Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged

by Andrews

  Grabbing my jacket, I tossed Callie hers and patted Elmo on the head, then doubled back and tossed him the plush basset hound toy "Live it up. We're all too busy chasing crazies to get any ourselves."

  Callie punched me in the arm playfully and I kissed her.

  As we drove toward the hospital in silence, I tried to put together the elements I knew to be true.

  "The Indian rescued me from that net. If your theory is right, he had to be in on the plan."

  "But who is he and how will we find him?"

  At the small hospital, we stood patiently in line at the reception desk, waiting behind the Sunday visitors to ask where we could find Cy Blackstone's room. The receptionist hit a few computer keys, then announced that Mr. Blackstone was in intensive care and could not have visitors.

  We took the elevator upstairs and got the same answer from a floor nurse. After quizzing her, then informing her I could get permission if necessary to talk to Senator Blackstone, I watched the tired woman give a maternal shrug. "Dear, you can get permission from Jesus Christ, and I'll let you go in and talk his head off, but you won't be getting any answers, because Senator Blackstone is comatose."

  "He could have the nursing staff say he's in a coma to keep people away from him," Callie whispered.

  "Got an idea." I began walking to the elevators. Callie followed, and once inside I punched a button that took us to the chapel level. Getting off the elevator and sinking into the plush mauve carpet and heading toward the polished pews had Callie twitching and demanding to know what we were doing here.

  "Stealing," I replied, and entered the chapel as Callie gave me a questioning look. Scanning the room, I didn't find exactly what I was searching for, so I had to make do. I picked up a Bible from the back of one of the pews, crossed the room to a shelf where the brochures were stacked and lifted a small six-inch crucifix from the wall above the literature, then checked out the area near the pulpit.

  "I hope you're not doing what I think you're doing," Callie said.

  Ignoring her, I approached the stole hanging over the pulpit behind the altar rail. It was white with gold crosses above the gold fringe at each end. "Have you got a safety pin?"

  When she shook her head no, I said it would have to work regardless of length. I draped the scarf around my neck and let the fringe fall down in front on both sides, hitting me slightly above the knees, then tucked the Bible under my arm and clutched the cross in my other hand. "How do I look?"

  "No comment," she said as she followed me out of the sanctuary.

  "I'll bring it back."

  Getting on the elevator again, I altered my demeanor to a reflective silence, and even Callie was impressed, I could tell. When the doors opened, we were on the intensive-care floor, and I went to the nurses' station to say Senator Blackstone's family had asked me to look in on him. The nurse at the desk pointed to the cubicle in the corner, and I walked quietly in, leaving Callie behind. The ICU nurse was checking his chart and stepped out of the room to let me talk to the senator, who had his eyes closed but seemed to be moving a bit.

  "How are you, Senator?" I asked, touching his arm. When he didn't respond I bowed my head. "Dear Lord, heal this man, make him whole in mind and body, relieve him of this pain, in Christ's name we pray."

  I didn't see my words as blasphemy, since prayer was anyone's prerogative and basically beneficial, so in fact I'd performed a service for a guy who probably wasn't the all-time best citizen on God's planet.

  "What happened to you, Cy?"

  He opened one eye enough, I suspected, to see the cross in my hand and the Bible open before me. Then he turned his head away, refusing to speak or perhaps unable to, and I figured with my luck Cy Blackstone was an atheist and wanted me to leave him the hell alone. For all I knew, he could be dying, and I certainly didn't want to torment the guy.

  That's another reason I'd made a lousy cop—I couldn't torture the near-dead into confessing. It seemed to me at the point a perp was checking out, he ought to have special dispensation to cross the River Styx without somebody on this side jerking him around and demanding answers.

  Logically, I should get him to confess with his last worldly gasp, but practically speaking, I couldn't do it. I turned to go as Blackstone looked like he was about to board the boat for the Beyond. Rest in peace, Cy Blackstone, I thought.

  He made a gurgling sound, which compelled me to turn back, and I caught him looking at me, his head back slightly and one arm raised weakly.

  "Something to say..." he whispered hoarsely, and I realized that was probably a variation on "Would you take my confession?"

