Empire of Dust (9 page)

There had been an uncomfortable silence in the car ever since they had left the rock slide, and Tony tried to break it by talking about what had to be on all their minds. "So, Miriam, this has happened before? Your, what would you call it, premonition?"

"Yes," she said. "I get feelings about things . . . it's as if something tells me not to go somewhere or do something. Sometimes I learn that I might have been harmed if I had—like the rock slide? And other times, well, there doesn't seem to be anything bad that happens."

"But it might have," Tony suggested, "if you'd acted against what you thought."

"Or maybe not," said Joseph. "Premonitions are funny things. We have a pretty selective memory when it comes to coincidences, but our memories get faulty concerning the noncoincidences, which, let's face it, are a lot more plentiful."

"What do you mean?" Tony asked.

"Well, lots of times people have bad feelings about things—getting on planes, going on trips—but when they do, and they arrive safely, they forget about the bad vibes they felt. But that one time out of a thousand when something really does go wrong, when there's an accident or a flat tire or something, they remember the premonition."

Miriam nodded. "I see what you mean, um. . . ."

"Kevin," Joseph said.

"Kevin, sorry. But my . . . experiences aren't like that. I love to travel, and I never have premonitions, just these . . .
things
. And they are so sure, so certain, that the people around me know, and they can vouch for it. I just figure it's a present from God."

"You're religious, then?" asked Joseph, and Tony hoped that he wasn't going to start one of his agnostic harangues.

"I was brought up Roman Catholic," Miriam answered. "I'm kind of lapsed, but it's been more the result of circumstances than any willful denial. I still believe in what I learned. It's just that it's hard to attend mass when you spend a lot of your Sundays in the desert, or on the rez."

"The rez?" Tony said.

"The Indian reservation. I try to photograph there as much as possible, though it's hard. The Navajo aren't very cooperative, and unfortunately I've never been able to break through their reserve and make any real friends among them, except for a few I've met in some of the towns."

"I'd think they'd be impressed," Joseph said, "with somebody who can predict rock slides."

"You're making fun of me," Miriam said, though not angrily.

"No, just skeptical, that's all."

"Kevin," Tony said, using the cover name, "you really saw it, so how do you explain it?"

"It's possible Miriam might have actually heard the beginning of the slide, or sensed the trembling of the earth ahead. To me that's more likely than a visitation from the spirits."

"Just one spirit," Miriam said. "God."

Joseph chuckled. "Ah, the main man himself."

"My mother always told me it was a gift, and not to be scared of it. It would come in dreams, too. I would see things, and the next day I would see them for real. A person, or a pattern, or an animal . . . and there it would be, and I would remember it."

"And did you ever tell anyone about these dreams?" asked Laika. "Or could it have just been déjà vu?"

"Oh no, I told people—my mother, my sister, my friends. And they would see what I had dreamed about, and they would know I was telling the truth."

"It's a wonder," said Joseph, "that you never tried to use this in any way, you know, become another Jeane Dixon, only a
real
one, of course."

"Oh no, it's nothing that I do. I mean, I can't sit down and make predictions, or see what horse will win a race, or what stocks will do well. When it comes, it comes; and when it doesn't . . . well, I'm just like everybody else."

"I can't believe that," said Tony, intending it to sound as flirtatious as it seemed.

He heard her give a little laugh, though he couldn't see her face in the mirror.
Score one, ace
, he thought, and smiled in the dark.

Once they got back on 40, it took only another hour to get to Winslow. Still, it was 2:30 in the morning when they entered the town. "So," Laika said to Miriam, "can we drop you off anywhere before we try and find a place for the night?"

"Or what's left of it?" Joseph said.

Miriam seemed slightly uncertain. "Well . . . maybe I could just go where you're staying. I mean, one motel's pretty much the same as another, and I did want to spend a few days shooting around here. . . ."

From the comer of his eye, Tony could see that Laika wasn't pleased at the prospect, and he knew why. It was never a good idea to get friendly with civilians, even possibly psychic ones. But dumping her somewhere else would seem suspicious, and Laika must have realized that, since she nodded and said, "Sure, that's fine."

They pulled into the parking lot of the first chain motel they saw, and registered in four singles, which seemed to surprise the clerk, who thought he was seeing two couples. They were all in the same hallway, though not in adjoining rooms.

Tony received a call in his room five minutes after he closed his door behind him. "Come down," Laika said into the receiver, and hung up.

Joseph was already in Laika's room when he got there. "We'll just go for a few hours sleep," Laika said. "Let's be ready to head out at nine—the hospital first, then we'll go to the site where the body was found." She paused, as though she wasn't sure what to say next.

Joseph filled the gap. "What about the girl?"

"What do you mean, what about her?" Tony said. "She's going to be around here for a few days, and so are we."

"So what? She doesn't know who we are. And if she knows our covers, it doesn't matter. A lot of people are going to know Doctors Kelly, Tompkins, and Antonelli before we're finished here. From the National Science Foundation, big deal."

"What are you saying, you want to date her?" said Joseph.

"Date her? Hell no, but if we run into her again—and we probably will, if we're staying in the same place—so what?"

"We want to stay as low profile as possible," Laika finally said. "And this girl's a photographer."

