The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon Mysteries)

by James D. Doss

  A bystander might have thought the policeman was watching someone else caught in harm’s way, detached and curious about the outcome. In fact, Parris was immobilized, his feet frozen to the pavement as she squinted down the knurled ridge between the blue barrels and calmly launched a wad of bird shot in his direction. The young officer was a few yards farther from the muzzle of the Remington than the flower van, and this had made all the difference.

  When they took her away, barefoot in her dirty print dress with her hands cuffed behind her, the satisfied smile had not left her smooth pale face. The troubled woman, a recent arrival from the hills of Tennessee, eventually confided to the court-appointed psychologist that the Darkness had whispered to her ever since her baby daughter had choked on a piece of bread. Parris had listened in the dark room behind the one-way glass while the woman explained. She had been at home with the child while her husband tried to find work in the steel mills. She called for help, but no one came. She ran down the street with her unconscious baby under one arm and beat on doors until her knuckles bled, but her frightened neighbors thought she was drunk or insane and ignored her pitiful pleas. The tiny child had turned cornflower blue, the woman told the psychologist, “… and slipped off to that good place where Almighty God wipes every tear away.” But the mother remained in the hard world; her tears fell like a warm spring rain and no one wiped them away. On this fine summer day, the Darkness had told her to load the shotgun. “Tell me,” the psychologist asked gently, “about this … ahh … darkness.”

  The pale woman turned and smiled at her reflection in the mirrored surface of the one-way glass. Parris felt her eyes meet his and shuddered in the darkness. “Ask him,” she said as she pointed through the mirror. “He knows.”

  Now, years later, he ran his fingertips over his face, then his neck. He could feel the tiny scars where the stinging bird shot had penetrated his skin. Sometimes, he could feel the woman’s blue eyes staring through the mirror into his own darkness.

  The Dread had visited him several times after that. The last time had been barely more than a year earlier at O’Hare International. He had waved good-bye to Helen as she boarded the 737 for Montreal. It was to be an ordinary trip, her annual visit to spend two weeks with her aged mother. The premonition came like a punch to his groin as the aircraft lifted off with a roar that was barely audible through the double-paned plate glass on Concourse C. The flight had been uneventful, but Helen’s taxi ride in Montreal had not. The left front tire had blown immediately before the cabbie plowed head-on into a Mack truck loaded with six tons of green plywood.

  Scott had numbly accepted the sorrowful condolences, buried his wife, taken a hard look at the dirty snow, and made up his mind. Enough was, damn it, enough. The detective had taken early retirement as soon as he found what promised to be an undemanding job. What, he had asked himself, could possibly go wrong in a quiet university town in the Rocky Mountains? There would be the occasional knifing, family quarrels, automobile accidents, a little dope here and there. A normal American burg, but nothing like the city with a heart of dirty ice.

  The policeman stumbled, only half-awake, into the kitchen. He searched the nearly empty refrigerator, made a thick Swiss cheese sandwich, poured a pint of milk into an oversized beer mug, and sat down to wait it out. Shoulders tensed, he stared out the window into the darkness, munched on his near-tasteless sandwich, and watched for the cold white rays of morning to spill over the western slopes of the San Cristobal range. The moon, he thought, seemed to be so very close … as if you could reach out and touch it.

  * * *

  He peered through the windshield and blinked nervously at the faint yellow light filtering through the third-story window of the Physics Building. What mischief was she up to, this clever girl? He expected the Voice to tell him, but his adviser was silent. He had gradually grown accustomed to this presence and was no longer alarmed by its intrusions into his thought processes. The diminishing part of his mind that was rational suggested that he was suffering from some peculiar schizophrenic delusion. The Voice vehemently denied this assertion.

  The presence had been weak when it first addressed him months earlier. The whirring sound in his head was like many voices, muffled by the wind. Their name was legion. But his patience had been rewarded. As he had listened carefully, trying to understand each word and phrase, the multitude had gained in strength and merged into a single personality. For weeks now, he had been able to hear its exhortations quite clearly. He eventually decided the visitor was a gift, a source of power.

