Stormwalker

by Allyson James

  “Begay.”

  Memories shattered, and I swung around to see Nash Jones climb up the railroad bed, his sheriff’s badge winking in the sun. His uniform was as crisp as ever, flat, black sunglasses hiding his eyes. He didn’t have his handcuffs out, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t come to drag me back to jail.

  I drew a sharp breath, banishing the gut-chilling thoughts of my mother. “I want a lawyer,” I said before he reached the top.

  “I’m not here to arrest you.” Nash halted a yard from me and trained his sunglasses stare on me. “Your story checked out.”

  I blinked. “It did?”

  He gave me a curt nod. “No paint on your bike, no corresponding dent in the truck. Looks like an animal ran onto the road, a big one, and hit the truck. Might have been a mountain lion or even a bear.”

  Both animals came down out of the mountains to look for water in the dry months, but mountain lions were shy and avoided humans whenever possible. Bears, though less worried about humans, weren’t stupid enough to charge a truck moving at fifty miles per hour. But I clamped down on my argument. Jones the Unbeliever wasn’t going to buy my skinwalker claim, and if he wanted to think an animal had done this, fine.

  “You came here to apologize?” I asked. “For wrongly arresting me?”

  He didn’t look one bit sorry. “No. I was doing my job.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll complain to my tribal government about a white sheriff harassing a Navajo?”

  “Not really. They know you.”

  He had a point. “So why are you here?”

  “To return your personal belongings and tell you your bike has been taken to the garage in Flat Mesa.”

  That meant I wouldn’t be riding around Magellan today, talking to Amy’s friends. I didn’t like to think of my bike in the shop, broken and alone. I’d have to get up there somehow and make sure the mechanic knew what he was doing.

  “I also came to see if your boyfriend was all right,” Nash went on. “I can’t find where he’s checked into any hospital.”

  I was surprised he cared enough to look. “Mick will be all right,” I answered “He’s good at looking out for himself.”

  “I won’t charge him, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just tell him that when I say stop, I really mean it.” He paused. “How is he?”

  I had to shrug. “I don’t know. He took off.” When Jones just looked at me, I fumbled for more explanation but couldn’t find one. It bothered me that once again, I had no idea where Mick went or what he did when he wasn’t with me. He hadn’t changed in that respect either.

  “What’s his name?” Nash asked.

  “Mick.”

  “Mick what?”

  I didn’t know, another thing that bugged me. I gave him the name I invented a long time ago. “Burns.” It was my little joke. Mick did like to play with fire.

  “Where’s he from?”

  “I don’t know, actually. I met him in Nevada, about five and a half years ago.”

  “And you still don’t know where he’s from?”

  “I was never nosy enough to ask. Navajos stay out of other people’s business.” That wasn’t strictly true, especially in the case of my grandmother, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “I like to find out where people in my county have come from and what they plan to do here.”

  “I haven’t seen Mick in a long time. Why don’t you ask him?”

  Nash trained his stare on me for a while, before he said, “When he gets back, tell him to come talk to me.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It’s a request.”

  I shuffled my feet, stirring the gravel with the toes of my boots. “If I see him again, I’ll pass it along.”

  “Good.”

  “What do you—” I began, then I broke off and raised my hands as Nash abruptly drew his pistol. “Whoa. Don’t worry. I’ll tell him.”

  Nash wasn’t looking at me. He raised the gun and pointed it at the coyote that had wandered toward us while we talked and now sat on his haunches, watching us.

  “Don’t,” I said quickly. “It’s just a mangy coyote. Leave it alone.”

  Nash fired. I clapped my hands over my ears as the boom of the pistol tried to deafen me. The bullet hit the ground about five feet in front of the coyote, spewing an arc of dirt and gravel. The coyote scrambled back a few paces, an annoyed look in its eyes. Nash fired twice more, and the coyote, with a final sneer of disgust, turned and slunk down the wash.

  My ears rang. “What did you do that for?” It was never a good idea to idly shoot at animals. One might be a god in disguise, and you should never piss off the gods.

