Chapter Thirteen

The dim pools of light in the darkroom gave the two women at the switchboard an eerie cast as if they were witches enchanting a wall of snakes. Their disembodied conversations were an almost constant murmur. The late evening was a busy time at the dispatch, as tow companies were still busy and other responders became more active. The fever pitch would be between 10:30 and 11:40 and then die. The slow time was midnight until the drunks left the bar to start their cars or drive them into telephone poles if other drivers were lucky.

Dolly was reclining in her custom-built steel desk chair and across her expansive chest was her favorite orange fur blanket, Box.

“Stella knew you might be tied up at the hospital, and she knew she wouldn’t be home to feed him, so she dropped him off for me to babysit.”

Hooker took the plate from Willie and walked into the oversized kitchen with a large dining table that sat twelve every Wednesday night for dinner. Dinners were by invite only, and the players changed every week, except for Hooker, the anointed one. Everyone knew there was a reason you were invited or not. The joke was Dolly ruled San Jose by night, and only loaned it back to the minions to take care of it during the day while she slept. Hooker knew the joke was more truth than humor. Elections and power had been won and lost around the table. Arthur in Camelot had only dreamed of such a table.

“Just put them in the sink, Hooker. I’ll wash them with our dinner plates.”

He rinsed them off and stacked them with the coffee mugs.

Turning off the kitchen light, he walked back into the dark room. He continued the evening’s discussion. “So we thought you might know someone in the Native American community who could shed some light on the use of bird wings. If there is something more specific to a raven—that would be even better.”

Dolly looked at the large school clock on the wall. “Dina, get me Doc White down in Paso Robles, would you, dear.”

She looked back at Hooker. “Doc taught American Indian Anthropology at Stanford for over thirty years. He’s retired now and doesn’t go to bed until after Johnny.”

“Line three.”

“Thank you, dear.” Dolly swung around and picked up the handset as she pushed the blinking light. “Yut ta hey, Doc,” their standard greeting since she had taken a class from him as a young girl. She explained what Hooker was looking for.

Hooker could tell the conversation was going to run on for a while, and figured Box could use a grass break. “Box, grass?”

The cat looked at Dolly, and she heaved her chest. He jumped as much as fell out of her chest lap. The two partners strolled to the steel-clad door. Hooker checked the peephole as Dolly checked the TV monitor of the outside security camera. “You’re good, Hooker.”

“No, I was just telling Hooker he was clear to open the door. He had to take my cat outside.”

Willie walked over to the switchboard and sat down on the third rolling chair next to Dina. He watched the routine of pulling a cord out and plugging it into a hole in the wall, throwing a switch and answering the call, then plugging another cord in another hole if she was transferring a call, or using the radio if she was dispatching a call. The night rolled on. Willie still marveled at how they could keep everything straight, no matter how many cords were plugged into how many holes, and phone calls and trucks dispatched, and where they even were.

During a brief lull, he leaned in close to Dina. “How is the baby?”

She smiled and took his hand and held it on her large tummy. “He’s sleeping, but I think he’s his father’s son. He tosses and turns.”

Willie could feel the small convulsions of the child. She was only six months along but looked more like ten. He smiled at feeling something only a father would normally feel. He knew that with Hooker, his life had blossomed into a very large family. He knew that his longest and best friend, the librarian, Maddie, felt the same. Their solitary lives had been blessed with the arrival of a young fourteen-year-old boy who only looked like a man. With Maddie’s help, Hooker had become the man Willie had seen in him the first day.

Hooker knocked on the door. The thick steel on the solid oak door resounded only slightly louder than a sigh. Dolly had been watching the small security camera monitor and buzzed him and Box in.

“Just a minute, Doc, Hooker just walked back in.” She lowered the handset and laid it alongside Box’s body as the cat settled back in. “Hooker, he wants to know if you know which wing it was.”

“Raven.”

“Which side?”

“Right. It has always been the right radial bone.”

“Doc, he says the right radial bone.” She gave him a sharp questioning eye as to how he knew what the bone was called. He just shrugged.

