Whirlwind

by Charles L. Grant

  But first she would have to make a phone call. She couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.

  Garson wasn’t in his office, and no one there knew where he could be found. The secretary thought he might be at the ME’s office.

  The second call was to information.

  When the third was finished, Mulder replaced the receiver and began to wonder.

  “What?” Scully asked.

  “According to his sister, Paulie picked up a piece of jewelry from one of the local shops. A silver pendant of some kind.” Mulder looked up. “She thinks it was Konochine.”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t remember seeing it as being with his effects.”

  “Such as they were,” she reminded him.

  “Whatever. It wasn’t there.” He rose, and paced until Scully’s warning groan put him back in his chair. “That woman, the one who handles the crafts.”

  She flipped open a notebook, paged through it, and said, “Falkner.”

  “You want to take a ride?”

  “Mulder—”

  “The connection, Scully. You can’t deny we have a connection.”

  The rental car had been delivered, and the clerk at the front desk gave him a map and directions to the address he had found in the telephone book. The parking lot was on the north side of the Inn, through a gated entry in the side wall. As he slipped behind the wheel, Mulder noted that the car seemed to have every gadget known to Detroit, except perhaps an orbital trajectory tracking system.

  It took him a few seconds to get oriented, and a few seconds more before he convinced himself that he wasn’t charging headlong into foolishness. The how of the murders was still beyond him, in spite of Dr. Rios’s description. Concentrate on the who and the why, however, and the how would come wagging its tail behind them.

  He hoped.

  As he pulled out onto the street and headed north, Scully inhaled quickly.

  “What?”

  They passed a series of four small stores in a common one-story building. A man stood in front of one of them, not bothering to conceal his interest in the car.

  “Last night,” she said. “I didn’t see him clearly, but there was a man at the gate, watching me.”

  He checked the rearview mirror.

  The man, face hidden by the bill of his cap, still watched.

  There was no flip of a mental coin. Mulder swung the wheel around, made a U-turn, made another to pull alongside the stores.

  The man hadn’t moved.

  Scully lowered her window. “Do you want something?” she asked calmly.

  Leon Ciola swaggered over and leaned down. “You the feds?”

  With one hand still on the wheel, Mulder leaned over, curious about the fine scars that swept across the man’s face. “Special Agent Mulder, Special Agent Scully. Who are you?”

  “Leon Ciola.”

  “You’ve been watching us. Why?”

  Ciola spread his arms wide in a mocking bow, smiling impudently. “Always like to know who’s in town, amigos, that’s all. It’s very dull around here, you know? Not much to do. The sun’s too hot. Not much work for a man like me.”

  “What is a man like you?” Scully said.

  “Ex-con. They didn’t tell you that?”

  No, Mulder thought; there’s a lot they haven’t told us.

  Then he spotted a faint racial resemblance to Nando Quintodo. “You’re from the Mesa?”

  Ciola’s smile didn’t falter. “Very good, amigo. Most people think I look Apache.” Fingers fluttered across his face. “The scars. They make me look mean.”

  “Are you?”

  The smile vanished. “I’m a son of a bitch, Agent Mulder. A good thing to know.”

  He’s not bragging, Mulder thought; he’s not warning, either.

  Ciola glanced up and down the street, then placed a hand on the window well. “Sheriff Sparrow will tell you that I have killed a man. It’s true. Maybe more, who knows? He’ll tell you, when he gets around to it, that I probably killed those stupid tourists. I didn’t, Agent Mulder. I have more important things to do.”

  He tipped his cap to Scully and backed away, interview over.

  Mulder nodded to him, straightened, and pulled slowly away from the curb. The man chilled him. What chilled him more, however, was the fact that Sparrow hadn’t said a word about him. An obvious suspect, a self-confessed killer ex-con, and the sheriff had, conveniently or otherwise, kept Ciola’s name to himself.

  “Scully, do you get the feeling we’ve dropped down the rabbit hole?”

