Crossroads

by Jeanne C. Stein

  So why would George choose to break it?

  There’s no cover between where I stand and the house. I have no choice but to sprint the distance, moving faster than a human is capable of moving and hoping Kayani hasn’t pulled over somewhere to watch me through his binoculars.

  Once I reach the house, I don’t head for the front door, but race around to the rear where I expect to find a back way in. There’s no door, only a couple of windows. Still, that’s no problem. The windows are open and without screens.

  However, the lack of security makes the possibility of my finding something incriminating highly unlikely.

  But I’m here and all is quiet inside. No sight or sound to indicate anyone’s home. I climb in.

  The room is a small bedroom. Unfurnished except for a couple of boxes. When I peek inside, the musty smell of old blankets wrinkles my nose. The closet is empty, too.

  The door of that room leads to a short hallway, then a bigger bedroom and a bathroom. The bed is made, a beautiful handwoven blanket thrown over it like a spread. The room is clean; the furniture smells like beeswax. The feeling of neglect I experienced outside does not reach into the interior of the house.

  Once again, nothing in the closets except what one would expect. Jeans, skirts, vests, boots, blouses. There are a couple of beaded outfits under plastic, resplendent with feathers and colorful headdresses. Nothing to implicate George in a crime or in the practice of curse magic. Nothing to suggest anything other than a traditional Navajo couple.

  The living room and kitchen are as neat and clean as the bedroom. I make quick work of opening cupboards, peeking in drawers. Like Sarah, George’s wife has a loom and on it, a half-finished rug awaits completion. A basket of yarn lies beside it.

  The living room furniture, a couch and two chairs, is old but spot free. The tables and chairs gleam with polish. A hardwood floor has been swept and waxed. There are no pictures on the walls or on the table surfaces. Only a paperback, another Tony Hillerman novel, adorns the squat table near a reading lamp.

  I blow out a breath and look around.

  Nothing.

  A glance at my watch says I’ve wasted ten minutes.

  I go out through the same window I came in. When my feet touch the ground, I look around. George doesn’t seem to have horses or livestock of any kind but there is a small lean-to some distance from the house. I’m there in an eye-blink.

  The lean-to is more substantial upon closer inspection. Made of wood, recently constructed judging from the feel and smell of it, and about twelve feet by twenty.

  The door is heavy and has a good-sized padlock securing it.

  Thank you, George. Most people don’t realize that if they need to keep something secure, size does matter. The smaller the lock the better. A large padlock, like this one, is easy to pick because there’s more key space to work with and bigger pins.

  Now, to find what I need. A quick trip back to the kitchen and a revisit to the ubiquitous junk drawer. Something to use as a torsion wrench. A long, thin screwdriver. Something to use as a pick tool. A paperclip.

  Now, as a vampire, I could pull that lock apart and not break a sweat. But if there’s something important inside, it’d be a good thing to have Kayani and his deputies open it officially instead of trying to explain how it got broken. Better, too, not to alert George that someone broke into his shed.

  Besides, the human in me wants to see if I still have the touch.

  I do. The point of the screwdriver slips easily into the bottom of the lock. The straightened paperclip fits into the top. A little pressure on the screwdriver, a little pressure on the paperclip, and I get the satisfying click of an opened padlock.

  Less than three seconds.

  A new personal best.

  David couldn’t have done it faster.

  No time to gloat. I push open the door, slip inside, close the door behind me.

  The first thing I’m greeted with is the strong musk of animal. It’s dark and close inside. Vampire smells predator and springs to the surface. With a growl, I crouch and peer around.

  The pelts of a bear, coyote and wolf are splayed on a table in the back of the shed. Vampire retreats when she realizes there is no threat. She stays close, though.

  On the side wall, a blowgun hangs from a leather thong. Beneath it, another table. This one holds small, rounded beads in one pottery jar and a white powder in another. I recognize the beads. Bone charms, Frey called them, as he pulled one from my arm.

