I frowned. “Moonflowers?”
“Jimsonweed,” he clarified, “Datura. Strong as shit, from what Black said.”
“Ah.” I frowned, remembering a few cases of that I’d seen in San Francisco. “Sounds like Mr. Wolf is lucky he’s alive, if he was out there doing that alone.”
“Yeah, well… Manny says he was never the same after,” Cowboy added grimly. “When he came back to the rez, he started recruiting people, especially kids. He said he needed ‘em young, to train ‘em up for some kind of revolution he’d hallucinated out on those red rocks. He said the ancient gods told him to do it. He recruited his younger brothers first, then his cousins, then his nieces and nephews. Then kids of friends of his from school… then their friends. He eventually got banished after one of his followers killed someone. A little girl.”
“A little girl was killed?” I said frowning.
“No.” Cowboy shook his head. “No, the little girl killed a couple of tourists. Adults. Black says they were out climbing or something, here visiting from Oregon. She threw rocks down on them, hitting them off the cliff face they were on. They landed on the bottom, injured, and she smashed their skulls in.”
“Jesus.” I grimaced. “Where is she now?”
“Juvenile detention of some kind,” Angel said, glancing over from the road. “She’s in some kind of mental health ward, since Wolf was apparently feeding those kids datura and peyote and mushrooms and whatever else. She’s only twelve,” Angel added, her voice grim. “She was eleven when she killed those adults.”
Still grimacing, I nodded, taking a longer drink of the Americano.
“Black wants you to talk to her,” Cowboy added, studying her face. “You all right with that, doc? He thought maybe you could look into seeing her tomorrow.”
I exhaled, rearranging myself on the seat.
“Of course.” Still frowning, I added, “What’s the deal with the vampire’s clothing? Black was on about that last night, too. Did he tell you why he was so interested in that?”
Cowboy shrugged, glancing at Angel.
Then both of them looked at me.
“Dunno,” Cowboy said. “He just said it was wrong, somehow.”
“Yeah,” I said, pursing my lips. “He said that to me, too. But it was bugging him, I could tell. It’s a weird detail for Black to obsess on.”
Angel snorted. “Really? Is it, Miri?”
Thinking about her words, I grunted, in spite of myself.
“Maybe not,” I admitted. “But still. There’s got to be a reason.”
Still thinking, I felt my jaw firm.
“All right,” I said. “I’m here. Can I go see the girl now?”
Angel looked over at me, her eyes a touch wider. “Now? Don’t you want to go back to the hotel first? Take a nap? Unpack? Maybe jump in the pool?”
I shook my head, my mouth still pursed. “I’ve looked at enough resort pools to last me a lifetime, Ang,” I informed her with a sigh. I checked my watch. “It’s only two o’clock. I’m here to work. Take me to the work. They’re keeping her in Santa Fe, I’m assuming?”
There was a silence while Angel and Cowboy exchanged another look.
Then Cowboy smiled, even as Angel rolled her eyes, as if in defeat.
I couldn’t help noticing they were already at the point in their new relationship where they didn’t need to talk a whole lot to communicate. I was still watching the two of them, unable to help noticing things pass between them, when Cowboy let out a real laugh, clapping me on the shoulder in a friendly way.
“You’re back in the shit again, ain’tcha, doc?” he grinned. “That didn’t take long.”
Grunting at his words, I watched as he sat back on the backseat bench, that smile still toying at his lips as he gazed out the tinted windows of the SUV. I was still looking at him when he pulled a phone out of his jean jacket pocket, punching a number after he swiped the front screen.
I knew he was probably calling Black.
Black, or maybe Nick’s detective pal from the F.B.I., Jasper Natani.
Leaning back in the leather seat with a sigh, I gazed out my own window, squinting at the swath of desert to the west of us, and the scattering of houses I could see from the freeway. Most of them had stucco or adobe walls. Most bordered on dilapidated.
