Whirlwind

FIVE

Sheriff Chuck Sparrow took off his hat, wiped a forearm over what was left of his hair, and slapped the hat back into place, yanking the brim down hard.

"What do you think?" the woman beside him asked, her voice tight with the effort not to lose her dinner

Sparrow shook his head. The best he could figure, either somebody was in sore desperate need to practice his tanning skills, or there was another one of those damn cults holed up in the hills again. Either way, it didn't take a brain surgeon to see that he was in for a hell of a lot more work than his inclination wanted.

They stood side by side near the mouth of a small cave, on the west side of a solitary low hill two miles west of the Hatch ranch. Sprawled in front of it was what was left of a steer, ants and flies now vying for the right to rid the dead animal of whatever they could take.

"What do you think?"

"Donna," he said, "I wish to hell I knew."

She was a tall woman, her figure hidden in boots, baggy jeans, and a man's shirt about a size too large. Her short brown hair was brushed back over her ears, and on her right hand she wore the biggest silver ring Sparrow had ever seen. Her Cherokee was parked on the shoulder, fifty yards away; his patrol car was behind it.

She jutted her chin toward the cave. "You look in there?"

"Yes," he answered with exaggerated patience. "Yes, I looked in there."

"And?"

"And fourteen different kinds of shit is all what I found, all right? Bones. Little bones," he added hastily. "The usual crap."

"I read that they use them, you know. Kind of temporary, so to speak."

He scanned the hillside, squinted at the vehicles. "Now don't take this wrong, all right? But there hasn't been a damn mountain lion around here for nearly as long as I've been working this job. And in case you hadn't noticed, they don't generally skin their meals before they eat them."

"I don't need your sarcasm, Chuck."

No, he thought; what you need is a good swat upside the head, keep you from bothering the hell outta me.

The trouble was, this was the fourth animal he'd come across in just over a week slaughtered like this, and not a single sign, not a single print, not a single goddamn hint of what had killed them. Or rather, what had stripped off their hides. For no reason he could put a ringer on, he didn't think they had been killed first. He reckoned the creatures had either died of the shock or had bled to death.

Just like he was about to die of the smell if he didn't get out of here.

He brushed a hand over his mouth as he turned and walked back to the car. Donna followed him slowly, humming to herself and snapping her fingers.

The thing of it was, Sparrow thought as he slid down the shallow ditch and took two grunting strides up the other side, if this was confined to just animals, there wouldn't be such a stink of another kind in the office.

That there were also three people dead, obviously of the same thing — whatever the hell that was — had put the fire on. So to speak. And every time someone called in with another claim, it was Sparrow who personally checked it out. It wasn't that he didn't trust any of his deputies. Thirty-five years roaming the side roads of the desert, talking to the Indians in Santo Domingo, San Felipe and the other pueblos, getting to know the hills and mountains until he could walk them practically blindfolded, did that to a man — made him the so-called area expert, even when he didn't want to be, hadn't asked to be, and would have given his right arm just to be plain stupid.

He reached in the driver's-side window and grabbed the mike, called in and told the dispatcher what he'd found and where. While Donna watched him distrustfully, he ordered a van to pick up the carcass, and a vet standing by to handle the examination. When he was finished, he dropped the mike onto the seat and leaned back against the door, arms folded across a chest nearly as broad as the stomach below it.

"You think you might go talk to Annie?" She stood in the middle of the two-lane road, sketching senseless patterns in the dust that turned the blacktop gray.

"What for?" He waved vaguely to his right. "Her place is too far away"

"Might be one of hers."

"Probably," he admitted. Then he gestured toward the hill, meaning what lay a mile or so beyond, what some of the locals called the Konochine Wall. "Might be one of theirs, too, you ever think of that?"

She didn't look, and he smiled. Donna Falkner didn't much care for the Konochine. For years they had refused her offers to broker whatever craftwork they wanted to sell; once they had even chased her off the reservation. Literally chased her, yelling and waving whatever came to hand, as if they wanted to drag her up Sangre Viento Mesa and drop her off, just as they had done to the Spanish priests and soldiers during the Pueblo Revolt over three hundred years before.

The difference was, the Spaniards never returned to the Konochine. No one knew why.

Now there was a middleman, Nick Lanaya, who worked with her, so she never had to set foot on the reservation at all.

"Satanists," Donna suggested then, still toeing the blacktop, hands in her hip pockets.

Sparrow snorted. He had been through the entire list of the usuals, from Satanists all the way to half-assed dopeheads who thought they could bring on a better world by chopping the heads off calves and goats. None of them, as far as he knew, killed like this, or killed both animals and people quite so ruthlessly and left the bodies behind.

But then, he wasn't an expert there, and he sighed as he finally admitted that maybe it was time to bring those experts in. Pride and getting nowhere fast were getting him crucified in the papers.

Two men sat on a hillside, their loose-fitting clothes as brown and tan as the ground around them. The first was old, his straight hair dull white and touching his bony shoulders. The planes of his face were sharp, the dark skin crevassed around the mouth and deep-set eyes. There was a necklace of rattlesnake spine around his neck.

The second man was much younger, but not young. His hair was still black, pulled back into a ponytail held by a braided circlet of gold and turquoise. His knees were drawn up, and his hands dangled between them, long fingers constantly moving like reeds in a slow wind.

