Empire of Dust (13 page)

Laika stopped a man with a camera who was walking toward the road, and asked him if he knew when the drawing had been discovered. "Early this morning," he replied. "Just after dawn, people were coming by and noticed it. The cars started stopping, and . . ." He swept his hand around at the dozens of people walking to, from, and around the drawing. ". . . you see it."

When they finally reached the giant pattern, Joseph knelt and examined the trench carefully. "No tread marks," he said. "Of course, whoever did this could have used tires without a tread."

"Look around," Tony said. "You see any entrance or exit tracks? How'd they get out here in the first place?"

"Maybe they flew, Dr. Antonelli," Joseph said dryly. "They do have things called helicopters now, you know."

"I don't see any backwash," Laika said, looking around. "As powdery as this sand is, you'd think some would show if a chopper came in. Besides, that'd be an awful lot of money to spend on a practical joke."

Joseph said, "Maybe they just drove in and swept their tracks clean behind them when they left. After all, you didn't see the paths the crop circle makers used to get in to the fields, did you?"

"No," said Laika, "but that was because the wheat sprang back up on its own. These trenches wouldn't fill in by themselves."

"Okay, you got me, it was pixies," Joseph said. "Or angels, or spacemen, or Steven Spielberg. And Miriam predicted it all in her dream."

"Are you saying she didn't?" Tony asked. "I mean, at least
that
much seems obvious. You heard it yourself, and I heard it late last night, when she couldn't have known anything about it . . . even before it was made, probably."

"I really didn't know anything about it," Miriam offered. "I was just as surprised as all of you were."

"I'm sure you were," said Joseph. "I'm not suggesting collusion here, I'm just saying that as great a coincidence as it seems, that's what it is—coincidence. People dream all the time, and sometimes what they dream about comes true. That doesn't mean they're prophetic."

"What about her premonition?" Tony asked. "That's two coincidences in a row."

"Sure, and sometimes
that
happens. Sometimes somebody hits
three
in a row, or four, or more, and if they can prove it, they win a column in a tabloid as Madame Souvlaki, who sees all and knows all."

"You're probably right, Kevin," Miriam said, addressing Joseph. "It's just coincidence. But sometimes coincidences can be pretty strange."

Laika got the feeling that the girl was just saying the words, trying to keep the peace. As for herself, Laika wasn't a believer in coincidences. She liked explanations for things, and when she didn't get them, she went looking, assuming something was wrong. When, in a foreign city, she came across the same person twice in two days, that was more than a coincidence, and finding out why might save her life.

At the very least, Laika believed that whatever else Miriam might be, she was not, as Joseph put it, a New Age airhead.

As they started to walk back to the car, Miriam stopped.

"This is why you're here, isn't it? You're investigating these sand drawings for the Science Foundation?"

Several mouths opened, but Laika was the first to figure out what to say. "It's another matter. One that's taking us to Gallup. Not to say that this might not fall into our purview eventually, but now we're just curiosity seekers, like the rest of these people."

Miriam nodded, then asked, "Does it have something to do with that hiker they found?"

Laika tried to keep a poker face. "Hiker?"

"The one who got all dried up." She looked at their solemn faces, then grinned. "Oh jeez, it's not like it's a big secret. News travels fast among the nomads out here. I heard about it from a girl who heard from a friend of the guy who found him."

"Well, I'm glad security's so tight," Joseph muttered. Laika nodded and started walking again. "That's the one."

"They found another one in Gallup?" Miriam asked.

"Near here, actually. We're going to Gallup to see the body." What the hell, Laika thought. The girl knew they were investigators, and they had to be investigating
something
. She might as well know the truth. It wouldn't matter. So she'd hit on a lucky guess. So what?

Laika felt a sudden twinge as she thought, shit, maybe the goddamned girl's psychic, after all.

"By the way, Dr. Kelly," Joseph said, as they neared their car, "does the bird stand for anything in particular in Indian lore?"

She looked at him with a wry smile. "The eternal," she said, and was pleased to see his face grow serious. "The great bird would carry away the dead to the eternal dwelling place."

Laika knew what he and Tony were thinking:
Locus hominus aeterni
, Place of the one who never dies. It seemed as though the prisoner would not leave them alone.

A
s Laika, Tony, Joseph, and Miriam got back into their car, someone watched them through mirrored sunglasses from behind the wheel of his own dusty car. He was a big man with heavy features, and his skin was a deep reddish-brown, the color of the desert sands in certain forbidding light.

From beneath the dashboard, he brought a pair of binoculars, and noted the operatives' license number as they pulled away. He saw them pass under the highway to get back to Route 40. Only after they disappeared around the abutment did he pull his car onto the road to follow.

Once on Route 40, keeping a quarter mile distance between them and himself, the man punched a number into his cellular phone and spoke into it. "I think," he said, "I've found some people you've been looking for."

T
hey dropped Miriam Dominick off at a small hotel on what used to be Route 66, and still was the main drag through Gallup. Tony wasn't impressed with the town. It seemed like a stretch of restaurants, transient hotels, bars, pawn shops, and tourist traps. There were a lot of Indians on the streets, a few sitting on curbs and stoops, some with cans of soda, some with bottles in brown paper bags. None of them looked happy.

"You've, uh, stayed here before?" Tony asked Miriam, as he walked her to the door while Laika and Joseph stayed in the car.

"Sure. Not a thing to worry about. It looks a lot cruddier than it really is."

