Hidden Pearl

by

Rain Trueax

He felt like an old man, not the thirty-five years he was and vowed for at least the third time in less than an hour to consider his projects more carefully in the future. That is if he had a future. He got up from the chair, paced the book-lined room as he waited.

The door opened, and the man he had come to call Nemesis walked into the room. "You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you?" he asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He had to deceive him, all of them. He wished he was better at lying.

"Ah, but you do know." Nemesis’ smile was smug and full of assurance. This man saw right through him. Lies wouldn’t work. Would begging? He doubted Nemesis had a heart.

Three more men entered the small room.

God, help me.
When the door closed, he edged toward it, stopped by a beefy hand against his chest. He looked up into soulless eyes. Who were these people? What the hell had he been thinking to--

"You were not told you could leave.”

A stronger surge of fear shot through him when he’d thought he had been as frightened as it was possible to be.

With a sick sense of recognition, he understood. He wouldn't be able to reason his way out of this. He saw the satisfaction on Nemesis’s face, knew he was relishing the smell of fear. He could almost see him growing in size as he took it in. What kind of human being was he?  

"Have you talked to anyone about this? Like say your wife?"

"Of course not.” He understood it wasn’t really a question but a threat. “She’s busy with our daughters. Please, have mercy. I have small daughters…”

"So you will care about saving them, won’t you?" Paper was produced and put on the desk. "Sit." When he didn’t immediately obey, two of the mindless ones took hold of his arms and propelled him to a table.

"I congratulate you for your wisdom. It can stay with just you. Or…"

The sentence didn't need to be finished, and he understood then how perfectly the trap had been sprung. He had no choice but to write whatever was ordered. He would not let anyone to hurt Katy and the girls. Perhaps after he wrote this, they would let him go. Maybe they only wanted to keep something for blackmail. He was amazed to realize a thought as awful as that filled him with hope.

He sat at the table, his guards standing behind him, then was handed a pen. 

Nemesis stroked his chin, then smiled. “Let’s see now… write--I'm sorry for causing grief, but I have no choice but to end my life."

"I won't write that!" He tried to get out of the chair but was pushed back. He looked into those cold eyes and understood that for him there was to be no way out.

"Storm Walker?”

S.T., still breathing hard from his morning run, had felt his first surge of irritation at seeing the light blinking on his answering machine, a device he frequently wished he'd never yielded to purchasing-- not for his home. His second came at hearing the name his mother had given him, the name he only heard from her.

“You must call me as soon as possible." There was a moment of silence. "And if you're monitoring this call to avoid me, I warn you that I will keep calling until I hear from you!" She knew him too well despite having had little real time together.

He reached behind him for the leather thong that held his hair clubbed to his neck and jerked it loose, letting the damp hair fall heavily onto his shoulders. He seldom saw his mother or the red rock reservation on which she lived but she had sure as hell left her mark on him—a mark that showed in more ways than thick black hair or dark skin. There had been another heritage, one harder to escape than geography; it was one of separation, confusion, rejection.

He filled a glass of water before he sank into the chair beside the phone. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t want to call her back. The worry in her voice left him no choice. She had never asked for money but maybe this time...  Sipping half the glass of water, he stared blankly out the window at the darkness, the rays of the sun creeping over the horizon, just beginning to backlight the tall firs surrounding his home. Reluctantly he punched in her number.

She had been waiting. "Where were you?" Her tone was crisp, each word enunciated.

"Jogging." He flipped open the Oregonian.

"Before light?"

"It's the time I had. What do you want, Mother?" He scanned down the front page; this might be his only chance to look at a paper all day.

"Your sister's missing."

"How would you know?" he asked, a note of mockery in his voice that he knew his mother would probably recognize but about which he doubted she would comment. So far as he knew his mother's contact with Shonna had been as irregular as his. He barely knew what his sister might look like by now. He’d seen her three times since he left home twenty years earlier at sixteen.

He heard his mother's sigh as loudly as though it was in the room with him. "It has been two months since I've heard from her. Every call I’ve made has been ignored. Last night her phone had been disconnected."

"Did you try Jason's?" he asked, using his father's name with reluctance. He himself rarely called the man who had sired him and knew his mother would be equally if not more reluctant.

