Death and Desire

by P. H. Turner

  “Why didn’t he come in? Walk through the wall?”

  “After my uncle’s death, Grandfather nailed a spray of giant hyssop to the front door. He ground the little blue flowers to dust and sprinkled the dust around the hogan and over the top.”

  “Your grandfather was expecting a shapeshifter?” I was puzzled.

  He shook his head. “My grandfather was a careful man after my uncle died. My uncle was out working around his sheep camp early one evening. A coyote loped to within a few feet of him. As my uncle pulled his pouch out, the coyote shifted into a witch and blew black dust in his face. Uncle ran back to his home, and his wife summoned a shaman who prayed and smudged him with herbs. But by morning, his tongue had swollen and turned black. He convulsed and died later that day.”

  “Crap.” I pulled the medicine pouch out of my shirt. “This thing needs to be turbocharged or whatever you do to make it stronger. He’s gained about three feet out there—from standing on my grass to getting up on my deck. What do I need to do? The son of a bitch is not getting any nearer to me.”

  “I’ll gather the hyssop. It’s grows wild all around here.”

  “And do what?”

  “I’ll smudge this place and your yard.”

  “You mean burn incense?”

  “Not exactly.” He smiled. “Smudging for protection is done with sage, cedar, and sweet grass. We’ll walk through the house and around your yard, letting the smoke drift while we pray for protection.”

  I tapped on my iPad, pulling up a picture. “Is this the right plant? Giant hyssop?”

  “Yeah. I’ll bring everything with me tomorrow and we’ll smudge.”

  “Is this the same hyssop mentioned in the Bible in Leviticus when God commanded his people to use it to cleanse themselves and their homes?”

  “Yes.” He bent softly to whisper in my ear, “Does that make your rational Scottish brain feel any better?”

  “This makes it feel better.” I kissed him.

  Chapter 32

  I parked in front of a nondescript beige stucco building with a small sign identifying it as the DEA Division Field Office and squinted up at the two-story building.

  “Doesn’t look like much does it?” Louis asked.

  I hoisted my bag out of the car. “No, but I wouldn’t want to call a lot of attention to myself if I were a DEA agent in the southwest.”

  “He know we’re coming?” Louis quizzed me.

  “Yeah. I made an appointment with Ramon Gonzalez.”

  “What are you after?”

  “I’d love for him to go on record saying the Zetas are involved in meth and money laundering. No equivocation, just a direct sound bite for collaboration.”

  Gonzales was young. He met us in the institutionally bland waiting room and zigzagged his way through a series of corridors back to his cubicle.

  “Coffee?” He waved his hand at an industrial-size coffeepot. We declined. I got his permission to record the interview, and Louis took a few shots of his diplomas and the office and then focused on his face. “How can I be of help, Ms. McWhorter?” he asked.

  I gave him a synopsis of what we had before pitching him the first question. “What can you tell us about the Zetas’ activity in northern Arizona and on the Navajo Nation?”

  “I’m sure you know they took responsibility for the murders of those two young boys. We suspect the Zetas are tied to meth distribution in the area and we are working with the FBI.”

  “Do you know where the meth is coming from?”

  He shook his head. “Wherever the lab is, they are producing vast quantities of good quality white meth.”

  “Where is the cash going?”

  “Mexican drug cartels establish legitimate business in the US to clean their cash. They became upstanding businessmen, creating jobs for the locals and going to Rotary meetings.”

  “Do they bribe US authorities?”

  “Of course, Ms. McWhorter. You can find those stories all over the Internet,” he said without hesitation. “We work hard to keep our house clean, but no organization is perfect.”

  “Are you looking at anyone locally?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Are you investigating Dinetah Mining and Engineering?”

  “You know I can’t share the details of the work of this office.”

  We rose and thanked him for his time, then wound our way back through the maze of corridors and out in the bright sunshine. “He’s a fed and he talked straight,” I said.

  “Hard to believe,” Louis said. “He flat-out connected the Zetas, meth distribution, and money laundering.”

