Whirlwind

by Charles L. Grant

  Quintodo concentrated on his grooming. “You know what tonto means, Mr. Mulder?”

  “My Spanish is—” A deprecating smile. “Lousy.”

  “Stupid,” the man said, smoothing a palm over the horse’s rump. “It means stupid.” He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a lump of sugar, handed it to Scully. “She won’t bite. Just keep your hand flat, she won’t take your fingers.”

  Scully offered the treat, and the horse snorted and snapped it up, then nuzzled her for more.

  “She’s a pig,” Quintodo said, with a hint of smile. “She’ll eat all you give her, then get sick.” A loving pat to the animal’s side. “Tonto.”

  With a look, Scully asked Mulder why they were here; he nodded a be patient, and put his back to the door. All he said was, “Why?”

  Quintodo worked for several long seconds without speaking, the scrape of the brush the only sound. Then:

  “She is one, you know.”

  Mulder’s head tilted slightly.

  “Konochine. One of us. Her husband, Mr. Hatch, he met her in Old Town, in Albuquerque. She was fifteen, he was from Los Angeles. I don’t know what they call it, looking for places to make a movie.”

  “Scouting,” Scully said.

  He nodded. “Yes, gracias. He told her about the movies, about being in them.” The smile finally broke. “All hell broke loose on the Mesa. But he was very persuasive, Mr. Hatch was. Very handsome, very kind. Very young and…” He hesitated. “Dreamy. Before we knew it, she was gone. Making movies. Getting married.” He looked at Mulder over the horse’s back. “They were very happy. Always.”

  The smile slipped away.

  “No children?” Scully asked.

  “Not to be.”

  The horse stamped impatiently, and Quintodo murmured at it before resuming his grooming.

  “She is special, Mr. Mulder,” he said at last. “She hears the wind.”

  Scully opened her mouth to question him, and Mulder shook his head quickly.

  Quintodo swallowed, second thoughts making him pause.

  When he did speak again, he spoke slowly.

  “We have priests, you know.” The horse stamped again; a fly buzzed in the stifling heat. “Not the Catholic ones, the padres. Konochine got rid of them a long time ago. Our own. Seven, all the time. They…do things for us. Comprende? You understand? Today they are all men. It happens. Sometimes there are women, but not now. Priests are not…” He frowned, then scowled when he couldn’t find the word. “They live like us, and then they die. When one dies, there is a ceremonial, and the dead one is replaced.”

  A two-tone whistle outside interrupted him. Mulder heard hoofbeats trot across the corral.

  The chestnut didn’t move.

  “They know their call,” Quintodo explained. “That was for Diamond.”

  “And the ceremonial?” Mulder prodded quietly.

  Quintodo lowered his head, thinking.

  “There was one now. Like the others, it lasted six days. No one is allowed to see it. But the wind…the wind carries the ceremony to the four corners. Sometimes you can hear it. It talks to itself. It carries the talk from the kiva. The songs. Prayers. Mrs. Hatch…” He inhaled slowly, deeply, and looked up at Mulder. “Sometimes you think you hear voices on the wind, yes? You think it’s your imagination, no?” He shook his head. “No. But only some, like the kiva priests, can understand. Mrs. Hatch too can understand. We knew this recently, Silvia and I, we could tell because Mrs. Hatch was very nervous, very…” He gestured helplessly.

  “Afraid?” Scully offered.

  “I’m not…no. She didn’t like what she heard, though.” His voice hardened. “Never once since she came back from the movies has she been to the Mesa. Never once. She turned them down, you see. An old man died, and they wanted her to be in his place, and she turned them down. She had a husband, she said, and she had a way of her own. She would not go, and they never talked to her again.”

  “They don’t have to,” Mulder said, moving closer to the horse, keeping his voice low. “She hears them on the wind.”

  Quintodo stared at him, searching for mocking, for sarcasm, and his eyes narrowed when he didn’t find it.

  “These dead, Mr. Mulder, they didn’t start until the ceremonial started.”

  Scully sidestepped nervously when the chestnut tried to nuzzle her again, upper lip momentarily curled to expose its teeth. “What are you saying, Mr. Quintodo? That these priests killed those people out there? And the cattle? For a…for some kind of—”

  “No.” He kept his gaze on Mulder. “Six days and six nights they stay in the kiva. Praying with the man who is to join them. Taking visions from the spirits to be sure they have made the right choice, and to show them the way until the next time. When they do all this, soon the wind blows.” He made a rapid spinning motion with his free hand. “whirlwind, Mr. Mulder. You know what I mean?”

  Mulder didn’t, and the man spat dryly in disgust at himself.

  “Sangre Viento, Mr. Mulder. There are some who say they make the Sangre Viento.”

  A knock on the front door sounded thunderbolt-loud. Donna sat at her desk, a small secretary in the living room, working on the accounts. They added up, but not fast enough. If she was going to leave soon, on her terms, there would have to be more.

  She was tempted to ignore whoever it was, pretend she wasn’t home, then realized with a roll of her eyes that she could be seen through the room’s picture window. With a martyred sigh, she scooped the ledger and papers into a drawer, pushed at her hair, and opened the door.

