White Shell Woman

by James D. Doss

“Then you know she was a student here at Rocky Mountain Polytechnic.”

  “Of course.”

  “What else do you know?”

  Parris frowned sourly at his toast. Murder and breakfast didn’t go well together. “Miss Tavishuts had an off-campus apartment.”

  Moon looked up from his plate. “I suppose the FBI’s been all over it.”

  “Bureau cops were there the day after the body was discovered. Forensics detail lifted prints, vacuumed up dust, took umpteen dozen photos. The usual.”

  “I guess it’s taped off.”

  “Like the mummy’s face.”

  “But you could get me inside if I wanted to have a look.” Moon speared a greasy link of pork sausage.

  Parris eyed a chunk of pale-green melon, and let it lie. “You intend to mess around in the FBI’s business?”

  “Yeah.”

  The matukach grinned. “When do we start?”

  The Ute investigator thought about this. There were things to do at the ranch. But it was just an hour from the Columbine to Granite Creek and Rocky Mountain Polytechnic’s campus. “How about I drop by your office tomorrow morning?”

  The chief of police assumed a weary, harried expression. “I’ll try to fit you into my busy schedule.” It’ll be like old times.

  Moon’s cell phone chirped anxiously, like a small bird smothering in his coat pocket. He ignored the bothersome thing.

  Scott Parris spread sugarless orange marmalade on the toast. He knew how Charlie Moon detested the interruption of a telephone call. Especially when he was enjoying a tasty meal. “Might be something important.”

  “Should’ve left the danged thing in the car,” the Ute said. “Pete Bushman’s always calling me about some problem at the ranch. Something’s always breaking down. Or getting sick.” The telephone continued to chirp. Maybe the battery will run down.

  “Might be the tribal chairman,” Parris said with a sly grin. “Maybe Oscar Sweetwater wants you to do some serious police work.”

  With a grumble, Moon pressed the plastic contraption to his ear. “Yeah?”

  “Charlie—is that you?”

  He recognized the voice. “What’s on your mind, Dolly? I need to pick something up before I head for home?” Last time it was a bushel of potatoes and six dozen eggs.

  “Oh no. I just wanted to let you know that there’s someone here to see you.”

  His heart did a drum roll. Maybe Camilla had shown up. Sweet Thing, who lived on her horse ranch in California, had a habit of dropping in unannounced. Nice habit. “Who?”

  “Your aunt Daisy.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “At least that’s who she says she is. Pete thinks maybe she’s some thief who intends to ransack your house.”

  “He’s an optimist.” Moon laughed out loud. “No self-respecting felon would impersonate my aunt.”

  “There was another lady with her,” the ranch foreman’s wife said in a conspiratorial tone. “Tiny little thing.”

  This was beginning to come together. “An elderly white woman?”

  “Could’ve been Moses’ widow.” There was a smile in Dolly’s voice. “And she was driving a beat-up old car that smoked like a haystack on fire.”

  Bingo.

  “They went on up to the big house. Pete says I should’ve kept ’em here at our place till you got home.”

  “Don’t worry, Dolly. They’re harmless.” Not that they hadn’t been a problem once or twice. But after that big hullabaloo a couple of years ago, they had learned their lesson. Besides, they’re too old and tired to cause any real trouble.

  Charlie Moon was an optimist.

  THE DEPOSIT

  Having parked near the cabin, the pair of aged women stood near the dusty automobile’s rear bumper. They looked this way and that.

  Louise-Marie LaForte spoke first. “This makes me awful nervous.”

  Daisy’s hands tingled with inner electricity, her mouth was dry as sandpaper. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  This assertion did little to reassure the French-Canadian woman, who stared at the shimmering surface of the mountain lake.

  “Go ahead,” Daisy said urgently.

  Louise-Marie shook her head. “Not me.”

  The Ute woman managed a smirk. “What’s the matter—you afraid?”

  “Yes.” And she was. Once things like this get started, you never know how they’ll turn out.

  THE WITHDRAWAL

  Charlie Moon saw a plume of dust in the distance. It was billowing up behind a black sedan. “Aha,” he said.

