Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear Read Free Book Online Page A

have been like for the victims when the place burned in A.D. 1263.
    Dusty slid into the driver’s seat and propped his arms on the steering wheel, only to stare out at the darkness in silence. She studied his hunched figure: a muscular cowboy-hatted shadow.
    Hesitantly, he said, “It’s Halloween. Trick or treat. I could set you up for the night. Save you the cost of a motel. My couch makes into a bed.”
    She watched him for a moment, the silence stretching. What was it about him that she had come to like? They were oil and water. She, the calculating Canadian scientist with impeccable credentials, he a footloose American dirt archaeologist with a clouded reputation. Yet they shared a love of antiquity—of people who
had lived long ago. In the beginning, when they’d first met on a dig in upstate New York, they had hated each other on sight.
    “You sure you want to do that?” The words formed easily, as if of their own volition.
    “What’s life for if you can’t live dangerously?” He reached for the ignition. Pulling away from the curb, he drove toward the looming bulk of the Hotel Loretto, its pueblo architecture outlined with glowing luminarias: plastic lights made to look like candles glowing in paper bags. How Southwestern, totally in fitting with Santa Fe’s special charm. They crossed the river and he took a right onto Alameda, turned again at Paseo de Peralta, then took a left onto Canyon Road. A strip of mellow adobe-walled galleries lined the way. She peered at each, wondering at the interiors.
    “You live close to here?”
    “End of the road,” he told her, and gestured at the galleries. “None of this was here when Dad bought the property in the fifties.”
    He said no more as they drove up the winding road past painters’, sculptors’, and metalworkers’ studios, each illuminated by bright lights. Occasional pedestrians strode along the tree-lined sidewalks, their bodies muffled in coats. Some walked dogs. They all looked like the leisurely rich. At least, all but the children in their costumes. They looked like kids anywhere, albeit, when she looked more closely, they were really decked out. No old sheets with holes cut in them, but slickly tailored costumes that made them look like the real thing. To her amusement, costumes of the American president were vogue. It struck her that in the modern world, politicians gave people more nightmares than ghosts or goblins did.
    “Your father must have been doing well. I heard that he came from a rich family back East.”
    “Dad had a falling out with his family. They disinherited him when he ran off from the university to become
an archaeologist.” He pointed to one of the huge Spanish-style houses. “Like I said, this wasn’t here back in the fifties when Dad bought the place. I live in, well, more humble settings.”
    They took the jog in the road to Upper Canyon; she watched the million-dollar houses with glowing jack-o’ -lanterns atop adobe walls pass by her window, and waited, unwilling to press him about the darkness in his voice. Anytime his father, Samuel Stewart, cropped into the conversation, Dusty grew morose.
    At the end of the road, just before the curve that would take them back across the Santa Fe River, he pulled into a narrow dirt track that led down into the trees. The Bronco’s lights illuminated a ratty-looking 1950s vintage trailer. Aluminum-sided, painted with what looked like flaking turquoise paint, it seemed to hunch in the night, a forlorn orphan dwarfed by high-dollar splendor.
    Dusty stopped them before a plywood porch. A rusty metal barbecue stood to one side. After he shut off the truck, he sat for a moment in silence, then said, “Wait a minute. I’m out of my mind. You’d be a lot more comfortable in a—”
    “I’ll be fine, Dusty. Thank you.”
    She took matters into her own hands and stepped out into the late October night. She could smell damp soil and wood smoke in the air. Overhead, through the