smiled. “No, Prometheus,” she said. “Not this time.”
That’s when Mayer heard it. The pounding of heeled boots in step. A menacing death march goose-stepping toward them, ever closer. Louder and louder. The sound of a thousand soldiers marching in step. Stomp, stomp, STOMP.
SEVERAL MINUTES PASSED before Mayer realized the sound was coming from his front door. A knocking, well before he was awake, and long before he’d had his coffee.
“Go away,” Mayer shouted, but the knocking continued.
“Open up, Mayer,” the female voice called from the other side. “I know you’re in there.”
“Mayer’s dead. Let him rest in peace.”
The knocking continued, so much so that Mayer had little choice but to rise and let his disrupter enter. He slipped on his trousers and stumbled shirtless to the door, his hair a rat’s nest atop his head. Waiting for him on the other side was Cassi in a red and white sleeveless blouse and gaucho pants. Cheaters covered her eyes and she held a gasper loosely between her red lips. Along with her purse, she carried—to her enduring benefit—a steaming cup of Joe.
“You look like hell,” she commented and handed him the cup. “Stella said you’d need this.”
Mayer took the offering and moved aside to let Cassi in, warning her to step over the salt barrier. She did, exaggerating the move, as if afraid to get something unpleasant on her shoes. Once inside, she gave the place the once over.
“Quaint,” she said. “Use enough salt?”
“Protection against unwanted visitors,” Mayer explained. “Doesn’t always work.”
“Hey, you invited me.”
He sipped the coffee, then donned his grass-stained shirt just for a cover, leaving the shoulder holster draped over the chair. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
“No.”
“Give me a chance to look presentable and I’ll take you to breakfast. Make yourself at home.”
Cassi crinkled her nose. “Unlikely,” she said.
Mayer showered, but decided to skip the shave. He combed his hair, tucked a fresh shirt into his trousers, picked out a tie, and tightened his belt. When he emerged from the small bathroom, he found Cassi straightening up the place. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Playing the housekeeper,” she said. “You could use one of those.”
“I could use a two-week vacation in Tahiti,” Mayer said, as he got into his shoulder holster, “but it isn’t likely.” He removed the cigarette case from the bed and placed it in the inside pocket of his suit coat, put on the coat, and placed his hat in position atop his newly-combed hair.
“You coming?” he asked, as he picked up the envelope and headed for the door.
Cassi followed him out and over to his Hornet. He held the door open for her, just like his father had taught him, then went to the driver’s seat. He pulled out of the parking lot, turned left on Fremont and headed to a little diner he favored. The pair entered and took a booth. A middle-aged waitress in a pink uniform with a white, food-stained apron tied around her ample middle tossed menus on the table. “Coffee?” she asked.
Mayer nodded.
Before they could even get a good look at the menu, she’d returned, sliding the coffee in front of them. “What’ll you have?” she asked.
Mayer put down the menu. “I’ll have two poached on toast,” he said. “And a donut for my coffee.”
“Adam and Eve on a raft and a life preserver!” the waitress called out, writing on a notepad. “And you dear?”
“How about French toast,” Cassi said.
“You want eggs?”
<
br /> “Sure, scrambled please.”
“Biddy board with machine oil and two cackleberries! Wreck ’em!” the waitress called as she walked away.
“You come here often?” Cassi asked after the waitress left.
“Often enough,” Mayer said, sipping his coffee. “What have you got for me?”
Cassi pulled the notepad from her purse and began turning pages. “Well, this took a bit of work, but I think I found a connection to a Navajo in the area.”
“Did you now?”
“I found a story from the late 1800’s about a woman who was wanted for the brutal murder of her children and husband—killed them with a hunting knife in the middle of the night! Her name was Hakʼaz Asdzą́ą́,” Cassi said, likely butchering the name. “She was ostracized by the tribe and labeled a witch. The Navajo County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona searched for her for days. They tracked her across the state, but lost her somewhere in Mohave County, near Kingman. They think she crossed into Nevada, but could never prove it. They found a campsite they believed to be hers, but all that was left were the carcasses of several skinned animals.”
