“Teeko.”
“Ah,” Gil said. “Well, then maybe you should leave all the talking to me when Heath shows up.”
I smiled. “What would you say?”
“That it was my idea to come here,” he said simply.
I lifted my head and stared at him. “You’d do that for me?”
He seemed surprised that I’d even ask. “Well, duh, M. J. It is my job, isn’t it?”
“Your job?”
“Yeah. Don’t you remember what your mom told us? That it was my job to watch out for you?”
My eyes widened. “You remember that?”
“Of course I remember it,” he said. “We were playing on my back porch and your mom came over and told me to look after you. That was right before she died, wasn’t it?”
I smiled. Gilley’s mind had reshaped the events of that morning so that the memory wouldn’t frighten him. “Yes,” I said, not seeing any point in correcting him.
“Well, see?” he said. “I’ve been doing that ever since.”
I nudged him with my shoulder. For all the bickering and petty arguing we did, Gilley was still the best friend I could ask for. I saw his eyes flicker to somewhere behind me. “Here comes the law,” he said.
I turned and saw the deputy approaching the squad car. Opening my door, he said, “Out.”
I scooted forward and exited the car, noting that he was looking pointedly at my hands, which were now in front of me. The deputy didn’t say anything or recuff me, which I was grateful for. Gil struggled out and nearly fell when his legs got tangled under him. I reached out and caught him because the deputy seemed just fine with letting him take a tumble.
Jerk, I thought.
“Inside,” he ordered.
We headed in and waited for him to get the door. “Down the hall and to the right,” he instructed.
We followed his every command without a word between us, moving along the well-lit corridor to a doorway that led into a large room with two desks, rows of filing cabinets, and a single jail cell.
The smell of pizza still lingered and I noticed a mostly eaten microwave pizza on one of the desks. Ah, so he’d decided to catch his dinner before dealing with us. My own stomach grumbled and I could hardly say that I blamed him.
“Sit,” he commanded, pointing to two chairs in front of the desk with the pizza.
Gil sat in the chair on the right and I took the one on the left. The deputy then went behind his desk, which was oddly placed in the center of the room, with his back to the jail cell.
Putting his fingers to a keyboard, the deputy said, “Names?”
I glanced sideways at Gilley. He stared at me as if he didn’t know what to say.
“Names?” the deputy repeated, and this time his tone said, “Right the freak now!”
Gil and I spoke at the same time, so the words came out in a tumble. The deputy eyed me. “You first,” he said before those eyes swiveled to Gil. “Then you.”
We relayed all our information to him, and in front of us he took out all the contents of our bags one at a time, laying them out on the desk to catalog them. He’d already confiscated our cell phones, which both Gil and I had had in our back pockets, and thrown them into his desk drawer.
After he’d cataloged all the contents of Gilley’s backpack (he’d brought his tablet and keyboard along—why I didn’t know), the deputy put the items back, then moved on to the contents of my messenger bag.
He looked over the magnetic spikes curiously, but didn’t ask me about them. Instead he wrote them down, then put them back and tossed my bag and Gilley’s backpack onto a nearby chair.
By the time he was done, my hands, which had been throbbing, were now completely numb. I eyed them and became concerned. They were both swollen and blue. I held them up to show the deputy. “Can you do something about this, please?”
He ignored me and continued to type at his keyboard.
“We know the Whitefeathers,” I said. “Heath and his mom are friends of ours.”
That got the deputy’s attention, but maybe not in quite the way I’d hoped for. “You were the other two with them at Milton Whitefeather’s cabin, right?”
“Yes. Heath and Gilley and I are in a television series together.”
The deputy leaned back in his chair and considered us. “Did he bring you here tonight?”
I shook my head vigorously. “No!”
“Then how’d you get here?”
“We drove,” I told him.
He looked at me skeptically. “Where’s your car?”
“At the entrance to the Pueblo,” I admitted.
“We had car trouble,” Gilley piped in. “Our car died on the side of the road and we thought we’d come find Heath to see if we could get a ride back to the hotel.”
I took up Gilley’s story with ease. “That’s right,” I said, nodding my head. “We had car trouble and we came looking for Heath.”
“Entering the Pueblo on sacred ceremonial days is a crime,” the deputy said.
“We’re so sorry,” I told him, doing my best to sound contrite. “We were just looking for our friend and we didn’t realize we were doing anything wrong.”
The deputy squinted at me. I could tell he didn’t buy it. “You can’t read?” he asked.
I knew he was referring to the sign posted at the entrance of the Pueblo. I smiled tightly. “Technically, we’re not tourists,” I said. “I’ve been here before, so I just figured the invitation extended to tonight.”
“Heath has no authority to invite you onto tribal land,” the deputy said. “He doesn’t live on the Pueblo, so he couldn’t legally invite you here.”
“He didn’t,” I told him.
“Then who did?”
“Ari Whitefeather.” I knew I was in quicksand, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from offering up names.
“Ari invited you here tonight?”
