The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon Mysteries)

by James D. Doss

  The shepherd was considering his options when he heard a fluttering whistle from the north; this was followed by the sound of laughter. It was a wild, malicious laughter, without a trace of humor. Nahum understood what manner of creature was arriving; it was not the first time. But now there were so many! A dozen balls of fire appeared, dropping from the sky, caroming off the limestone outcropping, bouncing on the dry sage without setting it afire. The fireballs rolled along the ground toward the shepherd and his little flock; some of the sheep scattered in panic; a few animals milled closely around the old Ute, pushing against his legs as they bleated pitifully.

  He waved his staff at the flaming spheres. “Go away from this place, filthy brujas,” he shouted. “We’ll have none of your foul business here!” The balls of fire danced with mad vigor; the mindless laughter increased. Nahum was shocked at their brazen behavior. He felt his heart thumping, the fear sending electric shivers through his old limbs.

  One of the fireballs assumed the shape of a voluptuous young woman; the form moved to the limestone outcropping as Nahum withdrew, shielding himself with his staff held forward at arm’s length. The sheep scattered. The flaming figure placed a large square bottle on the limestone and indicated, with a seductive gesture, that Nahum should help himself. The mellow scent of aged whiskey wafted to the shepherd’s nostrils. For a moment, he desired the whiskey more than life itself. The bruja laughed. “Taste, old man, taste and enjoy. It is better than you can imagine. Drink to your heart’s delight; the bottle is always full!” Nahum hesitated for a moment, then bent over, picked up a chunk of basalt, and flung it at the decanter. The glass shattered, spilling lustrous streams of liquid over the limestone. The sweet odor was now almost overpowering, as if the scent itself might intoxicate him.

  As the whiskey rivers flowed over the edge of the rock outcropping and spilled amber falls onto the clay, he heard the rumbling approach of the storm. The whirling fury stood before him, towering out of sight into the vault of heaven, but not a breath of wind could be felt in the pasture. Nahum trembled. The voice in the whirlwind spoke soothingly, gently, inviting the old Ute to … communion.

  Nahum raised his staff above his head. He shouted into the churning malignancy of the abyss: “Go away from this place, Kwasigeti … Yaweh is my shepherd—”

  The whirlwind exploded with elemental ferocity.

  * * *

  Charlie Moon surveyed the landscape in silent wonder. The twisted bodies of sheep were scattered over the pasture like broken, discarded toys. Sturdy clumps of chamisa and sage had been pulled up by the roots and torn to splinters. The Ute tribal policeman removed his hat and scratched thoughtfully at his coarse black hair. He turned to look back at the small figure of Armilda Esquibel; the tiny woman had not been able to keep pace with his great strides.

  Armilda hurried along, gasping for breath, grateful that the giant policeman had stopped. This Charlie Moon, she recalled, was the one the old Utes called Makes No Tracks. This one, the tribal elders whispered, had inherited his grandmother’s ability to walk through the forest without touching the ground. The old woman smiled at this nonsense; his big boot heels were making heavy imprints in the moist clay. So much, Armilda thought, for the silly gossip of old Indian men. The exhausted woman paused in the shadow of the policeman’s towering frame and clutched at the lapels of her raincoat to protect her body from the chill wind whipping down the broad flood-plain of the Animas.

  The policeman found a ballpoint in his jacket pocket, glanced at his wristwatch, and jotted the time down in his notebook. “Okay, now. Tell me exactly what you saw and when you saw it.” He hoped she would not embellish the facts, but Armilda was a spinner of fantastic yarns. Moon suspected that she added a touch of spice here and there to give her product a more delectable flavor.

  She gulped in a breath that the wind almost sucked away. “I already told that girl at the police station … when I called.”

  “I know what you told the dispatcher. Just tell me what you saw, without any … ah … interpretation.” He couldn’t suppress a brief smile.

  The voice from the small figure in the plastic raincoat was surprisingly strong and salted with defiance. “Believe whatever you want. I’m old and don’t give a damn. I saw what I saw. Maybe … maybe I should just keep it to myself.” She paused to see the effect of this remark, but Charlie Moon, apparently oblivious to her presence, was leaning over to examine the shattered body of a spring lamb. Armilda tugged anxiously at his sleeve, annoyed to be ignored by this big brute. The Ute tribal policeman seemed not to notice. She elbowed him sharply in the ribs; Moon recovered from his apparent interest in the dead animal.

