The Vengeance of the Tau (10 page)

“How were they killed?” Rainwater had asked Estes, the department’s chief pathologist, outside the drug lord’s mansion the previous morning.

Estes had worked through the night and looked it. His thinning grayish-brown hair was ruffled. The top buttons of his shirt were undone, and his tie was only half-knotted. He smelled of alcohol and formaldehyde. Rainwater had watched Estes sit down on the mansion’s front steps only after checking to make sure they were clear of blood. The medical examiner stuck a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.

“They were torn apart.”

“I saw that much for myself.”

Estes lit his cigarette and held it away from his face. “Then you know as much as I do.”

Rainwater didn’t see Estes again until he stepped outside the precinct building just after four Tuesday afternoon.

“You spare an hour?”

Injun Joe sighed. “I’m due back at ten and I got to chair a meeting of the Informed Indians’ Council right now.”

“Cut the shit, red man. I’m being serious. Something out at the Oliveras house I want to show you.” He paused. “I wasn’t all the way straight with you this morning. Guy like you deserves to know, ’spite of the orders.”

“Orders?”

“You’ll see.”

Thirty minutes later, Estes slid his car through the main entrance, past the police guards posted before the mansion. He got out and led Injun Joe across the front lawn. Almost at the mansion’s entrance, Estes knelt down and ruffled a patch of grass.

“Take a look at this.”

“At what?”

“Found it right about here after you left this morning. Sun musta dried it out.”

“Dried what out?”

Estes looked up at him. “Made a plaster impression of it. You don’t believe me, I’ll give you a look. You and nobody else. I’m staying clear of this one.”

“You talking about a footprint? That qualifies as evidence even on the reservation,
Kemo Sabe.
”

“This wasn’t like any footprint I ever saw. Took it to a friend of mine at the zoo over lunch hour. He thought I was playing a fucking joke on him. Said nothing owns that print ever walked on this earth. Said it looked like a combination of a bird and a lizard.”

“You find only the one?”

Estes stood back up. “I look like a douche bag to you or what? Found two more between here and the gate. This was the clearest.”

“Nothing about footprints in your report.”

“Brass thought it’d be a good idea if I kept it out. Look, two years from now I pick up my pension and do consulting work on the side. Bad time to make waves.”

“Yet you brought me back here.”

“Yeah,” Estes said softly. “Thing is, red man, you get all the weird cases, and most of the time you solve them. Serial killers, kid busters, whackos … Way I see it, whatever did this last night is still out there. I figured you had a right to know that.”

Rainwater nodded. “Any way you can give me a better idea of what this print looks like?”

Back at his car, Estes pulled a plaster impression of the footprint from his trunk. Injun Joe took it from his grasp and ran his hands over the clawed extremity.

“This was a man’s foot, how tall would he be?”

“It’s not a man’s foot.”

“Educated guess.”

“Okay. You wanna hear it, I’ll tell you: based on the angle of the bone structure and the way these, well,
talons
I guess you’d call them, curve inward, whatever calls this its foot would be between eight and nine feet tall. Weigh maybe two-fifty, three hundred pounds.”

Injun Joe handed the plaster impression back to him.

It was too late to bother with sleep before beginning his ten o’clock shift, not that he could have managed to even close his eyes. He stayed at his desk throughout the night, uneventfully save for a pair of phone calls. At midnight he called a number and left a message. At six a call came in that had brought him to the airport where the United Airlines ten
A.M.
flight out of Boston into O’Hare had just locked home against the jetway.

“What’d you say this shaman’s name was?” Injun Joe’s sometime partner Hal Repozo was asking now.

“I didn’t.”

“You grow up with him or something?”

Joe Rainwater’s face grew reflective. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

“I hate when you get like this. Talking mumbo-jumbo and—”

Detective Hal Repozo stopped when Joe Rainwater stiffened at the sight of a figure that had just emerged through Gate 15. Repozo followed his eyes and did a double take.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? …”

The figure was that of an Indian who was seven feet tall if he was an inch. His coal-black hair showed a tint of gray and was tied behind his head in a ponytail. He wore a leather vest over a blue denim work shirt and thick khaki pants with badly scuffed brown boots tucked inside them. His face was as leathery as his vest, and his eyes were black ice on a winter night.