  “Coyotes are vermin. They carry rabies.”

  “You couldn’t wave your arms and shout at it?”

  “I got my point across.” Nash shoved the pistol back into his holster. “Tell your boyfriend that if he doesn’t come see me, I’ll find him.”

  “You don’t want to mess with Mick, Sheriff.”

  “Want to tell me why?”

  I hesitated. “He doesn’t exactly follow anyone’s rules.”

  “In my county, he follows mine.” Nash gave me a severe look. “I expect you to follow them too.”

  “Of course you do. It’s been fun talking to you, Jones, but it’s getting hot, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back inside.”

  Nash stood back, making me an “after you” motion. I scrambled down the railroad bed and heard Nash’s quiet footfalls behind me.

  Without speaking, we walked the twenty yards to the hotel and the activity there. Nash had parked his sheriff’s SUV a little way from the workers’ trucks, the vehicle sparkling and gleaming in the sun. He probably had it washed and waxed every morning.

  I stopped, and Nash almost ran into the back of me. He looked over my shoulder at what I saw and started to swear.

  The coyote that Nash had driven off was shooting a stream of yellow piss onto his SUV’s front tire. I pressed my hand over my mouth, trying not to laugh, while Nash continued to swear. He ran at the coyote, waving his arms and shouting this time.

  I heard peals of laughter from the direction of the hotel. Maya Medina had emerged, and she stood straight, hands on hips, watching the coyote and laughing hard. Her dark eyes flashed, and ringlets of black hair straggled from her cap. She was truly a beautiful young woman, and now she laughed as though she hadn’t seen anything this funny in a long time.

  The coyote finished his business and sauntered back out into the desert. Maya signaled to me, wiping her eyes. “Hey, I need to show you something. In the basement.”

  Maya never addressed me by name, if she could help it. She also seemed to delight in telling me the problems that I was having with the electrical system, which had been installed during the renovation attempt in the 1960s. I had no idea why Maya disliked me. It might be nothing more than resentment of a stranger in her small town, or her not liking me renovating the hotel, or she might not like Diné women. People got hostile for the strangest reasons.

  “What is it?”

  “Something I found.” Maya glanced thoughtfully at Nash. “You might want to look too, Sheriff Jones.” The last two words were inflected with scorn.

  Oh, gods, what? More wiring that had to be completely replaced? Was the building so hopelessly beyond code that Nash would declare it a disaster area and make me move out?

  Nash kept his face straight as he walked to us, but the thin scar above his lip was jumping. Maya wouldn’t look at him but turned and went back inside. I followed, with Nash coming behind.

  The dry-rotted door to the basement was off its hinges now, and the opening gaped like a black hole in the bricks. My leg hurt a little again as I navigated down the slippery stone stairs to the basement with its seven-foot ceiling. A new water heater gleamed in the corner, waiting for electricity and plumbing.

  As Maya led me across the room, beneath the lobby, my shoulder blades began to itch. Nash breathed he
avily behind me, but none of us said a word.

  Maya lifted her flashlight and played it on a wall until she found what she was looking for. She’d knocked away some of the old paneling to trace wiring running down from the kitchen. She trained her light on a square she’d pulled away, and I gasped. Jones said another swear word.

  There, grinning at us from behind the wall, was the face of a half-decayed corpse.

  Six

  The three of us stared at the skull in stunned silence. From the fine bones and the gleam of gold jewelry around the neck, I assumed it was a woman, although I wasn’t expert enough to know. She’d been dead for some time, the skin still on the bones, some hair still attached to her head.

  Without taking his eyes from the corpse, Nash picked up the crowbar Maya had left against the wall, wedged it against the panel, and ripped away more of the rotted wood.

  The entire body stood there, half-skeletal, with part of a shirt and shorts that she’d been wearing, and sneakers. It was bizarre, the dry decay of the rest of her, but the sneakers still pretty much whole. Her clothes looked not so much decomposed as torn—insects and animals that had made their homes here had chewed them for food or to line nests.

