by Alex Archer
“I’m—wait. Did you just quote Hamlet at me?”
“Naw. You’re givin’ in to that conspiracy-theory stuff again. I’m just an Indian country hick, too dumb to come in out of the rain.”
“All right. You can back off. I already know better than to underestimate you. But seriously? You think there might not be a rational explanation?”
“Seriously, I don’t think we can—anyhow, anyway—discount the possibility of a killer nutbag dressing himself up in a wolfman suit and skulking around the county. Seems I recently got me a report from this highfalutin outside expert, all college credentialed and all, mentioned skinwalkers’re supposed to do that very thing. Even quoted a second expert to the effect that playing skinwalker might just be a perfectly natural thing for a sociopath to do. Of course, how you could call that a rational explanation is way past me. Ain’t nothing rational about this perp.”
“Okay, okay! You just have no mercy, do you?”
“I’d have to turn in my Comanche card if I did, ma’am. We got us a historical reputation to maintain.”
Annja laughed aloud. This short, portly cop was proving himself a worthy foe.
“Peace,” she said. “We need to be on the same side.”
“Amen, sister. Preaching to the choir.”
“Okay. Well, thanks for taking the time to meet with me. Can we get in out of the cold now?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
They started walking back to their cars.
“So do you have any actual evidence of any kinds of plots against the opening ceremonies for this new Comanche Star Casino?” she asked.
“Now, Annja, don’t go getting yourself wrapped up in that kind of thing. It’s pure trouble. And it has nothing to do with the deaths of your friend and his associates.”
“I seem to have gotten wrapped up in it, regardless. Anyway, how can you be so sure there is no connection.” She stopped and squared to face him. “There’s something seriously nasty going on here. It started long before the murders, and it seems to be ongoing.”
“And it’s our business,” Ten Bears said. “Got nothing to do with this other thing.”
“How can you be sure? Is it just coincidence that the killer struck here, where tensions between Indian and white and Indian and Indian are getting wound so tight?”
“But he hit twice in New Mexico,” Ten Bears said. “And while there’s always tension where Indians come in contact with white-eyes or Mexicans, they’re not having troubles across the state line like we are here in Comanche country. I’d know if they were, believe me. There’s an old-boy network for Indian lawmen. Yes, and women, too. We keep in touch.”
“But he did come here. Which is a lot farther from Navajo country than the Rio Grande Valley.”
“You said it yourself—he seems to be drawn to these protests by professional Indians, wannabes and loafs-about-the-fort,” Ten Bears said. “Like he’s trying to show solidarity with them. Why make it more complicated than that?”
“Because it is more complicated,” she said. “You feel it, too. I know you do.”
“It always is,” he said, turning away.
As they were opening the doors of their respective vehicles, he called to her. “Just one more little thing.”
“This is where you warn me to steer clear of your son because he’s pure trouble, isn’t it?” Annja said.
“This is where I warn you to steer clear of Johnny,” he said solidly. “He’s pure trouble. Especially for a pretty woman such as yourself, if you won’t take that as sexual harassment and all.”
“I have a pretty high harassment threshold, Lieutenant.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
“I’m not going to get romantically entangled with your son, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that? He can be a pretty charming cuss when he sets his mind to it. Gets it from his old man.”
He slapped himself on the belly. “Built the way I am, I had to be charming. Or I’d never have got the chance to pass my genes along, as the kids say nowadays.”
Given how slick the fat old bastard was, she thought it was a pretty plausible theory.
“Of course I’m sure!” she snapped. “Why shouldn’t I be sure?”
“If you say so.”
“I do. But he may have information that could help lead to Paul’s killer,” she said. “I want that information.”
“I’m not sure that’s the right tree you’re barking up,” he said. “One way or another, you want to be careful what might come dropping down on your head from the branches.
“I know you’re not the usual college-professor type, Annja. But there’s trouble you can get into here in Comanche country I can’t pull you out of. You may find trouble even you can’t pull yourself out of.”
She looked at him for a moment. Then she smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “I mean that. Thank you for caring.”
“It’s my job,” he said. “Not like you’re gonna listen to me.”
“No,” she agreed. “But thanks, anyway.”
WHEN SHE GOT BACK to the motel her phone was blinking a red light at her.
“Who’d be calling me here?” she asked the room, which was all done up neat and trim and nice smelling, with the bedspread taut as a drumhead.
“Well, one way to find out.” She laid her backpack on that immaculate spread and sat down on the edge of the bed by the phone, still wearing her coat. She picked up the handset, consulted the little chart printed on the phone and punched in the code to retrieve the message.
A strange male voice said, “Ms. Creed? You don’t know me but we need to talk. I know what certain people are up to, okay? Johnny said I need to talk to you.”
“WHOA,” ANNJA SAID, gazing around as she walked through gates that had not been closed for a long time by the looks of them.
“I didn’t know there were any old drive-in movie theaters still standing.”
