The Bone Man (23 page)

I smiled and walked backward out of there but fast.

Out back, I caught my breath. I wasn’t comfortable being around all those people. They made me nervous. I didn’t know why. Maybe I just needed some peace and quiet to think, not a bunch of folks out jiving it up in the New Mexico wilderness.

The late afternoon breeze felt good on my face. I walked down a path soft with pine needles and paused to look over the hill at the lake below. What a view! The lake’s crystalline beauty enthralled me—so still and quiet and deep. No ripples. Smooth and soft.

Sadly, it provided no answers about who had killed my friends or Aric’s location or any of the things foremost in my mind.

Reality called. I headed back up the path.

Really, things were in a pickle.

I had no clue where Aric was. Didn’t know what Hank was doing. Or who’d shot those bullets into our hotel room. I might have gotten rabies from Coyote. Natalie was dead. If I continued my litany, I might as well just shoot
myself. Things were grim, and, worse, I saw no end on the horizon.

So what the hell was going on?

I rubbed my hands up and down my arms to stop the chill that crept into my bones.

Why was that skull so important? At least three lives had already been lost. I couldn’t make sense of it. I walked onward. Minutes later, something just off the path caught my eye.

I walked over to the path’s edge. Before me lay acres of pine. I hesitated, then left the path. There, beneath a fallen pine bow, something shined white. I crouched down, and with a stick I pushed some of the earth and needles away.

A shed antler. A small one, from a young deer. Lovely. Nature was incomparable. Beside it sat a rock shaped like a faceted heart in the colors of red and ochre and green. It glittered in the blue-sky day. The rock just fit my hand, and its sharp edges dug into my palm. It was worth taking. Its beauty reminded me of the Southwest. I slid the rock into my jacket pocket and the small antler into the opposite one. Treasures. My favorite kind. I stood, turned, and slammed into a burly oldster smelling of booze and sweat.

“Pardon me.” I went to sidestep around him.

He smiled and matched my step.

I wasn’t amused. “Don’t,” I said. “It’s annoying.”

He laughed, and his hands slid onto my upper arms. He squeezed, and pulled me toward him.

I pushed. And instantly knew he was no oldster, but some guy made up to look geriatric. I looked toward the lodge. I’d walked farther than I’d realized. “What’s your problem?”

“Now?” he said. “None. You’re coming with me.”

He had that flat, Minnesota-Scandinavian accent, and a vision of
Fargo
and the wood chipper bounced into my head. “My ass I’m coming with you.”

“The baby in my pocket says you are.”

“Screw the baby.”

He jerked his head back. “Do I look stupid?”

What a great opening. He still held my upper arms tight enough so that I had little mobility. I could knee him, but I wasn’t close enough. “Sad to say, yes.”

He threatened to backhand me across the face. “Bitch.”

I bent my head, tried to reach his hand and bite it. No luck.
Dammit
.

He laughed.

“Screw you,” I said.

“You’ll get your chance.”

“In your dreams.” I squirmed to get away, and he laughed harder. He stood there like a chunk of petrified wood until I exhausted myself. That was when I recognized him. He was the fake cop who’d come to pick me up in Zuni. Then he’d been wearing a hat and a uniform and a mustache.

He began to drag me down the path, away from the lodge. I squirmed some more, but I had trouble finding purchase. I tried to swing my leg around to kick him in the balls. All I did was fall flat on my back. He hauled me back up again and dragged me forward.

“Don’t fuckin’ do that again,” he said.

“Or what, you’re going to kill me? Looks like you have that in mind anyway.”

“You don’t know shit, lady.”

“I know you’re an asshole.”

He backhanded me. My neck snapped, and for a moment I was stunned as blood filled my mouth. Bastard. I spit at him. Bull’s-eye, right on his shirt.

He raised the back of his hand again.

Painful as it was, I smiled. “Go for it, asshole.”

His hand squeezed into a fist he raised high in the air.

I felt myself cringe, forced my body to relax. “Like I said . . .”

He punched me in the face.

My ears rang, and dizziness nauseated me. I twirled, stumbled, and became a bouncing boomerang from his hold on my wrist. I spit blood, then more, then began to heave.

The world slowly stopped spinning and my panting sounded loud in my ears. The guy would kill me or turn me over to people who would. “Why?” I mumbled. Already my face had started to swell.