“Hello, Joe Rainwater,” the big Indian greeted him when he was a yard away from Injun Joe.

“Hello, John Wareagle.”

The two Indians looked at each other, motionless for what seemed like a very long time. At last Joe Rainwater extended a hand. Wareagle’s grasp swallowed it.

“Thank you for coming, John Wareagle.”

“Old times’ sake, Joe Rainwater.”

After being introduced to the big Indian, Detective Hal Repozo couldn’t resist asking what was on his mind. “Hey, how you guys know each other? Same tribe or something?”

The two Indians again exchanged stares, as if each was waiting for the other to speak. It was Rainwater who broke the silence.

“I’m Comanche. He’s Sioux.”

“Is that important?”

Wareagle looked down at Repozo. “If you’re a Comanche or a Sioux.”

“Okay, what then?”

“The hellfire,” Wareagle said.

“Say what?”

“Let’s go for a walk, John Wareagle,” Injun Joe said.

Wareagle’s luggage consisted of a single shoulder bag, almost hidden by his great bulk. He shifted it from his right shoulder to the left one as he and Rainwater moved slowly through the terminal, Repozo hanging well back.

“I really meant it when I thanked you for coming,” Injun Joe started. “I know you didn’t have to. I know seeing me brings up memories you’d rather leave buried.”

“Memories are never buried, Joe Rainwater. They are pushed aside by one plow into the path of another, but always they remain.”

“I was out of line with you way back when. You were more patient than you should have been. I didn’t know, didn’t realize. If I had …”

“Past, Joe Rainwater.”

In Vietnam, Captain Joe Rainwater had commanded a company composed entirely of native Americans. Tribal distinctions were meaningless. Rainwater had been possessed by a fierce nationalism for both his country and his heritage. His would be the greatest company in the war. He would recruit the finest native Americans available.

He had crossed paths with Johnny Wareagle on several occasions when Wareagle was training with the Special Forces. Rainwater had offered him a chance to pull out and sign on with his unit, which by then was already known as Shadow One. But Wareagle had elected to stay with SF and, much to Rainwater’s dismay, ended up with the cutthroats of the Phoenix Project.

The war had ended for Rainwater and Shadow One when the company was virtually wiped out at the Tet Offensive. Rainwater came home with a limp he sweated to lose and a legacy he fought to preserve. Shadow One had been on the point of every major assault it had participated in. A record number of Silver Stars and Purple Hearts were given out, too many of them posthumously. Burning with the pride of his people, Rainwater wanted the whole country to know. He organized the American Indians Veterans Association and tracked down Wareagle in the backwoods of Maine to sign him up.

Wareagle had refused. Short and simple. Rainwater had berated him, taunted him, insisted he was letting his people down. Wareagle had listened to it all without response, obviously hurt.

“I cannot join,” was all he had said.

“Why?”

“I cannot join.”

Rainwater had left enraged. It was not until over a year later that he uncovered precisely why Wareagle had so steadfastly refused. According to all official records, Johnny had never gone to Vietnam. The unit he had served with had never existed. Johnny Wareagle, apparently, had
never
existed. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t march, because if someone dug around, a little too much of the Phoenix Project’s dirt might be shifted in the wrong directions.

Joe Rainwater had apologized. Johnny Wareagle didn’t seem to think it was required. Injun Joe had kept in touch with him sporadically over the years and had learned what questions not to ask.

“I’m glad I was able to come,” Wareagle said suddenly, stopping just past the security station before the entrance to the United gates. “I believed in your work back then. I believe in it now. Forsaking you made me feel as if I was forsaking my people.”

“You were under orders, John Wareagle. That takes precedence.”

“
I
determine precedence in my life now, Joe Rainwater. I would help you in your work still, if it were possible for me to.”

“It’s possible for you to help here. That’s more important.”

“Why did you call me?”

“Because the spirits still speak with you, John Wareagle. And I think we need them now.”

