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TEN YEARS PAST

CHAPTER 1

First the snap in the air and then the crack of the thin piece of leather which sliced open another ribbon of flesh as if it were a tender piece of beef. Blood dripped from the tattered flesh and mingled with dirt, cloth and leaking fluids all across the boy’s back. He did not cry out, did not whimper, did not even flinch as the whistle of air foretold another excruciating bite of the bullwhip. His fingers were gradually slipping from the splintered post. Only his broken nails, still embedded in the wood, revealed the strength of his grip.

The whip flicked upwards in a graceful dance before it twisted like an angry serpent and screamed downward again, biting into the ragged flesh. The sound of it hitting the boy’s body was like the pop of a firecracker followed by the soft plunk of wetness as skin parted. A heavy smell of urine filled the air as he lost bladder control. The only movement from the prone and bloodied boy was his arms slipping off the post to the ground.

The man releasing this violence on the boy stood heaving, his uncut, matted beard speckled with the child’s blood. His eyes were wild, slate grey orbs and were bloodshot, lost in deep wrinkles. His bulbous nose, red and veined from the alcohol he ingested almost intravenously, ran freely into the hair on his upper lip. He wiped his dusty arm across his snotty nose and then raised the whip again.

“I’m just going to have to kill you to get her out of my head, you murderer,” he mumbled, spit dribbling off his lip. He raised the whip and snapped a quick release, his arm too tired to draw it above his head. Another strip of skin was filleted off the boy’s back.

He turned as he heard the barn door slide open. In the shadows, he knew his daughter had arrived to try and save the day. He listened as she approached cautiously, and callously lifted the whip to strike again so she could see his dedication to killing this demon in his life. Just as he snapped it forward, she caught his wrist and the piece of leather was deflected from the child.

“No!” The girl held the handle to the bullwhip. “No more, Dad! You will kill him!”

“That’s my aim. So just get out of my way Meadow, before I start putting this horse leather to your backside.” He shook off her grip as if it was just a circling, pesky fly.

Meadow braced herself over her prostrate brother, and in front of her drunk father. She crossed her slim arms just below her ample breasts and shook her straight brown hair. “No Dad! No more!”

Her father growled like a bear and charged at his daughter, shoving her hard toward the dirt floor. “Get out of my way you little dick magnet, or I’m going to whip you next for coming on to that Simmons boy.”

Meadow slowly sat up, shaking the straw and dust from her hair. How had her dad found out about Pete Simmons? She brushed her arm across her eyes to refocus her thoughts on her brother. He had not moved since she had entered the barn and blood was pooling all around his inert body. His back looked like a meat cutter had started making slices of ham stopping only as it reached each vertebrae. She could not even tell if he was alive, so still he lay. Meadow looked up as her father raised the whip again. Her eyes scattered in all directions in search of something to take him down. Just put him out, until he wasn’t drunk. In the back corner of the barn she saw a grain shovel and scooted back toward it like a crab racing across a dry sandy beach. Grabbing the handle, Meadow stood and walked directly at her father. She raised it like a baseball bat and just as the whip was at it’s highest arc, she brought down the shovel with all her strength. The scoop landed hard on his upper shoulder blade and back of his head, bouncing upward with the force of the strike. The reverberations sent shock waves through Meadow’s arms and she staggered backwards, the shovel slipping from her numb fingers.

Her father dropped forward like a tree felled in the forest. He didn’t move. Hitching an anxious breath, Meadow knelt down next to him and placed her hand over his nose and mouth. He was still breathing. She squatted back and turned to look at her brother. Now what ...?

Tangled hair was swiped back with her shaking arm as she stared at her brother. Her father had hurt him bad this time. She couldn’t even count the strips of tattered flesh that lay open and weeping blood.

For the last several months Meadow had realized that her dad’s anger was exploding outward as he drank harder and harder. It was all directed at her brother, Chase, for killing their mom. It had been an accident but no matter, Chase had become Dad’s demon. And if she did not do something, he would kill her 9 year old brother. She had to get her brother away...tonight.

Meadow leaned forward and gently pushed a lock of black hair from Chase’s face. Her brother’s breathing was short and shallow and his color was very pale. She only knew one person who could help her and he was three hours away. It was going to be a long, long night.

Chase felt nothing. The pain had long ago disappeared into a fog of emptiness. His hands had fallen off the beam he had been told to hold on to and he lay prone on the dirt floor, his face smashed into the musty hay and dust. Clenching fists of dirt, Chase pressed his face deeper into the dirt, as if he was becoming part of the earth itself.

Breathe in...dust entered his nose and mouth...breathe out...dust blew out in little whirls. He felt soft, free, floating. There was no pain, no light...nothing. He pushed his face harder into the dirt, his breathing slowing even more. More dirt into his nose and mouth...musty...loamy...it smelled ancient.

