Ghost Dance

by Mark T Sullivan

  Caleb told me to tell Joshua or I’d end up like his daddy, dead in his sleep with a bullet in his head.

  Joshua smiled in a way as to make me sick. And for the first time I saw that he was not right in the head. He’d been using the spider medicine almost every day, sunup to midnight. That and all the worship during the seances had pushed him outside his normal course, like a river that’s done jumped its bank.

  I was powerful scared and wanted to run all the way back to Standing Rock. But Ten Trees and Painted Horses taught me to be clear-eyed. I was months walking from Standing Rock. If I were to go home, I needed time and a plan to gather what I’d need.

  I told Joshua I was obliged to think on how best to teach him our ways because it can’t be done in one pull. Joshua trained them last-week-of-the-moon eyes on me and I looked into them until I felt I was commencing to tumble. He leaned forward and kissed me hard on the lips before I could step back. He tasted like water when an animal has fallen in the well.

  It is night now, more than a week since he kissed me, and Joshua’s breath still hangs around me like the smell of black teeth. I have thought on it and thought on it and I cannot do this alone. I need help, but I cannot count on Caleb or the rest of them. They are all trapped by Joshua’s spider medicine.

  Tomorrow I’m gonna go see Father D’Angelo.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE DISPATCHER BURST THROUGH the door to the interrogation room, waving another one of those pink slips in the air. ‘I just took this call myself!’ Shaddock said breathlessly.

  His furtive eyes came immediately to the pouch and the yellowed papers on the metal tabletop in front of Andie. Before continuing, the gossip licked his lips, fascinated yet nervous in their presence. ‘Orin Loomis, a clockmaker down south of Windsor. He told me he had a red leather pouch with an excerpt of a journal and an old pipe bowl inside.’

  ‘A pipe bowl?’ Andie cried. ‘I never mentioned a pipe bowl on television! Who’s left out there?’

  ‘Just Lieutenant Bowman and little old you, but I suppose you’ll be wanting to stay around, waiting for Patrick’s call?’

  ‘Knock it off, Shaddock’ she said. ‘I’m going to pay Mr Loomis a visit.’

  ‘Do you want me to hold onto that?’ Shaddock asked, nodding toward the journal.

  ‘Why, so you can leak it to Hard Copy or something?’

  ‘I’d never!’ Shaddock said indignantly. ‘But what’s it say anyway?’

  ‘None of your business,’ she said, gathering up the journal papers and sliding them back into their pouch.

  That evening there was a break in the line of storms buffeting Vermont. The setting sun refracted through fast-moving clouds of the departing front, bruising the sky ruby and purple as Andie crested a rise about a mile from the turnoff onto the dirt lane that led to Orin Loomis’ home. The late-day riot of color and light played out over fields where cows grazed. The bottoms of the mountains showed first leaf now. A thousand Vertical feet higher, the maples were just in bud. But at the highest reaches winter still gripped the forest.

  The thinly settled lane passed a general store and two farms, then climbed through tamaracks toward a plateau of sorts. She passed a brick ranch house, three trailer homes and then a white Colonial with a heart-shaped pond. Around the next bend was a sign, GREEN MOUNTAIN CLOCKWORKS.

  Andie parked, tugged on a green sweater, then got out and mounted the steps to the clock-shop porch and knocked. No lights shone inside. No answer. She knocked again, waited and was turning to leave when the entire house began to clang, vibrate and bong. Startled, Andie jumped off the porch, her heart pounding. Then she heard laughter, spun and saw a young freckle-faced boy in a blue tank top, straddling a mountain bike.

  ‘Ain’t it great?’ He grinned. ‘Eight o’clock, that’s a good one, but an hour from now, nine o’clock, that’s a racket. Orin says ’cause it’s the only hour all the grandfather clocks seem to work right.’

  Andie laughed at herself even as the din petered out to the tinkling of some smaller timepiece. ‘Where is Orin?’

  The boy pointed toward a two-track overgrown with grass that disappeared into the woods behind the clock shop. ‘He and Missy and the girls live just up the hill. Not far.’