I shook my head again. We were going in circles, and I had a feeling the deputy was trying to find the holes in our story. “No. The day her aunt Beverly died. She invited me into Molly’s house. At least I think it was Molly’s house. It’s the one at the top of the cul-de-sac, three down from Ari’s. Oh! And we were invited here just yesterday to drop off Serena Whitefeather at Ari’s house! So, technically, we’ve been invited onto the Pueblo twice now.”
The deputy’s fingers drummed on the desk, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Instead he checked his watch, rubbing the back of his head, before getting up and coming around to grab Gilley by the arm and escort him over to the jail cell. He placed Gilley inside before ordering him to turn around and put his wrists against the bars. Gilley did as he was told and the cuffs came off.
The deputy then moved over to retrieve me and do the same, and with immense relief I felt the pressure subside from the cuffs, even though I couldn’t really feel my hands.
“The ceremony will go on until after midnight,” the deputy said. “I’m going to run my patrols and find your car, then head home. You two behave until tomorrow morning when I ask Ari to vouch for you.”
“Can we have something to eat?” Gil asked him.
The deputy walked over to the pizza, which was now cold and congealed. He folded two pieces and handed them to Gilley with two plastic plates and got us two cups of water, for which I was very grateful. By now I was both really thirsty and hungry.
“I’ll be back at six a.m.,” he told us. And then we were left alone, most of the lights shut off, save the one desk lamp next to his computer.
Gil chowed down and I had to wait until the feeling returned to my hands before I could join him. The pizza was pretty bad, cold, hard, and rubbery; it took most of the water in my cup to get it down, but it was definitely better than nothing.
About a half hour after finishing the meager meal, I was regretting drinking the water. Gilley seemed to be in the same boat, because we both eyed the one open toilet in the cell nervously.
“I need to pee,” he said from
the bunk on the opposite side of the cell from mine.
“Right there with you.”
“No, I’m serious, M. J. I gotta go.”
I closed my eyes, plugged my ears, and rolled away from him. “I won’t peek or listen if you promise to do the same.” I then began to sing.
A few minutes later, just when I thought that Gilley was taking the longest pee in history, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped a little and twisted around. Gilley stood there with a big old grin on his face and the earphones to his new iPad in his ears.
“Your turn!”
I looked at him curiously. “Where’d that come from?”
“My backpack,” he said, his grin broadening.
I sat up. “Huh?”
Gil pointed to his bunk. Sitting in the middle of it was his backpack.
“How’d you manage that?”
Gil pointed to his belt. “Do you remember that episode of The Brady Bunch where the family got locked in the jail of that ghost town and they had to use their belts to get the keys?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, that method works!” he said triumphantly.
My messenger bag was still on the chair next to the deputy’s desk, however. “You couldn’t get mine too?”
“I figured you’d want to do your business. Then we could work on your bag.”
I jumped up from the bunk. “Turn the music up, Gil.” I had to go so bad I was about to pee in a cup and I didn’t care who watched.
When I was done, Gilley and I worked on getting my messenger bag. It took us seventeen tries, but eventually, we managed it.
Once we had our bags with us, I felt a little better about being cooped up. “Maybe I’ll call Teeks in the morning and she can look for a good lawyer in the area in case things get sticky for us tomorrow.”
Gilley, however, was busy rummaging around in his pack again, searching for something. At last he pulled up a small pair of binoculars with a satisfied, “Ha!”
I looked around the room, which was mostly windowless, and all the blinds were closed anyway. “What’re you gonna do with those?”
Gil ignored me while he fiddled with the focus. He seemed to be looking through them at the deputy’s desk. “Crap,” he said. “Too close.”
He then got off the bed and moved to the very back of the cell, fiddling again with the glasses before saying, “Okay, I should be able to read the type on the computer.”
I looked over at the computer on the deputy’s desk. The screen saver was on, displaying a running message with the words Zanto Pueblo PD. “What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.
Gil lowered the lenses and moved back to his backpack to pull out his wireless keyboard. “This has an amazing range,” he said. “And it’s the same model as the one the deputy uses. So, all we have to do is . . .” Gilley clicked the space bar and suddenly the screen saver was gone. “That.”
“Whoa!” I said, thoroughly impressed. The screen displayed the e-mail window, but I couldn’t read any of the type. It was too far away. “Now what?”
Gil fumbled around inside his backpack again until he’d pulled out his wireless track pad too. He then scooted to the back of the cell and offered me the binoculars. “Will you hold them for me?”
“Sure,” I said, moving over to hold them while Gil got comfortable, placing the keyboard in his lap and the track pad at his side. When he was ready, I held the lenses over his eyes and marveled at how quickly his fingers flew over the keys.
I had to switch hands after a while, and Gil continued to type. After another fifteen minutes without him uttering a single word, I said, “Can you give me a status report?”
Gil backed away from the glasses and blinked his eyes a few times. Then he told me to put the binoculars away and got up from the floor. I watched him retrieve his iPad from the backpack and bring it back to our corner. He whipped his finger around the display for a minute, then turned the tablet toward me so I could see. “Whoa!” I said again when I scrolled through all the new e-mails from Deputy Cruz. Oh, yeah, that was his name . . . Cruz.
“So, what’s in these e-mails?” I asked absently, scrolling down the subject headers.
