Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (10 page)

"I
wonder what makes a woman decide her life's work is cleaning up roadside-park
facilities," I mused, thinking of Fern.

"She
seems happy." Callie kissed my shoulder.

"I
wonder why I had to be a screenwriter. I would have made a wonderful field
general or rodeo cowboy or even a priest... I would have been a great
priest."

Callie
chuckled, I was certain, over the direction my mind could take when relaxed.
"You would have been a terrible priest."

"Not
true. It's theater, and I would have packed the house every Sunday. My first
official act as a priest would be to get rid of hell as a destination, as in
'Go to hell.' Or 'It was hell on earth,' which sounds like a suburb. I would
ask the pope to replace the word
hell
in all religious texts with the
word
shopping,
which still has an element of hell to it. If you sinned,
you would go to Wal-Mart. Twice, and you would go to Target. If you committed a
really evil crime, you would have to go to that huge mall in Minneapolis, lose
your car, and never get out."

"I
love you," Callie said, smiling at me. "You know more than you know
you know."

"When
will I know I know it?" I teased her.

"When
you open your third eye."

"Don't
tell me about that, I can't take it." I put a pillow over my head and
could still hear Callie laughing, and soon she began to make love to me, slowly,
deliberately, every move making me want her more.

"I
don't want to be a priest. I don't think they get to do this," I said,
resting my cheek on her pelvis and hugging her hips to me.

"Oh,
honey, for an ex-cop, you are so naive."

“We
were curled up on the bed, my arm around Callie's shoulder, cozier than I'd
felt in weeks, when I flipped on the ancient black-and-white TV on the rickety
table in the corner of the bedroom, mostly curious to see if it could get
reception. A recap of the news featured the story about the mall construction
site.

A
bouncy, young news anchor, with a voice like Minnie Mouse, waxed on about the
incredible run of bad luck that the construction company had endured,
elaborating on how the Native Americans on the job recognized signs they should
not be building the mall on this particular piece of ground because it offended
the ancestors. The most recent death of a Native American woman by wolves was
cited as further anger from the departed.

"First
it was one wolf, now it's wolves. Before it's over she'll have been carried off
by ten thousand wolves brandishing spears," Callie said.

“Is
this mall going to be built over Indian ceremonial
grounds?"
the anchor asked the television screen.
"We asked Cy
Blackstone, owner of Blackstone Development."

"Remember
up on the ceremonial site when Blackstone told your friend Manaba that as a
favor he wanted her to go on TV and settle things down? Looks like he's having
to do it himself."

The
videotape editor cut to a pre-taped interview with Blackstone, and there he was
in all his wiry, old-cowboy glory aw-shucksing the on-the-spot reporter in such
a charming way I could almost like him. Easy to see why he was elected to the
legislature.

"If
it turned out this was Native American ceremonial land, we would be the first
to stop excavation and call in the tribal elders and do what's right because
this great state is built on our Native American heritage. We in Arizona don't
treat our people any way but with respect and honor. But we've checked that out
thoroughly, and we are miles away from anything remotely related to that site."
He tipped his hat at the end of the
interview, to the cameraman, I supposed. It was a nice touch and apparently his
trademark.

Back
in the studio, the mouse-voiced anchor said,
"Some of the locals are
saying this is reminiscent of Thanksgiving in ninety-seven when concrete
wouldn't set up and Native American workers walked off the job due to the
unexpected death of one of the elders of the tribe. Well,"
the anchor
turned to her starched male co-anchor and bubbled,
"sure hope things
get better 'cause us girls like to shop at the mall. "
She beamed and
he laughed and they both moved on to the next story.

"I
don't think that little news clip will get it done if Native Americans are
walking off due to their ancestors."

Callie
bolted out of bed and dashed to the computer, looking at the astrological
chart. "Venus was squaring Saturn in the Venus-besieged chart—another
heavy placement showing structural breakdown involving a woman."

"The
mall seems to be the only structure causing women to have a breakdown," I
quipped, but Callie took me seriously.

"It
could be a physical structure, or her grandmother's own structure—her death.
Venus is squaring Saturn in the Twelfth House of something behind the scenes.
Of course in matters like these something is always going on behind the scenes
or we wouldn't be looking at the problem, so I don't know what that means,
really."

"So
what does 1997 have to do with a woman being killed by a wolf years
later?"

"I
don't know. The bigger question is who is putting these women under attack,
because we know it's not wolves."

"We
do? I mean you say that, but I read the accounts and looked at the newspaper
photo of the tracks found at the site."

"Close
your eyes," she commanded and I obeyed. "Clear your mind, relax,
focus on the Native American girl, Nizhoni, who went over the cliff. Say her
name in your head again and again and again." I did as she asked.
"Drift.. .think.. .listen. Now ask the gods if Nizhoni was killed by
wolves." Pause. "What do you hear, league?"

"I
don't hear anything but I think you're right. She wasn't killed by
wolves."

"Now
ask the gods, ask your inner self, if Nizhoni is dead or alive.. .dead or
alive.. .dead or alive?"

"She's
alive." My eyes popped open and I was startled by what I'd said.

"Yes,
she's alive," Callie said firmly and smiled at me, seemingly in
appreciation of my newfound ability to know things. "You're tuning
in."

"So
where is she?" I asked, uncertain what exactly I'd tuned into.

"I
don't know..." Callie said in a tone that seemed to deny what both of us
had said.

Having
no idea how we might determine if the woman was alive and who had shape-shifted
into a wolf, I headed for my laptop to work on the screenplay—
another
equally hard-to-explain story,
I thought.

"Do
I go ahead and make the nun a therapist and the housewife a hooker?" I
asked Callie, sighing as I spoke.