They drove out to the Oliveras mansion on Forest Avenue in Evanston, the ride agonizingly silent with Repozo behind the wheel. He remained there when Rainwater led Wareagle onto the grounds through the front gate, skirting the yellow
POLICE! DO NOT CROSS!
strips.

Wareagle had read Estes’s report in the car on the way over, so he knew exactly what had happened. Then, as Rainwater looked on in amazement, Johnny stopped at each spot on the grounds where Injun Joe recalled a body having been discovered.

“Four out here. Nine within,” Wareagle said suddenly.

“Right. Thirteen in all, including Oliveras.”

“Where were the footprints found?”

Rainwater brought him to the spot where Estes had lifted the clearest one, then pointed out the other two. “Leading to the house, if the indications are right.”

“What about leading back out?”

Injun Joe shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Strange.”

More uncomfortable silence passed between them.

“You couldn’t feel where the prints were,” Rainwater raised in a half question.

“No.”

“The bodies, but not the prints …”

“Show me the inside, Joe Rainwater.”

Injun Joe led Johnny Wareagle inside, talking the whole time.

“I been a cop, shit, fifteen years now. Seemed like the best thing to go into after the war. I’ve seen things in those years, awful things. And I saw worse things with Shadow One. But this, this is different.”

Rainwater stopped in the center of the mansion’s main foyer. He seemed to be grasping for words.

“I’ve heard tales of the old-time shaman summoning evil spirits to punish those who wronged the tribe.”

Wareagle smiled slightly. “As I recall, Joe Rainwater, the true old ways never held any interest for you.”

“Because I passed them off as legend, folklore—the way the tribal chiefs could keep their people, as well as their enemies, in check.”

“But you feel differently now.”

Rainwater’s expression tightened. “Nothing on this earth could have done what I found here. Nothing on this earth stands eight feet tall and leaves a print like the ones left here Monday night.”

“Perhaps you do not know the earth as well as you think you do, Joe Rainwater.”

Johnny Wareagle walked about the foyer in a wide circle. Then he started up the spiral staircase. At the top, Injun Joe moved in front of him and pointed to a spot on the Oriental runner that curved up off the stairs down the hallway.

“One body here, another four feet from it.” He kept walking. “Ten feet on, two almost right next to each other. …”

“I need to see the pictures,” Wareagle said, right next to Rainwater without Injun Joe having heard his approach.

“They’re in the car.”

“Get them.”

It appeared to Injun Joe that Johnny Wareagle acted more like a cop than a shaman. He moved about the scene in methodical fashion, studying each picture within the context of the hallway. Rainwater could tell he was trying to see the scene as it had been two nights ago, just prior to the massacre. Wareagle came to the shattered door leading to Oliveras’s bedroom and stopped.

He was still standing there when Injun Joe drew up even. “I felt something when I stepped inside this house, John Wareagle. It may have been gone by then, but not its residue.”

“Not it.”

“What?”

“Not it, Joe Rainwater—they.”

“More than one?”

“At least three. Potentially more.”

“Oh, shit …”

“Two entered through the shattered front door downstairs first. The other or others launched their attack after them from the opposite end of this corridor.”

“No guards down there. …”

“Right.”

“The spirits told you that,” Rainwater concluded.

“They only helped me see. The way the bodies fell, Joe Rainwater, it is clear they were under attack from both directions.”

“They got off two hundred rounds and didn’t hit a single thing except air and walls.”

Wareagle came closer to him. “But you don’t believe that, do you?”

“No.”

“You believe the bullets struck their targets but did not fell them.”

“I believe what killed Oliveras and his guards wasn’t human. Say what you will, John Wareagle, but you and I are both full-bloods. We have the old ways running through our veins, even though they run slower through mine. We know the tales of our ancestors who were able to conjure up beings from other worlds to do their bidding. And we can be sure our ancestors were not alone in this ability.”

“Times long forgotten.”

“And now, perhaps, skills recalled. We must track these things down before they can kill again.”

“Perhaps they already have, Joe Rainwater.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you.”

“You made my day, big fella, let me tell you,” Sal Belamo said on the other end of the line at Gap headquarters in Virginia.