  “Oh, yeah. Were you saying something, Mrs. Esquibel?”

  “Learn to pay attention, young man, I don’t dip the same snuff twice. Now write this down in your little book: Last night, see, I hear this big commotion, like a freight train straight from hell. Only it wasn’t no train.” She twirled her hand in a circular motion. “It was … like a tornado. Saw the whole thing from my bedroom.” She nodded toward the small rise where her two-room adobe perched precariously on the edge of the crumbling arroyo. “I can see most of Nahum’s north pasture from my window; it happened not too long after the moon came up over Bondad Hill.”

  Charlie Moon jotted a reminder in his notebook: “Check time—moon rise.”

  She continued, her voice shaking with emotion at the memory. “That awful storm, it could’ve killed us all, but God in his tender mercy delivered me.” Her pious expression suggested that the Almighty knew very well who deserved deliverance.

  Moon picked a dirty clump of wool off a flattened sage bush and sniffed the crisp morning air. The smell of whiskey covered the pasture like fog. Perhaps Nahum, after these many years of abstinence, was hitting the bottle again. “We understood about the storm from your telephone call. But the dispatcher didn’t understand … um … everything you reported.” That, he thought, was an understatement.

  Armilda crossed herself hurriedly. “It was that big wind that killed these poor animals. It killed Nahum, too. I saw his body in the pasture, after the wind went away. He was about … over there, by that white rock.” She pointed toward a limestone outcropping. “He would sit right there, on that rock, watching over them sheep of his. Sometimes, if it was light, he read books.” Judging by her expression, she considered the latter activity to be somewhat eccentric.

  The policeman turned to study Armilda’s wrinkled face. “I can see there’s been a bad wind here, ma’am. And there must be a dozen dead sheep. But there’s no sign of Nahum.” The old shepherd, Moon imagined, would be in Durango filing a claim with the insurance agency, maybe throwing down a stiff drink. Nahum claimed to be “cured,” but you could never tell with alcoholics.

  Armilda shook her head in frustration. “Well of course there’s no sign of Nahum. He’s not here. He’s gone.”

  “Then where…”

  “They took him.” She crossed herself as she squinted up at the policeman. “Three of them, I saw them gather up his body and carry it away. And there was this music … sweet, sweet singing.…” Armilda paused, her voice trailing away into a whisper. She rubbed at her eyes and tried to swallow the hard knot in her throat.

  Moon scribbled more notes; now he was getting somewhere. Even these days, it still happened. Relatives had removed the body for burial, probably singing ancient chants for the dead as they carried Nahum’s remains away. It was the old Ute custom to hide the body. Nahum’s corpse would be in one of the dry canyons to the east, secreted in a crevice in the yellow rock. Moon licked the tip of the ballpoint and held the instrument over the notebook page. “Which way did they go?”

  “Up there,” Armilda rasped, jerking her thumb upward toward the clouds.

  Charlie Moon turned away and stifled a groan. Had this lonely old woman been influenced by those fantastic stories about inhabitants of cigar-shaped UFOs with a ravenous appetite for mutton? “So … he … they … went up there.�
�� He squinted upward thoughtfully, as if he accepted the story. “Who, exactly, took him up there, Mrs. Esquibel?” He dropped the ballpoint into his coat pocket and closed the notebook.

  Armilda stared up at the policeman with frank astonishment that he did not have the capacity to grasp the obvious. Someone had to explain the facts to this big jughead. The old woman spoke slowly, hoping Makes No Tracks would finally comprehend the obvious. “They took him, of course, the angels!”

  A perfect crystal of snow fell onto the sleeve of Charlie Moon’s dark blue uniform. Unaccountably, this six-sided jewel of ice filled his soul with a deep melancholy. This first snowflake of winter.

