The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  At that moment, the elevator doors opened.

  “After you, ma’am.” He held the door for her.

  “Oh, thank you very much, young man.” She toddled inside, and he followed.

  “Could you press 4 for me?” she asked.

  “I’d be glad to.” Leroy complied.

  Wasn’t the fourth floor his destination too? He got an idea. He followed her out when the doors opened again and waited to see which apartment she would head for. Sure enough, it was right next to the one where Miss Cassie used to live.

  “Ma’am, could I ask you a question?”

  She stopped fiddling with her keys for a minute. “Yes?”

  “Well, I’m lookin’ for a little gal who might of showed up here some months back. She’s a runaway, and her folks are real worried about her.” He fished in his jacket pocket and produced Hannah’s scared rabbit wedding photo.

  “Now let me see.” The old woman took the photo and adjusted her glasses.

  “Why don’t I hold that for you, ma’am?” Leroy hoisted the grocery bag out of her arms. He wondered if she was packing a ten-pound ham in that sack. It had to weigh as much as she did.

  “Oh, thank you.” This time she smiled. “That’s very thoughtful.” She turned her attention back to the photo and peered at it for several seconds. “Yes, I do believe I’ve seen her before. Of course, her hair wasn’t braided like it is here, but I’m sure it’s the same girl.”

  Leroy inwardly danced a jig. “Well now, ain’t that somethin’. Do you recollect anything particular about when you saw her?”

  “I certainly do.” The woman sounded vexed. “She was sitting on the floor right next to my neighbor’s door. I thought she was a vagrant. We don’t get that sort of thing in this neighborhood. I asked her what she was doing there. She said she was waiting for someone named ‘Cassie.’”

  “Ain’t that your neighbor’s name, ma’am?” Leroy asked cautiously.

  “My neighbor’s name was Sybil. That is, she was my neighbor until that horrible robbery at her store where she was murdered.”

  Leroy chafed inwardly at her phrasing. Everybody kept tossing around that word “murder,” but the fact was Miz Sybil died of natural causes. A terminal case of the clumsies. It was none of his doing.

  The old lady was still talking. “But I recall that Sybil did have a younger sister named Cassie. I never saw her. I suppose she must have taken over the lease.”

  “And did our little runaway find Miss Cassie at home?” Leroy nudged the conversation forward.

  The old woman shrugged her shoulders. “I have no idea. Somebody arrived later because I heard two voices in the hall. This was all a long time ago.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Maybe last October?”

  “I think so,” the woman agreed vaguely. She seemed distracted by another idea. “Something strange happened right after that.”

  Leroy’s ears perked up, but he didn’t rush her, fearing she might lose her train of thought.

  “It must have been about a week after I saw the girl in the hall. That’s when the movers came.”

  “Movers?” Leroy was puzzled now too.

  “A week afterward. I never saw the person who was moving out but there was a truck, and it whisked all Sybil’s things away.”

  This bit of news took Hunt by surprise.

  “Is anybody living in that flat now?” he asked.

  The old woman shook her head. “No, it’s been vacant, but you could check with the building manager. He’s got an office in the lobby.”

  “Why thank you kindly, ma’am. I believe I’ll do that.” He helped her with her keys and gave her back her groceries.

  “And you never saw the gal in the photo again?”

  “No, never.”

  Hunt tipped his hat and let her go on her way.

  ***

  The cowboy opted to take the stairs down instead of waiting for the elevator again. He crossed the lobby and made straight for a black painted door which was partially open. It revealed a squat, dark-haired man whose eyebrows met in the middle. He was hunched over a computer in fierce concentration.

  Leroy tapped lightly on the door.

  The building manager looked up at him. “Yeah?” he asked belligerently. Apparently, he didn’t like to be interrupted.

  Hunt remained standing in the doorway. “I wonder if you might remember the party who moved out of apartment 4C last fall?”

  The man stared at him in disbelief. “You gotta be kidding me!”