“I pulled every e-mail that had to do with any mysterious deaths on the Pueblo, including the remains of that John Doe, who’s not so much a John Doe anymore.”
“Huh?” I looked up at Gilley.
“The coroner was able to pull a print off the lone finger they found.”
I swallowed hard. “Ick.”
Gilley smirked. “Ick aside, the identity came back as Daryl West of Los Alamos. And if you’ll scroll down to that e-mail from the Los Alamos PD, you’ll see that the attachment is Daryl’s rap sheet, which, among the many offenses listed, has on there eight charges of grave robbing, and defiling a corpse.”
I swallowed again. “Ick squared.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gil agreed. “But there’s a pretty long exchange between Cruz and the deputy in Los Alamos who booked West for the grave-robbing crimes.”
“So?”
“So, there must be a reason Cruz is so interested in West’s past, and who the hell robs graves in the twenty-first century anyway?”
“Someone looking for gold,” I said easily. “Seriously, Gil, the price of gold is ridiculous these days. And people get buried with their jewelry all the time.”
“Yeah, but, M. J., even if they recovered a ring or a bracelet or a necklace, that’s an awful lot of work and even more risk for a few hundred bucks.”
“To you,” I said. “But maybe not to West.”
Gilley nodded but held his ground. “I say there’s something there.”
“Okay,” I agreed, knowing that Gil had pretty good instincts when it came to information. “I trust you. When we get outta here, we’ll check on it.”
Gil shifted sideways and pulled up his sweatshirt. “In the meantime,” he said, lifting out a book from his waistband, “I figure we can read up on the history of our demon spirit.”
My jaw dropped. “Please tell me you did not steal that from the library!”
“I did not steal this from the library.”
I glared at him.
“I didn’t!” he insisted. “I borrowed it. That’s what you do at a library, M. J. You borrow the books and promise to bring them back.”
I leaned against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “Heath is gonna break up with me for sure.”
“No, he won’t,” Gil said, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction in his voice.
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. “Do you think they’re back from the burial grounds yet?”
Gilley shrugged. “Maybe.”
I sighed. I didn’t know if Cruz was going to tell Heath we were locked up here, and if he decided not to—which was what I suspected—then Heath was going to return to an empty hotel room and wonder where I was. I looked longingly at the desk drawer where Cruz had put our phones. Then I eyed Gilley’s tablet with interest.
“Don’t,” Gil said.
I looked up. “What?”
“You’re getting ready to ask me if you can e-mail Heath.”
“He’ll be worried if he goes back to the hotel and sees that I’m not there, and I don’t think Deputy Dog is going to tell him where we are until morning.” And then I thought about Doc and my heart skipped a beat. “What about the birdie?”
Gil sighed, and set the book down to pick up his tablet, where he then opened up a blank e-mail. Without letting me look, he typed very fast, then punched the ENTER button with emphasis.
“What’d you do?”
“I sent Heath an e-mail.”
“Oh, God. What’d you say?”
“That you were hanging out with me tonight at a club and we’d catch up with him in the morning, and could he please put the bird to bed because we were bound to be very late getting in.”
“He should know the truth about where we are, Gil.”
But my best friend only sh
ook his head. “He’s at a funeral, M. J. He’s upset enough for one night.”
I suddenly felt ten times worse. “What the hell was I thinking?”
“You weren’t. Which is why we’re stuck in this jail cell.”
“Thanks, Gil,” I said woodenly.
“You asked.”
I reached over and took the book from his side. Flipping to the back, I looked for an index, found one, and then read through the list for the legend of the black and white hawk spirits.
It was on page 229 and began exactly the way Mrs. Lujan had described. I read aloud to Gilley from the part where the battle ended and the black hawk fell to earth.
“The great White Hawk circled the whole of the sky, claiming it all for itself and boasting its victory to all the world. The Black Hawk was so angry at its rival that it plotted its revenge by shedding its feathers for scales, and losing its beak to grow fangs, but it kept its talons and grew two more sets. ‘One day you will land, White Hawk,’ it shouted up to the sky. ‘And on that day, I will kill you!’
“But the White Hawk only laughed, planning to ride the currents forever. It stayed in the sky for so many moons that it eventually lost its bird form, turning into mist and becoming the clouds. On days when the clouds are absent, the White Hawk travels to the edge of the sky, where it can rest without needing to land.
“Sometimes, however, it misses the land and the White Hawk grows dark and moody, shedding tears from the sky, mourning the touch of the earth below. But once it has shed its tears, it remembers the glory of the sky and again rides the currents with great happiness.”
I looked up to see Gilley gazing at me. “I kinda dig that story,” he admitted.
I folded the book closed over my thumb to look at the cover again. “Yeah, me too.”
“Okay, so find the part about the Whitefeathers.”
I opened the book back up and skimmed the next page, but the story seemed to end there without anything more about the white hawk spirits. Flipping to the back again, I moved my finger down the list to the Ws and found the pages for “Whitefeather.”
I then skimmed the story of Whitefeather’s father, finding the white feather on the ground. “Did you know that Whitefeather’s father was named White Wolf?” I said to Gil.