Three Sisters

by James D. Doss

  The older man had also admired that shapely young lady. “Little Red never called me sweetie.” Why do the women go for Charlie? Parris’s voice took on a petulant tone: “And don’t say you showed up to see me every day, ’cause you sure as hell didn’t do no such thing.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “Then why was it I didn’t happen to notice you being in my room?” He smirked at the seven-foot-tall Ute. “It’s not like you’d be easy to miss.”

  “I’ll tell you why—because sometimes when I dropped in you was sound asleep. Snoring like all get-out. And I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  Parris coughed up a “Hmmph,” which was his way of saying that he did not believe a word of this Indian blarney. But he was happy to see his best friend. He nodded to indicate a padded armchair. Watched Mr. Moon seat himself. Lean back. The very picture of contentment. Parris eyed the Very P. of C. “While I was in the hospital—did you go to Cassie’s funeral?”

  The tribal investigator nodded.

  “I imagine there was a sizable crowd.”

  Moon quoted the newspaper account, which he was certain his friend had read. “Seven hundred plus.”

  “That’s a good turnout. Must’ve pleased Bea.” What he wanted to say was, Charlie, I can’t hardly sleep a wink at night without having bad dreams about Cassie’s death. I was driving her car—and she was under my protection. Which makes me responsible. But because a bona fide hairy-chested man does not seek solace, our hero was deprived of the comfort he sorely needed.

  Parris had arranged his desk for a view through the window that framed a red maple. A plucky black-crested Steller’s jay landed on a spindly branch, cocked its head at him, shrieked a shack-shack-shack remark that the cop, who was not a dues-paying member of the Audubon Society, interpreted as a fowl obscenity. Shack-shack right back at you, birdbrain! Keeping his glare fixed on the jay, Parris muttered, “State police got a warrant to examine Cassie’s computer equipment, but all the memory was wiped clean. Ditto for Moxon’s laptop. He must’ve taken care of that critical piece of business before he stole the big truck and bashed the owner’s head in.” He was attempting to stare the jay down. “Not that it matters all that much, what with her verbal confession.” And with both of ’em dead.

  “It’s finished,” Moon said.

  Not quite. Parris blinked. The jay made a derisive eck-eck chirp that sounded like a bird chuckle. Having been bested by a creature with a brain the size of a piñon nut, the chief of police nodded to indicate the miniature kitchen and pantry at the far end of his office, where a six-quart coffeepot bubbled hot around the clock. “You need a shot of caffeine?”

  “Nope, but I’ve never been known to turn down a free cup of coffee and I don’t intend to change my ways this late in life.” The perpetually hungry man eyed a grease-spotted cardboard box. “Is that what my nose says it is?”

  “Yeah. Those doughnuts are stale as granddaddy’s jokes, but stuff your face with as many as you want.”

  Heading to the source of food and drink, Moon asked whether he could bring his host some refreshment.

  Parris was this close to asking for a cup of real coffee. Even a sugar-soaked doughnut. He yielded to his conscience, whose voice was identical to his long-dead mother’s. “I’ll have a cup of decaf—the little pot’s full of the stuff.” Nobody drinks that crap but me. “Put some artificial sweetener in it, and a dash of that powdered, no-calorie, nondairy creamlike substance that tastes almost as good as chalk.”

  The Indian delivered the chief’s beverage first, returned to the canteen. Searched the refrigerator for what he was looking for. Found it.

  That java don’t smell half bad. Parris took a sip, arched a surprised eyebrow, spoke to Moon’s back. “That sure hits the well-known spot.”

  The cowpuncher punched buttons on the micro wave oven.

  “If you don’t mind, Charlie, bring me one of them rice cakes.” It’s like eating cardboard, but a man needs something to chew on.

  Moon returned to place a plastic picnic plate on his friend’s desk. Upon it was a brown recycled-paper napkin. Also a glazed doughnut. Melted butter dripped off the pastry.

  Parris’s suspicious gaze darted from the doughnut to his coffee cup. Back to the doughnut, tarrying for a long, lustful look. “What’s in my cup?”

  “Half a tank of high-test java. Other half is half-and-half. And it’s sweetened with the real thing.”

  A halfhearted protest: “I’m on a strict diet.”