  As he watched the window, a sinister possibility occupied his thoughts. What if Priscilla was not alone? Could she be meeting someone in the university laboratory? He clenched his hands on the steering wheel until his fingers ached.

  He was intimately familiar with Priscilla’s activities; he often watched when she thought she was alone. He smiled with satisfaction at his secret; how surprised she would be at what he knew about her habits, the smallest details of her daily schedule!

  He rubbed his moist forehead to drive away the throbbing. His neck ached from watching the third-story window; his toes were numb from the cold. He sighed impatiently and squinted at the luminous dial on his wristwatch. The long wait would surely be over soon; the first light of dawn was only minutes away. He lit a cigarette, then took a sip of Jim Beam from a half-pint silver flask. The light dimmed slightly in the third-floor window. That would be one of the small lamps being switched off. He immediately stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and waited. Ah … there. The window went pitch-black as Priscilla shut off the ceiling lights. Moments later, the graduate student was leaving the side entrance of the building. She must have been tired, but the click-click of her high heels revealed a pent-up excitement. This was no longer the shy, insecure transfer from Arizona State. Priscilla Song’s gait exuded confidence.

  Her car was under the lone streetlamp in the center of the parking lot; he watched the pretty young woman toss her long black hair to one side as she slid into the antique Volkswagen bug. He observed, not for the first time, that she had rather attractive legs. He waited impatiently as she cranked the engine to life and chugged out of the parking lot trailing small puffs of blue smoke. Once in the third-floor laboratory, he closed the half dozen venetian blinds. There was no point in alerting anyone to his presence in the building at this strange hour.

  The rectangular room was arranged for utility rather than with any concern for aesthetic sensibilities. The walls were lined with olive green benches, dreary relics of the room’s earlier service as a sophomore chem lab. The bench on the north wall was divided in the center by a large stainless-steel sink and this was covered by a fume hood with a pair of fans that could exhaust six hundred cubic feet of air every minute. The sink was flanked on the right by a vacuum oven, an electron-beam evaporator, and a surplus helium-neon laser donated by the U.S. Air Force. On the left, there was a variety of equipment, including microbalances, a small lathe, and a miniature drill press. Hand tools were scattered over the bench.

  The man peered under the fume hood and sniffed for any pungent odor that might suggest drug preparations. Nothing. He opened the safelike door on the vacuum furnace, taking care not to touch the oven wall; the bimetallic thermometer was still registering eighty-five degrees Celsius. He studied the black interior of the oven carefully but found not a trace of any experimental material. “What sort of muffin,” he asked aloud, “is my little Priscilla baking?”

  The bench on the south wall was normally kept clear for short-term experiments, but it was currently occupied by a variety of electrical instruments and an assortment of connecting cables. There was an ancient Hewlett-Packard dual-beam oscilloscope, a relic of good funding during the 1960s, and a modern digital voltmeter. There was also an expensive eight-pen chart recorder that the graduate student had borrowed from the Electrical Engineering Department.

  He placed his hand on the oscilloscope. Cold. He repeated this simple test on the v
oltmeter and then the chart recorder. The voltmeter was tepid; it might have been used during the past hour. The recorder was pleasantly warm to his fingertips. So, she was making electrical measurements. Perhaps these were required as she monitored the chemical processes to produce … to produce what? Perhaps, just perhaps, a new designer drug to satisfy the appetites of the expanding population of middle-class junkies. He checked the paper-output tray under the recorder. Empty. He suspected that the perforated sheets from the recorder were now neatly taped into her logbook.

  The center of the room was furnished with a row of battered file cabinets, a refrigerator, and a gray metal desk that supported a desktop computer and a selection of catalogs and textbooks. There was a small oak table with a terminal that conversed with the VAX mainframe in the basement. He inspected the terminal, which was never turned off. The screen was blank except for the READY indicator followed by a green cursor. He went through the file cabinets with considerable care, but there was nothing more than the usual folders filled with data from various projects over the past decade.