  FOUR

  Priscilla arrived a full hour before the scheduled Electromagnetics lab; she needed the extra time to prepare the demonstration experiment for the sophomore class. The graduate student lit the gas on a greasy Bunsen burner and brewed a cup of green Japanese tea, laced it with five cubes of sugar, and settled down to prepare herself for the mundane task. It was not easy to concentrate on the alternating current motor-generator experiment, not when there were so many terribly important matters to consider. She would keep up appearances, at least until the end of this semester. Before her doctorate was awarded, Priscilla expected to be wealthy. Not merely president of General Motors wealthy—Arab oil prince wealthy!

  It would be necessary to do everything just so and the young woman did not intend to miss a trick. She had kept a detailed description (in indelible ink) of her experiments in a bound notebook. Nothing would be left to chance. Priscilla had taken great care to record every stage of her experimental procedure. The precise amount of each chemical used in preparing the precursor compound was listed, along with the temperature level during the sintering procedure. There were charts of heating rates, oxygen pressures, final temperatures, time-at temperature, and, last but not least, the cooling rate. Each plot was taped into the book, both the recent successful runs and the early tests that had, in spite of their production of unstable samples, provided intriguing clues. It was excellent scientific procedure; her record was complete.

  The only important item missing from the notebook was the signature of one or two knowledgeable witnesses. It was an important omission, but it couldn’t be helped. To be useful in any future legal proceedings, a credible witness should be someone who understood the nature of the invention. Once she revealed her astounding accomplishment to a single fellow scientist, the secret would be too good to keep. Much better to line up a buyer before the word was out, an investor with deep, deep pockets. There would be no lack of buyers; there would be a bidding war! Then, the results of her discovery would gradually revolutionize the way millions lived. The world would never be the same.

  The young scientist was lost in these thoughts when the intercom buzzer on her telephone jarred her back to the present reality. Priscilla pulled off a clip-on earring and pressed the receiver to her ear.

  The caller did not wait for her to speak. “That you, Priscilla?”

  She smiled as she recognized the voice of Kristin Waters. “Yeah, Kristin, it’s myself. What’s on your mind this morning?”

  Kristin Waters, secretary to the entire Physics Department, had never married. The middle-aged woman took a special interest in the welfare of the graduate students. Particularly the female students. “As usual, it’s Professor Thomson, sweetheart. He’s working on the air force contract renewal forms, needs to talk to you. After you’re through with Thomson, see Professor Dexter. The chairman wants to discuss next semester’s schedule, your teaching assignments. I think he wants you to take over the undergraduate thermodynamics class.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Priscilla was not surprised. When it came time to generate the paperwork for a contract renewal, Thomson was even more agitated than usual. She picked up her files on the honeycomb armor contract from the physics lab and was at Thomson’s office door in less than a minute.

  He glanced up from the pile of papers that covered his desk, blinked under his bushy brows, and smiled. This jarred Priscilla momentarily; she had never seen a genuine smile visit the features of Professor Waldo Thomson.

  She stepped inside his office. “You wanted to see me?”

  He appeared distracted for a moment and then seemed to remember. “Oh, yes, of course. Come in and sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He waved his hand to indicate where she should sit.

  This was the second surprise. All of his students, even his graduate assistants, knew that you stood at attention when summoned into the master’s presence. Priscilla seated herself in the uncushioned wooden chair and waited for the next surprise.

  Thomson leaned back in his swivel chair. “How are things going for you, Miss Song?” He tried to smile again. The effort strained his facial muscles.

  She returned the smile. “Just fine. I have the latest data on compression strength and fracture resistance for the honeycomb structure. I think you’ll be pleased at the progress we see with the forty-micron silicon carbide fibers embedded in—”

  He interrupted. “I’m certain I will. You’ve been doing an excellent job. Understand you’ve been working very hard lately. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  This was strange. “I do hope that you’re satisfied with my work.”

  “Oh my yes. Quite satisfied. In fact, I’ve learned you’re rather an eager beaver, not satisfied to put in only eight or ten hours a day!”

  Priscilla’s mouth went dry. It had been inevitable that someone would eventually notice her late hours. But he knew nothing more than that. After all, what could he know?

