He'd tried making suggestions about this case; mostly she didn't even give him an argument. Instead, she just ignored them, acted as if he hadn't even said anything.
That was bad enough; he was used to people listening to him, and asking for directions. He didn't like being ignored. But what was the most humiliating was that when he'd gone ahead and followed through with his own ideas himself, what he'd tried had usually backfired on him. Like two days ago, when he'd tried to tail Calligan's new foreman, the guy who'd moved up from assistant after the first foreman went up with the dozer....
He'd figured the foreman probably knew something, and tailing him seemed like a good idea. After all, no one on the whole crew had a better opportunity to plant something like a bomb than the foreman or the foreman's assistant. The man had spotted him, and had tried to lose him. Stupidly, he'd tried to keep up. That was when the foreman picked up his cellular phone and called the cops.
Too late, he'd seen the man talking on the handset and looking back at him. That was when David figured out what had just happened and had tried to get away.
At that point, the foreman had turned the tables on him and had started tailing him, keeping up a running cellular report as he did so.
The end of that story was inevitable. The cops had pulled him over, and he'd spent the rest of the afternoon at the station while they checked all fifty states for any outstanding warrants on him, even parking tickets. They didn't find any, but when they came back now and again to check on him, their file folder with his name on it kept getting thicker and thicker. He figured that before the afternoon was over, he'd cost them a couple hundred bucks in fax charges.
They couldn't hold him forever without charging him with something, but they could keep him for twenty-four hours at least, and they didn't have to make his stay comfortable. And they had the right to question him every time a new addition to his file came in. He could have shut up and demanded an attorney, but he figured that would only make things worse. They knew he was an activist by now, and for all he knew, Oklahoma had a 'stalker' law he could be charged under. Or they could try and hold him on suspicion in the Calligan sabotage.
So he chose the appearance of cooperation. His story, made up out of desperation, was that he was trying to see if the foreman was the source of the anti-Indian stories in some of the papers. He knew what Jennie would have done to him if he had dared to drag her name in. Finally they let him go with a warning that any more incidents would leave him open to harassment charges, and that Oklahoma did indeed have a 'stalker' law he could be prosecuted under. But now he was 'red-flagged,' and he was pretty sure they had that full file on him just waiting for the moment he did something else stupid.
He hadn't told Jennie about the incident. He knew what she'd say, and he wasn't in the mood for 'I told you so.' He hadn't tried anything that might get him the attention of the Tulsa cops again.
Whenever he suggested she might act along the lines of working Medicine, she just gave him an opaque look. He hadn't dared follow his own suggestions along those lines; for one thing, he didn't even know where to begin, and for another, even if he did, after his one and only experience with the Little People, he wasn't too eager to have anything more to do with the Spirits.
This list she had given him now-it was all perfectly ordinary stuff. Finding out if any Osage artifacts had been offered to any of the local galleries, antique stores, or collectors in the last six months. Tracking down everyone who was licensed to handle explosives in this area. Finding out everyone in the area who could be considered an expert on Osage culture who wasn't Osage. Interviewing all the men on Calligan's construction crew to find out if they had seen any person or vehicle hanging around the site a great deal, either before or after the explosion.
It looked like make-work, or something to keep him occupied while Jennie did all the important things. He resented that, but he didn't dare make the accusation that she was sloughing him off.
Why?
Because she had scared him, that was why! He had to admit that as well, and he resented both the fact and having to admit it.
She waited patiently for him to say something. He sighed with disgust.
'Isn't this more along your line?' he asked, patronizingly. 'You could do most of this on the phone-'
'I could if I had the time, which I don't,' she replied, imitating his tone perfectly. 'If I could afford a secretary, it would be his job. Since there are things to do that only I can get way with, like trading information with the cops, you're going to have to do the other stuff if you want to get anything accomplished. It's a fair distribution of effort. I have other cases to work on, David-I have to make a living. No P.I. of my small-time stature works full-time on anything. You have the time I don't to do this kind of thing.'
He came very close to wincing when she mentioned the cops, and he hoped she didn't notice. Or had she somehow found out about that little run-in he'd had? Was she rubbing it in?
It would be just like her, he thought sourly. Every time he tried to get into the dominant position with her, she just put him right back down again-and he had no doubt that if she had learned about the humiliating episode, she was saving it for later use.
'One of the guys called me this morning,' he said, after a moment. 'He got his buddy Paul Fry to keep him posted on what's going down out at the site. Calligan is trying to replace all the guys calling in 'sick,' but it seems like everybody who shows up for an interview is either an alkie or a fake.'
'A fake?' Jennie looked up from frantically scribbling something on a pad by the phone. 'What do you mean by 'a fake'?'
He straightened a little, pleased to have some knowledge she didn't have. 'According to Fry, all the ones that have gotten callbacks turn out to have given bad phone numbers. Either the numbers have been disconnected, don't exist, or no one on the other end ever heard of the guy who interviewed.'
Jennie tapped her eraser on the desktop in a curious and rhythmic pattern for a moment. 'Doesn't that strike you as odd?' she finally asked.
He made a noncommittal sound. 'I don't know. I know Billy said it was another sign of the curse on Calligan.'
Jennie tossed her head, so that her hair whipped over her shoulder, and snorted. 'Right. I don't think so. Not unless that particular lot of mi-ah-luschka has learned how to work the phone system. It takes a lot of power to fake out the phone lines, and a lot more knowledge that I don't think they have.'
She didn't add and I should know, but she might just as well have. Both the authoritative tone of her voice and the fact that she mentioned it could be done at all confirmed his hunch that she had somehow messed with the phone system when he had tried to call her to chew her out.
And a little cold chill ran up his spine for a, moment or two. A Medicine Woman powerful enough to mess with the phone system-what did that take, anyway? Was there anything she couldn't do? Or-
He caught himself up sharply. Dammit! She did it to me again!
'So what do you think is happening?' he asked.
'My best guess is that someone might just be sending ringers over to Calligan to keep him from filling those slots.' She gave him a sharp look. 'That 'someone' wouldn't be you, would it?'
He brought his head up indignantly. 'Me? Why the hell would I do something like that?'
'To keep Calligan from filling those slots,' she said, logically. 'Those are jobs theoretically being taken away from Indians. It would be a good way to preserve them until our guys came off the sick list.'
'Oh.' Damn, he wished he had thought of that one! 'No, it isn't me.'
'Then maybe I ought to find out if there really is a plot, because I don't think the Little People are behind this one.'
'Neither do I,' he told her-and actually, that did agree with the feeling he'd gotten when Billy told him this morning. He was beginning to get a feel for which incidents were caused by the mi-ah-luschka and which by purely human hands.
Not that the 'feeling' made him any more comfortable. He would really rather not have anything to do with Medicine at all, except admire the showmanship from afar...
Are you a shaman, or are you a showman? one of his friends used to ask the people he suspected of fakery, or of catering to the supermarket psychic crowd. Up until last night he would have said that anyone who claimed to be the former was really the latter.
Until now. . . .
'How sure are you about this 'false trail' stuff?' he asked, unwilling to make the concession, but also unwilling to let her get away with putting on a show rather than giving him real facts.
