The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon Mysteries) Read online

  Parris extended his hand, which, after the old man dropped the rabbits, was accepted firmly but without enthusiasm. “Claude Potter-Evans, I presume?”

  “That’s me” was the curt reply. “From that pretty six-pointed star on your shirt, I may safely assume that you are a law-enforcement officer.”

  “Scott Parris, chief of police in Granite Creek. Need to have a talk with you.” If Potter-Evans got nasty, he could always ask for a look at his hunting license.

  The hunter hung the cottontails over the sawn-off branch of a small aspen and pulled the latch handle on the cabin door. “Come into my modest lodgings, Constable. I require refreshment. I’ll brew a pot of tea … unless you are partial to coffee. I keep an instant-brew version of that stuff as well, for the infrequent guest.”

  “No,” Parris lied, “tea will do just as well.”

  The cabin had a single room. It appeared somewhat barren, even with the clutter of worn, mismatched furniture. Parris found himself a seat at a wooden bench that, judging from the presence of an archaic typewriter, an array of dusty manuscripts, and an unmatched salt and pepper set, evidently served double duty as desk and dining table. The old man added a handful of dry branches to smoking embers in the fireplace. The kettle over the flames began to bubble. Potter-Evans dipped a pair of enameled tin cups into the kettle. “Water boils at a lower temperature at this altitude. Hope it’s hot enough for you.” The Englishman produced a pair of tea bags from a tightly covered can and dropped them into the cups. “What, precisely, shall we talk about?”

  “Have a crime on my hands. Murdered student.” Parris swallowed a mouthful of the tea, then swished the remaining liquid into a sloshing whirlpool by shaking the cup in an elliptical orbit. Potter-Evans grimaced at this lack of respect for the precious beverage but held his tongue. “She left a gobbledygook message on her computer,” Parris continued. “On her desk, I found a book on codes. Need some help. Understand you know something about this sort of thing. From the big war, in England.”

  Potter-Evans closed his eyes as if to call up the ghosts of old memories. “England. Ah, I miss it constantly. But not today’s England, thank you, no. I remember her in the thirties and forties.” He abruptly dismissed the nostalgic remembrance. “But that England is dead and gone, like old Winnie.” The recluse raised his cup in salute. “Now dear old Winnie, there was a prime minister. A truly great man, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Indeed,” replied Parris, raising his tin mug. “To Winston Churchill.”

  Potter-Evans’s pale blue eyes were moist as he raised his own cup in salute to the departed warrior-statesman. “Hear, hear.”

  There was a long silence, eventually broken by Parris. “This young woman left one word, seven letters, on a computer file just before the attack. May be nothing. May be important.”

  Potter-Evans raised an eyebrow. “Seven letters? And you expect me to decode it for you?” The old man lowered his head; his gaunt frame shook with silent laughter.

  “Why…” Parris began.

  “Oh, that just won’t do, don’t you see?” Potter-Evans took a tiny sip of tea from the blue enameled mug. “There is one fundamental principle about breaking codes. The longer the message, the easier the code breaker’s job. Breaking a sophisticated code when there is only a seven-letter sample is next to impossible. Your only chance is that the victim used some very simple type of transposition or substitution scheme. What, by the way, were the seven mysterious letters?”

  Parris produced a small notebook from his jacket pocket and tore out an unused page. He wrote the letters, now etched in his memory, on the paper and slid it across the table to his host. Potter-Evans held the paper close to a kerosene lamp. He read the letters aloud. “Hmm, z, f, r, c, y, r, t. Ah yes. Hmm. Might be merely a phonic message.”

  Parris raised his eyebrows. “A phonic … you mean a sound?”

  Potter-Evans expression was deadpan. “I say … rather sounds somewhat like a mule breaking wind.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Was everybody a comedian?

  “Forgive me,” the recluse said, “I realize this is a serious matter. You presumably hypothesize that this assemblage of letters might provide some clue to the identity of the murderer. I will try to be of some help, Constable, but you must provide me with the names of everyone at the university—students, faculty, office workers, janitorial staff, everyone.”

  “You,” Parris replied, “have got to be kidding. There must be over four thousand students and at least a couple of hundred—”

  “I jest not; I’ll also need the victim’s book on codes. I won’t waste my time on this task unless I have your full cooperation.”

