The Evil That Men Do Read online

  “They could do both,” threw in Tommy. “Many religious leaders hold other jobs.”

  “Perhaps,” said Melanie. “But in any case my mother was highly conflicted. As Huruku, she was sworn to defend the sacred oral traditions. But as a thoughtful person aware of the modern world, she wanted to save the wisdom, lore, and science of our people in a more accessible form. I believe Professor Akrich encouraged her and told her it was her right as Huruku to do this.”

  “But see how it turned out, Mulakaniya-mo. Aren’t we like the Americans in Vietnam who ‘destroyed the village to save the village’? Did our gods not make their will known?”

  “You know I don’t believe our gods, or anybody’s gods, intervene in our lives on earth,” retorted Melanie. “Not any more. Not since last contact. We control our own destiny. Even the ancient ones believed that.”

  “We must agree to disagree on this matter,” said Tommy.

  “When I got news of my mother,” continued Melanie, “I naturally came home. It took a couple of days. I hitched a ride on a mail plane to get to where I could fly back on commercial airliners. I arrived barely in time for the funeral.”

  She stood up and walked to the mantel over which hung the painting that bore her mother’s name, a night scene with a dozen bright splotches of starry yellow. She looked into the painting as she spoke.

  “My mother had few possessions apart from the house and furniture. She valued knowledge, not wealth; beauty over riches. When I went to our house, I was in a sorry state. The sudden loss of her, so young, relatively, was a terrible shock. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t bring myself to go into her bedroom, where she kept her personal things. I thought I’d ask someone to help me. Then I remembered her writing. If it was discovered that my mother, of all people, had blasphemed in this way, her memory would be stained.”

  Izzie had risen and was nuzzling Melanie’s hand, copping some head rubs and ear strokes. Melanie turned away from the mantel and obliged the big dog, cuddling a silky ear in her little hand and bending down to kiss the black muzzle.

  “Before retrieving the notebooks, before even entering that dread room, while my head was relatively clear, I had to decide what I would do. I considered burning them outright. If I’d done that, I could never have prayed to my mother’s spirit with a full heart. I knew such an act would be against her wishes. I thought about turning them over to Tommy, the new Huruku. But Tommy had enough burdens and enough doubts. The revelation of my mother’s tradition-breaking writing would weigh too heavily on him.”

  Tommy stirred as if he were about to protest, but remained silent. Melanie returned to the sofa to sit next to me, coaxing the compliant Labrador to put his head in her lap.

  “In the end, I decided not to decide. I’d lock up the notebooks, and when my grieving was over, take up the question afresh. After the burial I went home, emptied a small suitcase, found the key to its locks, and proceeded to carry out my plan. I brushed past my mother’s clothes and found the bookcase. The notebooks weren’t there. I didn’t panic. I thought she had a better hiding place. I searched the closet and her room thoroughly, ignoring the grief that her personal belongings aroused in me. I couldn’t find the books in the bedroom, so I continued through the rest of the house. I grew up in that house, and apart from my mother’s room, I knew every nook and cranny. It was easier than looking for money or jewelry. Seven notebooks take up a lot of space. I would’ve found them if they were there.”

  She turned to look at Tommy.

  “Then I thought of you. You had taken charge of the death rituals, and of removing her body. Maybe you’d stumbled across the notebooks and taken them. I had to confide in you, and I must say you were a bit shocked when I did.”

  “To put it mildly!” exclaimed Tommy. “I swore by your mother’s sacred soul that I knew nothing about them.”

  “Oh yes,” said Melanie, “and I believed you. And wasn’t it amazing! As we wondered about their disappearance, we both had the same thought at the same time, and the same word formed on our lips.”

  Chapter 16

  Akrich, they both said in unison.

  “Professor Akrich often stayed in my mother’s house when he was on the reservation,” continued Melanie. “He was like family. I guess you know he discovered her body after she passed.”

  I nodded.

