Adrien English Mysteries: A Dangerous Thing & Fatal Shadows (31 page)

“Yeah, well so far I haven’t generated any.”

“What’s that?” Shoup’s utensils clattered against his plate. He goggled at us.

Beside me, Jake went very still, the only person to understand my meaning. And considering the fact that Jake had killed in order to save my life -- and had nearly lost his shield over it -- it was a bitchy thing to say.

“Jake’s a cop,” I said. “He doesn’t trust anybody.”

“A cop?” Kevin repeated.

Was it my imagination or was there an uncomfortable silence?

“Now that must be interesting work,” Dr. Marquez said heartily.

“What kind of cop?” Kevin asked.

“Detective. Homicide.” Jake’s voice was flat. He resumed eating, intent on spearing every last bean on his plastic plate.

Another of those weird pauses. Melissa chuckled then and said, “Well, well. Maybe we should ask Jake --”

“Smith, you know my feeling on the subject.” Dr. Shoup cut her off with force.

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As I studied the faces around us only Dr. Shoup met my eyes. I said slowly, “Is there something going on here that I should know about?”

“There is n-not,” Dr. Shoup said with that small and revealing stammer.

“What about the weird noises? The chanting?”

Jake made a sound as though he had inhaled a bean.

“The hollow is haunted, you know,” Melissa said slyly.

“Here it comes,” Kevin said, “The legend of Big Foot.”

“Don’t be so quick to scoff at the beliefs of others, O’Reilly,” Dr. Marquez said seriously.

“That’s right,” Amy said. “Melissa’s people were here when yours were still scratching for potatoes in Ireland.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

Amy’s logic seemed to have confounded even her. She shrugged and popped a frank in her mouth.

“There are trees in this hollow older than your United States have been united,” Melissa said. “Those juniper pines by the tarn are four hundred years old. The fucking insects inside them have a more complex civilization than your own.”

“Language,” Dr. Marquez cautioned.

“Mountains are considered strong power points,” Bernice put in, handing over a bag of peanut butter cookies. “Water is another. There’s your argument for the hollow being a portal to the spirit world.”

“Psychic archeology!” hooted Kevin.

“This hollow has long been held a sacred place by the indigenous peoples,” Melissa said.

“The pictographs on the rocks above us tell the story of guardian spirits.”

“Poppycock!” Dr. Shoup said. “Not another word about werewolves.”

No one had mentioned werewolves. Jake and I exchanged a look.

I inquired, “Did you say --?”

Kevin met my gaze and grimaced. “Ask Melissa about ‘The Devouring.’”

I turned to Melissa. She was still smiling but there was something in her eyes. Something black and unfathomable.

“Do you want to hear a spooky campfire tale, Mr. English?”

“Do Boy Scouts like to be prepared?” I ignored Dr. Shoup’s obvious displeasure.

Melissa pushed back from the table and folded her arms comfortably, at ease in her role of storyteller. The rest of us fell silent and waited.

“According to the legends of my people, when the land and the water and the sky had been finished to his satisfaction, Coyote-man stabbed two sticks in the earth at all the places 194

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he had chosen for The People. Half of those sticks became men, half became women. It’s a Creation legend.” She shrugged.

“The little ones learn the story of how Lizard-man convinced Coyote-man that it would be better for The People to have fingers instead of paws, and that is why, ever since, Coyote has chased Lizard in the rocks. But there is another story. An older story.”

As Melissa moved into the rhythm of her story, her eyes half-closed, her voice grew low.

There wasn’t a sound all down the long table.

“This is the story my grandfather told me. My grandfather was a shaman. A wise man.

He knew many stories. The story he told me was that Coyote-man would not listen to Lizard-man, not at first telling, and so the first people who came to life were given claws and fangs. Claws and fangs.” Melissa held up her hands, curving them as though to show long claws. She curled her lip in a silent snarl.

You could have heard a pin drop.

