The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset: 1-6

by Ethan Cross

  She opened the Lisa Frank cover and was immediately appalled by the imperfect, crooked handwriting of her childhood self. Grimacing, she scanned a few pages and was about to put the notebook away when she felt something stiff between the pages.

  The short stack of photos she found tucked inside the crinkled pages brought back a flood of long lost memories. Her family looked so happy. Her little brother with her and her mom on a wooden bench, their grinning faces smeared with butter and sweet corn. She vaguely remembered that day. An American Indian event called a “Powwow” had been taking place at the local university. Her dad, who was a Discovery Channel junkie, had insisted on them all being in attendance. He had taken the picture. Maggie could only remember vague flashes and emotions from that day. She wished that she could remember those happy times better. It would have been one of the last outings while her family was still together. But she had been so young, and it seemed that everything about her childhood, except for the day her brother was taken, was nothing more than an obscure collection of shadows.

  A folded, yellowed piece of paper had been tucked away behind the photos. She unfolded it to reveal a child’s eye view of the Powwow–bright colors and triangle-shaped teepees interspersed with feathers that looked like cattails. In the center of the drawing was a group of American Indian dancers depicted in colored pencil. The view of the dancing men was from the side with their rectangular arms twisted in strange ways to help illustrate their movements.

  But there was one dancer who Maggie had drawn facing her. He was dressed just like the others, except that his eyes were piercing black holes. The hair on her arms and neck stood up and a chill shot down her spine. Maggie felt like she was going to throw up as the fear swept over her. She frowned at the drawing, not understanding why those black eyes had such an effect.

  Then Maggie’s ears, honed by years of training, caught the sound of car doors opening and closing outside. Folding up the drawing and tucking it back into her old journal with the picture, she went to meet the new arrivals, expecting it to be her grandma and mom, but not blind to the possibility that Marcus had found out where she’d gone. She’d told him she was fine and not to come after her before ditching the burner phone so he couldn’t trace it, but her team was good. She imagined it was only a matter of time before they located her.

  She felt bad, sneaking around like this, but Marcus wouldn’t understand… No, Maggie was lying to herself. She knew Marcus would have understood, probably would have dropped everything to help her, but she didn’t want him involved unless he really needed to be. This was her burden, not his.

  She reached the living room window that faced the driveway and parted the lace curtains to see an old silver Buick and two women carrying groceries toward the house. Maggie rushed to unlock the doors, smiling at her grandmother’s surprise. “Hi Grandma, let me help with these.”

  “I’ve got it!” Grandma Helen told her sharply. “Help your mother.”

  Maggie obeyed, moving to her mom. The woman, who looked so much like an older version of herself, said nothing, merely releasing the bags without showing any recognition of her daughter. “Hi Mom.”

  Her mother’s blonde hair was graying now, pulled back in the same French braid Grandma Helen had plaited into Maggie’s hair for years. Peering at her mother’s pale face, Maggie could see the blue of her veins just under the surface of her skin. After a moment, she smiled at Maggie in a vague way, her eyes almost looking through her. “Hello, Magpie.”

  Maggie let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d held and smiled at the old nickname. “It’s me, Mama.”

  The older woman looked away and walked toward the house, chuckling and saying, “Magpies are one of the smartest birds in the world. They’re one of the only animals that can recognize itself in the mirror.”

  Maggie held her tears in check. She’d hoped, perhaps naively, that her mother would have gotten better, but it seemed her mom was still sleepwalking her way through life. Maggie knew it was mostly the drugs—everything from antidepressants to antipsychotics—that caused the haze. Her and Grandma Helen had went round and round for years about her mother’s meds and dosages, but for Grandma, the most important thing was that her only daughter remained calm and didn’t try to hurt herself.

  Maggie let her mom go into the house ahead of her, knowing that she wouldn’t close the door behind them. Juggling the bags as she twisted the deadbolt, Maggie followed the two older women into the kitchen. Grandma was already organizing the new purchases to perfection in her cabinets. Helen said, “I was expecting you later today, Maggie. How long have you been here?”

  “Not long. Thirty minutes or so,” Maggie answered, staying out of the older woman’s way as she bustled around the kitchen. She still remembered the painful pinches her grandmother would give her ears if she was caught underfoot. Grandma’s silver hair was cut short and curled, as Maggie knew, nightly with rollers. The old woman’s face was lined by age and a sour disposition. As items were slid into their proper places, Maggie noted that Grandma Helen’s organizational pattern hadn’t changed a bit. All canned foods in the same cabinet, divided by vegetable or fruit. From them on, they were further broken down by color, cut, and can size.

  Maggie felt her shoulders relax. She followed the same pattern at her own apartment. Having things in proper order made her realize how much she had actually missed being home.

  Then Helen said, “So… Maggie, how’s everything with your boyfriend? Marcus is his name, right?”

  Maggie blinked at her grandmother. How had she known that she had a boyfriend, let alone his name? Maggie had never told her about Marcus. Maggie didn’t really talk to anyone about her relationship. Who would she tell? It had been years since she’d had any girlfriends. She was slowly making a few friends–Emily Morgan was one, Lisa Spinelli another. Even then, they already knew about Marcus.