  She didn’t answer.

  A glance at her profile showed him lips so taut they were bloodless.

  He didn’t question her. Something about the man, something he hadn’t caught, struck a nerve. Sooner or later, she would tell him what it was. As it was, he had to deal with street signs he could barely read because they were too small, and the vehicles impatiently lining up behind him because he was driving slow enough to try to read the damn signs.

  The sun didn’t help.

  It flared off everything, and bleached that which wasn’t already bleached.

  Everywhere there were signs of a town struggling to find the right way to grow—obviously new shops, shops that had gone out of business, houses and buildings in varying stages of construction or repair. It was either very exciting to live here now, or very frightening.

  “There,” Scully said.

  He turned left, toward the river, and found himself on a street where lots were large and vacant, spotted only once in a while by small, one-story houses in either brick or fake adobe. A drab place, made more so by the gardens and large bushes flowering violent colors. No toys in the driveways. The few cars at the curbs seemed abandoned.

  He parked in front of a ranch house whose front window was buried by a tangled screen of roses. A Cherokee parked in the pitted drive faced the street. As they got out, he saw a suitcase by the driver’s door.

  “Somebody’s going on vacation.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, nodding toward the two other suitcases sitting on the stoop. “Not unless she’s planning to stay away for six months.”

  He knocked on the screen door.

  No one answered.

  He knocked again, and the inner door was opened by a young woman with a briefcase in one hand.

  “I don’t want any,” she said.

  Scully held up her ID. “Special Agent Scully, Special Agent Mulder, FBI. Are you Donna Falkner?”

  It didn’t take any special instinct to realize the woman was afraid. Mulder opened the screen door carefully and said, “We’d just like to talk to you, Ms. Falkner. It won’t take a minute, and then you can take your trip.”

  “How did you know that?” Donna demanded, her voice pitched high enough to crack. Then she followed Mulder’s gesture toward the suitcases. “Oh.”

  “Just a few minutes,” Scully assured her.

  The woman’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, what the hell, why not. How much worse can it get?”

  THIRTEEN

  The air conditioning had been shut off. The room was stifling. The woman hasn’t left yet, Mulder thought, and already the house feels deserted.

  Donna grabbed a ladder-back chair from in front of a small desk and turned it around. When she sat, shoulders still slumped, she held the briefcase in her lap, looking as if she wanted to hold it against her chest. Scully took a seat on a two-cushion couch, pen and notebook in hand; Mulder remained standing, leaning a shoulder against the wall just inside the room’s entry.

  It kept him in partial shadow; it kept the woman in full light.

  “So,” she said resignedly. “What do you want to know?”

  “The Konochine,” Mulder told her, and saw her gaze dart in his direction.

  “What about them?”

  “You sell their jewelry,” Scully said, shifting the woman’s attention back the other way. “We were told they didn’t like the outside world very much.”

&
nbsp; “Hardly at all,” Donna answered. Her shoulders rose a little. “I got chased off the res once, back before I knew what I was doing.” She shifted the briefcase to the floor beside her. “See, they’re not the only Indians I deal with, but they give me the most trouble. Or did, anyway. There’s this man—”

  “Nick Lanaya?” Mulder said.

  “Yeah. He’s one of the out-and-backers. You know, got out, came back? Well, we met at a party once, got to talking—he’s very easy to talk to, kind of like a priest, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he knew his people needed money, and after he asked around, he knew I’d be able to get them a fair price for the work.”

  Scully moved a hand to draw her attention again. “How mad are the ones who don’t want outside contact?”

  Donna frowned, the understanding of what Scully meant slow in arriving. “Oh. Oh! Hey, not that mad. God, no. You think they killed those poor people?” She dismissed the notion with a wave. “Jesus, no. They talk a lot, yell a lot, but Nick just yells right back. He’s—” She stopped, frozen, as though something had just occurred to her. “Tell you, though, the guy you should be talking to is Leon Ciola.”

  “We’ve met,” Mulder said dryly.