  Dr. Moon offered his prescription: “What you need right now is a stiff dose of caffeine. And a big helping of highly refined white cane sugar.”

  Parris took another sip of the coffee. That is sooo good. Tasted the doughnut. Closed his eyes. I’ve died and gone to heaven. Which reminded him: “This stuff is liable to kill me.”

  “Not a problem. Bein’ your best buddy, I’m bound to be asked to say a few sorrowful words at your funeral.” Moon raised his cup to salute the prospective corpse. “I’ll tell the two or three folks that show up what a disgusting glutton you was in your former life, and how your untimely passing is a warning to chowhounds who—like yourself—have to keep punching extra holes in their belts.”

  “Thanks a whole bushel.”

  “I try to do a good deed every day of the week.” Moon returned to his chair with a steaming mug of police-station brew and the box of sugar-encrusted pastries. “Anything new on Andrew Turner’s car wreck?”

  The weight-watcher watched the tribal investigator get to work on the remaining doughnuts. “Day before yesterday, a state police copter did a few passes over the Devil’s Mouth. It was dragging a cable with some high-tech sensors. Magnetic field detectors. Infrared sensors. Ice-penetrating radar. From what I hear, they picked up a dozen ‘anomalies’—which is eleven too many.” Parris took a long drink of sweet coffee. “It’d cost a truckload of taxpayers’ money to dig ’em all out. So until there’s a big thaw, whatever’s left of Turner and his fancy car will have to stay right where they are.” The chief of police felt his gaze pulled to the window. The bird on the maple branch still had a pair of beady eyes fixed on him. He aimed a scowl at the haughty descendant of dinosaurs. Go eat a poison bug. Getting in the last words (“chook-chook-chook!”), the impudent Cyanocitta stelleri took wing. To celebrate his small victory, Parris took the last bite of buttery pastry, downed the final sip of sugary coffee. Boy howdy—that was good! But by his measure, a pleasure must be balanced by a commensurate worry: I’ll gain five pounds and stay awake all night.

  Time passed. Which is another way of saying: One-second segments of the fourth dimension of the space-time continuum were ticktocked away by the electrical innards of a Go Broncos! wall clock.

  Parris glanced at the branch where the jay had been. Remorse set in. I was just kidding about the poison bug. He addressed the human being in his office: “I’d give a month’s pay to turn up Turner’s corpse, stuff his bones into a pine box, and nail a lid on this nasty business once and for all.” Which reminds me. He blinked at the Indian. “Charlie, d’you remember that peculiar old drunk—the guy who claimed he’d seen something or other on the Spencer driveway when Turner had his accident?”

  “Clevis Parsley, aka Elvis Presley.” The Ute, who was working on the next-to-last of the stale doughnuts, delayed taking a bite so he could say, “That ol’ rock-and-roller told us he’d seen a couple of witches.”

  Parris scratched at the fiberglass cast on his arm. Charlie has a good memory. Tempted to have another mug of genuine coffee spiked with half-and-half and genuine sugar, he sighed, pushed the mug aside. “From time to time, I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder.” He started to say something, lapsed into an uneasy silence.

  “What do you wonder, pard?”

  “I wonder did Turner run off the driveway because it was slick with snow and he was going too fast around that curve—or was there something he tried to keep from running into.” He also wondered where the jay had gone. Maybe to hec
kle the mayor. “What do you think?”

  “I try not to do too much thinking. But if I was to cogitate about it for a minute, I might begin to wonder whether Mr. Moxon was responsible for Mr. Turner’s accident.”

  Parris nodded. “Another spectacular vision for the up-and-coming TV psychic, another big boost in program ratings.” He turned to gaze at Moon. “But when Cassie made her final confession, she didn’t say a thing about Turner’s car wreck.” He rapped his arm cast on the desk. “Anyway, why would Moxon want to knock off Cassie’s brother-in law?”

  Scott still believes he saw a big hairy Sasquatch on the Spencer driveway that snowy night. Carrying something on its shoulder. What was it? Oh, right—a king-size burrito. Maybe it was a south-of-the-border Sasquatch, come up from Mexico. Moon closed one eye, peered through a doughnut hole at his friend. “What you need is a good night’s sleep.”