She listened for a moment. “Doc, just a minute, let me put you on speaker so you can teach the whole class.” She spun in the chair and punched the button, and then cradled the handset. “Doc White, this is Hooker. Hooker, Doc White.”

Hooker sat on the corner of the large desk. “Glad to meet you, Doc.”

“Same, son. I’ve heard nothing about you, so it must all be true.” He laughed. Dolly rolled her eyes, and Hooker assumed it was one of the man’s standards.”

“So the right radial bone of the raven? How exactly is it being used?”

Hooker looked at Dolly. She held her palm out at the phone. It was as much permission Hooker needed. “He’s cutting a clump of the victim’s hair, and then binding it with some of their skin to the bone. He then is using it as a paintbrush to paint symbols on the wall with the victim’s blood.”

Over at the dispatching board, Dina turned toward Willie. Her eyes rolled into her head as she closed her eyes and wished she could close her ears. Her mouth had a full look.

Willie quickly reached down and grabbed the metal trash can full of crumpled call and run tickets. He held it up toward her.

She slowly gained control and opened her eyes. Looking into Willie’s eyes, she grew a question mark on her face. He slowly nodded, confirming what Hooker was saying was true.

Karen reached over and rubbed her back.

“Can you describe the symbols?”

“They are kind of hard to describe.”

“Okay, son—let’s try it a different way. Do they look like numbers or something written?”

“Both, but it looks like mostly writing.”

“Any other stuff, or is it just him writing in his diary?”

Hooker’s eyebrows rose, and he looked at Dolly. She gripped her lips together in a smug smile. She knew her people. She petted Box.

“Man, you are good. There is a large circle with other smaller circles on the line and some other larger symbols in and out of the large circle.”

“Just a minute, son.” They could hear the professor had just put them on speakerphone as well. The sound of him pulling books and flipping pages was a soft background.

Dolly swung her chair around and lifted her coffee mug. She looked in it at the cold last swallow. Curling her nose, she held it out at Hooker. She slowly closed her eyes and nodded to let him know he had time. She knew the professor, and Hooker had just sent him on a hunt.

Hooker took the mug and rinsed out the old coffee. He stood leaning against the sink, thinking about the walls in the railcar. The fact of the ‘ink’ being the victim’s blood was gruesome enough, but the writings were creepy and disturbing in a ‘thing under the bed in the night’ kind of way. He shook and then picked up the carafe for coffee. He put the mouth of the cup under the spigot of the large coffee urn and started to fill. The dispatch went through over a pound of coffee in a twenty-four-hour cycle. The second urn was already cleaned and ready to go when these twenty cups were low or old.

Hooker thought about his sister and what she demanded. Her minions were subservient and basically under control. But if one or two were breaking out of her control, there could be trouble that could spread through the whole community. He didn’t want to think about what kind of fallout could overflow into the regular community.

He carried the carafe in his left hand. He placed Dolly’s half full mug on the desk with the handle turned away from her. She drank with her whole hand, holding the body of the mug and her three fingers in the handle. Her bent pinkie finger rode stiffly on the outside of the handle.

Quietly, he filled his mug, and then the other three. He expected Willie to cut him off with only a half cup, but he took it all. Hooker suspected there was something up because Willie was not a true night owl.

Returning from the kitchen, he could hear a chair squeak and books plopped on a desk. “So, we have a few things here.” The professor was still lost in his world. “If you look here, you see the...” He seemed to remember he was all alone with a phone on speaker. Hooker could imagine the man with wild hair looking over his spectacles at the empty room.

The man chuckled. “Sorry, I was talking to my cat, I guess.”

Dolly and Hooker smiled as they looked at the rumbling cat on her chest. “It’s okay, Doc, we have one here, too.”

“Oh, Dorthia, when did you acquire a cat?”

Dolly shot Hooker a hard look before he could even think to mouth the name Dorthia. “It’s Hooker’s mange bucket, Doc. He just foists the derelict on me for safekeeping.”

“Oh, I see.” He fidgeted with the books. “All right now, so—are there any patterns that have an arc like a sun with rays and it’s resting on a flat line?”

Hooker thought with his eyes closed. His head was turning slowly as he tried to picture the walls. A part of him swore because this was the one time he could have used the Squirt and his photographic memory. “I don’t think so, Doc. Would it be big or small?”