  “You’re kidding.” Her right hand drifted down to brush at the case. “You know he was in the state pen, up by Santa Fe? Killed a man in a bar fight.” Her left hand draw a line across her throat. Slowly. “Nearly cut his head off. I don’t know how he got out. A good lawyer, I guess.”

  “Where are you going?” Scully asked.

  “Vacation,” Donna replied instantly.

  “You take more clothes than Scully,” Mulder said with a laugh.

  “I’ll be away for a while.”

  “Who takes care of the business? Nick?”

  She shrugged. “Mostly, yeah.”

  Scully closed her notebook. “You have no control over what you receive from the Mesa? Or who buys them retail?”

  “Nope. Nick chooses the pieces, I choose the shops. After that, it’s the guy who has the most money.”

  Mulder pushed away from the wall. “What if somebody who didn’t know any better just drove onto the reservation?”

  “Nothing.” Donna retrieved her case. “No one would talk to them, probably. Sooner or later, they’d get the hint and leave.”

  “And if they didn’t?”

  “You mean like me?” She laughed; it was false. “I’m pushy, Agent Mulder. I pushed too far. Chasing is all that would happen, believe me.” She stood and looked none too subtly at the door. “I still say you should check Ciola. He has a knife and…” She shuddered for effect.

  Scully rose as well. “Thank you, Ms. Falkner. We appreciate the time.”

  “No problem.” She led them to the stoop. “If you don’t mind, though, I have a plane to catch, okay?”

  Mulder thanked her again, asked her to call Agent Garson if there was anything else she thought of before she left, and got behind the wheel, cursing himself soundly for forgetting to leave the windows down.

  The sun out there, and an oven in here. He set the air conditioning to high and hurry up about it and drove off, taking his time, while Scully watched Donna Falkner in the outside mirror. When they turned the corner, Scully said, “She relaxed very quickly.”

  “Yeah. Because we didn’t ask her about what she thought we would.”

  “Which was?”

  “Scully, if I knew that, I would have asked her.”

  She grunted disbelief; he knew what she was thinking. There were times when asking questions got you answers, but not necessarily when you wanted them. There were times when it was better to spin a web and see who tried to break free.

  Donna was breaking free.

  Once she got on that plane, New Mexico would never see her again.

  Scully looked over. “How are you going to stop her?”

  He gestured toward the backseat, asking her to grab his denim jacket. When she did, his portable phone fell out of the inside pocket.

  “Garson?” she said.

  “Material witness to an active investigation.”

  “But she isn’t, Mulder.”

  “No, maybe not. But he can delay her long enough to miss her flight. Maybe discourage her enough to wait until tomorrow.”

  She called, discovered Garson couldn’t be reached, and demanded to speak to an agent on duty. After convincing him they weren’t kidding about Falkner, she asked where the Constella van was being held.

  “Right here,” she said when she hung up. “A lot behind a sheriff’s substation.”

  “Why do you want to see it?”

  “You wanted to see Ann Hatch, and look what it got us. I want to see that van.”

  “And what do you mean, I take too many clothes when I go on a trip?”

  The substation was little more than a double-wide on cinder blocks, only a sign on the door announcing its function. The parking area in front was only big enough for four vehicles, and the tree that cast a weak shade over the building looked about ready to collapse at any second. Beyond the tree was another lot, fenced in with chain-link and topped with concertina wire. Within were a handful of cars, a pickup, and a van.

  Sheriff Sparrow was outside waiting when Mulder pulled in off the street.

  “Garson works fast,” Scully said when they stopped.

  “Your tax dollars at work.”

  Sparrow waved them over to a padlocked gate in the fence. “Looking for anything in particular?” he asked as the gate swung free and they walked in.

  “You never know,” Mulder told him.

  The van was at the back, dusty enough to ward off the sun. Mulder shaded his eyes and looked through the side and front windows, then asked Sparrow for the key. through the side and front windows, then asked Sparrow for the key.