  “But not any ‘details of his work’ that might include Dinetah Mining,” I reminded Louis.

  Dusk was falling as I drove into my garage. I fed and watered Mac, who was whimpering for a run. I wanted to take him, but not in the dark and certainly not alone. I hated feeling confined by an evil I couldn’t define. I desperately hoped Trace’s smudging and prayers would turn the witch away.

  I heard Trace’s truck grumble to a stop and flung open the front door before he could insert his key in the lock. Fragrant grasses and dried stalks of dusky-blue flowers nearly covered his face. He shifted them to his left arm and hugged me with his free hand. He murmured, “I’m going to make it okay. You’re going to be safe.”

  The scent of the sweet-smelling grass mingled with the heat of his body. “I know you can.”

  “You have to believe in the power of what we are about to do. The force of your belief and mine will deny the witch the power he craves.”

  I disengaged from him and straightened my shoulders. “I was skeptical at first . . . No, that’s not true. I flat-out didn’t believe.”

  “You have to do better than that for this to work. You’re going to have to convince your Scottish side that many beliefs exist and work simultaneously.”

  “I didn’t finish. I was going to say I now believe evil is a force with the power to break the boundaries of science.” I threw up my fisted hand. “Clar Innis!”

  “Clan battle cry?”

  “Absolutely. It’ll scare the hell out of any Navajo witch.”

  He threw his arm around me and laughed. “Let’s take care of you, and then we can relax with a little dinner.”

  “I don’t think I have anything to cook here,” I said, feeling humiliation at running a household with no groceries.

  He laughed a deep throaty laugh of good humor. “Sexy Legs, I know whose house I’m in. I stopped by Costco on the way out of town and bought a pizza to make sure we could eat. The oven still works, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose. It doesn’t see much action. Tell me what to do with these grasses.”

  He took the loose grasses into the kitchen, put them on the counter, and fished a small ball of twine from his pocket. “We’re going to cut and twine each grass into a smudge stick. We’ll smudge each grass separately and finish with the hyssop.”

  I took the shears out of my knife block, and he divided the sweet grass, the cedar needles, twigs, and the white sage into three piles while he cut a small piece of twine and handed it to me. “Tie up the ends of the sweet grass and then loosely braid it. Here’s a second piece to tie the end of the braid.”

  As soon as the twine bit into the sweet grass, a wonderful tangy aroma wafted around me. “It smells like fresh-cut grass and vanilla.”

  He cut the white sage into seven-inch pieces. When the bundle was about an inch in diameter, he wrapped and tied it with twine. Laying the smudge stick aside, he took the braid from my hand.

  “Which one do we use first?”

  “The sage, followed by the cedar to drive away the evil. We finish with sweet grass to bring in the good. Then we’ll scatter the crushed hyssop branches and flowers.” He gathered the prickly cedar needles and small branches and wound them tightly together, cutting them to a length to match the sage stick.

  “We must first cleanse ourselves spiritually of our fears and negative tho
ughts. I want you to open your heart and your mind and release your fear.”

  He lighted the sage bundle and the embers glowed, releasing the earthy smell of a heavy rainstorm in the desert. Trace chanted in Navajo, rotating the smoldering stick around me and then over him. I prayed for strength to combat evil.

  I followed Trace through the house as he waved the glowing sage bundle, the scent seeping into the nooks and crannies of every room. We returned to the kitchen, and he lighted the cedar stick. “Take a deep breath and when you exhale, imagine the negative pouring out of your body.”

  I breathed in the piquant smell of the cedar needles and slowly exhaled while visualizing my anxiety and fear mingling with the smoke. Again, we walked through the house, opening closets and cabinet doors, pushing the smoke into the enclosed places. I followed, praying for strength and safety.

  Trace struck a match to the bundle of fragrant sweet grass. “In the void created by banishing the witch, we pray for the spirit of good to enter.” The sweet-grass bundle sputtered to light and the house smelled like baking sugar cookies. He smudged the rooms while we each prayed in our native language.