  Next to the jars, pieces of broken pottery. One has something wrapped around it. I bend close. Pick it up. Hair, soft, smelling of grass and sunshine. My heart jumps. I recognize the scent.

  It’s John-John’s hair.

  What are they planning to do with it?

  Nothing. Now.

  I stick it into the pocket of my jeans. I will take this with me and the threat of discovery be damned.

  A sound from outside. A car pulling up to the house.

  Kayani? Why would he come to the house? I still have a few minutes left.

  I peek through the door. An old sedan, gray from sun and weather, is parked at the side of the house. A woman stands beside it, midfifties, dressed in a long velveteen skirt and cotton smock. Her waist is cinched by a conch belt of large silver disks each with a stone of turquoise and agate in the center. She wears a squash blossom necklace and bangles of silver. Her face is soft, rounded with age but her back is straight and she stands tall, commanding respect.

  She looks toward the shed.

  George’s wife? Can she see the door slightly ajar from where she’s standing?

  She takes a step in my direction. Then stops, turns back toward the house. The sound of another car approaching has drawn her attention.

  Kayani’s police vehicle pulls behind her car.

  She and Kayani exchange greetings. I don’t waste a second. I take another quick look around the shed, recording to memory what I see. The screwdriver and paperclip are shoved into another pocket. Then I close the door softly behind me, relock the padlock, and slip like any other desert creature into the bright midday sun.

  CHAPTER 41

  I WAIT FOR KAYANI TO RETURN TO THE SPOT WHERE we planned to meet. I watch as he chats with the woman a few minutes, then climbs back into his vehicle and drives off. The woman looks again toward the shed, sees nothing amiss, gives her head a little shake and retreats into the house.

  I jump in as soon as Kayani pulls up.

  “Well?”

  “First, thanks for distracting her so I could get away. Is that George’s wife?”

  “Yes. When I saw her pull up, I figured you might need a little help. Lucky you were in that shed instead of the house.”

  I pull the screwdriver out of my pocket, wipe it with the tail of my blouse and let it fall to the floor of the cab. Kayani glances at it but doesn’t ask what I used it for. Plausible deniability.

  “Might want to throw that into the nearest Dumpster,” I suggest with a tight smile.

  He looks at it again, distastefully, but chooses to pursue more important matters. “What did you find?” he asks, heading away from George’s.

  “Not what I expected.” I dig into the other pocket and pull out the pottery shard wrapped with John-John’s hair.

  When Kayani sees it, he slams on the brakes so hard, my seat belt snaps taut, my head whip lashing forward and back.

  “Ouch.”

  He reaches over and snatches the thing out of my hand.

  “You found this in the shed?”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  I can tell by his expression that he does, but he barks, “What else did you find?”

  I tell him. The pelts, the blowgun, the bone charms. I pause a beat when I’m finished to ask, “He is a skinwalker, isn’t he?”

  His dark eyes pierce mine. “You know of such things?”

  “Only what Frey told me. But that—” I point to the charm in his hand. “That I don’t know about. It’s John-
John’s hair. What did he intend to do with it?”

  Kayani peers at me again, searching my face for something … Wrestling maybe with how much he can confide to this outsider. I can’t come clean with everything, but if I tell him I’ve had personal experience with a skinwalker, perhaps that will gain me some measure of trust.

  “I was shot with a bone charm. I’m pretty sure now it was George who did it.”

  Kayani’s eyes widen. “What? When?”

  “The night of the accident. The night Frey and I spent in the hogan.”

  “You should be dead.”

  “Frey recognized what it was right away. He got it out of me in time to prevent the poison from working.” That and the fact that I’m vampire and my body could heal itself once the charm was removed.

  My shoulders tighten, waiting for Kayani to ask why George would target me, a question I’m dreading. I may have to tell him what I am.

  While I wait, Kayani is silent. Then, “Why didn’t Frey tell me?”

  “I suppose he wasn’t sure you’d believe it.” Flimsy but plausible. I don’t give him time to think about it, either. Relief, impatience and concern for John-John make me cut off any chance for more questions. “What were they going to do with John-John’s hair?”