“Perhaps Coyote-man wished these first people to look like himself. Perhaps he was mocking his brother, the Wolf. No one knows. Some say this first people came to be in the days of the great serpents whose footsteps shook the trees. Some say these beings were born into a world where mountains spouted flame, where the red lava bathed the earth in rivers of fire. Who can remember past the time of the storytellers? But it is true that these first people were so fierce that when they woke to life they sprang upon each other and began to devour each other, man and woman.”

Sounded like your average high school. I glanced at Jake’s profile. His gaze swerved briefly my way.

“Like wolves in winter, so did the first people feel the ravening for flesh and blood. Too late Coyote-man saw what he had done. He tried to stop it before all were devoured, but could save only five of these first ones, these First People. Yet, having saved them Coyote-man did not know what to do with them, for they were as much animal as human, and there were already all the animal spirits needed in this world. So he named them The Guardian and sent them to guard the door between the spirit world and this one, and if ever man should trespass too close to the gateway, The Guardian shall fall upon him in the devouring, and rend him limb from limb.”

As though hypnotized we all stared at Melissa as she finished in a kind of sing-song, “He turned them into the darkness. The darkness of the deepest water or the blackest night, the black of the tree bark, the black of fur, the black of loam that sucks the unwary footstep. You will know them by the darkness if you stray too deep in the heart of night. But even before you feel their fangs and claws, you will see their eyes shining bright in the darkness like amber, like a hornet’s sting, like fool’s gold.”

Melissa trailed into silence. No one spoke.

At last Dr. Marquez chuckled and said, “I’m afraid there are several -- um -- holes in that story, Smith.”

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Melissa laughed too, the spell broken. “It’s just a legend. A story to keep small children from wandering too close to the caves.”

Dr. Shoup snapped out like broken chalk, “It’s this kind of irresponsible babble about legends and folk tales that inspire dolts to dig up and cart off every removable artifact, utterly destroying the sanctity of a site.”

“We call it the Schliemann Syndrome,” Dr. Marquez informed me.

“But if Heinrich Schliemann hadn’t listened to and believed the old legends, he wouldn’t have discovered Troy,” I pointed out.

Dr. Shoup barked, “Troy? Which Troy? Troy One or Nine or Zero? A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

* * * * *

My car, I drive. That’s the way I see it, but Jake apparently loses points anytime he permits another male to chauffeur him, so I tossed him the keys. I’d had too much cheap wine anyway and my headache was coming back.

We had gone a mile down the dirt road when I said, “That was stupid. The thing I said at dinner.”

He said dryly, “Which stupid thing was that?”

Maybe I deserved that. I said, “About generating bodies.”

Jake grunted which could have signified “you’re forgiven” or “fuck off.” After a moment he said, “But I wish you hadn’t let it out that I was a cop.”

“Then you agree that something is going on?”

“No. I find it ... socially awkward.”

We landed in a pothole and I muttered as though my suspension had taken the hit.

“Were you ever a Boy Scout?” Jake inquired, shifting gears.

“No.”

“Your mother, I suppose.”

Jake has never forgiven my mother for trying to get him fired during his investigation of me. They are neither of them the forgiving kind.

“Were you? A Boy Scout, I mean.”

“Hell, I was an Eagle Scout.”

“Figures.”

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It was then, like straight out of The X-Files -- or one of Melissa’s ghost stories -- that something flew out of the darkness. Something with burning yellow eyes and outstretched claws, shrieking down upon us.

There was a thud that should have broken the windshield. I had a wild impression of horns, a razor-sharp beak and those glowing eyes.

“Shit!” Jake swerved hard.

The Bronco bumped off the road. Jake tried to compensate but we slammed down in a rut, our heads grazing the ceiling. As though locked on train tracks we headed straight for a massive oak and the open sky beyond. Jake stood on the brakes.

Instinctively I threw my arm up so I don’t know how the hell we missed the tree, but we scraped by, literally, twigs and branches scratching the sides and chassis of the Bronco. I banged hard against the side of the door despite the seat belts, and my arm went numb.

The next instant the Bronco clambered back onto the road, tires spinning and spitting gravel. Jake cut the engine. We were both breathing hard. He turned on the cab light.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure?” His eyes looked black in the overhead light.

