Stormwalker Read online

  “I’m not. But when someone’s missing, it’s not the same as them dying. You’re never sure. That’s why the McGuires asked me here, because they want me to give them an answer, whatever it happens to be. Maude McGuire told me that holding on to hope was making her crazy.”

  Maya’s face softened. “The McGuires are nice people. I feel bad for them.”

  “I do too. Everyone thinks Amy is dead, including you, but it’s not the same as knowing she is. So if you know anything, anything at all—if Nash has said something that made you wonder—tell me. If I can find Amy, or what happened to her, think how many people can make peace with it. Including you.”

  Maya fell silent. She reached for the tequila bottle again, then released it without lifting it. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

  “I’m begging you, Maya. Help me.”

  “I can’t think of anything right now,” Maya said. “I’m too drunk.”

  “When you can think, call me anytime at all. Day or night.” I reached over and squeezed her shoulder, figuring that if I hugged her, she’d either hit me or throw up again. “And come and fix my frigging electricity. All right?”

  I did spend the night, and in the morning, Maya let me use her shower before she made breakfast. Neither of us was much in the mood to talk, but we downed coffee, ate Maya’s egg burritos, and I shared my bottle of ibuprofen.

  “I thought Native Americans were all about natural medicine and chanting and peyote,” Maya said as she accepted two tablets.

  “Not after a night of tequila.”

  I was in a little better shape than she was, because I’d had two glasses while she’d downed almost the entire bottle. I really was a lightweight—alcohol put me over the top pretty fast, which was why I only nursed one watery beer whenever I went to the Crossroads.

  Maya agreed to come back to work and was less hostile when we said good-bye. I didn’t deceive myself into thinking we’d become best friends, but we’d made a start in the right direction.

  I drove my rental back to the hotel, noting that work trucks had already showed up to start repairs. The workers stared at me as I passed, but I ignored them, and I ignored the mess. I even pretended to ignore Mick, who leaned against the counter in the lobby with one of the Hopis, going over the damage. Mick shot me a speculative look, clearly wondering where I’d been, but he didn’t try to speak to me.

  I went in search of Fremont, knowing I needed someone to oversee the massive repairs here while I followed up the leads I’d gotten from Maya. Before last night, I would have assumed Mick would take charge while I was out, but I no longer wanted him to. Also I wasn’t ready to talk to him.

  Fremont was flattered to be made foreman, so flattered he didn’t even ask why I hadn’t given the job to Mick. Before I left again, Maya showed up and went silently to work, wincing a little whenever someone made a loud noise.

  I was tired of my rented SUV and wanted my bike back, but I climbed into it again to track down my leads, stopping at the phone place to replace my cell phone—again. I’d lost one in a bike crash and the other had been shot to death in the space of a week. I wondered if I’d set some kind of Magellan record.

  Trinity Lutheran was on the main highway, its parking lot holding only two cars on this Tuesday morning. In the office, the secretary gave my midriff-baring top and jeans a disparaging look, but she agreed to tell the minister I wanted to talk to him.

  The Lutheran pastor, Reverend Tim, as he asked me to call him, was in his fifties, confessed to a fanatic love of strong coffee, and offered me a cup. He expressed sympathy for the criminal destruction to my hotel and hoped it wouldn’t put me off staying in Magellan. We chatted politely about the hotel and how his wife was looking forward to seeing the finished product, then I turned the conversation to Amy.

  Reverend Tim confirmed what Maya had told me, that Amy was beloved in Magellan. She’d been attending Trinity Church since birth, had enjoyed Sunday school and the youth choir growing up, moving to the adult choir when she reached high school. Reverend Tim had been greatly surprised when Amy disappeared, and he was certain she hadn’t simply run away. The Amy he’d known wouldn’t do that.

  I asked him a few more pointed questions and liked that he answered them. Reverend Tim seemed genuinely concerned for Amy and said he’d counseled her parents extensively in the past year.

  I thanked him, let him convince me to make a donation to the church fund, and went on to my next call.