  He sat down at the desk and leaned back in the chair. Had she been alone? If someone had been with her, he must have left by another exit. As he pushed the chair away from the desk, his shin bumped the metal wastebasket. He pulled the can into view and leaned over to inspect the contents. Several wadded paper tissues, one with a lipstick smudge. A half dozen of the free throwaway technical magazines and catalogs on subjects ranging from laboratory glassware to chemicals. Comics from yesterday’s Denver Post. Chewing-gum wrappers. In the bottom of the can, he spotted a tightly wadded paper. He unfolded the paper with mild apprehension, expecting to find a pink glob of spent chewing gum.

  It was a discarded photocopy of a graph made on the paper in the eight-pen plotter. The photocopy machine had malfunctioned. The upper-right-hand section of the page was hopelessly smudged with inky black toner. The rest of the reproduction was blurred and indistinct in some areas, crystal clear in others. A useless copy that Priscilla had carelessly tossed aside. The vertical axis was labeled “R, Norm.” The horizontal axis had a penciled scale of zero to one hundred and was labeled with a capital T. Time? Temperature? The plotted line of data ran along the bottom of the sheet, barely above the horizontal axis. It started at 22, was flat until it reached 60, then took a steep rise toward the top of the page, disappearing into the sooty splash of toner. He squinted at the horizontal ordinate again. What was this? Sixty seconds, the time required for some critical reaction? Or sixty degrees? Something that happened at a particular temperature? There was something familiar about this plot, but he couldn’t quite remember where he had seen a similar graph. He studied the enigmatic tracing with a feeling of frustration, sensing that he had found something of importance. He did not understand what he held in his hand until he heard the spoken words inside his head. The Voice explained the significance of the crumpled piece of paper, and the revelation was absolutely stunning. It was difficult to believe such an incredible assertion, even from this unassailable source, but the Voice had never been mistaken.

  His fingertips began to tingle. In his excitement, he was only barely aware of the warm liquid streaming down his leg as the sphincter on his bladder relaxed. He wiped at bloodshot eyes with his shirt sleeve. “It’s not fair,” he muttered, “but I know how the bitch’s mind works. She won’t need me … or anyone now.” He blew his nose into a wrinkled handkerchief. “I’ve been good to her … but she won’t remember. Not now. I’ll be yesterday’s news.”

  The Voice asked whether he wanted everything.

  “Damn right … this is my chance for…”

  He was informed, forcefully, that he should take what he wanted.

  “I don’t know,” he answered uncertainly. “How could I…”

  The Voice explained how—with two words.

  THREE

  Priscilla Song pulled the lavender blanket up to her chin and stared at the spider web pattern of cracks and brown watermarks in the plaster ceiling. Within a year, she promised herself (cross my heart, hope to die!), she would be living in better quarters. Much better. To begin with, a first-class condo in Aspen. In the tall pines, where the crisp mountain breeze refreshed the Beautiful People. Then, a horse farm near Gunnison. Arabians for her, quarter-horse stock for her wild cowboy.

  The venerable Bug, of course, would be relegated to the junkyard. She would buy a new car, or maybe a classic. A restored ’Vette for herself, but something quite different for him. A twelve-cylinder XJ-S Jag convertible? Yes, yes! Priscilla closed her eyes tightly and strained to visualize it. Metallic blue, burl walnut dashboard, leather seats soft as a baby’s behind. Two hundred and sixty-three horses under its long, sleek hood. She had watched his hazel eyes sparkle with secret desire as her sunburned cowboy gently drew his fingertips along the mirror-surfaced fender of the display model in the Denver showroom. The gesture had been so sensuous that she had (absurdly?) felt a pang of jealousy. An impossible dream at the time, but within a year she would be able to plunk down hard cash for it. Soon, very soon, she would make her move. The young woman rolled over, raised herself on one elbow, and blinked at the red LED numbers on the face of the oversized digital alarm clock. She had been trying to reach him for a week. If he wasn’t rounding up strays in the dusty canyons that jutted like skinny fingers off the Rio Chama, her man was off to a rodeo or hauling cattle to the rail head in Denver. He had been behaving oddly of late; she prayed that he wasn’t drinking again. Or worse. Their last argument had been stupid, a result of his juvenile jealousies. It was high time, as he would have said, “time to mend some fences.” She could not wait to tell him that she … no, they were going to be shamefully wealthy. Priscilla punched in the area code for New Mexico and then carefully pressed the buttons for the Thorpe Hereford Ranch. The line buzzed four times before she heard his father’s drawl.