Staring forward through his closed eyes, he wondered about the flickering light in the middle of his screen of sight. Pushing deeper into the ancient earth, the light became brighter. Flickering, crackling, moving light. A fire...and a man.

“Who are you?” Chase asks in his mind. His mouth was filled with dirt and hay and could not move or speak, but he knew the elderly man had heard him. The ancient’s head lifted upwards and nodded at him in the firelight.

“You do not belong here.”

“Who are you?” he questioned again. The garb of this ancient man is old and outdated. His regalia, that of a chieftain of a tribe of Native Americans long since extinct from the plains of America. He wears a full war bonnet, that drapes feathers and bones across his shoulders and chest. His face is painted with whorls and lines of red and yellow ochre. He looks exactly like a full-blooded chieftain readying for war. And yet, Chase does not fear him for some reason, he is only curious.

“It is not your time to be in this spirit world, young wolf.”

“I’m just dreaming and escaping my father’s whip,” the boy’s mind speaks.

“No Chasing Wolf, you are nearing the edge of my world, not yours. You must go back now, it is not your time. You are of your mother’s spirit and have her sight. You must learn to use this gift of seeing. It will help you, hurt you, drown you at times, but you can also use it to help others, too. You must be molded and your grandfather in the mountains can teach you how to use and accept this gift. Go! Go back! Meadow will help you.”

“What are you talking about?“ the boy questioned the elder. “I like it here...it’s quiet, safe...so safe.”

“NO!” the man shouted and whipped his wild mane of grey hair forward causing the fire to billow high into the air.

Chase jumped back and suddenly feared this man’s anger. He felt tugging on his arm and then his name being called. Slowly he started to turn and head back into the darkness, but before he disappeared, he heard the ancient Indian speak

“Sight is how people live and die...it is what will destroy you if you do not learn to use it...a gift of power that can hurt...be careful my son of many colored hearts. They can reach into yours and love you or destroy you.”

Chase looked back toward the voice, but it was completely dark. It was as if a black hole had evolved and then just as quickly become extinct. What had the Indian been talking about? How had his mother given him sight? Was it all just a hallucination and part of the nightmare that was his life? He shivered violently and felt himself traveling back toward life, toward the searing pain that wracked his body. The trip from peace to pain was so quick, he could only moan and cry out as the dirt, the barn, the whip, his sister, all came back into focus.

“I thought I had lost you, Chase,” his sister cried, tears streaking her face.

“I met an Indian chief,” he whispered quietly, his voice subdued by dryness and dirt. He didn’t try to spit out the dirt, though. It was caught in his teeth, under his tongue, around his gums, and it had brought a peace and a serenity to his soul, that he had not felt in a very long time. He gradually wet it with his spit and let it plaster the inside of his mouth, like the first coat of paint to a masterpiece.

Meadow frowned at her brother’s statement and then gently shook her head. “We have to get you out of here, Chase. Dad is going to kill you, if you stay here.”

“Take me to Grandfather, “ he whispered

Meadow frowned in confusion. She took a damp bandana and squeezed drops of water into her brother’s mouth as she spoke. “Why’d you say that, Chase? You don’t even know Grandfather. I think he would be good for you, though. I know he can heal your wounds and teach you not only book learning, but hunting skills and the old ways. He has great stories, ...but ...“ she hesitated, “ I don’t know if he’ll help you.”

“Because I killed Mom,” Chase whispered.

“She was his daughter...” Meadow stopped and then slapped the ground. “You didn’t kill her, Chase. It was an accident and he will understand that. He’ll take you. I know he will.” She nodded vigorously, talking herself into this solution.

“It was that Indian chief’s wish,” the boy said with utter certainty.

Chase stared at his sister. Her hair was long and straight, but a lighter brown than his charcoal black hair of their heritage. She had beautiful doe-like brown eyes and seemed to hold the weight of the world in them right now. His eyes were from his father’s heritage, an unusual green with flecks of blue in them. He felt like they made him a chameleon, everything about his spirit was Native American but his eyes, they challenged his heritage.

“Can you get up?” Meadow ignored her brother’s statement and then put her arms under his armpits. “Can you get up?” she repeated when he did not move or answer. Tugging his arm, she pulled him upright.

Chase cried out and shied away from the pressure of her arm against his bleeding lacerations. “Let me just do it,” he panted and slowly rolled onto his knees.

Meadow glanced at her stirring father. She didn’t want to hit him again, but might have to if Chase couldn’t move faster. She went to grab his arm but he drew back, the raw pain of any touch on his tattered skin was overwhelming.

“He’s waking up, Chase. We have to hurry.”

