Ghoul Interrupted

  I grinned. “Yeah. Pretty much exactly that. But what if Bissell also encouraged Wyatt and Daryl to go hunting for buried treasure too?”

  “Then he’d have quite a racket going, wouldn’t he?” Heath said, glaring at the surroundings before handing me another one of the papers.

  I gasped when I saw it. “The black hawk vessel!” I said, seeing the photo match perfectly the image of it I’d seen in the imprint I’d been sucked into back at the cave. “So it wasn’t destroyed when the demon escaped!”

  “I don’t know how he got his hands on it,” Heath said angrily. “But from the picture you can tell that the top of the pot has been broken off.”

  I squinted at the photo. Sure enough, the lid of the clay pot appeared to have been broken off. Bissell’s notes indicated the pot sustained only minimal damage, and he estimated its price tag in the thirty- to fifty-thousand-dollar range. “Whoa!” I exclaimed. “Is he kidding with this figure?”

  “He’s not,” Heath said. “Relics like that go for a lot of money. It’s why we keep the location of our burial grounds a closely guarded secret and send out regular patrols along our back roads, but as you can tell, we’re not always successful stopping the grave robbers.”

  Something clicked in my head when Heath said that, but with so many synapses firing at once, I found it hard to focus on the thought, especially when I watched Heath get up and move into the other rooms. I’d sort of hoped we’d be going soon. I badly wanted to get out of there, afraid that Heath’s SUV in the driveway would call attention to us if we lingered and Bissell’s neighbors knew he wasn’t home.

  “I think we should go,” I said loudly when Heath disappeared down a hallway.

  “In one sec,” I heard him say from the interior. “If the vessel’s here, I want to find it.”

  I followed after him, preparing to talk him into leaving quickly, but came up short when I found him in what was obviously Bissell’s bedroom. “Whoa,” I said.

  Heath stood just inside the doorway, allowing me a good view of the interior. Dresser drawers were pulled open and some of the clothing was spilling over the sides. The closet door was also open and several empty hangers hung on the rod and also cluttered the floor. On the bed was a small suitcase, which was open and empty.

  “Somebody left in a hurry,” I said.

  Heath walked over to an answering machine with a blinking red light on the nightstand. I would’ve made fun of it if the situation weren’t so tense; I mean, who still has an answering machine?

  Heath hit the PLAY button and we both listened to the first message. “Bissell?” said an anxious male voice. “Dude! Where the hell are you? I’m at the storage unit, man. You gotta get here soon, okay? I’m freaking out! I think he knows we have the pot, Professor! I think he was at my apartment!”

  The time stamp indicated that the message had been left the same day Heath, Gilley, and I had flown into Santa Fe.

  Another message began, and again that same anxious male voice came through the recorder. “You son of a bitch!” he began. “I been waiting for you for three hours! I know you fuckin’ left me out here to hang, so you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna call that cop and tell him what I know and then I’m gonna point the finger at you! I’ll have him meet me right here at this storage unit, and I ain’t leaving till he gets a load a what you been up to!” With that, the line went dead.

  There were a few more messages after that: one from Brad, the owner of the moving company, asking Bissell to return his call, and one from a girl who identified herself as Jenny, asking him to call her back because they hadn’t heard from him on a few of their appraisals and the clients were getting anxious.

  “That sounds like Pigtails,” I said, pointing to the machine.

  Heath grunted and hit the END button. With a sigh he said, “I don’t think the vessel’s here.”

  “That’s my guess too,” I said. “I bet he either took it or hid it in the storage unit Wyatt was talking about.” There was no doubt in my mind the caller was Wyatt. His partner Daryl would have already been dead, and really, who else could it have been?

  “So, where is Wyatt?” Heath wondered.

  I shook my head. I had no idea what’d become of him. I almost asked Heath to play the message again, because there was something on the message that was wiggling around in my mind, but Heath was already focused on something else and he had his cell out, motioning for me to follow him out of the room.

