around, no longer even shaky. Martti, Tuuli, and the night agent stayed to wait for the sheriff's deputy.
38
CLOSURE
Their three-man security escort arrived from L.A. while the deputy was still asking questions. When the deputy left for Flagstaff, they drove to Tuba City with their escort, and checked in at a motel room. Physically and emotionally spent, they fell asleep without rehashing the events. The next day their escort drove them back to the park as planned, where they found the travel van undamaged, though the car gun was gone. From there, Martti and Tuuli drove south to Williams, then west and north to discover Las Vegas.
On the road, Martti asked questions. The first was: Why had she taken her Colt into Barney Canyon with her? At best she didn't like to carry it, and in the park it was illegal.
She hadn't even thought about it at the time, she said. Probably it was a psychic impulse acting subliminally.
He mulled that over, unsure that something acting subliminally qualified as psychic, then decided he might be placing improper constraints on the concept.
He remembered vaguely her crying 'OUT! OUT!' during his seizure at Tusayan. What, he asked, had she meant by that?
There'd been a being, she said, someone not in a body, enveloping Martti, stopping his heart. An enraged someone. She'd attacked it, thrown her intention at it like a war axe, and it had withdrawn as if snapped back to its body by some great rubber band. She'd gotten a sense of someone insane, whether chronically or in temporary rage she didn't know.
'Could it come back and attack one of us again?' The thought made him uncomfortable.
'Possibly, but not soon.'
He wondered how she could sound so sure of herself, but didn't question her on it. Again he brought up the psychic photographer in North Hollywood, and the picture she'd gotten of him with the spirit behind him. And what she'd said about someone acting through her when she took it. Some woman, physically small.
Tuuli laughed. It could have been, she said, she could have been acting subliminally. She'd like to meet this psychic photographer.
He'd driven nearly to Hoover Dam before he asked the next question: Could anyone learn to be psychic like she was? Perhaps by going to Spirit Ranch and being taught there?
She shook her head. Even if everyone had the potential, which she wasn't sure of, it didn't seem doable yet to teach it broadly. Besides, in his way he was already psychic. Look at the 'coincidences' and 'lucky hunches' that had been so important in his life.
He left it at that. It made as much sense to him as any of the rest of it. He thought about asking her whether she read his sensations when they were making love, but decided not to. Best not to mess with a good thing. Maybe that was subliminal too, and talking about it might kill it.
* * *
Two nights and a day in Las Vegas were enough for both of them. Martti was no gambler, but he'd urged Tuuli to try, wondering if her psychic power would bring a payoff. She was willing; willing and curious. She made a bit on the slots, a bit on the wheel, and somewhat more on the crap tables—enough to cover room and meals, but not a lot more. Nothing conspicuous.
* * *
They spent a short day driving to Tahoe, and a night there at Rollins' Casino Hotel. They liked the lake best, and the forest and mountains.
* * *
Yosemite was beautiful, even the thick flurry of snow—great wet flakes that met them on the pass, pelting their windshield, melting on the highway. The stands of red fir, so straight and clean, so uniform and dense, were the most handsome forest he thought he'd ever seen. When they visited Tuolumne Meadow, late that day, Tuuli said there'd been a strong but peaceful spirit living there in the past, but it had left. She didn't say how she knew, but he decided that if she said so, it was probably true.
For some reason he wondered about later, he asked if the trees and mountains had spirits of their own. She said they did, but those she sensed here were simple spirits of little force or reach, not the sort that had dwelt in the valley, or in Humphrey Peak or Sipapu.
* * *
The next afternoon they were driving west on Highway 46, through the hills and vineyards southwest of Paso Robles, when they saw a funeral procession approaching. A small one: a hearse and four cars. Tuuli was at the wheel, and pulled off on the shoulder to watch it pass, regarding it thoughtfully.
Martti saw the goose bumps on her forearms, and when the procession had passed, asked 'Why the stop?'
'I needed to see that,' she said. 'That funeral procession. It's the reason I wanted to take the coast route south, instead of I-5.'
He remembered their discussion about the route, before they'd left Yosemite. They'd decided on I-5, then somehow ended up on this road. 'And you knew there'd be this funeral procession?'
'Not consciously.'
'I remember thinking at the time,' she went on, 'that my reasons felt like rationalizations, and I wondered what the real reason was.'
'Who died?'
'Ask me who killed him.'
