Blood Memory

“Listen, Catherine.” A sharpness cut through Marjorie’s voice. “It’s not safe for you out there. Maury Beekner’s dead. The cops have been here all morning asking the same questions—who’s trying to kill you and why?”

Catherine pressed the cell hard against her ear and dodged past the couple window shopping on Larimer Street. “I can take care of myself, Marjorie.” A horn blasted, and a sedan took a sharp right into the outside lane. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t worry about you? My God, you’re a journalist and somebody wants you dead? This is news, Catherine. Jason needs to talk to you. He’s been trying to reach you all day. I can put him on now. We’re running the story on the front page of tomorrow’s paper.”

“Don’t do that! The killer doesn’t know!” Catherine heard herself shouting. She pushed ahead of the crowd at the corner and crossed Fifteenth Street on the red light, slowing for an oncoming pickup, running ahead of the sedan that screamed toward her, brakes squealing, horn honking. “If you run the story, he’ll know that I know he’s trying to kill me because of what I’m writing.”

“Well, what the hell are you writing? I haven’t seen anything in the casino stories that would make someone want to kill you. Certainly not for anything you’ve written about the Sand Creek Massacre. Please, it happened in the nineteenth century, for godssakes.”

Catherine dodged the thick black wire that ran around the parking lot and wove past the parked vehicles toward the rental car on the far side. “I’m on to something,” Catherine said. “He’s trying to stop me from making it public.”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it.” She fumbled inside the bag for the keys and pressed the unlock button. “Listen, Marjorie,” she said. “There’s a briefing Monday in Washington. I have to be there.” She started the engine and turned on the air-conditioning. A stream of cool air blasted through the heat inside the car.

“No! Marjorie, this is my story. I’m on my way to see Norman Whitehorse. I intend to find out how the tribes got involved in the first place. I want to know if the Northern Arapahos and Cheyennes are in agreement with the tribes in Oklahoma. I want to know what kind of deal Arcott and Denver Land Company have cut for themselves in the casino. You’ll have the story in time for tomorrow’s paper.”

“Marjorie, I have to do this.” Catherine pressed her thumb on the end key and steered the car across the lot and out into the traffic heading west. The numbers glowed yellow in the dashboard: 3:50 p.m. Ten minutes before the meeting with Norman. She took the viaduct across the Platte River and swung left. As she circled back toward the park where Cherry Creek flowed into the Platte, she could see kayakers paddling the rapids, bicyclists, and runners on the river walk, kids tossing Frisbees on the grassy slopes, a family spreading a blanket for a picnic. This place, this spit of land between the creek and the river, close to the log cabins and tents that the gold seekers had pitched on a rutted dirt path that would become Larimer Street, was once the site of an Arapaho village. Her people had lived here, she thought, her own people. She blinked at the salty tears stinging her eyes and blurring the road that curved ahead. She had never thought that she had her own people.

She drove past two small parking lots—both full—and kept going. The trolley that ran along the South Platte clanged past, faces of the passengers framed in the open windows. She found a space in the strip lot wedged between the walkway and the trolley tracks and started walking toward the park. The sun was still hot, a yellow glow in the sky that made the mountains loom closer, as if she might walk a little farther and lose herself among the rocky slopes. She reached the concrete landing above the steps that led down to the confluence of the rivers. The sounds of children—laughter and squealing—floated toward her from the grassy slopes. On a platform adjacent to the banks of the South Platte, men were setting up microphones and speakers. There would be a concert this evening, crowds of people would be here. Already more picnickers were staking out places on the slope. It would be a lovely summer evening, she thought. The sun would set, the sky would turn crimson, and coolness would invade the air. A normal evening, people doing normal things.