Chase slowly unfolded his four foot frame and swayed as he stood upright. Blood ran in rivulets down his arms, back, legs. He felt weak and dizzy grabbing the post where he had originally started before the whipping. Staring at the man who had inflicted this gut-wrenching pain on him, Chase felt only hate. With all the slowness of a ninety year old man, he bent over and grabbed the shovel. He leaned on it a second to stand erect again and then lifted it in his dirty hands. With the angled, bladed scoop held downward, he raised it up and before Meadow realized what he planned, he jammed it straight into his fathers gut.

“NO!” Meadow screamed. “No, Chase! We need to just go. You are not him. You are not a monster.”

“I hate him.” Chase whipped the shovel away from his sister’s outstretched hands. “He deserves to die. He is a piece of shit that should be flushed from this earth.” The boy was shaking violently from his injuries and from the emotions erupting in his soul.

“It is not for you to kill him, Chase. He will drown in his own way in the bottle. We need to save you, that is all.” Meadow held out her hand, waiting for her brother to acquiesce.

His eyes sent beautiful sparks of green and blue at her as his anger dissipated. He was going to be a handsome man in a few years, she thought as she watched him slowly drop the shovel. Long, straight black hair to match eyelashes that curled around his green eyes. His arms and legs were already gangly, waiting for his height to catch up with them. She wondered if she would ever see him again after this night.

Grasping his small hand, Meadow helped him to move forward out of the barn, that might have been his grave. She opened the passenger side door of the old Chevy truck that belonged to her father and pushed her brother into the front seat. He cried out and then lay curled on his side so his lacerations wouldn’t touch the torn seat cover. Meadow grabbed the old blanket from the back of the truck bed and placed it gently on him. His breathing was already evening out and she knew he had lapsed into unconsciousness.

She ran around the front of the truck and plopped onto the seat, a spring riding hard into her thigh. The first turn of the ignition, heard the grinding of an abused motor. Meadow glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the barn door begin to slide open.

“Come on you piece of shit truck, just this once, start for me.”

The old vehicle coughed as she turned the key again and a black plume of smoke shot from the muffler. As she shifted into drive, she glanced in the rear view mirror again and paused in horror. Her father stood in the barn door. He held onto the wall and just watched as she pulled out into the gravel driveway and headed away from the homestead. Meadow refocused her eyes ahead of her and gently lay a hand on her brother’s blood-matted hair. Only the spirits knew what the future would bring. She spun the tires as the truck gripped the road and she hurtled north into the mountains of Arizona.

PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER 2

Paige sipped her steaming coffee and waited in the pre-dawn light for her partner to arrive. The temps were already sixty and the sun had not even crested the horizon. November in Phoenix...just the beginning of the gorgeous desert winter and she had multiple DB’s according to the anonymous caller. She stared at the long, low building in the industrial park, south of the barrio and felt the tiredness deep in her bones. She shouldn’t have felt this heaviness, but the last week had been physically and emotionally hard. Now, she was facing dead bodies...a bunch, the caller had declared.

A sharp rap at her window, sent her jumping and cursing as coffee scalded her bare knee. “Shit, Sanchez!” Paige yelped as she brushed at the dark brown liquid on her leg.

Carlos Sanchez chuckled and opened her door. “Shouldn’t have been daydreaming at a crime scene partner.”

“Fuck you, Sanchez. Wouldn’t have been daydreaming if you had gotten your skinny ass here faster. Come on, let’s get this over with.”

“Wow, you on the rag or something? You need a good lay, Hanson.”

“Yeah or something...” Paige mumbled as she got out of the hot car. Carlos Sanchez was a good partner, but she just wasn’t in the mood for his adolescent banter at the moment. She rubbed her lower abdomen as cramps circled around the muscles and then squared her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”

Carlos watched her with the eyes of a detective and knew she wasn’t feeling great. He trusted her implicitly, but something was hurting in her and he didn’t believe it was all physical. He’d talk with her later he decided, and moved ahead toward the long steel door.

Both detectives placed hands on their sidearms as they closed the space between the building and their cars. Their movements were slow and cautious. The caller had said dead, but they didn’t know what actually lay behind the rolling steel door. Glancing at each other, Paige placed her hand on the U-shaped handle and nodded once. Slowly, with the deliberateness of a stalking cat, she pulled the door to the right. It slid open about a foot and a black, moving swarm hit them.

Flies, thousands of them, shot out through the opening and covered the two detectives like hot fudge on ice cream. Paige flung her hands up and squealed, staggering backwards away from the fierce mass of flies. Carlos waved his hands around his face and backed away, tripping over a break in the asphalt and landing unceremoniously on his backside.