She was talking to herself, and to the stars, hard and bright overhead, although they were rapidly taking leave of her as menacing-looking clouds raced in and gathered from the north.
The place had clearly stood derelict for years. The posts had been stripped of their car speakers and stood in forlorn ranks like bare stalks leftover from some final harvest. The windows and doors of the former projection booth and concession stand were gapes of blackness in the gloom. Their outer walls, and the insides of the perimeter walls, were crusted in spray-painted signs and slogans.
She walked over to the concession stand. It was where her contact said he’d meet her. It was also an obvious ambush site. She stayed on her guard.
She knew she wasn’t going to delve deeper into the real reasons behind the skinwalker murders, or the Dog Society’s mysterious vendetta for her, without taking some real risks. She’d been forced to confront the fact.
She came within fifteen feet of the door and stopped.
“Hey,” a voice said, echoing slightly inside the derelict concessions stand. “I’m in here. Come on in.” It was the same voice from her motel-room phone. Whispering, raspy, tentative. If a hunted rabbit could talk it might sound that way.
“Not on your life,” Annja said flatly. “I’m not going in there. You come out. Or forget about the whole thing.”
Nothing happened. She started to turn away.
“All right,” the voice said around a weedy chuckle. “You’re smart. You don’t wanna walk in blind where you might get ambushed. That’s cool.”
She saw motion inside and slipped her hands out of her pockets.
She found herself facing a man. Not a terribly pre-possessing one. He looked to be Annja’s age, a head shorter, skinny as a prairie weed. He had foxlike features and coarse hair, but his skin and eyes were light and his hair looked brown rather than midnight black. He didn’t twitch overtly but never seemed to be at rest. He wore torn, stained jeans, pointy-toed boots, a grimy T-shirt and a scuffed black
leather jacket. He looked as if he’d seen one too many James Dean movies.
“You’re Creed?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
He nodded spasmodically. “You can call me Two Hatchets,” he said.
It was a pretty grandiose name for someone who looked as if he’d need both arms to raise one, Annja thought.
“What do you have for me?” she asked.
“Right to the point, huh? Yeah. I like that.”
Annja turned to walk away.
“Wait! Sorry. Sorry. Listen, the Dogs are planning something. Something heavy. Something bad. Something bad enough to send shockwaves circling the globe. You get me?”
“That’s old news, Two Hatchets. Anyway, how would you know?”
“They use me for a runner, like. The Dog Society. Do odd jobs. Gopher. That sorta thing.”
“And they let you in on their planning sessions?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Imagine that. Two Hatchets, the errand boy. No. They never tell me shit. But I’m like the janitor, man. Part of the furniture.”
He pointed to the side of his head. “They forget I got ears. You dig?”
“I see.”
She was skeptical. But it made sense. Back when people had servants their masters always seemed to forget that they had ears, too. Service people still tended to be taken for granted. And she could definitely understand overlooking Two Hatchets.
“So what did you overhear?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing specific. Just enough to know what they’re cooking up is big and bad. Superbad.”
“Again,” she said. “Old news.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He nodded, as if trying to mix something in his skull. “I’m getting to that. They got a big meet set up. It’s key. It’s like the final step, man. The final piece of the puzzle. Going down tonight. Tonight, tonight.”
He looked up at the sky. “Gotta hurry if we wanna get there.”
“You’ll take me?” she asked.
“Yeah. Shit, yeah. Show you the way in. I’m not going in myself—no way. But I’ll point it out, and if you’re bat-shit-crazy enough to spy on these Dog warriors, knock yourself out.”
“I’ll do that thing,” she said.
He started walking toward the gate. Since there were no cars in the derelict lot he correctly assumed she’d parked outside the graffiti-clad walls.
“Wait,” she said.
He turned and tapped a pointy, impatient toe on the gravel.
“What’s in it for you?” she asked.
“Heh. Payback’s a bitch, man. The Dogs make me do their shit work. Treat me like I’m nothing!
“I take you there,” he said. “You get what you want. And then you screw those Dog Society warriors. Smash them to pieces.”
Annja shrugged. “That’s the plan,” she said.
13
Two Hatchets guided Annja north of Lawton and east of Sill on Interstate 44. He had her turn off at an exit that led to a strip mall east of the road. Like the drive-in it was abandoned. Big plywood sheets covered all the windows. Instead of public taste passing it by, though, it had fallen victim to a bubble that had burst.
“Turn off your lights and go around the right side,” the informant directed her.
Annja did as he said. Built in a sort of bowl its drainage either had been poorly designed or was degrading from lack of maintenance. Parts of the parking lot were pools of scummy-looking water.
“Desolate,” she said to her passenger. She wished it wasn’t too cold to roll the windows down. Two Hatchets smelled as if he lived in his clothes.
“So they’re meeting here?” she asked him, disbelieving.
“What? Are you stupid or what? You think I’d just have you drive in, just like that, if they were? They’d spot us and kill us both, they would.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing it out. “I thought you might have me do just that, if you were trying something funny.”
