Mary stopped this critical line of thinking, feeling ashamed. She wanted, vaguely, to atone for it, and decided she would make a prayer-stick, just a rude one, and gathered two of the twigs from the ground. She should have willow sticks, but there weren’t any. Then she searched around for a feather, found only a buzzard’s, and decided it would have to do. It would be a really shabby prayer-stick, but since (according to Rosella) women weren’t supposed to make them anyway, only men were, she supposed it wouldn’t have any power, and went ahead and and made a cross. The cross was held down with a small stone. Since she herself did not believe in the power of prayer, she would let the prayer stick do the work for her, that is, if there were any power in it at all.
All of Angela’s mysticism—the aura balancers, the channelers—passed right by Mary like smoke. But what the Indians believed, that was different. Like them, Mary Dark Hope looked at nature from a materialistic standpoint. Whatever was spirit was connected to the material world. The Zuñi were practical in their offerings—clothes and food. It was easier to believe in supplying something basic and needful than in Angela’s praying to a dolled-up version of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary pulled a sandwich bag from her pocket, it contained some of Rosella’s jeweled cornmeal, meal mixed with bits of turquoise and coral. Mary didn’t know what to do with it, but she liked looking at it.
She stretched backwards over the rock, keeping her feet on the ground and her head arched back and touching earth on the other end. She liked to feel the blood rush to her head; she liked to see the world upside down. What would she look like to someone passing by (as if anyone would, out here)? An acrobat? A dancer? None of which she wanted to be. Or would she look like someone having convulsions or a fit? No, she didn’t think so. She stretched her arms out and back so that the palms of her hands were flat on the land. This she imagined was the pose of a gymnast. She hoped Sunny wouldn’t think something was wrong and lumber over and start licking her face. He didn’t. She could hear Sunny away somewhere scratching and digging and wondered what treasure he had found; Sunny was always burying things and then digging them up.
It reminded her of Angie, going off on some dig when she was taking that anthropology class. No, archaeology. Anthropology was something else. Anthropology, archaeology. They both sounded boring to Mary. Though she liked this particular rock. It was almost comfortable. And wrenching her body around like this kept her mind free of painful thoughts and images. The rock supported the small of her back. She lifted her arms and settled them across her tilted-back chest. Almost comfortable. Well, as comfortable as a rock could be. But she was fond of this rock; she considered it hers. Whenever she and Sunny came out here, she always ended up on this rock. She liked its changeable grays, its ripples, its indentations, the microscopic river—that is, she thought of the crevice that circled the rock as a tiny riverbed, after she had watched rain run into it, narrow as a needle at some points, widening out near the bottom. And she would have loved to think she herself had worn this seat smooth on top, which was perfect for sitting; but, of course, she hadn’t. Weather had worn it away.
Then she started in thinking about rocks. Rocks, trees, the piñon bushes. Was there some sort of intelligence connected to them? And would Dr. Anders call this a “deep” problem? He had explained the various kinds of problems. The first was a problem that any fellow scientist trained in the field could solve; the second kind was the sort that made you famous and won awards; but a “deep” problem was the sort that confounded even a brilliant scientist and took a long, long time to solve. It went deep into the universe.
Dr. Anders was the one person in Santa Fe who treated Mary herself like an intelligent human being. He did not talk down to her, not even when he was talking about his theories, his work. And that was really hard to understand. Too complex. Well, that was the whole idea. Complexity. They were all sitting over there at the Institute on Canyon Road thinking about Complexity and Chaos. The edge of chaos. She had read the copy of the book he’d given Angela. Read it twice, but could understand only a few sentences here and there. That’s more than most people do, Dr. Anders had said with a laugh. But Angela had read only the first few pages before giving up on it. “Too cerebral,” she’d said. Mary had been surprised by this: it was, after all, Dr. Anders’s work. Shouldn’t she try to understand it? She went back to wondering why he was in love with Angie. Especially since he seemed well acquainted with Angie’s faults and didn’t mind letting her know. When Mary had told him her sister had a reputation for being “too dreamy,” Dr. Anders had laughed and said, “Too lazy, you mean.” Mary was surprised he’d seen this. Not reading his book was really sheer laziness on Angie’s part.