  He dipped the ends of the smoking bundles in water and placed them in the kitchen sink. He rubbed his strong hands up and down my back. “We’re almost done,” he said encouragingly. “Bind together a spray of the hyssop and nail it outside your front door. You can put it by your horseshoe.” He gathered a bundle of the fragile stems and flowers and crushed them in a plastic bag. “I’ll scatter the dust across your deck and around the exterior of the house.”

  The woods were silent as he stepped off the deck to walk the perimeter of my house, dropping the crushed hyssop. I tacked the spray to the front door, and had I not known the story of hyssop, I would have thought it was a door decoration of dried desert flowers hung next to a horseshoe someone had turned upside down.

  He rounded the corner of the house and joined me to drop hyssop on the front porch. “If our prayers are strong enough, we will turn the evil back on the shapeshifter, and it will consume him.” He toed a lump under the welcome mat. “What’s stuck under your door mat?”

  Before I could answer, he squatted on his knees and turned over the mat. “What?”

  I held up both hands. “It’s a Scottish belief. Bury a knife under the entrance to your home and witches can’t come in. It would have been a little hard to bury it in concrete, so I slipped it under the mat.”

  He laughed and sifted powdered hyssop over the knife. He held the knife up for me to see it dusted with dried flowers. “Ah, lassie, no witch can conquer the Scots and the Navajo.” We scattered the remaining petals and dusky-blue powder over the mat and down the sidewalk. He slipped his arm around me and we went into the house. The smell of burning herbs clung to the air.

  “You ready for dinner?” he asked.

  “No, I’m ready for you.” I pulled him to me. The scent of herbs and his cologne tantalized me.

  He looked at me quizzically, “We going someplace?”

  “Yeah, cowboy, I have plans for you.” I led him into my room.

  He switched on one small lamp on the chest. “I like watching us make love.”

  He slid his hands down and cupped my buttocks, kneading and massaging. My breath hitched when his mouth found my breast and tantalized it through my shirt. I bared my nipples to his eager mouth.

  He pulled off his boots and jeans, letting me feast on the sight of his maleness. He picked me up and set me on the bed, then kissed his way up my legs from my bare feet to the top of my thighs.

  “You’re my beautiful Scottish lass. You drive me crazy when I’m near you.”

  I hungered for his touch—each stroke of his hand, each brush of his mouth left me ravenous for more. But I wanted to drive him crazy with lust. I rolled on top of him and licked his nipple, sliding my tongue across, biting and teasing until it hardened.

  “You’re killing me.”

  “I’ve only started.” I tongued my way to the ribbon of soft black hair that grew below his navel.

  His eyes clouded with desire. When I took him in my mouth, he gripped the sheets. I tasted him, thrilled at his pulsating in my mouth. “Stop,” he said hoarsely. “I want to please you.” He rolled me over on my back pinning me beneath his weight. “I want you like I’ve never wanted a woman.”

  I ached for the wetness he would leave inside of me. When he entered me, I cried out into his mouth with pleasure. With each stroke, I tensed, feeling the sweet tension build. He thrust faster as I pushed myself into him. Waves of pleasure sent a rhythm of release though me. Spent, he lay on me gasping. I knitted my fingers across his strong back, caressing the muscles corded on either side of his spine.

  He put one finger under my chin and lifted my face. “I love you.”

  Something in me released. Some wall tumbled down; some guard dropped when he spoke those sweet words again. I cupped his face with my hands. “I love you, Trace Yazzie.”

  He grinned and snuggled me closer. “About time, woman.”

  We lay quietly in the tangled sheets. Sated with pleasure, we fell asleep spooned together. I awoke once in the night and admired his lean body in the moonlight, then covered us both with a quilt.

  Chapter 33

  I was mindlessly humming a tune stuck in my head when I walked into the newsroom and dropped my bag on my desk.

  “McWhorter!” I felt the rumble before I heard the growl. “Get in here and tell me what a great story you got for the news tonight.”

  Marty stabbed his finger at a chair when I walked in his office.

  “I’ve filed four good stories from more than five interviews. That’s a lot of productivity for a reporter.”