“Holy Shit! What the hell was that?” he asked incredulously as he looked up from his seated position. Wiping the tiny pieces of grit from his hands, he stood and glanced at Paige.

She stared at the partly open door and then back at Carlos. His look of skepticism was exactly what she was feeling. What was behind door number one? Eight years on the force, two in homicide and many dead bodies behind her in the underbelly of Phoenix, but never had she been accosted by a traveling mass of flies. They were still spilling out of the foot-long opening but had slowed considerably. How many dead bodies were they talking inside that warehouse?

“We better call for the troops before we go any farther.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Carlos nodded and brought out his phone.

Calling ME, paramedics and the crime scene guys before they had even stepped foot in the building was unprecedented, but both detectives knew they had death on their hands. So many flies only verified it was multiple.

“You ready?” Paige glanced at her partner, as he ended his phone call to Central. Carlos was part Mexican and part black, a handsome man. Closing in on mid-thirties, he had one marriage behind him and a serious girlfriend that seemed not to mind the long hours he spent on the job with his female partner. His hair was short cropped to his head with just the start of grey around his ears. His eyes, a dark chocolate, were expressive and gave his sharp cheekbones and narrow nose a fluid grace that might otherwise be too angular. He was just slightly taller than Paige, but had the muscular body of a man who worked regularly with weights and she had seen him dead-lift a grown man from a burning vehicle.

“They asked how many wagons we needed?”

“What’d you say?”

“By those flies, I just said multiple dead and we were still examining the scene.”

Paige smiled grimly and shrugged. “Let’s try this again.”

Carlos nudged her shoulder and passed her the small jar of menthol he kept for ripe murder scenes. The smell of the dead was overpowering, like that of rotting roadkill left in the sun on a desert highway. Placing a delicate finger in the clear gel, she rubbed a layer under her nose and wiped the rest on her black capris.

“You okay?” Carlos asked as he took back the plastic jar and recapped the lid.

“Yeah, fine. Just spooked a little by all those flies.”

“First for me too,” he replied and watched her closely. Her narrow face was drawn and dark circles were like half-crescent moons under her brown eyes. He noticed her pants seemed looser too and her hands shook a little, when he took back the menthol. Even her light brown, shoulder length hair seemed limp and dull. “We can wait for help,” he suggested carefully, knowing Paige would never balk at being the first to examine a crime scene and would get hard-headed if she thought he was coddling her.

Her quick, angry look, made him grin. Maybe she was just low on sleep he thought, and he was making more than necessary of her fatigued state. “Okay, then,” he advanced toward the rolling door.

A quick glance sideways at Paige and he grabbed the handle. The door slowly squealed open and once again both detectives staggered backwards. “Holy, Mother of God,” Carlos exhaled as he stared at the interior carnage, unconsciously crossing himself.

Paige brought her hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut for several seconds to calm the nausea that seemed to creep up into her throat. In all the years as a cop, dealing with the evil that other humans could do to one another, never had she seen such a massacre. Carlos’ hand gripped her arm, and she turned to look at his pallid face. His thoughts were hers...his emotions of horror written like a novel in his eyes.

“What...why...?” was all he could say.

Paige stepped back toward the open doorway and just stared. Five bodies were hanging by heavy, linked chains from the beam that ran the width of the warehouse. Each body had been desecrated and tortured. She knew immediately that her senses would not be able to take in the entire picture, almost like a movie that had too many special effects. She would have to examine each death, individually.

Swallowing the bile that continued to flutter around the back of her throat, she carefully pulled on latex gloves and the cover slippers over her solid black shoes. She moved all the way to her left and stepped closer to the first hanging body. He was young. That was her first impression. Small, slight, his muscles still that of a pre-adolescent.

Her examination started at his feet. Afraid to look into the horror of his last sight, she needed to divorce her feelings from this atrocity. Bare feet...dirty, two toes missing from each foot. Cut cleanly off by the clippers that lay beneath him. His skinny legs were scratched and blood had dried in small squiggly lines running away from the deeper cuts. The maleness that would have defined his manhood was also cut off. One testicle still hung from the castrated body, but his penis and other testicle were gone. Paige was certain she would find them elsewhere, since the vision of his screaming mouth was burned on her optic nerve. She continued her scan of his body, trying to replace the sight of his missing manhood with something less heinous. Sharp, thin slices had been cut into his chest and at first she thought they were random, but then she realized they were letters.

“Carlos?” The detective turned and checked on her partner, for the first time in many minutes. He was beside her, his notebook out with a pen suspended over the paper.

“Fucking nightmare,” he breathed heavily. Sweat was running down his cheeks and he still looked pale.

Paige pushed at a damp strand of hair with the side of her upper arm and realized how hot it was in the warehouse. She had been so absorbed in her examination of the body, she hadn’t realized her shirt was sticking to her as sweat leaked from her like the condensation on a water bladder.

