Читать книгу I Am Called Shaman - Rebecca Reeves - Страница 7

Chapter Five

5:35 p.m.

I awakened with the sense of being watched. I peeled one eye open. Two equine noses hovered inches from my own. Tiara had carried me home.

Apollo and Blaze nickered. They were both rescues, near death when they came to be with me. Tiara had had the good life until her owners had lost everything. She would have been easy to place in a new home, but I couldn’t bear to let her go. I didn’t rescue her; she’d rescued me with her effervescent spirit.

I slid off Tiara’s back. She wasn’t all that tall for a horse, but still I cringed when my feet hit the ground. The impact reverberated through my body and sent hot poker jabs through my brain. I hadn’t passed out during a journey in a long time.

My gift takes a toll on my body. Without the aid of touch, connecting becomes much more difficult. I can use my staff to bridge distances, but the further the distance the higher the price. The closer distances and shorter durations add up as well, and have a cumulative effect with the same results.

I removed Tiara’s bridle, scratched the itchy spots caused by the brow and nose band, and smoothed out her forelock. I laid a kiss upon the white crown of hair that wrapped around her dainty black ears, and thanked her for her help.

I threw hay for the horses and gave Tiara an extra helping of the sweet feed she enjoyed, then Sundara and I trudged the well-worn path to the house.

My home was less than a mile from civilization, but, with the exception of the occasional backfire from cars up on 89A, you could believe you were the last human on the planet. My property was the only remaining, privately owned, twenty acre parcel on Oak Creek. It was nestled within a protective cove of rocks and trees. My neighbors wouldn’t hear me if I screamed my head off. It was a slice of heaven, and from the time I was a child, the only place my heart ever called home.

Redwood benches and clay pots, waiting to be filled with spring flowers, lined the flagstone entryway. A whistling grunt came from the terracotta chimenea in the corner. A tiny black snout peeked out and wiggled a greeting. The white stripe down the center of his nose made him look a little cross-eyed.

I whistled back at Chan. I seldom named the animals, only the ones who became family. Chan had made himself family. Once acknowledged, the skunk retreated back into his darkened burrow.

The original owner of the house had been a master in the art of stained glass. His work trimmed most of the windows in the house, but his opus was the inlay in the front door where lush greenery and wild flowers framed a wolf drinking from a crystal clear creek. It was a rendering of my own backyard. I’d searched for the Native American woman for years, I watched for her still, and often wondered if the stained glass artist had encountered her also.

I leaned my staff against the antique sideboard just inside the door, and dropped my jacket over the back of the cinnamon leather sofa.

The fichus tree in the corner had not a single leaf when I’d rescued him from a dumpster years ago. He was now green and proud. The automatic timer clicked, and the strands of twinkle lights woven around his branches lit up and cast a warm glow about the room. It was almost as soothing as a fire in the hearth.

It was impossible to believe that only ten hours ago I’d been at my father’s grave. It seemed a lifetime ago. I felt disoriented, as if someone had rearranged my furniture while I was gone, but all was as I had left it. The changes were inside me.

Sundara followed me into the kitchen, her toenails clicked on the hardwood floor. I transferred the SK scented dirt out of the poopie-pick-up bag and poured it into a small plastic zippie. I added a piece of sterile gauze that would help absorb the scent, sealed up the bag, and put it in my pocket. I’d carry it with me until the SK was caught.

I warmed up Sundara’s dinner, got some aspirin and herbs for myself, and then went to my office.

My father’s face smiled at me from a framed 5 x 7 that sat at the corner of my desk. I could still smell his cologne. He could have afforded the most expensive, but he’d maintained a fondness for the white bottle with the sailboat on the front. He used to tell my mother it reminded him of his humble roots. I always thought he smelled like a king.

Dog eared files and a sketch pad sat in a tidy pile in the center of my desk. The files were filled with newspaper articles and copious notes of my own. I opened the top one. The first item was my father’s obituary.

For the first five years after his death, I’d been condemned to sit and watch events around me unfold, powerless to act because of my young age. I’d thought turning thirteen would grant me a host of freedoms, but I was kept on an even shorter leash. I was never sure if that was due to my mother’s fear of loosing another loved one, or her determination not to allow my father’s death to interfere with her debutante dreams for me. I am sure that my mother would have sold the Sedona house after my dad died, but he had deeded it in my name. I’d moved into it on my eighteenth birthday.

Scottsdale had grown exponentially during my teenage years, and without access to much wilderness, I hadn’t realized the extent of my gift. Once I was back in Sedona, surrounded by the purity of the land and her animals, my gift began to flourish.

For the next five years I followed the SK. I structured my life so I could take off on a moment’s notice whenever the SK surfaced. His killing rampages took me all over the western United States. In the times when there were no new scenes to go to, I visited the old scenes that had occurred when I’d been a teenager, but of the few animals that were still alive, none had any recollection of those events from so long ago.

