Whirlwind

by Charles L. Grant

  Sparrow leaned into sight then, and between thumb and forefinger held up a stone that would fit perfectly in his palm. He turned it so Mulder could see the fresh bloodstain.

  “What were you doing, Mulder?” Scully’s expression was stern, but her voice was pure concern.

  Again he tried to sit up, and again the dizziness was too strong. He accepted the order her hand on his shoulder gave him. “Someone was out there.” He pointed vaguely, not sure of the right direction. “Maybe more than one. Definitely more than one.” His eyes closed as he tried to remember.

  While he did, the sheriff said, “And they knocked you out with a rock? Agent Scully said she heard a shot.”

  Voices had interrupted them, for which he had been grateful. He needed time for all parts of him to get back together, and when they did, reluctantly, he said, “No, never mind. I don’t think it was a person.”

  The sheriff grunted. “Then you’re the first man on record to get himself beaned by a coyote.”

  “Not an animal either.”

  “He’s delirious.” Sparrow sounded disgusted. “Such a little scratch, too. I’ll be back in the morning, folks. There’s nothing out there, Agent Scully. And if there was, he’s long gone by now. Long gone.”

  More voices, footsteps, murmuring, then silence.

  He opened his eyes.

  Scully was still there, patient. “What did you shoot at, Mulder?”

  “Little scratch? I thought a boulder hit me.”

  “Mulder, pay attention. What did you shoot at?”

  He hadn’t known then, and he didn’t know now. Not that he could think very straight yet anyway, even if he did know. Fingers touched his forehead gingerly, skated over it until they reached the lump of a square bandage just above his left temple. He pressed, it protested, and he let the hand fall away.

  What the hell was it?

  Sleep on it, he ordered, and no one argued.

  When he next woke up, the ache had lessened considerably, and he felt well enough to stumble into the bathroom before his bladder exploded. A double palmful of water scattered the rest of the cobwebs, allowing him to check his reflection without wanting to break the mirror.

  All in all, he looked a lot better than he felt. The bandage was small, and someone, probably Scully, had already washed the blood from his face. Other than his hair poking out in all directions, he figured he looked pretty human.

  A few minutes of washing, holding onto the basin while ripples of nausea and dizziness settled, and getting that hair back into place, and he felt even better. Hungry, even. He was about to give Scully a call to meet him for a late breakfast when he spotted a note taped to the mirror over the low dressing table in the front room. It was a reminder that she had an autopsy to perform, and a warning not to do anything on his own. She hoped to be back by noon, or shortly after.

  Taking care to move without jarring anything loose inside his skull, he finished dressing and stepped outside.

  The sky was blindingly blue, the sun simply blinding, and the heat hadn’t changed, although it might have been, relatively, a bit cooler than yesterday. None of it did his head any good, and he hurried to the restaurant and the safety of the indoors.

  A simple breakfast eaten in solitude allowed him to get past the muted throbbing behind his brow, to go over what had happened the night before.

  Not that he needed much reminding. The humiliation of the lump was bad enough.

  What had happened was, he had ignored all his instincts and had opened that damn door. What had made him do it, he couldn’t figure out. It had been more than simple curiosity, and until the end of the episode, he didn’t recall feeling all that threatened.

  So…why?

  He ordered a second tall glass of orange juice and sipped it while he watched the other guests come and go, wind through the courtyard, take pictures of each other beneath the cottonwood. In the white sun they had no idea what he had seen yesterday in that weed-infested yard; or if they did, they weren’t going to let it ruin their day. A tale to tell when they got home, nothing more, a whole lot less.

  The glass was empty when he remembered something else—that the noise he had heard by the river had reminded him of something. He concentrated, and scowled in defeat when he couldn’t give it a name. He did bring back the feeling, however, and it made him put the glass down and take a deep calming breath.

  Above and in that hissing was the whispering. she is special, mr. mulder.

  His spine stiffened.

  she hears the wind.

  He was on his feet before he realized he had even left his seat, and that he hadn’t yet received his check. Luckily, the waiter spotted him and came right over. Mulder signed it, added a large tip and an effusive verbal thanks that startled the young man, and did his best not to run from the room to the lobby reception desk. There were no messages from Scully, and none from Sheriff Sparrow, who had said, Mulder recalled, that he would be back sometime this morning to ask some questions about last night.

  He wondered if he could convince the man that he hadn’t been delirious at all.

  The wind.

  Not wanting to confine himself to his room again, he strolled deliberately slowly around the courtyard, for all the world like a tourist who couldn’t think of a damn thing to do. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he veered into the passageway to the back garden. Except for a woman standing near the center, he was alone.

  The wind.

  As he passed her, heading for the place where he’d been struck, he heard a noise. A familiar noise. One that made him stop, that made his headache return.

  “Are you all right?”

  The woman, a short Hispanic woman in a maid’s uniform, looked up at him, not really concerned; she was only being polite because she had to. Behind her he saw a wheeled cart stacked with fresh linens and towels.

  He nodded, and stared at her hands when the noise started again.

  “Hey,” she said, both a question and a warning.

