Thief of Souls (19 page)

As Chee approached the holding cell, the old man, who identified himself only as “Radio Joe,” had calmly made the space his own. He had collected a host of dead flies and cockroaches from the corners of the cell and was now crushing them down into a fine black powder between his fingers.

“Congratulations,” said Chee. “You've just guaranteed yourself the cover of this week's
Time
.”

No response from the crag-faced old man. He crumbled a beetle between his thumb and forefinger. Only now, as Chee came closer, did he see what the old man was doing. He was adding the pulverized exoskeleton to a fine-lined sand painting that was slowly expanding from the center of the cell.

“You think that's gonna save you from the gas chamber?”

“Biye Gak misa dtaoopyu,”
the old man said. “I do not fear death.”

In spite of his advanced age, Keedah had roughed up the old man in the interrogation room. Now his face was bruised, lips bloated, yet still he offered no words, no explanation as to why he had brutally massacred more than thirty people.

“If you have something to say, best to say it now,” Chee advised. “Before the feds come to take you away.”

“Let them come,” said the old man, without looking up from his sand painting.

Chee felt his fury rising, and approached the bars. “You killed innocent people, old man. Parents—children. Don't you feel anything, you bastard?”

The old man was unperturbed. “I killed no one.”

“There were hundreds of witnesses—your prints are all over half a dozen weapons!”

“You cannot kill what is already dead.”

Chee swallowed hard. “Exactly what's that supposed to mean?”

“A shotgun leaves behind its spent shell. Worthless. Useless,” said the old man. “So does this Quíkadi. The ghost-devourer. The spirit
chupacabra
.”

In any other circumstance Chee would have laughed at the suggestion.
Chupacabra
tales had been all the rage lately: red-eyed creatures that drained the blood of livestock. But what the old man was describing was not that same new-age vampire
yarn. It was something completely different.

“You're telling me you follow this . . . creature?”

“I clean the waste it leaves behind. I lay the dead to rest.”

“You're crazy, old man.”

And for the first time, the man called Radio Joe looked up at him. He stood, coming forward, and suddenly Chee realized the bars held no protection for him.

“Am I crazy?” asked Radio Joe. “You would not be here if you did not already know the truth.”

Chee wouldn't answer to that. Wouldn't dare think about it. “This thing—what does it look like?”

“It wears the body of a Hualapai,” Radio Joe said. “Twenty years old.”

“Man or woman?”

“Both.”

Chee took a step away, not even realizing he had done it. There had been such a specter in town the week before. They had picked him up on vagrancy, as Sheriff Keedah had zero tolerance for itinerants. When they found no reason to keep him, they let him go, but Chee kept an eye on him until he left town.

“You've seen it, then,” said Radio Joe.

“I saw something,” Chee admitted.

“Your sheriff's soul was taken by it.”

Suddenly the cell key became a weight in Chee's pocket. He could feel the heavy keychain pressing into the flesh of his leg.

“You killed thirty-two people!” screamed Chee. If he could have killed Radio Joe right there he would have, to spare himself from having to consider what he was about to do.

“Then let them take me away,” said Radio Joe calmly. “But the job will remain undone.”

Chee turned his back, trying to force his legs to take him
out to the front office. The phones were ringing off the hook out there. Townsfolk tying up the lines; pressing them for information they simply didn't have, or couldn't give out until the next of kin were officially notified.

But the old man was right. Keedah was another “absentee.” He was there in body, but not in spirit—and had been that way ever since his run-in with that genderless transient. Chee knew this to be true, and while Chee's head told him his job was to confine this murderer, his gut told him something else entirely.

“Damn you,” whispered Chee. “Damn you to Hell.”

Then he turned to the cell, and slowly pulled his keychain from his pocket, inserting the cell key into the lock. The old man watched impassively. Chee turned the key in the lock until he heard the mechanism spring open. Then he removed the key and returned to the front office without giving the old man another look.