“They’re letters.” She raised her hand toward the first body.

“Yeah, a ‘E’, ‘Y’, ‘E’... Second body says ‘F’, ‘O’, ‘R’ and third is ‘E’,

‘Y’, ‘E’ again.”

It was why they worked well together, Paige thought. Carlos had already superficially glanced at all five bodies, taking in the entire unit while she was just finishing her minute examination of the first hanging corpse. What he missed, she would catch and if she became too obsessed with one detail, he would derail her and make her look at the bigger picture. They worked well and they trusted each other’s instincts.

“Huh...okay... let me finish,” Paige nodded deliberately and went back to studying each of the bodies.

“I’ll be outside waiting for the coroner and CSI unit,” Carlos stated and moved outside into the growing sunlight.

Paige glanced at the first victim one more time and his face remained imprinted on her brain, like the sear marks on a piece of steak. He had died screaming and the mouth was stuffed like a pimento in an olive, only this stuffing was his genitalia. His was a horrible death.

She moved right, to the next hanging body and realized immediately that he had also been castrated, tortured and left to bleed out. The cuts on his chest were deeper and she guessed had caused a quicker death. But in her estimation, any death such as this, was not quick enough. His eyes were open unlike the first victim, and they seemed to be frozen in a silent, horror movie that would never stop for him.

The third corpse, was taller than the first two and she realized with a quick glance down the line that this was not random. Each victim was a little taller and more muscular than the one before. So, they had left the oldest or strongest or maybe the leader for last, she thought as she examined victim number three. He was not castrated, she realized with her first glance. All his fingers had been severed as well as his toes, but it was these appendages and not his penis and testicles that were stuffed in his mouth...weird...was all her brain processed at that moment.

The cuts on this victim were more penetrating and his bleeding had been major, the pool of blood beneath his hanging body moved and gyrated with flies feeding on its surface. So the person/persons doing this massacre were hurrying; the information they sought had been obtained, or maybe they were just rushed and needed to finish.She would have to ponder this later as she processed everything in her brain. Unlike her partner, her brain compartmentalized the questions, the sights, the smells, the horrors and she would pick at each one in the dead of night while most people slept.

The fourth body was heavy and his toes, all ten of them almost touched the cement floor. He had been slashed with a knife multiple times, from face to feet. The slashing had been wild, some penetrating, some no more than scratches, as if the assailant went berserk in his anger and just lashed out until spent. No appendages were missing, nothing stuffed in his mouth...just massive slashings that had probably made him bleed out and suffer a long time.

The last victim was tall and well-built. His torso, arms and legs were muscular and reminded her of Carlos’ bodybuilding physique, just longer and leaner. He had one slash down the side of his face and several deep penetrating ones in his abdomen, but all body parts were still intact. Blood was trickling from a cut near his bellybutton and she watched as a fly rose and fell as it fed on another cut beneath his right nipple. Rose and fell....

“Jesus Christ!” Paige yelled. “Carlos! Carlos! Get in here, this guy is alive! Oh my God! Carlos! Number Five’s alive!” Paige screamed as she stumbled to the open doorway. Carlos and two other paramedics were already rushing in at her screams and they all nearly collided as she swept her arm toward the last body.

“He’s fucking breathing.” Paige grabbed her hair as she tried to regain control of herself. “Get him down. Hurry up!”

The paramedics had already grabbed a ladder near the wall that had probably been used by the murderer and any evidence was now lost, but Paige didn’t care. One victim was alive and if they could keep him that way, they had a witness to this horror show. One EMT was placing pressure bandages on the hemorrhaging wounds while another was trying to get a line in the extended arm of the victim. Until some type of cutters were found, the poor man was left hanging, his life precariously balanced on the edge of the razor that determined life or death.

Paige had moved back, but was still inside the warehouse. Her clothes were drenched with sweat, her hair matted and tangled, yet she was afraid to take her eyes from this living being. Let him live, she prayed as she bit her thumbnail until her flesh bled. Finally bolt cutters appeared and a technician cut the chain that held the living corpse aloft. His body slumped forward as it was freed and several men caught him, balancing the deadweight of the unconscious man until he was lying on the stretcher. She watched helplessly as leads were placed on his chest to monitor his heart and the IV lines were opened to saturate his dying body.

“We’ll let them process the scene and follow the ambulance to the hospital, Paige.” Carlos pulled her toward the outside.

“He’s got to make it. He has all the answers.”

“Yeah and all the horrors, too, Paige. He was left for last for a reason, and even if he does live, will he even want to speak of what he witnessed or will he even remember?”

