The Bone Man

by Vicki Stiefel

  I just wanted to go home. Or, at least, to a warm bed where I could sleep for a week.

  Hank reappeared. He slid his arm around my waist, peered down at me, all serious business.

  “What?” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Hon, tell us again about last night and the stairway and Dumb Dick.”

  “Oh, why not!” I repeated the whole thing, blow by blow. Yawn. I caught Aric listening, too.

  When I finished, Hank turned to the rangers. “Another canyon staircase around here?”

  They shook their heads, looked down and left, a perfect “tell” that something was off. Maybe they thought I’d murdered Dumb Dick in cold blood. That I hadn’t been pursued.

  “Hank,” I said. “He was after me. I know the sign says not to climb the stairs, but I had to get away. He was shooting at me. You’ll find the bullets and . . .”

  My voice trailed off. Now everyone was looking weird.

  “People!” I shouted. “I am, after all, a psychologist. What the hell is wrong?”

  The wind that had been howling so furiously, quieted. I heard canyon noises. Scurrying and bird chatter and pebbles tumbling to the canyon floor.

  Aric held out his hand. “Come. I’ll show you.”

  I took it. “Hank?”

  “Let Aric take you. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Aric held my left hand, and we walked around the large boulder that hid the entrance to the staircase.

  Impossible.

  I stared at a jumble of rock, and the vague memory of a stairway cut into the rock. Steps had crumbled. Many no longer existed. Others were impossibly narrow and smooth, and still others gaped or were worn to near nothingness. At the bottom of the stairway, near where we stood, a chaos of rocks and boulders, so that the base of the stairway was pretty much impossible to reach.

  The stairway before me could not be climbed.

  I turned to Aric. “This isn’t it.”

  He nodded. “It is, Tally.”

  I waved my hand. “I couldn’t climb this in a million years. No one could. There’s nothing to climb!”

  He looked at the ground. “I know.”

  I threw back my shoulders. “Obviously there’s another stairway around here, one that’s well defined and easy to climb.”

  “There isn’t, Tally.” He raised his hand to the stair. “This is the only one nearby. This is where we found Dumb Dick.”

  I stormed back around the boulder. The two rangers and Hank stood there wearing expressions of expectation. Hank’s eyebrows inched up. “Well, hon?”

  “Don’t ‘hon’ me. Where’s the frickin’ stairway I climbed?” I first looked at Hank, who shook his head, shuffled his feet. I walked over to the rangers. “Well?”

  “Um, ma’am,” the man said. “You’ve obviously had a long and terrible night. We understand. We do.” He tried to smile.

  “Understand what? I climbed the stairway to get away from Dumb Dick. I got halfway up. I know because of the view.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the woman ranger.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “Look. Let me explain again. He was chasing me, and I felt along the wall, and then I came to the bottom of the stair. I began to climb. The steps were wide. Wider than four feet, I’d say, and well defined. Well cut, you know. They were deep enough, too, that I didn’t feel tippy. I have lousy balance. So just to make everyone happy, please show me the other stairway, okay? I assume it’s farther away from here, but in the dark, distances can be strange.”

  “That’s true about distances.” The woman ranger dug her hands into her back pockets. She looked from me to Hank to Aric to the other ranger, then back to me. “Sure. I’d be happy to do it, okay?”

  “Thank you.” I began to walk beside her. “They just think I couldn’t have made it so far or something. Sure, I was beat and terrified, but the adrenaline was pumping like mad.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Except we found the dead man at the bottom of the stairway we were just—”

  “Humor me,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  We headed across the canyon floor.

  “Wait, please,” I said. “I didn’t cross the canyon.”

  She turned to me, her face sad. “Look, ma’am, you’ve had an ordeal.” Her voice had a Southern lilt that fell softly on the ear.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It was dark.”

  “Yes, but the moon was out. It was brighter than you think.”

  She tilted her broad-brimmed hat back. “Ma’am, I don’t know how else to say it kindly. It’s either where we’re going, across the canyon, way over there. Or way down the canyon, there.” She pointed, and I knew I hadn’t traveled anywhere near the distances she was showing me.