  “No, sir, I ain’t.” Leroy felt an urge to haul that cracker up by his collar and teach him some manners. Of course, it would be hard to get any useful info out of him through a crushed windpipe. “Might of been a short gal, dark hair. Went by the name of Cassie Forsythe?”

  After giving him a dirty look, the manager turned in his swivel chair and scooted over to a filing cabinet in the corner. He flipped through a row of manila folders and finally pulled one from the drawer. Laying it flat on his desk, he studied it before shifting his attention back to the cowboy.

  “My records say that the lease to 4C was transferred from Sybil Forsythe after her decease to her sister Cassie. It looks like this Cassie paid the last month’s rent in October and moved out.”

  “You got any particular memory of that transaction?” Hunt asked, already knowing the answer. “It would of been a little brunette gal who paid you.”

  The manager rolled his eyes. “It might have been a brunette girl. It might have been a little green space alien. I don’t remember. Buddy, this building has a hundred apartment units. I don’t know any of the tenants from Adam. All I care about is that I got my money. It says so right in the paperwork. End of story.” He flipped the manila folder closed with a loud slap.

  Leroy wordlessly tipped the brim of his hat, turned on his heel and left the building. Instead of finding some answers, all he’d gotten for his trouble was a skull full of questions. He climbed in his truck and pulled away from the curb, intent on finding the nearest watering hole where he could mull over the day’s events. By his reckoning, Miss Cassie would have been dead for months before little Hannah came knocking on her door. So, who did the gal meet when she got here? And who paid the building manager off? Most important of all, who arranged to have Miz Sybil’s things carted away? All those “who’s” were making more noise in his head than a nest of barn owls. One thing he knew for sure. It would take some serious drinking to sort this mess out.

  Chapter 15—Sitting Pretty

  Much to her teammates’ amazement, Cassie strolled into the hotel dining room the next morning appearing rested and cheerful. Erik’s look of relief told Cassie that he had braced himself for another day of moody complaints. After eating a hearty breakfast, the trio wandered to the hotel lobby where they waited for Oluoma’s return.

  Their guide bustled through the entrance punctually at eight o’clock and greeted them all with a broad smile. Cassie noted that Oluoma was wearing a cotton blouson in a bright fuchsia and white print over a long black skirt. Her feet were clad in sandals. Given the heat and humidity, this seemed a wise decision, but the rest of her attire caused the pythia to ask, “Will you be comfortable hiking in that outfit?”

  Oluoma gave her a dubious glance. “Hiking? No, no. There will be no hiking. The monoliths are practically in the middle of town.”

  “Well, that’s a first,” Cassie murmured as the team filed out of the hotel and back into Oluoma’s car.

  In less than ten minutes, they were out of the traffic in Calabar and moving quickly down a blacktop country road. At least in the United States, it would have been called a country road. In Nigeria, it was a major highway.

  Cassie sat up front with Oluoma while the men occupied the back seat. Since the trip to the little village of Alok would take a while, Cassie decided to pass the time by learning more about Oluoma’s work. Turning to face their guide, she asked, “So, what’s your special assignment
in Nigeria about?”

  Oluoma shrugged briefly at the question. “It’s very much like the general mission of the Arkana—recovering the lost record of civilization before the rise of the overlords—but this continent presents a special challenge. The history of sub-Saharan Africa has been sadly neglected. Everybody knows what happened in Egypt because so much has been written about it. But what about the rest of the continent? There are gaping holes in our knowledge of overlord infiltration of the interior. It is my task, and that of my associates, to fill in the blanks. Africa, in its original state, was wholly matristic. You have only to look at the way the San live today to see what the entire continent was like thousands of years ago, but something happened to change that way of life.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Cassie said archly. “It was the Kurgans, right?”

  “Actually, it wasn’t,” Griffin piped up from the back seat. “They weren’t the only purveyors of overlord ideology.”

  “They weren’t?” Cassie swiveled around to stare at him.

  “No. In the case of Africa, the overlords would have been Semitic.”

  “You’re kidding!” The pythia was aghast. “You mean Jewish people came to Africa and oppressed the natives?”

