Empire of Dust (17 page)

"Your brother, Mr. Begay," Laika said.

"I don't have any brother. You may mean a man with the same last name as mine, a man called Ralph, but he's not my brother, alive or dead." Kee Begay fished a pack of Winstons from his pocket and lit one with a butane lighter.

"Well, at any rate," Laika said, "we're looking into his death."

"Why?" Begay asked quickly.

"Well . . . it was suspicious, and we want to learn what killed him."

"I know what killed him. A betrayed spirit. An angry spirit. I heard how he died. People don't just die that way. He was sucked dry, the same way that he helped that white story teller to suck the
Dineh
dry. They took away everything from us, and now they won't even leave us our secrets, the things most sacred to us. This Ralph Begay got what he deserved."

"But the same thing also happened to someone else," Laika said. "A white hiker died the same way. Would the spirit have done such a thing to a white man?"

"It would have," Kee Begay said, "if the white man offended it, or if he discovered things about the
Dineh
he shouldn't have known. The gods cannot stay silent forever. They speak from time to time. They spoke to Ralph Begay. And they speak in the sands."

"You mean the drawings," Tony said, thinking of the giant images made in the earth nearby.

The old man nodded. "These are signs. Signs that the gods are alive and awake." He looked out into the harsh desert, at the loose soil, the sandstone rocks, the sparse vegetation that managed to cling to life in such a cruel environment.

"There is something here. Something that has no love for betrayers. . . ."

T
here was something, and love was the farthest thing from its mind. Its intent was as dark as the blackness in which it lay.

It reached out, pressing its thoughts against the heavy shell that encased it, using all its prodigious energy to push through, probing with mental tentacles, trying to sense who was out there, who were the ones that it could reach, could speak to, could seduce. Who was there who would free it from its leaden prison?

It felt the strong one, the one who spoke to it. It had heard the man's prayers and curses, his yearnings and tantrums, and it had responded, telling the man, as best it could, where it was, drawing him closer.

But the man had changed somehow. He was different, weaker, but it could sense the fire in him, the desire that was still there, the need to find what beckoned him, entering first his dreams and then his thoughts. He would come.

It struck out with its thoughts again, and found the woman. A stupid woman, not strong at all, but at least it was able to touch her, rattle her mind from time to time, shake her, and say,
Here! Here I am! Find me!
Her mind seemed closed to him now, however, as thick and obtuse and unyielding as the lead that was its prison. If she would only listen, it thought, open herself, maybe it could speak to her more clearly.

It pushed out anew, a sailor on a sea of thought, and found the one it had touched several times before, the man who doubted. And there was someone else now, near to the man, another woman, one who had felt his presence, but remained unaware. It felt a shudder of pure joy ripple through its earthly body as it considered what strength she might have, if she only knew.

But she would have nothing like the strength of the man. The man could be its mightiest disciple of all, if he could lay down his doubts and his fears.

That was something to think about, and the prisoner had nothing if not time to think.

R
ichard Skye set the steel balls swinging on their strings, staggering his release of the first and second so that the five balls made a jerkily rhythmic sound as they tapped against each other.

The executive toy had sat on Skye's desk for the past fifteen years. It was the only item in his office that was not work related. There were no family pictures, for Skye's parents were dead, and he had never married. There were no sports items; Skye played no sports and rooted for nobody. A daily workout in the Company gym gave him all the exercise he needed. There were no novels on the shelves. Although Skye was an avid reader in his spare time, the books were all nonfiction, and concerned government and politics.

But there was something about the wooden framework and the five steel balls each descending from two strings that Skye found oddly comforting. He seldom thought about it, but when he did, he assumed that it appealed to his sense of order, that no matter how chaotic the rhythms of the swinging balls seemed, there was always a pattern, and the balls always came to rest as they had been before.

Now, as he spoke to Agent Harris on the phone, they were making a
tack
-eta
tack
-eta rhythm, the force of the falling balls at the left passing through the central ball and driving the balls at the right end upward, and the descent of those balls causing the ascent of the left balls, and so on. It was soothing, relaxing, predictable, quite unlike his life.

If Harris wondered what the clicking was, she didn't ask. It was just as well. Skye liked to keep his people guessing.

"Your investigations," Skye told her, "will from now on include the sand circles that have been done and any future ones."

"They aren't really circles, sir," Harris said. "They're patterns in the shape of—"

"Yes, Agent Harris, I
know
what they are." Skye hated to be corrected, and he was certain Harris knew that. "But sand circles are what the popular press is calling them, no doubt to tie them in with crop circles. Therefore, I will describe them as
circles
, if that's all right with you."

"Sorry, sir. We have already seen the . . . circles."

"Yes, but I want you to take photographs, soil samples, talk to the people who seem most interested in the phenomenon. Theorize how it might have been done, and then check all the resulting avenues—do I have to explain this further, Agent Harris?"

"No sir, of course not."

"I'm so glad. Now, anything to report on the other phenomenon?"

He listened as she told him about the visit to the Begay family, and of Officer Joshua Yazzie's intrusion into their investigation. "Did you run a background on him?" Skye asked.

"Yes, and he checks out. He's been a reservation cop for seven years."