  Her mouth opened, then closed. She wasn’t sure how to respond. Her grandmother seemed oblivious to Maggie’s shock. She merely went about her dinner preparations, rinsing and peeling some potatoes she’d taken from her pantry. Grandma had acted the same way when Maggie was in high school and the old woman had something to hold over her granddaughter’s head.

  Maggie asked, “Has Marcus called here looking for me?”

  “He’s worried about you.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m worried too.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “He seemed like a nice young man.”

  “He is.”

  Grandma Helen stopped mid-peel and turned to look her granddaughter in the eyes. “Magpie, I need to ask you something… Something important about you and your man friend, Marcus…”

  Maggie tensed up fearing that she was about to get a lecture on premarital sex. She replied, “Okay…”

  With a slow nod and sad eyes, Helen said, “Are the two of you…eating organic?”

  The tension fell from Maggie’s shoulders. Shaking her head, she started to say, “Grandma—”

  But Helen interrupted, “I know it’s hard to maintain when you’re on the road as much as you are, but you just have to plan ahead.”

  “Grandma—”

  “The government is trying to kill us with all the chemicals in our food. You have to protect yourself. What are you going to do when you go to have my grandbabies, and your womb is a shriveled up wasteland from all those preservatives and pesticides and Lord knows what else.”

  The comment stung—since Maggie had in fact learned that she was unable to have children—but her grandmother had no way of knowing that. She said, “We take very good care of ourselves, Grandma.”

  “Really. Are you drinking soda? I remember when you were using those pink sweetener packets in your coffee, and I caught you. Nothing artificial, girl. How many times I have I said. You haven’t moved onto the blues have you? And don’t let them fool you with those new yellow ones. Those are the worst of the lot!”

  “No, Grandma, we eat all organic,
chemical free, all natural products. I drink nothing but water and black coffee.”

  Grandma Helen narrowed her eyes with the don’t-lie-to-me look that she had perfected over the years.

  Maggie held up her hands in surrender. “Do you want to examine my next bowel movement?”

  “How about I just go check the passenger floorboard of your car?”

  She winced, knowing that she had been busted.

  After a few seconds, Grandma Helen said, “We can talk more over dinner. Go finish unpacking and clean yourself up. Must have been a long trip.” Then, with a teasing smile, she added, “Now get out of my kitchen and let me prepare some real food for you.”

  Maggie obeyed, leaving her grandma to her preparations and heading back to her bedroom. The drawers should have been dry by now. She could put away her clothes, arrange her personal items, and replacing the newly cleaned bedclothes.

  She had just finished when she heard her grandmother yell that dinner was done. It had taken her nearly an hour to get things the way she wanted them.

  The three women were quiet at first as they took their assigned places and loaded their plates, but then as Grandma handed Maggie the porcelain bowl of fried potatoes, Helen said, “So tell me more about Marcus.”

  Maggie took the bowl, scooping some potatoes onto her plate, making sure that none of her food touched, “I thought we were done with this.”

  Her grandmother scoffed. “You thought. No, I want to know who caught your fancy, Miss Magdalania.”

  Magdalania… Maggie winced. She hated her given name. It was so old-fashioned, but her grandfather had used her real name all the time during her youth. “What do you want to know?”

  “Is he cute?” Grandma Helen asked, chuckling as Maggie’s face flushed.

  Clearing her throat and changing directions, she said, “His older brother works with us too. They’re both highly intelligent. Do you remember those brain teaser puzzles that Tommy and I used to play with Grandpa? Marcus and his brother would probably solve them on the first try.” Maggie continued on for a while, telling heavily-edited stories of Marcus and Ackerman’s exploits. She realized halfway through her own stories how much she missed Marcus. And maybe even Ackerman, a little. She added, “I feel like I’m the Batman of the group. I’m a mere human being, but everyone else on the team have superpowers. It’s a little surreal at times.”

  On her last sentence, Maggie matched gazes with her mother and thought she saw a vague flash of understanding or interest. But then the haze returned, and Mom mumbled, “Sounds nice.”

  The idle chit-chat carried on through the rest of the meal, and it wasn’t until the three were working together to clear the table that Maggie worked up the nerve to ask, “Mom, I need to ask you something important… about that day. The day that Tommy was taken.”

  Standing halfway between the table and the sink, her mother stared at the plate in her hands as if it held the meaning of existence. The older women’s facial muscles twitched ever so slightly, but Maggie noticed her mother’s hands turn white and begin to shake.

  Maggie tried again, “I know it’s hard, Mama. But I can’t just let it go this time. What happened the day we lost Tommy? I need to know everything you remember.”

  The plate fell from her mother’s hands and shattered against the kitchen’s tile floor. Mother merely stood there as if in a dream. There was a sort of strange confusion in her eyes as she fled the room. Maggie heard her mother’s footsteps dragging toward her bedroom and then the click of a door’s lock.

  The kitchen fell eerily quiet.