He was always around: in the shop on Canyon Road, at their house sometimes for dinner. Which Mary didn’t mind at all. She hoped, though, that he wasn’t being nice to her just to get in good with Angela. But she didn’t think so. He was too sincere. He was too real. He was sort of like Sunny over there, waiting with incredible patience for something to appear out of those rocks, those trees. Other people she knew—Malcolm Corey, for instance—seemed to be wispy, like smoke you could drive your fist through.
There was something about Malcolm Corey that was more sad than silly, she supposed. He really desperately wanted to be a movie star or at least a second lead. But he got only these tiny, walk-on parts that never amounted to anything. And he was a terrible painter on top of it. In a way she had to admire him for at least trying to do something else when it was obvious he’d never make it in the movies, even if the “something else” was no more practical. Anyone who could hold a paintbrush seemed to wind up in Santa Fe. If you stood in the middle of the square and threw a stone in any direction, you’d hit another gallery. Yet, she could understand why painters came here. As much as Mary deplored all of its commercialism, Santa Fe and the desert around it had a fundamental beauty that no matter of glitzy galleries, and carved coyotes, and too much turquoise jewelry could ruin. She loved the long stretches of umber desert, the dark mountains surrounding it, the magnificent sunsets, the light like shaved glass. Sometimes she thought if she flicked her finger at the air, the light would ring like crystal.
She had no desire to be an artist. What she herself wanted to do, finally, was work at the Santa Fe Institute. Only, you had to be some kind of genius to get into it. Her grades in school were As, but she didn’t think that qualified her as a genius. They were As because she’d figured out long ago it was as easy to get good grades as bad ones. It was as easy to hand in your English paper on time as it was to hand it in late. You had to hand it in sometime, didn’t you? It was easier because then people let you alone. No principal after you, no teacher on your back, no family railing at you to do better.
Mary swung herself into a sitting position and saw Sunny was gone again. But where?
She worked at Schell’s Pharmacy two days a week, minimum wage, sometimes at the soda fountain, sometimes delivering prescriptions at the end of the day on her bike. It was boring and she disliked Dolly Schell, and was quite aware Dolly felt the same way about her. No love lost, probably just because she was Angela’s sister and she hated Angela. Insofar as Mary could figure, she always had, for as long as Mary had known Dolly, yet Angela was unaware of this.
Dolly Schell was now her only relative. Would Bibbi try and hand her over to Dolly Schell just because she was the only “family” that Mary had? Good Lord. And why had Dolly even offered to go to England? It was really she herself who should have gone. To be told by the police a person is too young to identify a dead sister seemed the ultimate insult. She had managed to sit on her rage when Dolly told her she, Dolly, was going. Heathrow Airport and from there to Salisbury. Mary was good at hiding her feelings. And she had to admit Dolly had offered to let her come along. Knowing she’d refuse.
Angrily, she swung herself up and put her cool hands on her hot face. In a minute, she felt better and whistled for Sunny, a whistle that she knew would have no effect unless he wa
s agreeable to doing whatever it meant. She looked around again. Ghost dog.
Thinking about the Scotland Yard detective made her feel much better. Like Dr. Anders, he treated her as if she had some intelligence; he took her seriously. Angie dead was awful enough. But Angie murdered?
Mary watched the sun go down. Such glorious sunsets were one thing she loved about this part of the country. On the far horizon, the sky glowed, flamed in orangeish red, dyed the horizon in shades of pink and lavender.
And in another part of the world, the sun was coming up. Did the people who’d built places such as Stonehenge think the sun was God? A God who again and again abandoned them, and for Whom, to make Him reappear, they performed a ritual sacrifice, and because they did, God reappeared? So it would go on and on, in a sort of circle, no one ever really understanding.