  I glanced up at the nurse, who was about to enter, and asked for a moment longer. She nodded and turned away out of earshot.

  "Alright," I said.

  Thinking no doubt that he was about to die and not wanting to fly from this earth weighed down by guilt, he let everything tumble out in his hoarse whisper—what he'd done the night Nizhoni was to be killed. I suggested we pray together and we said the Lord's Prayer in unison. After the amen, he added out of the blue, "I double-crossed my son."

  "Your son...?"

  "Luther."

  So much blood rushed to my head I felt dizzy. Cy Blackstone was Luther's dad! Blackstone, by Ramona's admission, had the scoop on everything and everybody; therefore, his son must too. And the social power of a white political family would outweigh the spiritual power of a Native American shaman's. It also meant that Dwayne could be a friend of Luther and indeed might know Cy Blackstone's family. So why was Dwayne trying to kill Luther's father?

  Trying to keep my questions calm and priestlike, I took a breath and prepared to ask Blackstone to explain what had happened, when he closed his eyes and journeyed back into the unconscious.

  "Damnation!" I uttered at not getting my questions answered, as the nurse walked in and stared at me. Glancing down at the cross on my scarf I added, "Damnation can be overcome with prayer. Thank you, nurse. Bless you." I made a hasty exit to the waiting area where Callie jumped up to join me.

  Slightly out of my body, as if putting the pulpit scarf around my neck and carrying a Bible had afforded me entrance into a private place I shouldn't have visited—allowed me to become a voyeur into someone's soul—I managed to whisper, "He confessed, not knowing who I was. His son is Luther Drake."

  I paused to let Callie take that in.

  "Blackstone was headed out to kill Nizhoni on Luther's behalf—well, a fake killing by Cy Blackstone—but before he could, the shaman threw her over the ledge. Apparently, you're right that Nizhoni isn't dead, or they didn't mean for her to die. Anyway, the way I see it, Blackstone and Manaba double-crossed Luther, so his friend Dwayne-Wayne took Blackstone to the woodshed."

  "He told you all that simply because you walked into his room carrying a cross?" Callie seemed to marvel at that. "Do you see what 'double-crossed' can mean?"

  "Yeah, I guess so," I said as we dashed back to the chapel and I replaced the priestly props and privately said a prayer of contrition.

  "Why would Blackstone cover up the murder of a schoolgirl years ago or take part in a staged murder today?"

  "For the love of his son?"

  "No. I don't see that. I would say threats—the kind of threats maybe that got Eyota, the grandmother, to sign over her land."

  "Want to go to the newspaper office and see if they've got archives, because it's a cinch their old copies aren't online."

  Callie nodded and minutes later we were in front of a tiny redbrick building with the word Publishers carved in stone over the front entrance.

  "Closed. I forgot it's Sunday." We'd turned to leave when a pair of eyes peered through the shutters in the front window. I waved in a friendly fashion, hoping whoever it was would come to the door. Perhaps an employee was working on a Sunday.

  Moments later, an elderly Native American woman opened the door for us, almost as if she'd been told we were coming, listened to a description of what we were looking for, and offered
us a chair at a small table in the back of a room filled with boxes and rusty filing cabinets. We scanned hundreds of old articles, but it seemed that over the decades this fledgling newspaper had either struggled to fully report the news or the newspaper owners had only reported what suited them, because controversy was kept to a minimum.

  It was near dark when she came back to find us, tired and discouraged, hunkered down over the piles of articles from twenty years ago. Without a word, she set a file down in front of me— an old, tattered, dog-eared 8 1/2 x 11 manila folder—and flipped open its bent cover. The article placed on top said, "Young Aide, Luther Drake, Worked on Senatorial Campaign—Says Election Not Rigged."

  "So the campaign was rigged and Luther knew it, and he had Blackstone by the balls?" I whispered.

  Without speaking, she flipped to a second, much older article, and I raised my eyes to look into hers, then lowered them to the page where her tan finger pointed.

