by Lukens, Mark
The house was still dark and quiet; the only sound was the humming of the heat through the ducts in the ceiling. Palmer slipped inside the bathroom, closed the door and locked it.
After using the bathroom, Palmer went back to his room and slipped his suitcoat on. He grabbed his overcoat and duffel bag and walked back down the hall to the living room and kitchen.
Like the last time he had stayed here, Captain Begay’s wife Angie was up and moving around in the kitchen. The aroma of coffee and slightly burnt sausage hung in the air.
“I made a plate for you,” Angie said and stared at Palmer for a moment.
He knew she wasn’t going to let him turn down breakfast a second time, so he sat down at the table. “Thank you.”
“The captain’s still getting dressed,” she said as she set a plate full of scrambled eggs, sausage, and fried potatoes down in front of him. “Salt and pepper is on the table. There’s hot sauce or ketchup if you need it.”
“No, this will be fine,” he said and smiled at her.
Begay entered the kitchen, dressed in a long-sleeved flannel shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans, and a pair of worn hiking boots. Apparently Begay was figuring on outdoor work today.
“Sleep well?” Begay asked Palmer.
“Like a baby,” Palmer lied.
Angie set a plate of food down on the table in front of Begay, and then she set a plate of toast in between the two men. Begay buttered his toast carefully and then slathered it with the homemade jam.
Palmer watched the big man eat for a moment. Where Palmer was indifferent to food, he could tell that Captain Begay took pleasure in it and that he had particular tastes and rituals when it came to eating.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” Palmer asked after shoveling another bite of food into his mouth.
Begay shrugged as he ate. “Keep searching for your fugitives.”
Palmer sensed that the captain’s plans didn’t include him, but he wasn’t going to be brushed off that easily.
Begay chewed his food slowly and looked at Palmer. “You still have to stay here?” he asked bluntly.
“Yes,” Palmer answered. Another lie. Cardenelli wasn’t very happy about Palmer abandoning the crime scene in Colorado, closer to his own territory, but Palmer wasn’t going to give up this collar to Klein so he could screw everything up. And he wasn’t going to let a murder suspect (or suspects if Stella turned out to be involved in all of this somehow) get into Begay’s hands—and Begay knew it, so it didn’t need to be said. Threats didn’t need to be made right now, especially not in front of the man’s wife. He hoped they could keep things civil.
“Any leads?” Palmer asked as he ate another bite of his breakfast. It was his way of asking the same question: What were they going to do next?
Begay wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t letting it show. Palmer could tell that Angie sensed the unease and tension in her husband, but Palmer didn’t care if he was hurting anyone’s feelings or stepping on anyone’s toes—he’d learned over the last few decades to be a single-minded machine when it came to searching for criminals and solving crimes.
“We’re going to find Billy Nez,” Begay said as he took another bite of his food.
“Who’s that? Someone hiding from you?”
“He was the one with Alice when they talked to Stella and David.”
“How do you know that? You talked to him?”
“Someone I know saw them all at a diner together. Someone who owes me a favor.”
“Good,” Palmer said. “I’m going with you.”
Begay didn’t argue. Palmer could remind Begay that he had let him tag along to the crime scene at John and Deena’s house, but he didn’t say anything.
Palmer got up to take his plate to the sink, but Angie swooped in and intercepted him like she’d been waiting for him to make a move to clean up. “I’ll take that,” she said with a forced smile.
“Thank you, Angie. That was the best breakfast I’ve had in a long time.”
She nodded and the smile on her face never wavered. “Thank you, Agent Palmer.”
Palmer looked at Begay, who wasn’t hurrying through his breakfast. “I’ll wait for you outside. I have a few phone calls to make.”
Begay nodded, but he gave him a “whatever” look with his eyes.
Palmer got his coat and duffel bag and went out through the front door.
*
After Agent Palmer went outside, Begay continued eating his breakfast. He enjoyed his wife’s cooking, it was one of the great pleasures of his day, and he wasn’t going to let the sour FBI agent ruin his breakfast.
He wasn’t too happy about Palmer riding with him all day, but he couldn’t exactly kick him out on his own. This was an FBI investigation now, whether he liked it or not, and it was best to play ball up to a point. Besides, working with Palmer was much better than working with Klein.
Begay stopped eating. He could feel the weight of his wife’s stare on him. He looked at her. She stood by the stove, watching him. She looked a little nervous, holding her hands in front of her, rubbing them; it seemed like the winter weather was affecting her arthritis again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
“I don’t feel good about this.”
“I’m just going to track down Billy and find out what he knows.”
She sighed and shook her head slightly. “You know what I mean,” she whispered as if Palmer might somehow overhear her from outside.
He knew exactly what she meant. Angie was a believer in all things mystical, and Begay had to admit that she had a gift of some sort. She’d predicted things plenty of times before with an uncanny ability and a spooky accuracy. Even though he wanted to brush off her fears right now, he knew he had to respect them and listen to whatever warning she had to offer.
“I had a bad dream last night,” Angie said in a low voice.