  A second later, I overheard him say, “Hey Gil, I need for you to find a storage unit registered to Professor Bissell.” There was a pause, then, “Yeah, I know that’s gonna be hard . . . but next to impossible? If there’s anyone that can do it, buddy, you can. . . .”

  I grinned. Heath knew exactly how to get Gilley to work on something: Ply him with flattery. “What’s that?” he asked, reaching the back door and holding it open for me. “You already got it?”

  I took the key from his hand and relocked the door while Heath tapped the address into his phone. “Thanks, bud,” Heath said. “I owe you one.”

  We arrived at the U-Haul storage facility just five minutes later. Bissell had chosen something close to home at least.

  Heath led the way to the unit Gil had pegged as Bissell’s, and we were a little surprised to find it unlocked. Heath pulled at the latch on the bottom of the door, and it rose easily, revealing an empty room, save for a few remnants of packing paper.

  It was my turn to call Gilley. “Did you find it?” he asked the moment he answered my call.

  “Yes. But it’s empty.”

  “Figures,” Gil said. “What do you think was in it?”

  “A whole lot of valuables,” I said. “But that’s not why I’m calling. Can you maybe get a trace on Professor Bissell? We’re pretty sure he’s left town, and when we go to the police, we’d like to point them in the right direction.”

  I heard Gilley’s fingers flying across the keyboard again. “I’ve already run his credit report,” Gil said. “He has a credit card with Santa Fe University Credit Union.”

  I stared at the floor. “And you’re telling me this because . . . ?”

  “Credit union systems are easier to hack into than the big banks,” Gil told me. “I can run a trace on his credit card and see where he’s gone.”

  I stifled a chuckle. “It is a really good thing you aren’t a criminal, Gil.”

  “For everybody,” he agreed. “Here it is. Bissell purchased a ticket through American Airlines ten days ago. That was the last purchase he made with that credit card.”

  “Does it say where he went?”

  “Hang on,” Gilley said impatiently. “I have to hack a different system for that.”

  I waited and in a moment Gil said, “He left two days after he purchased the ticket, headed for Buenos Aires.”

  My brow furrowed. “What day was that?”

  “The seventeenth,” Gil said.

  I thought back to Bissell’s answering machine. The time stamp on Wyatt’s message had been the eighteenth. Something wasn’t adding up. “Gil, can you hang on a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  I put the phone to my chest and said to Heath, “Gil says Bissell left the country on the seventeenth.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Heath swore. “He probably took the art with him. Did Gil find out where?”

  Heath was missing the point. “Argentina. But that’s not what’s bugging me. There’s something off here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I walked over to the storage unit and closed the door. I stared at the latch, which was missing any form of a lock. “If Bissell left in a hurry, do you really think he’d risk trying to smuggle the black market artifacts out of the country too?”

  Heath shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, I know I’d probably give it a shot if the pieces were valuable enough.”

  “Okay,” I said, pointing to the bare latch. “So, you mean to tell me that Wyatt comes here and waits for three hours for Bissell to show u
p, which we already know he doesn’t, because he’s left the country the day before, and in the three hours Wyatt’s waiting for him, he doesn’t notice the lock is gone from the storage unit and that all he has to do is pull the door up and take a look inside to figure out that Bissell has ditched him?”

  Heath squinted at the latch. “What if it was still locked when Wyatt was here?” he suggested. “Maybe Wyatt managed to break into it and steal the contents himself?”

  I pointed to the somewhat crowded facility. There were lots of students around and security cameras everywhere. We’d been able to enter the building because we’d come between the hours of eight and five, but after that, the sign out front said you’d need a key card to enter. “So he somehow manages to break into this unit without anyone noticing? I don’t think so.”

  “What’s your point, M. J.?” Heath finally asked.

  “If Wyatt didn’t take the art, then who did? I mean, we know that Daryl’s dead, and Wyatt somehow survived the demon escaping from the vessel, but someone’s got to be controlling the demon right now, and it sure doesn’t seem like it’s the professor—we know he’s flown the coop—and from that voice message, it sure as hell doesn’t sound like the demon has control over Wyatt.”

