He only chuckled at the suggestion, saying, “After Theresa O'Rourke sat in this chair? Don't count on another female chief here in your lifetime, dear, unless maybe you're bucking for the job?''
Now she laughed a hearty belly laugh, something she'd not done in a long time. For all his faults, Paul was quite human, and he made her laugh, and that was a good balm. “I wouldn't touch your job with surgical gloves and forceps, not even if they threw in my own personal yacht and my own island to sail it around, not for all the perks and bucks in the world, Paul, ever.”
“Hey, it isn't that bloody bad....” He stopped to consider what he was saying. “As for the perks, hell, I earn every single one of 'em daily.”
She playfully patted his cheek, stepped briskly toward the door and turned for a final wave, saying, “I'll just bet you do.”
“I do!” she heard him shouting from behind the closed door as she passed his secretary's desk, anxious to be finally escaping Quantico, wondering if maybe she'd have time to stop at the local bookstore in town for a guidebook on New Orleans. She knew next to nothing about the city. She'd never visited before. It would prove to be quite an adventure, most interesting and pleasant, she desperately tried to convince herself.
9
Away, and mock the time with fairest show: False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
—Shakespeare
Tahlequah, Oklahoma
He'd finished with the old woman whose body weight made the overhead beam in the barn irrrrk with a disagreeing give and sag. Matisak busily put away the last of the blood-filled canning jars into the ice-laden foam cooler which he'd earlier prepared. Teach, as he liked to call himself, had found the canning jars in the old lady's fruit cellar. He'd emptied the jars of their tomato, blueberry and strawberry contents, throwing the sugary muck to the hogs, and had washed each jar thoroughly. The jars amounted to a good dozen, more than enough for his needs.
Earl and Hillary Redbird had been gracious to open their hearth and hearts to Matisak, kind to allow him to stay with them for these many weeks now.
He'd returned to Oklahoma after escaping FBI authorities not far from here by kidnapping a pilot at a regional airport and forcing him to take him northeast into a storm. Somewhere over the Boston Mountains in Arkansas, the plane got into serious trouble. Unable to withstand storm and wind pockets, they were forced down in a remote meadow, which the pilot had called a miracle find amid the mountainous terrain below them. The pilot, a well-groomed, retired auto executive, was counting his blessings when the plane touched down, but before it even came to a stop at the end of the meadow, Matisak had slit the man's throat from ear to ear. His look of shock was pleasing to Matisak.
After feeding as well as he might on the other man's blood, Matisak slept like an innocent child in the cradle of the cockpit beside the dead man who'd called himself Norman Easthan.
The following day, Matisak heard the approach of a helicopter, possibly searching for Easthan, or quite possibly FBI searching more for him than for the now-dead pilot.
He tumbled from the cockpit and worked demonically to force the light plane into the trees nearby. He then went about the business of covering the plane and its markings with debris and brush.
He took as much money as Easthan had in his wallet, sixty-four bucks, and struck out on foot. He went in search of telephone poles, wires, homesteads, a road, preferably paved. He had reasoned that the people searching for him would not expect him to return to the Tulsa area, and so this plan pleased him.
He took his time returning, however, with stopovers in one small town after another, pretending to be a drifter and a hobo, doing odd jobs for people—all the inane work they put off forever. He worked for a place to sleep and, for appearances, a bite to eat. Determinedly, for a time he held his urge for human blood in check. He didn't want anyone discovering a corpse, which would point a dead finger in his direction. The FBI net had come too close for such encounters now. For the time being, he wanted Jessica Coran to wonder and wait, without a clue as to when and where he would strike.
His ultimate goal in life was to have her completely and wholly to himself, just long enough to bleed her, not once but many times. He knew just how much he could take from a victim before she lapsed into coma, and if he continued they'd die soon after; however, if he denied himself for that moment, allowing the victim's body to regenerate a fresh, new supply of blood, then he could take this refill as well. With Jessica Coran, he intended to take such good care of her as to have her produce blood for him as often as he liked, to use her like a milk cow, for as long as her body and soul could withstand the shocks he pledged for her. Either that, or he'd put his quest for her blood to the ultimate test, take it to the max—which he himself could no more survive than she. It would be an end which in truth would be a new beginning, one which promised an eternity with her. He hadn't completely decided which direction their fate would go in, not yet anyway.