  “My mother wasn’t open about her writing. She did it in the privacy of her bedroom, which doubled as a study. No one was allowed in that part of the house, not even me. My father died when I was very young. As a child, if my mother was in her room and I needed her, I’d call her and she’d come to me. When I had nightmares she would comfort me and sleep with me in my bed, never me in her bed. Still, Akrich may well have known of her writing and taken the notebooks to protect her. He would understand the impact of their discovery by someone like Tommy.”

  Melanie paused and Tommy took the opportunity to offer us something to drink. Melanie had been talking non-stop. She asked for tea. Tommy and I had diet Cokes. Izzie got a XXXL dog biscuit and resettled himself by Tommy, munching contentedly.

  Tommy picked up the story’s thread. “Julius moved out of Starry Night’s house after she died, into the house where students usually lived. He asked for, and received, permission to attend the funeral rites. Starry was much beloved by our people, and it’s our custom to give everyone a chance to express their feelings. Julius, too, spoke briefly in Churok. He was the first non-Churok ever to do so.”

  “I still remember how amazed I was to hear an Anglo speaking Churok nearly flawlessly,” added Melanie. “And his words were sweet and sincere, and people were moved.”

  “On the final day,” continued Tommy, “there was a funeral procession to the Churok burial grounds. It was miles long. I didn’t get home until well after the final prayers because of my new responsibilities. I hadn’t been home half an hour when Melanie called. She asked me to come to Starry’s house, her house now. Her voice had an edge that urged me to go immediately. When I got there she told me about the notebooks, and we knew we had to take Julius into our confidence.”

  Melanie interrupted. “This was a tough decision, because even though we agreed that Julius was the logical suspect, if he didn’t know, and there was something else happening—maybe they were in a bank vault or something, who knew—then another person would be in on it. A Churok proverb goes: A secret known to three is like water in a sieve. It rhymes in Churok, by the way.”

  She smiled, now, finally, a bit more relaxed.

  “We had little choice,” resumed Tommy. “I called him and he came right over. When he saw that we were alone, he went out to his car and returned with the notebooks. The look of relief on our faces was mirrored in his own when he saw that we knew what they were. He explained that Starry had confided in him because she needed his help in writing everything correctly.”

  It was my turn to interrupt. “But if he took them to keep Tommy from finding them, and then was relieved later that Tommy knew—” I was thinking aloud—“then something still doesn’t add up.”

  Melanie said, “I suppose he couldn’t be sure who might find them, and what the consequences would be. I think he was afraid both of their being discovered, and his being blamed for encouraging my mother; and of them not being discovered, and him bearing the knowledge of them and not knowing what to do.”

  “We may never know what made Julius act,” said Tommy. “At the time, I thanked him for being forthright and returning the notebooks. He was very concerned about their fate. He said he’d reconsidered the wisdom of writing down the sacred words, and was no longer in favor of it.”

  “Which surprised me, I have to say,” injected Melanie, “given that he had been a prime motivator in having my mother create them.”

  “Nonetheless, he was very persuasive,” said Tommy. “He said that his professor at UCLA, William Gribith, who is a renowned anthropologist and friend of the Churoks, favored the oral tradition.”r />
  “But it wasn’t clear that Professor Gribith was advocating the destruction of the notebooks. It was vague, and I wasn’t about to give in to that,” said Melanie.

  “Spell the professor’s name for me, please,” I asked.

  “G-r-i-b-i-t-h,” said Tommy. I jotted it down; it was another thread in the weave of this mystery.

  Tommy went on. “For the sake of preserving the Churok oral tradition, Julius begged me to destroy the notebooks. I was inclined to do so but Melanie wouldn’t hear of it. In the end, I promised to defer my decision for a year, and to pray to our gods for guidance.”

  “When the year was up, then what?” I ventured.

