Land of Echoes

by Daniel Hecht

  "You agree?"

  She shrugged. "I've seen him sort of. . .fix on her. But I'm really not sure—I haven't seen much of them together."

  Edgar nodded and thought about that as he peeled a banana, bit off half of it in one mouthful, and appeared to swallow it whole. "That would seem to support her idea it's the ex, no? Driven by lingering hatred or hostility?"

  "Or the ex driven by regret and a desire to reconcile. I don't know enough about the dynamics there to tell."

  "You know, when we were going over to the maintenance building, she told me some interesting things about her relationship with the McCartys. Did she tell you about the lawsuit she's got going against them? The uranium thing?"

  "She said she often fought them in court, but nothing specific."

  "Well, this one's still pending, some protracted process involving McCarty Energy and local townships and the Navajo tribe. Seems there's uranium here and there throughout the region—huge profit potential? So McCarty Energy wants to do what's called in situ extraction. That's where they pump a chemical solution into the ground that dissolves the uranium ore. They mix the dissolved ore with water, and pump the slurry back up for separation. But water's rare and valuable out here, right? So the problem with the process is, one, it consumes huge amounts of a crucial resource, and two, the liquefied uranium travels in the aquifers. Given that the process uses up or pollutes groundwater far beyond McCarty property, there's a lot of resistance. A number of nearby water users have joined the suits. Julieta got worried about radioactivity in the school's well, and she's been the ringleader among the other parties involved. And so far, they've won—there's an injunction against in situ extraction, pending resolution in the courts. It's been going on for years already, began while Garrett was still alive. In the meantime, needless to say, McCarty harbors no great love for Julieta."

  "Jesus! No wonder Donny was so paranoid when we came to the mine! And why he was so convinced I was conspiring with Julieta."

  "Yeah. Something to keep in mind when you meet with him today." Edgar poured some more coffee, recapped the thermos, and handed the cup to Cree. "You don't want to get caught in that crossfire."

  Cree nodded, still not sure how she would deal with Donny. She finished the banana Ed had given her, then took a long swallow of coffee, hungry for the caffeine burn in her belly. The heat was nice, but her anxiety was rising again. So much to consider. The in situ issue and Donny's rather understandable distrust was yet another complication, another indication this thing was snowballing out of control.

  They spent another half hour exploring the western side of the mesa. The small tableland sloped gently to the south and east, where a couple of miles away it broke up and descended to the desert floor in rounded hills and gullies, more thickly scattered with pinon and juniper. Faint vehicle tracks in the hard brown soil suggested that humans sometimes drove up from the gentler slopes at the south end. On this side, the cliffs were higher, and the ravine they'd come up provided the only access to the top. But Julieta was right, Lost Goats Mesa wasn't much, and there were no signs of earlier habitation. Just lots of God's raw materials, dumped after the big job.

  Walking back, Ed swung himself along with easy strides. He looked around him with avid curiosity, humming quietly. Cree couldn't make out the tune, but it was energetic and upbeat, maybe some Paul Simon song. She couldn't help absorbing his mood, feeling more confident. Drinking black coffee on an almost-empty stomach probably helped: that feeling of being up for almost anything.

  "You're in a good mood," she commented.

  "Am I? Yeah, I guess I am."

  "Any particular reason?"

  He shrugged. "Nice day. New scenery. Good company. Belly full of Java. Getting an early start."

  She chuckled. "I don't usually see you this early in the morning. I swear to God, Ed, your beard has grown a quarter inch since last night. Seriously."

  He rubbed his sandpapery chin, then grimaced and shook his hand as if he'd hurt it.

  "We gotta go for hikes more often, back home. I mean, it's been so long—" Cree stopped, aware that she'd moved into uncomfortable territory: Yes, it was the first time they'd done anything like this together since she'd gone to New Orleans and met Paul.

  He glanced at her quickly but didn't bog down in it. "Yeah. Jane and Bill Terry were telling me about a nice day hike they did, out on the coast trail. We should try it."

  "You ought to ride Julieta's horses while you're here. It's a total and complete blast. Like you're flying."

