by Brian Hodge
"I'm asking you. And yes, I'm educated. I've been to college."
"What do you do now?"
"Various things," Del-Klinne replied, and it was obvious he was uncomfortable with the subject.
"Such as?"
"Look, I didn't come in here to talk about my work and my educational background. I just wanted to find out some things. Such as what you know about lightning. And dreams."
But for some reason Yellow Colt wouldn't drop the matter. "A blanket Indian, eh, bro?" He laughed harshly, looked at Laura. "Is that what you're doin' with your fine education? Is that how you're helpin' your race? By goin' back to the reservation?"
Del-Klinne stood up quickly, his fists curled loosely at his side. "Thanks for your help." His tone was sarcastic. He pivoted gracefully and walked straight toward the door.
Yellow Colt laughed. "See what we have to fight, Ms. Rainey? Sheer ignorance on the part of guys like him. What else can I do for you?"
"I think I've got all I want. Thanks." She grabbed her purse, tossed some crumpled bills down on the table for her drink because she wouldn't let him pay for it, then hurried out of the bar. In front of it a black wrought iron fence set off a handful of tables with accompanying chairs. At one of the tables a beautiful black woman, dressed in an expensive red dress with a gold belt, lightly swung one leg crossed over the other and nonchalantly studied the businessmen in their dull three-piece suits, the short-sleeved tourists, the serious-faced Indians standing in small groups.
The hookers are out early, Laura thought, and remembered with amusement how shocked she'd first been when a friend of hers told her that those young women weren't waiting for particular dates.
Talk about naive, she thought, and looked around for the Indian who had spoken to Yellow Colt. She saw him in the parking lot and hurried outside.
"Mr. Del-Klinne!" She waved a hand at him and watched as he stopped. She hoped she'd pronounced his name correctly. God knows, she couldn't give the last part of it the twist he had.
When she reached him, she was slightly out of breath. He was watching her warily. She gripped the strap on her purse tighter and smiled as encouragingly as possible, then took a deep breath.
"Hi. I'd like to talk to you, if possible."
"About what?"
His tone was slightly sour, as if he expected her to repeat what Yellow Colt had said. She couldn't blame him, though, for being suspicious.
"I—well, could we go some place? I'd rather not stand in the middle of the Hilton parking lot."
He smiled then, a pleasant expression. He was a good-looking man, handsome in a way not at all pretty, like most men were nowadays, and she was surprised at herself, because she'd never thought of an Indian in an attractive sense. For all her professed liberalism in college, she hadn't known a single Indian, hadn't sought the company of any, had to admit she hadn't really cared or rarely even thought about their plight. With a sense of irony she realized she was precisely the sort of person Yellow Colt's coalition was trying to reach.
"Okay. We can talk. Hop in." He jerked his chin toward the pickup, and she stepped around to the passenger side. She waited for him to come around and open the door for her; when he didn't, she grasped the handle set almost eye-level with her, climbed into the cab and jerked the door shut. As she watched him back up, she wondered what she had gotten herself into.
He watched her carefully as she finished the last of her green chili cheeseburger. She wiped her fingers fastidiously on the paper napkin, sipped her coke, then looked out the window of the restaurant.
She didn't believe him. He knew she wouldn't, and yet he'd persisted in telling her. Dumb. Dumb and … touched.
He watched the cars go by on Constitution, heading toward the UNM law school. He had driven to a small hamburger place operated by a Chinese family. Along with great burgers and roasted chicken, they also served a number of Chinese dinners. It wasn't a fancy restaurant, not very big—only about ten tables pushed together in the single room—but the food was excellent, inexpensive, and the service friendly.
He'd found the place when he'd lived in his house, only a few blocks away. So close, and he wanted in one way to drive by and see it again. Yet again he didn't want to, didn't want to see what the new owner had done to it, didn't want to see the improvements or the decay. Didn't want to stir up more old memories. Too many memories were being dredged up recently anyway.