Such a place of myth and mystery would appeal to her sister: Angie seemed to want to think that’s what life was—mystery and sacrifice. If you can afford such beliefs, Mary thought, shaking her head, her mouth tightening grimly in an old-maidish way. She would have liked to be worshipful, but it was too hard. As far as she was concerned, life was really handing in your English essays on time and delivering prescriptions on your bike for hardly any pay. Just request God to help with that stuff and you’d hear one huge abiding silence.
She was ashamed again; such hard thoughts seemed a betrayal of her sister. Mary pulled up her legs and rested her chin on her knees. The thing that she really couldn’t explain, and wanted to, to somebody, was her lack of feeling; it was numbness, mostly. She had felt numb when the police sergeant had told her about Angie and gone on feeling numb for the last week. She was not using her “grief time” from school properly. It was like when her parents died, except she’d been only five then, and that was different. And although she’d never said this to anyone, she was happy for them. Imagine a husband and wife dying together like that, going down in the flames of their own jet plane, never having to grow old and watching the other one die, leaving you alone. Their deaths had been like them. Dramatic and dazzling. Sylvestra. Often she wished she’d been named Sylvestra; it was a name a goddess could own.
Mary Dark Hope wheeled backwards on the rock as she had done before, placing her palms on the earth, letting the tears run backwards. Out of nowhere, Sunny reappeared, magically before her. Mary raised one hand and rubbed his muzzle and wished she hadn’t grown up so hard-hearted about things.
It was as if, on the way to somewhere, she had ignored a warning, and looked back and turned to stone.
FORTY
When Jury walked through the door of Rancho del Reposo with a dusting of snow on his coat, the same two clerks sorting through what looked like the same registration cards looked up and smiled; the drinks room was warmed, just as it had been before, by a fire huge as hell throwing shadowy beckoning fingers across the tile floor.
He looked for Malcolm Corey as he stood in the doorway of the atrium-like coffee lounge where the sun, reflecting off the glass walls, threw confetti-like light across the faces of the customers. He could have sworn these were the same people he’d seen two days previously. He didn’t see Malcolm Corey, but over there beneath the assortment of kachinas was Benny Betts playing tag with two telephones. No, three, Jury saw as he squeezed past tables and between chairs. One of the hotel phones had been delivered to Benny’s table.
Chatter buzzed around Jury, with the occasional sting of a high-pitched laugh. Benny Betts motioned him to sit as he pointed a finger at the phone and winked and smiled as if Jury were in on the deal, too. Benny also waved the receiver that was not at his ear towards a silver coffee pot and a straw basket of bread and muffins, inviting Jury to eat and drink.
Jury sat down, pulled over a clean cup, poured, as he watched Benny Betts’s animated face. He was the very emblem of West Coast cool. Blue eyes, teeth white as a collar of roiling surf, well-tanned. A California dream.
Which was just what Benny Betts trafficked in and was selling (did he ever buy?) over his portable phone. At any rate, he was at the end of it, for he was saying a Betts goodbye (ending on a question or a promise).
“Yo! Richard Jury, Superintendent Flatfoot!” Benny shot out his hand.
Jury smiled. “I’m surprised you’re still here, but I’m also glad. You knew Angela Hope.”
Benny Betts cocked an eyebrow, looked at Jury out of innocent eyes. “Who?”
“Come on, Mr. Betts, you know who.”
“Benny, please. Why so formal?” Benny flashed a whitecap smile.
“Because I expect it’s safer. Otherwise, I’d find myself with an agent and a walk-on part in a remake of The Bill.” Jury split a muffin. Why was he always eating these days? “Where’s Malcolm Corey today?”
Betts pointed toward the outside, out toward the white distance where the road and the miniature figures were becoming blanketed in snow. “He’s down there. I got him a couple lines in the picture. He’s delirious.”
“I can imagine. You must be a marketing genius.”
“Pretty much. How come you’re surprised I’m still here?”
“Because you strike me as a person who doesn’t light for very long.”
Benny shrugged, poured some more coffee. “Makes no difference where I am. Here, there, everywhere. It’s all the same.”
Jury ate his muffin. Carrot. He thought of Betty Ball’s bakery. “Coming from you that sounds rather fatalistic. As if things were pretty much out of our control.”