  "Huh. I'd break my neck."

  "Nah, they're very well behaved. If we get any time, I'll ask her to take us out."

  He tossed his head, whatever, and Cree puzzled at his reaction.

  "What?" she asked. "You dislike her?"

  He looked over at her, surprised. "Not at all. She's just as you described. Gorgeous, sexy, smart. Compelling."

  "So why isn't she your 'type'?"

  Ed's cheerful face had sobered and now drew into a speculative frown. He kicked at a rock and sent it bounding away. "I don't know. Maybe I'm just wary of extremely beautiful women."

  "I don't think she tries to be beautiful. I think it's been a huge burden for her all her life. Beauty can be a lot of trouble for a woman. Men get their buttons pushed by it and act like idiots. Or they make unflattering judgments about intelligence and character based on it. Women envy it and compete with it. Lynn Pierce's response is probably typical—she's got Julieta pegged as a complete narcissist, which she emphatically is not."

  "Huh. I can see why she would want a child so badly. For once to love and be loved without all those complications."

  Ed was very wise, Cree was thinking. Very insightful.

  "I know what it is," he went on. "Whenever I'm around her, I feel like she's . . . working on some internal process of great importance, and I instinctively want to defer to it. Not look at her too closely or intrude on her thoughts. On her isolation."

  "Exactly," Cree asked. "But why has she isolated herself?"

  "Love," Ed said immediately. "She doesn't trust love."

  "Hm. With good reason. But what can she do about it?"

  Ed didn't answer right away, and when he did, it was with another question: "What's going on between her and Joseph Tsosie?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "When he came to the school yesterday, you know what he did? He checked the brakes on her truck—brought it over to the maintenance garage while I was there. He and I talked as he jacked up the front end, checked the pads and disks. A very competent guy. I guess she had mentioned there was a shimmy whenever she put the brakes on."

  Cree smiled at the image. "Which implies—?"

  He shrugged. "It's just a very . . . guy thing to do. It had more importance as a gesture than as a necessity, you know what I'm saying? Given that she's got a maintenance staff for that stuff—I mean, they work on the school buses all the time."

  The implication was obvious, but that was difficult territory and neither wanted to articulate it: longtime friendship, deep and full, yet never quite matriculating into romantic love. Thinking about it opened up a deep reservoir of feelings too complicated to face.

  They came around a curve in the mesa wall and saw the school. The sun was high enough to bathe all but the easternmost edge of the campus in its angled light. Students were spilling from dorm buildings and heading toward the cafeteria. Without saying anything, they both stopped to gaze at the scene.

  As always, the sight moved Cree, a pang in her chest and belly. It was a rainbow of feelings, Julieta's and her own, admixed, and somehow central to it was the image of Joseph Tsosie fixing her brakes, making sure she was safe. It all had to do with love—the labyrinth that love of any kind had to pass through. Why did it have to be so complex? Why was it so easy to get lost?

  An insight occurred to her, and though she shied away at first she forced herself to spell it out. One time, she told herself, just once. She'd let herself think it one time and th
en she had to let it go away for now. Julieta and Joseph: not unlike Cree and Edgar. But was that real, based on her own feelings, or another example of Cree Black's absorption of Julieta's state of mind? It hurt not to know. And the worst of it was, Ed must have noticed and was probably asking himself the same question. He deserved so much better.

  "Hey, Ed," she said quietly. "That was nice. Up on the mesa—our breakfast picnic."

  "Yeah."

  "I've missed hanging out with you. I can't tell you how much."

  He turned away as if there was something to look at in the empty land to the west, then checked his watch. "We should get back. Big day for both of us."

  "Yeah. Okay." He was right: This was no time for her to be talking to him this way.

  He started walking. When he spoke again it was as if she'd been harrying him for further explanation: "Look, Cree, I don't know how to solve Julieta's thing with love, past, present, or future, or where things stand with her and Joseph, or why. But I do know this—love won't leave us alone until we meet its gaze fairly and fully. Okay? That's what I know. That's my pontification for the day, take it for what it's worth. Now I gotta go be an engineer for a while."