And it was still a mistake bringing the reporter here and telling her everything. He needed to talk with someone. He hadn't planned on telling her, but she had looked sympathetic and had seemed to be a good listener. She'd said she saw he had a terrible burden. She urged him to talk, to tell her what it was that was bothering him, and before he could stop it, everything that had happened had come pouring out. The strange hitchhiker, his missed job interview, the ride to the mountains and his grisly discovery, his trip to the sheriff's. department, his second and near fatal journey into the mountains, his visit to Isleta. Everything. Nothing had been left out, no matter how ridiculous it sounded now in this little cafe with the hissing of hamburgers on the grill, the high-pitched voices conversing in rapid Chinese, the scraping of chairs next to their table.
Nothing.
Not even the shadows.
He had thought she would understand. But he was wrong. She had been quiet too long. Her attention had returned to the room and she was concentrating on wiping her individual fingers now with the paper napkin. Maybe she was a cleanliness freak, he thought, amused. Maybe she was wondering how she could escape the nut and get back to her car in the Hilton parking lot.
"The shadows," she said.
The sound of her voice, when she finally did speak, surprised him, and he nearly lost the grip on the coffee cup. He took a quick sip, swallowed the now lukewarm coffee, set the cup down with a slight scrape on the saucer.
"Yeah."
"They chased you."
He nodded.
"And the lightning. Ball lightning is a common occurrence in the—"
"Not like this. I've seen the natural kind. This wasn't." He traced a pattern in the wet ring left by his water glass. Wryly he recognized it was the same pattern the Isleta elder had been tracing in the dirt. He smeared the moisture with his fingertips, wiped his hand on his jeans. "I swear I wasn't—I'm not—on anything. What I saw was real. My detention by the cops was real. And I don't understand any of it. I thought maybe you, as a newspaper reporter, might have heard something that a peon like me wouldn't have." He waited, watched her. At least she hadn't stood up and shrieked that he was a nut who should be locked up. He could be thankful for that.
When she did not speak, he sighed deeply and reached into his pocket to pull out the money. He guessed he hadn't lost much. He'd had some companionship for a while, had been able to talk about what was bothering him, and he only had to pick up her lunch of the burger, fries and coke. He wasn't out much. Except he knew she suspected he was certifiable.
"I believe you."
His head jerked up at that and he stared at her. She was looking at him now, her blue eyes solemn. "Everything I said?"
She nodded.
Laura drank more of the coke, held out the empty glass to indicate she wanted another one. When he returned with a second soft drink for her, another cup of coffee for himself, he sat and drew in a deep breath.
She was still regarding him solemnly. "That sheriff might be wrong. Maybe the guy at the University got mixed up."
"Maybe," he said, sipping the coffee, rolling the hot liquid around on his tongue. "But a bear is a mighty handy scapegoat, if you don't mind the animal mixture. And using the bear as an explanation doesn't tell us why those things were at the picnic site."
"Coincidence then."
"No. That's too convenient." He paused to look at her closely. "Maybe it's more involved than we think. Maybe it's really a mass murderer, an escaped convict, something like that. A bear in a killing frenzy would be less frightening to most people than a huma
n killer. Perhaps the city doesn't want that spread around, so there's a news blackout on that. I mean, the news media aren't playing it up; it's their sources. "
"Why?" She answered her question almost immediately. "Because of Senator Kent, that's why. At the press conference I asked the Mayor how the deaths would affect the senator's visit, and he adroitly avoided answering me. In fact, he made me look like a fool in front of everyone else."
He glanced out the large windows of the hamburger place, watched an old Chicano, shoulders slumped, head sunk into his neck, shuffle slowly along the pavement, and he was reminded of Junior. They weren't very far from where he'd dropped the hitchhiker off. If he got in the truck and cruised along Central, would he find the old man? Then what? Ask him questions. What would the geezer know? More than he should, one part of him whispered.
