Shadow Play Page 5

  “Give me the keys.”

  I held out the keys in my left hand, slid the right behind my back for the Beretta, but had enough sense to stay away from it. People skills, time to try them out.

  “Look,” I said. “I really need to find Antoinette.”

  “Don’t know her. Now go move your car.”

  “I’ve got a message for her.” She hesitated. “You do know her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me write down the message.”

  “Don’t care what it says. Who’s it from?”

  “I’m, my name is Laura Winslow.” Staring into eyes like coal-black buttons. “My partner’s name is Nathan Brittles?”

  “Umh. What’s his clan name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mother’s name?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  The .30-30’s barrel drooped a few inches. “His middle name?”

  “Nathan? Oh. Nathan Cutting Brittles. Cutting.”

  “Cutting Tongue,” she said. Uncocked the .30-30, lowered the barrel until it pointed somewhere at my right running shoe. “Don’t know him.”

  “But you know his middle names.”

  “Don’t know him, never said I’d didn’t know about him. What’s the message?”

  “Um,” I said, “well,” I said, trying to create some message, “look, he just wants to see you. Talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Leon Begay.” She staggered, brought the .30-30 up again. “Nathan, he’s an old friend of Leon Begay. And another old friend just came down from Monument Valley. A Navajo tribal cop. Bob Good…Good something, I can’t remember.”

  “Good Fellow. Umh.” She went slowly to the pickup, opened the passenger-side rear drawer to fumble inside one of the cardboard boxes for a very worn silver picture frame holding an old black-and-white photo. Three young men, hardly more than teenagers, standing slightly apart but all pointing at the camera. In the background, what looked like Right Mitten, one of the most photographed rock structures in Monument Valley. “Who are they?”

  She held out the picture.

  Two of them I’d never seen before. On the left, Nathan, a fierce grin underneath a battered straw cowboy hat.

  “That one’s Nathan,” I said, pointing. “Never seen the other two.”

  “Leon and Robert, that some call Bob. Come on in. Have some coffee.”

  Her house was small, but neat except for a half-dozen or so empty cardboard boxes in the living room. She packed nothing in the kitchen, I didn’t want to look elsewhere.

  “Where’d you get that picture?” I said, coughing at the coffee, incredibly strong and black, she had no milk or sugar. Sipping from her pink mug, no handle, staring over the rim at me, only halfway to trust. “Wait, wait a minute.”

  I ran to my Cherokee, got my camera and turned it on, cycling thru the pictures until I found the one I wanted to show her. “It’s kinda small. Do you need glasses, can you see it?” A picture of the shelving in Leon’s computer room, showing the spots not marked by monsoon dirt. “You’ve been there,” I said. “Yesterday?”

  “This morning.” Put down her cup. “I was afraid he’d come back for them.”

  “Who?”

  “Sheriff’s had a volunteer watching the house until early this morning. When she left, I went inside, got some things. I was afraid, I didn’t want him coming back.”

  “Who?”

  “The yenaldlooshi.”

  “Who? I don’t speak Navajo.”

  “The thing what killed Leon.”

  “What thing?”

  “Skinwalker,” she said, standing up. “Got to go, got a long drive.”

  “No, wait, Antoinette, you are Antoinette Claw?”

  “Umn.” Carrying the picture to the pickup, holding out her hand for the key.

  “Where are you going? Back to Dinetah?”

  “Dinetah. Yup.”

  “Where?” Like pulling a yard of weeds, never getting to the root of what she could tell me. “Where on the rez?”

  “You talk to Robert Good Fellow, he knows my family.”

  “If I tell you where Good Fellow is, will you go see him?” She twisted the key in the ignition, the V-8 rumbled quietly and she pulled the center-shift lever into Drive. “Casa Grande,” I said. “Whoever you’re afraid of, he’s never been to this place, he doesn’t know about this place. Please.” Grabbing a restaurant receipt and a ballpoint pen from my handbag, I wrote down Nathan’s address and drew a rough map, adding the phone number at the bottom.