  33

  DONNY GOT to the restaurant just as Nick pulled his black SUV into the parking lot. He checked his watch and found that it was eleven-twenty, just as they'd planned, a few minutes early. Nick would have time to bring him up to date before the nurse arrived.

  They went inside together. He had decided to make it a threesome for the lunch with Lynn Pierce, given that Gallup was directly on the way to the mine and his one-thirty meeting with the parapsychologist. Might as well help flatter and cajole the nurse and hear what she had to offer firsthand. It wasn't Tuesday's regular bill of fare, but Donny was glad to have an excuse to get out of Albuquerque. Anyway, there were some scary overtones to this latest thing of Julieta's. The sooner he cleared them up, the better.

  Inside, there were no other customers—they were ahead of the lunch rush. They took seats at a booth toward the rear, ordered coffee, and set the menus to one side. Nick seated himself so that he had a clear view of the front door, Donny noted, and would see the nurse when she arrived, give them a few seconds' warning. A competent guy.

  Donny grinned and rubbed his palms together expectantly as Nick put a slim leather briefcase onto the table, opened it, and pulled out a few sheets of paper.

  "Okay. The photo I got from the university. That your gal?" Nick turned around a brochure and handed it to Donny.

  It was a UNM psychology conference schedule with a photo of each of the featured speakers alongside a one-paragraph bio and a summary of their lecture topic. Donny scanned the faces, found Cree Black's earnest face, and nodded as he read her blurb.

  "That's her."

  "Good." Nick took it back just as the waitress brought their coffees. The big man thanked her pleasantly and gave her a flash of Czech-Irish charm, warming up for the main act. When she left, he carefully stirred three plastic cups of creamer into his coffee and tasted it doubtfully.

  "What else you got?" Donny asked, feeling good as a coffee glow replaced the sharper burn of acid reflux in his chest.

  "Ran an Internet search. Lot of entries, but I looked at every one of them. Lot of her activities are like this one, kind of on the margins of academic psychology. Couple of more sensational things about her investigating a famous haunting or something. Sometimes she debunks ghost stories, too. Then I found a few of these." Nick frowned meaningfully as he slid a few sheets across the tabletop.

  Donny took the papers and felt his good mood vanish. These were copies of newspaper articles from different parts of the country, Sunday features-type pieces of the "Frustrated Police Turn to Psychic" variety. All three were about homicides in which the police had asked or allowed Lucretia Black to assist. All reported that she was making "substantive contributions" to the solution of the cases. Only one of the articles was a follow-up item: " 'I can't explain it,' said a jubilant Detective Howard Lathrop of the Mason County, Michigan, Sheriffs Department. 'I was highly skeptical at first and it was definitely not the kind of consulting we'd usually solicit. But Dr. Black gave us information that we were able to verify and that led directly to the apprehension of the suspect.'"

  Donny tossed the papers back at Nick, who slotted them back into his briefcase.

  "I wonder how much she paid jubilant Detective Howard Lathrop for that little endorsement? Must have been quite a shot in the arm for her ghost-busting business."

  "I got one more," Nick said. "This was deep in the pile. Seems she's a licensed private investigator in the state of Washington. You want to see?"

  Donny scowled and waved it away.

  Nick shrugged his big shoulders, put the briefcase on the seat beside him, wrapped his meaty hands around his cup. They both drank reflectively for a moment.

  " So—" Nick began.

  "So nothing. We see what our friend has to say, meet the spook at the mine, and take it from there." Donny finished his coffee and glared around the restaurant for the waitress. "It's probably nothing. And I sincerely fucking hope so, because that's all the time I have for it—none."

  He glanced up to see that Nick's expression had suddenly turned boyish and sunny, and then the big man was sidling out of the booth. Donny turned to see the nurse coming through the door.

  "It's been too long, Lynnie," Nick told her. "You're looking great. I take it life's treating you good?"