  I’d done a spell when I moved in that asked the animal life to leave—much more effective than an exterminator—because the place had been infested with mice, snakes, spiders, and scorpions. An empty building provided fine shelter for desert critters. The animals and insects had chewed the woman too, of course, which made it all the more gruesome.

  I put my hands on my hips and tried to control the instinctive panic that lodged in my throat. I hated death and places of death. Traditionally among my people, when someone died inside a hogan, the entire building was abandoned. Easier to build anew than to live with the ghosts. My father and grandmother had a horror of hospitals, because people went to die there. When my grandmother had gone in to have her gall bladder out ten years ago, we’d had a hell of a time convincing her to stay overnight. She still hadn’t forgiven me, or my father, for that.

  “Holy shit,” said a new voice. Fremont came across the basement floor, the beam of his flashlight bobbing. “That’s not Amy McGuire, is it?”

  He voiced what the three of us hadn’t dared. A woman, dead for months, walled up in a place that had been abandoned for years. Even if the hotel had been searched when Amy disappeared, no one had thought to remove the paneling down here until Maya had started working on the electricity.

  “It’s not her,” Nash snapped.

  The three of us jerked our attention to him. He stood with crowbar in hand, the glow of the flashlights making his uniform look gray. His face was just as gray.

  “You sure?” Fremont adjusted his cap. “She’s missing, and here’s a dead woman about her size.”

  Nash’s eyes glittered menacingly. I had the fleeting vision of him taking each of us out with the crowbar, walling us up behind the paneling to keep Amy company.

  “I want everyone out of here,” he said. “Upstairs, and don’t come back down. Maya, don’t go anywhere. I’ll need a statement from you. You too, Begay.”

  “It’s my hotel,” I said. “I’m not leaving.”

  “Good.” He gestured with the crowbar. “Out.”

  Maya gave him a look of undisguised fury before she nearly ran up the stairs, a string of muttered Spanish floating down after her. Fremont, the gentleman, politely waited for me to go ahead of him. I heard Nash click on his radio.

  I swung back. “Don’t call McGuire,” I said quickly. “Don’t let him see this.”

  I imagined what it would be like for my own father to view the remains of a woman who might be me, not knowing for sure whether the pile of bones and flesh was his daughter.

  “It’s not Amy,” Nash replied, words clipped.

  “Doesn’t matter. It could be her. Don’t make him have to identify her.”

  Nash regarded me for a long time. I don’t know what went on behind those eyes of his, but finally he nodded. “I’ll call Salas.”

  Salas was the assistant chief of police in Magellan. I didn’t know much about him, and I didn’t know whether he could keep this quiet, at least until the woman was identified. But if I could spare kindly Chief McGuire any agony, I would.

  “Go upstairs and stay there,” Nash repeated. “Tell your workers to stop what they’re doing. This is now a crime scene.”

  Terrific. I went up after Fremont. He moved to the carpenters to break the news to them, but Maya wasn’t in the lobby. I suppressed a growl of exasperation as I went to look for her. If she took off, Nash would probably blame me.

  I found Maya outside, standing in the shade of the building, arms folded, staring across the parking lot to the desert beyond. I leaned against the door frame, inhaling the clean morning air, trying to wash away the crawly sensation of death.

  I’d been here two weeks and not sensed or seen the woman’s ghost down there, nor had my protective spells signaled me that something was wrong. Why not? Maybe the spells knew that the dead woman wasn’t a danger? She wasn’t a demon or similar evil; she was a poor, sad person locked away in the dark, killed and abandoned.

  Lack of a ghost either meant that she was at peace, which didn’t tally with her being buried behind a wall, or it meant she hadn’t died here. I’d felt no residue of violence in the building, not even the emptiness of death.

  Fremont came outside and joined us in contemplation of the desert. “Do you think she was walled up alive?” he asked, half in horror, half in fascination.

  Maya looked over at him, her bleak look replaced with impatience. “I doubt it. The paneling was dry-rotted and easy to pull apart. Even a weak person could have kicked it out. It doesn’t look like she was tied up or anything, as far as I can tell.”

  “You looked?” Fremont asked.