He laughed. “Everything I do is funny. So funny I forgot to laugh.”
Leaving her to digest that odd rendition of the half-forgotten playground saying, her guide pointed. “Park here. South side. Don’t go no farther! Park here, here!”
She guided the car against the side of the southernmost wall of the strip mall and stopped. “Now what?”
He grinned. “Now we walk.”
As he got out of the car Annja frowned. Two Hatchets didn’t look like someone who walked a whole bunch. He was dancing around in a little circle, puffing condensation like a steam engine.
“Follow me, follow me,” he said.
He peered around the corner of the building, then sidled around. She followed deliberately. She didn’t trust him entirely and wasn’t going to. But given that Johnny had sent him to her, she had to take seriously the prospect he might have useful information to convey.
Two Hatchets crouched on the side of the small mall away from the highway, where the early-evening traffic continued to hiss by. He seemed to be peering intently to the northeast, past the loading docks for the stores that no longer existed.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.
He pointed. “There.”
She squinted. In a rising moon’s light she saw a black sprawl of what looked like a structure perhaps a thousand yards away.
“What’s that?”
“Holly Hills Training Center.”
“Training for what?”
“Who knows, who cares? Company building it went tits-up right before it got finished. Contractors cratered, too. Everybody just walked away, left it empty.”
“The Dog Society’s meeting there?” she asked.
He bobbed his head. “Place is built behind a ridge there, hides it from the highway. Company wanted privacy. Wanted to block some of the interstate noise.”
“What about lookouts?”
He laughed and shook his head. “No. Not this way. They’re watching the road that leads from the west. Probably watch the back door, east side, just because. Otherwise, zip. Nobody ever comes here, nobody ever goes there. So why bother? Not like they think anything can touch ’em, anyway.”
She nodded and blew out a long breath. “Looks as if we’re in for a hike.”
“You are,” Two Hatchets said. “Not me. Not me. No how, no way. I brought you here. I pointed you in the right direction. You take it from here. This is where I get off.”
“All right, I guess,” she said, trying not to sound as eager to be rid of him as she felt. “I can handle it from here. Thanks.”
“You be sure to tell Johnny I did this for you,” he said. “You be sure. Tell him.”
“I’ll do that,” Annja promised.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Annja was hunkered down in brush growing beneath a wood of small trees that stood along a creek running from the east down toward the highway. The south wing of the Holly Hills Training Center stood a hundred yards away. A drainage ditch with low grass-covered banks ran around its parking lot. It apparently emptied into the little creek through a small culvert thirty yards to Annja’s left.
Annja had picked her way cautiously across the darkened countryside.
Now she was looking at a loading dock. The center consisted of three main wings strung out south to north and connected by covered passageways. The windows of this wing were covered in plywood sheeting like the ones in the dead mall.
She contemplated how to get inside. She already took for granted the Dog Soldiers wouldn’t have enough people on hand to secure the whole facility.
Nor did she reckon the building contractors, stiffed and more than likely themselves insolvent, would have wasted much time and energy ensuring no one could get in the empty husk. It almost surprised her they’d bothered to put plywood over the windows.
A flare of white light off to her left made her hunker down instinctively. She saw the glow as a pair of headlights swung around the southern hip of the ridge that screened the center from the highway. She followed the vehicle’s pr
ogress.
The south wing quickly hid the lights from view. Annja remained crouched. She waited and watched.
At the center’s far end, several hundred yards off, she saw the headlights sweep across the grassland to the north. Then they cut off.
Somebody was coming in, she thought. Right through the front door, apparently. Good to know.
Annja slipped across the open space down into the drainage ditch. Smelling stagnant water, she leaped a marshy bottom, and ran quickly up the far side and toward the buildings. In the several minutes she’d spent watching she hadn’t seen any patrols. It seemed probable that any sentries were concentrated farther north, and doubtless paying more attention to the newcomers than unexpected, uninvited guests.
Annja ran through plots and plans to gain admittance. Could the upward-sliding door of the loading dock itself be unlocked? Maybe she could cut through a plywood window covering with her sword, although she knew from experience that would make a lot of noise.
On impulse she walked up the short flight of steps to the access door beside the main loading bay and tried the knob. It wasn’t locked.
“You never know,” she said softly, and went inside.
14
Annja froze.
She’d made her way blindly through the dark building until she’d heard voices.
The voices were raised and angry. She could make out no words.
Annja waited, pressed in the shadows as the voices moved from the front of the building toward the middle. They passed in front of her from left to right. There they seemed to stop moving. Other voices joined, and the disputants were gradually mollified.
Annja made her way carefully toward the sound of the voices. In short order she saw the glare of some kind of artificial light shining from her right.
She turned down a corridor. A few steps along, whitish-yellow light spilled onto the concrete floor from an open door. She crept up to it, crouched, then risked a three-second look around.