  Sitting across from Donny, Lynn Pierce looked tiny next to Nick's bulk. She had ordered coffee, too, and now tasted her cup delicately. She had dressed up a bit for this meeting, Donny saw, wearing a snappy brown blazer with a silk scarf at her throat; her hair shone like a silver dollar. But in fact she didn't look great. Her speck-eyed gaze seemed more lopsided than ever, and her face looked old and a little crazed, kind of the way she'd looked at Vern's funeral.

  "Life," Lynn said, "is treating me . . . interestingly."

  "You know, Lynn, I can't tell you how much we miss Vern. Miss both of you. Even after all these years. The Bloomfield site went to hell in a handbasket after Vern died and you left. Seriously." Donny shook his head sadly and sipped his coffee with a pious expression. This was a ritual pronouncement and she'd know it was bullshit, but it was obligatory.

  "Thank you. That means a great deal to me."

  "It was so great to get your call," Donny went on. "An excuse to have a social lunch. Kind of busy these days, but always happy to squeeze in some time with an old friend and colleague. Life's too short, you know?"

  The waitress arrived to stare at them expectantly, hovering with her pad poised. "Are you ready to order?"

  They hadn't looked at the menus yet.

  "Not quite," Nick told her flatly. "We'll need another few minutes." This time he showed her his other side, a look that told her not to come back until they waved semaphore flags and set off flares. Donny smiled to himself as she scuttled away.

  They tossed pleasantries back and forth, and a gentle babble of conversation began to fill the place as other customers filtered in and took seats. The nurse was warming up to her pitch, getting a little flirtatious. Nick was a ball of boyish charm and attentiveness, but Donny thought he'd play it differently. Nice but not too nice; you had to keep her in her place, not let her think anything she had to offer was too valuable. After a few more minutes he decided the foreplay had gone on long enough and it was time to get down to business.

  "So Lynn," he said, "you'll never guess what happened Saturday up at the mine. I come out of the site office, I'm about to get into my car, when who do I see on the south rim but Julieta and some other woman. Horseback. And when I go up there, I find out the other woman is a, what do they call it—"

  "A parapsychologist," Lynn finished. "Yes. That's one of the things I wanted to tell you."

  "What, exactly, is a parapsychologist?" Nick asked innocently.

  "Someone who claims to study the weirder aspects of the mind," Lynn to
ld him. "Things nobody's ever been able to prove—telepathy, clairvoyance, contact with the dead, things like that."

  "So which kind is this one?"

  "Her main thing is ghosts," Donny answered. "But she obviously generalizes a bit, because she was there to ask me about animal mutilations. Remember, we had that episode a couple of years ago? Some Navajo kids found those two horses? Made the papers?"

  Lynn was frowning. "But that's not what they've talked about. Not when I'm around, anyway. Or no—they mentioned it, but just in passing. It's not their main concern."

  "Oh?" That was interesting, Donny thought: Either the mute thing was some kind of a ruse, or it was something Cree Black and Julieta weren't sharing with the nurse.

  The waitress hove nearby on her way to another table but ricocheted away as Nick gave her a look that would have stopped a runaway bull.

  "You know, Donny," Lynn said as if beginning something long and complex, "I'm a health-care professional. You know how committed I am to my work. That's my only concern. My patients."

  "We've noticed it and appreciated it, Lynn. And you know how much McCarty Energy has relied on it in the past." This was how she worked, Donny reminded himself: veering off the subject so that she could be flattered and coaxed back. You just had to grit your teeth and bear it.

  The nurse smiled that little smile, as if she knew she'd set her hook and could now reel them in at her leisure. "I love my work at the school. I really do. At the same time, there are . . . personality issues that get in the way. You know what I mean."

  "Hey, you don't have to tell us," Nick put in. "I don't know how you manage. Working with her these last three, four years."

  "She shacked up with the Navajo doctor yet?" Donny couldn't help asking.

  Lynn gave him a cardsharp's look, appraising his interest while concealing her own. "Not to my knowledge. But now that you mention it, the . . . um, questions there might bear upon the situation. For me, it's come to the point where it's not just about personality. This parapsychologist being there is an example of very troubling behavior on the part of . . . school administration. And I don't know just what to do about it."