  “Good Fellow is here. I’ll call him. I’ll tell him you’re coming there. Here’s my phone number. Call me if you have,” starting to say trouble, biting my upper lip, “if you have any problems.”

  “Maybe,” she said finally. “Move your car.”

  “Wait. Just, wait, one more question. Why did you say that Leon was killed by a skinwalker.” For the first time, I saw a wave of fear ripple down her cheeks and neck. “The girl, too? Were they both killed by a skinwalker?”

  “Are you Dineh?”

  “No. My father was Hopi.”

  “Hopi.” Spat the word out. “From up there?”

  “Hotevilla. Until I was fifteen.”

  “Hotevilla. Umn, umh. You grow up with witches?”

  “No. Except television. Bewitched.”

  “What’s that?”

  “TV show. Once in a while, my dad would hook a TV to his truck battery.”

  She abruptly shifted into Park, reached through the seats behind to pull another picture from a box. “Take this,” she said. “I get near Casa Grande, I’ll call Robert.” Two youngsters, maybe twelve or thirteen, and an older man, probably their father, sitting outside a single-wide trailer. “You and your friends, you tell me who these people are, you call Robert at Casa Grande and tell him, then I’ll call Robert when I’m near there, if he gives me the names…maybe, I’ll stop for gas.”

  “I don’t believe in witches,” I said. Brought up my Nikon and ripped off three pictures of her face.

  Livid, she jumped out of the pickup. “Give me that film,” shouting, half-running toward me as I backpedaled. “You can’t keep my face.”

  “It’s digital,” I said. “There is no film. But here. Look.” Holding up the back of the Nikon, working the buttons to show her picture. “I’m sorry. Watch.” She stuck her face a foot from the camera, tried to grab it but I’d called up her picture. “Okay, I’m deleting it.” I backspaced to a picture of Leon’s house. “See?

  “That picture is gone?” Unbelieving.

  “Yes.” The truth, that one picture was gone. Two more images left on the flash card, she didn’t seem to know what I was showing her. “How many pictures did you take from Leon’s house? Was there also a map, two by three feet?”

  “Ah!” she snorted, waddling back to her pickup, cramping the steering wheel to the right, jumping on the gas pedal to drive across the caliche front yard, the pickup bouncing slightly as it rocketed off the curb, the heavy sixteen-inch tires spewing a rooster tail of dirt and small stones that rang like hail against my car. I ran to my Cherokee but had to fumble for my keys, finally starting the engine before I looked up to see her pickup at the five corner, but I lost sight of it when she lurched around the corner since I had to stare through five starry cracks in my windshield.

  In all my life, I’ve only heard one real ghost story. Here it is.

  10

  A giant Kachina stood just inside Patrick Valasnuyouoma’s rusted screen door.

  My own witch story, from five years ago. Up on the rez, Tuba City, story of a vision, told to me by a Hopi elder. Adam, Anthony…no, Abbot, no, that was Abbott Pavatea, wanting me to find his missing daughter. Judy.

  I hadn’t thought of Judy Pavatea in a long time.

  And a Hopi elder, a kikmongwi, he’d told me the ghost story, yes, that’s who it was, I remember now. Johnson…Johnson…something.

  Pongyayanoma.


  And in remembering his name, I remembered the ghost story with absolute certainty of Johnson’s exact words, they rushed into my head, each word crystal clear, like seeing all the drops in a monsoon rain. Each grain of sand in a dune.

  Blue prayer feathers stuck in thick, flowing black hair.

  Come, Patrick, he said.

  Why?

  Travelers, the Kachina said.

  Seeking the Home of the Dead. We must protect them from Powakas.

  Two Hearts? Patrick said. Witches? he said.

  Come.