She stared off into the distance as Carlos spoke. Her thoughts mimicked her partner’s. What had she read about victim amnesia, or post traumatic stress disorder in soldiers that had seen heinous crimes in war? They didn’t or couldn’t remember in order to stay sane. Yet, a small kernel of hope remained and she begged him to stay alive. Prayed he would regain consciousness and help bring the monster who did this desecration to justice.

With a gentleness that always surprised her, the paramedics covered the man on the stretcher and deftly pushed the bed toward the ambulance. She folded her arms across her wet chest and stood a long moment with her face toward the rising November sun. Not even two hours into her shift, and she was exhausted. Maybe another coffee, she thought as her legs numbly moved her toward the vehicle. Maybe something stronger...

CHAPTER 3

Meadow pulled into the long, rutted drive around midnight. The ride to the north of the town of Williams had been uneventful but worrisome. Her brother already showed signs of fever and his body twitched with restlessness and pain as she drove. Her grandfather lived twenty plus miles, deep in the pine forest beyond the town. She had bumped and weaved along a dirt road off of I-40 for the last hour and her brother had cried out constantly as each deep rut made his torso touch the back of the seat. Her hand reached out to steady him and she almost swerved off the road several times as the tires slipped sideways out of a pothole. Who would want to live so far from civilization, she wondered for the hundredth time in that many minutes? Meadow had not seen her grandfather since her mother’s funeral over a year ago and the words that he had spoken had not been kind. Would he take Chase, she wondered? Her brother had been the cause of the accident that had killed her and now she was asking her grandfather to take him. It was probably like pulling a scab off a slow healing cut, and this three hour drive was a futile endeavor that put Chase’s life in danger.

An old coon hound barked from inside the house and she could hear the generator click as lights about the cabin flashed on. She braked before the long porch and sat in the cab of the old blue truck. The front door opened and her grandfather filled the door, a long rifle held under his arm, his finger on the trigger.

“No use for anyone this time of night,” the old Indian yelled. He was stocky, with solid muscle even at his 75 years of age. His long, grey hair was tied back in a leather thong and although he wore jeans that held an unbuckled belt, like he had pulled them on quickly, his feet were shod in moccasins. He was the antithesis of living two heritages. Part American, and part wild, Native American. It was either live off the grid or on a reservation, drinking away a life where everything was handed to you for all the guilt of white man’s history.

Meadow, cranked down the manual window and waved her arm. “It’s me...Meadow...”

“Whatcha doing here at this time of night?” he gruffly spoke at her while lowering the rifle.

“It’s Chase, he’s been hurt bad. I need your help,” the girl shouted, trying to pull the old man’s attention toward her needing assistance and not her brother’s peril.

There was a long silence. Behind the man, another silhouette appeared and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. There were quick, terse words spoken and the old man shrugged the hand from his body. He shook his head once and then stepped further out the door, away from his companion.

“How bad’s the boy?”

“Dad whipped him with a bullwhip. He’s already hot and feverish. Please Gramps.”

The old man said something over his shoulder and immediately a giant of a man stepped outside with a large hound dog right on his heels. His name was Tito, Meadow remembered, but she didn’t know why she would call him uncle. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was only Spanish and in a voice so gravelly it was like he had rocks in his mouth that were rubbing together with each word. His stature was upwards of seven feet with shaggy hair, hacked off every few months with a machete he kept on his belt. Tito had been with her grandfather ever since she could remember and she had no idea how they had ever come together in this life-long bond.

Tito opened the passenger side door and gently lifted the agitated boy from the car. His right hand cupped the boys head, while his other huge hand tucked under his knees, never once letting anything touch the mangled back. Effortlessly carrying the boy inside, Meadow followed at a distance not sure if she was invited in. The air was cold up here and all she had on was a t-shirt and shorts.

“Well get inside, girl. It’s cold and rain or our first snow is on it’s way. Where’s your jacket?”

Meadow shrugged, “Didn’t have time to grab one, Gramps. It was 80 degrees when I left Black Canyon.”

Her grandfather grumbled incoherently and closed the door behind her. The contrast in weather always amazed visitors to Arizona. Two hours north of the city of Phoenix, there were ski areas, pine-covered mountains and temperatures that would vary 30 degrees or more. It was November and here, at over 7000 feet, they could have snow.

Meadow watched Tito place her brother on his stomach on a thin mattress to one side of the cavernous room. The two men chattered rapidly in Spanish deciding on their plan of medical attack, their total focus on the deteriorating condition of the boy. She stood awkwardly for several minutes watching them work and then weariness enveloped her and she sank onto the huge, old couch. Resting her head against the backrest she looked up at the pine beams that crossed the high ceiling. The cabin’s interior had not changed much from the last time she had been here, maybe two years ago, on a visit with her mom.