  “Semitic doesn’t only mean Jewish, toots.” Erik joined the conversation. “It’s a term that covers the language of a whole bunch of different groups. Everybody who used to live in the Middle and Near East would be considered Semitic. Arabs, Hebrews, people from southeastern Turkey, Assyrians, and lots of extinct tribes.”

  “But why would they travel all the way to Africa to bother the people here?” the pythia asked. “Why not start by harassing their neighbors?”

  “Because of desiccation,” Griffin said.

  “Oh, that,” Cassie commented knowingly. “You mean the landscape dried out just like what happened to the Russian steppes around five thousand years ago.”

  The scrivener nodded. “Precisely the same as the Russian steppes and at approximately the same time as well. The Sahara Desert wasn’t always a desert. There were lakes and rivers, and much of it was verdant grassland where nomads could graze their livestock. This was also true of the Arabian Peninsula. Beneath the desert, there lies evidence of river beds, even dams, and irrigation canals—all covered with sand now. A devastating climate shift swept from the western Sahara all the way through Arabia to central Asia, leaving nothing but dust in its wake.”

  “So, I guess the Semites ended up acting the same as the Kurgans,” Cassie observed.

  “Yup,” Erik concurred. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. Or in their case, theft and murder of anybody who had anything they could steal. Too bad it didn’t stop when they finally got to greener pastures, but they never seemed to get over it. All overlord cultures are fueled by fear. Fear of not having enough—ever. So, even after the nomads invaded richer territories, they kept on fighting amongst themselves for more land, more wealth, more slaves, more...” He paused uncomfortably. “More women to produce heirs to carry on their bloodlines.”

  “And patriarchy was born,” Griffin commented softly.

  Cassie sighed and glanced out the car window. “Same old, same old,” she murmured to herself. High grey clouds were rolling across the sun. The air was heavy with the promise of an afternoon shower.

  Oluoma picked up the narrative. “Overlord patriarchy evolved in two separate regions. You have the Kurgans who left the steppes and moved northwest to invade Old Europe. And then you have the Semites who moved southwest to invade northern and coastal Africa. Of course, these would-be overlords honed their battle skills against one another in their increasingly inhospitable homeland centuries before they spread out to pillage other areas.”

  “The Semites and the Kurgans did cross paths and swords occasionally,” Griffin remarked. “For example, they clashed with each other over domination of Mesopotamia. The Kurgans also made inroads into Egypt and crowned themselves its pharaohs, but for the most part, incursions into Africa were perpetrated by Semites.”

  “No matter who was responsible for the pilfering, the result is still the same,” Cassie said. “You have a bunch of peaceful gatherer-hunters or farmers getting preyed on by greedy hordes of nomads.”

  “That is correct,” Oluoma agreed. “Some scholars insist that the influx of foreigners was a friendly migration of entire tribes. However, we in the Arkana disagree. Overlords, whether Semite or Kurgan, traveled in predatory male packs.”

  “How do you know that?” Cassie asked.

  “The DNA studies bear out that theory,” Griffin answered. “In Africa, the maternal DNA is all indigenous whereas some of the male DNA is Semitic.”

  “So, you’re saying the invading males got to mate with the local girls but never the other way around?”

  “Yes,” the scrivener concurred. “The mating was unidirectional. The primary reason for that lopsided arrangement is that the invaders were all unattached males. We know that these raiding parties were not mass migrations of families because there is no female Semitic DNA signature in the conquered regions of Africa. Also, a disproportionate percentage of the ruling class seems to bear Semitic DNA ancestry. The same unidirectional mating pattern was true in Old Europe after the Kurgan invasion and in the Americas after the Spanish arrived. The impetus for such behavior was the same in all three cases. In order to hold onto possessions which were acquired through conquest, a patriarchal bloodline had to be established to trace lineage back to the first thief. And of course, the way to establish a male bloodline is to horde all the indigenous women via polygynous marriage and to curtail their opportunities to mate with other males.”

