Whirlwind

by Charles L. Grant

  The other man didn’t ask for one, and one wasn’t offered.

  “So?” Leon said.

  The man lifted one shoulder. “So they brought in some FBI, straight from Washington. They came in this morning. One man, one woman.”

  Ciola coughed a laugh. “You’re kidding.”

  “They’re supposed to be experts.”

  “A woman?”

  The man nodded, and offered a lopsided grin. “Gets better. They’re Anglos.”

  The empty bottle was taken away, a full one left in its place. The man grabbed it before Ciola did, took a long swallow, and set it down. His fingers stayed around the neck. “Am I worried?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” The man stood and hitched up his pants. “I hate being worried. It always pisses me off.”

  He left without a word to anyone else.

  The bartender turned up the baseball game.

  Ciola wiped the bottle’s mouth with his palm and drank the rest without coming up for air.

  When the waitress returned for the empty, he grabbed her wrist, just strongly enough to keep her bent over the table. “Chica,” he said softly, “what are you doing tonight?”

  “Getting a life,” she answered, yanking her arm free. “Try it sometime.”

  He laughed. Not a sound, but he tilted his head back and laughed. Wonderful! She was wonderful! He wiped a tear from his eye and shook his head. Since she didn’t want him, he would leave her the biggest tip she had ever had in her miserable life.

  And to make it better, he wouldn’t even kill her.

  Scully massaged the back of her neck. It was hard to keep her eyes open, and she didn’t bother to hide a yawn.

  “The desert night air,” Mulder said. “It’s almost too peaceful here.”

  “I know.” She dropped her hand into her lap. “The point is, Mulder, we haven’t enough data yet to show us why they were killed, much less explain the connections in any reasonable fashion. And I don’t think we’re going to find them out here. Not tonight, anyway.” She smiled wanly. “I think I’m a little too punchy.”

  “We both are.” He stretched one arm at a time over his head, clasped his hands, and pushed his palms toward the sky. “I just wish I could see the connections between a handful of cows, a kid by the river, and a couple in the desert.” He brought his arms down, one hand again moving to his nape.

  “Mulder, relax, we just got here, remember? Besides, you have to remember that the thinner air out here slows down the intellectual process, the result of less oxygen flowing to the brain.”

  He grinned and looked at her sideways. “Is that a doctor thing?”

  “No, that’s a Scully thing.” She grinned and pushed off the bench and held out her hand. When he grabbed it, she pulled him up, turned him around, pushing him lightly toward the motel. “The doctor thing is, get some sleep, like Red said, or you’ll be useless in the morning.”

  He nodded as he waved a weary good night over his shoulder, sidestepping a garden wall just before he tripped over it. Another wave—I’m okay, I know what I’m doing—before he disappeared into the passageway, and she couldn’t help wondering what it was like for him—seeing things other people sometimes couldn’t; engaging in a pursuit with oftentimes terrifying intensity; looking so young and deceptively guileless that there had been many times when he was severely underestimated.

  She wasn’t surprised when, passing his room on her way to bed, she saw light slipping around the edges of the drapes.

  Exhausted or not, he would be up most of the night, turning over what he knew, and setting up what he didn’t know so he would know the right questions to ask, beyond the how and who and why.

  She wished him luck.

  Right now, she was having difficulty remembering her own name.

  She fingered her key out of her pocket, moved on to the next room…and stopped as she inserted the key in the lock.

  You’re tired, Dana, that’s all.

  She looked anyway.

  The Inn gates were closed, the lanterns out. Only a faint glow from a nearby streetlamp reached over the wall.

  A man stood at the gate, arms loose at his sides.

  She couldn’t see his face or his clothes; just his outline.

  Tired, she reminded herself, and pushed into the room, flicked on the wall switch, and, as she closed the door, checked the gate again.

  He was still there.

  Watching.

  TEN

  Mulder didn’t have to be outside to know it was hot and getting hotter, even though it was just past ten. Even with sunglasses, the sun’s glare was almost too much, and to stare at the passing scenery too long made it jump and shimmer, showing him things he knew weren’t there.