  The detective glanced at her pickup, then decided to walk. The boy stood there watching. It was a balmy evening, the first blessed warmth from the relentless cold rain of the past two weeks. The still-damp grass in the middle of the two-track sopped the ankles of Andie’s gray slacks. The road curved alongside a streambed, climbed a hill, then gave way abruptly to a clearing in the middle of which sat a larger version of the clock shop, flanked by two apple trees blooming in the gathering dusk.

  A mare and a colt grazed in a paddock beyond the house. In the lighted kitchen window, a gangly man about thirty was stirring a stove pot. Beyond him at a kitchen table, two girls colored.

  A dark shadow slipped along the side of the barn. It halted as Andie strolled into the light cast from the kitchen window, then circled quickly behind a broad-waisted rhododendron bush, hesitated, then rushed out and bore down. Out of her peripheral vision Andie caught the flash, spun and crouched, clawing for her pistol.

  The chocolate Labrador retriever skidded to a halt inches in front of her, shaking its butt like a hula dancer, then dropped a tennis ball from its mouth and barked happily.

  ‘You little stinker,’ Andie whispered. The dog fetched the tennis ball, nipped it toward her feet and barked again, behind wagging faster than tail.

  ‘Missy, you stop now,’ the gangly man called from the doorway. Then he saw the gun in her hand and took a step backward.

  Andie holstered the pistol, then walked toward the porch. ‘I’m Sergeant Nightingale. Vermont State Police. Are you Orin Loomis?’

  Yes he said, relieved. I’m sorry I haven’t known what to do since that report on television. That was you, wasn’t it?’

  Loomis had pale skin, a ski-jump nose and a kind face. Barefoot, he wore a blue apron over a tan short-sleeved shirt and jeans. The Labrador scampered up to him, circled his legs and sat panting beside him.

  ‘Yes,’ Andie said.

  A pretty little brown-eyed girl about seven years old appeared on the other side of the French doors. ‘Daddy?’

  Loomis looked at his daughter, then at Andie, and he gave her a quick shake of his head to tell her the girl did not know that he’d called. The clockmaker said, ‘Tina, do me a favor, honey; help Jenny get washed up for supper, ’kay? I’ve got to talk with Ms Nightingale about a clock.’

  The girl nodded uncertainly and went back inside, and Loomis turned to Andie.

  ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Do you have a piece of Many Horses’ journal?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  JERRY MATTHEWS DODGED HIS rental car through bridge traffic toward Ronald Reagan National Airport. ‘You’re gonna just make it!’

  Although Gallagher had less than twenty minutes to catch the last shuttle to Boston, his attention was not on the road but on the photograph in his lap.

  Before he melted off into the viburnum-scented night, Harold—or whatever his real name was—had given them a photograph of Terrance Danby. It was a ten-year-old shot of Danby on the day he had made sergeant major: a lean, close-shaven giant with a bull’s neck and stone-colored eyes. He wore a black beret. Ribbons and medals festooned his jacket.

  Jerry rubbed his nose on his sleeve and glanced at the picture before wrenching the car right to speed up the exit ramp. ‘Harold wasn’t shitting you. The guy’s close enough to be your brother.’

  ‘Kind of makes me queasy to know that I look like an assassin.’

  ‘Better than being one,’ Jerry grunted. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel. ‘Fucking Harold! I should have buried that bastard when I had the chance.’

  ‘He might have had your nieces killed,’ Gallagher replied. ‘Nothing you could do about it. You made the right call.’

  Jerry stewed for a moment, t
hen nodded toward the cell phone. The Flight Departures area was just ahead. ‘Don’t you think you’d better tell the detective you’re working with what Harold said?’

  ‘I’ll wait until I get off the ground.’

  ‘What’s her name again?’

  ‘Nightingale, Andie Nightingale.’

  There must have been something in the way Gallagher said it that made Jerry take his eyes off the road. They bounced up on the curb and a skycap yelled in protest.

  ‘Don’t tell me—’ Jerry began.

  ‘Okay, I won’t,’ Gallagher said, already halfway out the car.

  Jerry grinned. ‘Hey, man, good for you. See? Midlife crisis ain’t so bad.’

  Gallagher ignored him. ‘How long until you and the camera crew can get to Lawton?’

  ‘Two days. Three, tops.’

  ‘See you then.’