  Daisy Perika was feeling quite smug, silently congratulating herself on a job well done. Considering the unexpected difficulties, things had turned out just fine. And then she saw something she didn’t want to see. It looked like Charlie Moon’s car turning off the highway, into the gate. Just five more minutes and we’d have been out of here. She muttered an obscenity.

  Louise-Marie clucked her tongue. “Shame on you, Daisy, saying such things on the Sabbath day.”

  Moon slowed the Expedition to a growling crawl, then stopped in the one-lane gravel road to block the path of the oncoming Oldsmobile. The sedan slowed, then stopped with an air of nervous uncertainty. Like a sitting rabbit, ready to jump at the least provocation.

  Ignoring his aunt, he approached the driver’s side of the old car. The Ute tipped his expensive gray Stetson at the elfin woman behind the wheel. “Well, look who’s here. Is this Louise-Marie LaForte, or her good-looking twin sister?”

  The tiny white woman looked up at the tall Indian. “Hello, Charlie.” Such a sweet young man.

  “You come to the ranch to buy yourself a side of beef?”

  “Oh no. Daisy needed to come up here, so I drove her.”

  “My aunt came all the way up here just to see me?”

  Louise-Marie dithered. “Well, I suppose she…well…perhaps—”

  Daisy, worried that her companion’s aimless mumblings might decide to go somewhere, interrupted. “Next time I come to see you, Charlie Moon, make sure you’re at home.”

  He leaned over to look through the window at his irascible relative. “Seems to me, you were supposed to be at home this fine Sunday morning. At least that’s where I thought I’d find you. After I drove all the way to your place.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “To take you to church. Just like on every Sunday morning.”

  “I don’t need you to take me to mass,” she huffed. “I got plenty of friends who can drive me anywhere I want to go.” She elbowed her aged chauffeur. “Let’s get going.”

  Louise-Marie peeped under the steering-wheel rim. “I can’t, dear. Your nephew’s big car has got the road blocked.”

  Daisy wrung her hands in exasperation. “Well, go around it.”

  Moon didn’t like the sound of this. “Hold on now—”

  But Louise-Marie—who could not see the irregular landscape near the Oldsmobile—had already stepped on the accelerator pedal and hung a hard right into the sage. The slick tires spun in the sandy soil for a few seconds, then caught hold. And off they lurched in a churning cloud of dust. With a fine assortment of local flora snagged on the underside of the ancient car.

  Moon watched them go. I’d sure like to know what that was all about.

  In time, he would know. But not soon enough.

  GOING HOME

  The blacktop road led south. Loath to witness Louise-Marie’s erratic driving, Daisy Perika closed her eyes. She hoped her French-Canadian crony would believe she was asleep.

  The smaller of the elderly women squinted under the arc of steering wheel. “I don’t know,” Louise-Marie LaForte said.

  There was no response from her companion.

  The driver repeated her words, louder this time. “I don’t know.”

  Daisy ground her teeth. What you don’t know could fill a book. Great big book.

  Louise-Marie adjusted the steering so the painted white line on the pavement was a
ligned with the hood ornament. That keeps just the same amount of space on both sides of the car. Makes me less likely to run into the ditch. She glanced at her passenger. “Daisy?”

  “You woke me up,” the Ute woman grumped.

  “I don’t know if we did the right thing.”

  “Sure we did.”

  Louise-Marie shook her gray head. “The more I think about it, the worse I feel.”

  “I’ll do the thinking. You keep your eyes on the road.”

  There was a heavy bumpity-thump under the aged Oldsmobile.

  Daisy opened her eyes. “What was that?”

  “I think I run over something—maybe a jackrabbit. Or a pig.” Louise-Marie lifted her foot from the accelerator pedal. “What should I do?”

  “You’ve already done it. Keep on driving.”

  10

  The Sun asked them what they would do with this weapon…They named the monsters one by one…The Sun sat with his head down and thought a great thought, for Yietso, the One-Walking Giant, was also his son.

