Andie held it in her palm, studying it as if she couldn’t believe it. She chewed at her bottom lip and looked into her palm again, the incredulity in her expression changing clearly to dismay and men to fear.
She jammed whatever it was into the right pocket of her slicker, then stood there in the squall for several moments as if she could not decide what to do. At last she picked her head up. The cat scampered from under a bush back through the barn door and sat purring contentedly at Gallagher’s feet. Andie came toward the barn, clucking and calling, ‘Come here, Tess.’
Knowing he was caught, Gallagher simply stepped out.
Andie jerked to a halt. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I … I didn’t feel well after seeing … Mrs. Dawson,’ he faltered. ‘And I just went for a walk to get some air—’
‘I told you to leave.’
‘There’s mud on the floor inside,’ he blurted. ‘Fresh mud. It leads to a stall … there’s another one of Charun’s pictures. Those wounds on Olga’s body weren’t from heat!’
‘Olga?’ Andie said. Her face took on a dazed expression, as if she’d been wind-robbed by a punch to the solar plexus. Then her knees buckled and she collapsed into the mud. Two inches of gold chain now hung outside her raincoat pocket. She looked up at Gallagher, then down at the chain, and that alone seemed to bring her back from the brink. She reached into her other pocket and got out her gun shakily. ‘Get back,’ she ordered.
‘Hey, put that thing away!’ he cried.
‘Move!’
Gallagher took five steps backward. Andie came to her feet like a newborn colt and stuffed the rest of the chain into her pocket, watching him as a cornered animal might.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.
‘And what’s that?’
‘That I went in there to plant the picture.’
‘A mind reader, an anthropologist and a killer,’ she said. ‘You are talented.’
‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ Gallagher said. ‘If I was the killer, wouldn’t I have left the drawing last night? How was I supposed to know that your truck would die and I would be allowed on the scene?’
Andie didn’t answer. Her attention was jumping from Gallagher to the barn and back again. And with each jump her expression gravitated toward that brink again. She blinked and rubbed at her eyes as if blinded by an invisible light.
Gallagher pleaded his case again. ‘Why would I wait until Mrs. Dawson’s farm is crawling with police officers to leave a calling card? I’d have to be an idiot.’
Andie hesitated, then dropped the gun to hip level, muzzle down. ‘Show me. You go first.’
When they reached the mud on the floor, Andie ordered Gallagher to take off his boots and stand against the wall. She picked up one mud clot and studied the design. His boots were chain-style, rubber-bottom boots. The clots on the floor had that Z design. She kicked off her own boots, then motioned Gallagher forward, warning him to be careful not to step on any of the remaining mud clumps. ‘Where’s the drawing?’
‘Last stall,’ he said. ‘It’s tacked to the frame under the trap door.’
‘How did you know there was a trap door in that stall?’ she demanded.
‘I didn’t,’ he protested. ‘It was open when I got there.’
Gallagher led her to the stall, but remained outside on her orders. She put on latex gloves, went over to the boots under the pine bench, turned them over and inspected the tread. They and the Z clods were obviously the same.
‘She wasn’t in any condition to take a walk, especially at night,’ Andie mused, talking more to herself than to Gallagher. She crossed to the trap door.
‘Where does that staircase go?’ he asked.
But Andie only half heard. She was already transfixed by the drawing. She mumbled, ‘To a tunnel that runs under the yard to the house. Olga’s father-in-law built it back in the twenties so he could come out and tend to the cows in the winter.’
‘So could she have gone out?’
‘No, I … I don’t know,’ she said. She glanced over at Gallagher. ‘The drawing … the creature has a …’
He nodded.
‘He raped Olga before he killed her,’ Andie said. She snatched the drawing as if it were the vilest thing on earth. She seemed poised to shred it.
‘Don’t!’ Gallagher yelled.
There was a moment of absolute silence in the barn. ‘Don’t do it!’ he whispered.
‘Sergeant Nightingale?’ Lieutenant Brigid Bowman’s voice called from outside the barn door. ‘Are you in there?’
At the sound of the lieutenant’s voice, Andie let the drawing slip from her fingers, then staggered toward the bench and slumped onto it. Her sopping hair hung like tentacles over her face. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she moaned softly to herself.