  “But—”

  “Or it’s the stairway we just showed you. You couldn’t’ve reached anything else. I am sorry, but those are the facts. Even the stairway across the canyon isn’t . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  The ranger’s unlined, sunkissed face looked genuinely sad. Squint lines fanned from her green eyes, and freckles dusted her nose and cheeks. Most of all, she wore truth on her face. She didn’t look down or away or anywhere but right at me.

  “So, that’s the staircase,” I said, pointing back to where we’d just come from.

  She nodded. “That’s it. Right where we found the man you call Dumb Dick.” She held out her hand. “C’mon. Let’s walk back and join the guys. We’re freakin’ ’em out.”

  I took her warm, leathery hand in mine. “You’re a good person. Your name?”

  “They call me Gimp because, well, I limp. I have a lousy foot.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  She smiled.

  On the walk back to the tunnel, I tried not to think about the stairway or how I’d climbed it or the looks I was getting from the other ranger and Hank and Aric.

  Gimp held my hand, and, yes, she did walk with a limp.

  Her strength seemed to move from our clasped hands up my arm and into my heart. I felt better. I looked at her—with her confident, limping stride, straight shoulders and flushed cheeks—and saw a face I’d seen before . . . in my dreams or that waking dream or whatever last night’s vision had been.

  She must have felt me staring, because she looked straight at me and smiled. The sun was in that smile.

  “I’m, um, uncomfortable calling you Gimp. What’s your given name?”

  “Doesn’t matter. ‘Gimp’ reminds me of someone I’m fond of. Use it, please.”

  “Of course.”

  “How ’bout you stay at my apartment today?” she said. “Get some rest. We need to talk.”

  I had the strangest feeling that she knew things. Things I needed to understand. “Yes. Okay. I’d love a place to lie down.”

  Back at the tunnel, we examined the box of potsherds, which was about the size of a fresh fruit box used at farm stands.

  “I’ve seen no stolen pots,” Aric said. “None that are whole.”

  Hank paced the breadth of the tunnel. “No.”

  With gloved hands, Aric and Hank lifted the sealed wooden box.

  Gimp walked over, her hands also gloved. “I figure you don’t want to open it, right?”

  “Not a good idea,” Aric said. “We might be able to get some prints, some trace of something off the outside of the box.”

  Gimp nodded. “Shake it a little.”

  Hank and Aric gently shook the box as the two rangers and I watched. It made a soft, rattling sound.

  “I wonder,” I said. “Could it be more potsherds? Unwrapped? I don’t get it at all.”

  They carefully replaced the box on the floor of the tunnel. Aric pushed a chaw into his cheek. “Maybe. Boxes aren’t shaped right for a whole pot. Too small.”

  “So why would they want a bunch of shards?” I said, more to myself than anyone. “I’ve seen a few on eBay. What does it give them? They’re not that valuable.”

  Hank picked up the flashlight
and shined it on the box. “You see where it’s headed, Tal?”

  I leaned forward and read the address. “Wow. Huh. Salem, Massachusetts. What goes around . . .”

  “Yup,” Hank said.

  I pulled Hank aside, into a darker recess of the tunnel. “I wanted to ask . . . any word or sign of Niall and his daughter?”

  He brushed my lips with his. “Leave it to you to ask.”

  “Isn’t everyone asking?”

  He pressed me closer. “Some rangers found ’em just a little while ago, hon. While we were out walking to the stair.”

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.

  “They’re dead, aren’t they?” I said. “Just like Didi and Delphine and . . .” I didn’t need to open my eyes to feel the sorrow and kindness in Hank Cunningham. He hugged me tight.

  “We did our best, babe. They were dead long before the five o’clock deadline.”

  I melted into him, and we held each other, knowing that we both were feeling the horror of the world and glad we had each other.

  “It’s probably time to go home,” he said.

  “It is.”