  The headline read INDIAN WOMAN ACCUSES CITY COUNSELOR OF RAPE. The photo caption said "Beleaguered Counselor Cy Blackstone denies ever knowing the Navajo woman."

  "She was a friend," the Native American woman said, and the simplicity of her statement struck an emotional chord as I watched her retrieve the folder and turn to go. I wondered how long she'd saved it, what she'd thought as she clipped each of those articles, and where she'd hidden it, hoping someday someone would care to ask.

  "Thank you," I said to her broad, tired back. "Thank you for caring enough about your friend to save this."

  But she had already gone into another room as Callie and I walked out of the building and into the night.

  "So Luther and Cy Blackstone share a long and sordid history," I said as we climbed into the car and headed back to the cabin.

  "More than we know," Callie said. "Their secrets are old and dark and exist even to this day."

  "What more could there possibly be between them?" I mused.

  "A son who covers for his father's rigged election in exchange for the father covering for the son when he's accused of a teenage girl's death—conspirators who protect each other yet hate each other. There's more. That much I know."

  Elmo was ecstatic to see us, perhaps feeling bad about his previous low-key greetings, and I led him down the porch steps for a potty break and bumped into Manaba, who nearly scared me into the next millennium, her deerskin-clad arm in my face as she tried to calm me.

  "Manaba, it would be spectacular if you could approach the cabin like a normal person instead of like a freaking apparition. Terrific that you have that ability but—"

  Ignoring me, she walked past and up the steps, as I glanced around to see if she'd been tailed. Then I followed her inside where she paced, refusing water or food or conversation, and Callie and I resigned ourselves to the fact we'd have to wait until she could get the words out.

  "How did she know we wanted to talk to her? Did you call her with your mind?"

  "No, with my cell phone," Callie said dryly.

  I had never associated Manaba with a cell phone and wondered if she had a kangaroo pouch built into her hides so she could keep her phone with her. Glancing over at Callie, I could see her resoluteness.

  She was focused on Manaba and I had a feeling, having gotten that look myself on occasion, that Manaba was in for it.

  "Luther Drake is Blackstone's son. You knew all along and you didn't share that with me. You knew Nizhoni wasn't dead and you let me dig up that grave. What else do you know that you're not telling?" Callie said, and her voice was stone.

  Manaba didn't even attempt to avoid it or spin it or refute it. At least she was smart enough to know when she'd been checkmated.

  "I didn't know that he'd made plans to kill her, but Blackstone knew, and his conscience forced him to come to me. On that night, Luther Drake drove Blackstone to the ridge to meet Nizhoni. Blackstone and I arranged the net below, strung like a hammock then, and a rope around her waist hidden under her clothing, so in case she missed the net, she would still not fall below. Luther thought I had killed her, which put an end to his jealousy."

  "Long way to go to dump a personal problem," I said.

  "He is not an ordinary man," Manaba said. "He was happy when Nizhoni was gone. I had proved to him that he was more important than she. Blackstone gave her over to an Indian man to keep her hidden until I could prove Luther Drake was a murderer. Then you exhumed the grave—"

  "How did Luther know to show up at the gravesite?" I asked.

  "The wind carries the message."

  "How did you keep this from Nizhoni's parents? They would know animal bones," Callie said.

  "Distraught, they left it to Little Horse, Nizhoni's uncle. He has known all along."

  Hearing the name reminded me that carrot boy was due back with a map to Little Horse's place. I dashed out on the porch to see if he'd been here and sure enough, stuck under the doormat, was the map he'd promised. Her back to me, Fern was about to disappear into the woods when I shouted her name.

  "Didn't want to disturb you. My boy said you wanted that map." She pointed to the paper I'd retrieved on the doorstep, and I realized Fern was taking on her son's commitments.

  "I'm sorry you had to make the trip."

  "Love walkin' the woods." She dismissed my apology. "You and your girlfriend havin' a good time?"

  "We are," I said, and smiled.

  "You know, I was thinkin' if you find one person in this lifetime you can't stand to be without, then you're the luckiest person alive and you better grab ahold and hang on. Well, I got to get back to work."