He wondered whether or not he should tell her where he and the others would be staying in Gallup, but only for a moment. If Laika and Joseph got pissed, so be it. "Look, if you want to get hold of us . . . for any reason, we'll be at the Gallup Inn, for one night, anyway, maybe a couple, depending on what we find." There. The die was cast.

"Okay, Vincent. Well . . . I hope I see you again."

"Yeah, me too." He smiled and headed back to his partners.

T
hey stopped for a quick lunch and then drove to Gallup General Hospital, where they showed their IDs and asked to be taken to the body of Ralph Begay. A middle-aged man in a dark suit came out and introduced himself as Mr. Austin, a hospital administrator. "I'm sorry, Doctors," he said, "but the body has been turned over to the family."

"This is getting to be a habit," Joseph muttered.

"Mr. Austin," Laika said, so tightly and officiously that Tony was glad she wasn't talking to him, "were you not instructed by the National Science Foundation to retain this body until we arrived to examine it?"

"Yes, Dr. Kelly, we were. But when it comes to dealing with the Navajo, we're limited to how much we can do as a hospital. If the foundation had spoken directly to the police, it might have been a different story, but when the family requests the body, we as a facility can't refuse it."

"Where's the body now?" Joseph asked. "Cremated?"

"Oh no," Austin replied. "It would have been taken to Red Water, the village on the reservation where Mr. Begay lived. There's a tribal cemetery there. The Navajo like to bury their dead as quickly as possible."

"Do you think he's been buried already?" Tony asked.

"Possibly. I sure wouldn't waste any time in getting out there. But I ought to caution you that it's not very likely they'll let you see the body."

"Was a cause of death determined while the body was here?" asked Laika.

"Yes." He handed her several sheets of paper. "Here's a copy of the report. The cause of death was extreme dehydration, but the reason for it is unknown."

"And no foul play was suspected?"

"There was no sign of violence."

"Just how dehydrated was Mr. Begay?"

Austin seemed to be getting to the point where he no longer liked Laika's tone. "I think you'll find that all in the report," he said coldly. "I'm sorry we weren't able to help you further."

"Thank you for the information," Laika said, just as coldly, then turned her back on the man and stalked out. Tony and Joseph followed.

Back in the car, Tony found the village of Red Water on the detailed topographical maps in their dossier, while Laika and Joseph pored over the medical report. "Identical to the hiker," Joseph said. "No photos, though."

"Well, why should they take photos?" Laika asked. "They're not of a suspicious mind around here. Maybe they're used to finding dead Indians."

"An Indian mummy, in this case," Joseph added. "So do we have any legal rights on the reservation—as members of the National Science Foundation, that is?"

"I suspect," Laika said, "we'll be greeted with the same respect they'd afford a drug dealer. Or Custer."

R
ed Water was worse than Tony had imagined. The town, such as it was, consisted of one long street with houses on either side, and two side streets with scattered dwellings. The whole village was no larger than a few acres. Everything was exposed to screaming sunlight, for the only vegetation was low brush and a few short, decorative trees struggling for their lives, planted in front of some of the houses.

The buildings were all of one story, and mostly made out of weathered, unpainted planks. Roofs were flat or slightly slanted, and Tony noticed that rubber tires were sitting on a few of them, either for storage, or, as he suspected, to hold the roofs on in the event of a windstorm. Most of the windows were open and without screens, and Tony saw no air conditioners, though a few box fans sat in some of the windows, whose sills, when they were painted, were nearly all blue.

Some of the houses were in clusters with other structures. On one lot there might be a house, then a small round or hexagonal hogan with a sloped roof, and next to it a small trailer or another outbuilding.

On the side streets were a few rusty mobile homes, and even a school bus with painted-over windows. He wondered if anyone actually lived in it.

A few of the houses had rudimentary porches, and some people were sitting on them, as if trying to catch a whisper of the breeze that stirred the dust. To the porch sitters, Pepsi seemed to be the drink of choice. A number of children played in the streets and in the areas between the dwellings.

A car was parked at every third house or so, with the exception of one house where plaster or adobe, painted light green, covered the wooden planks. There, four cars were parked, all of them older than ten years. A black station wagon sat nearest the house. A long and narrow wooden box hung over its dropped-down tailgate.

"Looks like a party," Tony said.

"Or a funeral," said Joseph.

They parked, which consisted of pulling off the dust of the main street onto the dust in front of one of the houses, and walked to the house with the cars. The few windows were all open, and three men were standing in the shade of a wood-planked porch. Two were drinking Pepsi, and one drank something from a chipped coffee mug.

"Is this the Begay house?" Laika asked. The men, somewhere in age between thirty-five and sixty, only looked at her. "I'm looking for Mrs. Begay," she went on. "Mrs. Ralph Begay?" Still the men said nothing. Tony thought he saw one of them nod slightly. "Would you please tell her that three doctors from the National Science Foundation's Division of Special Investigations are here to speak to her?"

The men looked at Laika, then at each other, and one of them went inside through the open door, where Tony saw less than a dozen other people standing, talking quietly. In a minute the man came back out with an elderly woman wearing a long-sleeved, black blouse and a long, dark blue skirt. Her face was deeply lined, and the hair on the top of her head was sparse. Around her wattled neck hung a large necklace made of small discs of turquoise and other stones, and from her ears dangled large, finely engraved silver earrings.