By then Bowman and Chief Mike Kerris had entered the far end of the barn.
‘Take off your boots!’ Gallagher called to them, nervously casting his attention from them to Andie and back ‘Pull yourself together!’ he hissed. ‘The lieutenant’s coming. You can’t let her see you like this.’
Andie shook her head like a donkey Gallagher had once seen in the Sahara that had been whipped so hard it refused to move. He walked toward the law enforcement officials, pointing to the mud. ‘Sergeant Nightingale wants everyone to take their boots off. Charun was in here.’
‘Charun?’ Lieutenant Bowman’s forehead knotted.
Kerris groaned. He had changed his clothes since yesterday, but he looked worse. His posture was stooped. His ‘Chief baseball cap was on backward. And the bags under his stainless-steel eyes were larger than Gallagher’s.
‘Where is Sergeant Nightingale?!’ Bowman demanded.
‘In that last stall,’ Gallagher said, trying to figure out ways to delay them. ‘There’s another drawing.’
Kerris’ eyes darted about. He fumbled in his pocket for a lollipop. ‘I’m going to have to call my uncle about this.’
‘No one’s calling anyone until I say so,’ Bowman countered. She kicked off her rubber boots, watching Gallagher suspiciously. ‘Why are you in here, Mr Gallagher?’
‘I found the drawing, then went and showed it to Sergeant Nightingale.’
‘You found the … Chief, please make sure Mr Gallagher does not leave,’ Bowman ordered; then she moved past.
Gallagher tried to hurry after her, but Kerris grabbed him by the collar. Despite the obvious strain he was under, he was three inches taller and fifteen pounds of muscle heavier than Gallagher. Kerris spun Gallagher around neatly. His breath smelled of grape. The stick of the lollipop stuck out of his mouth. ‘Where do you think you’re going, bright boy?’ he asked.
‘Disney World,’ Gallagher said. ‘What’s it to you?’
Kerris’ upper lip arched. ‘Lawton doesn’t need your kind. Why don’t you just go back to New York or wherever it is you’re from?’
‘Look, Chief,’ Gallagher said. ‘I don’t know what your problem is, but I helped Sergeant Nightingale interpret the last letter. I thought I might be able to help with this one, too.’
‘I’ll bet you did.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Kerris gave him a malevolent grin. ‘Andie Nightingale’s a damn fine-looking woman. But I wouldn’t get too close. She’s so cold she could be dangerous to your … mental health.’
Before Gallagher could reply, Lieutenant Bowman called out in an agitated voice, ‘Chief Kerris, would you escort Mr Gallagher up here, please?’
Gallagher feared finding Andie sprawled on the floor. But she was back on her feet. Her pallid, damp complexion, her sunken eyes and the visible tremor in her hand made it seem as if she had just gotten over a virus.
Lieutenant Bowman’s jaw was set hard. ‘Mr Gallagher I’m going to want to search your cabin. Will I require a warrant?’
‘No, go ahead. I’ve got nothing to hide,’ he said.
‘Chief Kerris will arrange it.’
‘If he’s involved, I’d like to be there, if you don’t mind.’
‘That’s your right,’ Bowman said. ‘In the meantime, I’d like you to look at this letter.’
‘You’re going to let a suspect look at the letter?’ Kerris barked incredulously.
The lieutenant shot the police chief a patronizing smile. ‘If Mr Gallagher is the killer, men he’s already seen it, hasn’t he? If not, he might be of help.’
Gallagher winked at Kerris, then went to the bench where Andie had laid out the piece of paper with the drawing and the note. Andie stepped to one side. Her breathing was asthmatic.
Angel was my Persephone, the letter began. I could not see. But like the old man and father, she said she knew the way. She said the little death would steer our boat.
I will have what Angel knows now for sure. And if more be rowed across the river until I have it, so be it. You condemned me, Lawton. Now I condemn you!
Angel said we all will die. We all will die. Will we see the other side?
The eerie madness of the letter worked its way up the back of Gallagher’s spine and centered, pounding, in his head. He recalled the drawing of the leering fiend on the other side of the note, shuddered, then forced himself to reread the words.
