"I'm just saying good-bye. I have to leave early tomorrow. I understand you'll be leaving soon, too."
"Yes." Tight-lipped, eyes hard and suspicious.
"But I hear you've got another job all lined up."
"Highly skilled medical practitioners and administrators are hard to find out here. I'm fortunate to have professional contacts who respect that fact. I'll be assuming my new position next week."
"Yeah, I saw Donny earlier today. He thinks the world of you. I guess you've worked for him before, right? Up at the Bloomfield mine. Your husband, Vernon, too. I'm sure he'll take good care of you."
"Is there something I can do for you, Ms. Wu?" Lynn Pierce took a paper towel from a dispenser and feigned preoccupation with a smudge on the stainless steel counter.
"No. But there's something I can do for you."
"Oh, that's so kind of you!" Lynn's voice was coy, but when she turned back toward Joyce, her eyes were not. The look confirmed Joyce's sense of her: This gal is dangerous.
"Vern, he was a pretty important man in the McCartys' operation?"
Lynn could tell she was being baited, but as Joyce had hoped, she couldn't resist indulging her pride in him. "Vernon was chief explosives engineer at the Bloomfield mine. He was the very best in his field and received numerous commendations for his safety record. He supervised all explosives operations and staff. It's a very important part of coal mining."
"So he probably rubbed shoulders with Garrett McCarty now and again. And Donny."
"Vernon was invaluable, and it's to the McCartys' credit that they knew what they had in him and made a point of treating him well. Vern's office was just down the hall from Donny's in Bloomfield. Vern appreciated their respect and trust."
Joyce nodded. "Do you know what's been going down around here in the last few days? Aside from you telling Donny everything about Tommy Keeday?"
Lynn looked at her speculatively. After a moment, she took a cigarette pack out of her smock, unfolded a little foil ashtray, and lit up. She blew the smoke at the ceiling. "You're kind of a disjointed conversationalist, Ms. Wu, did you know that? Are you going to connect the dots for me, or do I have to guess?"
"Oh, heck," Joyce said, "I'll connect 'em. Why not."
Lynn narrowed her eyes as she sucked hungrily on her cigarette. This time she blew the smoke at Joyce and stared confrontationally at her.
"Your husband once told you something he'd overheard the McCartys talking about, didn't he? Way back, like in 1986, not long before he died. Something very juicy and hush-hush about Julieta. That's how you knew she'd had a lover back then. A Navajo guy. That's why you figured she acted so strangely sometimes-maybe Tommy Keeday was her child."
"Isn't he?"
"What else did Vernon tell you? Did he tell you that Garrett murdered Julieta's lover? Buried him in the ravine over at the north end of the mesa?"
That news clearly caught Lynn by surprise. She said, "No!" and then must have realized it was an admission that Joyce had been right so far. A mask slipped over her face.
"No, of course you didn't know. Because all this time you've been thinking Joseph Tsosie was the father. But he wasn't. A man named Peter Yellowhorse was, and that's who the McCartys killed. And Vern found out. And he made the mistake of letting them know he knew."
"You're thinking you can sour me on Donny McCarty, but I don't believe any of this. And you're not subtle enough."
Joyce tossed photocopies of the Gallup Independent articles onto the counter next to Lynn's white, clenching hand. The nurse glanced at them despite herself.
"When did Vern tell you, Lynn? Think back. Because I know when Vern died and how he died."
Lynn tore her eyes away from the photocopies.
" 'Explosives expert killed in coal mine accident,' "Joyce read out loud. "Think about it. Best safety record in New Mexico, but he manages to blow himself up November fifteenth, 1986. A couple of weeks after Peter Yellowhorse was murdered, probably a few days after he overheard Garrett and Nick, or maybe Donny and Nick, talking about it. A few days after he told you the juicy gossip. He knew what they'd done, and it was dangerous knowledge, Lynn. Nick was up at Bloomfield a lot right around then, wasn't he? Really think it's all a coincidence?"
Lynn was holding her cigarette in the V of her fingers, high in front of her, but she had forgotten it. Joyce could see in her eyes that she was thinking back, checking the dates, the details. The tumblers spun and began clicking into place. After a moment, Lynn took a long, long, deep breath. The deadly, metallic look in her eyes chilled Joyce.
Lynn turned back to the counter to stub out her unfinished cigarette. She busied herself with a tray of scalpels. Her hands shook badly at first but then steadied as they moved among the bright blades, putting them one by one into the sterilizer.
"Good-bye, Ms. Wu," Lynn Pierce said expressionlessly.
Joyce left her and went back to the ward room where Cree had been sleeping peacefully. She had felt a little twinge of guilt, knowing Cree probably wouldn't approve. But, hey.
Turning the basket, Joyce thought. She couldn't be one hundred percent sure she was right about Vernon Pierce's death. But those bums deserved it in any case. Donny, Nick, Lynn-the three of them deserved each other, and Lynn was already launched, something like a human heat-seeking missile, coming in under the radar. Oh, it would take a while; she would settle in at the mine and think about how best to do whatever she'd do. But you didn't have to be a Las Vegas bookie to figure the odds on Donny's and Nick's continuing health and happiness were not so good. Joyce made a mental note to check the Albuquerque papers once in a while to see how it turned out.
She finished her coffee, checked her watch and found that she'd been sitting for almost an hour. Still, she felt good and lingered a little longer.
Cree would be back on Thursday. She'd have a lot to think about. She'd done an incredible job with Julieta and the gorgeous Navajo doctor, zeroing right in on the crucial knot that held everything back, kept everything snarled. But Joyce doubted she'd do as good a job when it came to her own love life. Ed hadn't talked about the parallels there, but Joyce was sure he'd noticed them. You'd have to be a major dummy not to. And of course Cree would come back all bent out of shape by it. For more reasons than one. She'd absorbed so much of Julieta McCarty, she probably couldn't even tell whether her feelings toward Ed were truly her own, or some kind of resonance with Julieta's thing with Joseph. Heartbreaking, really.
On one hand, Cree was as ready for a man as anyone Joyce had ever known, but on the other hand, it was complicated. Joyce couldn't decide where the problem lay, exactly. Once, she would have said, Easy-the shadow of her dead husband's hanging over her, her very own ghost. And the cure for that was obvious. She'd told Cree as much last spring, and Cree had wisely gone back to see Paul in New Orleans.
But maybe it was more complex than that, more even than making a choice between Ed and Paul. Seeing Cree out there, riding, walking, the way she expanded into the place, Joyce knew she'd come back in love with the land, the rocks, the big sky, the Navajo medicine men, even the ghosts, as much as with Paul Fitzpatrick or Edgar Mayfield. Cree wasn't all that available because she already had a lover: mystery. Or maybe just life. The mystery of life. Whatever.
Joyce honestly had no idea how you could help somebody with a situation like that.
53
The old Keedays' place was transformed. The Evil Way was not as large or long a ceremony as others, but it still required substantial preparation. Tommy's closest aunts, uncles, and cousins had come to participate and help out, along with a few nonfamily, including Cree, Julieta, Joseph, and Joseph's uncle. With the medicine man and his two assistants, there were around two dozen. Pickup trucks and station wagons were parked haphazardly all around the grandparents' home. The kitchen stove in the trailer was going, and a couple of fire pits had been set up outside to help prepare the food needed to nourish the gathering during the two-day Way. Two sheep had been butchered and now hung from the branches of a small cottonwood, soon to be roasted.