Benny smiled, clasped his hands behind his head, in the way (Jury thought) he must have looked in his mahogany-paneled office in his executive swivel chair.
“They are.”
Jury looked up over his muffin. “This from the man who wants to remake The Wizard of Oz? I’m astonished.”
“Dorothy got a crummy deal. And the ending was a total cheat.”
“ ‘Crummy deal’? Meaning?”
“Well, she went through hell to find this wizard, so when she does, she discovers he’s a fake.” Benny brushed some crumbs from his designer jacket. “But it’s the greatest kidjep picture of all time. Classic.”
Jury frowned. “Kid what?”
“Kidjep, kidjep. You know, ‘kid-in-jeopardy.’ You got a kidjep situation, you got prime box office. Guaranteed.” Benny drew a huge dollar sign in air.
“Does that make To to a dogjep?”
“Yak yak.” Benny eyed the phones, willing them to ring. Then he turned back to Jury. “You don’t mind me saying, you look kind of down.”
Jury smiled. “I don’t mind you saying. I am.”
“How come?”
Jury poured himself coffee, said, “I’m leaving tomorrow and I don’t seem to have found any answers. Angela Hope—”
Benny Betts interrupted, frowning. “Answers? You been living in a fool’s paradise, Richard Jury?”
Jury laughed. “Unfortunately, I do the kind of work that more or less calls for answers.”
“You mean you’re looking for a real one?”
“Well, I’m sure as hell not looking for an unreal one.” Jury sipped his coffee.
Benny shoved his own cup aside to make room for his arms, which he folded on the table. He leaned towards Jury. “Did you learn about life at a fairy’s knee?”
“Probably.”
“Because, if you don’t mind my saying it, you are just too much into rationality.”
“Well, in my line of country, you deal in facts. In reality.”
Benny’s laugh caused a number of tables to turn and smile in return. “That’s rich, Rich.” He became suddenly sober. “All you can expect is virtual reality. You want a so-called solution? Hell, I can give you one. Or a dozen. The most you can do in this life is put a package together. Makes no difference what it is, take X from here, Y from here, Z from there—” his fingers flew up and out, pull, pull, pull—“and then you mush ‘em together. Makes no difference whatever what the three things are. It’s the package that’s box office.”
&
nbsp; “X, Y, Z have to be related.”
Benny looked like he was going to spit. “It don’t make a fuck whether they’re related or not. If somebody said ‘kidjep-wizard-emerald’ to you, would you think they were related?”
Jury frowned over this failure of logic. “Wait a minute. You can’t use that because it’s a priori, it’s already a fait accompli.”
“Christ, he knows French, too,” Benny said to his audience of empty chairs.
“I’m talking about facts, Benny—”
“Facts?”
“To you, a dirty word; I’m a policeman, for God’s sake—”
Benny shook his head at the chairs, as if the chairs empathized. “The worst kind, guys.”
“It’s not a fantasy that three women are dead—”
Benny nodded his head.
“It’s not a fantasy that they may have been murdered—”
Nod. Nod. Nod.
“And it’s not a fantasy that Angela Hope’s body was found in Wiltshire at Sarum—”
Nod. Nod. Nod. A quick little snap of Benny’s fingers, then a banner drawn in air and “By God, I can see it. Can’t you see it? Sarum. Sunrise, maybe sunset. The colors, oranges bleeding into reds. Get it? Like blood, maybe paints dripping through the credits? I see. Michelle—no—I see Melanie . . . hate that little shit, but she’d look great dead . . . the body on a stone slab in the middle. . . . ” He grabbed Jury’s arm. “We scroll back maybe a few dozen centuries—what year was it built anyway?” Benny’s hand stopped scrolling and reached—
Was he really going for that phone? Jury put his hand on the wrist. He wasn’t going to be drawn into a Bettsian fantasy. “NO—” Jury looked round, ashamed he’d raised his voice. He whispered “No” again. Benny smiled with the most irritating benignity that Jury had ever seen. “Facts may be elusive, but they’re still facts. Evidence. Hard evidence. If that’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
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