  There were no clouds, no signs of rain. It was hard to believe there ever was.

  He rode with Scully in the back seat of Sheriff Sparrow’s dusty blue-and-white cruiser, Garson up front on the passenger side. It was evident from their conversation that the two men had known each other for a long time, using shorthand gestures and single-word answers, mostly grunts. As far as Mulder could tell, the gist of it was, there had been no further incidents since the death of the boy, except for a drunk driver who claimed to have been forced off the road by an invisible, or incredibly short, vehicle.

  “It brings out the nuts, this kind of thing,” the sheriff said, lifting his gaze to the rearview mirror. “You find that, too, Agent Mulder?”

  He nodded. It was true. Just as it was true that Chuck Sparrow was laying on the western sheriff routine a little thick, constantly hitching his gunbelt, chewing a wad of gum that was supposed to simulate tobacco, getting a deeper drawl in his voice every time he opened his mouth. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it made him wonder why the act at all. Garson would have already filled the man in, and it was the sheriff who had finally asked the FBI for help.

  It didn’t sit right.

  Like not wearing a suit and tie, like wearing running shoes.

  He knew Garson was right—wearing his usual clothes out here would have been ludicrous as well as stupid; still, like the sheriff, it didn’t sit right.

  The Sandias passed them on the right as Interstate 25 left the Albuquerque suburbs behind. And although other ranges broke the horizon, there was nothing out there now but the high desert.

  And the sun.

  “Cult,” Sparrow said then, raising his voice to be heard over the air conditioning.

  “What?” Scully, startled out of a reverie, asked him to repeat it.

  “Cult. You know…cult. One of them Satanist things, probably. Look hard enough, betcha them poor folks were all involved somehow.”

  “A seventeen-year-old boy?” Mulder asked skeptically.

  “Hey, that ain’t no rare thing, you know what I mean? You got your heavy-metal crap with all that subliminal stuff, you got your rap stuff telling kids to kill cops, shit like that…drugs and sex…” He lifted a hand off the wheel, palm up. “What more do you want?”

  Mulder saw his eyes in the mirror, watching him, gauging.

  “Maybe,” he answered reluctantly.

  “No maybe about it, son, no maybe about it.”

  Fifteen miles later, at a speed Mulder thought would soon launch them into orbit, the cruiser slowed, pulled onto the right shoulder, and crossed a narrow wooden bridge. A two-lane paved road led into the desert.

  Sparrow pointed with a thumb. “What you got up there, them hills there about ten miles along, is what they call the Konochine Wall.” He scratched under his hat. “Kind of like a jagged outline of a lightbulb lying on its side. Fat part, it’s pointing toward the Sandias back there to the south. The base part, it crosses the road onto the ranch where we’re going. Unless you want to climb the hills, the only way in or out is a gap where the road is.”

  Mulder watched a barbed-wire fence blur past on his left. Beyond it was desert, and he couldn’t imagine how anyone could raise anything out here, much less cattle. When he
had asked at breakfast, Garson only told him to hold onto his horses, he didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

  “Do the Konochine fit in here?” Scully asked. “This case, I mean.”

  Sparrow shrugged one broad shoulder. “Who the hell knows? Doubt it myself. Their place isn’t like the other pueblos, see. It’s a res and all, but they don’t like tourists, they don’t like Anglos, they don’t like other Indians…” He laughed. “Hell, I don’t think they much like each other a whole hell of a lot.” He yanked at an earlobe, then scratched vigorously behind it. “Some of them, mostly the young ones, they’ve been trying for years to change things. Most of the time it don’t work, though, and they leave, don’t come back.”

  “And the ones who do?”

  “Well…” He glanced at Garson. “Nick Lanaya, right?”

  Garson nodded agreement and half-turned so he wouldn’t have to yell. “Nick’s a good guy. He went off to college, and came back with enough ideas to fill a canyon. Because of his family, he’s on the Tribal Council, so he has to be heard. And he is, believe me. Trouble is, not a lot are listening.”