  I refused to leave at that instant, and so we were right back to reality. We had a fight. Not a big one, but I sure didn’t need it, and I bet Hank didn’t either.

  I insisted on spending that day at Chaco. He wanted out of there right away. Gimp offered to drive me to Albuquerque, but Hank would hear none of it, so he and Aric hung out somewhere, while Gimp took me to her apartment in the housing area where most of the rangers lived.

  The one-story apartment had a wooden porch and was made of stucco. Inside, it felt like any other apartment just about anywhere on the planet. It was clean and plain, with photos of Gimp’s family as decoration. I slid beneath the clean, white sheets. Heaven. I didn’t dream. Or, if I did, I had no memory of it when I awakened.

  I sat up in the bed, rubbed my eyes. Every damned part of my body ached, from my skin right down to my core. I had cuts and bruises everywhere. My knee throbbed, and so did my head. My face . . . oh, boy—I didn’t even want to go there. All I wanted to do was sleep some more.

  Instead, I fluffed the pillow and sat up in bed. I smiled when I saw the bottle of ibuprofen on the small wicker table beside the bed. I was sure it was courtesy of Hank. It would help, for sure.

  I shook three tablets into my hand, then poured some water from the white ceramic pitcher that also sat on the end table. They went down easy. Funny, it felt good to do small things, like pouring water and plumping a pillow. It felt good to live. I should pay attention more often.

  I’d been damaged, outside and in.

  But maybe not my heart. Maybe not that. Yes, it felt bruised, but not broken.

  I hunkered under the soft down comforter that was just light enough on my aches and pains to keep me warm. My eyes slowly shut, and I pictured a small red boat I’d owned as a kid back in Maine. The paint was flaking and there was a hole—a big one—in the bottom. I’d found the boat near our home on the Surry Road and asked my dad if he’d fix it for me. He said I was nuts, that it wasn’t worth fixing, but he did it anyway, and he and I used to row in the boat out to the big rock where he’d pretend to fish and I’d read my book.

  “Ready for our walk?”

  I jumped. “Gimp?”

  “Yupadoodle.” She leaned in the doorway, one foot inside, and one out.

  “I think I need to sleep more.”

  “I go on duty in an hour. We don’t have much time. Let’s go.”

  “How about a rain check, huh?”

  She burst out laughing. “I’ll meet you outside in five minutes.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  She handed me a chilled water bottle, and we strode across the housing area, then hopped into the Jeep she’d left running.

  The sun from the sunroof felt good, but Gimp stuck a ball cap on my head.

  “No sunstroke here,” she said.

  I snugged it on. “Gotcha.”

  With one hand, she fished in the cooler on the floor behind the seat.

  “I can do that,” I said.

  “All set.” She handed me a Diet Coke. “Figured you needed that to wake up.”

  “You got that right.” I popped the top and took a long swig. “Thank you, Gimp!”

  “Pleasure.”

  She shifted gears, and the Jeep took off, thumping and bumping over the chip-seal road.

  “I’m surprised the road’s not dirt,” I said.

  “Everyone is.” She laughed.

  The golden sun fingered the canyon with jeweled beauty. The red and yellow rock took on even deeper hues.

  “This is the quick tour,” she said.

  I looked at everything, drank it in as the best nourishment in the world.

  She pointed with her right hand. “That’s Una Vida.”

  I nodded.

  Minutes later, as we drove down the canyon she pointed out Hungo Pavi and then . . .

  “Chetro Ketl,” I said. “Yes?”

  “Yes. And there,” she said. “Pueblo Bonito. Chaco’s crown jewel. Can’t you see it filled with people?”

  And suddenly it was dark, and I again saw a hive of activity, and the man with the carving and the woman with the crutch and . . .

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She parked the Jeep. “C’mon.”

  We walked inside Pueblo Bonito, down a small stair, and onto the floor of the great house.

  “I’d love to see the six-toed petroglyph,” I said. “It’s in Bonito, right?”

  She shoved her hands into her back pockets. “Is . . . was. We had to backfill it. Someone vandalized it. You can’t see it anymore.”

