I parked in front of it and climbed out of the car. I left the headlights on and directed at the dilapidated single-wide. I added my Maglite to the cause and drew my Beretta.
A coyote yipped and howled in the distance. Maybe just over the rise on the other side of the mesquite-lined gully. The wind rose with a scream, pelting the back side of the trailer with grains of sand that sounded like buckshot. I figured that was probably the reason for the lack of paint on the mobile home. It was just plain gray wood and cracked windows patched with duct tape and sealed behind a layer of dust and grime.
Red flagstones had been stacked in front of the door to form uneven stairs. Tumbleweeds clogged the skirt, a crosshatched pattern of thin wooden slats that had proved no match for whatever animals had tunneled under it and, in spots, straight through it. The way the trailer canted toward the dry streambed made it impossible for the front door to close in its frame. Which also meant there was no way to lock it. I’d caught so few breaks up to this point that I was almost surprised at my good fortune. Of course, all it saved me was a little wear and tear on my leg from kicking in a door a good solid knock would probably topple. It was held closed by a bungee cord stretched between the door knob and what looked like the handle from a kitchen cabinet that had been screwed onto the exterior.
I undid the cord and drew the door open. The smell that greeted me was one of tobacco smoke, sour sweat, dust, and rotting wood. The shadows fled from the flashlight as I ascended the uneven rocks and entered. Even my softest tread made it sound like I was stomping on the hollow floor. The carpet was so old that there was nothing left of the actual knap, only the crunchy matrix through which it had been sewn. It had pulled away from the far wall, due in large measure to the transverse ridge that bisected the main room where the settling of the trailer caused it to break its own back. The lone item of furniture was a threadbare couch that looked like it had spent more time outside than in. It had slid down the slope to rest against the far wall.
The wind roared and again assailed the wall opposite me with sand. The entire trailer shuddered with the gust. Dust shivered loose from the ill-fitting, yellowed acoustic ceiling tiles and sparkled in my light, lending an element of unreality to my already surreal surroundings. It was almost as though I had stepped across some magical threshold from the rational world I knew and loved into another reality entirely. There was something about this place that made me uncomfortable on a primal level.
The windows had been boarded over from the inside and painted bone-white to match the walls. Nothing hung from them. There were no pictures or speakers or bookshelves or plants or knickknacks. Only the flat white walls that served as a canvas for a tableau of an entirely different sort than the one in the cave, but somehow nearly as unsettling. There were stylized smiley faces painted on the walls. Every square inch, covered with variations of smiley faces. Some were red. Others were black or gold or brown. All of them had similar slanted eyes and that broad arched grin. Some had eyebrows, others nearly full circles for the heads. Some had what I took to be upward-curving mustaches, others various markings that seemed at odds with the overall motif. There were literally thousands of them, painted on every available surface, one on top of the other. All of them nearly the full height of the walls. There were some sections where it looked like he had simply practiced painting circles, over and over and over again until they were just right.
My first impression was that he’d made himself a modern cave similar to the ones through which I had been crawling; an enclosed space with walls covered with primitive artwork. And maybe that had been his intention, but it had the overwhelming sense of incompleteness, of a work abandoned before it was finished. It was the same sense I got from the smiley faces themselves, or perhaps because of them. There was just something inherently inconsistent about the nature of the designs. I found it hard to believe that anyone with enough talent to paint nearly perfect circles would content himself with such childish and meaningless expressions of his creativity.
I advanced deeper into the house. There were gaps where appliances had once been and the kitchen cupboards hung slightly open with the will of gravity. The counters were covered with dust. There was a black trash bag on the floor that smelled of the Dumpster behind a Taco Bell, crawling with black flies so fat I doubted they were capable of flight anymore.
Another gust of wind shook the entire structure. The sand and gravel sounded like hailstones.
The bathroom to my right smelled like an outhouse. The buzzing racket of flies sounded hollow, as though they were swarming somewhere beneath the sink, or possibly under the lid of the toilet. All of the walls in the hallway were painted in the same fashion as the living room, variations on the theme anyway. Even the master bedroom was white and covered with smiley faces, although it was obvious these hadn’t been painted with a brush like the others had. I recognized the distinct paw pad marks. It was in this room that he taught himself to paint with the severed limb of a coyote. I shuddered at the thought of him unwrapping the stiff leg from a bundle of cellophane, turning it over and over in his hands, and then dipping it into the red paint for the first time, the charge causing the goose bumps to rise all over his body.
There was a military surplus cot with a large footlocker overflowing with clothes in the middle of the room. This was where he’d been living, all right. But there was nothing here that offered any sort of clue as to where he was now. At least not that I had found.
Yet.
I turned around and headed back into the living room. That was where all of this had started, where one day he had boarded over the windows, painted the walls, and begun creating his modern-day cave. Another Hohokam allusion? It certainly fit the established pattern, but why go to such lengths to actualize a small portion of a myth? It was only a story, after all, a story that eventually led to a mischievous creator god.
Don’t be too quick to lay this at the feet of I’itoi. There are many gods of mischief out here in the desert.
A creaking sound behind me.
I spun around, my light tracing the wall as I aligned it with my pistol and sighted down the open front door—
The wind wailed and sand clattered.
An animal stood before me, its front haunches inside the trailer, its back legs on the makeshift stairs. Its eyes reflected my light like twin moons. One ear stood straight up while the other sagged against its cheek. Its gray fur was mangy and matted and the crescents of its ribs showed. It just stood there, looking right at me, its tongue lolling from its mouth.
Another gust rattled the trailer and it disappeared back into the night again.
I stared after it for a long moment before I finally turned around once more. As before, my beam swept across the smiley faces, seemingly animating them like a zoetrope. I was already attempting to mentally catalogue the differences from one face to the next when my brain caught up with my eyes.
I turned again, this time swinging my light across the opposite wall. I did it again. Faster. Watching one face metamorphose into another and another. I did it again. And again and again and again.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered.
It had been right in front of me the entire time.
I sprinted out the front door, cleared the stairs, and raced to my car. The moment I was in the driver’s seat I grabbed my laptop, launched my digital photo manipulation program, and imported the pictures from the various crime scenes. My feet tapped restlessly on the floorboards while I worked. I needed to know for sure. I couldn’t afford to go running off on another tangent. I found the clearest example of each smiley face, the winking face, and the armless K. I scaled and resized them and converted them into semi-transparent masks that allowed me to separate the designs themselves from the rocks upon which they’d been painted in the blood of the Coyote’s victims. I arranged them in chronological order.