Читать книгу I Am Called Shaman - Rebecca Reeves - Страница 3

Chapter One

7:55 a.m.

I knelt in silence with my father by the weeping willow tree. A swan glided across the glassy surface of the pond then disappeared behind a thatch of cattail. The morning dew had seeped through my jeans and my knees were beginning to ache, but I held still, unwilling to break this fragile moment.

I’d arrived in time to witness the sun rise from behind the Four Peaks of the McDowell Mountains east of Phoenix. The sun heralded this year’s spring equinox; the day when the sun passes over the equator and causes night and day to be of equal length everywhere.

I’d have been here anyway because it was the 20th day of March. The date held more significance for me than a mere planetary alignment. This day had etched a thick black gash through my history, forever relegating my personal timeline to that which came before, and that which came after.

When the sun’s ascent had erased all shadows from the foothills of the McDowells, I stretched out my legs, and brushed the dried blades of grass off the cold marble surface of my father’s tombstone.

“I miss you, Daddy,” I said.

Twenty years ago today, my father had been murdered out there under the Four Peaks, his life stolen by a man who would become one of the deadliest and most elusive serial killers of our time. That the place of my father’s death was morbidly in view of his grave, here, some thirty miles away in the heart of north Scottsdale, made me wonder about the people who’d been advising my mother in her time of grief.

I busied my hands arranging the bouquet of white roses I’d brought. I put the vase on the marble.

“They published my novel.” I picked up the hardcover book and opened it to the second page. “For my Father,” I read aloud. “A circle of love surrounds you.”

The dedication matched the epitaph inscribed on his tombstone. He used to assure me that, no matter where I went, no matter the distance, I’d always be surrounded with his love.

I wanted to hear his voice praising me for the accomplishment, for having created something with my own hands, but there was only twenty years of silence. Seeing the dedication for the first time had been exhilarating, I couldn’t wait to share it with him. Now I felt only shame for having wasted my time on something as frivolous as the writing of fiction.

“I haven’t forgotten. I just don’t know what to do anymore.” The weight of my unfulfilled promise pushed my shoulders forward. The band of hopelessness that tightened around my chest with each passing year, cinched up, and forced tears to fall onto my clenched hands.

Long ago I vowed to find my father’s killer, but still he walked free; free to live a life, free to take the lives of others. Then, just when I’d thought I had a chance of catching him, he’d disappeared. Ten years without a trace, not one single clue. I was coming to believe that my father’s killer was dead, and the thought that he might’ve escaped justice because I’d been too late in taking action or too inept to take the right action, filled me with bitter regret.

“Dead or alive, I promise you, I’ll never stop searching until I find him.” I wiped my eyes and placed my hand on the ground over the spot where I thought his heart would be. “I love you, Daddy.”

A procession of cars snaked their way through the cemetery.

It was time to go anyway, time to do what I did every year on this horrible day: go home, watch the news, and wait for my father’s killer to strike again.

I pulled one rose from the bouquet and placed it on my mother’s grave before walking away from the rising sun.

10:30 a.m.

God made the Grand Canyon, but she lives in Sedona.

One hundred and twenty miles north of Scottsdale, I passed by Bell Rock and slipped into the welcoming embrace of Sedona. Here, it’s as if the walls of the Grand Canyon had been torn asunder and raked outward to form a bowl, eighteen miles wide. Scattered within the bowl are colossal red rock monoliths, with names like “Cathedral” and “The Sphinx.” Dr. Rorschach would have had a heyday picking images out of the eroded remnants of the Colorado Plateau.

Time itself is written into these mountains, layer upon layer, like a stack of books, tomes that tell of the passage of over 80 million years. The dark basalt layer speaks to the time of volcanic activity. The Fort Apache Limestone layer, a gray band, now fifty two hundred feet above sea level, was once the ocean floor. The creamy layer that tops our highest mountains was once a sand dune. Striations in the rocks show the direction the winds were traveling when the sand solidified into stone.

Sedona is rich in geological history, but it is the oxidizing, iron- rich earth that draws travelers from all over the world, and causes them to do silly things like hold video recorders out of their sunroofs while they drive.

The tourists wouldn’t see the full glory of our red rocks today though. The Forest Service had been clearing the woods at the top of Oak Creek Canyon in an effort to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires when summer came and rendered all of Arizona a tinderbox. They’d begun burning the slash piles yesterday and the air was thick with smoke. The sooty gray sky added to the heaviness in my heart.

Two ravens rode the air currents, spiraling higher with each effortless turn. From their perspective, looking down upon Sedona and the vast wilderness that surrounds her, our roads form an idea of a “Y” that has fallen over to the east. The disproportionately long and serpentine forks bring travelers into the bowl from I-17 and onto Highway 89A — the stem of the “Y,” and our humble two mile stretch of Main Street known as West Sedona.

I was on the right fork, Highway 179. Traffic here was usually backed up by now, slowed by hordes of tourists, but it all seemed deserted today and I made it to the center of town, where all the roads intersected, in record time.

I entered the first roundabout; the circling traffic control device, in thematic keeping with the renowned vortex energy of Sedona. A Phoenix news van was parked illegally alongside the road. A woman in an ivory pantsuit paced alongside it with a cell phone pressed to her ear. They’d most likely been sent to alert day trippers to our smoky conditions. The woman had to be new in the business; she seemed awfully geared up for a public service announcement.

In West Sedona, I parked in front of The Doggie Lama, a holistic pet supply store I’d started several years ago. Operating from the “Teach a Man to Fish” theorem, I’d gifted the business to the Buddhist church to run as a co-op. The proceeds funded their animal rescue work.

When my Blazer came to a stop, Sundara stood up on the backseat, stretched, then hopped down between the front seats, waiting for me to get out.

I stroked the soft fur behind her ears and laid a kiss on her long nose. “I just want to grab a couple things and get home. Would you mind waiting out here?”

She placed a paw on my leg.

“If your fan club sees you, we’ll be in there for an hour.”

She sighed, and returned to her throne in back.

“Thanks, baby,” I said. “In and out, I swear.”

Inside the store, stacks of unopened boxes from this morning’s delivery littered the floor. They should have been unpacked and put up on the shelves by now.

Ace, the store cat, sat on the counter, contemplating the vases on the top shelf that housed the colorful betta fish. His tail swished back and forth like a metronome as he formulated yet another diabolical plan to get himself up there for a fishy hors d’oeuvre.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

Without breaking his concentration, Ace twitched his tail twice toward the back of the store.

I made my way past racks of human-grade pet food, spring hiking gear, herbal remedies, and a thousand other products essential to holistic pet care. The smell of incense grew stronger, and, under the soothing strains of flute music, was the staccato beat of television chatter.

In the backroom, clad in burgundy robes and saffron tee shirts, two nuns and one monk stood before the little TV.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Ana Ellie turned her shaved head toward me, her gentle eyes full of sadness. “Abra, haven’t you heard? They found a girl out on Schnebly Hill this morning. She was murdered.”

I stepped closer to the television to see the newscaster. It was the woman in the ivory pantsuit, talking now into a microphone. She spoke with an almost gleeful urgency, “Again, the body was discovered this morning, March 20th, and we have confirmed that it was a shooting.” The camera zoomed in. “This reporter can’t help but recall the terror of a decade ago, and wonder if this murder signals the reemergence of the notorious SK. We’ll keep you informed.”

“What does SK stand for anyway?” Konchog, the monk, asked.

“I think they spun it off of a police code,” Ana Ellie said.

I might have corrected her, but I was already running for the front door.