Empire of Dust (15 page)

"We don't know. But we want to find out, so that it doesn't happen again."

Yazzie shone his light down into the grave and shook his head. "Scarcely dead for a day, and he looks like a damn mummy. You're right, somebody
should
investigate this." He looked back at Laika. "And they have, you know. The Anglo police have started to look into it."

"You don't sound as though you expect much from that," Laika said.

"When the Anglos investigate on Indian land," said Yazzie, "it's like first-graders building a computer—they don't know where to start, they don't know how to get their information, and nobody takes them seriously, not on the reservation, anyway. Present company possibly included. Now, you've committed a pretty dreadful crime here—robbing an Indian grave, stripping the corpse. . . ." He shook his head. "But you had valid reasons. So I'll tell you what—you get Mr. Begay dressed and put him back where he belongs, exactly as he was, and I'll see if I can get the Bureau of Indian Affairs to approve of your investigating on Indian land."

"Why would you help us?" Laika asked. "After this?"

"I don't like my people getting turned into mummies. And there's something about you that makes me think you'd be more effective than the Anglo police."

"Can't you tribal police investigate things yourself?" Joseph asked.

"We don't have the manpower or the resources. Or access to National Science Foundation investigators."

"So why should we go through you?" Laika said. "We could get clearance ourselves, couldn't we?"

"Sure," said Yazzie. "And by the time you cut through all the red tape, there may be a dozen more deaths like this one. Besides, I want to keep an eye on you three. What you've done here . . . well, this is not a good thing. So, where are you staying?"

"The Gallup Inn," Laika said.

"Tell you what. You give me your IDs, and I'll take them up to the Navajo Area Office in Window Rock first thing in the morning, vouch for you, and get you clearance to investigate . . .
legally
. Then I'll meet you at your motel."

Laika hesitated, and Tony knew that she was wondering if their IDs would pass muster with a governmental agency. But she must have come to the same conclusion that he did, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs wasn't real heavy on the investigatory end. If their IDs could pass muster with anything short of a Senate committee, the local BIA shouldn't prove too big a hurdle. Laika took her ID back out and handed it to Yazzie, then gestured for Tony and Joseph to do the same.

"All right, then," Yazzie said, "get Mr. Begay covered up again."

"I don't suppose that we could take some photographs and tissue samples first?" said Laika.

"That would
not
be a good idea. Consider this a purely visual surveillance, and one that you will not discuss with anyone else."

The ops put the dead man's clothes back on him and fit him back into the coffin. It took less time to fill in the hole, but when they were finished, it was only a few hours before dawn. They drove Yazzie to his car, which he had parked on the main road before jogging back to the cemetery.

"White," Joseph observed. "Shows the dust pretty well."

"It needs to be washed," Yazzie admitted. "But in a white car, it's harder to see you coming in the desert. Crimestoppers' tip number 358."

"Dick Tracy," said Tony.

"Ah, a well-read man." Yazzie got out of their car and opened the door of his own. "I'll see you tomorrow around noon. Till then, stay out of trouble."

"I
think we got lucky," Joseph said when Officer Yazzie was safely behind them.

"I don't know
what
we got," Laika said. "I was surprised, that's for sure. Surprised that somebody was able to sneak up on us like that. It was my fault. One of us should have watched."

"It wouldn't have done any good, Laika," said Joseph. "He's an Indian."

"I think that qualifies as an ethnic . . . something-or-other," she said.

"Not a slur. It's a compliment."

"It's a stereotype," said Tony.

"Tell me about it while you cook me some spaghetti sauce, pal," Joseph said.

"Fine—I know you can tell me where to get the cheapest ingredients."

"See there?" Joseph said with a laugh. "There's nothing wrong with knowing how to cook spaghetti sauce, or knowing how to save money, or being stealthy—they're all stereotypical, but they're not
negative
."

"Mmm-hmm." Laika nodded. "And I got tons of rhythm. I'm not worried about his stealth, I'm worried about his cooperativeness. He caught us grave robbing, and how it ended up was that he volunteered to
help
us. That doesn't make sense to me."

"It did when he suggested it," Joseph said. "He doesn't want to see any more dead Indians, and he knew we were connected with the government. As far as he's concerned, we're more than legit, in spite of what we were up to tonight."

"I think you're right," Tony said. "He seemed on the level to me. But what about that body?"

"A completely unnatural death," Laika said, "and I can't find a rational answer for it. It looked identical to the photos of the first victim."

"There's that
victim
word again," said Joseph. "Like the cop's line from
Plan Nine From Outer Space
—'This man's been murdered, and somebody's responsible.' So you think there's a killer involved?"

"Yes. Someone who did something to these two men. Two deaths like these have to be more than just a coincidence."

"Then he's on the move," said Tony. "Looks like he's traveling east."

"You're the map man, Tony," Joseph said. "Where could Mr. Prunization go from Gallup?"

"Well, he could keep going east into New Mexico, northwest toward Canyon de Chelly on Indian roads, or north from Gallup on Route 666."

"Ooo, the Route of the Beast," said Joseph. "That's the one
I
predict. . . ."

They got to the Gallup Inn an hour before dawn. They had decided to remain in the area, finding out as much as they could about Ralph Begay and those who knew him. What they could learn, they realized, depended on how much Joshua Yazzie was willing to help them. Three Anglos on their own weren't going to get a lot of information from the dour and taciturn Navajos.

