Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

Julieta raised her hand to point to the west. "Yeah, but your airspace is public. Overflight's perfectly legal. And that little Cessna that's been circling for the last half hour? Dr. Edgar Mayfield, Dr. Black's associate, hired it from Gallup. He's up there with a good camera and telephoto lens. He's an engineer and a physicist. Knows what to look for."

Donny whirled to look at the little plane, buzzing sleepily through another slow circle in the distance. Nick looked to him for instructions, but Donny appeared speechless.

"One more thing, Donny. Your source at school is lying. There's no sick boy, and there's no exorcist. There's a consulting clinical psychologist from Seattle, and there's a kid who's fully recovered from a temporary illness. That's all a matter of record. If I hear any suggestion you're spreading rumors to the contrary, I'll have you in court so fast your head will spin."

"What do you want, Julieta?" Donny croaked.

"I want a charitable donation to my school for a million dollars. I want construction on the in situ plant stopped and whatever's there dismantled. And I want Nick turned in to the police with a confession. Afterward, I leave you alone and you leave me alone."

"Not a chance," Donny said derisively. But his expression was anything but confident. He was making that gulping movement in his throat again.

"Fine. We'll see how it shakes out." Julieta brought Spence around and made ready to leave.

"Nick, stop her horse! I need a minute to think this through."

Nick took a step and reached for Spence's bridle, but it was a mistake to take his eyes off Joyce. Cree had seen her use the move in tae kwon do competition: She leapt up, lithe body spinning as her left leg slashed in a savage backward arc. The heel of her boot hit the side of Nick's head with an awful sound. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Joyce landed like a ballerina and went to look down at him. Flat on his back, he goggled up at her, eyes wide, mouth moving soundlessly.

Joyce gave him a lascivious smile and asked, "Oh, honey! Was that as good for you as it was for me?"

She turned disdainfully away, took Breeze's reins, boosted herself into the saddle. The three of them urged the horses away.

When Cree glanced back, Nick was still trying to get up. Donny didn't look too happy.

"Sorry," Joyce said ten minutes later. "I couldn't resist." The encounter had put her in a good humor. Cree shook her head, unable to suppress a smile.

Julieta didn't share the mood. She rode with her head tipped down, shoulders slumped. "It's all a bluff, of course. I don't want to exhume Peter's bones, I want to leave him be. And I can't let anyone know about his murder, or about my past, it'll only hurt the school. And you're right, Joyce, after all these years there wouldn't be any evidence to implicate Nick or Donny. Donny's smart enough to figure all that out. He might stop construction on the in situ plant, but he'll never stop hassling me. They'll never have to pay for killing Peter." She rode on and added quietly, "And I don't need the past coming back anymore. I don't want an ongoing feud with Donny. I just want a new life. I have a chance to do things right now. I've already waited long enough."

Cree had no answer. She was glad Julieta saw her own path in the right way. But it was so wrong for them to go unpunished. She felt Julieta's despondency come over her.

They rode in silence for a few minutes.

"You know," Joyce said to no one in particular, "I learned some interesting things while I was out poking around. A lot of stuff on the McCartys and their mines, and some fascinating stuff about Navajo traditions. One of the old ceremonies is called… what was it, something like Turning the Basket. It's used if the patient's suffering is inflicted by someone else, like a bad person or a witch. The medicine man turns the evil back on the person who sent it. Rebounds it. It cures the sick person and punishes the wrongdoer in one swell foop. Kind of got me thinking." Maybe it was just the lingering endorphin high from her demolition of Nick Stephanovic, but her small sharklike grin never wavered.

Julieta nodded distractedly. Cree thought about whether such a ceremony might be of symbolic value for Tommy. But he'd been put through a lot of curing, an endless month of fuss and bother. Sometimes you had to let it go, Cree thought. Sometimes justice took the long way around, just like love. Sometimes peace of mind meant relinquishing things. It seemed intolerable to let Nick and Donny get by without consequences, but there wasn't anything anyone could do about it.

Joyce looked over at her thoughtfully, seemed about to say more, but then clammed up for the rest of the ride.

Seattle. Monday, back at the office. Eight a.m. sharp. Joyce unlocked the door to PRA's suite, turned on the lights, tossed the pile of mail onto her desk. The light on the message machine was blinking and the digital readout told her that there were thirty-two messages waiting. Through the door to Cree's room, she glimpsed the big views of Elliott Bay and the smile of bright blue sky above. She and Ed had arrived Sunday midafternoon, and she'd spent the rest of the day just relaxing and mooning around. She'd done some stretching to ease the soreness in her thighs, then went for a run along the shore of Lake Washington. The rez was great, but it sure felt good to be around a body of water again.

Joyce measured ground Nicaraguan beans into a paper filter, filled the reservoir of the coffee machine, and turned it on. As it perked, she listened to the calls and took notes on pink message slips for Cree and Ed. By the time she was done, the coffee was ready. She poured a mug and took it and the mail into Cree's office, where the Bay and the Sound could keep her company as she went through the week's correspondence.

Between the calls and the letters, there looked to be some promising cases in their future; Ed would be glad to see this stuff when he came in this afternoon. Cree, too, when she got back later in the week and once she got over the exhaustion and existential upheaval that would likely follow the Oak Springs case. Cree was on a perpetual learning curve, rising so steeply Joyce was sure it would one day take her right off the planet. Which day Joyce was determined to forestall as long as possible.

A couple of inquiries had come from people who'd been seeing glowing orbs, one in San Francisco and one right here in Washington, not far from Seattle; Ed would like that, because orb reports were on the increase and the phenomenon promised to be particularly susceptible to physical analysis. There were people troubled by standard-issue phantoms in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota; the person in Maine said hers looked like a druid shaman, like old representations of Merlin. Coincidentally, she claimed to live near one of the supposed pre-Columbian, pre-Viking druidic archaeological sites that occurred throughout the Northeast. Another letter requested help on a poltergeist case in Kentucky and came complete with newspaper clippings with photos of household objects hurtling through the air. Poltergeists always gave Joyce a shiver.

There was even a terse letter from Mason Ambrose in Geneva, accompanied by a check for five grand; the old creep was donating Cree's fee on behalf of Oak Springs School. Trying to redeem himself. Joyce was glad to see the check, because most of the remaining envelopes contained bills and the PRA bank account was, as always, running on fumes.

When she finished sorting and filing, she got herself another cup of coffee, put her feet up on Cree's desk, and stared out the window. She thought back with satisfaction to that last day and night in Oak Springs, which made up for some of the frustrations of the rest of the investigation.