‘Well?’ Bowman asked.
‘We’re dealing with an intelligent but very sick mind.’
‘Takes one to know one,’ Kerris said.
‘That’s enough, Chief,’ Bowman said. ‘What else?’
‘He’s got a beef with Lawton, so he’s probably local, or was, and feels wronged by the community. Which counts me out, by the way.’
‘Not in my book,’ Kerris said.
‘Who’s Persephone? Who’s Angel?’ the lieutenant asked.
‘Both mythological figures, but they’re from different cultures,’ Gallagher said, ignoring Kerris’ glare. ‘Persephone’s from Greek mythology. Angels are Judeo-Christian figures.
‘Persephone was a daughter of the harvest goddess, Demeter,’ he went on. ‘She was raped and abducted by Hades, king of the underworld. While there, she ate three pomegranate seeds and was doomed to stay forever as Hades’ bride beneath the earth. Her mother, Demeter, sought her daughter everywhere, sorrowing and completely neglecting the crops. When the crops of the earth withered, winter appeared for the first time.
‘Humans beseeched the gods to intervene in the dispute and a compromise was reached. Persephone would spend half a year in Hades and the other half with her mother on earth,’ he added.
Andie’s voice was gravelly and high. ‘How did Persephone get back and forth between the underworld and earth?’
Gallagher thought about it and nodded soberly. ‘Charun would have been her boatman.’
‘And Persephone was raped by the king of the underworld?’ Andie asked the question as if a sharp bone had caught in her throat.
‘Yes.’
Kerris looked away, his face flushed. ‘If you ask me, it’s a bunch of nutso mumbo jumbo. Where’s the real evidence?’
‘That’s what I want to know, too,’ Bowman griped. ‘Mr Gallagher, did Charun have sexual relations with Persephone in the myths? The penis—it’s exaggerated.’
Gallagher shook his head. ‘Charun didn’t have any romantic relationships that I can remember. He’s a minor figure in the more major myths.’
‘What about this Angel?’ Bowman asked. ‘How does she fit in?’
Gallagher shrugged. ‘He’s jumbling these references. It doesn’t make sense. Unless … the meaning is his own.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Kerris asked warily.
‘Since the dawn of time, myths have been the way people explain the unexplainable to themselves,’ Gallagher replied. ‘To the early Greeks, the Persephone legend was a way to explain the cycle of winter and summer. But your killer is altering the telling, changing the meaning.’
‘To what?’ Bowman asked.
To suit his own experience,’ Gallagher said. ‘To make sense of the evil he’s done.’
‘Or is going to do,’ Andie mumbled.
She had been sitting on the bench during the last part of the conversation, looking vacantly at the trap door that led to the staircase. Now she cradled her stomach and rocked back and forth as a mad person might in a padded room.
‘What’s that, Sergeant?’ Bowman asked.
‘He raped Olga, didn’t he?’ Andie groaned. ‘He raped her, then hacked her to death! And before he burned her, he used her blood to draw that—’
She rocked faster. ‘He’s going to rape us and kill us all and we won’t even know why.’
Kerris and Bowman exchanged glances. Bowman went over and sat on the bench next to her. ‘Andie, are you all right?’
The detective stared at them as if they were strangers. She held her head in her hands and moaned, ‘I don’t know! I just don’t know!’
They had a trooper drive Andie and the cat down the River Road to her house, under orders from Bowman to take two weeks off to rest. An evidence team accompanied Kerris and Gallagher to the cabin. The search lasted for four hours, but as Gallagher had predicted, they found nothing. The cabin was empty again around six.
Gallagher felt wasted by the day’s events. Starving, he cooked himself a steak, then for the second night in a row stumbled upstairs and flopped on the bed fully clothed. His sleep was deep and dreamless for several hours; then the horrible images of the day surfaced and whirled in that intuitive state on the edge of consciousness. He saw the charred body of Olga Dawson, the monster taunting him with his bloody phallus and Andie Nightingale’s sudden and puzzling collapse.