“Um… small, I think.” The sound of three large books slamming shut bounced over the speaker. “All right, we’ll hold Zuni and Navaho in limbo for now. So I’m looking for objects with an arrow coming out of them. Usually, it will be pointed in an upward direction.”

“Yes.” Hooker sat up excitedly. “I remember there were three in the railcar. Two were smaller, but not as small as the writing. One was a little larger, near the floor, so I just thought it was easier to paint it bigger.”

Two more books landed on an auditory stack.

“All right, we are not in the Pacific Northwest then. Is there any hand print or something similar to a handprint?”

“No. We would have checked it for fingerprints, and there were none.”

“Good, so the Plains Indians are out now, too. I didn’t want to have to go get the ladder, anyway.”

Dolly licked her lips and raised her eyebrows in a memory about how the professor was so refreshing about his likes and dislikes.

“This might be taxing, but I’m looking for a specific symbol. It would be in the writing, but I think it would have stood out. As you look at it, it would be a snake-like an ‘S’ connected to a ‘C’… or wiggle with two humps on the left and one on the right. Standing very close but not touching would be a straight line up and down, except the bottom would reach down farther like the tail on a ‘g’ or ‘y’.”

Hooker stared at the wall. The concrete melted away and became the wood of the rail car. “Could it have an arrow starting in the middle right curve that projects right through the line?”

There was silence from the speakerphone. Dolly frowned and looked over at the dispatching board and Karen.

Karen looked on the board and shook her head and shrugged.

Dolly rose to a more sitting position. Box turned his head and scowled at her. The purring stopped. She held her large hand along him as she leaned forward. “Doc? Doc, did we lose you?”

There was a pause, and then a very soft pensive voice responded. “I’m here, Dorthia… just thinking. Look, hang tight for a few minutes. I have to make a phone call, and I’ll call you back in about ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, Doc...” She knew she was talking to a dead phone.

The clock ticked slowly as they waited. None of them wanted to talk. The last-minute had seemed to step off the sidewalk of reality into the superhighway of strange. Hooker knew they had just landed in the universe of his sister. Dolly suspected but wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know.

Willie got up and stretched his legs. Looking at his coffee mug, he wandered into the kitchen. Hooker watched as he got another cup of coffee. Hooker turned and looked at the large clock. He was now positive Willie was truly up to something in the middle of the night.

“Dispatch, this is Dina… just a moment, Doc. I’ll put you through.”

Dolly’s finger was hovering over the speakerphone button.

“What do you have, Doc?”

“I called a professor friend of mine. He has been doing some work over in Nevada and the long valley in California running along the border. They share some tribal grounds running the length of the Owens Valley, out through the many valleys north of Death Valley and into the Nevada desert. These are basically Piute Indian lands, but there are also factions. Some of these factions even reach west into the Central Valley.

“You may recall a few years ago there were some unsavory types who were rounded up out there in the desert. They called themselves a family, but they were more like a mangled collective who acted like a tribe. The leader was a guy named Manson.”

He let the meaning of it soak in.

“The symbol you described would fit not only one of the more deviate factions of the Piute nation, but the Manson tribe, as well. The symbol is a hybrid of a shaman and a warrior. It represents the god of vengeance taking a mortal visage to put the world back in balance.”

“By killing?”

“By not only killing, my boy, but killing in a much-ritualized manor. The entire process about creating the magic that will grant the power back to the mortal to become a god again. You said the victims were nailed up to the walls. I would hazard a statement of the number of nails always being the same, and it wasn’t just the hands, but nails through the arms and legs as well.”

“Correct.” Hooker was drained and subdued.

“You mentioned the hair was bound to the raven’s bone with a part of the victim’s own skin. Would the skin have come from some sexual area such as the penis, vaginal lips, or breasts?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have a very sick individual on your hands. There have been similar killings in the Central Valley. My friend was consulting on a few. They were hushed because they didn’t want to frighten people about a serial killer. But you could check with the Fresno, Bakersfield, and out in Tehachapi and Mojave area.”

“I thought a shaman was supposed to heal people? Like a witch doctor or something.”