"What
happens if you don't?"

"They
pay me Writers Guild minimum, thank me, and tell me good-bye. Since they've
optioned the story, they can hire someone else to be the writer and—"

"Someone
who will happily make the nun a therapist or a wildebeest, for that
matter?"

"Yes,
so I might as well give it a shot," I said, and Callie shrugged as if that
kind of change was infinitesimally important in the scope of things.

Knuckling
down, I knocked out ten pages...not the opening ten pages, but the ten pages
midway through the screenplay when the two women have their first physical
contact. Callie was at her computer when I finally looked up and read what I'd
written out loud.

"So
the way I've got it worked out is the hooker is lying on the therapist's couch
and the therapist is sitting beside her, legs crossed, her notebook in hand..
.kind of bookish and interesting but professional. And the hooker in the midst
of answering the typical therapy questions suddenly says, 'You've got nice
legs. You could have been a dancer.'

"The
therapist looks down, shy, and starts to speak but the hooker says, 'Or a
hooker. Men like nice legs. Long legs that disappear up into the...unknown.'
She runs her hand over the therapist's calf and then up her thigh and stops as
she says, 'Men like adventure.' She lets her hand drop to the couch and leans
back as if she meant nothing by it and is merely ready for the therapist to ask
her the next question.

"Of
course now the therapist is totally confused and has trouble collecting her
thoughts, and she ends the session abruptly, saying 'I think our time is up.'

"The
hooker says, 'I have ten more minutes.'

"And
the therapist says, 'I'll make it up to you next time.'

"The
hooker smiles and says, 'That's what I say to
my
clients.'"

I
looked up at Callie. "So what do you think?"

"It's
sexy and provocative. You've developed a sophistication beyond what I thought
you'd be able to do with it. It's really good, Teague."

"But
I didn't have her say cunt or pussy?"

"Why
would she?

"Because
she's a hooker!" I shouted, imitating Barrett, and Callie laughed.
"Jacowitz wants lurid language. Now that I think about it, I remember
Barrett telling me about the studio rumor that he's into S&M."

"Jacowitz?
The guy I met with the nerdy glasses and the battered briefcase? He looks like
Willie Lowman in
Death of a Salesman"

"Rumor
says he likes to get naked and have a woman in spike heels walk across his back
and flagellate his buttocks with a riding crop."

"I
understand pain and pleasure, but not how one evokes the other."

"Yeah,
like having a vasectomy and a lap dance in the same half hour. I'm so glad you
like the pages. I'm sending them off to Barrett."

With
a ping, the e-mail with the ten pages attached was on its way. "Gone. My
dilemma is now sitting on Barrett's laptop, let's get back to yours," I
said, referring to the shape-shifter.

"Looking
at this chart," Callie said, "I know the woman is besieged, but I
have this calm feeling when I think about her, as if she's alive but time could
be running out."

"I
know, but being alive is a bit tricky when you fall over a canyon ridge into a
2000-foot free fall before you hit the jagged bottom. The vultures almost have
enough time to pick you clean before your bones ever bounce off the
riverbed."

"Teague,
that sounds terrible!" Even Elmo was sobbing, a sign that my mental
imagery had made him need a bathroom break.

"He
hates heights," I said, hooking him up to his lead. "We'll be right
back." We headed out into the dusky evening, not straying far from the
cabin.

I
looked left over my shoulder, right over my back, up to the treetops, and down
to the ground searching for something, anything that remotely looked like a
wolf. Though Callie said the wolf was a human, I still didn't want to see him
or her. Elmo seemed calm and completely unconcerned, so I relaxed and gazed up
at the stars, thinking it a beautiful, cold night down by the creek's wide,
frigid waters.

Large
flat boulders leaned out from the land, forming beautiful rock sunbathing
shelves all along the creek bed, and Elmo and I walked ten feet out onto one
and stared into the water below—by day crystal clear, sweeping fish downstream,
by night invisible, only sound rushing over the rocks.

On
our return, Elmo lifted his short, chubby leg draped with extra fur folds,
watered the ferns, and threw some creek sand high up into the air with a few
well-placed flicks of his hind feet.

"You're
still a studly, guy," I said admiringly and we climbed the cabin steps,
where I unhooked Elmo's leash, pushing the door open, and he strutted through
it as if he'd accomplished something extraordinary.

The
cool air settled in my bones as I walked back down the porch steps and around
the side of the cabin to the car, then clicked open the lock to retrieve my
windbreaker. Rummaging around on the floor of the Jeep, I found the neatly
rolled shirt-jack sack that held my army green windbreaker, yanked it out,
extracted the pink one I'd purchased at L.L. Bean for Callie before I left
L.A., the only pink item I'd ever seen at L.L. Bean, and slammed the car door.
I turned and yelped into the face of the largest wolf I'd ever seen.

The
broad, furry face not three feet from mine seemed as large as a ceremonial
mask. Frozen in my own footsteps, fearful the wolf would kill me without Callie
here, I tried to scream for help, but the sound came out a hoarse squeak. The
wolf cowered slightly as if to assure me with its body language that it had
more to fear than I, while with hypnotic eyes it seemed to beckon me.

I
backed up a few feet, maintaining eye contact. Its face intelligent and focused
on me, the wolf carefully turned to walk away, then paused, looking over its
shoulder as if to beg me to follow. When I didn't move, it stopped and pivoted
to face me, the moonlight slicing down on its thick gray coat, the black-tipped
hairs standing up like tiny knives from the field of silver fur.

Through
the exquisite white facial markings, flashing eyes stared into mine, and I
thought I heard a voice telling me not to be afraid.
Is the wolf talking to
me? Is it a voice inside my own head? Is it something I want to hear so I put
it into my own head?