In the beginning, I’d been delighted if I could receive one memory picture from an animal witness before blacking out. With Gaagii’s help, my gift developed by leaps and bounds, but that didn’t eliminate the obstacles.

First, I couldn’t get close enough to the place of the crime. I had to wait until the authorities cleared out, and by that time, the scenes were trampled and cold. Then I had to develop relationships of trust and respect with the animal witnesses at each new location. When they’d finally consider talking to me, their memories were distorted by trauma and faded by time. They remembered the hordes of humans, their cars, and their helicopters, because those things were much more threatening than the solitary man who’d moved quietly among them for mere hours.

I became more adept with using my staff to draw the animals out to me, and that helped with the time factor, but with no idea what the SK looked like, every human they showed me was a suspect. However, over numerous scenes, one lone human figure kept appearing, and the SK began to take shape.

Armed with a general description, the questioning of the animals started moving much faster. Then the killing stopped, and the SK vanished as if he’d been merely a mirage.

In the next ten, silent years, I tried to make a life for myself. I opened The Doggie Lama. Sundara came to be with me, and we made a name for ourselves with our search and rescue work. I wrote a novel.

I would gain some semblance of normalcy, but then March 20th would roll around again, and I’d get derailed in a hopeless cycle of emotions. Every year it got worse. Rage that my father’s killer walked free, guilt that I hadn’t been able to keep my promise, hope because, as my skills built, so did my chances of catching him. I yearned for one more chance at the SK, but with an equal amount of shame because I couldn’t imagine a more reprehensible wish since more clues would require more death.

My handwriting told its own tale of the twenty year journey. It started round and loopy with the exuberance of youth; it became tighter as hope got smothered by defeat.

The SK was accredited with forty-nine murders spanning eleven western states. After the results of today’s forensics were collected and processed, that number would be revised to fifty. But that was just the official number, there had to be more. Nobody knew when he started or what other methods of killing he might have used before evolving into his three shot signature.

The SK killed men and women of all races, ages and demographics. He was brutal, and elusive, and devoid of those egotistical urges that caused other psychopaths to be caught. He was one of the worst serial killers of our time.

The SK hadn’t killed every year, but in the years he did kill, his rampages always began on March 20th.

Early on, the press had coined him, “The Spring Equinox Killer.” The equinox falls on the 20th for three consecutive years then on the 21st after a leap year. He didn’t kill the first year it fell on the 21st, but the next time it rolled around, he did. The equinox theory was blown, but by then the press, with their dedication to expeditious tag lines, had already shortened his title, first to, “The Spring Killer,” then finally, “The SK.”

In my mind, SK stood for “serial killer,” and for me there was only one: The SK.

For all his kills, there had never been a human eyewitness, never a survivor. The SK seemed to choose his victims with complete randomness. For all I knew, he threw a dart at a map, but there had to be something — there always was.

I returned to my files again and again looking for patterns. I had thought I’d found a sequence of Fibonacci numbers running through his kills, but that pattern broke the same year the equinox theory was disproved. I’d looked for shapes within the pushpins that marked each of his kills on my map. I cross referenced those with thousands of symbols, but found nothing cohesive. Only the start date and the three round burst had stayed consistent, and I could do no more than speculate at the meaning behind the trinity theme.

In his early years he’d killed in daylight in the more remote areas, but he’d evolved into a predominately night hunter. The distances he shot from ranged between seventy-five to two hundred and ten yards. He’d killed in urban, rural, and deep wilderness environments. During the years he did kill, he’d strike then disappear for weeks or months before killing again in some distant location.

Except once.

The SK had gone dormant for two full years then came out with a vengeance for his tenth and final year of killing. That last year became the bloodiest on record with a total of fifteen victims.

It had begun on March 20th in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. He didn’t disappear that time. He’d shown up two days later, mere miles from his Gila victim, in the outskirts of a little town called Pinos Altos, and there he killed a man who thought he was safe inside his home.

I opened my sketchbook. It was filled with rudimentary sketches of the visions I’d collected from the animals over the years, and notes to indicate the crime scenes they were related to. Until today, the SK hadn’t been much more than a stationary shadow, a silhouette, a Hitchcock cameo.

I got a charcoal pencil and began to sketch the bearded jaw line that Fox had shown me. I sketched the shape of his arm, his boot print, and his outline when he’d peeked out from behind the tree. I made a note beside the latter, “Egress — checking truck.” He’d been making his getaway after the murder, but he’d had the presence of mind to stop and verify that the security of his ride hadn’t been compromised in his absence.

My eyes returned to the sketch of the bearded jaw. All I needed was for one animal to see him, a clear facial view, and I’d have him.Well, I’d still have to find him, and find him with enough evidence to convict, but I’d at least have a face to put to the demon mask that haunted my dreams.