  “How sad.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Happens. Let’s sit.”

  We sat on a floor of stone surrounded by four circular kivas excavated to about four or five feet down. Grasses, now brown with winter, grew on the bottom.

  The stone was chilly on my bum, but it reminded me that I was alive.

  “How long have you been at Chaco?” I asked.

  “Forever.”

  “It’s a good place, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “As long as we can keep the evil at bay. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Pardon?”

  She handed me a granola bar and unwrapped one for herself. “You were meant to come here, to protect Chaco.”

  I looked around at the brown clumps of grasses, the fine stonework, the round kivas, and raised walls of Pueblo Bonito.

  “Chaco doesn’t need me to protect it,” I said. “Not that I believe I could.”

  She finished the bar, rolled the paper, and tucked it into her pocket. She took a deep swig of virulent pink Gatorade. “I don’t say I understand it. I just know it to be true.”

  I thought of the many deaths—good people and bad. Odd how I felt no further along in learning who’d killed Didi and Delphine. “Sounds like a lot of woo woo to me.”

  She grinned. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  And then Gimp sat very still. The wind, which had been our companion all day, quieted. She moved to sit cross-legged, closed her eyes, and rested her hands, palms up, on her knees.

  The sky darkened, not night, but softer, as if the world were wearing a chiffon party dress.

  And she transformed into the Chaco girl I’d seen the previous evening, the one with the crutch and the warrior lover. Gimp’s hair darkened from blond to black. Her eyes tilted upward and her figure slimmed to fragile and young. Her hands shrank to delicate, and a dull henna polish coated her nails.

  Her left ring finger was bound with a bright gold ring, braided and inlaid with turquoise and jet. And resting on her right palm sat the carving done by the young man, the one of the mountain lion. Or was it? The carving was the same, yet different, more . . . detailed.

  My breath came shallow and fast. Obviously I was hallucinating. Maybe she’d spiked my water or soda. Sure. Or maybe it was a real vision, like the sta
irway.

  But I didn’t believe in visions.

  We were sitting so close. I leaned closer to see better, and she said with her mind, Take it.

  I lifted the fetish from her hand.

  The carving was heavy and rough and hard. It glittered, and its turquoise eyes seemed to move, to watch me. On its back bound with sinew was a black arrowhead, which looked hand flint-knapped, and random shell heishi. A nugget of turquoise, small and crude and a deep blue, had a hole in the middle, through which passed the sinew.

  The lion’s mouth yawned, but it was all interpretive, really. The fetish had just a hint of a form, with the tail bent over its back. And someone—the young man?—had rubbed a rust-colored substance, like clay, on the body. Part of a ritual, maybe.

  The fetish warmed my hand. It felt secure. I felt secure. And strong. Powerful. I wrapped my fingers around it. The arrowhead stung as it pierced my flesh, but I didn’t mind. I rubbed my fist against my cheek.

  Was this the blood fetish? The one Didi had meant by the words written with her own blood? The one demanded by the man on the Vineyard? Was I really seeing It?

  “Hey there, Tally,” said the voice.

  I was leaning on my arms, which were folded across my knees. I looked to the left. “Gimp?

  “Where you been?” She was smiling, and she was blond and sturdy and wore her tan ranger hat.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered slowly. “Things seem clearer here, don’t they?”

  “Mostly.” She offered me a hand up, and I took it.

  “I’m weaker than I thought.” I chuckled.

  “Oh, but you’re not.”

  I clutched the fetish tight in my hand as we walked back to the Jeep. I knew I couldn’t take it with me, but I wanted to hold it for a little while.

  “This is very weird,” I said. “I don’t ordinarily talk to people. I’m pretty closed. But I’m talking to you.”

  She brushed her hat against her thigh. “People say that I’m a good, well, I’d guess you’d say sounding board. Or somthin’.” She smiled. “Haven’t we known each other for always?”

  We climbed into the Jeep.

  I smiled back. “Maybe we have. I’ve learned things.”

  “Yeah?” Off we went.