I knew a good chunk of Albuquerque was poor––working poor, at least––especially in the southern part of the city and in swaths of the downtown area, away from the richer neighborhoods on the northwest mesa, and especially those in the northeast, where mansions lived at the foot of the Sandia Mountains.
Santa Fe, by contrast, was a lot wealthier.
Movie stars had homes and ranches outside of Santa Fe. So did a number of wealthy tech moguls and Wall Street types.
It figured that if Black was going to buy property here, it would be in Santa Fe, not down here, in the more middle class and military family suburbs of Albuquerque.
I hadn’t been in this part of the world in years.
I used to know it pretty well, when I was young.
Me and my sister used to come out here, even after Mom and Dad died.
Feeling a different pain in my light at the thought, I pushed the memories from my mind, turning my head to give Angel a wan smile.
“I guess I am,” I murmured belatedly, taking another sip of coffee. “I guess I am back in it now.”
Angel laughed, gunning the gas to slip past a long-haul truck when she saw an opening in the traffic. Without looking over really, she smiled too, shaking her head before she reached out and patted me affectionately on the thigh.
“I missed you, Miriam,” she said.
Clasping her hand in return, I smiled back.
“I missed you too, Ang.”
For some reason, my eyes stung as I said it. My throat closed too, maybe just from the simple sincerity of both of our words, or maybe because of how tired I was.
I realized how isolated I’d been for the last seven or eight weeks, staring at the ocean when I wasn’t working on psychic skills, going for the occasional swim or long walk on the beach and talking to no one but resort staff and my uncle for days on end.
I hadn’t called a single person the whole time I was there.
I’d barely talked to my uncle, apart from during the training itself.
“I missed you, too,” I repeated, my throat tightening.
Wiping my face, I squeezed her hand a second time, smiling more genuinely.
She gripped my fingers back, holding them fiercely.
We drove like that for most of the way to Santa Fe.
7
THE COYOTE AND THE DEAD
WE PULLED UP to the gate in front of White Rock State Hospital, stopping the SUV before a high, reinforced fence topped with razor wire so we could show our IDs to the guards working the booth.
Jasper “Red” Natani, Nick’s friend from the F.B.I., who now worked for the B.I.A. apparently, called ahead for us, so the security guards already had our name on a list by the time we drove all the way out there from Albuquerque.
I’d forgotten just how much of New Mexico was more or less empty space.
Despite its name, the maximum-security, state-run psychiatric correctional facility was located a good thirty miles outside the town of White Rock. White Rock itself was small, with a population of barely six thousand people, most of whom worked either at the correctional facility, or at the nearby Los Alamos Labs.
The town of Los Alamos wasn’t much bigger really, and felt strangely cut off from the rest of the world when we drove through there on our way out here.
In all, it took us roughly two hours in total to get out here, given the smattering of traffic we hit around Albuquerque, and the fact that it was a good seventy miles just to reach Santa Fe from the Albuquerque Airport.
“They keep a child in here?” I muttered, looking up at the white-painted fence and the razor wire on top. “This looks more like an adult facility.”
“
I think it was the only place they had for her here, meaning in New Mexico,” Cowboy murmured, finger saluting the guard when the uniformed officer handed back his ID. “Black said her family asked if she could be kept somewhere in New Mexico, so they made accommodations here, somehow.”
He shrugged, shoving his wallet with his driver’s license into his back pocket. “She killed them off the rez, so it was a state crime, not a federal one.”
I nodded, frowning as I took back my own ID, putting it back into my wallet and shutting my purse.
“Drive around to the left when you reach the building,” the guard told Angel with a smile. “You’ll find the visitor parking there.”
I noticed his eyes lingered on both of us sitting in the front seats, but barely gave Cowboy a glance in the back seat. I also noticed he had trouble looking at our actual faces, even though he made a point of smiling at Angel repeatedly whenever she lifted her eyes to his.
Cowboy clearly noticed, too.