  “I postponed my decision for another year, then another and another. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy the work. I couldn’t bring myself to add to it, or condone it. It’s not our way. My life’s ambition is to preserve the Churok Nation. In America, which I love as I do my own people, it’s possible to be both Churok and American. Many groups do it. Part of what I liked about Julius is that he manages to be both an orthodox Jew and an American.”

  “Do you still agonize over these notes?” I asked.

  This time Melanie answered, her brow furrowing. “They disappeared. They’re gone. It happened—what would you say, Tommy?—sometime in the past six months.”

  Tommy nodded agreement.

  “You see why,” continued Melanie, “even apart from my dreams, there’s a logical reason for concern.”

  “Do the notebooks have any actual value?” I asked, and immediately regretted my choice of words. Before I could correct myself, Tommy answered.

  “Dollar-value, no. No self-respecting institution would traffic in such goods. Their true value is cultural.”

  “Do you have any idea who might steal them?”

  “If their existence were known, any number of Churoks might seek to destroy them,” answered Tommy.

  “But nobody knew about them,” I said.

  “Three of us knew, originally. It’s possible that Julius confided in one or more of his students, who’ve been coming to the reservation for years. Perhaps they let something slip. I’d almost rather see the notebooks destroyed than turn up in the wrong hands to embarrass us.”

  Melanie winced but didn’t say anything.

  “Could a student have stolen them?”

  “They weren’t in a bank vault,” said Tommy. “Technically, they belong to Melanie.”

  “I kept them in the same closet where my mother kept them. It never occurred to me that I needed to protect them because I didn’t think anyone but us knew about them. My house would be easy enough to burgle. Heck, we Churoks don’t lock up much, do we, Tommy? We don’t steal from each other, and we don’t have enough to make it worth an outsider’s trouble.”

  “Has there been any trace of the notebooks since? Any hint of who might have them?” I asked.

  “None at all,” answered Tommy.

  “When did you last see them?” I asked Melanie.

  “I remember seeing the suitcase in December because that’s where I stashed holiday presents after I wrapped them.”

  “Holiday presents?” I asked.

  “We Churoks celebrate the Winter Solstice. It hasn’t always been an important day in our history, but it gives us an excuse to join in the festivities of the season. A bit like the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. Julius once explained to me that it isn’t a high holiday in Judaism, but its nearness to Christmas makes it more widely celebrated.”

  It was late afternoon. The sun already was approaching the tops of the mountains, and even though there were hours of daylight remaining, we would soon be in shadows. I asked to use the bathroom. I washed my hands and rooted around in my handbag a bit to kill time. I thought I’d give Tommy and Melanie a few moments alone to confer. When I returned, I asked if they could add anything more. Both shook their heads.

  It took about five minutes of good-byeing to get away. Both Tommy and Melanie expressed a sincere desire to help. I gave a business card to Melanie with the usual request. I started to leave but Izzie had planted himself squarely across the front door and I wasn’t sure how to act. My greyhounds don’t do that sort of thing.

  “Move, Izzie,” growled Tommy. The big dog lifted his head toward me.

  “He wants to say goodbye,” said Melanie.

  I put my hand on his head, which he maneuvered so that my fingers were behind his left ear. I gave him some scratches and said, “Bye-bye, Izzie.” This seemed to satisfy him and he moved out of the way as if to say, “Permission to leave granted.”

  I drove to town and stopped at a Quickie Mart gas station. I filled up and asked for my change in quarters when I paid. A decrepit phone booth, soon to be a relic of the twentieth century, found only in history museums, stood sadly askew outside the door of the little convenience store. The phone still worked, however. I needed to make some calls and there wasn’t any cellular service. A call to directory assistance got me UCLA’s main number and connected me to it. The operator at the central switchboard transferred me to Professor Gribith’s office.

  “This is Anna. How may I help you?”

  She helped me by making a 10:00 appointment with Dr. Gribith for the next morning.

  I called John’s phone at home. The machine answered and I keyed in the code that causes it to playback messages. There was one from Charles, a terse “Please call me ASAP.” Nothing from Lucy, or the Worthingtons regarding her. John’s office phone had no messages.