  After a moment, Grandma Helen sighed and said, “Maggie, you know better than to talk about Tommy around her.”

  “But I think I can find the man who took him. And…Tommy could still be alive, Grandma!”

  Meeting her gaze, Helen reached out and took Maggie’s hand. Her grandmother seldom ever showed signs of physical affection. They were not huggers and hand-holders in Helen’s household. The old women’s eyes displayed the same kind of gravitas as she said, “I know that you want to find this man. And maybe you can. But Tommy is gone, and we can never get him back.”

  Grandma’s eyes filled with tears, and Maggie tried to remember the last time that she saw her grandmother cry. Grandpa’s funeral perhaps?

  Helen continued, “That evil man has taken so much from us. He took my grandson, he destroyed your family, broke your mother’s heart and then her mind. He has stolen so much happiness from this family. Please, Maggie, don’t let him take you from us too.”

  Unable to hold back her tears any longer, Maggie broke down and joined her grandmother in mourning yet again for all the Taker had stolen from them.

  8

  John Canyon had killed in both hot and cold blood. He had cut his teeth on the Rez inside the Native Mob, and he had the scars and the tattoos to prove it. When he had decided to escape that life and join the military, the teardrops of ink that ran down his left cheek were converted by a skilled artist over to small eagle feathers. He had kept that tradition going during his two tours in the first Gulf War. By the time he returned to the Rez, as a war hero, he had nearly half his face covered with feathers and other small icons which held significance to each life he had taken.

  When he returned to civilian life, the gang had tried to bring him back into the fold. He accepted them with open arms at first and then killed a few of the leaders as examples. The gangs on the Rez were typically not connected to the larger organizations from which they derived their names. They were just kids modeling another oppressed society of which they empathized. But after the war, John Canyon had a vision. A dream of a better kingdom for The People.

  And he was pleased with the contribution he had made to the Diné so far. He had united several of the gangs into a true criminal empire, and then he had turned his attention to the belegana’s greed.

  When Canyon had killed to unite the scattered bangers of the Navajo nation, he had done so with ice in his veins. This was what needed to happen, for the good of his people.

  But tonight, as John Canyon brought his brand new GMC pickup truck to a halt with a screech of brakes in front of the local tribal police outpost, his blood boiled and murder was certainly on his mind.

  He had built something in this valley, a kingdom built of hard work and blood. He had a family and a good name and a legacy to leave behind for his son. And then this blonde-haired blue-eyed agent from the Department of Justice had come around digging up the past, speaking the names of the dead, and inviting the victim’s chindii into his home. And as he had feared, the spirits had called another dark wind down upon him in the form of this stranger, this coyote, who had blown into the valley and disappeared with his son.

  It was a good thing that John Canyon didn’t fully believe in the old superstitions. He only believed in things that he could see and touch, and right now, he was about to reach out and touch the man who had taken his son.

  The Roanhorse Navajo Nation Police Substation was one of those old mobile offices that schools and bureaucracies fell in love with during the mid-80s. It was little more than a fancy double-wide trailer, and just like everything else that had to contend with constantly blowing sand and the sun’s barrage, the corrugated metal shell of the station was faded and in desperate need of a coat of paint.

  He knew the inside of the building didn’t look much better. It was a large open room with one partition for the captain’s office and one for the drunk tank. But as John Canyon entered the station, all he could see was his enemy and the only emotion he could feel was rage. Before exiting the truck, John had grabbed his semi-auto Remington shotgun from the gun rack and loaded it full of double-aught buckshot.

  Now, as he stepped into the police station, he ignored the three uniformed officers standing in the middle of the room. Instead, he headed straight for the drunk tank and the man sitting on the bunk in the back of the cage.

  The bastard on the wrong side of the bars didn’t even flinch when Cany
on raised the shotgun. The shirtless man simply cocked his head in curiosity. The strange white man didn’t even blink when John squeezed the trigger and unleashed a volley of pellets into the wall beside the prisoner.

  Yazzie yelled, “What the hell, John?”

  But Canyon ignored him. Instead, he redirected the aim of the barrel at the prisoner’s chest and said, “Tell me where to find my son, or I swear to any and every god listening that I will kill you where you stand.”

  The prisoner said, “You seem upset, Mr. Canyon. Perhaps you should take a moment.”

  “What have you done with Toby, you son of a bitch!”

  “First of all, don’t ever talk about my mother like that again, or I will force you to consume your own testicles. Now, I’d love for you to sit down so we can have nice little chat, but you don’t seem to be in a very receptive mood. Perhaps you’d like to leave the room and come back in, but this time without the childish temper tantrum.”

  Canyon had never wanted to end a life as much as he did at that moment. The rage threatened to overwhelm his reasoning. It had been a very long time since anyone had disrespected him as much as this man. In his younger days, he would have blown the stranger’s head off and sorted out the consequences later, but age had a way of driving home the fact that every action had a consequence, for every choice a man made he had to pay a price. Whether it be overworking a deteriorating body or having one too many pieces of cake, repercussions were assured. And now, he wanted to kill this man with all his being, but the potential cost would be too high to pay.