  “Who does that leave, then?” Heath asked.

  I closed my eyes and thought back to something that I’d heard on Bissell’s answering machine. “He said that someone knew he had the vessel,” I said softly.

  “What?”

  I opened my eyes. “Wyatt. On the voice message, he said that someone knew he had the vessel and was after him.”

  “The person controlling the demon,” Heath supplied.

  I nodded. “And then you said something, Heath. . . .” I closed my eyes again, because I knew that the biggest clue was lying right there in the puddle of facts we’d just sifted through. But the more I tried to find it, the more the clutter seemed to get in the way. My mind flipped back to that slip of paper found in Trudy’s hand, and then shot forward again to an image of Heath sitting at Bissell’s table, sifting through the photos and appraisals. And then, in an instant, I had it! My eyes flew open and I stared at Heath in shock. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed, putting the phone back to my ear so that Gilley could hear too. “Guys! I said excitedly. “I think I know who controls the demon and who murdered Milton and Beverly!”

  Chapter 15

  Heath gently eased his shovel underneath something long and thick buried in the same cave where we’d discovered the Whitefeather urn. Gilley shifted nervously next to me, his eyes continually darting to the front of the cave entrance. I knew he didn’t want to be here, and I’d even offered to have him stay behind, but in an odd moment of bravery he’d opted to come. I could tell by his expression that he was seriously regretting that decision.

  Heath tilted the handle of the shovel and something truly foul smelling crept up through the soil. “Bach!” I exclaimed, covering my nose with my arm.

  Gilley hurried to the mouth of the cave, his hand covering his own mouth while he pinched his nose. For a minute, I really thought he was going to lose his lunch.

  Heath had backed away too, and he pulled out a bandanna from his back pocket, wrapping it around his face before he began to pile the small amount of dirt he’d excavated back over the dead body he’d just disturbed.

  I tried not to breathe more than I had to until he was done, and then the pair of us wordlessly moved to the mouth of the cave and motioned Gil down the slope.

  “That was the worst thing I’ve ever smelled!” Gilley exclaimed, taking long leaps down the side of the hill.

  I said nothing, lost in thought because now that I’d confirmed where Wyatt was, the rest of my plan felt far too flimsy. “How’d you know he’d be there?” Heath asked when we were partially down the slope.

  “I couldn’t figure out why Beverly had been killed,” I said. “I mean, I know she married a Whitefeather, but the only reason to attack her specifically was if she saw something. Since no one ever heard from Wyatt again after he left that voice message for Professor Bissell, I figured he was probably killed right after he called Pena. Pena then took his body here to bury it, and Beverly—who was on her way to check out the spot where Milton was going to be buried—must have seen something she shouldn’t have.”

  “I’d like to rip Pena apart,” Heath said angrily.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not Pena calling the shots, Heath. It’s the demon.”

  I had already figured out that Trudy had in fact called Pena, and that’s what triggered the demon showing up at her trailer. I’d also figured out why Pena had “hired” us. He’d wanted to keep tabs on us and our investigation, especially after he and the demon hadn’t managed to kill Gilley or me at the station. He’d known we were there on the reservation—the demon must have sensed us near the library—but he’d kept his cool and waited for Cruz to depart the area; Cruz, after all, wasn’t a Whitefeather, and maybe there was a residual part of Pena that still cared about his deputy.

  And I knew that the demon would want to take care of the Whitefeathers one at a time, picking them off one by one, but I’d been pretty convinced it would go after the Whitefeathers in order. Milton was obviously the firstborn; then it’d been about to get to Mrs. Lujan when we were at John’s lodge, but what flummoxed me was Ray. Why had it bothered with Rex’s son before going after Rex—and for that matter, why had it skipped over Vernon to go after Sam’s youngest son?