  “I’m sorry.” He added a smile to the apology and moved on, forcing himself not to look back. A moment later he heard the cart’s wheels roll quickly across the stone. Obviously she thought he was nuts. Maybe he was. The sound he had just heard was an emery board being drawn across her nail. Almost like sandpaper.

  At the bench where he had been last night, he looked toward the spot where he had heard the hissing, the whispers.

  He didn’t have to go there now to know what he would find, but he went anyway. A justification, a confirmation. He hadn’t seen it on the riverbank where Paulie Deven had been killed, but he had seen it yesterday, in Donna Falkner’s backyard. He just hadn’t known what he had been looking at.

  It didn’t take long.

  At the place where the grass met the underbrush, he stopped and rose up slightly on his toes. The growth wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t get in there; he didn’t need to. He could see well enough from where he stood.

  About ten feet away was an open spot, a scar. The branches of the brush at its rim were either snapped off or had their bark worn through. Stretching his neck allowed him a glimpse of the ground, and the debris that covered it.

  He grinned.

  “Agent Mulder!”

  Sheriff Sparrow came into the garden, and Mulder answered him with a gesture that he’d be there in a second. One more scan of the area showed him everything he needed to see, and he rubbed his hands briskly as he returned to the garden path.

  “Sheriff, do you think you can get hold of Nick Lanaya?”

  “I suppose so. What do you need?”

  Scully, he thought as he headed for the sheriff, you’re going to hate what I know.

  You’re going to hate it a lot.

  NINETEEN

  There were no chairs in the lobby. The only place to sit was a thick wood bench beside the fountain. Mulder waited while Sparrow used the desk phone to reach Lanaya, hoping that Scully would return soon. He didn’t want to leave without her, but he fe
lt a need to move fast, before someone else died.

  After last night, he had more than an unpleasant feeling that he knew who that target was.

  Sparrow sat beside him, hat and sunglasses off, rubbing his eyes. “I left a message. There’s only a couple of phones out there. Portable jobs like you have. Half the time they’re left behind.” He leaned back against the fountain’s broad lip. “So you want to tell me what’s going on, or is this going to be one of those need-to-know bullshit things?”

  Mulder shook his head. “No need-to-know, Sheriff. Scully and I are going to need all the help we can get.” He checked the time, wondering aloud how long his partner would be.

  “She’s done, and on her way,” the man said wryly.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read minds, Mulder.” The jerk of a thumb toward the reception desk. “Plus, I called.”

  Close, Mulder thought; not quite, but close enough.

  “Half an hour, maybe a little more.” The sheriff rocked to nudge Mulder with a shoulder. “I can’t read minds that good.”

  Mulder debated. No matter how many times he told it, there would be arguments and counter-suggestions, especially from Scully. He decided it would be best to get it out in one session rather than have to keep repeating himself.

  It would also give him time to convince himself more thoroughly that he was right.

  At his hesitation, the sheriff took off his hat and dropped it beside him on the bench. He took a notepad from his breast pocket, and a pen whose tip had been chewed close to chipping. “Okay. So how about you tell me about last night? You fired a gun, Mulder. FBI or not, that needs some explanation.”

  Grateful for the change of subject, Mulder complied readily. He took the man through his movements step by step from the time he entered the garden until he had been struck. Sparrow asked few questions. A clarification here, a doubt there. When Mulder was done, the man put the notepad away, fixed the pen to his pocket, and scratched his forehead.

  “Basically, what you’re telling me is that you shot at a shadow.”

  “No, Sheriff. I shot at something that was definitely no shadow.”

  “So what was it?”

  Mulder smiled and stood. “Patience is a virtue, Sheriff Sparrow.”

  “Patience, my friend, is a royal pain in the ass. And you gotta admit, I’ve been pretty damn patient with you.”

  Mulder agreed, and decided to take the lawman out back to show him what he had found. Sparrow reminded him that he had already been there, he and his men, but Mulder insisted gently. What he wanted the sheriff to see was something his men, good as they were, probably wouldn’t have thought twice about.

  “I did the same, Sheriff, the first time I saw it.”

  They were already at the riverbank when Scully called his name.

  He made a silent wish for no surprises, no complications, then looked at the sheriff.

  Sparrow was laughing.

  “What?”

  He pointed at Scully, then reached over and tapped a finger against Mulder’s chest. “Couldn’t stand it, could you?”

  That was the first time Mulder realized that in dressing this morning, he had put on his tie and blue suit. It had been automatic. He had been too busy fighting his headache to think. His hands had grabbed what they knew best.

  Scully, too, was the same.

  For some reason, even out here, she looked more natural that way.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Scully greeted the sheriff almost curtly, pushed at her hair to keep the steady breeze from blinding her, and said, “Mulder, I do not want to have to do that again, ever.”

  “I’d think,” Sparrow said, “you’d be used to it by now. Cutting them up, I mean, figuring things out.”

  “You don’t get used to it,” she told him. “You just find a way not to let it bother you for a while.” She grabbed a folded paper from her shoulder bag, glanced at it, and took a deep breath. “You’ll be pleased to know there are no surprises, Mulder. And Dr. Rios was right—it wasn’t skinning and it wasn’t flaying. Scouring, for the time being, is a pretty damn good word.”