  His eyes refocus. “How did you know it was John-John’s?”

  He keeps answering my questions with questions of his own, but I’ll give him this one. I already laid the groundwork. “I told you—good sense of smell. Try it yourself. You’ve been around John-John a lot. His hair smells like a little boy who spends a lot of time outside.”

  He raises the charm warily to his nose, closes his eyes, inhales. “I guess my nose isn’t as sensitive as yours.” He touches the hair, examines it. “It’s the right color and texture, though.”

  He bangs his hand against the dashboard with so much force, I jump. “Why would he be after John-John?”

  I choose this moment to advance another theory. “I think maybe he caused the accident that killed Sarah and Mary, too.”

  I say it softly, then brace myself, expecting heated denial and unequivocal rebuttal to blow with gale force my way. Instead, I get more silence so I forge ahead.

  “Could Mary and Sarah have heard something the night of the meeting? Maybe a conversation between George and the men he was sitting with on the deck?”

  Kayani presses the palms of his hands against his eyes. “Did you find anything to connect George with the counterfeiters ?”

  “No.”

  “Then they might have been tourists he took out that day. We need something concrete to connect them.”

  I touch the charm. “If George goes looking for this, he’ll know someone has been in his shed. He’ll know someone recognizes what he is. How do you think he’ll react?”

  “Skinwalkers are reviled in Navajo society. He’ll want his secret protected.”

  “How does one become a skinwalker? Frey said it had to do with desecrating the body of a loved one. He didn’t believe George could ever do that.”

  “Well, it looks like he was wrong, doesn’t it?” Anger flares in his voice. “It is said that if a Navajo pronounces the full name of a yee naaldlooshii, a skinwalker, that person will die for the wrongs they have committed.”

  He draws in a breath, a look of purpose tightening the lines around his eyes and mouth.

  I put a hand on his arm. “No. Don’t. If you speak George’s name and it works, we may never find out if he is behind the counterfeiting. Or who is working with him. Protecting the good of your people is important, isn’t it?”

  Kayani breathes out. His eyes narrow a bit as he looks at me. I suppose he’s wondering why I, a stranger to the Navajo, so easily accepts that he could kill with the invoking of a name.

  But he doesn’t ask.

  Wordlessly, he takes the charm from my hand, opens the car door, steps onto the desert floor. He throws the charm down, crushes it with the heel of his boot. Then he picks up the strands of hair and lets them gust away on the breeze.

  “Let’s get back to Daniel,” he says. “He must be warned.”

  CHAPTER 42

  FREY IS WAITING FOR US ON THE PORCH WHEN WE arrive back.

  “Where’s John-John?” Kayani asks the minute we’ve jumped out of the truck.

  “Inside. He’s already asleep. The poor kid is dead tired.” He looks from Kayani’s face to mine and back again. “What’s going on?”

  There’s so much Frey doesn’t know about our afternoon excursion that it takes both of us several minutes to bring him up to date. His reaction is predictable.

  He directs his anger first at Kayani and me. “You two went off without letting me know what you were doing. What if you’d gotten caught? What if George had decided to shoot you again with a bone charm? Or you, Kayani? John-John would be next and I would have known nothing about it.”

  Kayani accepts Frey’s wrath. “You are right. It was stupid not to let you now where we were going. But at the time, we thought we were hunting smugglers, not a yee naaldlooshii. It wasn’t until Anna found the proof in George’s shed that we realized John-John was in trouble.”

  “Did you destroy the charm?”

  “Of course, my friend.”

  “Then it is time I pay George a visit.”

  Kayani nods in understanding. “It was my first reaction, too. But Anna reminded me we don’t yet have proof that he is behind the counterfeiters. We must be sure one way or another before we act. There is a greater good to consider.”

  “Not to me there isn’t.” Frey is on his feet, ready to sweep any obstacle out of his path. “I won’t give him an opportunity to harm my son.”

