Last Chants by Lia Matera Read Free Book Online

fact. It was a flat, hot shrine to suburban strip malls. If I were a graphics designer, a computer artist or engineer, I’d rather live in the mountains and commute down when necessary. But I’d never have guessed the commute was so convenient.
    By the time I left the market, the restaurant coffee had kicked in, cheering me. I was enjoying the strangeness of my unexpected new hairstyle. I was seeing new sights.
    Maybe in my heart of hearts, I was happy not to be lawyering this morning. I was happy to be out in the world, not trapped at a desk.
    I walked back up the town’s only business street. I passed the Cyberdelics group leaving the restaurant. They stared at me curiously—I doubted they had many strangers in town—but didn’t seem to recognize me.
    Anonymity was a wonderful feeling. There was no possibility of running into my parents here, no need to chat with street people I’d come to know by name, no chance of small talk with someone I’d gone to law school with, no reason to worry about how I looked, how much friendliness I could muster, how much change I had in my pockets.
    Just when I was ready to do something wild—break into a smile perhaps—I saw a stack of pamphlet-thin newspapers outside a drugstore. The headline read, LOCAL MAN MURDERED . Beneath it was a black-and-white photo of a handsome man with long black hair. It was captioned, “Billy Seawuit, recent to BC, killed in Bowl Rock.”
    I put my bag of groceries down and stared. No wonder Arthur felt we’d come to the right place, that he could “speak” to his murdered assistant here. No wonder Edward Hershey felt it was, on the contrary, the wrong place for Arthur to be.
    It was where Arthur’s assistant had most recently lived. It was the site—somewhere in these mountains—of his murder.
    In delivering Arthur from the police, I’d brought him to the scene of a worse crime. If the man with the scarf had been trying to frame Arthur by handing him the murder weapon, I’d simultaneously foiled the plot and breathed new life into it.
    I stared at the newspaper, feeling it must be impossible. I reviewed recent reality: It was Arthur who’d brought up coming to Santa Cruz. And I’d jumped at the suggestion; Edward lived here and Edward owed me a favor. Now I realized Arthur had wanted to follow up news accounts of Seawuit’s murder.
    I hadn’t thought to question Arthur’s motives. I hadn’t thought to ask where Seawuit died. I’d blown my chance to cheat irony.
    Of all the luck: Edward having a cabin here. But he was an outdoorsman, a hiker, a sportfisher, a rock climber; I supposed it made sense. Irony always did.
    Even encountering Curtis & Huston’s clients made sense, now that I knew Boulder Creek was half an hour from the heart of the computer industry.
    What I didn’t understand was why a scholar’s assistant would come here.
    As if in response, the opening sentence of the newspaper article read: “Billy Seawuit joined our community last winter along with famous mythologist Arthur Kenna, best known for the public television series Violence, Myth and Culture. The pair were hired as consultants by local computer firm, Cyberdelics.”
    Billy Seawuit had come here to work for Cyberdelics? Doing what?
    I skimmed the rest of the article. Seawuit was known to be a totem pole carver from Canada. He was found dead in Bowl Rock on Sunday. Police were withholding details pending further investigation.
    A clerk stepped out of the drugstore. “Did you want that?” she asked me.
    â€œYes.” I handed her two quarters, and she handed one back.
    â€œDid you know him?”
    â€œNo. Did you?”
    â€œI wish. They say he was something. But Toni and Galen kept him pretty much to themselves. Either that or Toni shell-shocked him. That’s where he was staying, at Toni and Galen’s.”
    â€œShell-shocked