  She couldn’t believe it. “What are you doing here? It’s practically the middle of the day.”

  “No. That’s the wrong question. The right question is: have you been cheating me?”

  A hand shoved her shoulder, hard, forcing her backward.

  “Here’s another one, chica: what do you think they would do if they found out?”

  Mulder kept to himself on the way back to the Inn. They had declined Annie’s invitation to lunch, promised to return for a nonofficial visit, and had visited the site where the couple had been murdered. It hadn’t taken long; there wasn’t much left to see, and when Sparrow asked, he only said it was too soon to make any kind of determination.

  Once out of the car, Garson promising to see if he could set up an appointment with the hard-to-reach medical examiner, he went straight to the front desk and arranged for a rental car to be delivered that afternoon.

  “I don’t like being chauffeured around,” he explained to Scully, leading her into the restaurant, complaining of imminent starvation. “Especially by him. He figures, but I don’t know how yet.”

  Scully said that was the easy part. The man was clearly fond of Annie. Just as clearly, he intended, somehow, to make sure she didn’t spend the rest of her life living alone.

  “He’s after her money?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been known to happen. You could see he was protective; he just wasn’t loving.”

  They took a table in the far front corner, Scully facing the white-curtained window directly behind him. They ordered, and he watched her fuss with her silverware, fuss with her napkin before spreading it on her lap.

  “What?”

  She didn’t hide her exasperation. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going to let you turn this into something it isn’t.”

  That, he thought sourly, was the problem with working with someone who knew you that well.

  Still, there was no harm trying. More than once, she had saved him from making a total fool of himself, determined to keep him at least within screaming distance of reason.

  “You heard what he said.”

  She nodded. “And it might even be possible that that couple, the Constellas, saw something they weren’t supposed to. It might even be possible they were killed for it. They wouldn’t be the first to die because they’d witnessed a religious event meant to be secret.” She held up a knife like a finger. “Po
ssible, I said, Mulder. Possible.”

  “Okay. Possible.” And she smiled.

  “Likely?”

  He smiled back. “Don’t push it. I’m still working on possible.”

  She started to speak, changed her mind, then changed her mind again. “But what about Paulie Deven? Don’t you think it’s stretching things a little to assume he saw something, too? Which he would have had to do, if you’re going to keep him with the Constellas.”

  “Which means?”

  “Mulder, it means there’s no connection between the victims and the ceremony. A horrible coincidence, nothing more.”

  “And the…” He stumbled several times, making her smile, before he managed, “Sangre Viento?”

  He winced when he heard himself; his Spanish was still lousy.

  The waiter brought their meal, and he stared at the strips of meat, the vegetables, the salsa in the side dish, practically feeling the heat of the spices without even getting close. He knew he would regret this later, and after his first taste, knew he would have to stock up on a supply of heavy-duty antacids if he wanted to get any sleep. The trouble was, it was so good, there was no way he wouldn’t eat it.

  Scully, on the other hand, popped a small jalapeño into her mouth, plucked the stem from between her teeth, and said, “Not bad, not bad.”

  The Sangre Viento aside for the moment, he was pleased to hear that her reaction to Sparrow was the same as his. Yet neither could think of a good reason for the act, nor could they believe the man actually thought he was fooling anyone with it. It was too broad, too born of bad movies and worse television. That led them to wondering, his feelings for Annie aside, if he was somehow involved, or just a lousy cop trying to cover his ass, make them feel sorry for him so whoever he had to answer to wouldn’t take his badge.

  “A little farfetched,” she judged when the table had been cleared and coffee served. “Not that we haven’t seen it before.”

  “This isn’t it. I don’t know what it is, but this isn’t it.”

  “Neither is that blood wind thing.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, picked up a spoon and tapped it lightly against his thigh. “How can you be so sure?” He propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and clasped his hands in front of his mouth. “There are any number of recorded so-called unusual phenomena associated with meetings, especially religious, where the emotional intensity and concentration are abnormally high.”

  “All of them recorded by the people who were there, not by outside observers.”

  “They, these priests, were in a kiva. An underground chamber whose only exit and entrance, and source of air, is a single hole in the roof. There may have been herbal drugs, peyote maybe, something like that. Six days and six nights, Scully, and they all focus on a single thing—the man they’re investing with their knowledge. Their history. With their power over the people they have to live with.” He rocked forward, hands dropping to the table. “Can you imagine what it must be like? Day in and day out? All that energy building up there?”

  Scully didn’t answer him for a long time. She sipped her coffee, stared out the window, glanced around the otherwise empty room. She was about to reply when a woman appeared in the archway entrance. Short, stocky, in a severe summer-weight suit; her graying black hair pulled back into a bun. Her left hand held a purse tight to her side.

  Mulder watched her hesitate, then march across the room toward them, no nonsense, all business. When she reached the table, she nodded a greeting.

  “You are the agents from Washington?”

  “Yes,” Mulder answered. “And you are…?”

  “Dr. Rios. Helen Rios. I performed the autopsies on those poor people.”

  He stood immediately and offered her a chair while introducing her to Scully. When they were all seated again, he told her he was pleased to see her. Garson wouldn’t have to make the appointment after all.