Then Gallagher’s mind zipped backward and he sat up alert, speaking to the darkness: ‘Andie never told Lieutenant Bowman about that gold chain.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE WIND OUTSIDE BLEW hard. Gallagher’s flashlight played on the wet, swirling leaves along the two-track that led from the cabin out to the River Road and to Andie’s house. Through the hedgerow he could see a light burning downstairs. And he hurried, pondering this question: why had a veteran homicide detective kept secret a gold chain found near a murder scene?
Gallagher rapped at the back door, waited and then knocked sharply again. He heard a melodious, haunting noise in the wind behind him, frowned, turned and peered into the darkness. It sounded like a flute trilling against the shake of a gourd rattle, the same one he had heard when waking up a few mornings before. But almost immediately the sounds were swallowed by the wind.
Gallagher opened the door and stepped inside, calling softly, ‘Hello? Anybody home?’
There was no noise but the snap and rush of the fire in the undampened woodstove. No smell in the kitchen but of her, and when he drew closer, another scent, horribly familiar. The odor of Gallagher’s mother’s breath.
Andie had given in to it with her forehead nestled in the crook of the forest-green chamois shirt she wore with a pair of jeans. At her elbow, the lip of a tipped-over juice glass met the barrel of a fifth of vodka. Nearly a third empty. She was barefoot. Her right arm was stretched out across the table. A frail gold chain wove among her curled fingers. Attached to the chain and resting in her palm was a delicate crucifix. Above the intersection of the spar and standard was the chip of a tiny red jewel.
Next to Andie’s arm lay twin strips of forest-green cloth attached to a liver-dyed oilskin pouch, six inches long, ten inches wide, cracked with time. An exact replica of the gold chain and the cross with the tiny red jewel spilled from the jaws of the pouch, as did a bundle of yellowed parchment, ragged at the left edge and so brittle and translucent that Gallagher could make out the faint scrawl of handwriting even though the pages were folded inward.
The ancient pages stirred in his gut an inexplicable, shallow nausea. Gallagher’s attention traveled to the vodka bottle next to the outstretched arm, which aggravated the nausea until a flame crept up the back of his throat. He saw himself as a little boy wandering into a kitchen, finding his f
ather the same way, trying to wake Seamus and crying because he was frightened he would not. Gallagher wanted to go right then, to leave Andie to wrestle with her demons as she saw fit.
But there was something about the yellowed papers that called to him, would not let him leave. Gallagher picked them up, sat in the overstuffed chair next to the woodstove and began to read:
NOVEMBER 3, 1893
They shall kill me tonight. I am sure of it.
But I am not scared because I have only to face it now. Then I shall dance with Ten Trees and Painted Horses, and the pale red dust shall rise under our feet into the warm air and the singing shall be like a tornado out on the plains.
I’ve got to close my eyes to hear it true, the stamp of feet joining a thousand, then ten thousand of my brothers and sisters, and our feet shall become like the thunder hooves of the buffalo come back. All of us dancing in a great circle around and around and around. Until Wakan Tanka hears the pounding of our moccasins against the land and the sky cuts open and we walk the earth again.
Grandfather, I am sending a voice. To the heavens of the universe. I am sending a voice.
I’ve been hiding here in the root cellar below the basement for hours. There are carrots, potatoes and gourds here, enough to feed me right for a week. And a bottle of oil for the lantern. And water running in the seep. I have Ten Trees’ pipe, the sacred stones and enough tobacco to finish the ceremonies.
Then they shall come. As they always have. Out of greed. Out of spite.
They shall try one last time to make me teach them the sacred ways I learned from Ten Trees and Kicking Bear. But I shall be true to my word and not speak. And then the killing shall be done. Because I am a squaw. And they are white. Because they believe what I am is rightly theirs to take or toss away like a bone on a heap.
I am not fearful of them or death. Ten Trees always said to face death when it comes. He said you’ve got to go into death with open eyes to pass clean into what is yonder.
Ten Trees, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Big Foot, Painted Horses and now me, Many Horses. Sure enough, winter is the Lakota’s time for death. The first storm of winter came in last night, cold and mean like a wolf pack on a hunt. They are out in it, looking for me. I will kill some of them before I die.
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