  “What killed her?”

  “Simply? Layman’s terms? Shock. If you want the details, we can start with the near-total destruction of a major organ—which is what the skin is—coupled with rapid fluid loss from various sources, including—”

  “Never mind,” the sheriff interrupted, a queasy look on his face. “I get the picture.”

  “No,” she contradicted. “I don’t think you do. Mulder, there were particles of sandy dirt lodged in the sinuses and eye sockets. And in the brain.”

  “What the hell could do something like that?” Sparrow demanded.

  “Force,” Mulder answered. “A lot of force.” He started for the river. “Which is why I want you to take a look at this.”

  Scully looked at him quizzically. “What?”

  “Just look, Scully. I’ll explain on our way to the Mesa.”

  She didn’t argue, but followed the sheriff to the brush at the edge of the grass, where Mulder pointed out the cleared area farther on. It took a while until they found a way through without ripping themselves to shreds, and when they reached the rough circle, he broke off an already damaged twig and held it up.

  “The bark,” he said. “Torn off.”

  The ground at their feet was littered with shredded leaves and shards of twigs and branches.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Sparrow said, “I’d say a nut with a weed-whacker got roaring drunk in here.”

  “There’s the same sort of damage done over at Donna Falkner’s house,” Mulder told them as they made their way back to the garden. “I saw it, but because the yard was so badly kept, it didn’t hit me until this morning.”

  Sparrow told them to meet him in the parking lot; he’d go in to see if Lanaya had been reached. Scully walked with her head down, every few steps shaking her head. Then she stopped Mulder with a touch. “A device, maybe? Maybe the sheriff wasn’t so far off with that weed-trimmer idea.” She looked away, looked back. “But that doesn’t explain the dirt. Just falling wouldn’t do it.”

  “No, you’re right.”

  He started for the car, but she blocked him, a hand briefly on his chest. “What is it, Mulder? What are you up to?”

  “Sangre Viento,” he answered. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Really?” She glanced over at the sheriff, hurrying toward them. “And you think that makes sense?”

  “It does to me.”

  “Of course it does,” she said flatly. “Whatever was I thinking of.”

  “Nick’s waiting at the res,” Sparrow said, herding them toward his cruiser. A hard look at Mulder. “We’ll ride together, all right? I want to hear this. Just tell me I’m gonna like it.”

  Mulder couldn’t, and by his expression the sheriff knew it. He rolled his eyes in resignation and wondered aloud how Scully put up with it.

  “Patience,” Mulder said as he slid into the backseat.

  “Pain in the ass,” the sheriff answered.

  “Maybe. But I’ve gotten used to it.”

  Scully wasn’t amused.

  Nick hunkered down beside the old man, hands draped across his knees. “You’re going to bake out here, Dugan.”

  The old man only shrugged.

  “The FBI is coming.”

  “There was a death.”

  “I know.”

  “The woman. I think I know her.”

  Nick shifted uneasily. “Donna Falkner, Dugan. She’s…was my partner.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember her now. She ran pretty good.”

  Nick couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, she did. And she helped us a lot. I hope you remember that, too.”

  The old man brushed invisible sand from his blanket, the only admission Nick was likely to get.

  “There should not have been a killing, Nick.”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  “
There should not have been any killings.” Dugan’s head turned stiffly. “The cattle sometimes. I remember a coyote once. But no people, Nick. Never any people before.”

  Nick nodded earnestly, leaning as close as he could without toppling into the old man’s lap. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Dugan. If we don’t do something, the FBI will find out, and we won’t be able to stop the news people or the police or anybody from trampling all over the Mesa.” He lowered his voice. “But if we stop him now, there’ll be nothing to see. Nothing to find.”

  A breeze stirred the grass.

  “Dugan. Father. The Falkner woman won’t be the last to die. You know that.”

  The old man’s head bowed, his hands gathering in his lap. “I am hoping for—”

  Nick couldn’t help himself; he grabbed the man’s shoulder harshly. “Damnit, she isn’t coming back, Dugan. Annie isn’t coming back, and she’s not going to help.” He felt the shoulder stiffen, and snatched his hand away. “If we’re going to make it through this, we have to see that Leon is…”

  He didn’t finish.

  He didn’t have to.

  All he could do was wait for Velador to make up his mind. As he stood, the old man began a low murmuring, and Nick walked away.

  He hadn’t gone ten paces when the old man said, “Nick,” just loud enough to hear.

  He turned to face Dugan’s back, and the right hand raised, finger pointing to the sky.

  “The FBI.”

  “What about them?”

  “They must be stopped.”

  The breeze blew.

  The sand stirred.

  Imagine, Mulder said, a group of men, extremely devout men, confined for so long in a single room. The kiva. Imagine, as he had already mentioned to Scully, the energy they must create and radiate as they perform the rituals required of their faith. Suppose, then, there are moments during that time when the energy can no longer be confined, but its excess escapes through the hole in the ceiling. It can dissipate. Maybe someone nearby feels a little discomfort, but nothing more. They might blame it on the wind.