Warrior in the Shadows

by Marcus Wynne

  "Just don't start answering yourself," the patrolman said.

  Bobby Lee laughed and went back to his pictures and his rumi-nations. The hunter, for that was what Bobby Lee was starting to call him, had used materials on the scene to stage it, but he'd brought his knife, and the club he'd used to kill the banker with him. The forensics team said the club was heavy, similar to a baseball bat but with a heavy bulbous head, maybe a walking stick. The blow that most likely killed him had shattered his skull and opened his brain pan. The hunter would be a strong man, strong as hell. The angle of the blow indicated that Simmons had been below and at an angle when the killing blow was delivered, probably sitting in the recliner with the hunter facing him. Everything else, the evisceration, hanging the body, that was all postmortem.

  It had been messy, and it had taken time, but the scene wasn't rushed. The hunter hadn't been afraid of being discovered, or he just didn't care.

  Bobby Lee felt sure that the hunter had stripped down to avoid getting blood spatter on him. Analysis of all the water traps in the showers and sinks showed that he hadn't showered or washed, at least not there. The traces of paint and minerals they'd taken from the image on the wall were still undergoing analysis.

  That painting disturbed him. It was carefully drawn with its hellish palette of paints and provided a clear message about the hunter's mind if he could only translate the meaning, find some way to go where the killer's mind went. Where did all this go? What was this all about, the killing, the eating, the painting? He wracked his brains about that, but he knew he'd have to get some help elsewhere for insights into that image, and he hoped Charley, with his unconventional thinking, would take him where he needed to go.

  1.9

  "Please move it to the right, Stan. Just a little," Kativa Patel said to the museum technician struggling to hold a heavy framed nineteenth-century watercolor up in the tight space she had left after laying out the exhibit.

  "We're almost there… there," she said in satisfaction. "Let me mark that for you."

  Stan was old enough to be her father and a bit slow but sweet. "I'll get it hung right for you, Miss Patel."

  "I know you will, Stan. Thanks for being such a dear."

  "That's why I like working with you, Miss Patel. You always take the time to get it right."

  "That's the way my old dad taught me, Stan. If it's worth doing it's worth doing right."

  She patted the old man on his arm and hurried back through the vaulted ceiling galleries and then the main lobby into her office, her low sensible heels clacking and resounding in the empty hallway of the administrative section. It was slow for a Sunday, but then it was late in the day. She waved to another curator working in her cubicle, and stopped to fill her coffee mug, a beautifully hand-thrown ceramic mug, a gift from an old boyfriend in Cape Town, with black French roast from the coffeepot before she went into her own office.

  Her office was tiny but immaculate in its organization. Even the stacks of correspondence piled on the floor for lack of filing cabinet space were neatly set edge to edge and in the most reasonable simulation of order she could create. She kept several pieces of art from the archives in her space: a hand-rubbed copy of a spiral stone carving from Dajarra, Queensland, and a variety of prints from modern Aboriginal artists in the Cairns area, some of them originals signed by the artists she had gotten to know while doing her postgraduate work there.

  She sat at her desk, leaned back in the old secretary's chair she preferred, and put her feet up on her desk, her hands cradling the hot coffee mug and slowly sipping with the delight she brought to things of the senses. She'd loved the time she'd spent in Australia, bashing around the outback in a tired 4© 4 in the Laura region looking at and looking for new and old rock art in the area. Looking at the pictures reminded her of that time, and how it had been so good to be in a country that reminded her of home, yet without the fears that plagued South Africa. Cape Town was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but the remains of apartheid, the unbelievable surge of crime after Mandela took office, and the flight of the professional class had led to her leaving, first to Australia, then to the United States, to one of the coldest states in the lower forty-eight, a fact that jarred her every time she stepped outside to enjoy the beauty of the trees surrounding the park and the Sculpture Garden across the street, the bite of the air just barely muzzled now, but ready to be bared within weeks.

  She thought of Australia, and wondered if she would get the grant she'd applied for to go back and continue her research on the Laura area, to continue her interviews with old Percy Tracy, the avuncular old pilot and artist who'd done so much of the original work on the Laura rock art.