  I tried Charles at work and the secretary told me he was in a meeting. I explained that I was outside of the cellular area and would call back when I could, and to please ask Charles to wait for my call.

  I wanted to update my files before I forgot any details, but I didn’t want to take the time. I figured I could review everything in my head while I drove. That would keep my mind off the tedious drive between Makrui and the 101.

  I had a trove of new information. I began my rumination with the Lucky-U gold mine. Suppose it was worth a fortune and only Troy knew? That gave him motivation to murder Judy. Who murdered Troy? Another owner, Tommy, who might easily be privy to Mojave Analytical’s results? Or could Tommy commit both murders? He was strong enough, probably clever enough, but I was having trouble imagining him a murderer. I decided to trust my instincts about Tommy, ignoring the lamentable occasions when my instincts had been all wrong—I was hoping they’d improved.

  Suppose the mine was worthless and Troy had salted it, maybe conspiring with Judy, or even Tommy, to bilk some hapless buyer. It wouldn’t be a first, but unless the sale actually happened or was pending, the motive for murder was weak. I didn’t know for sure that a sale hadn’t taken place, but it would be difficult with two owners out of the country. I put that one in a do-not-open-until-all-else-fails file.

  I considered the possibility that someone else knew the mine was valuable and thought only Judy and Troy knew. With them eliminated, they could persuade the other three partners to sell cheaply. I considered variations of these ideas. None appealed to me. None rose above the threshold of plausibility. It made my head throb. I lowered the driver side window and let the late afternoon breezes sweeping down the Sierra wash over me.

  My head cleared within a few minutes, and in a few more minutes, it was too cold in the mountain air. I raised the window and moved mentally on to the entanglements created by Starry’s notebooks. Judy steals ’em, and someone steals ’em back, leaving Judy dancing in the breeze. Troy finds out and he dances, too. Or Troy steals ’em from Judy but he gets caught and pays the ultimate price. Who were those assholes in the mine, anyway? Hell, maybe the notebooks were stashed there. It’s dry, and not a likely place to look. That might account for the assault on Charles and me.

  But notebooks? People kill for strange reasons, but why notebooks? It would be helpful to know what was worth killing for in those pages. The true location of the Garden of Eden? Directions to the Fountain of Youth? Maps to buried treasure? Something abo
ut the Lucky U? That’s a thought. So Judy and Troy steal and translate the notes about the gold mine. Based on what they learn, they lease the mine. They bring Tommy in because they need a Churok. The other two I wasn’t sure about. Maybe they thought it would dilute suspicion when the mine yielded its fortune.

  A fine theory, but the timing of events was at odds with the facts. They leased the mine before the notebooks had disappeared. It could be that they stole enough peeks into the writing to know the mine held some kind of secret. They leased the mine and then found they needed to study the notebooks in detail. That’s when they stole them outright. Or maybe they hid or destroyed the notebooks because they didn’t want others making the discovery.

  So intent was I on these thoughts that I took a curve too fast and found myself staring at the left front headlight of a Mack truck. I swerved out of the way just as a blast from its horn reached me. I needed to let matters simmer in my subconscious and think of something more pleasant and less distracting. I opted for Charles.

  It was a good choice because I realized that I’d forgotten to call him. I powered up my flip phone and the roam light came on. I stopped well off the road to make the call. The near head-on had made me a bit more cautious than usual. This time I caught Charles in his office.

  “I miss you already,” he said. “San Francisco spoiled me.”

  “Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. There isn’t much in the way of telephones or cellular service out here.”

  “Yes, I remember that. Pretty drive through the mountains, though. Are you all right? I’ve been jittery since last night.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How about you? Found any gentlemen to shoot?”

  He laughed. “Not yet, but I’m looking.” He paused a moment. “I think I have some news.”

  “Lucy,” I cried, and felt my knees go rubbery.