  “What for?”

  “To get inside.” He rapped a knuckle against the sliding side door. “You never know.”

  Sparrow grumbled, complained that he’d left the keys inside, and headed back to the trailer.

  “Mulder?”

  She was on the passenger side, and he took his time joining her. The heat was brutal, worse than the day before, and he understood now why life was so deliberate in this part of the world. Anything faster than a crawl on a day like today meant sure heatstroke, and a tub packed in ice.

  “So?”

  She pointed to the side.

  He looked and saw the dust; then he saw what lay under the dust.

  He used a palm to wipe the metal clean, and yelped when the heat scorched him. “Damn!” He shook his hand, blew on it, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Be careful,” she said. “It’s hot.” When he gave her a look, she only shrugged and added, “Your tax dollars at work.”

  There were two large tinted windows, one in the sliding door, the other at the back. He shook the handkerchief out, then folded it in quarters to form a makeshift dusting pad. Hunkering down, balancing on his toes, he swiped at the dust and dirt first, to knock off what he could before he started rubbing.

  “What the hell you looking for?” Sparrow said, tossing the keys to Scully.

  “This was a rental,” Mulder said without looking up.

  “Yep. So?”

  “New, then, right?”

  “Probably.” The sheriff leaned over him, squinting at the panel. “So?”

  “So I guess Mr. Constella wasn’t much of a driver.”

  He didn’t have to rub. When the area was clear, he rose and took a step back, waiting for Sparrow to comment. He was also waiting to hear why the man hadn’t noticed it days ago. Or, if he had, why he hadn’t said anything.

  From the window to the bottom of the frame, the paint had been scraped off, right down to bare metal. The dust had been thick, the van having sat here for more than a week in the sheriff’s custody. A glint of that bare metal was what had caught Scully’s attention.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Sparrow hitched his belt. “Run up against a sto
ne wall, boulder, something like that, looks like.”

  “I don’t think so.” Mulder ran a finger lightly over the surface. “No appreciable indentation, so there was no real collision.”

  Scully stepped in front of them and peered at it closely, shifted and sighted along the side to the rear bumper. “If there was, it wouldn’t be in just this one place.” When she straightened, she leaned close to the window. Touched it with a forefinger. Took the handkerchief and wiped the glass clean. “Scrapes here, too.”

  “Road dirt,” Sparrow said. “You get it all the time out here, dust and all, going the speeds you do.”

  She ignored him for the moment, using the finger to trace the damage’s outline, right to the strip above the window. “Whatever it was, it was big. Man-high, at least.”

  “Like I said, a boulder.”

  “Come on, Sheriff,” Mulder said, having had enough of his forced ignorance. “Scully’s right. A collision would have produced damage wider than this, and by the force of it, at the least this window would have been cracked, if not smashed.”

  He scratched under his jaw, and leaned close again.

  “Agent Mulder, this is—”

  “Do you have a magnifying glass?”

  He heard the man snort his disgust, but the expected argument didn’t happen. Sparrow trudged away, muttering about how the damn feds think they know everything, just loudly enough.

  Scully unlocked the passenger door and stood back to let the heat out. Then she climbed in and through the two front seats to the back. Mulder couldn’t see her until she rapped on the window and beckoned.

  He knelt on the passenger seat and leaned over the top. The two rows of bench seats had been taken out, leaving the holding rails behind. The floor and walls were covered with alternating swatches of vivid purple and dull brown carpeting.

  “This is a love nest?” he said, wincing at the garish combination.

  “Love is blind, Mulder.” She was on her knees, poking at a loose section of carpet with her pen.

  “In here it would have to be.”

  “Got it.”

  She rocked back on her heels and held up the pen. Dangling from it was a length of silver chain. She followed when Mulder backed out, and dropped the chain into his palm. “That’s not a store chain. It’s handmade.” She prodded it with the pen, shifting it as he watched. “I’ll bet it’s not silver-plated, either.”