  “So why does he stay?”

  Garson thought a moment before saying, “Because they’re his people.”

  Sparrow chuckled, sarcasm, not humor. “Doesn’t hurt he’s making a few bucks, Red.”

  Garson sighed dramatically, a wink at Mulder to signal what was obviously a long-standing argument. “Nick,” he explained, “has a deal with a local woman, an Anglo, Donna Falkner. He brings out some of the crafts the Konochine make, she sells them in town or up in Santa Fe, they each get a cut and the tribe gets the rest. Mostly jewelry,” he added. “Once in a while some incredible bowls and ceremonial-style plates, things like that. Every time he brings out a load, he has a fight with the other side, who claim he’s selling their heritage down the river.”

  “And every time he brings back the bucks to the Mesa,” Sparrow said sourly, “they line up with their goddamn hands out.”

  “The mesa?” Scully said.

  “Sangre Viento Mesa,” Garson explained. “It’s in the middle of the reservation. Their homes are at the base, their religious ceremonies are held up top.”

  “What does that mean, Sangre Viento?”

  Garson faced front. “Blood Wind. It means Blood Wind.”

  Eventually the barbed wire gave way to a short stretch of well-maintained split rail. In its center was an open gate over which was a wide wood arch. Burned into the face was Double-H.

  Mulder sat up as Sparrow drove under the arch, onto a hard-ground road. He looked between the men in front and saw what surely had to be a mirage:

  A wide expanse of impossibly green grass inside a blinding white fence; a long adobe and Spanish tile ranch house so simple in its design it looked prohibitively expensive; a stable and corral behind and to the left, with a small black horse plodding toward the shade of a tree he couldn’t name; a two-car garage behind and to the right, the driveway curving around the fence to join the entrance road in front; ristras—strings of dried red chiles—hanging from vigas protruding from the walls beneath a porch that had to be fifty or sixty feet long.

  “You want to be a millionaire and live like this, Scully?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Sparrow parked in a cleared patch of ground beside the driveway, took off his hat and slicked his hair back. He opened the door, and paused as he leaned forward to slide out.

  “I would appreciate it,” he told them, “if you wouldn’t bother her too much. She only found the bodies. She didn’t see anything else.”

  From that unsubtle warning, Mulder fully expected a withered and frail woman to greet them, not the beautiful woman who came out of the double front doors and stood on the porch, shading her eyes and smiling.

  Scully joined him while Sparrow fumbled with the gate latch, and as they approached the porch, a man and woman stepped out of the house and moved to one side, she in a simple white dress, he in work clothes. Their expressions were anything but friendly.

  “Hey, Annie,” the sheriff called, and when they were close enough, he made the introductions.

  Ann Hatch, Mulder thought as he shook her cool dry hand and looked down into those incredibly green eyes; so this is Ann Hatch.

  As she waved them to seats around a wrought-iron table, it was clear Scully liked her at first sight. “You know,” she said, accepting a tall glass of lemonade from the woman in white, “this is like finding an oasis, it’s so lovely.”

  Annie’s eyes widened in pleasant surprise. “Why, thank you. But it’s just my home.”

  She smiled broadly, and ten minutes later, the three of them were chatting as if they were old friends, long separated but never far from mind. Mulder didn’t believe for a minute she was acting.

  Another ten minutes passed before he sat back, abruptly sobered when she noted but didn’t remark on the holster at his hip. She caught the change in his mood instantly, and took a deep breath.

  “You want to know what I saw, and how.”

  “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Hatch.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, Agent Mulder, please call me Annie. And I don’t mind at all.” Her gaze shifted to the improbable lawn and the desert beyond it. “They were newlyweds, you know. They were on their honeymoon.”

  He knew; he had read the report so many times, he could have recited it word for word, footnote for footnote.