  Oluoma slowed the car as they approached a half dozen people on foot walking along the side of the road. Considering the equatorial climate, Cassie assumed that pedestrian traffic must have been common at all times of the year. She gaped in fascination at a woman balancing a huge bundle on the top of her head.

  Tearing her eyes away, she rejoined the conversation. “So, that’s why Africa has so many male-run kingdoms. Outsiders started taking over, marrying the locals and fighting with each other over surrounding territory.”

  “That’s not the only reason for patriarchy in Africa,” Oluoma retorted. “Even tribes which preferred to remain matristic found themselves changing after repeated attacks by overlords. Incursions by the Semitic Phoenicians into coastal West Africa had a profound impact on cultural values in this part of the world. The Phoenicians were a lovely people,” she said sarcastically. “They practiced ritual child murder and specialized in flaying their enemies alive. Consequently, the formerly peaceful inhabitants of this area learned to fight back and fighting became a prized skill. The warrior class enjoyed elevated status while the contribution of women diminished in importance. Men who knew how to kill became more valuable than women who knew how to give life. By the time Europeans first arrived in Africa, many of the tribes they encountered were patriarchal kingdoms constantly feuding with one another.”

  “Tribal warfare is still around today in this part of the world,” Erik chimed in. “The genocide in Rwanda between the Hutu and the Tutsi happened less than twenty years ago. Outsiders couldn’t understand why there was so much hatred between the two tribes. To foreigners, it looked like a bunch of native black Africans slaughtering another bunch of native black Africans. Brother against brother. But it wasn’t like that.”

  “It wasn’t?” Cassie echoed suspiciously.

  “Not even remotely,” Erik replied. “The Tutsi tribe is descended from Semitic overlords. The Hutus are indigenous and were oppressed by the Tutsi ruling class from the very start. It’s right there in the DNA. There’s a blood feud between those two tribes—literally—that goes back for centuries. It’s not all about skin color in this part of the world. There are a lot of blacks in Africa walking around with Semitic DNA.”

  Oluoma temporarily focused all her attention on maneuvering the car through a small town. P
edestrians were milling around in an open-air market. Three people stood right in the middle of the highway carrying on an animated conversation. Oluoma laid on the horn. Cassie was surprised that nobody took offense. The people on foot simply smiled, waved, and ambled out of the way.

  Returning to the topic about which they’d been speaking, Oluoma said, “When the Europeans first arrived in West Africa, they were greeted by inter-tribal warfare everywhere they looked. Male-dominated petty kingdoms vying for power would have been a familiar sight to the colonizers because it echoed their own history. However, the foreigners also encountered vestiges of female sovereignty which contradicted the myth of universal male power. Europeans dismissed these cases as anomalies because they didn’t fit the patriarchal model of the way things ought to be.”

  “That’s bleak.” Cassie sighed.

  “The picture isn’t quite so bleak as that, my dear pythia,” their guide retorted. “Of all the continents contaminated by overlord influence, Africa has had the longest tradition of female authority. It’s fascinating to see how much of that authority managed to survive the onslaught of overlord indoctrination. It persisted in spite of the Semitic invasions, patriarchal kingdoms, the arrival of Europeans, the slave trade, and finally colonization. Female influence may have changed its shape, but it hasn’t disappeared entirely. I find that heartening. African women are quite resilient.”

  Griffin sat forward in the back seat. “There are anomalies all over the continent—tribes in which women occupy positions of power. If one accepts the overlord hypothesis that Africa was always patriarchal because that is the natural order of things, then there is no precedent for some of the traditions which are still very much alive. Take the rain queens, for example.”

  “Rain queens?” Cassie asked.

  “Yes, it’s a hereditary title among the Balobedu Tribe of South Africa. The throne passes from a woman to her eldest daughter. The Rain Queen is credited with supernatural power to affect the weather. The neighboring Zulu tribe was terribly afraid of her. It doesn’t matter whether one believes in her power or not, there are flesh and blood women who have held that title for the past four hundred years.”