  The Kachina beckoned with his right hand. He backed outside, rusted hinges squeaking like mice in the winter corn. They left the ancient stone house and they flew over cornfields and peach trees, above and beyond ancient stone villages on the three Hopi mesas until the Kachina pointed down at hordes of travelers, gaunt, haggard with fatigue, begging for food and water. Staggering under gigantic bales of firewood, serpents braceleted and struck their arms, scorpions thrust into their thighs, hundreds of cholla thorns pricked the soles of their feet, their armpits, their genitals. All these punishments for bad things done to others, or maybe just for speaking up against rain.

  They flew until they landed upon a high desert plain.

  Someone sat motionless behind the wheel of a derelict, completely stripped pickup truck. No tires or rims, no hood, no doors or tailgate, the engine throbbing at full speed, a throaty pulsation, the enormous power of a diesel semi double trailer, shifted down into crawler gear, muffler blatting as it climbs full out up a three-mile hill and the longbox pickup bed over-flowing with girls and women of many ages, all bearing enormous scars or bruises or wounds or holes through their bodies, some carrying their hearts, livers, a hand, fingers, their heads.

  The Kachina pointed toward the south.

  Many creatures moved toward them at tremendous speed. As they drew near, Patrick saw they were young maidens with butterfly swirls of black hair braided behind both ears. Some of them ridden and spurred by five winged creatures with sharp beaks and enormous erections. As the women passed, Patrick saw their faces clearly and he was astonished that he knew many of them.

  Four of the creatures drifted by, but the fifth circled above him, above the pickup. A woman came out of the pickup cab, her fisted right arm extending, stretching upward, striking the creature and then plucking him from the woman he rode and the arm swinging like a lasso and throwing the creature beyond the horizon.

  Astonished, mute, Patrick saw the woman settle into the now empty pickup bed and the pickup drove away. The other creatures returned in a long ellipse, the dust of their travel rose, filled the air, swirled around until they passed and then things changed again.

  One thing more, now my mind could not stop picturing Leon’s destroyed head. In the Kachina ghost story, how he looked entering Patrick’s stone house.

  Head cradled in his left hand, shoulders thrust against the beamed ceiling.

  Enough of these old memories, my old life. Most people think the trick to dealing with the past is to push it out of conscious memory. Nope. The real trick is to deal with your life and recognize you’ve moved beyond it. Why else would Dr. Phil and Oprah be so popular, if not to tell us to get a new life?

  I tried calling Spider but she wasn’t home. About to flick the cell shut, I had an idea. If I was going to improve my people-person skills, I needed to meet somebody new.

  11

  “Anasazi Flamingo Casino.”

  “Vincent Basaraba, please,” I said.

  “Who is calling?”

  “Laura Winslow.”

  “Does he know you?”

  “No.”

  “What company or concerns do you represent?”

  “Computer Forensics,” I said.

  “Um…”

  “Data integrity. Computer security, that kind of thing.”

  “Security. I’ll ring you right through.”

  On hold. Then a number rang, immediately rolled over to another number, probably a cell phone, and somebody answered immediately.

  “This is Wes.”

  “Actually, I’m trying to reach Mr. Basaraba.”

  “The operator said you worked in computer security.”

  “Yes, but this is a personal call.”

  “I screen all of Mr. Basaraba’s personal calls.”

  “Screen them for what?”

  “Who am I talking to?” Voice harder-edged. “Winslett, is that your name?”

  “Laura Winslow.”

  “Computer security, right?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “We handle our own computer security, thank you.” His voice faded after the first word, sounding like he was either hanging up or switching off a cell.

  “It’s about his brother,” I said.

  A long silence, but no click of disconnection.

  “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Wes McCartney. Director of casino security. Uh, to my knowledge, Mr. Basaraba doesn’t have a brother.”

  “You’re right. He’s dead.”

  “He’s what?”

  “Enough of this jackshit,” I said. I’ve got this voice, I can lower my pitch almost an octave, I get even quieter, but it gets results sometimes. “Just let me talk to Vincent Basaraba. What’s the problem here?”

  “You’re not a reporter? Trying to get some inside story?”

  “Story about what?”