  Doris and Matt Constella, from Kansas, twenty-five, in Albuquerque only four days, and, from all Garson could figure out, on a wandering drive around the county in a rented van. They had already stopped to visit at least two of the pueblos, and it was there, it was supposed, they had heard about the Konochine. There was no other reason why they’d be on that road. There were no signs, not for the road itself, and not for the ranch.

  She explained how she had discovered their bodies, and how she had immediately ridden back to call the sheriff. “Near the gap,” she said sadly. “They were right by the gap.”

  So much for the connection between them and the boy, Mulder thought.

  “Mrs. Hatch,” Scully began, and cut herself off at the woman’s chiding look. “Annie. Have you had any trouble with people from the reservation?”

  Annie blinked once, slowly. “No.”

  She’s lying, Mulder thought, and looked to his left when he sensed movement. Nando Quintodo had taken a short step forward, one of his hands fisted at his side. When he saw Mulder look, however, he stopped, his face bland, his hand quickly relaxed.

  “Why do you ask?” Annie said.

  “It’s routine,” Mulder answered before Scully, and grinned at her skepticism. “I know, it sounds like a line from a movie, but it’s true. We’ve been told there’s some trouble, and…” An apologetic gesture. “We can’t afford not to ask.”

  Scully echoed the procedure, and apologized as she took Annie through her story again. Mulder, meanwhile, stretching as if he were too stiff to sit, rose with a muttered apology and left the table. As soon as he took a step, Quintodo walked away from him, heading for the door.

  Mulder spoke his name.

  When the man turned, his hand was a fist again.

  Mulder leaned against the porch rail and looked out over the lawn. He didn’t raise his voice; he knew the man could hear him. “Tourists ever call you Tonto?”

  “Not here. No tourists here.” Flat, unemotional. Careful.

  “But sometimes.”

  There was a pause.

  Mulder waited.

  “Yes. In town. Sometimes.” Still flat, still unemotional.

  Mulder faced him, leaning back against the rail, one hand in his pocket. “You’re from…?”

  Quintodo’s eyes shifted to the table, shifted back. “The Mesa.”

  “Your wife, too?”

  He nodded.

  “So tell me, Mr. Quintodo. Why would a woman like that want to lie?”

  The sheriff, mumbling something to Annie, stood.
r />   Quintodo saw him, and Mulder couldn’t miss the flare of hatred in his eyes.

  “Why?” he repeated softly.

  But Sparrow was already on his way over, a mirthless grin beneath dark glasses. “Why what?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his chest.

  “Why would I want to visit the stable when I don’t ride?” Mulder answered. “I’ll tell you why—because I’m a city boy, and I’d like to be able to see manure firsthand.”

  “Very well, Mr. Mulder,” Quintodo agreed before the sheriff could say anything. “I will show you everything. Mrs. Hatch, she has a pair of very fine horses. I think you will be impressed. Maybe you will learn something.”

  He nodded politely to Sparrow and went inside without looking back.

  The sheriff hitched up his belt, and spat over the railing. “This is a beautiful place.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Annie’s been alone out here for a long time, you know. Some say too long.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Sheriff.”

  Sparrow spat again. “Let me give you some advice, Agent Mulder.”

  “Always ready to listen, Sheriff Sparrow. You’re the expert around here, not me.”

  Sparrow nodded sharply, damn right.

  “Okay, number one is, Nando there is a Konochine. You know that already, I assume. Don’t trust him. He may live out here with Annie, but his heart’s still over the Wall.”

  Mulder said nothing.

  “Second thing is…” He stopped. He took off his hat, wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm, and shook his head as he walked back to the table.

  Mulder watched him.

  The second thing, unspoken, was a threat.

  ELEVEN

  The stable was gloomy, despite the open door. There were six stalls on either side, but most of them hadn’t been used in a long time. A scattering of hay on the floor. Tack hung from pegs on the walls. When Mulder looked outside, all he could see was white light; the corral and the black horse were little more than ghosts.

  Quintodo stood beside a chestnut, running a stiff brush over its flank. He hadn’t looked up when Mulder walked in, didn’t give a sign when Scully followed, unsure why Mulder had asked her to meet him out here.