Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

"I assumed you were going out."

Joyce sighed with patient exasperation. "You have this impression of me as such a swinger. What, I was going down to Linda's Bar and boogie? For your information, I was planning on calling my mom back east and then watching a video."

"Oh, yeah? What kind of video? With whom?"

"Tell me about the research, Cree. I've already worked up a brief on recent cases of possession for you. There's no shortage- you'll see, there was a real wild one in New Jersey just last year. What else you need?"

Cree enumerated the avenues that had suggested themselves: "McCarty Energy, a coal-mining company that's big in the region. Especially Garrett McCarty, the former owner, who died in 1999 at their Hunters Point mine."

"Aha. Think he's our entity?"

"Could be. Too soon, though, I'm just curious. While you're at it, I wouldn't mind some material on his son, Donny McCarty, current CEO. Education, marital status, legal stuff, whatever's come up in the newspapers. Then, let's see… bring me that Wilkins study on multiple personality disorder and anything else you can grab on the subject. You'll need to search for dissociative identity disorder, that's the current DSM classification. Mason gave me some materials, but I want to know more about the neurological mechanisms of identity disorders, see if there're any parallels, anything we can apply to possession."

"Smart cookie!"

"Also, some regional history, especially about Navajo culture. History, mysticism, contemporary social issues. I'm especially interested in Navajo witches-the Skinwalkers, the Navajo Wolves."

"Right out of Tony Hillerman, huh? This is a pretty rich mix, Cree. I'm leavin' on a jet plane, right, in twenty-one hours-"

"Oh, and one more-livestock mutilations."

Joyce made a shuddering noise. "Now that stuff completely and totally grosses me out. Seriously. So, what-they've been having them? At the school?"

"I don't think there's any connection. Actually, I don't know what I think about mutes, I just-"

"'Mutes'?"

"Local term. Listen, there's likely to be a ton on the Web, gotta really weed out the idiots on this one."

" 'Mutes'!" Joyce said again. "Isn't it supposed to be a UFO thing? Little green men I'm fine with, but little green vivisectionists? Brrrrr! You know?" While she paused to make notes, Cree distinctly heard the sound of the doorbell ringing in her Seattle apartment, and Joyce said quickly, "Well, okay. That's it, then, right? Gotta go. Gotta call Mom and get to work on this. See you tomorrow night, yeah? Take care. Bye-byee."

One last call, she told herself-this one for pleasure, not for business. It would be good to talk to Paul, to remind herself that life wasn't exclusively about lost love, ancient regrets, paranormal beings, grotesque syndromes, and existential mysteries. Talking to a living and romantically attractive man would help her get her feet on the ground. Remind herself that she had her own life, she wasn't just an extension of Julieta McCarty's troubled psyche.

"Hello?" Paul answered. In the background, Cree heard a din of conversation and music.

"It's me-Annie Oakley," she told him. Actually, she thought, at the moment it's more like Calamity Jane. "What's going on?"

"Hey, Cree!" he said warmly. "Oh, the racket? My annual shrink shindig. Didn't I tell you about this? I've got two dozen esteemed members of the greater New Orleans mental health establishment here, supposedly networking but really just wining and dining and telling war stories. We're just getting to the fast-and-loose stage. Hang on, Cree, just a second." She heard him turn away and call out, "Elaine, not that one, please. No, the other. The bigger one. Yes." Then back to Cree: "Hi. Sorry. Why Annie Oakley?"

"Well, it's this Western ambience out here. Also, I just went for a long horseback ride. Out on the desert."

"Oh, yeah? How was it?"

Cree surprised herself by blurting, "Paul, does anybody find love and keep it? Is it ever easy? Or is that just romance novels and fairy tales?"

"Whoa! That was quite a horseback ride. What happened?"

Before she could answer, a burst of laughter came through the phone, and the music in Paul's apartment swelled: zydeco. "I should call back later," she said.

"I could switch phones-"

"No. No, I just called to… I don't know, hear your voice, let you know I was okay. You go back to your guests. I'll call back later, okay?"

He paused. "Yeah, I guess that would be better." Another hesitation. "Cree, listen. I don't know about love-how it turns out, whether it's ever easy. Probably it's not. But I have to believe it's worth the effort. If it's… real, it'll survive anything. Sometimes you just have to… stick with it."

Cree went to her bed and lay down in her clothes. Just a nap. The windows were going dark already, but it was still early enough. She could nap for an hour, then get up and meet with Tommy.

The fat envelope of possession materials troubled her, and to get it out of her thoughts she put it into the side-table drawer. Better. She needed to keep her vision clear, unbiased by either ancient or modern preconceptions. But still her thoughts pestered her.

She didn't understand why her call to Paul should bother her so much. Of course he'd be distracted, with a crowd of guests there. Maybe it was that she didn't even know he held that gathering, which reminded her that there was a lot they didn't know about each other. Or maybe it was that the situation here, Julieta's past and Tommy's entity and the lonely, mystic desert all around, was pulling her away from her own life. As she'd feared it would. She was being tugged out of the warm orbit of love and life and away into the colder reaches. Her efforts to nudge herself back were so easily frustrated. Paul seemed very far away. The way her question had unsettled him showed how uncertain things still were with them.

On the other hand, she agreed with his comment about love: never easy, but always deserving persistence. Love had enduring powers, too, despite all the obstacles. Good to remember.

And it would be good to see Joyce and Edgar. She'd feel more confident of handling this with the two of them around. Joyce was a crackerjack forensic and historical investigator, relentless, adaptive, good at spotting the possibilities in seemingly unlikely links. And Ed: Surprisingly, though his ostensible specialty was physics and though he primarily saw to the technological side of investigations, the most useful, crucial thing he did was talk to Cree. Be there for her. His insight into her emotional processes was deep and subtle. He steadied her and gently guided her through the labyrinth of her own knots, often providing her with the solutions to intractable problems.

As Joseph Tsosie seems to do for Julieta, it occurred to her. Which invited the question whether their motivations sprang from the same source-whether Joseph felt about Julieta the way Edgar felt about Cree.

It wasn't even a question. Joseph Tsosie was in love with Julieta. It was evident in every word and gesture. After listening to Julieta tell her story, Cree suspected he'd been in love with her for a long, long time.

But how did Julieta feel about Joseph? There was a lot of tenderness there, certainly, a lot of trust and reliance. But love? Desire? Need? If not, why not? The questions buzzed in Cree's thoughts as if there was a lot more to consider there.

She drew herself into lotus position, her hands seeking the dhyana mudra, slowing her breath and letting every last thought drain out of her.

A moment later, she caught herself as her head bobbed: She'd almost fallen asleep sitting up. Groggily, she laid her aching head on the pillow and pulled the spread over herself. Already the inside of her thighs had begun to stiffen from the unaccustomed exertion of riding. She liked the feeling. Sleep came in a series of big smooth sweeps, a great hand moving across a blackboard and erasing her entirely.