She moved back along the metal railing and folded herself into the shade near one of the posts, still watching people moving about, but watching them differently now, she realized, the way the hunted watch the hunter. She pulled her shoulder bag around, found her cell, and tapped out Norman’s number. She hadn’t talked to Norman, hadn’t heard his voice setting up the meeting. God. She’d relied on a text message! She listened to the ringing, frozen in space. The voice mail kicked in: Sorry, you’ve missed me. Leave your name and number. She hit the end key and slipped the cell back into her bag. She kept the bag in front of her. And that made her give a gasp of laughter, as if the thin leather bag could stop a bullet. He was down there somewhere, pulling the oars in a kayak, locking his bicycle to a stairway railing. He was the one waiting for her, not Norman Whitehorse.

She realized the phone was jingling, and she dug into the bag again until her fingers curled around the familiar metal shape. YellowBull, the readout said. She opened the phone and cradled it against her ear. “This is Catherine,” she said. She waited for the sound of the elder’s voice.

“Listen, Catherine. It’s been hectic as hell. Along with everything else, somebody lifted my cell out of the car this afternoon. Everything’s moving pretty fast. Congress has scheduled a briefing Monday. We’re heading to Washington. Meet with some congressmen tomorrow. Try to get their support.”

She snapped the phone shut, spun around, and headed back along the concrete walkway. The trolley rumbled behind her. She dodged the families heading toward the park, the baby strollers and dogs on leases and toddlers dawdling behind, the sound of Bustamante’s voice in her ear. He can pick you off a block away. From a rooftop or a second-floor window. You’ll never hear the shot. There were buildings around, windows that looked out over the park. He could be crouched in one of the windows waiting until she came into view. My God, he could try to shoot her here, with families strolling by. He’d missed before, and he’d killed Maury. He’d killed the cable van driver. He might kill one of the children.

She veered off the sidewalk, crossed the strip of grass, and darted across the tracks in front of the trolley. The bell clanged, brakes squealed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw orange sparks sprinkling the air. The trolley grinding to a halt. The momentum propelled her down a little slope, and then she was sliding sideways, grasping at the bushes and clumps of grass that pricked her hands. A sharp pain exploded in her knee as she came down hard on the sidewalk. She pushed herself to her feet, rubbed at the pain circling cyclonelike down her calf and up into her thigh, then made herself hurry on. The trolley screamed in outrage on the track above, but it had started moving again. She could feel the hard stares of the passengers peering down on her.

She kept going. As soon as the trolley passed, she dragged herself up the slope and across the tracks into the parking lot. Hunched over, one hand gripping her knee, she hobbled between the parked cars toward the Taurus. Then she was plunging around the curve, back out onto Speer and heading west up the hill into Highlands. She wove through the traffic, changing lanes, steering with one hand, rubbing her knee with the other. Knowing only one thing: she had to get away from Confluence Park.

He could be behind her. Oh, he was clever, Erik the professional killer. He had known she would agree to a meeting with Norman. He had found a way to get Norman’s cell. But he didn’t know which lot she would park in, from which direction she would approach the park. And that had been a mistake, she realized. He could have text messaged her to meet him in a specific lot and shot her there. But he hadn’t.

He was still playing with her. The Drake Wake, Bustamante had called it. A certain attitude that kept him from admitting she was his equal, that she could sense his presence—as real as if she had reached out and touched the dried texture of his skin. He hadn’t known, he hadn’t understood, and neither had she, she realized, that her people had been hunted before, hiding in the villages with troops bearing down, sabers and rifles flashing in the sun, artillery clanking. And whatever had allowed them to survive—some instinct, some fierce and implacable force to live—that was in her.

She turned right into a residential neighborhood and drove around several blocks, up and down alleys, all the time watching the rearview mirror and the side mirrors. An occasional car lumbered into view, then disappeared. There was no one following her. She was in a maze of bungalows, oak trees, groomed lawns, and parked cars, like the people fleeing Sand Creek, running up the creek bed, darting through a maze of dried brush and rocks and little caves dug out by hand in the sandy slopes where they sheltered for a moment before running on. They had survived. Her ancestors had been among the survivors.