  “We had a suicide here today.”

  “Not…Mr. Basaraba?”

  “Gambler. Owed lots of money. Jumped from the roof.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not a reporter.”

  “All right,” he said finally. “But I’m gonna brief him first.”

  “Okay. I’ll take what I can get.”

  I waited three minutes, then the line clicked live again.

  “Miss Laura Winslow?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is…I’m Vincent Basaraba.” Baritone, very modulated, carefully exact with pronunciation, but also a current of concern. “About my brother? You’re calling to tell me my brother is dead?”

  “Last week.”

  “We’re talking about my brother Leon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leon Begay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m only asking because…I haven’t used that last name in years. But Leon, I knew he was in Vietnam, I heard he moved back to the rez. Did he die up there? In Monument Valley?”

  “In Green Valley,” I said.

  Sharp intake of breath, hand covering the phone but not entirely, I could hear another voice in the background, a woman’s voice and then that of another man.

  “Who are you?” he said. “I mean, I’ve never heard of you, I’ve not heard any news about Leon, nothing in the papers. How do I know you’re not just somebody trying to get an edge at the casino?”

  “He died last week,” I said. “The medical examiner’s office held off with his name because a young woman died with him.”

  “A car accident?”

  “No.” How could I explain this. “Can I make an appointment to see you, Mr. Basaraba? Tomorrow? Any time tomorrow?”

  “Yes…I suppose so, but…how did they die?”

  In for a penny, in for it all.

  “It’s been ruled a murder-suicide,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ.” He gasped, didn’t bother covering the phone, I heard him say murder and suicide to the other people. “Who was the woman? Why did she kill Leon?”

  “I don’t really know how to tell you this, Mr. Basaraba. Leon killed the woman. Then he turned the shotgun on himself.”

  The phone clattered onto a desk or table, something wooden, I could hear it bounce a few times.

  “This is McCartney. How soon can you be here?”

  “You told me he didn’t have a brother.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Tonight,” McCartney said. “Any time, all night. Any time is okay.”


  “I’m on my way to Green Valley right now,” I said. “Then I just want to go home, and I live in…” I stopped, right there, sometimes, I tell you, I get this instinct not to reveal personal things, like where I live. “…a long drive from here. I’ll be at the casino at nine tomorrow morning.”

  “How do you know this?” McCartney said. “About Leon, and the woman?”

  “Somebody contacted me.”

  “Contacted you? In what capacity? Does this have anything to do with computer security? What some- body?”

  “Tomorrow morning at nine,” I said. This guy asked way too many questions.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Miss Winslow. A lot of people, they know Vincent from the movies, a lot of other people want an edge at the casino. I have to be really, really careful about who I trust.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he said. “There’s a horrible plane crash exactly on the border between Arizona and Mexico. Bodies everywhere, wreckage across a dozen acres, plane seats, teddy bears, shoes, so tell me, if it’s exactly on the border, where do they bury the survivors?”

  “Survivors live on.”

  “Not the right answer. Tomorrow.”

  “Tell Vincent I’m a big fan,” I said.

  I heard the three people talking, Basaraba’s voice clearly audible at one point. A fan? What the hell is this? I disconnected and started to power down the cell so they wouldn’t star sixty-nine the call, but it rang.

  “Where are you now?” Nathan said.

  “Outside her house. Antoinette Claw, I met her.” I started to tell him about Vincent Basaraba, but he interrupted.

  “Come back to Leon’s place,” he said.

  “Nathan. I told you, I have to talk with my daughter. I can’t meet you.”

  “I need your help,” he said, his voice over the edge of control.

  12

  “I don’t know what’s going on there,” the old man said. White shorts, calf-high white socks, white golf shoes, and a cream-colored guayabera. Standing next to an elaborate electric golf cart, lime green and the roof curved up from the front. Holding his titanium Big Bertha driver in one hand and an open cell phone in the other. In the middle of the street, looking into the open doorway of Leon Begay’s house.