  Parris groaned inwardly. “I’ll have one of my men bring you the list of faculty tomorrow; we already have that. A listing of students may be a bit more trouble.”

  “I must learn everything possible about the victim,” Potter-Evans continued. “This may finally boil down to guessing a key word. Might be the victim’s mother’s maiden name, her favorite flower, the street where she grew up. I will also need a complete copy of your files on the homicide.”

  “Maybe,” Parris interjected acidly, “you’d like to have my firstborn child, as well.”

  Potter-Evans paused thoughtfully. “No, I think not. I detest children.”

  “I will,” Parris said, sighing, “do my best. You come up with something useful, I’ll try to squeeze some consultant money from the city coffers. Maybe a few hundred bucks if you really hit the jackpot.”

  This brought a sparkle of interest to the old man’s eyes, but he didn’t respond.

  “Oh, one other thing…” Parris retrieved the paper with the code and wrote another string of letters under the first, underlining the repeated letters.

  z f r c y r t

  p a c h e c o

  “That,” the policeman said, “is our suspect’s name.”

  “You may,” Potter-Evans said, “be on the right track. It could be a simple transposition code, where the c becomes an r. On the other hand, it may be a coincidence.”

  “See what you can do with it,” Parris said. “If you can convince a jury that the last word the victim entered on her keyboard was Pacheco, that would tie this case up nicely.”

  “I’ll try a few possibilities, see what falls out.”

  As the policeman was opening the Explorer door, he turned to say good-bye to the old man. The recluse, who had followed his visitor from the cabin, was distracted by the darkness slipping over the forest floor. The pines were covered with deep shadows that seemed to breathe in step with the rhythmic breeze. Parris caught Potter-Evans’s eye. “You really like it up here? All by yourself?”

  The Englishman paused thoughtfully before he answered. His reply was barely more than a whisper, an echo of the soft breeze through the pines. “It’s rather quiet, you know. But it always moves; it’s alive.”

  “Yeah,” Parris muttered, almost to himself, “I know what you mean.”

  The old man stood under the stars, hardly noticing the cold breeze as the heavy, frigid air spilled down from the mountaintop. He listened to the distant growl of the policeman’s automobile as the sound faded into the night. A small owl hooted, and he suddenly felt cold. And old. Very old. He closed and latched the cabin door and loaded the shotgun with fresh shells. He caressed the trigger, then sighed and leaned the shotgun in a corner.

  Potter-Evans lifted the glass door that kept the dust off a small bookshelf and scanned the titles: Karel Rektorys’ Survey of Applicable Mathematics; Athanasios Papoulis’s The Fourier Integral and Its Applications; Michener’s Centennial.

  He removed a leather-bound volume. It was a first edition of W. W. Ball’s Mathematical Recreations and Essays, printed in 1892. It was one of the select volumes he had kept all these years; the old man handled the book as if it were an irreplaceable treasure. It was. Reading and rereading this collection of essays was one of his greatest pleasures. He placed the volume on the table, c
ranked up the wick on the kerosene lamp, and turned to chapter XIV, “Cryptography and Cryptanalysis.” It was a very elementary presentation, but it would help concentrate his thoughts, to call back memories of the arcane occupation he had practiced a half century earlier, a lifetime and worlds away. Perhaps he might even be of some help to this American policeman. It had been a long time since he had provided service to his country, and this former colony was gradually becoming his country. He liked Parris; the policeman didn’t know how to enjoy a good cup of tea, but he did know how to do his job. Claude Potter-Evans appreciated those who took their work seriously.

  “Now,” he said aloud, “think about it, old boy, exercise the cerebral cortex. What sort of cipher would be simple enough … what technique could a frightened victim be expected to use?” This problem occupied his mind for some minutes. As he tried to picture the crime, a sinister possibility surfaced in his thoughts: What if the “message” was left not by the victim but by someone who wished to misdirect the investigation? Someone who left a book on codes conveniently nearby for the police to find. Someone with blood on his hands. Or perhaps … her hands? But that was police business. His task was to uncover the hidden meaning in this unlikely array of letters.