She pulled against the curb ahead of a pickup and ran the palms of her hands across her cheeks. Her palms were wet, as if she’d held them under a running faucet. Oh, she was so brave, telling herself she would survive. What a bunch of crap. So many hadn’t survived. Chief Left Hand, savvy and smart and on to white people. Hadn’t he visited their ranches, sat at their kitchen tables and drunk their coffee, given interviews to their newspaper reporters? They had killed him. But his sister, Mahom, and her young children had survived. It was her oldest daughter, Margaret, who had been married to Thomas Fitzpatrick.

She turned off the air-conditioning. She was trembling with cold, and yet the sun shimmered on the hood and burst past the windshield. She could barely feel the brief waves of warmth lapping toward the cubes of ice that her arms and legs had become. Her knee felt numb with cold, and for that she was grateful. She found her cell and called Bustamante, holding her breath, half expecting the voice of an answering machine.

She kept the engine running, her eyes darting from the windows to the mirrors, taking in everything. The blue sedan pulling up across the street, the man hoisting a briefcase out of the backseat, slamming the doors and—a quick glance her way—heading up the sidewalk and disappearing inside the redbrick bungalow. The woman pushing a stroller along the sidewalk, bumping it over the curb and crossing the street. The sound of a dog yapping in a yard somewhere far away.

There was a tapping noise on the passenger window. Catherine felt her heart leap into her throat, her hands crash against the edge of the steering wheel. Bustamante was outside, and when had he arrived? He could arrive just as unexpectedly, she thought. She hit the unlock button and watched the detective slide onto the seat and pull the door shut behind him.

Bustamante nodded and looked straight ahead, and she understood that he was watching, too, studying the street and sidewalks, the fronts of the houses for anything out of the ordinary. He had a strong profile— an actual Roman nose, she thought, the long, black eyelashes, the prominent jaw. She trusted him, and there were so few people left now that she could trust with her life. Marie, certainly, Marjorie and Violet at the paper, but that was it. A small remnant that cared whether she lived or died. And now there was Bustamante.

“We will get him,” he said, looking back at her. He had dark eyes, set back beneath the cleft of his forehead. Little pinpricks of light shone in his pupils. “Trust me,” he said. Then he told her that he had brought in Lawrence this morning for an interview. And how had that gone? As well as they might expect. He looked shocked, stunned, when Bustamante had told him that a hired killer was trying to kill her. “Either he’s a very good actor, or he doesn’t know anything about it,” he said.

Catherine set her elbow on the rim of the wheel and dipped her forehead into her hand. What was it? Four nights ago? She had lain in Lawrence’s arms while he’d told her how they should be together, they never should have separated, and she had drifted along with him, believing, believing.

“There will be an unmarked police car out front,” Bustamante said. “Dark sedan, nondescript, okay? It’ll follow you back to the bed-and-breakfast.” He took a moment before he said, “I assume that’s where you’ll be going.”

She nodded. Where else would she go? Not with Lawrence. That was over now, finally over, another part of her life swept away. She said that she had to go to the town house to get clothes for Monday. She intended to go to Washington for a congressional briefing.

“You can’t protect me here,” she said, turning toward him. She was immediately sorry. They both knew it was the truth, but the truth could be hurtful. She hurried on, wanting to get past the hurt in his expression. “He doesn’t know about the hearing,” she said.

“He would have used someone other than Norman to lure me to Confluence Park, if he’d known Norman was on his way to Washington. He would have assumed I knew Norman would be leaving.” The hurt was still there, impressed in the lines fanning from his eyes, the little frown on his forehead. She heard herself yammering on about how the hearing was a big part of her story and how she had to cover it. She told him she planned to fly back Monday night. Tomorrow she’d stay in the room at the B&B.

“Call me the minute you land Monday.” He didn’t take his eyes from hers. It occurred to her then that he would be watching her closely, that he would be in the unmarked car at the restaurant tonight, and he would follow her to the B&B. She was beginning to feel warm, wrapped in the safety of the car, the sun blazing over the mountains.