But whatever his choice, it would take careful preparation, time and money. Still, nothing so petty as currency should stand in the way of a man's ultimate dream, he reminded himself.
So, his quest had brought him here, finally locating Tahle-quah, the old capital of the Indian Nation where Cherokee lohn Ross held court and sway as the president of the Indian Nation for most of his life during the 1800s. Matisak had some Cherokee blood in him, or so his family history went—relatives in the tribe, distant, yes, but what better relatives to have?
The Redbirds weren't exactly blood relatives—until now, tie silently jested—but while they were not kith and kin, the aid folks were living in the ancient house where Matisak's mother's mother had been born to Janie Elyse Elkheart, a quarter-blood Cherokee who'd married outside the tribe to Karl Matisak, a German immigrant who became a self-taught doctor who worked among the tribe, and learning just how good he was at faking it, set up practice some years later in Chicago for the better part of his life. Matt Matisak's grandfather had told him tales of how he had buried gold coins in gunnysacks under the floor of that old house whenever they returned. He'd hidden over two thirds of his fortune amassed in Chicago somewhere around the old place.
Matisak's grandfather may well have been telling tall tales for a wide-eyed grandson, but he'd left a detailed map of how to find the old house and its treasure for his grandson. The aid man had learned to detest his own son, Matisak's father, who was so overwhelmed by Matisak's mother, a big woman af Irish descent who had a way of making her husband and young son grovel for any and all things.
Young Matisak had never taken his grandfather too seriously, but he was in the area now, and he recalled the exact location from years of staring at a crude map the old man had left him, one which Matisak's mother had thrown into the fire. Matisak had come to Oklahoma to seek his fortune, whatever that treasure might be. But the Redbirds posed a minor problem now that Matisak had come for the coins. Even if it were anly a handful of gold coins minted in the 1800s, as his grandfather had said, they would be worth a small fortune, certainly enough to help him in his quest for his newfound love, Jessica Coran. It took money to keep up with the lady. She'd just jetted back to the mainland from Hawaii then to Oklahoma some six months before, and she'd been in the area only a short while, along with a hundred other FBI agents, so it had been too dangerous to get near her then.
Next time, he would choose the time and place, and he'd have the necessary provisions. He must reinvent the spigot, his control mechanism, his instrument of choice, the mechanism by which he could carefully drain her of every ounce without spilling so much as a drop, or he must acquire a new, high-tech mechanism which only money could buy. Either way, it would take some doing.
But first he had to look around the old farmhouse where he'd been doing odd jobs for the Redbirds. He'd been fortunate that the fools in law enforcement had been circulating photos of him as he'd looked when he was first taken into custody so many years before in Chicago. He looked quite different now, what with a ful
l beard, glasses, a road map of wrinkles and sunken eyes in deep shadow. He'd put on some weight about his middle, somehow making the hunchback less pronounced nowadays, giving him a harmless Yoda or aging-old-man appearance, his graying hair brittle as fence wire.
The people around the reservation didn't ask questions. The Cherokees here were a displaced race, and miscegenation had done the rest so that there were hardly any full-bloods remaining, and so the small amount of Cherokee blood that flowed through Matthew Matisak's veins had been enough to suffice, getting him past old Mr. Redbird's threshold into one of the oldest standing homes on the reserve.
The old place was mightily ran down, chimney heaving to one side, roof faded and worn, shutters half on, half off, and the barn lived up to the old saying that you could throw a cat through any wall, but the Redbirds worked harder than most to keep their yard and front porch free of clutter: no used appliances sitting beside the front door, no rusted-out bikes on the lawn, no cinder-block sculptures or half-built outhouse shells, everything neat but the overgrown weeds, save for the ancient rusted hulk of an old, useless Ford touring car on cinder blocks and below canvas out back.