"Those bite marks—not from a known animal," she said suddenly, startling him in the change of subject. "That's what the anthropologist said?"
"Yeah. And the human animal as well. There's something going on here, but I'm damned if I know what. We've gotta do something, though."
He stood up, went up to the counter to pay, then started walking toward the door. Laura followed. When they were in the pickup, and he had backed up onto Constitution and was sitting at the light, ready to turn right into Carlisle, she looked sideways at him.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why," she asked, "do we—do you—have to do, something? I mean, it's not your business. You're not a lawman. So what does it matter?"
He stared at her. "It matters because—" Because he had been called; because those voices had stirred something from his past, something he thought he had buried forever, something he knew now still existed. "Because I have to know. Those things came after me; that damned lightning nearly killed me. I'm involved, whether I want to be or not."
"I can accept that, I suppose, but what's your plan now?"
"Beats me."
Without realizing it, he started toward Central and the University area.
He didn't speak for a few blocks, then: "First, we have to compile the facts."
"That's easy enough," she said. She started counting off on her fingers. "Fact: There have been three separate instances of death, all in the mountains. Fact: The deaths might not be related, but they all happened conveniently close in time and location. And two of the deaths have been attributed to a bear. Fact: The anthropologist said the low-riders weren't killed by an animal, so a bear couldn't have killed them. That follows for the campers. And what of the priest? Did he really die from a heart attack?"
"Fact," Chato added, "what I saw sure as hell wasn't bears."
"The inference?"
"Something's going on, and it irritates the hell out of me. Is it part of a cover-up?"'
"In Albuquerque, New Mexico?"' She laughed. "This is the Land of Enchantment, not Washington, D.C."
"Still, Sheriff Daltry called me, wanted to talk. Why? Because of fear? Or could it have been a warning? Get out of town before sundown, kid."
"A distinct possibility."
"Fact," Chato said, "I saw—found—those mangled bodies. Fact: I saw those shadows in the mountains. Fact: I was almost killed by the lightning. In the mountains. Always the mountains," he said, glancing sideways at Laura. "Have you noticed that?" She nodded. "The key's there. The murderers are there. I was touched there. In the mountains."
She nodded again, didn't speak, but didn't have to. Junior's laugh echoed in his mind, and once more he saw the old half-breed. The man knew more than he had said, knew more than he would say. He didn't have proof of that, of course, but he sensed it. Didn't have to have proof, he told himself.
"I need to find Junior. Somehow he's the key to all of this."
Laura considered, then nodded. "I think you're right. At least I hope you are."
The truck was parallel to the University now, and he glanced at the sidewalk on the south side of Central. Several winos sprawled outside the Frontier Restaurant, their legs outstretched in front so that students walking along the sidewalk had to carefully pick their way through the limbs. He saw more old men tottering down a side street.
Old men. Junior and Tenorio and Josanie. Wisdom came with age, it was rumored. He might believe that of Tenorio and Josanie, but of Junior? He shuddered, remembering the half-breed's ravaged face. Evil, too, could come with great age.
He glanced back down the street at the derelicts and winos. They were everywhere today. All the old men of Albuquerque. Out today to confuse him, to lure him away from the real object of his search.
The hitchhiker. Junior.
He didn't even know the old man's last name. Didn't know what pueblo he came from.
Didn't know, too, how he knew the man was half-breed. Half-breed of what?
He had to find Junior, had to ask him, had to know more.
Before it was too late.
Too late for whom? he wondered. And instantly knew the answer.
Before it was too late for him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He sat up abruptly, scratched an ear and lifted his nose to smell the wind. The itch persisted and he scratched at it again, his long nails rasping against the scrap of leather around his neck. He bent his head and gnawed at his side, where it itched, too. Then he opened his mouth, his tongue lolling, and looked around.
The shadows moved.
His fur bristled and a growl, from deep within his throat, welled up. Reflexively he snapped his stained and broken teeth. A warning. His gums were pink, bloodstained, and he bared his teeth again, the one long tooth, the only one left in the front, curving up over his grizzled muzzle.