  Thomson clasped his hands as if in prayer. The forced intermittent smile was replaced by a smug expression. “Now let’s discuss your recent … ah … extracurricular activities.”

  * * *

  Julio Pacheco shuffled along the hallway, lugging his heavy toolbox. If it wasn’t one damn thing, it was a dozen damn things. What had the gringo woman said on the telephone? “Someone smelled something … like a gas leak. You’d better come over and check out the whole building.” Pacheco had checked dusty offices and cluttered laboratories, restrooms that smelled of urine and bleach, musty classrooms with odors of chalk dust that made him sneeze. He had found nothing. A few more stops on the third floor and he would be finished with this foolishness. It was a good thing, too. Half the places he stopped had some half-assed little job to take up his time. A loose hinge on the chairman’s door, a leaking flush valve in the women’s restroom. Do this, fix that! What did they think he was? He slipped his master key into the slot, then realized that the laboratory door was unlocked. He pushed the door open and was pleased with what he saw. Priscilla was at her desk. The Oriental girl was small and well shaped. Beautiful dark eyes, arching brows, moist full lips … this was good fortune. She was wiping her eyes with a tissue. Had the pretty girl been crying?

  Priscilla looked up at the sound of familiar footsteps. It was Julio, the Mexican with the steel taps on his shoes. The Mexican always smelled of cheap cologne, but he was good-looking in a rough sort of way. She dropped the tissue into her purse; the meeting had shaken her, but she didn’t want to advertise the fact that she had been driven to tears.

  “Hullo there, chica,” Pacheco grunted. “Got to check the place out. Somebody smelled gas, so they call your man Julio to have a look. You smell anything?”

  As he came close, she did smell the sour odor of beer. “No, Julio. But have a look around. Help yourself.”

  The repairman leered at her as he produced the miniature gas sniffer from his pocket and waved the rubber-covered sensor wand in her direction. “I appreciate the invitation, little girl. Maybe I will help myself.” He chuckled.

  Priscilla blushed and returned her attentions to the computer keyboard. It would be best to ignore him.

  Pacheco was persistent. “It’s time we got together, had a serious talk, you and me. Unless you think you’re too busy to bother with—”

  “We can talk anytime you
want.” She whirled in her chair and glared at him. “Exactly what do you want to talk about?”

  “Oh, lots of things.” Pacheco crawled along the floor and tested the heat vents for signs of escaping gas, but the sensor was silent. “You been busy lately; don’t see you much anymore.” He opened his toolbox and removed a heavy pipe wrench. “I better tighten up the gas pipes a little, just to take good care of you.” She had turned away. He winked at her back as she pretended not to hear. “Don’t want nothin’ should happen to little Priscilla. Know what I mean?”

  This interchange was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Professor Harry Presley, whose tall, skinny frame appeared in the hall door as if he had materialized there. Students referred to Presley either as “Elvis” or “Snake Hips.” He sniffed the air like a giraffe wary of hyenas, regarded the Mexican with frank distaste, then smiled at Priscilla. “What’s going on in here, my dear? Is there a problem?”

  “Nothing,” she said coolly, “that I can’t handle.” He took note of the curt dismissal, lost the smile, and departed as silently as he had appeared. Pacheco muttered an obscenity, then turned his attention to a loose fitting on an archaic gas valve.

  Priscilla forgot about Pacheco’s presence; she had more urgent matters on her mind. This would be her last day at Rocky Mountain Polytechnic. There were so many loose ends to tie up, but the bastard might be watching her. Tonight, she knew, she would have the lab to herself.

  * * *

  On Friday evenings, the Physics Building was deserted. The sharp clicks of her high heels echoed hollowly off the plaster walls as she marched down the empty hall. On such nights, the place reminded her of a museum. Full of dusty old artifacts, hidden mummies, and other mute testimony to the victory of decay over progress. Priscilla turned her key in the lock and opened the door to “her” laboratory for the last time. There would be no experiments, no data analysis tonight. The precious logbook was now under the temporary protection of employees of the United States government. This evening, she would search the lab, her computer files, every conceivable place where any scrap of evidence might remain of her experimental work. There must be nothing left for anyone to examine, not the least clue to the recipe for her compound.