  It was more difficult to make an appointment with the Catholic priest in the church on Fifth Street, but it was agreed I could come back after lunch. I grabbed another meal at the diner, people there still talking about the gang fight at my hotel. I realized that none of them realized there’d been anything supernatural in the attack. They assumed it was a human biker gang out for revenge, confirmed by Barry, who reported the story of the Nightwalker accosting me in the Crossroads Bar, not realizing he was a Nightwalker, of course. Barry had just seen a loser trying to hit on me and pulling a gun when I refused. I let his account stand.

  I finished my meal after having to repeat the story of the fight several times, and reassure everyone that Mick was fine. I got more sympathy than I’d expected, and I left the diner realizing that the locals had started accepting me. They were angry at the gang for terrorizing me and happy that Nash had come in and arrested them all. It was a warm feeling.

  The Catholic priest, Father Matthews, had gray hair, a plump face, and a big smile. He looked a little like Santa Claus in a black shirt and clerical collar, and his shrewd blue eyes summed me up in seconds.

  “You want to know why Amy McGuire came to see me,” he said.

  “Did you tell her parents about her visits?” I asked after he invited me to sit down.

  “I did after she disappeared. I hoped it might help them find her, but she hadn’t confessed a wish to leave home or anything like that. She and I discussed her upcoming marriage, and she asked me why I’d become a priest. She was interested and friendly, easy to talk to. I was stunned when she vanished, and tried to comfort her parents. I doubt she left of her own free will, and I very much fear she’s dead. I’ve prayed for her, lit candles for her, though I don’t mention the candles to her parents.” He smiled. “Amy and her family are so very Protestant.”

  I talked to Father Matthews a little while longer. I didn’t discover the secret to Amy’s disappearance, but I did learn more about Amy the woman, maybe more than her parents and Nash had ever known.

  When I rose to leave, I asked, “So why did you become a priest?”

  Father Matthews stood up with me. “The world worries me, and this was the best way for me to help people withstand it.” He shook his head. “I have great faith in God, but sometimes I wonder whether I’m simply hiding here in my church, safe behind prayers and ritual.”

  Maybe I was hiding too, behind my ritual of restoring the hotel.

  Father Matthews shook my hand. “We’re always open on Sundays, Janet. It might do you good to stop by.”

  I grinned. “I believe in the old gods, Father. And what’s worse, they believe in me.”

  He laughed but gave me another shrewd look. “Just think about it.”

  I made no promises. I drove back to the main street, then north out of town through empty desert to the town of Flat Mesa. I walked into the county sheriff’s department, leaned on the counter, smiled at the deputy behind it, and asked to see Sheriff Jones.

  Twenty

  “I’m busy.”

  Nash didn’t look up from his very neat desk when I walked in. In spite of a stack of file folders and a computer humming away in the corner, everything on the flat surface was squared up, tidy, and dust free, not a scrap of paper or stray paper clip to clutter the space.

  When the deputy who’d let me in retreated, I sat down. “Too busy to learn something about Amy?”

  Nash looked up at me then, his expression hard. “You leave Maya alone.”

  I blinked. “Who sa
id anything about Maya?”

  “One of my cousins lives across the street from her. He told me you showed up at Maya’s house last night and didn’t leave until late this morning.”

  The man had the most accusing stare I’d ever seen. His light gray irises were circled with silver, his pupils inky black and fixed on me.

  “Maya and I had a girls’ night, which means drinking and bitching about men.”

  “Maya has enough to deal with without you bothering her,” Nash said.

  “Do the things she has to deal with include you? I can see why she’d struggle with that.” I got up and leaned my fists on his desk. “Did Amy tell you she was having a crisis of faith?”

  “What?” Nash looked blank, then angry. “What are you talking about?”

  “She’d missed going to her own church a few weeks before she disappeared, an amazing occurrence from what I understand. Did you know about that?”

  “Maude McGuire talked a lot with their pastor. I’m sure she knows.”