Too antsy to sit still, I set the sketchbook aside, and went out on the back deck. I breathed the soothing indigo twilight into my soul.

I couldn’t wait to get back out there tonight. This was the freshest crime scene I’d ever worked with, and I had so many questions. Did the SK choose his victims beforehand and know where to find them, or did he wait like a spider for his prey to stumble into his web?

To the best of my knowledge he never approached the body after a kill, to verify death or gloat or whatever it is that a psycho killer might do, and everything I saw today supported that theory, but how did he spend his time before the kill?

Sundara chased the horses across the lower pasture, downstream to my right. Tiara tossed her head and whinnied. The herd turned as one and chased Sundara. Their game of tag was a ritual enjoyed by all.

I never restrained my animal friends. Even the horses could leave the property if they chose to. They chose to stay. I shared with my friends a healthy relationship, built on a strong foundation of trust and affection.

The victim had shared a similar trust with her dog. She’d allowed him to run free and well out of her sight during much of their last outing together.

I couldn’t confirm how late in the day they’d been up on top of Schnebly Hill, only that they’d been the last off the Munds trail, and that meant late afternoon or early evening after the day hikers and bikers cleared out.

Chipmunk had shown me that it had been daylight when the SK arrived up by I-17. The shadows from the trees and the circling turkey vulture said late afternoon. Hawk reported that it had been full dark before the SK climbed up to his hide. So what about the time in between?

The SK’s prints couldn’t show me how long he’d taken to get down in the vicinity of the lookout point, but my calculations indicated that he’d been there twenty to twenty-four hours before Sundara and me. That meant he’d lingered somewhere along the way.

It was conceivable that both the victim and the SK had been atop Schnebly at the same time; the girl walking up the road while her killer was coming down, every step narrowing the distance between them.

Sundara had followed the SK’s scent in and out of the tree line. That weaving pattern was something I’d expect him to do if he were hiding from a possible human witness, and, from all I’d learned of the SK, I had the sense that he wouldn’t have let her see him — that he wouldn’t have let any human see him.

But who could anticipate the need to hide from the eyes of a dog?

And what dog, running free on a big wilderness adventure, could resist checking out any life form they smelled nearby?

I whistled for Sundara.

6:20 p.m.

I parked my old black Blazer in front of Pema Norbu’s home clinic, walked through the Zen garden, and knocked on the periwinkle door.

I’d met Pema years ago, long before she’d shaved her head and taken the vows of a Buddhist nun. Back then she’d been called Emma Swanson. She’d worn her thick hair in a stylish layered cut, and she often revealed the tattoo of a butterfly on her back. She’d become the best veterinarian I’d ever known, mixing Eastern and Western medicine with uncanny intuition.

She answered the door, dressed in her burgundy garb. Bright green slippers with floppy frog faces peeked out from under the hem. “Abra, I’m glad you came.”

Pema understood how to communicate with animals via mental pictures, and she and Sundara exchanged a silent greeting.

Pema led us past the surgery room and into her office. Shelves stocked with Chinese herbs lined an entire wall. A fountain bubbled in one corner and flickering candles surrounded a statue of Buddha in the other.

The dog rested upon the cushy massage table, cuddled on a fleecy white blanket. His fur was clean, but angry red wounds stood out within the patchwork of shaved spots around his neck and flank.

Sundara padded to him and sniffed at the stitches. When the dog lifted his heavy eyelids, she licked his muzzle then stretched out under the table.

“He put up quite a fight,” Pema said, “but we got him put back together. No broken bones, mostly tears and bites. He should heal up fast.”

I sat down on the table and gently stroked the parts of the little dog’s body that didn’t hurt. He pushed his face against my leg and closed his eyes again.

“He’s still sleeping off the anesthesia,” Pema said. “He’ll be able to go home in the morning.”

“What time do you want me to get him?”

“No need,” she said. “I talked to his family. They’re going to pick him up.”

“You talked to them already?”

“Briefly — Sheriff Devlin gave them my number along with the bad news.” Her hazel, doe shaped eyes filled with compassion. “The girl’s name was Sonja Urban. This is Duffy. I told the mother we’d take care of him for as long as they needed, but they want to get him right away. He’s part of the family.” She massaged his long, black tipped ear. “He’s also a part of their daughter.”

“Where do they live?” I asked.

“Sonja lived up here, but her family is in Phoenix,” she said. “They’re driving up in the morning.”

My heart went out to the Urban family. Tomorrow would be the second worst day of their lives. They’d have to identify their daughter’s body then face the additional horror of going to her home. An unmade bed, a coffee mug in the sink, unopened mail on the counter; all the things that would scream of a life interrupted.

“I was about to sit down for dinner,” Pema said. “Would you like to join me?”

“No, thank you. I just wanted to check on the dog. Duffy.”

