The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon Mysteries) Read online

  Without warning, the pitukupf, arrayed in luminescent green silk, appeared on her left and elbowed her thigh to announce his presence. The dwarf, leaning on his crooked staff with the plume of green feathers, was happily puffing a Lucky Strike cigarette. She was startled and stepped back, but the diminutive creature seemed not to notice her mild alarm. The pitukupf pointed at the raft with a stubby finger. She watched eddies and whirlpools forming in the river; these were sure signs of dangerous currents.

  “I could drown,” she protested meekly. “The water looks deep.”

  The dwarf blew a puff of gray smoke over the waters and tapped the raft impatiently with his feathered staff. The shaman obeyed without further question; it was the utmost folly to ignore the command of the pitukupf. If she did not cooperate, she would certainly become ill, perhaps even die. Daisy was an old woman and her bones ached when it rained, but she was not ready to hear the owl call her name. Not today.

  FOURTEEN

  Parris was reading an outraged citizen’s complaint about Patrolman E. C. Slocum. Piggy, as the elderly woman wrote in a precise hand, was observed “urinating on my gooseberry bush at half past four this morning.” She doubted the bush would survive this insult; its fruit would certainly never grace another gooseberry pie. Slocum didn’t try to evade such issues, because he never understood what all the hubbub was about. He had explained the reason for this latest outrage with disarming directness: “It hit me kinda sudden. Felt like I’d split wide open. Where would you take a quick piss when you’re out on patrol an hour before daylight? In your hat?”

  The intercom buzzed. Parris pressed the button and spoke to the machine. “Yes, Clara. What is it?”

  “Are you busy? I have someone … a visitor.”

  “I can spare a minute.”

  Clara, who entered alone, was subdued. “It’s my Aunt Daisy. She wants to talk to you.”

  Sooner or later, everyone wanted to consult the police. “Sure. Bring her in.”

  Clara was nervously pulling at her braided hair. “My aunt is … an old-fashioned Indian.” Clara hesitated, then blurted it out. “She is a piikati, a person with power.”

  Parris raised his eyebrows. “What sort of power?”

  “A piikati is a kind of a … what some people call a shaman. Mostly, they heal the sick. They’re connected to animal spirits with power, like the bear or buffalo. A particular animal gives them the power to heal a certain type of sickness. A woodpecker gives the power to stop bleeding; a badger, the power to heal problems with the feet. I wanted you to understand this before you met my aunt.”

  Parris resisted the temptation to ask what animal Aunt Daisy was connected with. “Bring her in.”

  Clara left, then returned immediately with a woman who walked with the short, measured steps of an arthritic. “This,” she said as she ushered her relative to a seat, “is my aunt, Daisy Perika. She lives on the Southern Ute reservation. Aunt Daisy has a message for you.” She smiled with honest affection and patted the elderly woman on the shoulder.

  Daisy peered through a heavy pair of spectacles that magnified her eyes in a fashion that would have appeared comic on one with less dignity. He got up from his chair and smiled in a manner that was intended to be reassuring. “Good morning, Miss … uh … Mrs. Perika. What can I do for you?”

  Daisy Perika blinked, and the effect was owl-like. “I had this vision,” she said simply. She had no intention of telling this white man about the pitukupf; he would neither believe nor understand and it would embarrass her niece. “I have come to you with a message. Three nights ago, I left my body.” She made this pronouncement with no pretense, like someone else would say, “Yesterday, I went to Farmington.” Daisy stared at the white man, waiting patiently for a response.

  If he didn’t handle this just right, Clara Tavishuts would be impossible to work with. Parris sat down on the edge of his desk and pretended that this was a normal conversation. “What happened when you … uh … left your body?”

  Daisy was rocking gently. “I was young, in a far land. On a raft of cottonwood logs, covered with willow branches, floating down a deep river.” After this, she fell silent, as if she had drifted away. The old woman’s eyes seemed to glaze, as if she had forgotten the purpose of her visit.