I nodded, rubbing feeling back into my arm. “Jesus, that was some driving, Jake. I thought we were going over the edge for sure.”

He opened his door and got out, then walked back toward where we had hit whatever it was.

I unsnapped my seat belt and followed.

When I caught him up Jake was on one knee in the road, an owl flung out before him. It looked huge, the wingspan nearly six feet. It was still quivering.

“God damn it,” Jake was saying. He spoke slowly as though in pain. “God damn it to hell.

I couldn’t miss it.”

“It flew straight at the car. It’s a wonder it didn’t break the windshield.”

“It was beautiful.”

It was beautiful. The pale feathers were so perfect they looked hand-painted. I saw the tufts that gave the illusion of horns. The fierce eyes were already filming over.

I put my hand on Jake’s shoulder, squeezed. He made no move.

I stared up. The mist turned the sky white behind the pines. All the world seemed blanketed in soft white silence. An owl, I thought. Age-old harbinger of darkness and death.

In Native American lore the owl is a bird of wisdom and divination -- and still they are feared as omens of doom.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

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One thing for damn sure, in no myth or legend in the world does killing one bring good luck.

Jake shook his head as though clearing it and said, “Christ, what a shame to leave it out here for the scavengers. It ought to be stuffed or mounted, donated to some museum.”

I said slowly, “We can put it in the Bronco if you want. Tomorrow I’ll try to find someone. A taxidermist.”

He was silent. At last he shook his head and rose. “It’s done,” he said. “Forget it.”

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The next morning Jake rose at the crack of dawn to go fishing. I declined his invitation, burrowing under my pillow and telling him I was going to buckle down and work on Death for a Deadly Deed.

At a more civilized hour I drove Jake’s Acura into Basking. But before I left the ranch I placed a call to my ex-lover Mel, who happens to teach film studies at UC Berkeley.

Lucking out, I caught Mel in his office between classes. We chatted briefly and then I asked my favor: What did he know about Dr. Daniel Shoup? “Mid-fifties, favors safari hats and Gestapo boots.”

Mel thought it over and then laughed that husky laugh I remembered so well. “Like Stewart Granger in King Solomon’s Mines?”

I knew he would think of that. “Or Green Fire.”

That evoked memories of late nights cuddled on the couch, eating hot buttered popcorn and laughing our asses off at the worst movies in the world. Mel must have remembered too.

His voice grew warmer.

“What did you want to know? He’s kind of an odd ball, even for Berkeley.”

“I’m not sure. The good stuff. Rumors, gossip, innuendo.”

“You know, there is a rumor connected with him. The kids call him Indiana Bones, by the way.”

“Bless their hormone-addled hearts.”

“Yes. Well, he came to us from the British Museum -- at least, that’s what everyone thought. It turns out the British Museum never heard of him.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s the word on campus.”

“How reliable is the word?”

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Another husky laugh. “Take it with a grain of salt. Although, the good doctor and the university did part ways a couple of months ago.”

Aha!

“What’s your interest?” Mel asked curiously.

I wanted to avoid getting into that. Funny to think he was the guy I used to tell everything to. Maybe that was the problem: I’d shared too much.

“I ran into him a few days ago. I’m vacationing in Basking.”

“You’re vacationing?” His laugh was disbelieving and a little tart. “And at the legendary ranch?”

“Things change.”

“They do.” He sounded oddly regretful.

I changed the subject back to Shoup, but though I pressed for details, Mel had little useful to add. He pointed out that the archeology department is a long way from film studies.

Just as Berkeley is a long way from Los Angeles.

Before I rang off, he asked, “Are you taking care of yourself, Adrien?”

Kind of a sore subject between us. “Of course. Always.”

“Are you --? Have you --?”

Found someone? “Sort of,” I said. “I’m involved.” It’s involved. “Are you still with Phil?”

“Paul,” Mel corrected gently.

“Right. The former student.”

“Former grad student. And no. We split up. About six weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry.” No, I wasn’t. I never was a good loser.