  Gallagher waited until the plane had been airborne twenty minutes before placing the call to Andie’s cell phone. The line rang several times, then forwarded, and a man with a whining nasal voice answered: ‘Bethel Barracks. Vermont State Troopers.’

  ‘I’m looking for Sergeant Andie Nightingale.’

  ‘You and everyone else in the state,’ the man said. Then his voice dropped an octave or two. You with CNN?’

  ‘My name’s Patrick Gallagher.’

  ‘Not the Patrick Gallagher?’ the man gloated. ‘You mean her personal Pat Gallagher?’

  ‘What?’ Gallagher asked, puzzled. ‘Is she there or isn’t she?’

  ‘No, but I’ll patch you through to her cell phone,’ he replied.

  ‘I just tried that. I was forwarded to you.’

  ‘She’s away from her vehicle, then,’ the dispatcher replied. His voice dropped conspiratorially. ‘She’s going to tell you there’s been another killing. Libby Curtin, the parish secretary. They found her portion of the Indian’s journal and now Andie’s out after another piece of it. I took that call. A clockmaker down in Windsor’s got it.’

  Gallagher clenched the phone tighter, his heart racing. ‘I need to talk to her.’

  ‘Can I tell her where she might reach you?’

  ‘I’m on a plane between D.C. and Boston,’ he said. ‘If she calls in, tell her I’ll try again around five past nine. Tell her it’s about Danby.’

  ‘Danby,’ the dispatcher said thoughtfully. ‘The plot thickens. How about a first name and a spelling?’

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ORIN LOOMIS HESITATED, GRIM-FACED, at Andie’s question about Many Horses’ journal.

  ‘My girls don’t know anything about it,’ he said at last. ‘Neither does my wife. She’s out on the West Coast for the year, completing her master’s. I don’t want any of them to know I kept it from them.’

  ‘I understand,’ Andie said. ‘I had a piece myself.’ Loomis looked at her now with great curiosity. ‘I always wondered who else had it,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I’m weird, but part of me believes it’s cursed. Whenever I held it, it made my skin crawl and I couldn’t explain it, because all it is is a pipe and some old pieces of papers. I know I must sound goofy, but it always seemed like there was a bad energy around them. I almost burned the pouch once, but it was like I couldn’t, you know?’

  Andie nodded. ‘You and your girls will be safe now. Can you get the journal for me?’

  ‘It’s hidden in the shop,’ Loomis said. ‘Hold on, I’ll take you down.’

  Loomis went inside, behind Andie came the chorus of tree peepers and then from an unseen pond the first hruumphs of the bullfrogs’ mating ritual. A light breeze stirred the scent of lilac. One of the horses neighed in the near dark.

  When the clockmaker emerged from the house, he had on a purple fleece top and white running sneakers. Tina wore a blue windbreaker and held the hand of a petite and pretty two-year-old in a pink bunny jumper sucking her other thumb. Loomis introduced her as Jenny.

  They climbed into Loomis’ rusting jeep Wagoneer. Missy, the Labrador, tried to jump in, too, but Loomis shooed her out. It was dark now. The moon, nearly full, was rising and casting shadows. The dog ran ahead and raced in a circle when they parked in the little gravel turnout next to Andie’s truck.

  On the porch, the clockmaker held Jenny in one hand and with the other punched in an elaborate code on an alarm pad. He opened the door. Missy wriggled between their legs and darted off into the dark interior. Loomis switched on the lights to reveal two large, connected rooms filled with every imaginable sort of timepiece hanging from or leaning against a wall. Heavy, ornate grandfather clocks, nineteenth-century banjo clocks, French table clocks. And among the timepieces, strewn over a half-dozen wooden tables, were old music boxes in various stages of assembly and repair.

  Tina and Jenny immediately went to the music boxes and began turning them on. Tinny music filled the air and the two little girls started to dance.

  Loomis led Andie into a back room that smelled of light oil and was filled to overflowing with the delicate tools of his trade. The clockmaker carefully moved an old music box off the top of a set of oak drawers. These he tugged back from the wall, then groped at the floor for several moments before coming up with a zippered black rubber bag. He handed it to Andie as if it were a distasteful thing.