“Let me guess, coyotes?”
Cassi tapped her nose.
“But that would mean our skinwalker is a wom . . .” He stopped without finishing his sentence and it was then that Mayer realized the witch hadn’t transformed into his mother at all. She had simply changed back into her own female body. The only part that was his mother was the voice.
“You okay?” Cassi asked.
“I had another run-in with the skinwalker last night. It transformed into my mother. At least I thought it was my mother.”
“I didn’t think it could do that.”
“It can’t, according to the shaman. But it was a woman. When it transformed from beast to human, it was in the form of a woman.”
“Why did you think it was your mother?”
“It spoke in her voice. When it transformed, I just assumed it was her. But it wasn’t, was it? Our skinwalker is a woman.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Mayer. It’s a woman and her name is Hakʼaz Asdzą́ą́.”
“Great, but how did she get to Las Vegas?”
“Be patient,” Cassi said. “Several years later there was a story about a Paiute shaman by the name of Wovoka who worked tirelessly to protect the sacred Paiute area just below the Red Rock Escarpment. He had a wife who died of cholera and a daughter named Thocmentony—Tony for short.”
“I don’t see the connection,” Mayer admitted.
“Neither did I,” Cassi continued. “Until I found other records that revealed more about the shaman and his family. His first wife died shortly after the birth of their daughter. He later married a Navajo woman. It was quite a controversy in the tribe—a Paiute healer marrying a Navajo. She too was a healer. Her name was listed as Giiwedinokwe, but according to the records, she took the Paiute name Besa-Yoona when she married.
“So?” Mayer asked.
“Giiwedinokwe is not a Navajo name. It’s Ojibwe.”
“Okay, so her parents liked the name. There’s no harm in that.”
“Except Giiwedinokwe translates to “woman of the north,” and Hakʼaz Asdzą́ą́ means “cold woman.”
“That’s too close of a coincidence,” Mayer said.
“That’s what I think.”
“So Hakʼaz Asdzą́ą́ has been living here all along under the name Besa-Yoona?”
“It would appear so,” Cassi said.
“You tell any of this to the shaman?”
Cassi shook her head. “I never really got the chance. After he felt better, I let him rest. Besides, I wanted to tell you first.”
“Well, that’s one mystery solved.” Mayer said.
“What’s the other?”
“Why she’s killing people who come on that land.”
The waitress returned with their food and laid it down on the table.
“Simple,” Cassi said after she left. “She’s carrying on the work of her husband and protecting sacred land.”
“I don’t buy it. That would be a selfless act. It doesn’t sound like the creature the shaman described. A person with no redeeming value, possessed by greed, anger, envy, and spite—often revenge. A person that had its heart and soul overtaken with blackness. Someone who must continually kill or perish itself.”
“Well, if it’s not protecting the land, why are all the deaths in the area associated with construction on sacred land?”
It was a good question, but Mayer had no answer. “Maybe this is a clue,” he said, then opened the envelope and poured its contents out on the table.
“What’s this?” Cassi asked.
“Photographs of Vera Krupp and R. J. Hawthorne. The mystery man your friend in the sheriff’s department told you about. I found them in Pierce’s office.” He handed Cassi the receipt. “Paid two hundred big ones for a peeper to tail his partner around. And then there’s this.” he said and pulled the cigarette case out from his inside coat pocket, then handed it to Cassi. “Go ahead. Open it.”
Cassi did as Mayer said and found the engraving. She read it aloud. “To R. J. with all my love, your geliebte.”
“Don’t know what geliebte means, but I’d take odds it’s German.”
“So Hawthorne was having an affair with Vera Krupp?”
“Looks that way.”
“Yet she was trying to thwart his plans for development.” She turned a few pages in her notepad. “Mostly unsuccessfully. The courts repeatedly ruled against her, that is, until she managed to enlist an environmental group who told her the area was the habitat of the desert orangetip.”