Pema opened the door to her living quarters then turned back to me. It always felt as if she could look into my soul and see all the things about myself that I tried to hide, but, if she did, she never seemed offended by my secrets.

“Stay as long as you’d like,” Pema said. “Just lock up when you go.”

As soon as the door clicked shut, I pulled the baggie out of my pocket. “Duffy?” I waited for him to open his eyes. “Baby, I need you to sniff this and tell me if you recognize the smell. Okay?”

He lifted his head and stuck his nose in the bag.

I braced myself for a revelation.

Duffy took a few halfhearted whiffs and laid his head back down.

“Sundara.” I held the bag under her nose. “What do you smell?”

The SK’s hide. Schnebly Hill Road. The clearing where the trail ended.

I sealed up the bag. There was plenty of scent in there. The anesthesia was interfering with his olfactory senses. I’d have to try this again tomorrow.

“That’s okay, Duffy,” I whispered. “You just rest. Your family will be here in a little while.”

He was already dozing off. I leaned down to kiss him and caught a glimpse of his dream.

His girl. Sonja. Sitting Indian style beside the campfire. He leaned against her while she hummed a tune. She smiled down at him, her eyes full of utter love and joy. She said, I love you, before leaning down to kiss his head.

6:55 p.m.

When I got home, Dane’s Lexus was in my driveway.

I parked under the ancient sycamore whose bare arms were just beginning to bud, the sprouts like lint balls on an old sweater. For all its wisdom, the tree never seemed to remember that our annual freak April snowstorm was still to come. Arizona weather is cruel that way; fickle, like relationships.

Dane waited at the edge of my patio with his hands on his hips. I must have inconvenienced him again. I seemed to have a knack for it.

Under a cashmere trench coat, he wore black pants and a white button down shirt. At first glance, Dane was gorgeous, exotic even, with his long black hair like Antonio Banderas in that vampire movie, but with a great tan. The illusion, however, had worn off after just a couple of dates.

He opened my door and said, “We have to talk.”

My hands slid off the steering wheel and into my lap. I didn’t have the strength to deal with him right now.

“Dane,” I sighed, “let’s just — not today, all right?”

“Look, I know I was a jerk, but how would you feel if I got up in the middle of dinner and left you sitting there?”

“I guess it would depend on the reason.”

I pushed him out of the way and stepped onto the chrome step bar to ease my descent out of the jacked up Blazer. I closed the door before Sundara could hop out. They didn’t get along very well, and I’d had enough conflict for one day.

“You know there’s more to life than playing search and rescue,” Dane said.

“Tell that to the kid who watched his best friend fall to his death trying to get out of Fay Canyon.”

“That’s what the cops are paid to do, Abra. You’re just a volunteer.” He held his arms out like a preacher. “I’m telling you, you use those people to avoid intimacy with the ones who love you.”

Sundara growled at him from the driver’s seat.

“And,” he pointed at the window, brave with the wolf behind a barrier of glass, “You’re totally codependent with that dog. I swear there’s no room for anyone else.”

Dane was on a roll, pointing out all of my shortcomings. He was oblivious to Chan who’d slipped out of the chimenea and was waddling up behind him.

Skunks play fair. They give three warnings. One, they stomp their feet and turn their back to you. Two, they raise their tail. Three, they look over their shoulder and take aim. By the time they get to step three, it’s usually too late.

Chan was lining up his shot.

“Stop!” I yelled.

Chan relaxed his tail, but didn’t lower it.

I tried to get a grip on my temper before I spoke again.

Dane’s tone softened. “Look, I know you’re upset about your dad and everything with,” he made quotation marks with his fingers, “‘ — The Solstice Killer — ’, but one of these days you’ve got to get on with your life.”

“How do you know about my father?” I demanded. Aside from the Devlins, nobody in Sedona knew that the SK had killed my father, and the Devlins would never talk.

“He’s dead, Abra,” Dane said, leaning closer, all earnestness now. “Face it, no matter how many people you save, you’ll never be able to save him.”

I clenched my teeth together and slowly repeated the question. “How do you know about my father?”

The corners of his mouth turned up. A mischievous glint appeared in his eyes.

A chill went down my spine. Forget gracefully bowing out, there was only going to be one way to get rid of this guy. End it, and end it now.

I opened the Blazer door, and Sundara jumped to the ground.

“I’m just saying,” Dane stammered and backed away. He was dangerously close to stepping on the skunk that still waited for my permission to spray. “This is an opportunity for you to get closure.”

“The only thing I need closure on right now is us,” I said.

“But, I — ”

“Please. Just go.” I pointed to his Lexus.

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

“Now,” I said.

When he continued to just stare at me, Sundara lifted her lips to urge him on.

Dane stomped to his car and slammed the door.

He left us standing in a spray of gravel.