the in situ plant, but he'll never stop hassling me. They'll never have to pay for killing Peter.' She rode on and added quietly, 'And I don't need the past coming back anymore. I don't want an ongoing feud with Donny. I just want a new life. I have a chance to do things right now. I've already waited long enough.'
Cree had no answer. She was glad Julieta saw her own path in the right way. But it was so wrong for them to go unpunished. She felt Julieta's despondency come over her.
They rode in silence for a few minutes.
'You know,' Joyce said to no one in particular, 'I learned some interesting things while I was out poking around. A lot of stuff on the McCartys and their mines, and some fascinating stuff about Navajo traditions. One of the old ceremonies is called… what was it, something like Turning the Basket. It's used if the patient's suffering is inflicted by someone else, like a bad person or a witch. The medicine man turns the evil back on the person who sent it. Rebounds it. It cures the sick person and punishes the wrongdoer in one swell foop. Kind of got me thinking.' Maybe it was just the lingering endorphin high from her demolition of Nick Stephanovic, but her small sharklike grin never wavered.
Julieta nodded distractedly. Cree thought about whether such a ceremony might be of symbolic value for Tommy. But he'd been put through a lot of curing, an endless month of fuss and bother. Sometimes you had to let it go, Cree thought. Sometimes justice took the long way around, just like love. Sometimes peace of mind meant relinquishing things. It seemed intolerable to let Nick and Donny get by without consequences, but there wasn't anything anyone could do about it.
Joyce looked over at her thoughtfully, seemed about to say more, but then clammed up for the rest of the ride.
52
Seattle. Monday, back at the office. Eight a.m. sharp. Joyce unlocked the door to PRA's suite, turned on the lights, tossed the pile of mail onto her desk. The light on the message machine was blinking and the digital readout told her that there were thirty-two messages waiting. Through the door to Cree's room, she glimpsed the big views of Elliott Bay and the smile of bright blue sky above. She and Ed had arrived Sunday midafternoon, and she'd spent the rest of the day just relaxing and mooning around. She'd done some stretching to ease the soreness in her thighs, then went for a run along the shore of Lake Washington. The rez was great, but it sure felt good to be around a body of water again.
Joyce measured ground Nicaraguan beans into a paper filter, filled the reservoir of the coffee machine, and turned it on. As it perked, she listened to the calls and took notes on pink message slips for Cree and Ed. By the time she was done, the coffee was ready. She poured a mug and took it and the mail into Cree's office, where the Bay and the Sound could keep her company as she went through the week's correspondence.
Between the calls and the letters, there looked to be some promising cases in their future; Ed would be glad to see this stuff when he came in this afternoon. Cree, too, when she got back later in the week and once she got over the exhaustion and existential upheaval that would likely follow the Oak Springs case. Cree was on a perpetual learning curve, rising so steeply Joyce was sure it would one day take her right off the planet. Which day Joyce was determined to forestall as long as possible.
A couple of inquiries had come from people who'd been seeing glowing orbs, one in San Francisco and one right here in Washington, not far from Seattle; Ed would like that, because orb reports were on the increase and the phenomenon promised to be particularly susceptible to physical analysis. There were people troubled by standard- issue phantoms in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota; the person in Maine said hers looked like a druid shaman, like old representations of Merlin. Coincidentally, she claimed to live near one of the supposed pre-Columbian, pre-Viking druidic archaeological sites that occurred throughout the Northeast. Another letter requested help on a poltergeist case in Kentucky and came complete with newspaper clippings with photos of household objects hurtling through the air. Poltergeists always gave Joyce a shiver.
There was even a terse letter from Mason Ambrose in Geneva, accompanied by a check for five grand; the old creep was donating Cree's fee on behalf of Oak Springs School. Trying to redeem himself. Joyce was glad to see the check, because most of the remaining envelopes contained bills and the PRA bank account was, as always, running on fumes.
When she finished sorting and filing, she got herself another cup of coffee, put her feet up on Cree's desk, and stared out the window. She thought back with satisfaction to that last day and night in Oak Springs, which made up for some of the frustrations of the rest of the investigation.
Saturday night, after booking seats for the return flight, she had opted to stay with Cree at the school in the hope that there'd be time in the morning to squeeze in one last horse ride, which she'd decided was easily as good as sex and had fewer risks. Plus there was some other business to see to.
After Julieta had gone back to the faculty residence, she and Cree spent the evening in the big ward room, talking only occasionally. Cree was exhausted and feeling alternately good and then unsettled about the outcome here. They agreed it had been an instructive case, and most of its details had worked out well, but they'd also agreed that a smack upside the head for Nick and some fleeting humiliation for Donny wasn't enough. The absence of justice was a real craw sticker. There certainly was a lot of comeuppance due those two. And due Lynn Pierce, who had done her best to bring the school down. Joyce had been tempted to tell Cree what she'd found and figured out during her research, but Cree was not in a receptive state of mind for such things. And anyway, some details were best kept to yourself.
Cree went on about how she felt only pity for the nurse: perpetually grieving for her long-dead husband, wounded, consumed with envy, fragile, but concealing it all with her coy, insinuating smugness. It wasn't easy to be Lynn Pierce, Cree said, and it couldn't be much fun.
Firing Lynn and throwing some anxiety Donny's way was about as far as it could go for Julieta, Cree said. Julieta had to move on now; she didn't need obsessive concerns for justice or revenge complicating things. It was more important now for her to find the gentleness in herself, to be free from the past and let her love blossom with the good-looking doctor-yaddah, yaddah, all the therapy hooey dear Cree was so prone to.
Actually, Joyce didn't disagree with her in the slightest. But.
Later, when she was sure Cree was asleep, she had gathered up the photocopies she'd made at the newspaper archives, and scanned them again to make sure she had the details right. It was ten-thirty when she went to find the nurse.
Cree and Julieta need never know.
Lynn Pierce wasn't in her bedroom, but Joyce found her in the examining room, tidying up. The silver head bobbed and its thick braid swung as Lynn stooped to pick something up. When she sensed Joyce in the doorway, she straightened and turned quickly, her eyes so wide the bronze speck glinted in the lights.
'Didn't mean to startle you,' Joyce said. 'I called out from the hallway, but I guess you didn't hear me.'
'I'm about to go to bed. Do you need something?'
'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