  —Sandoval, Hastin Tlo’tsi hee

  THE APARTMENT

  THE CHIEF OF police and the Ute tribal investigator stood side by side in the parking lot. They gave the U-shaped building a once-over. Then a twice-over. In spite of a fresh coat of green paint and a glistening red-tile roof, the squat structure managed to look ugly. In the grassy center enclosed by the U, there was a scattering of plastic lawn furniture surrounding an unattended swimming pool. Along with a Styrofoam cup, a few thousand dead insects floated on the oily surface.

  “Place looks like a third-rate motel,” Moon observed.

  Parris nodded his battered felt hat. “Used to be the Rest Easy Motor Hotel. Got bypassed by the new highway. Owners remodeled. Converted the place into off-campus housing for Rocky Mountain Polytechnic students.”

  “Where’s April’s apartment?” The Ute said this as if she still lived here. As if she still lived.

  The matukach pointed his nose upward. “Second floor. Number 226.”

  The chief of police peeled back one edge of the yellow POLICE—DO NOT CROSS tape intended as a barrier to the apartment where the young woman had—up until her last moments—lived an ordinary life.

  Parris turned a key in the slot, then stood aside. He indicated with a polite gesture that his friend should have the honor of entering first.

  And so Moon did. The interior was quiet and gloomy, with the smell of an old attic. There was the unsettling sense that no one had lived here for decades. The Ute went to the window; he pulled a frayed cord that squeaked over a plastic pulley. A bright slot appeared between dark blue curtains, letting in a broad stream of sunlight. A trillion-billion dust particles swam against the current, as if to pass through the glass.

  The lawmen looked around without comment. There wasn’t much to see. Two small rooms and a bath. They were standing in the rectangle that served as living room and kitchenette.

  Parris gestured with a jerk of his elbow. “Bedroom’s over there.”

  Moon paused in the doorway. Beside a neatly made bed there was a small, battered desk. Like a student might find in a discount used-furniture store. He took a step inside the bedroom-study and noted that the FBI forensics specialists had worked with their usual professionalism. Which was to say there was not the slightest hint they’d been in the dead woman’s apartment. Everything was precisely in its place—or precisely out of its place—just as April Tavishuts had left it. A pair of faded jeans draped over the back of a chair. Her bedroom slippers, one under a lamp table, another on the threshold of the bathroom door. As if she’d kicked them off, to remain where they landed. On her desk was a perfectly rectangular spot that was free of dust. Moon assumed that April’s laptop computer had been removed by the FBI. Around the vacant space was the usual array of a college student’s paraphernalia. An assortment of pens and pencils. A white plastic ruler. A football-shaped eraser. A RadioShack calculator with solar-cell power. On an unpainted shelf over the desk, there was a row of books. An American Heritage dictionary. The Chaco Meridian. The Book of the Navajo. Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians. Ancient Ruins of the Southwest. There were a half dozen volumes on Native American petroglyphs; most of these had library markings. Charlie Moon reached for a book he hadn’t seen before: When the Rocks Begin to Speak, by LaVan Martineau. The Ute investigator wondered whether the rocks had spoken to April. Like a prayer book whose spine was cracked from much use, the volume opened in his hand to page 179. The heading of the section was “Cryptanalysis—The Forgotten Tool.” April had left something to mark the page. The bookmark was a folded, tissue-thin sheet that had the yellowish look of parchment. Moon unfolded the delicate paper. On it was a carefully crafted sketch of the recently discovered petroglyph at Ghost Wolf Mesa—the hourglass-shaped Twin War Gods, spears in hand. There were penciled entries by the pointed weapons. A closer look revealed that these were compass markings. April had apparently recorded precisely where on Companion and Chimney Rocks the spears were pointing. There was a trace of something else on the tissue. He switched on a gooseneck desk lamp and held the makeshift chart close to the sixty-watt bulb. A pair of diverging lines had been erased, but the indentations of the sharp-pointed pencil were still visible. The marks had been made with a straightedge—probably the plastic ruler on April’s desk. The erased lines were precisely aligned with the spears. Which all proved exactly nothing. Except that April had been fascinated by the petroglyph that archaeologist Amanda Silk had privately pronounced a forgery. This was hardly surprising. April was—no, make that had been—a graduate student in anthropology. The mysterious petroglyph was meat and potatoes for such folk. Maybe April had imagined that there was a fabulous Anasazi treasure somewhere out there where the spears pointed. But now the young woman was no more. The sudden realization of her absolute absence made him feel empty. Diminished. The Ute investigator forced his thoughts back to her sketch of the Twin War Gods. He wondered why April had drawn the lines parallel with the spears. And perhaps more interesting, why had she erased them?

