The moon had finally set about the time the 1940 REO Speed Wagon truck barreled its way past Kit Carson Lake. The scenery changed to a slightly drier forest on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as Willie and Hooker dropped down through the Faith, Hope, and Charity valleys. Even with all the tall pine trees, there was still high-country fall color to entertain the eyes. This beauty was not lost on either male.
Willie mused as he looked across the expanse of Hope valley. “Maybe next summer we should all come up and go camping or something.”
Hooker harrumphed. “Willie, I’ve known you long enough to know that is code for rent a room, and maybe go take a walk around a lake like we did a few summers ago on Echo Lake. As for Maddie, I know she doesn’t want to suffer through our cooking attempts over a fire pit again. We only survived because of the little diner down the road.”
Laughing, Willie shot Hooker a hangdog face as he glanced over. “Well, who knew they had some good steak to offer?”
“Maybe it had something to do with the big-assed sign saying Best Steak West of Kansas City?”
“It was a cute place.”
“I was just afraid you were going to steal some of those red and white checked tablecloths and ask Maddie to sew you up a dress or two.”
Willie flashed a wide-eyed look of mock shock. Both men knew Maddie didn’t even know much more than sewing on a button, and even then she would drive it over to Willie and have him do it for her.
The miles and tall trees disappeared with the teasing and remembering of times gone by. The terrain leveled out, and large ranches became the landscape as the brush was replaced by long stretches of perfectly lined barbwire fences. In the distance, the occasional large hay barn hulked near a smaller three-story farmhouse with deep-set wraparound porches. Most of them were painted red with white trim.
About every mile, a road came out to the highway. Arcing over the end of each driveway, and connecting the fences was an arch made from large old telephone poles. Hanging in the middle the arch, high enough for a stacked hay truck to pass under, was a sculpted brand or the occasional sign.
Willie slowed as he approached each ranch entrance. “It’s along here somewhere. Look for a large R lying on its back followed by a C. The ranch brand is Lazy RC Ranch.”
Hooker frowned. “Isn’t Lazy RC the ranch you get meat shipped from?”
Willie looked over and smiled hugely.
Looking back at the road and the next arch, he recalled, “I served with Steven in Korea. He was a great cook who had a bad habit of burning field rations.”
The Speed Wagon slowed, but the arch revealed only a ranch humorously named Lito Ponderosa, or Little Ponderosa. The two men laughed as Willie asked the crude question, “Who would advertise they only have a little wood?” They drove on. Not much worth seeing.
They finally found the Lazy RC and pulled into the barnyard. A large man with long gray braids strolled out of the barn door. Hooker could tell he had an educated eye as he looked over the Speed Wagon slowly curving in front of him. Willie shifted into reverse and backed toward the barn door and parked.
“The extra two inches you stuffed in the nose really looks nice, William.” The giant ran his hand along the hood. “Where did you clip it in?”
Willie winked at Hooker before he slid out of the driver’s side. “Stupid asshole, you know I’m not going to tell a Ford man how to build cars right. It might upset the entire Detroit balance.”
The giant laughed as he took one step toward Hooker. “Ignore him. He was always an asshole, even before Korea. The name is Chief Steven Seven Toes, but you can call me Steve or Chief.” He glared at Willie. “Only my wife or another asshole can call me an asshole.”
Willie laughed. “Idiot, you’ve met Hooker before.”
The man’s face exploded in shock. Snapping back to Hooker, he smiled and looked at the man Hooker. “Oh, my gee-whiz, it is. Son, you done growed up.”
The memory suddenly snapped clear in Hooker’s mind. “It’s the beard. It was much larger then.” They laughed about the mutual teasing of a brief evening when Hooker was only fifteen but already towing.
He turned to Willie. “He lies like you do.”
“Nah, there is a librarian who won’t let him. But he has learned the word elaboration.”
Steven waved a large paw at the Speed Wagon. “Leave this for now. Lunch is about ready, and we can load this after.”
Willie took on a serious tone. “There is a little bit of a time consideration here.”
“What?”
“Hooker needs to go up to the prison near Carson and talk to an inmate.”
The giant turned to evaluate Hooker. “Friend?”
“Nah, the guy is an expert on a certain serial killer we are hunting. I have some pictures requiring his knowledgeable opinion. We would normally mail them, but time is a factor.”
Steven looked back and forth between the two men. “Do you have an appointment set up with the prison?”
Hooker shook his head. “Evidently, this guy is a regular consultant with the FBI and others, so we figured we’d just come on over.”
The man laughed the kind of deep belly laugh only large men can do with effect. “Not fucking likely. That kind of access usually requires a couple of weeks of red tape, unless you are married to him or are a blood relative.”