  Julie, the barely twenty-one-year-old secretary, who'd celebrated her birthday with the museum staff only nights before, stuck her head around the door frame and said, "Kativa? Your friend Mara is here. Should I send her back?"

  "Of course," Kativa said. She set her feet down and stood up. "Tell her to come in."

  Kativa followed Julie into the hallway and saw Mara and the tall man she dated standing patiently by the reception desk. She'd first met Mara on a gallery crawl, one of those fun affairs organized by local artists that consisted of a walking tour of the local galleries downtown interspersed with stops in the local drinking establishments. South African college life and then Australian outback living had taught Kativa to enjoy a good drink, and she more than held her own with the hard-drinking Minnesotans. Mara was a painter who had some odd sources of income, and once she had seen her briefly with the man who stood there with her.

  "Mara! How good to see you," Kativa said. She hugged Mara briefly, kissed her cheek, then held out her hand to the tall man and said, "Hi. I'm Kativa Patel."

  He had an interesting face, this man. He was tall and almost skinny in his leanness, and his grip was gentle but hinted at great strength. The backs of his hands were webbed with dry skin, big veins, and tendons that worked like steel cable under tension. He was casually dressed in battered, baggy old khakis and a denim work shirt under a worn black leather jacket. His face was long, with three distinct grooves across his forehead, as though someone had dragged a rake across his forehead many years ago. While his face was tired, it was a sort of tired amusement, and she sensed that it was something habitual with him, rather than situational.

  "I'm Charley Payne," he said.

  "I'm pleased to meet you, Charley," Kativa said. "What are you two doing here? Would you like some coffee?"

  "I'd love a cup, Kat. Charley?" Mara said.

  "Sure," he said.

  "Let me get it, Kat. Charley wants to talk to you about those pictures."

  "Pictures?" Kativa said.

  "The ones I told you about on the phone, the ones I think are African or Australian."

  Kativa frowned, then smiled as she remembered the phone call.

  "You must forgive me," she said to Charley as she led them back to her office. "I have a terrible memory."

  "So do I," he said. "I'm lucky I remember to put my pants on in the morning."

  He laughed and she joined him, sneaking a quick glance at Mara who just smiled and stopped at the coffee machine.

  "Let me take your cup, Kat. I'll freshen this for you," Mara said.

  "Thanks, darling. Come in, Charley. Take that seat and I'll fetch another chair," Kativa said, brushing past him. He smelled warm, with a not unpleasant smell of old sweat on him and just a hint of some sort of aftershave. His body was hard when she touched him. He would be quite muscley naked, she thought, then colored at the thought.

  "He's a hunk, Mara," she whispered as she brushed by Mara filling the coffee cups. "Where do you find them?"

  "He's a strange one, Kat. But I do like him. I think you will, too."

  "Does he have a brother?"

  The two women laughed, and Mara came in carefully holding three cups of coffee and Kativa followed, dragging a small chair. The three of them were quite crammed in her space, and Kativa was
again struck by how big Charley Payne was. He didn't seem large till you got close to him and realized he was at least six feet three or so, and his baggy clothes hid his body definition. He dominated the space, yet was quiet, and seemed amused and interested by the artwork and her racks of books that filled up the office.

  "Where is that from?" he asked, pointing to the spiral rubbing.

  Kativa sat down, leaned forward, and rested her elbows on the table, her mug in her hand, quite aware that it pressed her breasts together under the low-cut cotton blouse she wore. "From the Laura River region, in Queensland, Australia. I did my postgraduate work there."

  Charley took the coffee mug from Mara. "Thanks," he said to her. "Queensland is the northeast, right?"

  "That's right, Charley. Queensland is the northeasternmost territory of Australia. On the Great Barrier Reef side. Have you been?"

  "No, but I'd like to. I used to dive, but I haven't for a very long time. Do you dive?"

  "No. I'm a poor swimmer and I don't like water over my head. Mara is a diver, aren't you?" Kativa said.

  "I got my certification in Cancun a few years ago, but there's not much diving around here. I did it with my boyfriend."

