“Hey, I knew that. And they’re holding spears.”
“One of the spears was pointed at Companion Rock, the other at Chimney.”
“So?”
“The petroglyph was a sign, pardner. Telling whoever could read it where the Anasazi priest had stashed something or other.”
Parris shook his head at the injured man. “You don’t really believe those old tales about hidden treasure.”
“Somebody did.”
“So where was this treasure supposed to be?”
“Somewhere near that pit house—the one where April was buried.”
“And where you were assaulted.”
“Very same spot.”
“And where we found Dr. Silk’s body.”
“So I’m told.”
“So how’d you figure this out?”
“April Tavishuts told me,” the Ute said.
Parris chuckled. “Your aunt Daisy will be overjoyed to hear you’ve had a conversation with a dead person.”
The Ute recalled his encounter with Nahum Yacitti. “It was April’s sketch. The one we found in her apartment.”
“What’s this ‘we’ stuff—I had nothing to do with that particular misdemeanor.”
“Felony,” Moon said.
“Don’t get technical. Anyway, it wasn’t me who filched that evidence from her apartment.”
“I was just trying to give my pardner some of the credit for a good piece of police work.”
“Very generous of you.”
“Thanks. D’you remember what was on the paper?”
“Sure. Her sketch of the petroglyph. And a couple of penciled lines.”
“Those lines were aligned with the spears,” Moon said.
The Granite Creek chief of police crinkled his brow into deep furrows. “What am I missing here?”
Moon licked parched lips. “Can I have a glass of cool water?”
“Sure. Right after you tell me what you know.”
“Pardner, I’m really thirsty.”
“I got a bag of salted peanuts in my pocket.”
“Okay. The spears are pointing at the pit house.”
Parris poured iced water from a crystal pitcher into a cranberry-glass mug. “I sure hate to correct a man whose brain is all scrambled. But you already said those spears were pointing toward the stone pillars—which is to the northeast. And the pit house in question is to the southwest of the pictograph.” He put the glass in the Ute’s outstretched hand. “Why’re you grinning at the ceiling?”
“Like I already said, the sketch was a misdirection.” Moon took a short drink. Then a long one.
“What kind of misdirection?”
“Whoever drew that nifty little picture must’ve been laughing up his sleeve.” Moon emptied the mug. “He went to a lot of trouble to find a nice, flat sandstone outcropping for his sketch that was between the stone formations and the burial site. The pointy end of one spear is aimed at Chimney Rock, the other one at Companion.”
“So?”
“Try to remember what you learned in grammar school.”
“Always clean up your mess. Don’t throw erasers or spit-balls. Oh yeah—‘Don’t dip the little redheaded girl’s pigtail in the inkwell.’”
“That’s good. But what’d you learn about parallel lines?”
“Everybody knows that—they never cross.”
“And nonparallel lines?”
Parris was beginning to get it. “The lines those two spears make—they cross at the pit house where Miss Tavishuts encountered the pothunter—and you almost met your Maker?”
The Ute’s nod was barely perceptible.
“And April Tavishuts was the first one to figure this out?”
Moon closed his eyes. Tried to remember April’s face. He couldn’t. “April must’ve been the second one to catch on.”
“So who was first?”
“Now that’s the question.”
“If somebody knew where the lines crossed,” Parris countered, “then why dig all over the mesa—why not concentrate on the sweet spot?”
“I’m not sure, pardner. Maybe our treasure hunter didn’t want to make it too obvious where he thought the Anasazi treasure was buried. And digging in a whole buncha places would make it look like ordinary pothunters at work. Which is what the NAGPRA committee believed. That’s why Amanda Silk was contracted to check out the vandalism.”
“I am impressed with this complicated line of reasoning. Especially from a fella who’s recently suffered a serious brain injury.”
“All praise—however slight—is gratefully received.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So what did our treasure hunter find in the excavation that was worth killing for?”
“I don’t know if he found anything at all.”