“That man likes pussy a bit too much,” he muttered, as the guard returned to the booth and hit the button to open the gate for us. “Not exactly subtle about it, neither.”
Angel rolled her eyes, turning around in her seat to give him a look.
“Really, Elvis?”
He grinned at her, tugging on one of her braids.
“I can’t help getting crotchety when a man’s making eyes at you, love.”
She snorted, then turned, giving me a flat, knowing look.
Both of us burst out in a laugh.
“What?” Cowboy said. “It’s true.”
“That’s the part that frightens me,” Angel said.
Taking the SUV out of park, she gave the guard a short wave through the booth’s window, then pulled through the gate once it opened enough for the SUV to pass. Driving around the left side of the institutional-looking white building, she found us a parking spot in the area marked “Visitors” and we all got out.
A few more rounds of security protocols, sign-ins and introductions to a few of the onsite psychiatry staff later, and I found myself walking down a white-painted metal corridor to a visitor’s lounge in the small juvenile wing of the facility.
Angel and Cowboy opted to wait for me in the visitor area.
“She’s pretty well-behaved,” Dr. Rudy Washington was saying, holding a clipboard and glancing at me as she walked. “We’ve had a few incidents with her, but most involved situations where we feared she might self-harm.”
“She’s suicidal?” I said.
I glanced at the older, heavyset black woman with the graying hair who walked beside me. She only came up to about my shoulder, but she had a pretty face, relatively untouched by her sixty-plus years, and sharp, intelligent eyes. Her curly hair was tied up in a loose bun and she wore a purple dress under her white lab coat.
“Do you have her isolated, then?” I added. “From the other patients?”
“No, not isolated,” the doctor said, shaking her head. “We have additional security protocols on her, after the two incidents. She’s searched, meaning her person, several times a day. Her room is searched at least once a day.”
She glanced at me, her brown eyes grim.
“…and she’s not suicidal, per se. She was cutting symbols into her arms and legs, using a shiv she’d made out of paper and a piece of wire. She’d nearly bled out by the time we found her, but she claims her intent wasn’t to kill herself, and I believe her.”
Wincing a little, I nodded. “Does she talk about the murders? Does she take responsibility for them in any way?”
“She will talk about them,” Dr. Washington conceded, making a “sort of” motion with her head as she emphasized the word. “But I wouldn’t call it taking responsibility, no. She’s got a whole fantasy built around what happened that day, and who she is… what she did. We haven’t worked too hard to break her of that yet, mostly because of how young she is. It’s clearly defensive in some way, to rationalize what she’s done.”
She gave me another grim look.
“She had no history of violence before this, Dr. Fox. Absolutely none. Her parents describe her as the type of kid who would cry if she caught her brothers crushing snails. We don’t want her mind to break totally. We’re afraid it might, if we try to force her to see this for what it is, at least before she’s ready. Generally speaking, it’s not unusual for child offenders to have overly-active fantasy lives. It’s extremely common for them to replace the truth of a memory with a more pleasant and palatable alternative.”
I nodded, giving her a grim smile to show her I understood.
“So any advice on how to talk to her in there?” I said, as we slowed in front of the inmate’s communal lounge door. “Anything else I need to know?”
Dr. Washington pulled out her keys, her mouth pursed in thought.
“Just ask her about her glorious mission here on Earth,” Dr. Washington said, giving me a sideways look and another wan smile. “She’ll be chatty about it… believe me. If you ask her anything within the auspices of her delusion, it can be hard to shut her up. You might have to redirect her here and there, of course. He, meaning the adult who indoctrinated her, used a pretty elaborate belief system, with a lot of mystical-type characters in the mix, including gods, magical animals, etc.”
“Is there any basis for any of it?” I said. “Is it centered on Navajo religion or myth in any way?”