  “You’re right about that.” The chief of police stared through the rectangular glass portal into the outer world. The red maple looked downright lonely. He wished the impudent bird would return. Wished his wife hadn’t died fifteen years, three months, and six days ago. Wished he could slip backward in time, do a rerun of the confrontation with Nicholas Moxon, get it right this time. I’d pull off the highway soon as I saw him coming, get Cassie out of the car and down the riverbank, shoot the bastard dead.…He heard the Ute’s deep voice.

  “Pardner, it’s not your fault she died. You did all anyone could have. More.”

  Parris shook his head. “I don’t know, Charlie—”

  “Yes you do—you know because I’m telling you.” Moon got up, put both hands on his friend’s desk, leaned like a cougar about to pounce. An incandescent intensity burned in his dark eyes. “Busted-up and bloody as you was—and with nothin’ but that little .38 peashooter—you plugged Mr. Moxon right good. And if you hadn’t, he’d have run down a careless deputy whose six-gun was empty as a bucket with no bottom in it.”

  Scott Parris tried to speak. Could not. He blinked away something that was stinging his eye. A mote of dust, no doubt.

  Forty-Three

  Sniffing Around

  Thanks to Charlie Moon and despite the coffee, for the first night since Cassandra Spencer’s death, Scott Parris slept soundly, peacefully. Dreamed sweet dreams. Not so, his Indian friend.

  Charlie Moon woke up a dozen times. Whenever he managed to doze off, the Ute would encounter something unpleasant. Like a huge, hairy (big-footed!) creature that lumbered about in the snow, toting a yard-long burrito on each hairy shoulder. Or Clevis Parsley would make an appearance, outfitted in a sequined white tuxedo, a splendid wig of wavy hair, and blue suede shoes, of course. The odd little man would bellow out a few lines of “Heartbreak Hotel,” then recite his tale of “witches” that had caused Andrew Turner to drive his Corvette over the cliff, into the Devil’s Mouth. The Mouth would burp, belch—vomit Turner up, sports car and all. Lick its lips, swallow him again.

  Finally, the dawn came. But not like thunder. Like a cold, gunmetal-gray river that flooded Moon’s upstairs bedroom with a current of gloom, and the unhappy realization that he might as well have stayed up all night. The rancher/tribal investigator/deputy sat on the edge of his bed, stared at the floor, then at the door. Thought about it.

  Considered alone, the individual pieces of the puzzle were crazy. But looking at the thing as a whole…it was still fairly bizarre. But not entirely so. Fitting the warped fragments together in a particular manner, the final picture almost made sense. Enough to justify taking a long, solitary walk in the wilderness? No. But exercise combined with solitude helps a man clear his mind of worrisome thoughts. And build up a healthy appetite. After a long, restless night, Charlie Moon was not hungry.

  After finishing a breakfast that consisted of a cold biscuit (without the help of butter or blackberry jam) and a reheated cup of yesterday’s coffee (well sugared), the tribal investigator drove the oldest of the five Columbine F-150s several dozen miles down the road, through the Spencer estate’s wrought-iron gate, which, by order of the Granite Creek chief of police, had been left unlocked since that snowy evening when Andrew Turner and his Corvette had vanished. Beatrice Spencer, Moon knew, would not be at home. At Cassandra’s funeral, she had confided to the Ute her plans to travel. She planned to go away for a couple of weeks “to get the cobwebs out of my mind.” As he shifted down to second gear and eased the valve-tapping pickup up the long, winding driveway, Moon felt the overpowering presence of the grumbling, cloud-capped mountain. It loomed huge, pregnant with ominous possibilities, bulging with sinister energies—all conceived from a tiny spark, a seed concealed deep inside from before the Beginning. Just the sort of place where Moses received the stone tablets.

  From somewhere up there, a thunderous rumble.

  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.

  A flash of fireworks in the cloud crown, then the drumming—

  With-all-your-soul…

  Another drum-roll—

  With-all-your-mind…

  From below, an echo—

  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

  Charlie Moon felt his lips moving. You shall not murder.

  For perhaps ten heartbeats, the man was totally unaware of his surroundings. And of his self. Moon was elsewhere. No to worry—his mortal body operated the motor vehicle with perfect competence.

  A shattering crack of thunder—a white-hot flash of lightning!