He pulled me to my feet, and we walked forward, and that’s when I realized he’d released his death grip on my upper arms. My head pounded with each step, and my vision blurred.

Yeah, he’d kill me. I slid my free hand into my jacket pocket as we bumbled along the trail. I grabbed the heart-shaped rock. My right hand. Not my best or strongest.

If I went for it and messed up, I’d be in for a beating. I’d never been punched in the face before. I shook. That fist pounding into my face had been shocking. It was fast and furious and painful.

I tightened my hand on the rock.
Okay. Here goes
.

I faked a stumble, fell to my knees. Pissed him off, as I knew it would, and he began yelling at me. I slid the rock out of my pocket.

“You stupid bitch.” He leaned down, his splayed fingers with their black, broken nails, reached to pull me up. “We’re gonna fuckin’ use you up.”

I whammed him in the face with the rock. That feeling sickened me, but I made sure I followed through on the swing.

“Fuck!” His hand went to his face, and blood gushed between his fingers as he stumbled backward.

Just as he righted himself, I leapt up, pivoted, and slammed the rock into his temple, which was softer and even more horrible. He staggered. Blood streamed down the right side of his face into his stubbled jaw. He blinked over and over. He growled, a mixture of pain and fury.

I ran, clutching the rock, not letting go, out of the
woods to the path and up the hillside. I slipped on pine needles, stumbled onto my knees. I stretched out my arms to catch myself, but I couldn’t. I landed on soft earth and hard rock.

Pain shot into my knees and elbows, and my eyes watered. Fuzzy vision, woozy.
Shit
.

I pushed myself up just as I heard him, close, behind me, there, breathing, panting. Closer.

I lurched to my feet, and something brushed my long curly hair. I bolted, stumbled, caught a branch to steady myself, and ran on.

“Fuck!” came from behind. “Arrhhhh.” A crash, rolling.

I looked back, and he’d fallen, was rolling, and I almost went to help him. I shook my head. No way.

I ran uphill toward the lodge. “Help! Help!”

“What!” came the voice up ahead.

“I’m being attacked!”

“Coming!”

On the crest. There. A middle-aged man and several oldsters, branches in raised hands. I laughed, and just then . . .

My feet flew out from under me, the rock bounced away, and my head snapped back from the tug on my hair.

A hairy fist shot toward me, but stopped midair with the boom of a gunshot.

I tumbled backward—still attached to my pursuer, who rolled over and over down the hill.

I reached for roots, branches, anything to hold on to that would stop us. Nothing worked.

“Let go!” I shrieked.

Faster and faster, and dirt and needles billowed around me. I had to stop us. I flailed my arms, dug in my feet, except nothing worked. In my ears, screams and hollers and shrieks.

I forced my legs apart, and on my belly, pretended I could run uphill. I pedaled my legs, digging my feet into
the slippery, pine-needled soil as I swam the breast stroke, all trying to stop our roll, but it wasn’t helping, not at all, but . . .

Yes! I grabbed the hard thing, tucked my arms around a huge surface root. Cuddled. Again my neck snapped. Couldn’t let go, couldn’t, couldn’t. The pressure on my scalp. I was being pulled and pulled and . . . Holdonholdonholdon.

A sob burst from my mouth. I was so scared. “Damn you!” I screamed over and over and over.

Pebbles streaming around me, then feet, then a sudden glorious easing of the pressure. I flattened to the earth, let it cradle my cheek. Struggled for a breath without tears.

“Am I free?” I finally said.

“Yes,” someone said. An arm wrapped around my waist and lifted me to my feet.

I leaned against the middle-aged man, just one of my clutch of rescuers.

“Welcome to Navajo Pine Lodge,” he said. “I’m Niall, the manager.”

I chuckled. “Thanks. So much.” Atop the hill, Niall’s daughter gave me the thumbs-up, and I gave it back. As I relaxed, I sensed a recession of adrenaline, replaced by the sting of scrapes that went from the top of my head down to my ankles.

Soft murmurings that I couldn’t hear as Niall helped me up the hill toward the lodge. I looked behind me, and my legs grew rubbery when I saw the precipice that would have launched me into space just a few yards away.

“Ohmigod.”

“You can say that again,” said an oldster.

“I definitely need a good shot of bourbon,” I said.

“Coming right up.”