  I’d concluded that it’d been nothing more than opportunity. Pena was obviously trailing us, looking for said opportunity, and when he and the demon saw Ray Whitefeather alone and vulnerable in that shell of a house, well, he and it had moved in for the kill. It was sheer luck that Ray had survived.

  We arrived at the bottom of the slope and made our way back to Heath’s Durango, parked not far away. Gilley edged over to a patch of sagebrush where we’d hidden the rental car in case things went south. I got out Mrs. Lujan’s urn from the front seat of the Durango and set it down nearby and then I remembered something and opened the rear door to get out the original Whitefeather urn, carefully carrying it to the rental car and tucking it into the front seat. I didn’t want Pena anywhere near that precious urn. “Here he comes,” Heath said, and I closed the door of the rental and hurried to his side to face the approaching cloud of dust making its way toward us. And then I saw something else and my heart sank.

  “Dammit!” I swore. “Why the hell is he bringing Cruz?”

  “We told him to come alone!” Gilley squeaked. I glanced to my side and Gil was wringing the hem of his trusty sweatshirt.

  We didn’t even have time to come up with an alternate plan—Pena and Cruz were closing in. “We’ll have to do the best that we can,” I told them. “Just get Pena into Heath’s car, and Gil, you hit that switch to lock him in, okay? The magnets should do the trick and we’ll deal with the consequences.”

  The plan I’d come up with was to trick Pena into getting into Heath’s SUV, which we’d padded with about three hundred pounds of magnets from stem to stern. It’d taken us all day to tack the magnets in place, but if we could get Pena into the Durango and lock him in, then we might be able to generate a break in the hold the demon had on him.

  After that, it was just a matter of holding up Mrs. Lujan’s new vessel and begging Sam for some help, because I had no idea how to get the demon genie back in its bottle.

  “Maybe we should abort,” Heath said, his knuckles white as he gripped the shovel.

  But it was too late. In the next few seconds Cruz and Pena had come to a stop in front of us and they each got off their three-wheelers and came to stand in front of us. “What’s this about a dead body?” Pena asked, getting right to the point.

  None of us spoke for a minute—I think we were all still wondering how this would go—so Pena took off his mirrored sunglasses and squinted at me. “M. J.?” he said. “You okay? You look a little pale.”

  I found my voice, but it
was anything but steady. “I’m fine,” I said. “The body’s in the back of Heath’s SUV.”

  I looked at Heath to lead the way and for a second I didn’t know if he was going to play along, or swing that shovel up and pummel the sheriff. Finally, he pivoted on his foot and moved over to the back of his SUV, where we’d put some pillows under a thick blanket as a prop and positioned it in the very back of the Durango.

  While I walked with Heath and Pena over to the rear of the SUV, a quick-thinking Gilley was doing his best to distract Cruz away from his efforts to follow. And one glance over my shoulder suggested he was succeeding.

  Cruz didn’t like Gilley; that much was obvious. Maybe the guy was a homophobe or maybe he just found Gil annoying, but he backed up several feet as Gil pretended to take a shine to his physique, even asking if he could feel the deputy’s biceps, which allowed us the chance to maneuver Pena over to the rear door of the Durango without trouble.

  “He’s in there,” Heath said, opening the door wide so that Pena could look in. Without hesitation, Pena moved into the backseat and propped his elbows on the headrest.

  “You covered him,” Pena remarked, leaning over the seat to pull at the blanket. Heath and I made our move.

  In one swift action I reached in and, unlatching the small leather catch, jerked Pena’s gun out of its holster, while Heath dropped the shovel, grabbed Pena by the legs, and pushed him all the way into the car. The moment Heath was out of the way, I slammed the door shut, leaned against it, and shouted, “Gilley!”

  An instant later Pena couldn’t do anything more than yell in protest; all five locks on the Durango clicked home.

  Gilley then dashed away from Cruz to stand with us, while Pena straightened himself in the backseat and tried the handle. “Hey!” he shouted through the glass. “Unlock this door!”