The others in the pack, the females, pups and young males as yet untested by him, echoed his growling, a rolling, low sound that in the past had warned off other enemies, other predators.
But not today.
Grey clouds, their edges smeared with black, drifted overhead, obscuring the sun, and the warmth of the day that he had been enjoying disappeared quickly. Somewhere above there was a flash of lightning, a distant drumbeat of thunder. The wind rose, quickly, strongly, muttering angrily, without warning, as it always did, and brought with it a new scent.
He sniffed again, deeply. The odor was not of Man, but of something older, something not… unfamiliar. Decay. Living decay with the fresh, cloying scent of blood. The stench assailed his sensitive nostrils, and one of the pups, not yet weaned, bayed and rubbed its nose along the ground. Its mother clubbed him across the side of his head with a broad-padded foot and the sound ended with a whimper.
The old dog stood up, shook himself, and turned his head this way and that, looking for the scent worse than Man. The evil scent. He heard new sounds, too, in the wind, sounds like the voices of Man. But different.
Bad sounds, sounds so high they pierced his ears, hurt his head.
The shadows crept closer.
His bitch bared her teeth, barked shrilly and padded over to him. She nuzzled him and he snapped at her. She backed away and looked toward the bushes.
The pack had been hunting, and now, with the sun so high and the heat at its most intense for the day, the leader had returned with his followers to their lair. There they would sleep in the shade of the bushes and trees, protected by the rocks surrounding the lair on all sides, and in the evening, once the light was fading, they would go out once more-to bring down their dinner. Rabbits and chipmunks, an occasional stray house cat. Later they would return to sleep for the night, and once more, early in the morning, the cycle would repeat itself and they would hunt again.
Hunt or be hunted.
His one brown eye was watchful, the other torn out in a fight long ago. The needles on the branches overhead clicked, and he whirled, teeth bared. The fetor grew stronger. Again the growling in his throat started, his hackles rising as well. His uneasiness increased, and another pup whined. Its mother leaned down to lick it and it soon quieted.
The shadows watched.
> He barked once, twice, again—three short sounds. It echoed, clattering against the rocks, and he cocked one ear when he heard something slither down a sandy slope. His keen eye only picked up the sinuous form of a diamondback rattlesnake. It disappeared with a flick of its rattles down a hole.
The other dogs, sensing danger, huddled around him, forming a rough circle. His trio of pups out of the old bitch waddled toward him, their fat pink tongues lolling. Their stubby legs moved them surprisingly fast and they were soon at his side, their muzzles pulled back in baby imitations of his fierce snarl.
The shadows waited.
Lightning ripped the charcoal clouds above their heads and the dogs cringed, whining in fear. The sky blackened as though it were night, and slowly at first, quickening in a pulse-like rhythm, fat raindrops splashed downward. The rain assaulted them, matting their fur, splattering mud on their feet, blinding them. The leaves shuddered as the branches whipped back and forth.
And the voices still whispered.
And the stench became unbearable.
He barked again at his pack, and they trembled. He nipped at the back foot of the one-eared female, a young bitch who'd borne him many pups, and she whined.
The shadows rustled.
As the rain increased, so did the decaying scent. It assaulted his nose. He rubbed it along the muddy ground, tried to remove the odor. But it didn't help. The decay filled his nostrils, choked him, snapped at him, gnawed his throat.
He shook his head, pawed at it. Nothing helped.
And the shadows leaped.
A pup screamed as sharp claws raked across its muzzle, sliced at its nose. The pup squirmed away, trying to escape the pain in its head. Something dark leaped on it from behind, snapping its spine in half with one meshing of powerful jaws. It shrieked once, was quiet.
The trio of pups backed away from the shadows, alternately barking and whining. One stumbled over a brother; it momentarily faltered, and the shadows leaped. The puppies disappeared under the darkness. Soon their cries were gone.