Turning, he shrugged. “Well, come on in, and I’ll call over and see what I can work out with John Red Feather. He’s the warden over there. Meanwhile, I can smell the tamales Maria is making, and it’s making me some kind of powerful hungry.”
Hooker looked at Willie, who was chuckling and shaking his head as he followed the man toward the house. As they drew closer to the house, Hooker picked up the delicious aroma and had to agree about the powerful hunger.
A short while later, Steven cradled the phone back on the hook. “I’ll be going to Texas. John said come on down.” Steven pulled his chair out and sat back at the table filled with the remains of lunch. The four ranch hands had returned to their work, leaving the three men to discuss the prison and the engine they came to get. “Evidently, you’re right. This fella has people stopping by all the time. He even has a phone line in his cell so they can call him at any hour.”
Hooker just nodded with a smile.
The chief grinned. “Yeah, but you already knew that.”
Hooker rolled his eyes and shrugged.
Willie wiped the last piece of invisible food from his smiling mouth. He nodded toward the barn. “Shall we load the engine so we can be on our way?”
The giant rolled over to one hip and fished out a small clump of keys. Tossing them to Willie, he countered, “How about you two take my truck, and we’ll load all the Mopar scrap we can find into your Speed Wagon. That way you don’t have to waste time when you pass back through unless it’s close to dinnertime.”
Willie thought about the idea. “The keys are in the wagon. The engine is fresh, so keep it under eighty or a hundred.” The two smiled, knowing their history.
“How fresh?”
“Keep it under the speed you flipped the MP’s Hudson Cruiser.”
The former staff sergeant saluted with two fingers as they all got up. The chief cleared his throat. “And you remember even Nevada has the new stupid fifty-five law.”
As they walked toward the barn, Willie showed Hooker the very distinctive Cobra key.
The reputation of the 427 engine was not exaggerated. Nor were the stories about the Ford Cobra. Hooker wasn’t sure if his face would ever unfreeze the smile, but it was fun putting it there.
John Red Feather, who looked more like an accountant lost in some back office than the Piute Indian Hooker had envisioned, escorted them into a large interview room. The conference table had places for up to fourteen people.
“This is where the parole council meets. Usually, when Charles meets with people, they have a lot of stuff to spread out and look at. The large table helps.”
Willie looked the man over. “Do you usually sit in on his consults?”
“Occasionally, I have a certain knowledge set in Piute lore and shamanism. I’m a sixth-generation shaman in our tribe.” His stare was only slightly challenging, and he saw it had no effect on Willie. “When Steve told me you were coming, I had a chat with Charles. He thought I might be a bit of help.”
He looked over at Hooker. “I guess he spoke to you or someone the other night?”
“Indirectly, actually, I was talking with a Doc White in…”
“San Louis Obispo… yes, Doc is an old friend of ours.”
Somewhere outside the room, a bell rang, followed by a clanging, and garbled voices over speakers. The bell rang again, and a large metal door clanged shut. There was a knock on the door, and John stood up to open it.
A slender man with a mop of curly hair over thick glasses stood in the doorway. Dressed in an orange shirt and pants over a pair of fuzzy slippers, he looked more like a young child than a convicted killer.
John waved him in. “Come on in, Charles, we were just about to start.”
The man entered shyly with a soft-spoken, “Hello.” Hooker and Willie stood.
John performed the introductions. “Charles, this is Hooker and Willie. They’re here to talk about the killer in San Jose.”
Hooker sensed John was talking to a mentally challenged person, instead of a college professor. As he watched, Charles transformed physically into a more assured man. The shift was uniquely disturbing but explained something Hooker was familiar with—multiple personalities. The many facets of the man were at once explained.
“Hello, I’m Charles.” His self-assured hand shot out to shake Hooker and Willie’s hands. “So, my naughty boy has become busy again, I understand.” Waving at the chairs, “Please, be seated.”
Hooker pulled the photos out of the folder. “These are pictures of the walls of his latest kill.”
The man pushed his thick glasses high on his nose and looked closely at the photos. “Good, good… I’m glad they took color this time. Those last ones you brought were useless. I need to see the blood. Anybody can paint black paint…” He shuffled the photos. His dialogue seemed to be with someone other than those in the room.
Hooker looked over at John with a frown.
John held up his palms. “He isn’t here right now. We can say almost anything, but he can’t or won’t hear us. I’m not sure where he goes, but he is reviewing and comparing the case from the start and all the information he has gathered or has been brought since. This process takes longer and longer each time as more information is layered on top of all the previous evidence, and then is integrated. So, while we wait, can I get anyone something to drink?”