“Then it might still be there.”
“If it ever was.”
“If there wasn’t anything to find, then your clever converging-line theory is…well, just wrong.”
“If it’s wrong, I disclaim it,” Moon said.
“Maybe whoever bopped you was just a run-of-the-mill pothunter, digging all over the mesa. Maybe they picked that particular pit house because it looked like a promising spot to unearth a snazzy Anasazi pot. Maybe the Twin War God spears are in the sketch just to point at those big rock towers. Maybe the fact that the lines cross at the pit-house grave is a coincidence.”
“Pardner, you could maybe a fella plumb to death.”
“Three or four hard cases in Boot Hill have said the same thing. But you have to admit—there’s a strong possibility you were on a snipe hunt.”
“Maybe.” Maybe the pictograph is a hoax. Just like Amanda said.
“But even if it’s wrong, I like your converging-line theory. It proves you have a knack for plane geometry. And a fertile imagination.”
“You’re altogether too kind.”
“It’s one of my serious failings. And speaking of kindness, I guess it’s about time I told your grieving aunt that you’ve regained consciousness.”
“I’m feeling awful weak,” Moon said in a wan whisper. “Slipping away…”
“I’ll tell her you’re sleeping.”
The Ute’s voice was stronger. “She’d just bang me on the shins with her walking stick till I wake up.”
“Then what should I do?”
“Tell her I’m dead.”
PROGNOSIS
The physician, a slight man rattling around inside a starched white smock, leaned against the foot of Charlie Moon’s bed. He cuddled a clipboard under folded arms. “I’m Dr. Kenny—your neurologist. Last time I came by, you were not entirely with us.”
The Ute—who was sitting in a chair—wondered whether Kenny was the doctor’s first or last name. “Nurse tells me I’m about to be set free.”
The doctor smiled. “Over the wall.” He glanced out the broad window at a sunlit lawn edging the riverbank. “After almost two weeks, I suppose this place does begin to feel like a prison.”
Moon was pulling on his socks. “I’m ready to be in the world again.”
Like a discriminating shopper considering the quality of a melon, Dr. Kenny regarded his patient’s head with a doubtful expression. “You have suffered a serious concussion.”
“I’m feeling pretty good.” The Ute looked up. “And I sure don’t want to hear any bad news.”
The slender man shrugged under the loose-fitting smock. “You’re progressing as well as could be expected. CAT scan showed nothing remarkable. How’s your appetite?”
The seven-foot Ute was extremely tired of macaroni and cheese. Lime Jell-O with seedless, tasteless grapes. Green peas that tasted like the grapes. Cardboard meat loaf. “I could eat a five-pound beefsteak. Burned to a cinder or still bloody, wouldn’t make much difference.”
Dr. Kenny—a vegetarian—found this imagery stomach-turning. The neurologist shifted subjects. “Has your memory of events at the time of the trauma improved?
”
Moon, pulling on the second sock, shook his head. “Still pretty fuzzy.”
“How about the—ahh—visual phenomena you described to the intern?”
The Ute smiled. “You mean the hallucinations?” Wearied from the exertion of dressing himself, Moon leaned back in the comfortable chair. “I still see some lights.” He didn’t mention the oddly shaped shadows that occasionally cavorted at the edge of his visual field.
“Given the nature of your injury, that is not unusual. It should get better.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How better? Will it all go away—or will I start to see pretty women dancing on my bed?”
The physician laughed.
“When’ll I be completely well?”
“Hard to say. The visual phantasms should become less frequent over the next few weeks. Though you may experience recurrent symptoms even months from now.” The physician made a scribbled note on the clipboard. “Have you noticed any other phenomena?”
“Like what?”
“Oh—anything at all that you consider unusual.”
Moon gave the doctor an odd look. “Sometimes this feeling comes over me.”
Dr. Kenny leaned closer. “What sort of feeling?”