The central focus of the room was a large grey-stoned fireplace. Embers were stoked for the morning fire, logs and kindling in separate storage boxes on the wooden floor. There was even a rough mantel above the stone hearth, holding a couple of odd-shaped rocks and one very old faded picture of her grandmother. Meadow had never known the woman, but her mother had told her she was a character, always flitting around like a hummingbird, chattering like a magpie and laughing like a warbler. She would have liked to know that kind of lady, Meadow had thought at the time. Her grandfather was the complete opposite, reserved, stoic and unsmiling. But here, a couple of decades after her early death her picture still represented center spot on the mantel.

Meadow moved her eyes around the rest of the room. A small kitchen with a worn table and four chairs was nestled in one corner, a large, leather lazy boy chair with mismatched ottoman sat in another corner . The bed Chase was on sat in the third corner and a curtained doorway hid a bedroom that held two twin beds where Tito and her grandfather slept. That was the cabin. She thought she remembered a large bow with a quiver of arrows that had hung from a wall, but now the wooden slats were empty like a large glass frame that had no picture, yet begged for one.

The soft mumble of her grandfather’s voice and the return throaty grunts from Tito were relaxing and Meadow found her eyes closing. Had it only been twelve hours ago that she had been at lunch in the school cafeteria and her best friend, Lizzie, had told her Pete Simmons was talking like he had gone all the way with her? She had been steaming angry and had laid into Pete, stabbing him angrily with her index finger, venting her embarrassment and indignation without letting him defend himself. Now, she was numb with fear that her brother would not live. Emotions, like riding a roller coaster in Disneyland, never seemed to be easy for her to control. She let herself relax more and slide down onto the couch as the day’s worries took their toll. Knowing she would have to get back to Black Canyon City before her father woke from his bender, she let herself fall asleep. Chase’s fate was now in her grandfather’s hands.

Dawn was just streaking the sky pink, when she felt hands shaking her awake. Like a bear being pulled out of hibernation, she woke, opening eyes that felt like sandpaper. When she saw her grandfather’s tired and drawn face, all realization of the night before came back to her and she sat up quickly.

“Is he all right?” she whispered.

“It’s up to the spirits now, Meadow. You need to return to the valley?”

She nodded, her brown, doe-like eyes questioning her reticent grandfather. “Is it bad?”

“His fever is high and he walks in another dream world now, but he is young and can fight those enemies if he wants.”

“Why wouldn’t he want to?”

“It just seems his spirit is moving away from this world, Meadow. Maybe he wants to walk with his ancestors rather than face this life.”

“Gramps, Chase knows Mom just slipped. He knows it’s not his fault she fell.”

“Does he?” was all the old man said in answer to the teen’s anguish.

“Do you blame him, too?” she bit off, letting her anger surface at the man’s callousness.

“Your mother would not have been in that old cottonwood tree if it was not for Chase’s airplane getting stuck.”

“It was an accident!” she practically yelled

“Yes Meadow, and your brother has to accept this or walk forever in the spirit world.”

“You and your mumble-jumble spirit shit!” Meadow tossed at her grandfather, rising from the couch. “I’ve gotta get back to the valley before Dad gets to drinking again. Thank you for taking care of Chase.” She moved toward the door with a stomping of her feet.

“Meadow...”

The teenager stopped with her hand on the iron doorknob and glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t say anything and her sullen expression almost prevented the old Indian from speaking, but then he continued, “your brother will be best here. He will not come back to the valley if he recovers. You need to move beyond your father too, or he will destroy your life. His is not yours to live.”

“I know, Gramps,” she hesitated, “I know.” Letting go of the doorknob, she moved back to her grandfather and gave him a huge hug, squeezing tight. Slowly his arms came up and enveloped her, bringing tears streaking down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered. They stood like that for many seconds, before suddenly Meadow let go and stepped away. She turned and left the cabin without looking back, without glancing at her brother, without another word. It was done.

CHAPTER 4

Paige paced the floor. Up one set of off-white tiles, down the line next to them, then back again up the first set. Ten steps, about face, ten steps.

“Christ, sit down Paige,” Carlos grumbled looking up from his phone that had held his attention for the last hour.

“He’s got to live,” she breathed.

“The guy’s toast, burnt and blackened. You heard the paramedics when they came out. They lost him twice in the ambulance on the way here. Even if he does live, his brain is probably like the damn oatmeal I should have eaten this morning for breakfast instead of the bag of Fritos,” Carlos complained as he rubbed his burning stomach. Ten o’clock in the morning and his rations had been three cups of coffee and a bag of toasted corn chips. No wonder he had the beginnings of an ulcer, he thought acidly.