  “Hello, Mr. Thorpe, this is Priscilla. May I speak to…”

  “Sorry, young lady. Buster headed up to Fort Collins couple of days ago, deliverin’ a polled Hereford bull.” She hated the “Buster” nickname. “Should of been back by now. Expect he’s had some trouble with the truck.” That meant he was on another wild drunk. Or something. “He’ll be passin’ close by Granite Creek. I expect he’ll stop to see you.” Fat chance, she thought. As always, it would be up to her to make the first move.

  “I understand.” She didn’t. “Tell him I called. I mailed his birthday present today. It’s a ring.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be right proud to wear it.” The cowboy was not partial to ornaments.

  “Please ask him to call.”

  “I’ll tell ’im.” He would forget. “That all?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s all.”

  * * *

  The night air was razor sharp with hints of a hard frost, but then it always was in the Moon of Dead Leaves Falling. Nahum Yaciiti, deeply preoccupied with his thoughts, barely noticed the plaintive bleating of the few sheep milling around in the soft moonlight. The bottom of the night always brought worries with it, and now he sat, hunched forward on a flat outcropping of limestone, troubled about his old friend. Daisy Perika had been sprinkled with the holy water of the Christians, but she was deeply immersed in the spirit world of her ancestors. Always at Easter and Christmas, and occasionally on feast days of the saints she revered, the old woman would set out for St. Ignatius to joyfully revive her spirit with the sacred bread and wine.

  But after she had been nourished by the body and blood of the Lamb, Daisy would slip back into the world of her grandmothers. When the white-hot fingers of summer lightning snapped branches off enchanted pines … when Coyote barked his urgent summons … when the old spirits whispered their rhythmic hymns in the wind … she would hear their voices. The medicine woman, carried by the hollow thumping of the Lakota drum, would fly away to dark realms where the daughters and sons of Adam were never meant to visit.

  Whatever would become of this creature of two worlds after
the first snow blanketed his pasture? Would the aged shaman take her council from the angels or from the voices of her ancestors? Nahum shook his head and sighed. Life was a great war between the spirit forces, and he was weary from many battles.

  Willing his worries away, Nahum wrapped his arms around his staff and let his chin drop to his chest for a brief nap. Presently, he felt the warm breath of the ewe as she pressed her head against his knee. He gently caressed her thin neck. “What’s wrong, old fuzzball,” he asked with pretended gruffness, “you afraid of the dark? Hush, hush. Lie down now, and sleep. Dream dreams of green pastures, still waters.” The lamb stubbornly ignored this gentle entreaty, and the others were also gathering close to the tired shepherd.

  Nahum arose from his seat on the limestone, leaned on his stout staff, and peered into the stark landscape of moonlight and shadows. The waters of the river were churning tonight, as if they were attempting to speak to him … to warn him! The shepherd listened intently to the many voices of the river. Its full name was Rio de Los Animas Perditas, the River of Lost Souls. The souls of the rippling waters spoke incoherently, but he sensed that his flock was in danger. There was no sign or sound of coyotes, and the black bears would stay in the high country until the snows were deep. Perhaps a hungry cougar watched from the black shadows along brushy banks of the Animas. Nahum remembered his old Winchester, hidden behind the seat in the pickup, and wondered whether it would be wise to leave the sheep alone long enough to get the rifle.