  THIRTEEN

  Pacheco was delivered to the Granite Creek Police Station in a Colorado State Police van. Except for a bulge of bandages under his shirt, the Mexican appeared to be fit. Knox and Leggett unloaded the cuffed murder suspect from the van, signed the release papers, and provided the state troopers with black coffee and doughnuts. Piggy watched the delivery of the “one that got away” from his botched attempt at arrest with ill-concealed resentment, nervously running his stubby fingertips over the stag handle of his .357 Magnum revolver. Pacheco was locked into one of the remodeled cells, where he would be continuously monitored by a television camera.

  While the other officers were involved in the camaraderie of doughnuts and storytelling, Piggy Slocum swaggered to the cell, his thumbs hitched under his gun belt, and glared at Pacheco. He was infuriated when the Mexican seemed to take no notice of his giant shadow. Piggy leaned against the bars and fairly hissed, “Don’t try anything cute, you little wetback, or I’ll have you for breakfast!” Pacheco recoiled in wide-eyed mock horror, staring pointedly at Piggy’s ample waistline, then at the empty cells around him. “Oh, I do believe you Señor Puerco. It looks like you’ve already eaten a whole jailful of prisoners!”

  * * *

  The shaman’s resistance finally dissolved after two nights without sleep; it was clear that the unwelcome task could no longer be postponed. Daisy Perika left the warm comfort of her trailer home and shuffled along the deer path to the mouth of Cañon del Espiritu. After she passed through the narrow entrance to the canyon, the old woman abandoned the rough trail for the dry bed of Spirit Creek. Come spring, the stream would be churning with noisy water from the snowmelt on the rolling peaks of the San Juans. Even in the dry season, there were isolated pools where brown trout darted. The streambed was scattered with smooth stones of every shape. When she was a child, Daisy’s grandmother had told her that the stones with peculiar shapes were inhabited with spirits of the water, but these spirits were not as strong as the spirit of Badger or Bear. Daisy considered the story about the odd-shaped stones having spirits to be suspect, but she had always avoided stepping on them. There were so many mysteries … one could never be sure.

  Daisy left the streambed when she saw the gentle arch in the canyon wall where the Old Ones had scratched pictures into the stone. The Ute shaman stopped to lean on her oak walking staff until her breath would return. She directed her gaze toward the ancient petroglyphs on the beige sandstone of the canyon wall. There were three stickmen with large bulbous heads and sharp protruding ears. Shaman in buffalo masks. There was a horned serpent; this was a cruel god of human sacrifice who had been brought up from Mexico by the people who traded colored macaw feathers for tanned hide of deer and elk.

  Far to the right of the stick figures and horned serpent was the tiny figure of a man with one hand reaching toward a spiral symbol of the sun. His other hand grasped a feathered staff. This was a representation of pitukupf; the dwarf was the most powerful force among the elemental spirits of the earth.

  Daisy remembered the first time she had seen the little man. It had happened when she experienced her first menstruation. As was the custom, her mother and aunts had promptly built a menstrual hut. The conical nakanipi was fashioned from green willow branches stuck in the earth in a circle, tops bent over and lashed down. During her sojourn in the hut, Daisy had faithfully observed the taboo on consumption of meat or salt. She ate food from special baskets and drank endless cups of hot water to help the blood flow freely. She was warned not to touch her head or face with her hands; her long locks of dark hair might fall out if she broke this particular taboo. During this time in the menstrual hut, Daisy’s latent powers gained strength. She dreamed of the pitukupf, who offered her his healing power in exchange for certain services. When she awakened, she peeked through a gap in the willow thatch and caught a glimpse of the small creature as he darted behind a boulder.

  After this experience, Daisy listened more intently than ever to her grandmother and to her uncle, Green Humming Bird, who was also a respected shaman. From these sages, the girl learned that the dwarf dressed his small body in bright green; he expected gifts from the Dreamers among the Ute. Only a Dreamer could find the dwarf’s home, and only after its location was revealed in a trance. Other passersby would believe the lair was that of a badger, but the Dreamer would see the faint wisps of smoke rising from the piñon-wood fire on the pitukupf’s hearth. This smoke was usually invisible to other Utes, much less to matukach, the white people.