  “Of course I did. Don’t tell me you’re not curious.”

  Of the three of us, Maya seemed the most contained; in fact, she looked angry. Maybe she used anger to cover her true feelings, but Maya always looked angry, so how could I tell?

  “When you bought this hotel, didn’t you notice that there was a body in the basement?” she asked me.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets. “The building inspector didn’t mention it in his report.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Do you think Nash is right?” Fremont asked. “That it’s not Amy?”

  Maya shrugged. She was good at shrugging, managing to put a day’s worth of insolence in a quick rise and fall of shoulders. “How should I know? I’m not an expert on dead bodies.” She eyed me. “Can’t you tell with your mystical senses? Or Navajo medicine magic, or whatever?”

  “I take it you’re an Unbeliever?”

  Maya laughed, the laughter edged with anger. “Damn right. There’s nothing in this town but frauds and con artists. There aren’t any vortexes; there isn’t any ‘mystical energy’ crap. It’s all a big, fat, tourist-trap lie, and you’re not doing anything but encouraging it.”

  Her vehemence puzzled me. I’d never extolled the mystical virtues of Magellan, never joined in the group singalongs Heather Hansen led at the vortexes on nights of the full moon. “So, definitely an Unbeliever,” I said.

  “You got it.”

  Fremont shook his head. “You don’t see what’s under your nose, Maya Medina.”

  “You’re just as bad,” she snapped at him. “Telling everyone you’re a magician. You can’t even fix Janet’s plumbing.”

  “I’m working on it. The system is ancient.”

  “So go work on it, then.”

  Fremont gave me a look that said, “Humor her; she’s a little nuts,” and went back inside.

  Maya and I stood in uncompanionable silence a few moments, while sirens sprang up in the distance, Salas answering Jones’s call from the far side of Magellan.

  “I think she was killed elsewhere,” I said, thinking out loud. “And someone brought her and put her behind the wall.”

  �
�Well, it wasn’t me.”

  “Any reason it should have been?”

  “Dios, you’re nosy. All right, if I don’t tell you, someone else will. I hated Amy McGuire. Hated her skinny, blond, goody-two-shoes ass, and I wasn’t sorry when she disappeared.”

  I hadn’t mentioned Amy specifically, but Maya gave me a defiant look, as though she expected me to be shocked or appalled. I was neither. I wasn’t here to pass judgment on what people thought about Amy; I was here to figure out what had happened to her.

  “Anyone share your views?” I asked. “Enough to want to make her vanish? Or kill her and wall her up in my basement?”

  “Are you kidding? Everyone loved Amy McGuire. She was prom queen and sang in her church choir and was in the honor society. She went to U of A on a big scholarship. God knows why she moved back here.”

  “To get married to Sheriff Jones?”

  “They got engaged after she came back from college.” Maya’s mouth flattened. “Everyone loved Amy, Nash Jones most of all.”

  She didn’t bother to hide her rage. Here we were at a murder scene, the victim possibly a woman she’d hated, and Maya was venting about her. The surge of anger when she mentioned Nash didn’t escape me either, nor had the way she’d laughed when the coyote had emptied his bladder on Nash’s tire. Interesting.

  The sirens grew louder. A car marked “Magellan Police” turned onto the lot, dust spiraling into the blue sky behind it. I left Maya and went to greet Assistant Chief Salas and a younger uniformed cop who got out of the car. I led them through the lobby, past my curious workers, who showed no sign of leaving, and to the basement door. I clattered down after Salas. Nash was still standing near the wall, his body rigid, his gaze fixed on the corpse.

  “Jones,” Salas said, approaching him. “You okay, man?”

  Nash jerked, glared at Salas, and then strode across the floor, boots clicking in the sudden silence, past me up the stairs, and out.

  By the time I got back outside, Maya was gone, and Nash was in his SUV, pulling out of the parking lot, a cloud of dust in his wake. Once on the highway he turned on his red and blue lights and headed north toward Flat Mesa. I wondered if Nash had talked to Maya, but I noticed that Maya’s truck had gone as well.