When Chee reached the front office, Keedah was standing there, in the midst of madly ringing phones.

“What the hell, Chee? What, are you on vacation?”

“Had to take a leak.”

“Worst goddamn night on earth, you'd think you could hold it until someone got back.” Then Keedah took a glance over Chee's shoulder, and the worst night on earth hit a brand-new low.

Radio Joe lunged out of the shadowy doorway, a steak-knife blade flashing in his hand. Keedah reached for his gun, but it was as if he had no reflexes anymore.
As if his body were just going through the motions of reaching for his gun,
thought Chee. The old Hualapai brought the knife down in a cutting backhand slash, and ripped open Keedah's neck in a single stroke.

The spray of blood caught Chee in the eyes, blinding him momentarily. He heard Keedah collapse to the ground, and when Chee cleared the blood from his eyes, the sheriff was dead, his blood no longer pumping out, but oozing slowly onto the green linoleum.

Chee wanted to feel revulsion, shock, horror—anything, but he could not. Because Keedah had been dead for days. The old man was right.

Radio Joe put the steak knife back down on Chee's half-eaten dinner, where he had found it, then knelt down and took Keedah's gun. Chee didn't stop him.

“The one you're looking for—he headed west,” Chee told him. “Hopped a train with two others.”

“Others?”

“That's all I know.”

Radio Joe nodded. “This town is still lousy with the dead,” he said.

Chee let loose a sigh of surrender. “Leave them to me,” he said. “You find that thing. Stop it any way you can.”

The old Indian slipped out quietly into the cold night.

Then Parker Chee, trying to keep Keedah's body in his blind spot, unlocked the ammo locker, pulling out two boxes of .22-caliber bullets. He made sure his clip was loaded, then loaded a second. As he headed out to fulfill his new assignment, Chee regretted that the devourer of souls hadn't taken his soul as well . . . because by dawn it would surely be damned.

T
HE
D
EPARTMENT OF
P
ARKS AND
R
ECREATIONS DID NOT
come to evict the Shards from Hearst Castle. The National Guard never showed up to drive them out. Any official who came knocking, quickly pledged themselves into the service of the five—and in that new allegiance, those same officials made sure no word of what was really going on ever made it to the outside world. By the sixth day at the castle, it became clear that they could remain there, anonymous and invisible, as long as they wanted. And their numbers continued to build.

“This place is like a black hole,” Winston had commented; “things fall in, and they don't come out.” Which, noted Michael, was also an accurate description of a Roach Motel.

At first Drew kept a notebook of all the wondrous things that occurred within the castle grounds, as well as a record of who had joined their numbers—but after the second day, he gave up the pad and paper in favor of a video camera, to journalize the days.

But if anyone truly rose to the occasion, it was Okoya. With a quick mind and powerful spirit, he instantly became akin to a chief of staff. It was Okoya who kept track of the Happy Campers—organizing what they did, and when they did it—and when new recruits walked bleary-eyed out of the Gothic Study, with new leases on life, it was Okoya who led them away to be assimilated into the Great Repair that Dillon had begun.

“They need to be debriefed,” Okoya had said. “I'd be happy to see to it personally.”

And yet in spite of all of those responsibilities, Okoya made sure he had time to spend with each of the Shards. Plenty of time. As their personal confidant and advisor, Okoya was always there to ease their minds.

“I
ADMIRE YOU
, W
INSTON
,” Okoya said. “You know so many things.”

It was their fourth evening in the castle. Winston sat on his private balcony watching the sunset and reading yet another of Mr. Hearst's leather-bound volumes. Okoya had slipped in beside him without Winston noticing.

“Yeah, I'm a regular encyclopedia,” he said, shrugging off the compliment.

“What are you reading?”

“Machiavelli,” answered Winston. “Personally, I think he's full of himself.”

Okoya ran a hand through his shiny hair; the wind lifted it, and cast it about his shoulders. “I'll bet you could write things that would put them all to shame,” Okoya told Winston. “I'll bet you could inspire millions. You could convince them to do anything—cultivate their minds in any direction you wanted them to grow.”