  "Which one?" Kativa said, laughing.

  "I've forgotten him."

  "Did you get your doctorate in Australia?" Charley said.

  Kativa smiled. "University of Cape Town, actually."

  "You're from South Africa?" Charley said.

  "Kat grew up there, and left not long after Mandela came into power," Mara said. She tasted her coffee and wrinkled her nose. "This needs more sugar. I'll be back. Anybody else?"

  Charley shook his head no and Kativa said, "No thank you."

  "You were born in South Africa?" Charley said.

  "Yes, actually in a suburb of Johannesburg called Bredell. I went to university in Pretoria, then Cape Town for my Ph. D."

  "Patel, that's an Indian name, isn't it?"

  "Yes. My father was of Indian descent, my mother was Portuguese."

  "So you grew up under apartheid?"

  "Yes. We were considered Colored."

  "Ah."

  "Yes," Kativa said. She looked into her coffee cup, at the fine brown café au lait that very closely matched the color of her skin. "Yes, those were hard times for everyone."

  "Is your Ph. D. in Australian art?"

  "Well, to be specific, it's in Australian Aboriginal art and ethnography."

  "What's ethnography?"

  "It's the study of Australian Aboriginal cultural heritage. It's quite fascinating. Australian Aboriginal culture is the oldest 'primitive' surviving culture we have on earth. Many of their belief systems are completely integrated in their artworks, which encompass a variety of forms. While I studied all of them, I focused on the rock art, both the engravings and the drawings. I came to that really as a fluke… I met a young man who worked for an outfitting company that took tourists on tours in the Laura River regions, looking at the rock art there. He introduced me to Percy Tracy, who is the foremost living authority, at least among whites, in the Laura region. Percy liked me, actually he loves all the girls, even though he's well into his eighties, and allowed me unfettered access to his notes and helped me quite a bit. That's how it came about for me."

  Charley reached into the battered canvas valise he'd brought with him, then took out a dark brown manila collapsible file with the Minneapolis Police logo on it.

  "Are you a policeman?" Kativa asked.

  "No, but I work for the police department. I'm a crime scene photographer, and I wanted to ask you about the images in these photos."

  "What do you do for them?" Kativa said.

  "Nothing dangerous," Charley said. His smile seemed especially amused. "That sort of police work scares me. I just take pictures."

  He handed over an 8© 10 color print. Kativa took it, then picked up her glasses, large round lenses in a frame that even when pressed in place slid down onto her nose.

  "This is a very high-quality photograph, Charley. Do you do your own developing?"

  "No. But the shop I work with does good work and they know how to work with my stuff."

  Kativa was so engrossed in the photograph she didn't notice Mara standing at the door, looking at the two of them.

  "This is very familiar," Kativa said. "The design is definitely from the Laura region, I'll tell you this… I think I may actually have seen this before."

  "What do you mean you've seen this before?" Charley said.

  "Obviously not this particular painting, but the painting this is a copy of. Or rather the rock art image."

  "Where?"

  Mara came in silently and sat down. Charley set his coffee cup down on the edge of Kativa's desk closest to him. Kativa spun her chair around and scooted to the closest bookshelf and began running her finger across the neatly organized spines of the books.

  "Here," she said with satisfaction. She pulled out a book titled Australia's Living Heritage, then flipped quickly through the well-thumbed pages till she came to one section. She skimmed it quickly and said to herself, "Not that…" then set the book down on the floor and began looking again. She plucked out a small 6© 6 bound booklet titled Quinkan Rock Art and said, "Ah. Here we go."

  She flipped through the pages and stopped at one, then handed the booklet to Charley. "That's where. It's a copy of that image."

  Charley took the booklet, pushed aside some papers on Kativa's desk, and set the booklet beside his 8© 10. The three of them compared the two. The likeness was unmistakable. The photograph in the booklet was of a figure on what appeared to be a sandstone wall, outlined in red, colored white within the lines, with cross-hatching across the chest. The arms and legs angled upward, with what appeared to be a long bulbed tail dangling below.

  "Is that a tail?" Charley asked.