  “Yes,” Clara prompted, “and then what happened, Auntie?”

  She blinked again and cleared her throat. “I floated along on the water for a long time, not seeing nobody. I felt lonesome, but I wasn’t afraid. Then, there was this young girl on the bank. She had long dark hair and wore a yellow dress.”

  Parris remembered his dream of Priscilla Song … in a yellow dress. She had also worn a yellow dress on the night she was murdered. Mrs. Perika had undoubtedly picked this up from Clara.

  “As I floated by, this young girl was plaiting flowers; they looked like purple asters or maybe chickory—I couldn’t tell. She made these flowers into a garland and put it around her neck. Then she walked right into the water, toward my raft, and the raft became still, like the current had stopped. Her dress floated up to her waist, but she didn’t sink. When she got close, I was sure the uru-ci had something to say to me.”

  Parris interrupted. “The what?”

  Clara interpreted. “The ghost.”

  Parris was now riveted to every word. “Did she—the ghost—try to speak to you?”

  Daisy tried to read his face. Why did the policeman say “try to speak”? This man, who seemed so ignorant, knew something. Did this matukach policeman have the gift—did he hear the whispers of the spirits? “Yes, she tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear her.” Daisy turned her attention to Clara. “You go away now. I want to talk to this man by myself.” Clara departed without protest.

  Parris was stunned. In his own dream, the girl in the yellow dress had tried to speak, but her words had been lost. Maybe the old woman had sensed something in the way he asked the question.

  “She had,” the shaman continued, “these four black stones. She held them in her hand so I could see, like this.” Daisy held her hand out palm upward. “Then she drew a ring in the water with her finger, like this”—Daisy made a circle in the air—“and dropped one of those black rocks in the ring; it floated above the water. Then she ate the other three stones.”

  “She swallowed the stones?”

  “Sure.” Daisy nodded. “The uru-ci, she ate all three of them. She put her hand on her throat, then coughed like she was choking.” Daisy illustrated by putting her hand on her neck, then over her lips. “After that, she vomited and two of the stones came out of her mouth and disappeared.”

  “What did the stones look like? I mean, did they have a special shape?”

  Daisy seemed to be perplexed, then remembered. “Yes! Like medicine—you know, little black pills.”

  Parris started to say, “Like drugs,” but caught himself.

  Daisy shifted her weight in the chair and groaned; the trip to Granite Creek had exhausted her. “That’s all the ghost did. My raft started floating again and I was gone around a bend in the river. By and by, I was awake and back inside my body. I read about that dead girl in the newspaper, and told Clara about my dream. Clara said to come and tell you.” She pushed herself out of the chair. Before Parris could protest, Daisy gently placed her fingers on his temples. He felt a buzzing in his head, then a distant thumping—hollow, resonant. Like a drumbeat. It must, he thought, be my heart beating.

  “You dream dreams,” she said. It was not a question. “You see things … know things. But you don’t believe what you know.” She removed her fingers from his temples and regarded him quizzically. Someday, maybe, she would tell this one about the pitukupf.

  The thumping in his head was still there. Had the old woman hypnotized him?

  Daisy Perika removed a scrap of paper from her purse and offered it to Parris. “I don’t have no telephone. This is directions to my house. If you want to talk, you come by and see me.” The policeman folded the paper and put it i
n his wallet.

  The shaman paused at his office door. “You know what I think?”

  He rubbed his temples to make the thumping go away. “Tell me.”

  The shaman closed her eyes. “That deep river I saw in my vision. It was the one that separates us from the dead people.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely, “I know about that river.”

  Daisy departed as silently as she had arrived. He switched off the lights and watched the sun slip behind the rolling peaks on the western range. What did this mean? Did the old woman have some kind of gift? Was she able to communicate with … He dismissed the absurd thought. It was time to get back to the real world, solve real problems.

