Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

"Hey, Ed," she said quietly. "That was nice. Up on the mesa-our breakfast picnic."

"Yeah."

"I've missed hanging out with you. I can't tell you how much."

He turned away as if there was something to look at in the empty land to the west, then checked his watch. "We should get back. Big day for both of us."

"Yeah. Okay." He was right: This was no time for her to be talking to him this way.

He started walking. When he spoke again it was as if she'd been harrying him for further explanation: "Look, Cree, I don't know how to solve Julieta's thing with love, past, present, or future, or where things stand with her and Joseph, or why. But I do know this-love won't leave us alone until we meet its gaze fairly and fully. Okay? That's what I know. That's my pontification for the day, take it for what it's worth. Now I gotta go be an engineer for a while."

Donny got to the restaurant just as Nick pulled his black SUV into the parking lot. He checked his watch and found that it was eleven-twenty, just as they'd planned, a few minutes early. Nick would have time to bring him up to date before the nurse arrived.

They went inside together. He had decided to make it a threesome for the lunch with Lynn Pierce, given that Gallup was directly on the way to the mine and his one-thirty meeting with the parapsychologist. Might as well help flatter and cajole the nurse and hear what she had to offer firsthand. It wasn't Tuesday's regular bill of fare, but Donny was glad to have an excuse to get out of Albuquerque. Anyway, there were some scary overtones to this latest thing of Julieta's. The sooner he cleared them up, the better.

Inside, there were no other customers-they were ahead of the lunch rush. They took seats at a booth toward the rear, ordered coffee, and set the menus to one side. Nick seated himself so that he had a clear view of the front door, Donny noted, and would see the nurse when she arrived, give them a few seconds' warning. A competent guy.

Donny grinned and rubbed his palms together expectantly as Nick put a slim leather briefcase onto the table, opened it, and pulled out a few sheets of paper.

"Okay. The photo I got from the university. That your gal?" Nick turned around a brochure and handed it to Donny.

It was a UNM psychology conference schedule with a photo of each of the featured speakers alongside a one-paragraph bio and a summary of their lecture topic. Donny scanned the faces, found Cree Black's earnest face, and nodded as he read her blurb.

"That's her."

"Good." Nick took it back just as the waitress brought their coffees. The big man thanked her pleasantly and gave her a flash of Czech-Irish charm, warming up for the main act. When she left, he carefully stirred three plastic cups of creamer into his coffee and tasted it doubtfully.

"What else you got?" Donny asked, feeling good as a coffee glow replaced the sharper burn of acid reflux in his chest.

"Ran an Internet search. Lot of entries, but I looked at every one of them. Lot of her activities are like this one, kind of on the margins of academic psychology. Couple of more sensational things about her investigating a famous haunting or something. Sometimes she debunks ghost stories, too. Then I found a few of these." Nick frowned meaningfully as he slid a few sheets across the tabletop.

Donny took the papers and felt his good mood vanish. These were copies of newspaper articles from different parts of the country, Sunday features-type pieces of the "Frustrated Police Turn to Psychic" variety. All three were about homicides in which the police had asked or allowed Lucretia Black to assist. All reported that she was making "substantive contributions" to the solution of the cases. Only one of the articles was a follow-up item: " 'I can't explain it,' said a jubilant Detective Howard Lathrop of the Mason County, Michigan, Sheriffs Department. 'I was highly skeptical at first and it was definitely not the kind of consulting we'd usually solicit. But Dr. Black gave us information that we were able to verify and that led directly to the apprehension of the suspect.'"

Donny tossed the papers back at Nick, who slotted them back into his briefcase.

"I wonder how much she paid jubilant Detective Howard Lathrop for that little endorsement? Must have been quite a shot in the arm for her ghost-busting business."

"I got one more," Nick said. "This was deep in the pile. Seems she's a licensed private investigator in the state of Washington. You want to see?"

Donny scowled and waved it away.

Nick shrugged his big shoulders, put the briefcase on the seat beside him, wrapped his meaty hands around his cup. They both drank reflectively for a moment.

" So-" Nick began.

"So nothing. We see what our friend has to say, meet the spook at the mine, and take it from there." Donny finished his coffee and glared around the restaurant for the waitress. "It's probably nothing. And I sincerely fucking hope so, because that's all the time I have for it-none."

He glanced up to see that Nick's expression had suddenly turned boyish and sunny, and then the big man was sidling out of the booth. Donny turned to see the nurse coming through the door.

"It's been too long, Lynnie," Nick told her. "You're looking great. I take it life's treating you good?"

Sitting across from Donny, Lynn Pierce looked tiny next to Nick's bulk. She had ordered coffee, too, and now tasted her cup delicately. She had dressed up a bit for this meeting, Donny saw, wearing a snappy brown blazer with a silk scarf at her throat; her hair shone like a silver dollar. But in fact she didn't look great. Her speck-eyed gaze seemed more lopsided than ever, and her face looked old and a little crazed, kind of the way she'd looked at Vern's funeral.

"Life," Lynn said, "is treating me… interestingly."

"You know, Lynn, I can't tell you how much we miss Vern. Miss both of you. Even after all these years. The Bloomfield site went to hell in a handbasket after Vern died and you left. Seriously." Donny shook his head sadly and sipped his coffee with a pious expression. This was a ritual pronouncement and she'd know it was bullshit, but it was obligatory.

"Thank you. That means a great deal to me."

"It was so great to get your call," Donny went on. "An excuse to have a social lunch. Kind of busy these days, but always happy to squeeze in some time with an old friend and colleague. Life's too short, you know?"

The waitress arrived to stare at them expectantly, hovering with her pad poised. "Are you ready to order?"

They hadn't looked at the menus yet.

"Not quite," Nick told her flatly. "We'll need another few minutes." This time he showed her his other side, a look that told her not to come back until they waved semaphore flags and set off flares. Donny smiled to himself as she scuttled away.

They tossed pleasantries back and forth, and a gentle babble of conversation began to fill the place as other customers filtered in and took seats. The nurse was warming up to her pitch, getting a little flirtatious. Nick was a ball of boyish charm and attentiveness, but Donny thought he'd play it differently. Nice but not too nice; you had to keep her in her place, not let her think anything she had to offer was too valuable. After a few more minutes he decided the foreplay had gone on long enough and it was time to get down to business.

"So Lynn," he said, "you'll never guess what happened Saturday up at the mine. I come out of the site office, I'm about to get into my car, when who do I see on the south rim but Julieta and some other woman. Horseback. And when I go up there, I find out the other woman is a, what do they call it-"

"A parapsychologist," Lynn finished. "Yes. That's one of the things I wanted to tell you."

"What, exactly, is a parapsychologist?" Nick asked innocently.