The house with its small barn needed fresh paint, and he had promised to do the work, if they'd get the materials, which they had been scraping together. In the car port a usable old Chevy rust bucket of a pickup waited now for Matisak, the keys in the ignition.
Old Redbird, in his khaki pants and red plaid shirt, had stepped into the barn that morning, curious, wondering if his visitor had finally chosen to move on. He'd told neighbors that the younger man's father had been his brother-in-law, which wasn't true, but even the People felt foolish nowadays to take in a stranger from the outside world, and the old-timers in particular felt they had to present some excuse for such behavior. If they followed the old custom of never turning away someone on their doorstep—a custom Matisak's grandfather had mentioned a thousand times—nowadays they risked the ridicule of the younger generation, even their own children. But of the Redbirds' three children, two had died young, something to do with booze and a joyride, and a third had somehow gone from the res years before to take up a life elsewhere.
Most of the traditionalists simply accepted the fact that Red-bird must house the man who showed up on his doorstep claiming a kinship. It was taboo, long-standing tradition; you never turned away anyone who knocked at your door unless he was a known enemy. It was a custom begun generations before and perfected by the great and famous chiefs who opened their own homes to any and all who traveled great distances to see them.
Such was the case with the last of the great chiefs, Keeows-kowee, or John Ross, who prospered well here in what was once Indian Territory as both a businessman and the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. His Light Horse Guard still rode, but nowadays they were on motorcycles and in Toyotas and were known only as Res Police. The Res Police seemed very interested in the stranger at first, and had asked Redbird many questions when he had gone into Tahlequah to the Cherokee Feed & Grain Store. They had told him to expect a squad car out at his place before he went to bed tonight. The old fool had stupidly confided this to Matisak, telling him that if he had anything to fear from police, he'd better “skee-daddle.”
Matisak only nodded, went outside without any breakfast and disappeared. He waited in the shadows inside the barn for Redbird to come out to milk his single played-out old cow. Matisak had some milking of a different color in mind.
It was then that the old man felt a slicing, blood-letting blow to his right temple, just barely seeing the business end of the spade before he blacked out. His final thought was a worry, a worry for his bride of forty-seven years—Hillary.
From inside the house where she was preparing a chicken for dinner, Hillary had watched her old man amble bowlegged into the barn, swallowed up by the darkness there. When she'd first married him, he was doing the southwest rodeo circuit. He'd been so handsome and such a fine horseman, and he'd spoken of one day owning a big, fine ranch filled with horses, but he could never get enough money together, and after the trampling he'd received when that bull named Angel's Breath in Ardmore threw him under its pounding weight, well, neither he nor his long-held dream was ever the same again. Still, she'd continued to love Redbird, despite the arguments of her family, and she made a good home for him, and she was the best wife she could be for him, and they had had a good life together, despite the most heartrending moments, as when they'd buried their two sons, who'd run their car into the Verdigris River and been too drunk to swim out, or when Aaron had left for college and never returned.
She was brought back from her reverie on hearing the annoyed whine of one of the plow horses and the wail of the milk cow, but nothing else. She, like her husband, was glad to have seen the last of their “nephew” by marriage. Jack Thomas Elkheart Mankiller, he'd pronounced himself that first night, laying out a string of tenuous details connecting the family to him, despite his obvious whiteness, which he claimed was due to some sort of illness similar to what Michael Jackson, the famous singer, had. And there was something around the mean eyes that reminded Hillary Clay Redbird of Big John Mankiller, who'd been married for near thirty-four years to Winnie Elkheart over near the Arkansas line, but both John and Winnie were years in the grave now. John, though, had been a massive fellow, nearly three hundred pounds, when he'd died of a heart attack, while this man was sickly by comparison. Of course, if the man could be believed, he'd been orphaned in Chicago, shunted about from foster home to foster home, as many a poor Indian child had been, hardly able to fend for himself. Little wonder he bore such scars and the crooked back. His face was sallow and etched with pain and menace, however, and Hillary felt too old to become anyone's fool, despite her good Christian upbringing.