When they spoke, which wasn't often, it was in a combination of bastard Spanish and Konochine.

"Father," the younger man said, attitude and voice deferential and weary, "you have to stop it."

The old man shook his head.

"But you know what he's doing. He's damning us all."

No answer.

The younger man reached for a tuft of grass, stopping himself just before he grabbed it. The blades were sharp; had he pulled, they would have drawn blood. He grabbed a stone instead and flung it hard down the slope.

Below was the road that led out of the gap, past Annie Hatch's ranch to the interstate. Behind was Sangre Viento Mesa.

"People are dying, Dugan," he said at last, abandoning honorifics for first names. "He takes them as far away as Albuquerque now." He didn't turn his head; he knew the old man wasn't watching, 'it's gotten too big to hide. They're going to come sooner or later, the authorities. We won't be able to keep them out."

The old man touched his necklace. "They can come, Nick. They can look. They won't find anything."

"And if they do?" the younger man persisted.

The old man almost smiled. "They won't believe it."

Donna watched the sheriff's car speed away, dust swirling into rooster tails from its rear tires. She knew his ego had taken a fierce beating because he hadn't yet been able to locate the cult behind the atrocities, but she didn't think he or the city police were looking in the right place. Haunting the downtown Albuquerque bars and sending undercover men to the university wasn't going to accomplish anything but pay out more overtime.

She squinted at the sky, saw nothing but a wisp of a cloud that looked lost amid all that washed-out blue.

The Journal and the Tribune were screaming for someone's blood, and if Sparrow didn't watch out, it was going to be his.

Not, she thought sourly as she headed back to her car, that it was any concern of hers. He was a big boy. He could take care of himself. Just because he never paid her any mind whenever she tried to give him a hand, just because he thought she was a little off-center, just because he never gave her the time of day unless she asked him right out…

"Shit," she said, and kicked at the Cherokee's front tire. "Idiot."

She swung herself in, hissing sharply when her fingers grabbed the hot steering wheel and snapped away. A pair of colorless work gloves lay on the passenger seat, and she slipped them on, glancing in the rearview mirror, then looking toward the hill and the cloud of flies that marked the steer's carcass. Her stomach lurched; a slow deep breath settled it.

This wasn't like her at all.

She had seen worse out in the desert, and much worse in town, after a knife fight or a shooting. She had no idea why this spooked her so much.

A quick turn of the key fired the engine, and another glance in the rearview nearly made her scream.

A pickup more rust and dust than red streaked directly toward her rear bumper, sunlight exploding from the windshield, the grill like a mouth of gleaming shark's teeth.

She braced herself for the impact, but the truck swerved at the last second, slowed abruptly, and passed her so sedately she wondered if it had really been speeding at all, if it hadn't been her imagination.

A look to her right, and the other driver stared back.

Oh God, she thought.

A gray hat pulled low, black sunglasses, long black hair in a ponytail that reached to the center of the man's back.

Leon Ciola.

She didn't realize she was holding her breath until the pickup disappeared ahead of the dust its tires raised; then she sagged against the seat, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. Air conditioning spilled across her lap; she shivered but didn't turn it down or deflect it elsewhere. She kept her eyes closed until she couldn't stand it. When they opened, she was alone; even the dust had gone.

Go, she ordered as she swallowed dryly; go home, girl.

It took her ten minutes before she could take the wheel again without shaking, another ten minutes before she realized she wasn't moving and tromped on the accelerator, ignoring the machine gun that rattled beneath the carriage, fighting the fishtail until the vehicle straightened, and the sun made her blind to everything but the road.

Home first, and a drink. Then she would call Sparrow and tell him Ciola was back.

She had a feeling the sheriff would be royally pissed.

The younger man stood, mock-groaning as he rubbed the small of his back and stretched his legs to relieve the stiffness. He tried again:

"Dugan, we can't let this happen. It will ruin everything we've worked for."

The old man didn't rise, didn't look back. His gaze "seemed to focus on the dust clouds in the distance. "We can't stop it, Nick."

"Maybe not, but we can stop him."

"We don't know for sure."

But damnit, we do, the younger man thought angrily; we know damn well it's him, and we're doing nothing about it. Nothing at all.

Asked softly: "What if you're wrong?"

Nick shook his head, though he knew the old man couldn't see it. "If I am wrong, what have we lost? The Anglos come in, they look around, they go away, we're left alone. What have we lost, Dugan?"

Answered softly: "What is ours."

Again the younger man shook his head. This was an argument as old as he, and older: let more of the world in, it can be done without loss, we have television and radio, for crying out loud; or, keep the world out because it has nothing to do with what makes us what we are.

It was the reason the young were leaving, many of them not coming back.

In a single motion so rapid and smooth it seemed like no motion at all, the old man was on his feet, dusting off his pants, checking the time by the sun. Without speaking he walked to the top of the hill, Nick following to one side and a step behind. When they reached the crest, Dugan pointed to the pale ghost of the moon.

"One more night and it will be done."

Nick said nothing, and the silence spelled his doubt.

"One more night” The old man took his arm; the way down into the valley was slippery and steep. "It takes faith these days, you know." The hint of a smile. "A lot more than it used to, I'm afraid. But it is there."

It wasn't the faith Nick worried about. He had it, too, and even during his time in the outside world, he had kept it.

It wasn't the faith.

It was the killing.

It was what the killing would bring.