"The mutilations? They were nowhere near here. You're about five miles off target, Ms.-?"
"Black. Lucretia Black. Actually-"
"Bunch of bullshit anyway. I've looked at half a dozen mutes over the years, and I can guarantee you it's just scavenger activity. That, or some druggie Navajo trying to play Skinwalker and scare people. Nowadays, every time somebody's cow dies and the critters get at it, it's space aliens. Simple fact is, scavengers go for the easy parts first-eyes, lips, tongue, the organs." Cree was scrambling to adapt. When Donny had first pulled up, she'd had no idea how to explain her presence in a way that wouldn't imperil future contact. Now this unexpected tangent had provided the way, and she seized it gratefully: "You're probably right. Still, I've never personally seen one, and I'd very much like more information from people who have. When I heard there'd been some on your property, too, I asked Julieta to introduce us. I was hoping you and I could schedule a meeting to talk about it."
A couple of men had arrived at the front of the office complex and stood waiting, occasionally looking up toward the rim. Donny watched them thoughtfully for a moment.
"So when I call the university and ask if anyone's ever heard of you-"
"Call Dr. William Zentcy, head of the Psychology Department at the Albuquerque campus." Remembering suddenly, Cree groped in the pockets of her windbreaker and found that, yes, there was a crumpled Psi Research Associates card among the tissues and miscellany there. She fished it out, blew the lint off, and held it out to him. "Here's my business card. You're welcome to visit our Web site, too."
Donny walked over, took it from her, looked at it with minimal interest. From above him, she could see the pink scalp through his sparse, pale hair. Down at the parking lot, another company Jeep pulled in and its driver began conferring with the men who were waiting. Binoculars flashed from the passenger-side window, and Cree caught another glint from something held by one of the standing men. A rifle?
"Seattle? You're a long way from home, Dr. Black." Donny pocketed the card and looked up at Julieta. "So I take it you've found mutes on school property, too?" The thought seemed to give him some wan satisfaction.
"We've had some disturbing activity, yes," Julieta said flatly.
"If I can call you sometime soon," Cree told him, "I'd be very grateful…"
Another man joined the group, and the three of them got into the back of the Jeep, which pulled out and headed toward the south rim ramp Donny had used. Outwardly, Julieta maintained her scornful calm, but Cree felt her tension rising.
Donny turned to watch the truck's dust, then gave a resigned sigh and took out his cell phone again.
"Nick? Forget it. I can handle it… No, more of a bullshit exercise in community relations. Yeah. I'll see 'em off the property myself Send the boys back to work. Yeah." He snapped the phone shut. Ignoring Julieta, he took the bridle of Cree's horse and turned her around, facing away from the valley. "We can't have people coming this close to mine operations, Dr. Black. It's not safe-you could take a fall. Might be weeks before anyone found you, and you'd end up looking like one of those mutes. Now it's time for you to leave."
"Is there any chance we can meet? At your convenience-"
He regarded Cree briefly, and she sensed an analytic mind at work behind the weary gray eyes, some calculation of value or opportunity. "We'll see. Possible. Call my secretary." He appeared to give Breeze a shrewd once-over, stroking her cheek and neck and haunches. Then he spat and thrust the horse's head away from him. He started back to the Jeep. "Your horses, Julieta- not the quality you were once used to, are they?"
Julieta's eyes shot daggers. "Screw you, Donny! How dare you!"
He ignored her but paused at the Jeep's door to look at Cree again. "Another piece of advice-don't associate with the wrong people. Get off on the wrong foot around here, people don't forget. Bad reputations kind of rub off on you."
Julieta wheeled Madie around and led the way back toward the open desert, deliberately holding the horse to a slow walk. Cree rode next to her. Donny McCarty trailed a hundred yards behind for several miles, making a point, before finally pulling the Jeep around and speeding away.
18
"'Mutes'?" Cree asked. "I had no idea livestock mutilations were so common they'd earned a vernacular term."
Julieta's jaw had been clenched for the first ten minutes or so, but her rage had gradually given way to exhausted despondency. Now she shrugged. "There's more of it up in the northern part of the state, southern Colorado. We get a little wave of them, every few years. Makes the papers." She looked numbed and dispirited, back slumped, a negligent hand on the reins.
"People take it seriously?"
Another listless shrug. "Some do. He could be right about scavengers. I've never thought about it much. But I found a mutilated calf once. The face had been… well." She frowned over at Cree. "I thought you'd be an expert at that kind of thing."
"No. I'm a psychologist, Julieta. I may have a unique theory of psychology, but it all pertains to the human mind. They didn't teach us a thing about extraterrestrial intelligences at Harvard or Duke."
Julieta bobbed her head, unable to share the joke.
"Think Donny will agree to meet me?" Cree asked.
"Depends. I'd give it even odds. He will if he thinks he might get some useful information out of you-dirt about me or the school. Or if he thinks he can use you to get some publicity that makes McCarty look nice. He'll do anything-last month, they did a local TV special about handicapped grade-school kids taking a field trip to the mine. So very heartwarming. He calls it 'image management.'"
They rode on in silence for a time. It was only three o'clock, but the day had dimmed as a thin film of clouds formed high in the atmosphere and diffused the sun's glow. Though the light was still bright, it had begun to take on a milky quality that muted the landscape, softened the shadows, blurred the distances. The celebratory crispness was gone from the land, leaving it forlorn.
"We got interrupted," Cree ventured. "You were telling me some really important things. I'd love to hear the rest."
Julieta turned quickly, and even behind the mask of the sunglasses her face looked stricken. She whipped her head to the front again and looked as if she were about to flee once more, to gallop away from her own past.
"Julieta!" Cree barked. "You can do this, damn it! You're an administrator and you know how to do hard things! Tell me!"
Julieta caught herself as she raised the reins. She slumped again, took off her sunglasses, and looked at Cree with glittering eyes.
"You're being me again," she said. "The boss me." She grunted with bitter amusement.
"Whatever it takes," Cree told her curtly.
Peter Yellowhorse was about her age, twenty-four, twenty-five. He was from Teec Nos Pos, up near Shiprock, but he'd moved south a year earlier to take a job doing grounds work for the tribal facilities in Window Rock. Always late, he'd gotten fired pretty quickly, but then he'd been lucky enough to get work with the little company that took care of the McCartys' estate. He lived in a wreck of a house just over the rez line, about eight miles away. He was dirt-poor, by white standards, anyway, lucky to have a job. He owned exactly three things of any value whatsoever: his horse, a beat-up Chevy truck, and a belt with a fancy silver and turquoise buckle that had been made by some uncle who was a well-known silversmith. He loved to ride and occasionally did bronc riding at local rodeos, but mainly what he wanted was to get into radio, become a DJ. He did janitorial work three nights a week at a Gallup station in exchange for the studio time and training that would earn him his FCC license.
Easy to be DJ on a Navajo station, he joked. All those long moments of respectful silence, yeah?