  FIFTEEN

  Slocum’s sour expression revealed his displeasure; Piggy had a serious grievance to communicate to the chief of police. The Mexican prisoner, Slocum insisted, was “unsubordinate.” There was no doubt that Julio Pacheco was taking verbal liberties; he continued to make disparaging remarks about Officer Slocum’s oversized girth and prodigious appetite. Some of his observations had been repeated in the officers’ locker room: “Hey, Porky. I read in the newspaper that three goats are missing from Mrs. Snipes’s backyard. You have them for breakfast?”

  Piggy’s request was simple and direct. “Lissen, Chief. I’ll come in at midnight, take Sonny’s spot on third shift. I’ll open that little bastard’s cell and kick the vinegar out of him from here to Tuesday. That’s the onliest way to handle them smart-mouthed little jumpin’ beans!”

  It was impossible to reason with Piggy when he was angry. Scott Parris responded with a poker face. “That, Officer Slocum, is undoubtedly the most ludicrous proposal I’ve ever heard.”

  Piggy was jubilant. “Knew you’d see it my way. I’ll give Sonny a call and we’ll switch shifts.”

  “Not so fast,” Parris interrupted. “These things must be done according to proper procedure. You have a ten-seventy-eight form?”

  Piggy’s expression shifted to puzzlement; it was a familiar configuration for his facial muscles, because Piggy was continually puzzled at all manner of developments. “Do I got a … ten what?”

  “First, you fill out a ten-seventy-eight form, reporting the prisoner’s abusive language; make sure you list his insults in some detail. Make six copies for distribution. It’ll be just one more nail in Pacheco’s coffin!”

  “Well … I don’… don’… don’t know,” Piggy stuttered.

  “Then,” Parris continued coolly, “submit a detailed outline of your proposal for remedial action. Describe the exact form of punishment—where you’ll kick him, how many times, how hard, that sort of thing. Rules say you can’t kick a prisoner in the groin or face; I’m not sure about kidneys. Ribs and shins should be acceptable. We’ll need that report in triplicate. One for your personnel folder, another for department files. I’ll turn the third copy over to the DA for approval. Once all the paperwork’s done, you can stomp him to a pulp. We could make a videotape for training new officers.”

  Piggy frowned and muttered something about looking into it and backed out of the chief’s office, where he bumped into Eddie Knox.

  “How’s it hangin’, Toe-Jam?” Eddie asked innocently.

  Piggy recounted the essence of his encounter with Parris. “I ain’t altogether for sure,” he said after he finished his tale. “I s’pose them city cops hafta do things different up there in Chicago, but the boss, he sure got some funny notions.”

  “Noticed it right from the first day he got here,” Knox said through a jawful of Red Man tobacco spittle. “We better keep a close eye on that silly sumbitch, or he’ll get us all into deep shit.”

  * * *

  Piggy was deeply engrossed in a Batman comic book when he glanced up at the array of television monitors. It was Cell Seven. The inmate’s body was hanging from the light fixture, rotating ever so slowly. “Oh my God Almighty,” he prayed earnestly, “please don’t let him be dead!” For one so heavy, Piggy managed a fast sprint to the cell door. His hands trembled as he fumbled with the key ring. “Oh, Sweet Nelly, the chief will have my badge for this.” He finally felt the latch slide, and opened the cell door just far enough to squeeze through. Piggy waddled to the feet of the suspended body, clinched his chubby fists, and shrieked in his frustration. “Damn you anyway, you smartmouth little wetback! If you hadda stretch your neck, why couldn’t you of done it somewheres else?”

  The suspended body responded to this query with a swift boot in the policeman’s left temple. Piggy took a short step backward; his eyes rolled upward until only the whites were visible before he toppled to the floor with a dull thud, rattling the bars on Cell Seven. Julio dropped to the floor, removed Piggy’s Magnum from an engraved leather holster, and helped himself to a supply of bullets from the policeman’s cartridge belt. He found the most important item hanging on a ring from Slocum’s leather belt: a key to Car Three.