  Fern gave me a little wave before hiking off into the underbrush, and for a moment I felt like I'd been visited by an oversized angel in sensible shoes. I stood still, taking in what she'd said. Callie was that person for me, the one-in-a-lifetime I couldn't do without.

  Absently, I unfolded the map and sagged against the porch post, seeing a series of intersecting scrawled lines with no markers of any kind. Completely useless. I started to toss the paper back into the trees from which it came but thought of Fern picking up after everybody, and I crumpled it up and jammed it into my jeans' pocket.

  Returning to the living room, I heard Manaba tell Callie she would not let Nizhoni be killed, even if she had to kill Luther Drake. The words were cataclysmic; no Navajo and certainly no shaman would ever take a life.

  "Ramona Mathers has disappeared. An arrowhead was found on her dresser at her cabin, and now a business associate, Barrett Silvers, has gone to find her," I interjected.

  "You mean the studio woman who searches for her new lover," Manaba said. Her mind seemed to drift and then it appeared that she went into a trance, the kind of leaving her body that Callie did, only worse. Her body looked almost corpselike, she was so out of it. I sat quietly with Callie, waiting for her spirit to return. Minutes later, she stirred, rolled her eyes back down out of her head, and seemed to find it somewhat startling to be in a room with us. "Two are together. The other is lost."

  That phrasing jolted me. Did she mean that her lover and Ramona were together and Barrett was lost, or perhaps Barrett and Ramona were together and her lover was lost? And what did "lost" mean: missing, dead, unsaved by the blood of the lamb?

  "What do you mean?" I finally asked.

  "I don't know what I say or see," Manaba replied. "I do not allow myself to recognize the location, only the feeling and the voices and the information."

  Great, she takes trips and doesn't know where the hell she’s been, I thought.

  A whirring sound ensued outside the cabin, like a wind had picked up in the few trees along the creek bed and was blowing tales of evildoings around us. Manaba looked up at the ceiling, as if contemplating something unseen, then said she had stayed too long and left immediately. I had a feeling that staying too long had less to do with guest courtesy and more to do with her safety.

  "What in hell was that about? Now she tells us Luther Drake killed her first lover and would kill this one if he could get his hand
s on her, and she threw her lover over the cliff in a mock murder to muddy the trail. On top of everything else, Nizhoni's nice uncle took Ramona, but God knows where." I stopped my tirade long enough to try Barrett's number again, then tossed my phone onto the couch.

  "I talked to Wade. He says Ramona knew the Indian man she went off with. So does that mean she knows Nizhoni's uncle or is it a different Indian guy?"

  While Callie contemplated these scenarios, I added, "I got the map from carrot-kid—well, Fern, actually." I pulled it out of my pocket and Callie stared, rotating it ninety degrees and cocking her head to look at it. "I know, absolutely useless. And what's-his-name's feathers are falling out," I said, picking up the crow feather Luther had left on the floor.

  "Throw it outside," Callie said.

  When I asked her why, she was suddenly upset. She would only say that birds can mean death, and sometimes their feathers portend a similar end. Tossing the feather out the door, I didn't respond, unwilling to allow every errant feather to become a death knell. Life was complicated enough.

  In the dark, we burrowed into the downy comforter and soft sheets, and I put my arms around Callie's soft middle and whispered, "I want to make love but I'm exhausted. Maybe this is the time I should learn to have a cerebral affair."

  "Maybe," Callie said, snuggling into me but not taking the bait.

  "Okay, teach me how to do it."

  "It's not like that, you evolve into it."

  "Evolve over the course of the evening, over the course of dating—"

  "Over centuries."

  "It took centuries for you and she-who-has-one-dress to have a cerebral affair? So that means I'm not evolved or—"

  Callie suddenly placed her forehead against mine and closed her eyes, pressing her weight against me. It calmed and quieted me. My eyes immediately closed and I was silent, feeling an energy buzz that ran through my head, then trickled down my extremities the way children describe an egg breaking over their heads. The connection was electrical and spiritual...and sexual, the rippling sensation moving up my legs and inside them. Then Callie's hand followed that energy between my legs and I kissed her.