  Nash hadn’t thought it important, his tone said. His eyes told me he still didn’t.

  “Amy made an appointment to talk to Father Matthews at St. Peter’s,” I went on. “Father Matthews wouldn’t confide everything they talked about, but he told me she’d asked him whether God abandoned people.”

  “Abandoned people?”

  “I imagine she meant people like her. Something happened to Amy to make her worry that God didn’t love her anymore. I wonder what?”

  “If you think I know, you’re wrong. Amy seemed perfectly happy to me.”

  I laughed. “Jones, you are so buried in yourself you can’t see a foot in front of your face. Why did you want to marry Amy?”

  Nash made an impatient noise. “Why do you think?”

  “See what I mean? Your response should be ‘I loved her.’ Instantaneous, no thought, no tossing the question back at me. So either you did love her and are ashamed to admit it, or you didn’t love her at all.”

  “And again we’re getting into what is none of your damned business.”

  I titled my head to study him. “Defensive people only have something to hide. You should know that, with your career in law enforcement.”

  Nash plopped a file folder onto the desk in front of him. “I really am busy. Please get out of my office.”

  “Wait.” I sat down again, realizing that annoying him would get me nowhere. “This is important. I’m finally learning things that Amy’s parents didn’t notice or didn’t realize were significant. Why would Amy be so unhappy she thought God had deserted her? People usually attend church for one of two reasons—either they want to look good to others, or they have true faith. From what people say about Amy, she had true faith.”

  “I think she did, yes.”

  “And she was excited about marrying you in her church, had started making the arrangements with the pastor. Suddenly, she’s running to Father Matthews and worrying about God not loving her. What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice had an edge to it, a warning.

  “Was she pregnant?”

  The room went silent. Nash opened his mouth to yell at me, then he closed it and sagged back into his chair. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think she was?”

  Nash’s clear eyes held pain. “I’m not sure.”

  “Which means you think maybe she was. Maybe she got an abortion and was convinced God had turned his back on her for it.”

  “No.” The word rang out, harsh. “She did want to move up the wedding date. She was nervous, but excited. A happy kind of excited. She asked me once whether I wanted kids right away, and I said, fine.”

  “Very warm of you.” I picked my next words carefully, bracing myself for his reaction. “Is there a chance, any chance at all, that you might not have been the father?”

  Nash shook his head. No anger, no defensiveness. “Amy wasn’t that way.”

  “Chief McGuire gave me all her credit card and bank records. I didn’t find any transaction for a doctor or clinic where they might have told her she was pregnant, but she might have bought a home pregnancy test.”

  “Is your theory that she disappeared to have an abortion?” Nash sounded incredulous.

  “It’s one possibility. She could have had it done in Flagstaff where no one knew her, or better still, Phoenix, and kept it confidential.”

  “Then why not come home once it was done?” His face changed. “Unless you think it killed her.”

  “That’s always possible. However, if she’d died, I’d think her parents would have been notified—wouldn’t she have to give the clinic the name of a person to contact in case of emergency? Even if that person hadn’t been her mother or father—a girlfriend, say—I can’t imagine that friend not telling Amy’s parents she was dead.”

  “Unless she went to some illegal place.” Nash’s eyes filled with worry, then he shook his head. “But she was happy, Janet. I swear to you. Amy had a sparkle in her eyes, like she was waiting to surprise me with something. If she was pregnant, she wanted the baby.”

  “She could have lost the child, had a miscarriage. Losing her baby would probably make her think she’d done something to offend God. But then, same thing. There would be a bill for a hospital or a doctor; she’d have had to use her insurance if she had any, or pay for it herself, and hospitals are expensive. But her bank records don’t show any large payments or withdrawals, and her credit cards, like I said, list no payments to hospitals or clinics.”

  “I know. I went through them.” Nash’s mask came down again. “Your theory is far-fetched.”

  “There’s more to life than bank and credit card records. Amy left Magellan for a reason. You were closest to her, Nash. What was it?”