Skye didn't tell her not to get too familiar with the man. He knew she wouldn't. "Continue to investigate Begay," he said. "And the . . . circles, until further notice."

He hung up and sat back. The balls had stopped moving. He stroked his thin moustache as he thought about the sand designs. It was probably foolish to have the agents investigate them, but the two deaths were bizarre enough to be paranormal events. And if they were, it was also possible that there was some connection between them and the patterns.

Besides, if the patterns had been made by hoaxers, Skye felt certain that Joseph Stein would sniff them out. The man was a mountain of skepticism, with enough knowledge to expose any fraud he might suspect. Yes, it was best to turn them loose on it and get it out of the way. Afterward, they could concentrate all their attention on these dried-up corpses. Then maybe, just maybe, they could lead him to the prisoner he and Mr. Stanley sought so earnestly.

Skye allowed a small smile of anticipation to bend his lips. Then he picked up the end steel ball and let it fall, to start the most simple pattern of which his toy was capable.

"S
o we're splitting up tomorrow," Laika told Joseph and Tony, after she had explained to them what Skye had ordered. "Joseph, you and I will go to the sites of the sand drawings and see what we can find that we haven't already."

"Jesus, Laika," Joseph said, "that's just bullshit stuff and you know it—the kind of crap kids do."

"Skye wants it done, we'll do it. Maybe he thinks there's some sort of connection between the two. And maybe there is, for all we know. But if it's a hoax, we'll debunk it as fast as we can. That's our job."

"Sorry," Joseph said. "I forgot—'Ours is not to reason why. . . .'"

"What about me?" Tony asked.

"I want you to go into Gallup and hit the bars where Ralph Begay hung out. Start with this Wet Moccasin place Ella Begay mentioned. Find out where else he might have had a drink. See if the bartender or anybody he knew has any information. And while you're in there, one other thing—check the air service centers and see if any of them rent or charter helicopters, and if any were out around the times of the sand drawings."

"Gotcha."

"What about the chief?" Joseph asked.

"You mean Officer Yazzie?" Laika said, and Tony heard a chill in her tone. "The second site's on the reservation, so we'll have to ask him if he wants to go with us."

"Dandy."

"He was helpful today," she replied. "We never would've gotten to talk to anyone without him."

"I, uh. . . ." Tony began. "Listen, Laika, I was wondering if I could get a helper of my own for tomorrow."

Laika's face betrayed nothing, but Tony saw that Joseph immediately knew who he meant. "The girl," Joseph said disgustedly. "You want to take Miriam along with you, don't you?"

"
Yeah
, I
do
," Tony said. "She knows Gallup, I don't."

"Well, use some of those newfangled street maps and phone books," said Joseph. "I hear secret agents find them quite useful."

"Why don't you just shut up, and—"

"She's not
going
," Joseph said.

"You heading this team now?" Tony said.

"No," Laika said, finally speaking. "I am. Try to remember that." She cocked her head at Joseph. "Okay?"

Joseph threw his hands in the air. "But, jeez, that
girl
. . . ."

"She knows this town," Tony said, "she knows a lot of the Indians, bartenders, pawn shop owners . . . and she knows what we're doing here. We've got covers—hell, that's what they're for, so we can work with people, right? I mean, we're not wearing disguises and staying in the shadows, are we?"

"All right, Tony," said Laika. "I don't see how it could hurt, and it might help." Joseph's jaw dropped, but before he could protest further, Laika went on. "What Tony's doing is in line with our covers. If the girl is a good resource, we'd be foolish not to use her." She looked narrowly at Tony. "As long as
she
didn't suggest it. Did she?"

Tony shook his head. "It was my idea."

"It was a good one. Call her."

"Yeah," Joseph said, "call her. I'll be in my room if anybody needs
my
opinion on anything." He strode to the door of Laika's room, yanked it open, and slammed it shut behind him.

"He's edgy," said Laika.

"Yeah. Think it's the dream?"

She nodded. "Could be he's starting to believe in things he doesn't want to believe in."

"Including Miriam?" Tony asked, thinking of the woman's uncanny predictions.

"Maybe," Laika said after a moment. "Maybe."

M
iriam Dominick agreed to go with Tony, who would pick her up at her hotel the next morning. Laika liked the girl, although she was slightly concerned by the hold she seemed to have over Tony. When he talked about her at breakfast, he was beaming.

Tony's psych profile, which she had read in detail, indicated that he was extremely independent when it came to women. His sexual liaisons were frequent, with little emotional involvement. But his feelings toward Miriam, if Laika was any judge, were quite the opposite. He reminded her of a teenager with his first crush. She should have realized that when guys like Tony fell, they could fall very hard.

Joseph, on the other hand, was acting like a spoiled child who wasn't allowed ice cream for breakfast. He said little, concentrated on the menu, the window, and the titles on the table's jukebox selector, and only picked at his bagel and oatmeal. When the meal was over and they left Tony, Joseph fell into the driver's seat of the car with a long sigh.

"Don't tell me," Laika said. "You're not happy."

"Laika," he said wearily, "we've got a self-proclaimed psychic on our team, and I'm going out to investigate some assholes who do crop circles in the sand, because our boss apparently takes such bullshit seriously. Yes, I admit I'm a little piqued this morning."