“Loosely,” she said, glancing up from the door handle. “And I do mean loosely. There are a few references our Navajo nurses and our one Navajo psychiatrist recognized… but it’s been distorted pretty heavily.” She pressed her lips together in a hard line. “I read a bunch of books on it, so I could try and understand the belief system better, maybe talk her back into a more traditional reading of those myths… but it’s hard for me to even see the patterns sometimes. It’s like Navajo myth through a warped pane of glass.”
I nodded, feeling whispers of what she was telling me off her living light.
It struck me that I’d been reading her quite a bit on the walk up here to the fourth floor, which was part of why I felt so comfortable with her, and why I liked her so much already. I’d definitely been reading her more than I would have read a total stranger in a non-life threatening situation even six months ago, much less a year ago.
I wasn’t sure if I should blame Charles for that… or Black… or just myself.
The doctor’s mouth firmed, her voice growing a harder edge of anger. “I wish like hell they’d caught the monster who did this to all these kids.”
“All of them?” I looked over, returning her frown as she unlocked the door. “I thought it was only her. I was told––”
“She’s the only one who killed someone,” Dr. Washington corrected, giving me a dark look. “At least who’s been caught. At least where a body was found.”
Inserting the key in the lock, she twisted it to the left to unlock the heavy door.
“…She’s the only one who’s been convicted,” she added, still gripping the metal handle. “But we’ve had a few other ‘Wolf Children’ in and out of here, mostly for vandalism and lesser crimes. And tourists have been attacked and injured a lot lately.” Her voice turned even darker. “We’ve also had a number of them disappear.”
“Tourists?” I blinked. “Disappear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The State Police think it might be connected?”
She nodded, swinging the door inward and motioning for me to walk in ahead of her. “And the F.B.I. I hear the F.B.I. just opened a new investigation into the recent disappearances, so maybe they’ll find him,” she said, her Texas accent growing more prominent.
Still frowning, I followed the direction of her gesturing arm.
I found myself in a room with brown and green walls, filled with white, round tables each surrounded by plastic chairs. At one of those tables, right in the middle of the room, sat a girl with long brown hair, an oval face, and dark blue eyes.
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p; Her hands and fingers were folded on top of the table.
She watched us walk in, no expression on her youth-soft face.
A guard in uniform stood in the corner, but otherwise, it felt like walking into a child’s classroom and finding all the other children gone.
Dr. Washington walked directly up to the girl, leaving me to follow behind.
“Birdy,” the doctor said. “This is Dr. Miriam Fox. She was hoping to speak with you.”
The little girl blinked, looking from Dr. Washington to me.
She didn’t say anything.
She also didn’t look remotely scared, or intimidated––or even particularly curious about me. There was a distance and a scrutiny in her eyes that belonged to a much older person.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Dr. Washington said, looking between us. “Dr. Fox, if you need anything, just ask Jason here.”
I followed her jerked chin towards the corrections officer standing in the corner.
Looking at him for a beat, I turned, frowning slightly at Dr. Washington.
“I’d prefer to speak to her alone,” I said. “…If that’s possible, of course. It was my understanding Detective Natani requested a private interview, as well.”
Dr. Washington looked taken aback.
Glancing between the guard, Jason, and me, she nodded after exchanging looks with him.
“That would be all right,” she conceded. “There’s a button by the door. Press it, if you want to end the session. Or knock on the door.”
I nodded, smiling at her, then back at the young girl she’d called “Birdy.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sure the two of us will be just fine.”
Dr. Washington turned to look at the girl, too.
I felt skepticism on her at my words. I also felt a faint worry on her light, a worry that felt aimed at me. Despite what she’d said about Birdy being well-behaved, she didn’t totally trust her young patient.
That was good to know.
More than that, I distinctly got the impression Dr. Washington was afraid of this girl, despite her young age and tiny-looking body. Given that Ruby Washington was a board-certified psychiatrist with an M.D. out of Boston University and a decades-long career working in these kinds of institutions, she didn’t strike me as someone easily rattled.
Black To Dust_A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Page 11