  The spell is broken. The traveler has returned.

  Moon remembered nothing of his brief excursion. Or, for that matter, the last hundred yards up the mountain. A pointless detour? No. For all things, there is a purpose.

  His uphill journey continued.

  On his left, the heavily forested slope rose steeply at first, presenting a smooth, youthful face. With the Ute’s ascent, as if aeons accumulated with altitude, the mountain’s skin became deeply wrinkled by a series of ravines where cold water from crystalline springs seeped from beneath flat, mossy rocks, and shy mule deer grazed in shady glens. Separating these shadowy sanctuaries, rugged granite bluffs rose up to vanish in the morning’s low-hanging, smoky-blue mists. Off to his right, and before he could see it through the scattering of spruce and aspens, Moon could sense the heavy, brooding silence welling up from the depths of the Devil’s Mouth—where Andrew Turner’s corpse was presumably entombed. Macabre images of the body floated in the infinite space of his imagination. Bea’s husband was suspended in a blue, icy gel—frozen in a lonely eternity. But Mr. Moon was not one to dwell upon grim pictures. By sheer force of will, he banished the grisly scene from his thoughts. The unwelcome guest refused to completely leave the premises. The awful vision retreated from the solarium to the musty cellar, where it would settle in with other rubbish—always ready to creep up the stairway, display its horror in the bright light of day.

  As Moon approached the accident site, he pulled off the graveled lane, parked the pickup underneath the windswept branches of a lone pine. As he lowered the tailgate, the Columbine hound looked up at the boss, opened his mouth…. “I bet you’d like to go for a walk.” No. Dogs cannot talk. This was the human being speaking.

  Sidewinder could yawn and sigh, and so he did both. After which, he rested his graying muzzle between a pair of paws.

  Hoping to goad the inert creature into some semblance of animation, Moon assumed a pitying tone: “Poor ol’ fella—I guess you’ve gone a few miles past your prime.”

  Another canine yawn.

  The poker player upped the ante: “Guess it’s about time I thought about getting another dog.” A thoughtful pause. “A younger mutt, that’s still got some fire in his eye.”

  The hound snorted.

  “Maybe I should get me a frisky little puppy.”

  The dog closed his toothy jaws, then his eyes. Sniffed once. Twice. Slipped off…away into the long-ago canine Dreamtime when neither hound nor poodle yet trotted upon the earth. Sidewinder was a lean, gray shadow, r
unning with other wolves.

  Charlie Moon gave up the game. It was time to get down to business. He found the spot where he had stood beside Scott Parris on that frigid morning, did his best to recreate the experience. Sun was a little ways over the horizon, just like now. I was looking down the road. Breeze was coming from my right, down off the mountain. Just like now. Like the somnolent hound, he closed his eyes. But Moon was not drowsy. He was recalling. Me and Scott were talking about breakfast. Scrambled eggs. Buttered blueberry pancakes soaked in maple syrup. And when his best friend had mentioned the meaty subject, Moon’s famished imagination had conjured up the scrumptious scent of bacon frying. Or had it?

  He turned his back on the Devil’s Mouth, gazed up the mountainside.

  A bear, so they say, can smell food from miles and miles away. He thought about that folkloric proposition. Considered the pros and cons, came up with a decisive maybe. Who knows how well a hungry carnivore can smell—if the wind is right?

  The biped carnivore set his sight on the heights, found a convenient ravine, and—one step at a time—began to climb. Before very many minutes had slipped away into the past, he was high above the Spencer driveway and quite out of sight of it—in the depths of the forest. The effect was a familiar one, and thus expected—the farther this son of the People of the Shining Mountains went into the wilderness, the more at home he was. The Ute was in his natural element. At peace with himself. Many happy memories came to call. Like that long-ago time when his father took him into Cañón del Espíritu to visit the cave-shelter called Quiet Shade House, where the Old Ones had pecked out sketches of real and imaginary beasts on smoke-encrusted walls. Dad and me had a picnic. Spam sandwiches with mustard. Black coffee. Ginger Snaps. Those were good times.

  This pleasant walk into the wildwoods was just the sort of refreshment Mr. Moon needed. But perhaps—and this is not meant as a criticism—he should have been paying more attention.