Apparently embarrassed, the patient looked at his socked feet. “It’s kinda hard to describe.”
The doctor waited patiently.
“It’s like…like I’m not me anymore.” Moon looked up. “You know what I mean?”
The physician nodded. “I think so. You have the sense that you’re…someone else. We call it post-concussive disassociation.” Once a thing was named, it took on an air of familiarity. One might become almost comfortable with it.
“Not exactly someone else,” Moon said. “More like something else.”
Now this is interesting. The neurologist had once had a head-trauma patient who imagined she was a coat hanger. “What sort of something else?”
Moon set his jaw. “Something like…an animal.”
The physician’s Adam’s apple bobbled as he swallowed. “An animal.” How delightful. He could imagine publishing a socko JAMA paper on this. “What sort of animal?”
“Big hairy one.”
The neurologist paled.
There was a long silence while Charlie Moon managed to pull on his bull-hide boots.
Eventually, Dr. Kenny cleared his throat. “It is my understanding that you live on a ranch. In a rather large house—by yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“I think it advisable that until these—ahh—symptoms clear up, you should not be alone.”
“I’m not all that much alone. I see my ranch foreman and his wife almost every day. And the ranch hands. And my buddy Scott Parris drops by from time to time.”
“Do you have any relatives.”
Moon grimaced. “My aunt Daisy.”
“May I have your permission to speak to some of these individuals about your illness?”
“Sure, Doc.” Moon buttoned his shirt. “Only don’t bring up that thing about the big hairy animal. Wouldn’t want them to worry.”
SYMPTOMS
Dr. Kenny was seated behind an immaculate rosewood desk, his spare figure centered in a picture window that looked out onto a hedged garden. His gray eyes darted between Charlie Moon’s medical charts and the four persons in his office. He thought it fortunate that they had been present to visit the patient on his final day at the hospital. “I appreciate you ladies and gentlemen coming to my office on such short notice.” He frowned at the bearded cowboy. “Mr. Bushman, I understand that you’ll be driving Mr. Moon back to his ranch.”
The Columbine foreman, pulling absently at his tobacco-stained beard, grunted something unintelligible that was intended as an affirmative, and taken as such.
The neurologist looked down his nose at the elderly Indian woman, who seemed half asleep. “And you are Mr. Moon’s aunt?”
Daisy Perika nodded.
This poor woman looks barely able to take care of herself. He turned his attention to the handsome couple. Dr. Kenny needed no introduction to Scott Parris or Anne Foster. He was well acquainted with the Granite Creek chief of police and the town’s eminent journalist. “Mr. Moon,” the neurologist said in measured tones, “is recovering from a serious injury. As he lives alone, it is my hope that his friends and family will keep an eye on him during his recovery.”
“I’ll be checking on Charlie from time to time,” Parris said.
Bushman jammed his hat onto his head. “Me and Dolly—that’s my wife—we see the boss fairly reg’lar when he’s at the ranch. ’Course if he’s off somewheres doin’ some work for the tribe, why we may not lay eyes on him for days at a time.”
“What sort of work does Mr. Moon do for the tribe?”
“Charlie’s an investigator for the Southern Utes,” Parris said.
The physician did not like the sound of this. “I will advise him to avoid any work for at least several weeks.”
“I could come and take care of my nephew,” Daisy said. She shot a dark look at Bushman. “If I’m allowed to.”
The ranch foreman met her hard gaze with one of his own.
The neurologist smiled at the Ute woman. “That would be very helpful, Mrs. Perika. But I must tell you that patients who are recovering from an injury such as Mr. Moon has suffered may…” He hesitated, reflecting on the delicate issue of doctor-patient confidentiality. “They sometimes exhibit peculiar symptoms.” He paused to let this sink in.
It did. Four pairs of eyes stared holes in the doctor.
Anne Foster broke the tense silence. “Peculiar symptoms—what exactly does that mean?”