  Without speaking, she unzipped the bag and retrieved the red leather pouch. It bulged at the bottom. She untied the green ribbons and peeled back the flap. Tucked in beside the folded yellow sheets of Many Horses’ journal was a pipestone. She gently drew the stone out and studied the black bowl on which a silver buffalo and two red triangles had been painted. Andie ran her thumb into the bowl and found it rough to the touch, then nearly jumped when the bowl grew warm, almost hot in her hand.

  ‘She talks about the pipe in the journal,’ Loomis said, pointing to the yellow papers jutting out of the pouch. ‘It’s all about old shamanic ceremonies taught to her by her mother and father. Most of it I don’t get.’

  ‘Who gave the pouch to you?’

  ‘My dad,’ Loomis said. ‘Week before he died. He said his grandmother had passed it on to him and that she’d gotten it from a priest she used to work for.’

  ‘What priest? You mean D’Angelo?’

  Loomis shrugged. ‘Yes, I think that was the name.’

  ‘It makes sense that D’Angelo would be the one to disburse the journal,’ she said excitedly. ‘But McColl said he’d never come across anything about a Sioux.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’ Loomis shook his head, puzzled. ‘Who’s McColl?’

  ‘Forget you heard that. I’ll bring in troopers to guard you and the girls for tonight. Do you have anywhere you can go first thing in the morning?’

  ‘Karen’s sister has a summerhouse in Maine.’

  ‘Fine,’ Andie said. ‘What I’d like to do is have a trooper who looks like you stay here in the house after you’re gone.’

  ‘You mean, like bait?’ Loomis asked, worried.

  ‘Something like that.’ Andie returned the warm pipestone and the journal to the pouch. ‘I need a phone.’

  The clockmaker directed her to a portable on the wall, told her to turn off the lights and shut the front door behind her. The electronic lock would set automatically. He took one last glance at the pouch in Andie’s hands, then gathered up his girls, whistled to the dog and went back out into the night.

  Andie called the Bethel Barracks.

  ‘You just missed your ardent admirer,’ the dispatcher said. ‘He’s been calling here every twenty minutes. He’s stuck in Boston overnight. They canceled the last flight to West Lebanon. He’ll try you again in another fifteen minutes. Says it’s important. Very important. Now, who’s this guy Danby, Sergeant? How does he fit in?’

  ‘Stay out of it, Shaddock,’ Andie ordered. ‘And if that name gets out, I’ll have you fired.’

  ‘I’ve got twenty-three years in state civil service,’ Shaddock sniffed. ‘You can’t have me fired.’

  ‘Watch me,’ Andie promised. ‘Now get me four troopers in plain cloth
es to the Loomis home immediately.’

  ‘Loomis had a piece, didn’t he? I knew it! I took that call!’

  ‘Shaddock!’

  ‘All right. All right.’

  Andie hung up. She flipped off the lights and shut the door behind her, hearing a whirring and clicking noise in the wall.

  The peepers and bullfrogs had gone silent. Her shoes crunched gravel. The moon was luminous and pale stars shone amid the swiftly moving clouds. Andie opened the truck window so she’d hear if the cell phone rang and leaned against the bumper, waiting.

  From behind and to her left, from the bushes along the two-track that led up the hill to Loomis’ house, a tennis ball shot out and bounced past her. There was a soft padding on the gravel.

  Andie turned from the ball to shoo the dog. ‘Go home, Missy. Go on home,’ she said. The car phone buzzed behind her. The hundred clocks in the shop struck the nine o’clock hour with a resounding clangor.

  With her attention diverted and divided, the realization that the form was not canine but creature came to Andie in a slow motion unfolding. Crepe-soled black boots spit out gravel. Strips of leafy camouflage flapped moistly at the swift, hulking body that bore down on her. A machete in one hand. A tomahawk in the other.

  Andie screamed and went for the pistol in her pocket.

  ‘Angel! Alive!’ came a raspy voice from under the cowl as the monster closed the final yards.

  Andie’s fingers gripped the pistol butt and she thumbed the safety off before attempting to turn the barrel up at the charging figure and shoot him point-blank.

  But the creature must have sensed her intent. He dropped his back foot away from the barrel’s line of fire and slashed the square end of the tomahawk in a quick, horizontal action. The blow deflected her wrist outward just at the moment of discharge, just as the hundred clocks in the shop struck the last stroke of nine and all but swallowed the gun’s sharp report.