  “I love John-John, too,” Kayani says quietly. “I have known him since he was a baby. I will die before I let harm befall him. We must come up with a way to protect John-John while pursuing the truth of the other matter.”

  “And how do you propose to do that? Do you have a plan?”

  “Maybe,” Kayani replies. “We will take turns tailing George round the clock. At least one of us will always be here with John-John. We will make sure no one, especially George, gets close to him.”

  “And how do we tail him when he’s out on one of his tours?” Frey’s voice is tight with frustration. “There’s no way to follow him in a car. He’d spot that in a minute.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Kayani says. “On horseback. I know the land as well as George. I know where he takes the tourists. If he makes any unplanned spots, speaks with anyone not part of a group, I will see it. He will not spot me, I can promise you that.”

  Frey is not ready to let go of his rage toward George. “I will give you twenty-four hours,” he says. “Not a minute more. If you find nothing you can use to stop the counterfeiters in twenty-four hours, I will go after George on my own. I will make him talk.”

  I don’t know if Sarah told Kayani that Frey was a shape-shifter, or if he is aware that Frey’s other form is panther. The look that passes between the two men, however, makes me suspect that Kayani knows what Frey is capable of.

  Kayani checks his watch. “George will be returning home from the lodge. Daniel, you will watch the house tonight. I will stay here with Anna. If you see anything suspicious, call on the cell.”

  “No,” I interrupt. “I should take the night watch. Frey should stay here with John-John. You both should.”

  Kayani looks ready to argue but Frey is looking at me.

  In the same way Kayani knows what Frey can do, Frey knows what I’m capable of. He knows I’ll do whatever’s necessary to keep George from coming anywhere near John-John. More important, he wants to stay close to his son. “I agree with Anna,” he says. “She should take the night watch.”

  Kayani’s expression reflects skepticism and surprise. “Anna, do you even remember how to find George’s place?”

  “I do. I have become more adept at noting geographical points. His home is close to a mesa. I’m sure I can find it again.”

>   “Hunt’s Mesa,” Kayani says. “Let me show you on a map.”

  He trots out to his car and returns with a map. This is not the typical tourist map, though, it’s a map that marks all residences in the tribal park. There are well over a hundred, spaced far apart with no paved roads connecting them.

  “I had no idea there were so many homes in the valley.”

  Frey presses close to look. “Where is George’s?”

  Kayani traces the route from Sarah’s to George’s. He is—was—actually her closest neighbor.

  Frey’s anger resurfaces. “He had John-John the night of the accident. He said he was taking him to Sarah. I never thought to ask when he showed up at the hogan why John-John was at his house. I was too relieved that he hadn’t been in the truck.”

  Self-recrimination rings through his voice.

  “Doesn’t matter, Frey. John-John is safe. We’ll keep him that way.” I hold out my hand. “Do you have the keys to the Jeep?”

  He digs into a pocket of his jeans and withdraws the keys. Places them in the palm of my hand.

  “I’d better get going. We’ve missed trailing him after he dropped off his afternoon group. Let’s hope he heads straight home and doesn’t make a stop anywhere else. I’d hate to think we missed our only opportunity to catch him with those men again.”

  Kayani refolds the map. “I’ll head for the lodge, just in case. If he’s already left, I’ll call you. It should take him forty minutes or so to get home. I’ll retrace his route, then come back here.”

  Frey walks with us to the porch steps. “Keep a sharp eye out, Anna. George can take animal shape. You saw the pelts. Any of those are formidable opponents.”

  His voice is calm, but his eyes telegraph a more urgent message.

  Bear. Coyote. Wolf.

  I nod my understanding. But I have vampire inside.

  There is no more formidable opponent.

  IT’S MIDNIGHT AND I AM SO BORED, MY TEETH GRIND with impatience. George arrived home a little after six. From the time, Kayani confirmed that he wouldn’t have had time to stop anywhere and, backtracking his route just to be sure, came across no one unfamiliar on the way. He returned to join Frey.