Begay got up and took his plate to the counter. As good as the breakfast was, he didn’t think he would be able to finish the last few bites now—he’d suddenly lost his appetite.
“There was this … this thing in my dream,” Angie said. “It was chasing me. And chasing other people. It looked a little like a shadow, constantly changing and moving, but it wasn’t a shadow. It was real … it was all of the evil in the world rolled up into this black form.”
Begay laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder, a gentle touch.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Begay said.
“Not just for you,” Angie said and her dark eyes flicked to the front door in the living room. “For him, too.”
Begay nodded and exhaled a long breath. “We’ll be careful,” he said. “But I have to go. It’s my job. It’s his job too.”
Angie bit her lip and forced a smile, but Begay saw her lips trembling just a little. She nodded, indicating that she understood that he had a job to do. “Just be careful,” she whispered.
“It’s my middle name,” he said.
He kissed her, and she grabbed on to him and hugged him tight, like he was going away and she might never see him again. That hug, the way she clung to him, scared him more than her warnings and bad dreams had.
CHAPTER 59
Captain Begay’s house
Special Agent Palmer stood outside Captain Begay’s house in the cold air. The world was lightening up quickly, the sky such a deep blue already. He walked to his black rental car that he had parked in the strip of gravel beside Begay’s driveway last night. Begay’s giant Ford Bronco was parked in the driveway right behind Angie’s car.
As he walked to his car Palmer dialed Agent Klein’s number to get an update from him.
Agent Klein was at the dig site already.
“Some group of scientists is here,” Klein said on the phone. “They’ve been here since last night, poking around everywhere. They’re calling this dig site one of the greatest finds in the last fifty years. Definitely in this century so far, t
hey said. I’m constantly beating these guys back away from the cave like flies off shit. I don’t know how many times I need to tell these bozos that this is still a crime scene. I don’t care if they found Amelia-fucking-Earhart’s airplane in there.”
Palmer stared out at the end of the driveway as he listened to Klein drone on. He watched his breath mist up in front of his face.
Palmer instructed Klein to remain at the dig site and got a groan from the agent who wanted to team up with Palmer, and then he finally got Klein off the phone.
His next phone call was to the forensics offices in Albuquerque to see if they’d gotten anywhere. Most of the team wasn’t there this early, having worked late into the night, but Susan Dorsett, the woman he’d talked to at David’s parents’ house, talked to him for a few moments on the phone.
“I only have a few minutes,” she warned him. “I’m really busy.”
Palmer asked her some quick questions.
No, she hadn’t discovered anything new. No, there was still not a shred of DNA evidence found on the bodies. No, they hadn’t gotten any further in this investigation.
“How am I supposed to put this in the report?” Susan finally asked Palmer.
Palmer didn’t have an answer for her, and he really didn’t think she was expecting one from him.
He told her that he would get back with her later in the day, that he had something to work on right now. She seemed relieved to get off the phone.
Palmer looked at his cell phone in his hand. He needed to call Cardenelli, but he decided that he would put that call off as long as he could. Instead, Palmer called the forensics team up in Colorado. He got someone named Ben on the phone.
The forensics team in Colorado was just as baffled as Susan and her team was down here in New Mexico.
“One of the people in Nora Conrad’s house was her husband,” Ben said.
Palmer remembered the sheriff up there saying that the dead man on the floor with the bullet hole in his head was the woman’s husband and the girl’s father, and that he had been dead for at least six months.
And Ben verified that now. “Why would someone bring a dead man there and then put a bullet in his head?”
Again, Palmer didn’t have answers for the man. “What about the bodies from the hotel?”
“It just gets more and more bizarre,” Ben said. He was breathing hard into the phone. He sounded overweight. “One of the victims …” He sounded like he was looking something up real quick—Palmer heard the sound of the clicking keys on a keyboard. “A Travis Conrad, son of the dead guy in the house, was definitely run over by a vehicle. But the other two … one was twisted completely around, his spine snapped in several places, muscles torn, ribs smashed to pieces, organs practically liquefied.”
Palmer just nodded and rubbed at his temple with his other hand.
“And the other one … it looks like he came out of a garbage compactor. I don’t know how anyone … how a person could possibly do this to other human beings without some kind of high-powered machinery being involved.”
Palmer sighed into the phone. “I know this is a strange one,” he said. “Did you find any kind of evidence on the victims? Some hair samples, skin, blood … anything?”
“Nope. Nothing. Not one bit of DNA evidence at all. It was like these people were mangled without even being touched.”
“Okay,” Palmer said. He was ready to hang up now. This was getting nowhere.
Begay stepped out of his house and closed the front door with a thump.
“I gotta go. Thanks.” Palmer hung up his phone and met the big captain by his Ford Bronco.
Begay got in his truck and hit the button to unlock the passenger door for Palmer.
CHAPTER 60
Joe Blackhorn’s property
An hour after the sun was up everyone was awake inside of Joe Blackhorn’s trailer.