“Flattery or truth?” Winston quipped.

“I think you know.”

The crimson and cobalts of the sky were quickly fading to a rich violet, as the sun slipped below the horizon. Too dark to read by. Winston closed his book, and rubbed his eyes. It had been an exhausting day. They were getting better at their little medical triage sessions, but the Happy Campers had brought in almost forty people to repair today, most of them so badly injured it sapped all the Shards' strength to do the job. Winston knew this was good work he was doing, but like so much
of the information crammed into his brain, he failed to see how it fit into the larger picture. Even if they fixed the ills of ten thousand, in a world so large, it would make little difference. How could it stop this “great unraveling” Dillon was so fond of prophesizing? Dillon claimed to have it all worked out, but Winston suspected that, with all his skills of foresight and pattern recognition, Dillon was flying this one blind.

“Don't you think you could change the world with your gift of growth?” asked Okoya, whose face seemed more exotic than usual in the purple hues of the sky.

“Maybe I could, and maybe I couldn't. Anyway, I can't see the point.” Winston folded his arms against the chilling night. He thought he'd have to explain himself further, but Okoya nodded knowingly, and spoke in an intensely hushed voice.

“All the world's philosophy leaves you with more questions than answers, doesn't it? And the more history you read, the more you realize that no one truly learns from the past. You see math and science as proof of the many things we'll never understand; and literature as just a mirror of our own imperfections. You've broadened your vision . . . but lost your faith.”

Winston stared at Okoya, not knowing if he should be stunned, frightened, or amused. Okoya had firmly gripped Winston's frustrations, in a way he couldn't grip them himself. It occurred to Winston that Okoya had never really talked like a rural twenty-year-old. He was an enigma, and somehow that made Okoya thrilling to talk to. He wasn't sure whether there was actual wisdom, or just showmanship, in Okoya's words, but they were comforting nonetheless.

“Peace of mind is closer than you think, Winston.” It was then that Winston noticed the book clutched in Okoya's hand by his side. The same book he had been reading since they had first joined company.

“Haven't you finished that yet?”

“Each reading brings something new.” Okoya set the book on the edge of the iron railing before Winston, balancing it perfectly on the tip of a fleur-de-lis. It teetered in the breeze, swiveling slightly.
Like a compass needle,
Winston thought.

“You should give it to Dillon,” Winston suggested. “If there's anyone who needs a spiritual compass, it's him.”

“It's beyond his comprehension,” said Okoya dismissively. “In fact, none of the others would grasp its subtle truths. None of them have the breadth of your perspective. Tell me honestly, Winston; do you really trust any of their decisions?”

Winston found himself uncomfortable with the question. He always challenged Dillon, but that was his nature. Since their arrival, he had always presumed Dillon's competence; that his perspective, as Okoya had put it, was broader than his own. But was there really any evidence of that?

“Dillon sees things . . . .” said Winston.

“Dillon is unstable—and the others are not much better. Keep a close eye on them—never turn your back—and remember that trust is best left with your own wits, no one else's.” Then Okoya leaned over, and whispered into Winston's ear. “You are a great being. Don't let the others take that away from you.”

Okoya left as quickly and quietly as he had arrived, but the book remained, balanced on the spear tip of the iron rail. It seemed almost to float there, as if it had no substance, and the wind could lift it off the ledge, sending it spiraling into the sky. Winston sensed the book was not the only thing perched on the edge of a precipice. He, too, was there, and if he leapt, would he fall or fly?

“You are a great being,”
Okoya had said. Winston had always been afraid to admit it—but why such fear? If the Almighty
saw fit to make him closer to his own image than most anyone else on earth, why should he not accept that? And wasn't false humility in the face of all he knew himself to be, a kind of arrogance in itself?

If this book indeed contained wisdom that set him a plane apart from the other Shards, why not seize that as well?