“No, don’t say that,” Paige gasped vehemently. She didn’t know why, but she felt so strongly about this man’s survival. Maybe it was her precarious emotions playing into her fears, she just knew she needed him to beat the odds and live.

“What’s up with you? He’s a gang-banger who got involved in a turf war. Another dead banger, I say.”

“I don’t think so, Carlos. You know damn well gangs use guns, they don’t string up rivals, torture them and leave one alive. They drive by and shoot, killing anyone in their path. I just don’t feel like this is gang.”

Carlos studied her a moment and then shrugged, “maybe, but the youngest kid, Victim One, his prints just came through and his name is Nicholas Venta, aka Pinto, aka Sixteenth Street Posse.”

“Huh” was all that Paige said. It just didn’t feel gang. Her mind had just started to wander back to her first call in homicide of a drive-by where a five-year-old boy had been part of the carnage, when she heard her name called.

“Paige? Paige Hanson? Are you all right? Are you having recurring symptoms?”

Paige whipped around and saw her OB-GYN doctor before her. “Wwwwhat...? “ she stuttered glancing anxiously at her partner and then back at her doctor. “No, no...no, I’m fine,” she replied while shaking her head nominally at her doctor.

The woman caught her drift quickly and turned toward Carlos. “Hi, I’m Dr. Lieberman, you must be the infamous Carlos,” she smiled and laid on all her doctor-patient charm.

“Doctor of...?” Carlos asked while extending his hand, always playing the detective.

She shook his hand and then turned back toward Paige. “You here on a case?” Dr. Lieberman asked, ignoring Carlos’ question.

“Yes, a multiple murder, with one survivor, we hope,” Paige answered steering the conversation into safer waters.

“Well, I hope the victim does make it,” the doctor paused, “call me if you need anything, okay?” She squeezed Paige’s arm once and hurried away, making a mental note to herself to have one of her counselors call the detective. She could tell that lack of sleep was only one of the things Paige was battling.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Carlos asked as he watched the curvy doctor walk away.

“No,” Paige stated with finality and turned as an ER Doctor, wearing a blood spattered white coat walked into the waiting room.

She rushed forward toward the Doctor, or was it away from Carlos’ inquisition, Paige thought as she tried to read the man’s face. The doctor looked exhausted, with eyes much older than his age. He brought his hand up to stop her multiple questions, placing an invisible barrier between her words and his body.

“ He’s alive at this moment,” the doctor stated without hope. “Between his loss of blood, body fluids from the heat in that warehouse, and shock, I just don’t give it much promise.” His pause seemed to hang in the air like a bad odor that lingered and permeated everything. “He’s got to stabilize before we can operate, and we can’t stabilize him without operating...so it’s a Catch-22. I give him maybe 10% odds if I’m being optimistic.”

Paige felt her shoulders slump. “That bad?” she asked, a question that was redundant and didn’t need answering.

“Sorry, detectives. We’ll try our best. But best hope, he’ll live in a coma without giving any information to all your unanswered questions. I’d go on the belief that he is not a survivor but another death,” the emergency room doctor stated with the pessimism of a prison guard, who’d seen too many young men deteriorate and die in prison. He simply turned and laboriously walked back through the doors after that terminal sentence.

“Let’s head in and check on the fingerprints of our other bodies.”

Paige stared at the closed ER doors for a long moment, hoping the doctor would pop back out like a jack-in-the-box and say “Psyche! He’s doing great and will answer all your questions now.” But it wasn’t the way her job worked...her life worked. She pulled her daydreams back in under her false facade and nodded nonchalantly at Carlos.

“Yeah, let’s head in,” her voice was even shrill to her ears.

“So, when I look up Dr.Lieberman in the hospital directory what specialty am I going to find?”

“You’re like a dog with a bone. Just let it go, Carlos. I’m fine. Let’s go after this fucker.”

“You’re my partner and Paige, my friend. You look like shit, you’re shaky in your best moments, and cranky as hell. Talk to me.”

Paige shuddered and then shook herself like a wet dog. “ Fine, she’s my gyno and I just have some female problems. I’m good Carlos. Can we move on, now?”

“What female problems? Like cancer or just being on the rag?”

“Oh my God, really Carlos? You’re an asshole. Let it go. I’m fine,”

Paige volleyed a vehement return at her partner.

He pushed his hands up in surrender and smiled obsequiously. “Ok...ok, just stop obsessing on this guy and let’s go do some real detective work. As the ol’ doc said, the guy’s fruit loops even if he does survive.”

Paige was about to lash out at her partner, but then stopped and reigned herself in, which was like trying to tame a wild bronco. She didn’t want anymore inquisitions from him. When she was ready, she’d talk, but until then, it was none of his damn business. “Yeah, let’s head in,” she replied sullenly and walked away.