  “He wouldn’t have made it,” the woman said.

  “I…what?”

  “You read my report?” she asked Scully.

  “I did. To be honest, there weren’t a lot of—”

  “It’s wrong.”

  Scully looked at the table, then back to Dr. Rios. “Excuse me?”

  The woman opened her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “This is what I wrote first. What you read before is what I was told to write.”

  Mulder couldn’t believe it.

  Nor could he believe it when Scully opened the paper, skimmed it, and said, “Oh my God.”

  TWELVE

  After signing for the meal, Mulder moved them immediately to his room, a precaution against eyes and ears he couldn’t control.

  The women sat at a small round table set by the window, covered now by dark green drapes. Mulder sat on the edge of the king-size bed.

  There were four lights in the room; every one of them was on.

  Dr. Rios wasted no words, or time.

  “New Mexico,” she said, “has been trying to upgrade its image for years; decades. People still ask if you need a passport to come here. Easterners still look for cowboys and Indians battling it out in the foothills. What the politicians and businessmen do not want most of all are the hints, the stories, the urban legend–style fables that mark the state as a place where UFOs and weird cults are not only welcome, they’re encouraged. Leave that kind of nonsense,” Rios said, “to Arizona, and good riddance.”

  Then a case like this falls into their laps.

  She tapped the paper she’d taken back from Scully. “Agent Mulder, it’s bad enough that these poor people died the way they did. I could tell right away how it really happened, any first-year intern could have figured it out. But for the sake of appearances, because my superiors knew it was bound to hit the papers, I was asked to file a second report. The one the public would know.”

  It was cool in the room, but she took a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her forehead.

  Mulder understood the chance she had taken, and the pressure she felt. He, of all people, was no stranger to either.

  “I did. For the basest of reasons—I want to keep my job.” She smiled grimly across the table at Scully. “I am a woman, a Hispanic woman, in a state where the Anglos and outsiders call the tunes. I am not proud of what I’ve done, but I make no apologies for it.”

  Scully kept her expression neutral, and the doctor wiped her brow again. “The official version, Agent Mulder, is that those people were flayed. They weren’t.”

  Mulder lifted an eyebrow. “Skinned?”

  “Scoured.”

  He choked back a laugh of disbelief. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

  The woman checked her watch. “I have no time. Particles of dirt, pebbles, other debris were found deeply embedded not only in the muscle tissue, but also in their mouths and the back of their throats. Other indications, such as circular striation of the exposed muscles and bone and the cauterization of most of the blood vessels, point to only one conclusion.”

  “Scoured.”

  She nodded, and stood. “Like being held up against a high-speed spinning drum covered with coarse sandpaper, Agent Mulder. Or inside a cylinder lined with the same. The only thing I can’t explain is the dirt.” Another grim smile, another glance at her watch. “Thank you for listening. Please don’t tell anyone I have seen you. If you come to my office, if Agent Garson insists we meet, all you will hear is what you’ve already read in the official report.” She tucked the purse under her arm. “By the way, Agent Garson knows the truth, too.”

  Mulder rose as she left without looking back, and stayed on his feet.

  A high-speed drum covered with coarse sandpaper.

  “Scully—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “But you saw—”

  “I saw the pictures, yes. I read the report, yes. But given the time frame we’re working with, unless Paulie’s father and sister are incredibly off-base with their sense of timing, there’s no way
it could happen like that.”

  He looked down at her, pale under the table light. “It happened, Scully. It happened.”

  She leaned toward him, arms resting on the table. “Then explain it to me. Explain how someone could assemble an apparatus of that size, bring it down to the river without being seen, put the boy in it, kill him, take him out, and get away. Again, without anybody seeing a thing.”

  “The girl—”

  “Saw nothing we can substantiate. Ghosts, Mulder. She said she saw ghosts.”

  “And whispers,” he reminded her. “She also said she heard whispers.”

  Scully slumped back and shook her head. “What does it mean? I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either.” He yanked open the drapes, turned off the lights, and dropped into the chair opposite her. “But so far, everyone who’s talked to us has—” He stopped, closed his eyes briefly, then moved to the bed and stared for a moment at the telephone on the night table.

  “Mulder?”

  “Konochine,” he said, and picked up the receiver. “Why do we keep bumping into the Konochine?”

  “While you’re at it,” she said. “Give Garson a call and find out why he’s so reluctant to tell us the truth.”

  Donna looked helplessly at the two dozen cartons stacked in her spare room. They were all ready for shipping, or for hand delivery to area shops. A permanent cold seemed to have attached itself to her spine, to her stomach. She couldn’t stop shaking. She had denied cheating anyone, of course, and had even shown him the ledger to prove it. But it had been close. There had been no apology, only a lingering warning look before he left, slamming the door as he went.

  She had to get out.

  All the potential money in this room wasn’t going to do her any good if she wasn’t around to spend it.

  She looked at her watch. If she hurried, she could clean out the bank account, be packed, and be out of this godforsaken state before midnight. Leave everything behind. It didn’t matter. The house, her clothes…none of it mattered. Just take the money and get out.