Hooker’s face screwed up in curious resolve. Hooker looked to Willie. “Coffee?” The former Naval Intelligence Officer nodded as he watched the former professor.
The disjointed voice chimed in, “Yes, please. Coffee, please.”
The warden patted Charles’s shoulder, as the man remained bent over the photos. “Yes, Charles, of course, you want a glass of hemlock. Would you like some arsenic and old lace in the hemlock, Charles?”
The drone nodded silently.
John shrugged and quirked his face and mouth. He shook his head. “I’ll be right back,” as he slid out the door and a guard silently stepped inside to take his place.
The coffee was long gone by the time the ‘professor’ part had returned to Charles. Hooker was glad he had bought a second and third legal yellow pad as the first had filled fast.
“Wait… so you’re saying even though he is presenting mostly Piute shaman characteristics, he probably didn’t originally come from this area?” Hooker frowned. “How does that work?”
Charles smiled as he found the photo he was looking for. “Look at this symbol here. This circle with the arrow (which is actually called a carrot) is pure Piute. But you see this little wavy line it’s resting on—it isn’t Piute. It’s more Chippewa. It’s not even a symbol or part of a symbol, as much as it is a dialect mark.”
The professor rotated his glasses up onto the top of his head. “I’ve heard you say the word y’all seven times while we have been talking. Willie has never said it. You also just asked the question, ‘How does that work?’ Based on the wording of that question, and the use of the Southern term y’all, I would say you lived in Southern California around the San Bernardino area originally, but up on the hillside like Mentone or upper Redlands, and your family work involved the orchards.” He sat waiting for Hooker to confirm his theory.
Willie just watched Hooker, curious about the possibility of learning something new about his ward. The clock on the wall ticked as Hooker weighed how much he was willing to share about his personal life and past.
“I was left at an orphanage in Ramona. Most of the foster homes were in the area until I moved into the Central Valley. I never thought about it before, but we were always near some kind of agriculture.”
Charles smiled softly. “Thank you for sharing something I can tell is very private with you.” Leaning back in the chair to not appear threatening, he continued. “You slipped and said, ‘we were near,’ so you were protecting a sibling. I would assume it is female and younger.”
“Older. But yes, I’m very protective of her.”
“Good, but not blood-related.”
Hooker nodded.
The professor watched and processed some information which was only known or important to him. “So, just like your language, these little extra pieces keep showing up in our killer’s writings, and they tell a very different story than we see initially.” He turned to the Warden.
“John, this block here… what is he working on?”
The warden leaned over and scanned the photo. “In Piute, this is the story of the coyote bringing fire, but he has the bear taking the fire away to the moon.”
“So it would just be scrambled eggs of thought?”
Turning it around for Hooker and Willie to see, he drew his finger along the symbols. “This is the coyote and the fire. Think of the coyote as a medium-sized dog instead, much like a fox. So when we add in this mark here and here, we have a fox crossing, not the desert, but a large lake instead. He is still bringing fire to the Chippewa, but it is in the form of enlightenment instead of flames.
“The bear here works with the fox to bring enlightenment which will rival the white light of the full moon. So it’s about working together in combination to produce greater power. The sacrificial body contributes the blood so the shaman can paint the symbols to create the power.”
Hooker ran his fingers through his hair. All of this information was more than he had bargained for or could take in at one time. “So, what about all the rest of this—is he just saying the same thing over and over again? Is this writing ‘I will not spit in class’ a hundred times on the chalkboard?”
The professor had seen the overloaded student look many times. “Essentially yes, but…” He jumped up and started excitedly moving the photos around.
The other three men sensed a shift and stood.
“There. That’s how he painted the inside of the boxcar.”
Hooker stood stunned. He purposely had not told the man where the killing had taken place. “How did you know it was in a boxcar?”
The man turned and gave him a parental stare. “Please. I’ve been in my share of boxcars.”
Turning back to the photos, Charles once more became the animated professor. Extending his right hand and arm with the fingers splayed as a starburst, he started. “The sacrifice, victim to you, was at this end of the car. He starts his writings close and works left, unlike a native English speaker, who would start to the right of the sacrifice, and work right.”
Willie lowered one eyebrow. “So you are saying he is a foreigner?”
“No, I’m saying English is his second language. Arabic is his first language.”
Hooker screwed up his face. “What? Then where does the Chippewa come in?”
Charles stood straight and buried his glasses back in the mop of curls on his head. He rolled his lips tight to his teeth and then puttered them out. “I said, Arabic was his first language. I didn’t say he grew up in Arabia. Most likely he grew up in Wisconsin. His mother is Arabian, but early in his life, his Arabian father disappears. He’s later replaced by a very strong figure in the Chippewa nation, probably a shaman. My guess would be this happened when he’s probably nine or ten years old, a very impressionable time in a boy’s life.