  Only two years earlier, this particular pitukupf had killed a horse that grazed too close to his underground home. Daisy’s cousin, Gorman Sweetwater, had received a permit from the tribal council to graze his pinto in Cañon del Espiritu; he planned to bring in a small herd of Hereford cattle once he purchased a fine bull. Gorman’s daughter Benita found the pinto dead, but the cause of death was uncertain. The unfortunate horse was immobilized, its front legs wrapped in vines. This was a favorite trick of the dwarf from Lowerworld, to ensnare his victims with a cord of braided vine. Gorman didn’t believe in the old ways; he foolishly insisted that his dumb pinto had gotten itself entangled in the vines and died a natural death. Sooner or later, Gorman would learn better.

  The shaman turned first to the north, whispering, “Nitukwu,” and tapped the earth lightly with her staff. She faced the direction of the setting sun. “Nitukuwa tapai-yakwiniti.” She repeated the ritual for the other quarters of the world. Daisy rummaged through her coat pocket and produced a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a short string of multicolored glass beads. She wrapped these in a paper napkin she had saved from her last meal at the McDonald’s restaurant in Durango and tied the offering with black cotton thread. She laid the gift within inches of the hole in the earth and backed away. The pitukupf would not need matches for lighting the cigarettes. She had seen a thin column of smoke curling upward from the hole in the earth; the dwarf had his own source of fire to ignite the sapatuti.

  The return path was mostly downhill, but it took her a full twenty minutes to trudge back to her house trailer. She locked the door behind her and leaned her staff against the television. When she was on her bed, Daisy closed her eyes and waited, listening for sound of the Lakota drum. During one of his infrequent trips to the Black Hills, her second husband had traded two tanned deerskins to an aged Sioux for the medicine drum. The Lakota man, Lawrence Short Hand, had solemnly guaranteed that this drum had the Power. Was it not decorated with the sacred red paint of Wovoka, the Paiute Wanekia, the originator of the Ghost Dance? The promise was true. The first time her husband had tapped the papu-ti to produce a monotonous rhythm, the resonant, hollow sound had swept Daisy into a deep trance. She had left her body and visited a bright land where all her ance
stors lived in happiness. Her visit had been all too brief; though she had tried many times, the shaman had never been able to return to that good place.

  Her husband had been gone these many years, but the drum still hung by its rawhide thong over her kitchen table. The shaman concentrated on the drum, remembering its low, thumping voice. She could barely hear it, far away at first, then nearer. Soon, the drum vibrated the frame of her bed. The monotonous rhythm filled her consciousness until she could hear nothing else, not even the sudden gust of wind that shook her fragile trailer home. Daisy felt her spirit body float through a damp gray mist, then enter the earth at the hole that led to the lair of the pitukupf. Her spirit body did not stop in the den of the dwarf, but continued to follow the long roots of the juniper tree, until the root became a shining tunnel. She felt herself falling ever more rapidly toward her destination in Lowerworld, so fast that she had to gasp for a breath of air. She had made this journey many times and was not afraid, even though the voyage often ended in a part of Lowerworld she had not seen before. She emerged into a humid world of yellow light filtered by swirling blue mists. Reptilian creatures scurried under luxuriant undergrowth; robin-sized humming birds flitted nervously among the oversized ferns and gnarled cypress.

  Daisy was young again, but she was not herself. This was puzzling; she was someone else, in an earlier time. She followed a muddy animal path, parted the ferns, and found her new self near the bank of a wide river. It was certainly not the Piños or the Piedra, nor was it the familiar Animas. It was a large river, in a foreign land that she had not seen in all her journeys to Lowerworld. She approached the bank, her bare feet stepping lightly over the smooth stones of mica-flecked granite. The air was cool and moist, and she found the effect to be strangely pleasant. At the bank, under an umbrella-shaped maple, a raft was tied to a stake in the blue clay. The raft was of Ute design, and this familiar sight gave her comfort. Three long cottonwood logs formed the basic structure; these were strengthened by smaller poles laid across them at right angles. The top of the raft was covered with willow branches, and the whole assembly was tied together with willow bark. A sturdy oak push pole, decorated with delicate bands of aspen bark, leaned against the tree.