Hillary had confided to her husband in their bed the night before that she'd taken to sleeping with her gun below her pillow from the moment the stranger had arrived. This had somewhat shocked Earl, but he'd seemed all of a sudden to understand her need. He'd drawn a hickory ball bat he kept in the closet closer to the bed that night as well. She'd asked him about it, but he'd just grunted something about the Res Police looking in on them and their newfound relative tomorrow.
But now it was morning and the birds were chattering away, chasing one another in the apple orchard, the light dancing along the leaves, a brilliant blue sky made the more blinding by great billowy Oklahoma clouds that hung so low she thought even a little woman like herself might reach up and touch them.
She looked up again from her work, expecting to see Earl come out of the blackness of the barn with the eggs and milk she'd requested. Couldn't make a proper stuffing without either. He'd also said that he had to fetch a hoe and a rake, to do something with the cucumber and squash patch alongside the house. So where in tarnation was he now? Had he forgotten what he was doing again?
She grew impatient, and thought again about Jack Thomas Mankiller. Mankiller was an old, even ancient tribal name, and there were Mankillers up and down the hills here, spread across the state. One of them had been the first Cherokee woman ever to become Principal Chief at the longhouse. So, why didn't this Jack stay with closer relatives who might better know him and who surely had more to give a passing stranger than they? She didn't mind being charitable, but there was a limit, blood or no, custom or no.
Still no sign of Earl.
The damned stuffing wasn't going to make itself. That hoeing wasn't going to take care of itself either. Where the deuce was he?
She placed the cleaned and waiting chicken aside in a large pot of water to allow it to rinse in herbs and salt water, an old recipe handed down by her mother to her. Washing and wiping her hands, she decided it was too lovely a day not to step out into it, at least for a moment. She did so with the ulterior motive of looking in on Earl. He was getting up in years, and there was no such thing as being too careful. Suppose he'd fallen inside the barn there, hurt or cut him self? This might account for the uneasy neighing that old swaybac
k was putting up, and the racket Merleen was still raising with her mooing was going to put the old girl off her milk for a month.
Strange that the dog wasn't right in there with Merleen, making harmony, she thought as she neared the barn aperture, which was bathed in black shadow, a stark contrast to the light of the outside world.
“Earl... Earl, honey? Are you aw'right in there?”
She stepped into the shadow and into horror. Earl was hanging by his tied heels from a large tenterhook at the end of a pulley, his throat slashed at the jugular, the blood pumping out in large coughing spurts like a poorly pressurized pump. The blood settled into a pool of red inside a sterling-new bucket Earl had brought back from the feed and grain store just the day before. Earl's dead arms dangled, limp tendrils trying halfheartedly to touch the blood-soaked earth and straw-strewn barn floor. His old dog lay dead half in and half out of Merleen's stall.
The horse was whinnying wildly and kicking at its stall. Merleen continued in distress. Chickens scattered and nervously paced. The only light she saw was that which streamed in through cracks and at the rear of the barn, and she wanted to race for the light, afraid to turn or back out the way she'd come, sensing that Mankiller—living up to his namesake— was in the shadows behind her. At the same time, she was wholly unable to move, frozen in place, her fear and disbelief overwhelming, cutting like a cold blade into her soul, and here she was... caught, trapped like this... without a weapon or a plan of any sort...
Matt Matisak stepped from behind the barn door and easily draped his arm around the old woman in a firm manner, squeezing her shoulder and indicating Earl's corpse as if he'd brought her a gift to show off, pleased and proud of his demonic accomplishment. Hillary's scream was cut short by a swoon, a dark blotch of redness filling her brain at the moment Matisak's bloody hand streaked her forehead.
“War paint,” Matisak joked as she fell into a dead faint on the straw. Earl's dead form swayed in response.
Pure Instinct (Instinct thriller series) Page 11