“Learning a new language written in a new set of symbols, such as Chipewyan, was not a hard stretch for him. After all, he has made the jump from Arabic script to Judeo-Spanish writing. The most seductive part of Chipewyan and Piute language is the power and building of strength when combined with certain other rituals.”
“Such as human sacrifices.” Willie looked up from the photos.
The professor pulled his glasses down and looked at Willie as if for the first time. “Well, yes… but it’s not about the sacrificial body. It’s about the blood.” They stood looking and taking the measure of each other. The large scar across Willie’s neck and up the side of his face held a fascination for the murderer, but the professor was in the forefront at the moment. “Yes, that’s right, it’s the blood.”
He leaned over and started at the far right. “Here he is talking about the blood of a lamb. He is specific. So if we could find his original kill or kills, they would be either animals or children.”
Moving to the next photo, he pointed to a small cluster of symbols in a larger circle. “Here he branched out and took two children at once. He hoped for a Gemini effect, which is more synergetic than just a doubling. You might call it quantum mechanics in killing. It’s a very advanced thought process.”
Hooker wasn’t sure he was listening to the detached evaluations of an academic or the salivations of an admiring devote of ritualistic serial killing. Either way, Hooker found it a bit too creepy to be comfortable.
“So he started with children, and then graduated to adults?”
The man looked up and then stood. His eyes blinked, focusing behind the glass. Hooker guessed the serial killer stepped out of the way of the professor. “Yes but think of it as driving. You start by riding a tricycle. Stop, start, and turn—it’s all safe. Then you move up through bicycles with training wheels, and eventually, you drive motorcycles and automobiles. But he’s even beyond that. He’s up to jet airplanes now.
“Basically, killing small animals or neighborhood pets is how most start because it’s safe. You don’t have to explain when a cat goes missing when a raccoon could have gotten it.
“Once the dynamics of how to kill are worked out, the killer progresses onto much larger game, like a child from another part of town.” Absently, the professor’s hand and index finger drifted to a very specific symbol set on the third photo. The action did not escape the ever-watchful eye of the quiet warden.
Willie was becoming agitated, as well. “So what are we looking for now?”
The academic resumed in force as he scanned over the writings. “Based on his progression, I would be looking for a male with Sephardic features, in his middle thirties, probably affected clothing with a fetish for their killing knife.”
He drew his face closer to the last photo in the line-up. “Based on this, he’s counting his coup on his boots or shoes. He’s making ritualistic cuts. He also has moved into the last phase of some kind of stars and moon alignment. He’s getting close to his belief in his becoming a king, or god if it’s empire-building that he is doing.”
The professor rose and once again raised his glasses into his hair. “My supposition is he’s very egotistical, narcissistic, and psychopathic. He may even be sociopathic, as well.”
Hooker furrowed his forehead slightly. “You said ‘their killing knife’—did you also mean he has multiple personalities?”
The man slowly rose, blinking rapidly. “I did? Well, I meant to say his killing knife.” Hooker saw a shadow of anger hiding in the eyes of the man before him as the professor slipped the thick glasses back down to his nose.
“What about the bone from the raven’s wing?”
The man snapped. “I don’t know anything about birds.”
Hooker decided it was best to let it go. He turned toward the warden. “John, is there anything else to add to this?”
The man hesitated, and then looked at the back of the prisoner who was markedly ignoring him. He softly shook his head. “No, I think the professor has covered everything in his usual exquisite detail. Good job once again, Charles.”
Hooker noted the man barely nodded his head in acknowledgment of his prowess. He felt sure the killer part of the man’s personalities now stood fully developed in their presence.
The warden opened the door and addressed the guard. “You and Paul can take Charles back home now. I’m sure he needs his rest. It’s been a long day.” He swung the door wide open and stepped back to give the professor a wide berth. Hooker noted the guards did not touch the man either. A ticking time bomb came to Hooker’s mind.
As the door swung shut, the warden leaned his back against it. Resting, as well as waiting, listening, and counting. Outside, the voice over the speaker followed the ringing of the bell. The large steel door slammed open, and then shut. The warden’s eyes remained shut. Hooker and Willie waited. The room stank of unburned fear or tension.
With a deep sigh, John finally stepped forward and pointed to the last photo. “He wasn’t completely forthcoming about everything in this set of photos. Here your killer is talking about a mouse or a mouse tribe or a tribe owned by a mouse.” He looked up at Hooker with a question.
Hooker nodded. “I noticed he ignored talking about the photo, and yes, thank you, the mouse is real. And she has a tribe. And I fear she’s in grave danger.”