  He crossed his hands over his paunch. “Uh-huh. But what are you filing today?”

  I was saved from answering by the squawk of the police scanner. Marty’s gaze fixed on the black box as the call went out for emergency vehicles and police.

  “I’m there,” I told him on my way out the door.

  I yelled down the hall, “Louis.”

  “Heard it! Coming.” He was stuffing a camera and microphone in his bag when he ran out of the newsroom.

  “Bodies of an adult male and a minor.” I choked up. “It’s probably Gage Notah and his son. Please, you drive.” I handed him my keys.

  He eased my car out of the lot.

  “I hope they weren’t tortured. Damn it! I begged Gage to stay in touch. Trace would have protected them, but Gage never called me.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. Might not be them,” he said, “but if it is, Gage made the decision to go it alone. Where’s the wife? They’re only talking about two bodies.”

  “Maybe she’s safe. But why wouldn’t he stay on the reservation and use a trading post for what he needed? Why would he leave the safety of the Navajo Nation?”

  “Maybe the Navajo Nation wasn’t safe.”

  “Gage wasn’t stupid. If he were meeting someone, he trusted them. He took his kid with him.”

  “From everything you told me about Gage, he sounds like a guy in way over his head.”

  “I don’t even know what the little boy’s name is,” I lamented.

  Louis patted my hand. “Not your fault.”

  We could see the flashing lights ahead on the west side of the road. Louis parked on the east side and we darted across the highway.

  “That’s Gage Notah’s car.” I pointed at a gray Toyota 4Runner parked haphazardly in the deep sand.

  Louis shot a long pan of the area. As soon as we edged closer to the scene, a Navajo policeman blocked our way. On the far side of the bodies was Trace. It was as though he sensed I was there. He shook his head at me. Sadness etched his handsome face.

  Louis poked me and I turned my attention to Officer Nez who walked up by the cop I didn’t know. “What happened?” I asked Nez.

  “We got an anonymous tip telling us two bodies were up here on 89 north.”

  “Were they tortured?”

&n
bsp; He shrugged. “Doesn’t look like it. We’ll have an official statement later.”

  “Are they a Navajo man and a young boy?”

  “Yeah.” He took off his felt hat and wiped his face with his hand. His face crumpled with sadness. “God-awful sight. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Looked like they had been kneeling when they were shot in the back of the head. Shot the kid first. Guy toppled over on the kid’s body.”

  Nausea rolled my stomach. Gage had watched his son die, all the hope and love gone in a single blast.

  I saw the EMS guys shifting a tiny, tarp-covered body onto a litter. One little red tennis shoe was dangling from a small bare foot. The shoe fell to the ground, and without missing a step, the guy carrying the end of the litter bent and scooped up the sneaker, balanced it on top of the body bag, and placed the gurney into the vehicle. “Load up the big guy,” the driver said to the team.

  Louis tapped me on the shoulder. “I got what I think we need at this point,” he said quietly.

  “Get away from there. Get behind the rope.” A state trooper snarled at Thornton, who had angled his way through the crowd and slipped under the yellow rope, trying to get pictures of them loading the last body. The wind lifted the corner of the tarp and Thornton snapped three pictures. All I saw was a glimpse of dark matted hair.

  “What the hell you think you’re doing? Get outa here. You fuckin’ people are ghouls. He’s dead for Christ sake! You think his family wants to see his dead face on the front page?” the officer snarled.

  I interrupted his tirade. “When do you think you’ll have the bodies identified?” I was sure it was Gage and his son, but I didn’t want to look at their ruined faces and ID them.

  The trooper never took his eyes off Thornton when he spat, “Later.”

  I gave a finger wave to Thornton as Louis and I left. I knew Thornton had plenty of readers who would love to see the dead man’s face above the fold in tomorrow’s paper. He had been wise to keep his mouth shut during the officer’s outburst. I looked around at the group of looky-loos who surrounded the crime scene. Any of them who had been quick enough with their cell phone could be posting a grisly photo right now.