Dr. Kenny—who toyed with a gold-plated fountain pen—did his utmost to sound casual. “In Mr. Moon’s case, it is possible that there could be unusual discomforts. Even though the injury is to the cranium, referred pains may be felt in an arm or a leg. The effect is temporary. There is, of course, memory loss associated with the time interval shortly before and after the traumatic event.”
There was a collective sigh of relief.
“That is not all,” the neurologist added.
They waited for the big boot to fall.
He dropped it. “There may be other, more bizarre symptoms.”
“Like what?” Scott Parris said hoarsely.
Dr. Kenny cleared his throat. “Personality disorders. Delusions. Disassociatons. He may experience auditory or visual hallucinations.”
“Hah,” Daisy said with a derisive snort, “you’re telling us Charlie’s likely to start acting crazy.”
“I would certainly not use that term.” The physician shot the old woman a flint-tipped look. It bounced off like an arrow that had struck a wall of granite.
“I knew it,” she muttered. “He’ll never be right again.”
“I do not mean that it is likely that this patient would exhibit these particular symptoms. It is merely possible. Furthermore, such phenomena as I’ve described are actually not all that uncommon for a severe concussion of this type and—”
“Rattle-brained as an overworked woodpecker.” Daisy threw up her arms. “I always knew it’d turn out like this. Charlie ought to have listened to me and give up police work for good. Now,” she said darkly, “he’ll be like one of them punch-drunk fighters. Wandering around the streets of Durango, begging for loose change, drinking cheap wine, talking crazy talk.”
The neurologist found himself taking a professional interest in this peculiar old woman.
FREE AT LAST
Charlie Moon was packed and ready to go, waiting for the sheaf of paperwork that would discharge him from Snyder Memorial’s intensive care annex. He was not alone.
Pete Bushman leaned against the doorjamb.
Scott Parris stood by the window, staring out at a beautiful day. The mountains never changed. But men were different. He was wondering whether Charlie Moon would ever be the same.
Anne Fos
ter, her large eyes anxious, sat on a small couch.
Daisy Perika was hunched forward in an antique rocking chair, clicking her knitting needles. “Myra drove me up here to the hospital,” she said to her nephew.
Moon frowned. “Myra?”
“Myra Cornstone.” Daisy looked up from her work. “She came to see you a coupla days ago. Don’t you remember?”
“I must’ve been taking a nap.” Moon seemed to be in deep thought. “She a short girl—kinda plump?”
Daisy blinked owlishly at him. “Myra’s a head taller’n me. And thin as a grass snake.”
“Oh.”
There was a long silence.
“I’ve been thinking,” Daisy said.
Moon’s stomach churned at this unsettling news. What I need is to get home. Have a few days of peace and quiet.
“Don’t you want to know what I’ve been thinking?” There was an unmistakable tone of accusation in her question.
“Sure.” Go ahead. Ruin my day.
“I’ve been thinking about how you’re always after me to come up and stay with you. Keep you company on that big ranch.”
Charlie Moon pretended not to hear.
“I thought I should go up and get that big house cleaned up for you.”
“You don’t need to bother.” Moon glanced at his foreman, who had backed into the hallway. “Dolly Bushman takes care of the place when I’m away.”
Daisy leaned close and whispered, “That foreman’s silly wife—you let her mess around in your house?”
“Dolly is a very nice lady.”
“Well, there’s another reason I’d like to go up there.” Not that I’d ever tell you.
“What’s that?”
“Your doctor thinks you need some looking after.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Daisy was not about to give up. “And I thought I’d go and put some of my things in my little log house across the lake.”
Moon looked blankly at his aunt. “The guest cabin?”
“Sure. The one you fixed up for me. Sometime, I might want to come and stay for a few weeks. So I need to put some pots and pans in the kitchen.”
“There’s plenty of cookware there already.”
“I need my own stuff,” she snapped. “I’ll get someone to drive me up.”
Moon knew when he was whipped. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll come get you.” When I’m good and ready.
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