“Desert orangetip?” Mayer questioned.
“A butterfly native to the region. With the help of the group, she managed to get an injunction. Put the project on hold.”
“I bet that frosted Pierce but good.”
“Probably, but it was unlikely to have any lasting effect. The court only gave two months for the study. She caught a break with that suicide note.”
“Didn’t she though,” Mayer said.
Cassi took to her French toast. “You said you had another run-in with the skinwalker,” she said between bites. “I hope you didn’t go back to that cave alone.”
Mayer shook his head. “I was at Pierce’s house with him and his hired man when the skinwalker came crashing through the window, but before it did, Hawthorne’s ghost appeared and attacked Pierce. Hawthorne’s voice said, ‘I know what you did and why you did it.’”
“His voice?”
“Yeah, it was Hawthorne’s voice, according to Pierce, but it didn’t come from the ghost. It’s been my experience that some ghosts speak and some don’t. Mostly the ones with malicious intent don’t. I guess it’s more fun that way.”
“If the voice wasn’t coming from Hawthorne’s ghost, then it must have been . . .”
“The skinwalker,” Mayer said, finishing her sentence.
“What do you think it was referring to?”
Mayer picked up his life preserver and dunked it into his cup of Joe, then took a bite. “I’m not sure yet,” he said with a mouth full of donut, “but there are a couple of things that bug me. Like why was the skinwalker able to come crashing through the window? The shaman said it couldn’t enter a house unless it was invited . . .” Mayer paused, the words hitting him for the first time: a skinwalker couldn’t enter a house unless invited. A house . . . or a trailer. It was something he had missed. The skinwalker could not have come into the trailer uninvited. So, Mayer wondered, who invited it in?
“You still with me?” Cassi asked.
The question brought Mayer back. “Where was I?”
“Something about the skinwalker needing to be invited.”
“Right,” Mayer said. “But it scared the devil out of Pierce, so unless he’s some great actor, I’d say he’d never seen the thing before.” Mayer took hold of the cigarette case with his free hand. “And why was Pierce
so terribly fond of this cigarette case? So fond that he didn’t want it destroyed?”
“Why would it be destroyed?”
Mayer told Cassi about the case. How Pierce had removed it from his partner’s dead body and how he was adamant that it remain intact, how the shaman performed a ritual to cleanse the case and break the chain between it and Hawthorne’s ghost.
“Did it work?”
“I’m not even sure it was necessary in the first place.” Mayer said and took another bite of donut. “But skinwalkers can read minds, that’s how it knew my mother’s voice and that’s how it knew what it was that Pierce had done to Hawthorne.”
“So what do we do now?”
Mayer smiled. “We find out exactly what it was the skinwalker discovered about Pierce.”
Twenty-Six
UPON FINISHING BREAKFAST, Mayer drove Cassi out to Diamond V Ranch. The trip was mostly quiet with Mayer running everything through his head and, he suspected, Cassi doing the same from her angle. Mayer had many questions for Mrs. Krupp, not the least of which involved the amulet he found in his mother’s diary. That, however, was a subject he wasn’t quite sure how to broach.
As they turned onto the dirt road leading to the ranch, Mayer decided not to tell Cassi about the amulet or its apparent connection to Krupp’s husband and his penchant for the occult—that was best left between him and Vera. When they reached the ranch house, Mayer parked in the drive, put his lid in place, and removed the envelope from the seat. Then he walked Cassi up the path toward the house. They had made it most of the way before running into Buster, who was on his knees collecting dandelions and placing them in a metal bucket.
He looked up at Mayer through dark cheaters. “Ah, Mr. Mayer. You have come back.”
Mayer found it interesting that Krupp’s hired man knew his name. He didn’t remember introducing himself on his first visit until after the man left. “That I have,” he said.
Buster stood, removed his gloves, then used them to brush off the knees of his dungarees. “Have you come for Mrs. Krupp or for the witch?”