  “Hey,” Scott said from the doorway, “we’ve got company.”

  It’ll be the feds. Moon quickly replaced the book on the shelf. And realized that he still had April’s sketched chart in his hand. He stuffed it into his coat pocket. The next face to appear in the doorway was young. Female. Blonde. Pretty enough to unsettle a man who had a pocketful of evidence.

  She watched the startled look on Moon’s face fade into one of relief. “So who were you expecting, the FBI?”

  She’s a mind reader. Moon grinned at the familiar face. “Don’t I know you?”

  “You should. I’m Melina Castro. April’s friend.” A gray shadow passed over her fair features. She took a deep breath, then exhaled the evil spirits away. “I met you that night at Chimney Rock.” It was unnecessary to be more specific. There was only one That Night.

  “Sure. You and the archaeologist—”

  “Dr. Silk.”

  “—found the body.” But that wasn’t completely accurate. While this younger woman had seen the male suspect standing over April’s makeshift grave, Amanda Silk had seen nothing. If the murderer was ever apprehended and put in a lineup, that fact was highly unfortunate. In the peculiar arithmetic of the law, the sum of two witnesses is infinitely greater than one. “So what brings you here?”

  “I live here.” She glanced over her shoulder. “My apartment’s just down the hall. Number 229.” You can drop by anytime, Treetop Tall.

  The chief of police considered this answer unresponsive to Moon’s question. Scott Parris assumed his official expression. “You have some interest in Miss Tavishuts’s apartment?”

  The blonde grad student shrugged with a slow, feline grace. “Ever since…you know—well, it’s been taped off.”

  “And locked,” Parris added.

  She avoided his inquisitive gaze. “It’s just that I went to take out the trash and saw her door open. So I came to have a look. Thought I
should see who was rummaging around in April’s apartment.”

  Okay. So you’re a good citizen. “Then I suppose introductions are in order.” Parris introduced himself.

  She laughed. “I’ve been in Granite Creek long enough to know you’re chief of police here.”

  “I see you’re already acquainted with Charlie Moon.” Parris said this with a hint of sarcasm. “But you may not know everything about him. Charlie’s a modest fellow. I bet he hasn’t told you that he’s a special investigator for the Southern Ute tribe.”

  “My. A special investigator.”

  The matukach was warming to the game. “That’s because Charlie deals with special crimes. The kind that are altogether too challenging for us ordinary police.”

  Her enormous eyes grew even larger. “Sounds terribly exciting. But dangerous work like that must really be awfully stressful.”

  “It does make life tense,” Moon said with a harried look. “Some days I can hardly keep a meal down.”

  “Miss Castro?”

  She turned to Parris. “Yes?”

  “I want you to know that the sudden appearance of an attractive young lady like yourself is a rare treat.”

  “Why thank you.”

  “But I regret to have to tell you—these premises are currently the subject of an official police homicide investigation. And off-limits to those with no business here.”

  Her yellow hair seemed to bristle. “But I have a reason to be here.”

  “Which is?”

  “April and I were good friends—we borrowed things from each other. I thought maybe I could get some of my stuff back.” She added quickly: “If it’s okay with you.”

  Moon, realizing that Parris was about to give Melina a polite heave-ho, intervened before his friend could heave. “What sort of things did she borrow?”

  Melina Castro shrugged again. “We exchanged clothes sometimes. I think she still has one of my blouses. And maybe a scarf.” She glanced toward April’s bedroom, more particularly at the desk and bookshelf. “And I loaned her a couple of books. Stuff like that.”

  Moon followed her gaze. “Which books are yours?”