"So? She's interested in rocks and Indians, not us. What are you saying, you want to terminate her because we picked her up?"

"Of course not," Laika said. "I just don't want any of us to fraternize with her further."

"Fine," Tony said, "But I'd have thought we'd jump at the chance to deal with a genuine psychic."

"She's not genuine," Joseph said wearily.

"Hey, if it weren't for her, we might be at the bottom of a goddamn canyon right now. And you heard what she said about the other times."

"Yeah, what she
said
," Joseph replied. "Okay, maybe her little premonition saved our asses, but how many times that we don't know about has she hitched a ride, pulled the same 'Stop the car' stuff, and nothing happened? And then she says, 'Oh gee, I'm sorry, I was so
sure
something bad was going to happen.' Tony, all we've got here is one coincidence and a little anecdotal evidence, and that's nothing."

"I have to agree with Joseph," Laika said. "But the main point is that even if she made aliens come down and dance the boogaloo on our car roof, we're investigating a mummified corpse, not some nineties Bernadette with visions, no offense, Tony."

"None taken," he lied. "And no fraternizing, I get it, okay?"

"Okay," said Laika. "See you in the morning, right?"

Tony and Joseph went in different directions when they hit the hall.
Typical
, Tony thought.
That sonofabitch could be such a know-it-all
. Tony had seen what had happened in the car, he had known there was something other than a coincidence going on there. The fact that she was Catholic helped convince him.

Tony always felt that people of his own faith, so rich in ritual and mystery, were more susceptible to the other mysteries of this world as well. One of his mother's aunts was born with a caul, and family history told of her predicting not only the death of her own mother and father, but the crash of the
Hindenburg
as well. What was so difficult about believing that a Catholic girl could have a premonition of danger, especially when the results were so impressive?

But Tony felt more than just a fascination over Miriam's psychic abilities. He had been drawn to her in a way he had always tried to avoid. In Tony's profession, women were something to be kept at arm's length, and sex was recreation rather than an expression of love, something fleeting and enjoyable to both parties. The woman had to know going in that it wasn't going to be anything lasting, and there were always a lot of women who were willing to play by those rules.

Love and wet work didn't mix. They gummed each other up so badly that neither could thrive. You loved somebody, you started wanting to come home to them, so maybe you got a little too cautious, and that could be as dangerous as being too reckless. But the worst thing that Tony could imagine was having somebody who loved him left alone after he was killed.

It was what had happened to his mother, and he had watched her shrivel up and lose the will to live after his father had died in an accident at work. She had lasted for seven more years, and seemed to grow more and more transparent each time he was able to visit her, which was generally two or three times a year. She had quit smoking, but started again after she lost her husband, and was up to two packs a day when the lung cancer hit her at age sixty-three. When it happened, she welcomed it, refusing chemotherapy. "I just want to be with Frank," was all she said about it. Tony wasn't with her when she died, and he never stopped wishing that he had been.

So he had always tried to stay away from Miriam's type, the type he suspected he could feel more for than just companionship and desire. But in spite of his better judgment, in spite of what Laika had just said, he wanted to see her again. There was something about her that he couldn't shake.

Besides, the Company didn't have any right to run his private life, as long as it didn't interfere with his current op, and neither Laika nor Joseph had the right to tell him what to do, either.

T
hree hours later, the cultists rose with the dawn. Things had changed among those who had followed the late Ezekiel Swain. The days that had passed since they had hit the road again had been full of frustration and tension.

Jezebel, after much concentration, had felt that they would reach the Divine by going east, so they traveled in that direction on Route 40, stopping every twenty miles or so to let her get the psychic scent again. Rodney drove and Jezebel rode shotgun, with Damon right behind her, frequently querying her as to whether or not she had it. "Yeah," she would say, "yeah, it's okay."

But it wasn't, as it turned out, not by a long shot. God damn it, the bitch couldn't sniff out a bad container of yogurt in a heat wave. They had driven and driven and driven, and were nearly to the New Mexico line, when she had shaken her head and said, "Wait . . . wait, wait, wait, please, just stop. . . ."

She had gotten out of the car, and Damon had been ready for her to point dramatically to one of the half dozen rusty trailers around which a bunch of Indian kids ran. But instead of making some magnificent gesture of discovery, Jezebel stood for a moment as if listening, then put her head in her hands and started to cry.

"What?" Damon said, feeling the presence of all the others behind him, sensing their expectation and anticipation. "What's wrong?" But she only kept crying. "What the hell is
wrong
, Jezebel?"

She looked up, her cheeks streaky with tears. "I don't have it anymore. . . ." she whimpered.

"Have
what
?" Damon asked, near panic. Jesus, had she lost the power to sense the Divine altogether?

"The
trail
," she said. "We went too fast . . . there were too many roads . . . I missed Him. . . ."

"Too many roads?" Damon said. "Jesus, we were only on one road, Route 40 all the way!"

"No, I mean . . . too many off 40 . . . listen . . . it was on one of those that I lost it, it
must
have been. I just have to stop, you know? I'm not as good as Ezekiel was, I want to be, but I'm
not
," and she started to cry again.

"Okay, okay, jeez, knock it off. So you're saying that you want to go back the way we came and stop at all the crossroads so you can pick up the trail again?"