  Piggy, lost in utter blackness, couldn’t hear the Mexican’s taunting farewell. “So long, big man. Hope this don’t ruin your appetite.”

  Piggy was rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Boulder for a CAT scan. When Parris announced to the force that Slocum had suffered no apparent brain damage from being kicked in the head, Sgt. “Rocks” Knox snickered and bellowed, “How could they tell?” Parris used all his reserves to avoid joining in the nervous laughter that followed.

  The authorities in nine states were alerted to be on the lookout for Julio Pacheco, but Parris had no doubt where the Mexican was headed. South. It was assumed that the Mexican, who was not stupid, would already have dumped Car Three and replaced it with a less conspicuous stolen vehicle. Every report on a stolen car was hot news.

  At 9:00 A.M., Parris dialed the DA’s office. Slayton Cobb was on vacation, the secretary informed him. “Bad news,” he told her. “Julio Pacheco escaped last night. We’ll probably pick him up again, but we can’t be certain.”

  Her tone was icy. “I will inform the district attorney when he returns.” Parris hung up, grateful that Cobb was out of the office. He found himself staring blankly out the window into a thick grove of pines. Pacheco was gone, and he was responsible. Sgt. “Rocks” Knox came in to pitch the duty roster on Parris’s desk and noticed the despondent expression on his boss’s face. Knox’s normally cheerful expression was replaced by uncertainty, even a hint of concern. “You doin’ okay, chief?”

  Parris hadn’t noticed Knox’s presence until that moment. “Okay? Yeah, just contemplating the situation.”

  “Situation?” Knox cocked his head to one side.

  “That’s right. I can’t hold a two-bit hoodlum in this tin-can jail. Officer Slocum remains alive and able to wreak havoc over the earth. Wondering whether I should shoot myself or jump out the window.”

  Knox thought about it. “Drop from that window ain’t more than twelve feet. Likely, you’d just bust a leg. I’d say shootin’ is the ticket, boss.”

  SIXTEEN

  Silver Spring, Maryland

  Waldo Thomson nosed the rented Town Car into one of the hotel slots marked GUEST, slipped the gearshift into PARK and stepped on the emergency brake. Before unlocking the door, he placed his palm over the slight bulge just above his belt buckle. He had repeated this ritual more than a dozen times since leaving Denver, as if the booty might somehow vanish. The precious samples were still there, wrapped in a plastic bag, zipped into the canvas money belt. He would take no chances of being robbed, of losing this treasure to some doped-up mugger looking for a few bucks for a fresh fix. Before he left the relative safety of the Lincoln, the physicist removed the pistol from the suitcase and slipped it into his inside coat pocket. No one would interfere with his game plan. Absolutely no one.

  * * *

  On the flight toward the gathering darkness on the East Coast, Anne had tried to dismiss the absurd feeling that she was being followed. Waldo Thomson, after all, was already in Washington; she was doing the following! But eyes seemed to bore into the back of her neck. She
turned and glanced at the passengers behind her: a woman traveling with her small child; a matched pair of nuns reading Hillerman paperbacks; a cowboy dozing under his Stetson. She dismissed this paranoia and focused her thoughts on Thomson. Was she a fool for following him all the way to Washington on the basis of the tip from her contact at the travel agency? But it was peculiar; Thomson was leaving days early for the North American Physical Society meeting in Silver Spring. She had tried to pick up something from the Physics Department. Kristin Waters had told her that Thomson had taken a few days of vacation before the NAPS meeting started. The department secretary proudly pointed out that Thomson and Arnold Dexter would be delivering joint papers on the ceramic armor research. Anne had asked to speak to the department chairman about his paper, but Professor Dexter was at home recovering from a bout of intestinal flu. Kristin thoughtfully asked if Anne wanted to speak with another member of the staff who would be attending the NAPS meeting. Professor Harry Presley was available. The journalist, who found the man particularly repugnant, graciously declined.