  "A penis, actually," Kativa said. "The Imjins were said to travel by bouncing on that knobbed penis, much like a kangaroo travels by bounding."

  "What's an Imjin?" Mara asked.

  "This is the image," Charley said. He looked at Kativa with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. The amused look was gone, replaced by a fixity of eye that reminded Kativa of her cat when she was stalking a helpless bird. "What can you tell us about it?"

  "Where did this image come from?" Kativa said.

  "It was drawn on the wall of a crime scene."

  "That doesn't look like paint."

  "It's not. There's some paint, but most of it is blood and body fluids from a murder victim."

  "Oh, my God," Kativa said.

  Mara touched Charley's shoulder. "Show her the other photographs."

  He looked at her, then slid the manila folder across the desk at Kativa. "I'd be careful with them. They're quite ugly."

  Kativa looked through the photographs and felt herself go pale when she came to the overview photograph that showed the body of Madison Simmons hanging upside down. She forced herself to look at the photograph again and noted how the body was staged. She put the photographs down and made herself stack them neatly end to end, before she placed them on top of the manila folder and pushed it away with only her fingertips.

  "I've seen enough, thank you."

  "What do you think?" Charley said.

  "I've seen something much like the body as well."

  "Tell me," Charley said, leaning forward in his chair.

  "The body, the way it was set… were there parts… missing?"

  "Why do you ask that?"

  "In the puri-puri ritual, in the ritual killing, some parts of the person's body are taken, sometimes eaten by the sorcerer."

  Charley sat back in his chair. "The killer trimmed out portions of abdominal fat and ate it along with the victim's kidneys."

  "Oh, my God," Mara said. She sat down heavily. "You didn't tell me that."

  "That's another part of the ritual," Kativa said.

  "You said that before. What ritual?" Charley said.

  "Do you know anything at
all about Australian Aboriginal culture?" Kativa said.

  "If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here," Charley said.

  "What I mean is the background," Kativa said.

  "No."

  "Australian Aboriginal culture has a very unique mythos, the Dreamtime it's called. They believe that the entire world was created by the Rainbow Serpent who made the world and everything that lives in it. Part of their belief system is what they call the Dreamtime, a reality and a time that exists concurrently with the day-to-day reality we know. Aboriginals believe they can go back and forth between the Dreamtime and the day-to-day reality through magic rituals. When in the Dreamtime, they can see the future and the past, and they can commune directly with their ancestral spirits, or the elemental forces of nature. This is a very simple explanation of a complex subject, are you following me?"

  "I'm with you," Charley said.

  "For your purposes, there are four kinds of magic. There's hunting magic, to help the hunter find the prey, to join his spirit to the spirit of the animal they hunt. There's improvement magic, magic to improve circumstances, to call down rain, to improve health, so on. There's love magic, powerful magic to influence a young man or woman to come together with the person who wants them. And then there's puri-puri, the black magic of death. It's meant to kill someone who has wronged or alienated someone within the tribe. That's what the inversion of the body is about… puri-puri drawings to inflict the ritual magic always show the target of the magic upside down, an inversion or reversal of the normal order of things."

  "So this image is supposed to kill the victim?"

  "No, this image is not strictly speaking a puri-puri drawing," Kativa said. She took out the first book and flipped to a page, held out a drawing. "See this," she said, pointing to an image of a long black figure upside down in a gallery of right-sided red-brown figures. "That's a puri-puri drawing, meant to kill the person represented by that upside-down figure. The drawing you have is of a particular Quinkin."

  "What is a Quinkin?" Charley said.

  Mara set her mug down, opened her mouth as though to speak, then closed it.

  "A Quinkin," Kativa began, "is a spirit being. To the Aboriginals, there were many different types of spirit and ancestral beings. Some beings were spirits of animals that inhabited certain rock shapes, some were ancestors, family members who had died in the physical realm, others were spirits that inhabited rocks but weren't of the animal world. And there were others, both malevolent and good ones. The Quinkins are particular to the Aboriginal people of the Cape York Peninsula, which is quite close to Papua, New Guinea. There in fact was a land bridge between those islands and the northernmost part of Cape York, which is the far north of Queensland.