Joe made a quick breakfast of eggs, some kind of shredded meat, and a fried mixture of potatoes, peppers, onions, and tomatoes.
David picked at his food, but he drank two glasses of juice. He brightened when Stella gave him the spiral bound notebook and the pen.
“Remember when you drew those symbols in the notebook at the cabin?”
David nodded.
“Do you think you could draw those again?” she asked as she opened the notebook up and folded the cover back to reveal the first blank page.
David nodded. He took the notebook and went to the couch, curling up on it, his eyes on the paper, his hand clutching the pen, already drawing furiously.
Stella watched David for a moment. She felt like crying while she watched him, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. He seemed like such a normal boy at this moment, just a boy doodling in a book. But there was nothing normal about David, and nothing normal about what they had been through. Maybe the trauma was catching up to her; maybe she was finally having a breakdown.
Joe and Cole cleaned up the kitchen. Stella went in there to help, wiping the small wood table down.
The wind outside was picking up again, gusts shaking the trailer slightly. But there had been no attacks through the night. No army of animals and other creatures stood guard on the ridge in the distance. No dead person had stumbled across the desert and up to their door, waiting outside for them, calling them and asking for things.
“Why hasn’t it attacked?” Cole asked as he put the plates in the cabinet.
“I think it might be building its strength back up,” Joe said. “Kind of like we’re all doing. Maybe it needs to rest like we do. What it did last night—with all of those snakes and spiders and other animals—that must’ve taken a lot of energy.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it’s planning its next attack. I don’t know. All I can do is guess.”
“Does David know?” Cole asked in a low voice.
They all glanced at the living room. If David was listening to their conversation, he didn’t show it; he was still concentrating on the ancient language that he was scribbling down on the notebook paper. Joe’s dog was sitting near David, watching him draw.
“I don’t know,” Joe said in an even lower voice, almost a whisper. “I think he knows when it’s close.”
Stella remembered when they were back in the cabin—David always knew when Frank was out in the snow waiting for them.
“So what now?” Cole asked again. “That thing out there isn’t going to rest forever. Do we go to this … this place you were talking about?”
Joe nodded. “We need to go soon.”
“How soon?” Cole asked. “If we wait too long, then the four-wheelers won’t work. It will destroy them just like it disabled our truck when you picked us up … and just like it destroyed the engines of the trucks at the cabin. And it will probably kill your horses.”
Joe nodded like he had already considered those possibilities.
“David has to be ready,” Stella said and looked at Joe. “We can’t put him in front of the Ancient Enemy until he’s ready.”
“It’s true he needs to be ready,” Joe said, “but Cole is right. We need to hurry.”
“I’d be surprised if the horses aren’t already dead,” Cole mumbled, “and the four-wheelers and all the other vehicles out there trashed.”
“Yes, but we can’t rush David into this,” Stella said. “If we don’t get this right …”
“But we have to bring David to the place where he can fight it the best,” Joe insisted. “We have to take him to the place where he has the best chance of defeating the Darkwind … killing it, or at least sending it back to where it came from. And we do need to hurry.”
“So when are we going?” Cole asked.
“Today,” Joe said like he’d just made up his mind. His face was set in a grim expression like he wasn’t going to change his mind.
“Today?” Stella said, not hiding her surprise and horror.
“He’s right,” Cole told Stella. “We need to do this before we’re trapped here. You know what will happen if we’re trappe
d here.”
Stella sighed and glanced back at David.
David still hadn’t looked their way; he was still concentrating on his notebook, seemingly in his own world right now.
“You two need to understand something,” Joe said.
Stella and Cole looked at Joe again.
“This journey we’ll be taking will be dangerous. David will offer some protection, but when the Darkwind is strong again it will attack and all of us may not survive.”
Both Cole and Stella nodded … they understood.
Joe smiled at them. “But I’m going to bring along some things that can help us. Some things to help give us an edge.”
CHAPTER 61
Special Agent Palmer rode with Captain Begay in his jacked-up Ford Bronco. They drove down a strip of pavement that seemed to run on forever through the rocks and sandy hills.
They had been driving for hours, and they had already stopped to talk to a few people. Begay had gone into homes and buildings on his own, asking Palmer to wait in the truck. Through the morning Begay had questioned several people about where Billy Nez was. Palmer was sure that bargains had been made by Begay to find Billy’s whereabouts … and he was sure that threats had been made, too.
Close to eleven o’clock, Begay left a stucco-covered adobe building where some men milled about outside. Palmer wasn’t sure what kind of place this was, but he’d waited in Begay’s truck for twenty minutes while Begay talked to some of the men inside.
Once Begay got back in the truck, his expression gave nothing away. He stared ahead with the mirrored sunglasses still on his face. He put the truck in reverse (he’d left it running for Palmer while he’d been inside to keep the heat on) and backed up to leave the dirt parking area.
Obviously Begay wasn’t going to volunteer any information.
“Well?” Palmer finally asked.
“He told me where to find Billy,” was all Begay said. It even sounded like he was angry about having to tell Palmer that much.