We stumbled onward, Niall half-dragging me up the hill.

“Will you be able to get him back to the lodge?” I asked.

“We’ll wait for the sheriff’s deputies. They’ll be coming from Grants.”

“But . . .”

“He’s dead, Ms. Whyte,” Niall said. “He won’t care one way or the other.”

I took a long, steamy bath, complete with soothing aromatherapy oils and three fingers of bourbon on the rocks, courtesy of Niall. It helped all of me, even the throb in my jaw where the guy had punched me. It took almost two hours, but I finally felt clean. My shaky legs managed to get me out of the claw-foot tub, whereupon I melted to the plush bath rug laid on the floor.

The tub drained with slurps and sloshes, and I rested my cheek on the roll-tub edge and closed my eyes. I was alive. I. Was. Alive.

I yipped at a knock on the door.

“You okay in there, Ms. Whyte?”

“Oh, uh. Yes. I guess I fell asleep.” I was freezing, too, sprawled on the bathroom floor, half on, half off the matt. My God, I was a mess.

“Good bourbon’ll do that.”

“You’re so right. I’ll be out in a sec.” I hoisted myself up. At the sink, after I got over the sight of my black-and-blue and swollen face, I began smearing on the antibacterial
cream Niall had left for me. At least now I could get a good look at that pot on the mantel.

“Someone’s here to see you,” he called through the door.

My heart stuttered. Maybe Hank. That would be wonderful. I was an idiot to leave him. “Who’s that?”

“The deputy sheriff.”

I peered down the stairs at the leathery woman who stood waiting in the front hall, thumbs hooked to her Sam Browne belt, one cowboy-booted foot tapping.

“Hello,” I said as I walked down the stairs.

She didn’t smile, but gestured me into the small library at the back of the lodge.

She wore a brown pant suit over her boots, which were polished, but well-used. She’d traveled a lot of miles, I suspected. She’d bitten her nails to the quick. She’d tied her straight brown hair in a ponytail, but her bangs softened her face. She didn’t look like someone who smiled easily.

The minute I sat across from her, she pulled a small silver recorder from her pocket, pressed it on, and sat it on the table. The officer noted the date and the time. Niall sat across from us in a chair, but she shooed him away.

“I’m done with you, friend,” she said.

“C’mon, Louise,” Niall said.

She shook her head. “No. I want to talk to this lady alone. Now go.”

“Be careful,” he said to me as he left. “She looks all warm and fuzzy. She’s not.”

I didn’t think Louise looked warm and fuzzy in the least.

“You’re a problem,” Louise said. “One I wish I hadn’t encountered.”

“Okay,” I said. I had no idea what to make of her words.

“There’s a BOLO out for you.”

“Why should the cops be on the lookout for me?” I shrugged. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“We got a guy in the backyard here dead.”

Now was exactly the time I wished I still smoked. “He tried to kill me.”

“So you say.”

I sat up straighter and winced. “Yes, I do say. Just ask Niall and the others who came to help me.”

She flicked a speck off her pants. It felt like a dismissal.

“Since arriving in your fair state,” I said, “I have
not
had a pleasant time. Now you’re implying that Mr. Creepola wasn’t attacking me. Lemme tell you, lady, I almost died amidst the piñon pine out there.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She flipped open a slim notebook. “Says here you came to New Mexico for a job interview in Albuquerque. I also got that the car you rented at the airport was found bashed in and burned. That true?”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. “Well, yes, actually, but—”

“That in Gallup, you were involved in a gunfight between an unknown assailant and a Mass. State Police detective. And that you abandoned the detective during the gunfight. That true, too?”

Put that way, it sounded pretty grim. “Um, in one sense—” Thank heavens she didn’t know my real reason for being there.

She flipped a page. “I got one other thing before the, ah, ‘incident’ here. Says you believe that your friend’s skull was found in some old Anasazi pot and that another friend of yours got her throat cut over the same pot. That true, too?”

I really didn’t know how to answer without sounding like a crazy person. So I said nothing. I folded my hands on my lap.

She leaned forward, one hand pressed to her knee. “You know what I think? I think you’re trouble. I think you’re crazy, and that we’ll be glad to see your back. So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to drive you to Albuquerque, and I’m going to watch while you get on a plane that’s nonstop to Boston. And I’m going to let them handle it. You see?”