“Normally, they are. But with this faction, they are about the blood and killing.”

“Where does the raven bone fit in to all of this?”

“The fact he uses it consistently is an indication it is a talisman for him. It is something that is very personal. If he is of the tribe, it may have been his vision quest marker. You will have to catch him and ask him to get any real definitive clarification on it.”

“So, where would someone go to get a specific bone of a bird?”

“If I was one of my smartass students, I would say an ornithology supply. But I’m not, so I’m as stumped as she would have been.”

Hooker looked at Dolly. She didn’t acknowledge the comment, but Hooker was certain there was a glow creeping up alongside her ears.

“Do you think there would be some kind of company who could supply something like it?”

“There might be. Check with a museum. They may have a source for bones and things for restoring old skeletons or something. But I can’t see them being cheap enough just to throw away every so often.”

“Okay, Doc. Thanks a lot for your knowledge and research. If we need to contact the other professor...”

“You’ll find him at the federal penitentiary just outside of Carson City. His last four numbers are all zeros.” He laughed.

“He’s an inmate?”

“Well, yes. It’s a case of it takes a thief to catch a thief. He’s in solitary confinement, but he has a direct phone line into his cell. He does a lot of consulting work for police and the FBI.”

“Okay, Doc, you are officially a member of my family of weird people who know even weirder people. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem, Hooker. Any friend of Dorthia’s is like family to me. Goodnight.”

Dolly poked at the phone, and it was silent.

She shuddered. Box meowed a silent protest. “Personally, I think it’s creepy.”

“But what Sweets had to say was creepier.”

She raised her hand and pointed at Hooker. “True.”

She turned slightly and peered into the darkness. “Karen, who is on the table this week?”

Karen looked up at her cheat sheet. “Drivers—Mike P, Ace, Stan, Joe, and Terry; Cops are Chet and Micha. We have a call into Whelan’s office, but they said he might be back in DC still. Peter and Dutch are in, and we need them to look at the switching problem in the alarm room. Hooker is the head, and we have two opens.”

Dolly swung back to the two men now standing. “Bring Sweets and Danny. On second thought, Karen, Whelan has jerked me around one too many times. He’s out—and I do mean out. We aren’t supporting his next election. Find someone new who will work with us.”

Hooker listened and thought about how the table worked, and the power it and Dolly wielded. Every Wednesday night, there was a special mix of players at the table. Twelve, now eleven that Hooker was back, that Dolly could make or break depending on how she arranged the board. He also knew next election term, there would be a new person sitting in the seat in Congress. His rock and foundation were cast on the solid nature of the person sitting in front of him.

Dolly looked back at Hooker. “Tell Danny I want, or you want, I don’t care, which ever works, all three of them to be here. We’ll have Sweets fed and out the door in plenty of time for his shift.”

Hooker took a mental stumble. As far as he knew, she had never invited a woman to the table. Even Dolly never sat at the table. “Tilly? A woman?”

“Sure.” She gave Hooker the special look Hooker felt he should know, but it just added acid to his stomach. “It’s about time I shake things up in this town. As the song goes, the times they are a-changing.”

Hooker saluted his obedience. “Box…”

She placed a hand on the beast who had tensed. “You’re busy. He’s fine here. I have plenty of roadkill to feed the mange monster.”

“Okay, it’s your kitchen.”

They were halfway up the hill to the giant garage with the small house attached when Willie broke the silence. “A woman… Has she…?”

“Not to my knowledge.” Hooker looked out over the quiet, twinkling valley as the big car nosed onto the gas station sized driveway. Hooker tensed. The large door was slightly open.

Willie put his hand on Hooker’s arm. “It’s all right. Maddie rode her old Matchless motorbike up here. She’s working on the Granny car. In fact, there is some stuff out in Minden-Gardnerville area I need to go pick up. If we start early, we could stop off at a certain prison.”

Hooker softened and opened his door and stepped out of the car. Closing the car door, Hooker sighed with his relief. “I’ll get the door.”

As he pulled the large steel door all the way back, he thought about Dolly and about the coffee now sitting uncharacteristically in Willie’s gut. Something is up.