Joseph Stein flopped down on his bed as soon as the door of his room closed behind him. It had been a long day and night, and the energy expended in digging and filling in the grave reminded him all too well of his forty-plus years. What the hell was he doing in fieldwork? He had been, if not happy, at least content with his desk job.

Still, for better or worse, there was no going back now. He was in this until the end, whatever the end might be. Joseph hoped that it would have something to do with the prisoner. The symbols of eternity in the sand pointed that way, at any rate. But hell, maybe every Indian symbol could be read as a sign of eternity.

He made himself undress, and left a wakeup call for ten o'clock, which would give him five hours of rest, then turned off the lights and closed his eyes. He was asleep in moments.

And in his sleep he dreamed. There was no period of blackness. The dream came instantly, the moment he dropped off. He went from lying in a Gallup motel bed to floating under the dome of a dark sky, black with touches of blue where dim lights from below shone off of it. It was the blue-black, he thought, of Elvis Presley's hair, and he chuckled in the dream at the simile.

He was not frightened, although he seemed to be suspended with only a vast abyss beneath him. He knew he had been here before, but then he had been on a narrow bridge of rusting iron, under the same dark sky. And because he knew this was a dream, he had a dreamer's fearlessness. He could fly, he could fall, and nothing could harm him.

Joseph looked around, ready for whatever would come next, and then he heard a voice, as soft as the breath of whatever God might be, form the words, "Find me. . . ."

He knew it was the prisoner. It was the same sweet, angelic voice that had spoken to him in that other dream. Hearing it, all he could think about was finding the man, freeing him, helping him, however he could. He looked up, then down, and it was down, far below, that he saw the keyhole.

That was the first image that sprang to his mind. Whatever it was he was looking at, it was round, with a smaller shape attached to it, straight lines that spread out slightly from the circle, then were joined by another line. Yes, an old-fashioned keyhole. That was where the voice had come from, asking Joseph to find the speaker. All right, then. Maybe Joseph himself was the key.

He willed himself downward, toward the shape, and that will dropped him as if on an elevator, slowly and safely toward the keyhole. As he drew nearer, the darkness below took on a sandy brown color, and resolved into a gritty texture, and he knew that he was drifting toward the floor of the desert.

Though the keyhole was covered with sand, its outlines stood out clearly. There was one small hole that appeared slightly above the center of the circle, like a misplaced nipple on a breast, and it was toward that hole, only an inch across, that Joseph descended. For the first time, panic hit him as he realized that he could not pass through that hole, and that he might be crushed in the attempt.

He need not have worried. The dream-stuff he had become slipped through the tiny hole as smoothly as sand slipping through an hourglass, and he found himself in a large room whose walls were of a black so flat that no light could reflect from them. Instantly his throat locked, and though he tried to breathe, there was nothing to enter his lungs.

Look for him!
his mind screamed.
Find him, and you will breathe!

Joseph whirled about and saw the prisoner.

Immediately, at the sight of the man's gentle features, the lustrous, long brown hair, and the beatific smile wreathed by the soft beard and moustache, cool air rushed into Joseph's lungs. He felt saved, cleansed, released from all the rigors and terrors of life. The prisoner's sole white garment seemed to glow as radiantly as did the man's face, and he saw that the man, although free of the chains that had bound him in Joseph's previous dream about him, still was a captive, held by some force that would not let him go to Joseph, although he knew the prisoner wanted to. Nor could Joseph draw any nearer to him.

Then he heard the prisoner's voice, speaking the same words Joseph had heard him speak before:

Find me. Help me. Save me. And then I may save you.

And the desire rose in him, stronger and deeper than any he had ever known, to save this man and be saved by him. Joseph reached out his arms toward him, but felt himself being swept up and away, through the small hole, and this time it hurt. His body stretched and elongated as it was forced through the narrow passage, and he could feel his muscles contract, his bones splinter, his skull collapse, and with what was left of his brain that was being crushed and forced through the hole, the thought came to him,
Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life. . . .

Then he was through, and the maddening pain had ceased, bright only in memory. As he was swept away from the chamber and up into the darkness, he got a glimpse of another structure but was unsure of whether he was seeing it in his dream or in his imagination. It seemed not fully realized, even in the loose structure of dream, but was there, somehow, somewhere.

It was the front of a building that faded from view as quickly as it had appeared, a wide structure with a doorway and a humped top, with another opening in the hump from which something hung suspended. There were other details which his mind scarcely had time to register before it was gone, swallowed up in the darkness into which he flew.

His eyes opened, and he was awake.

His body was covered with sweat, and he still remembered the terrible pain of being forced through the narrow hole, though no pain actually touched his body now. Though he wanted to recall the prisoner's voice and appearance, and the way he had felt in his presence, Joseph struggled most to remember that last image he had seen in his dream, the building, the humped top, and what hung there.

Slowly it came, like the memory of something seen in the split-second illumination of a flashbulb. A bell had hung within the rounded top, and there were smaller humps, two of them, on the roof line on either side of the main one. A door had been in the center of the structure, and between it and the roof were lines . . . boards . . . timbers. A railing. It had been a balustrade. And there to the left, more lines, leaning against the wall. A cross.