"I did. The son of a bitch denied knowing anything about what she's been doing, but he was hiding something--not to mention stinking drunk."

"Where was Shonna living?" he asked knowing he likely wouldn’t want to hear the answer.

"I thought you would have known. She was in Oregon.”

“I haven’t heard from her in years.”

“I hoped perhaps you talked... sometimes.”

“No.”

Another sigh. “Can you see if she’s okay? Here’s the address I have for her.”

Reluctantly, he wrote it down. “I don’t know what I can do.”

"You can do more than I can from Arizona.” There was anger in her voice.

“I don’t owe you or her anything.” He couldn’t hide the anger from coming through his voice.

"We share flesh and blood." His mother didn’t sound offended but rather determined. He did remember that about her.

He laughed shortly. "Does that have meaning?”

"We have a common spirit."

"And that explains you leaving me when I was six."

"Things happened that were beyond my control.” Her tone was emotionless.

He gritted his teeth against his instinctive response. Glancing down at the newspaper to get control of his anger before he used words he would regret later, he was shocked at the headline---
Suicide of prominent architect Lane Brown is disputed.

"I do love you, my son. You know that, don't you?" His mother's voice had softened, forcing his attention back to her. 

Closing his eyes, he considered the problem she was attempting to land on his doorstep. "I don't know much about love, Mother, but I will see what I can find out about Shonna."

“One more thing.” There was a moment of silence. "Beware the
chindi,
my son."

"What?"

"Remember the stories I told you when you were small, the ones about the evil that can be created with death."

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Navajo superstitions, Mother."

"It is more than that." The words came fast, a new tone of desperation. "I have a bad feeling about this. About what has happened to Shonna. I need to know, but I just ask that you be careful. I do not wish to lose both of my children. I debated… for a long while actually, before I called you for that reason."

“You suspect violence as a factor?”

He could almost hear her snap her jaw shut although he knew no sound had carried to him. “Just be careful.”

"Of course." He suppressed a snort at her pretense of concern but instead gave the answer she wanted to hear. He was no risk taker anyway although some might say his life to date made a lie out of that statement.

"Thank you." If he hadn't known how unemotional his mother normally was, he would have thought he heard a sob in her voice. "I'll call back later to see what you have found... and to be sure you are all right."

When he'd hung up the phone, S.T. scanned the article on Lane Brown's death, still feeling a sense of shock. Lane had it all--career, family, money. Why would he kill himself?

The facts were stark and pitiful. Lane had disappeared. Two days later, his body had been found in a wooded area outside of Eugene--hanging from a tree. His wife refused to accept the police conclusion that he had killed himself, but Lane had evidently left a note leaving no doubt, at least so far as the authorities were concerned. None of that answered the why.

Trying to put the disturbing phone call from his mother and Lane’s choice of death from his mind, S.T. headed for his bedroom, stripped off his clothing, and stepped into the shower.

As the water pounded his body, he remembered his last meeting with Lane over a disputed project where S.T. had won the contract. Lane had been laughing, talking about his small daughters’ antics and telling S.T. family life was wonderful. When was he going to try it? Of course, all that had been almost a year ago; what could have gone so badly wrong in a year? As far as S.T. knew Lane’s business had been going well. What would drive a man like Lane to end it all? A fight with Katy?

Love stunk. Wasn’t there a song like that or shouldn’t there have been?  S.T. didn't know when he had quit believing in love. He wondered if he ever had. Maybe his disillusionment came from being born out of two different worlds, torn apart by both. A Navajo mother, a ne-er-do-well, drunken Scot for a father.

His parents had been ill prepared for commitment to each other and even less to their children. The only amazing thing is they stayed together long enough to produce even one baby, let alone two.  His father had technically retained custody, but the truth was nobody had custody of anyone. When his father had remembered he had children, there’d been good moments, good bits to remember. They were rare.

Storm Walker Taggert he'd been christened. What a name to bestow on a child, but S.T. guessed to his mother it might have seemed logical and perhaps it reflected his father's puckish sense of humor. Whatever the reason behind the name, it had caused him no end of grief. Using initials in school had helped only until his teachers demanded his full name, then the ridicule would begin.