  Nash threw his pen against the wall. The plastic shattered, spraying dots of ink over the white surface. “If I knew that, don’t you think I’d have stopped her?” he shouted. “How do you think it’s been for me, not knowing whether she decided to leave or was taken away against her will? Not knowing whether she’s dead or alive, and I, the powerful sheriff, can’t find out which? How do you think I felt when McGuire thought I’d done something to her? I practically had to do backflips to convince the investigators I knew nothing about it. I’ve been through her damned phone records and credit card bills a hundred times, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary. So I don’t need you to come in here and get in my face that I must have overlooked something.”

  I let him wind down, my hands in my pockets as I watched him. “You didn’t even know she was unhappy enough to make an appointment with a priest,” I said. “I’m willing to believe you didn’t know much about Amy at all. You were mad at Maya, Amy was nice to you, and you went down the path of least resistance.”

  “Like hell.”

  “I also know you’re deathly afraid that you killed Amy yourself and covered it up, and don’t remember.”

  “Leave that alone, Janet, or I swear to you I’ll drive you back to the reservation and kick your ass out of the car. I might even slow down.”

  I ignored him. “Or was your true fear that Maya had done something to her?”

  I don’t think I could have said anything that made him more angry. Nash’s eyes lit with rage. “Maya Medina would never hurt anyone.”

  “No? She was furious at you and at Amy. You broke Maya’s heart. I think you really loved Maya but didn’t like how you acted when you were around her. With Amy, everything was calm, peaceful, no inconvenient emotions you had to face.”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  “You’re right. I’m guessing, making stabs in the dark. I need to know so I can find Amy. What happened between you and Maya? Why did you run to Amy for comfort?”

  I didn’t think he’d tell me, but Nash bunched his fists on the desk. “Maya and I would never have worked out. We’re too volatile together.”

  “And you and Amy never fought?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Can I play
counselor and say the two of you probably never communicated either?” I was one to talk—the girl who’d had no idea her boyfriend was a dragon. “You never knew what was going on inside Amy. You didn’t even know she was worried about her religious life.”

  “No.” It cost Nash to admit that, I could see. He shoved the folder away. “She never told me anything.”

  But with Maya he’d always known where he stood. I went on. “Can I ask you a question, off the record, as it were?”

  He growled. “What now?”

  “If I find Amy, if I bring her back home, will you still want to marry her?”

  Nash gave me his gray-eyed stare. “If Amy is alive and well, and if she left of her own accord, obviously, she doesn’t want to marry me.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Nash clamped down on his emotions, his expression becoming neutral, which meant, for Nash, only mildly pissed off. “The most important thing is to make sure she’s all right.”

  “Yes, I know that.” I sat back, let him straighten his folder and take a new pen out of the desk. “Something else you hid from McGuire was the fact that you drove out to see Amy the day she disappeared.”

  His cheeks stained red. “Who told you that? Maya?”

  “I have my sources.” I couldn’t bluff him; he knew damn well Maya had given me that tidbit. “I don’t think you killed Amy or abducted her, so I’m not going to tell on you. But I’m curious why you went to see her. Was she there when you arrived?”

  Nash plucked at the edge of the folder. “I don’t know. Before you ask how I couldn’t know, I don’t remember driving out there at all, the same way I don’t remember driving all the way to Albuquerque. I didn’t report it, because I didn’t remember. Maya confronted me with it later.” Mr. Rules and Regs looked ashamed of himself. “I told her not to say anything.”

  “And she was loyal to you until I poured tequila down her throat. But I think Maya told me because she’s worried about you, and I’ve come along saying I don’t believe Amy’s dead.”

  “With no evidence but your premonitions.” He sat back. “I was wrong to keep it from McGuire. I feared I’d done something to Amy, but there was no evidence on me, in my car, at her house.” He let out a sigh, more misery in his eyes than I’d ever seen. “I lied on my statement, although at the time I didn’t remember, and I still don’t remember. I’ll tell McGuire, resign, take my lumps. Are you happy now?”