“You put that down on the bar, and step away from it,” he said, drawing his own.
“Sure, officer. No problem.” Dave put down the pistol and stepped down the bar toward where George was standing.
The second cop in the door had his own gun out, and he noticed No-Bath’s buddy trying to fade toward the door to the beer garden.
“I don’t think so, friend,” the cop said, motioning for stillness. “You get down on the floor and assume the position. Besides, just so you know, Sergeant Packer is out there.”
Despite himself, Harry snickered.
“What’s that about, friend?” the first cop said, with just a hint of menace.
“Not Sergeant Al Packer?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because that makes it officially old home night at the Piranha Tavern,” Harry chortled. “Packer, George here, Dave behind the bar there and me, we all served together in ’Nam.”
Harry raised his voice. “Hey, Cannibal, get in here!”
The beer garden door opened and admitted a huge black man in the uniform of the King County Sherriff’s Office, franked with the Maple Valley Police logo.
“Shit, I should have known it was you two.” He looked at Dave. “You three. What else?”
The first cop looked at his sergeant. “You actually know these guys?”
“I know him, him, and him,” the big black cop said, pointing to Dave, Harry and George in turn. “I don’t know him, or him, or the very late and probably unlamented him, over there on the floor.”
“I’m sorry, Al,” Dave said, “but he pulled a gun, and I didn’t have much choice. He hurried me.”
“Well, we can’t call it suicide by cop, because you ain’t one any more,” Packer said, “but suicide by bartender could be misunderstood. Too bad the dumb git didn’t just shoot himself.”
“All right. You,” he pointed at the first cop, “get these two uglies over to the lockup. Somebody can take them down to the Justice Center in Kent later.
You,” he pointed to the second cop, “get on the horn and get the coroner’s wagon up here. You,” he pointed to the third cop, just coming in the door, “get Mr. Mason and Mr. Wilson and Mr. Smith,” he pointed at George, Harry, and Dave in turn, “to give you statements, then turn ’em loose. I know where to find them if something doesn’t check out.”
Packer turned and stomped out of the bar.
The first cop muscled Jones and his remaining buddy out of the tavern. The third cop motioned Harry over to where Dave and George were standing at the bar.
“I’m Officer McDonald. I’ll be taking your statements,” he said, all formal and professional. Then, “Cannibal? You called the sergeant ‘Cannibal’?”
Dave guffawed. “Harry, you tell him.”
“Do you know the sergeant’s full name, officer?”
“Well, I assume it is Alfred Packer . . .”
“You’d assume wrong. You know what ‘assume’ means, don’t you? Well, ‘Cannibal’ isn’t Alfred, he’s Alferd. Alferd E. in fact.”
McDonald stared at Harry uncomprehendingly.
In a lugubrious voice, George began to chant, “Alferd E. Packer left the Ute Indians camp with a party of six in February of 1874 and came back alone. When the judge sentenced him, the judge said, ‘Al Packer, you maneating sonofabitch, there was only eight Democrats in San Juan county, and you et six of ’em!’ ”
McDonald shoved his fist into his mouth to keep from laughing out loud at his chief’s unfortunate name.
“Al’s mom was pretty high when she named him, and she wasn’t ever a good speller. She had no idea who Alferd Packer had been. So it was like naming Al ‘Sue’!” Harry chortled.
McDonald visibly pulled himself together. “Okay, now why did these guys come after you? We know that much from talking to the people outside, so let’s start there.”
Harry said, “The ringleader is a man named Darryl Jones. He has a beef with me from earlier today. It appears that Darryl was left paraplegic in a traffic accident supposedly caused by one of Federal Mutual Insurance Company’s insured.”
McDonald shook his head. “Didn’t look very paraplegic to me, Mr. Wilson.”
“That’s Harry, Officer. He didn’t look very paraplegic to me this afternoon when I took his picture as he was playing touch football down in Kent, either.”
“Ah!” McDonald nodded as he wrote in his notebook.
“I seem to see a connection here.”
“Well, you’ll have to talk to Jones to be sure,” Harry said, “but I think there might be. After all, I screwed up his tidy little scam for him. He must have recognized my car in the parking lot. Come to think of it, he didn’t mess up the old green Volvo that’s parked in front, did he?”
“No. And that was a funny thing, too,” McDonald said. “Several of the people we talked to in the beer garden before we came in said that a big black crow seemed to be defending your car. Weird.”
Harry looked at George, who responded with a slight shrug and turned out hands.
“What about a crow, George?”
“Or is it a raven?” George paused. “I dunno, man. I think we need to go down to my house in Puyallup and talk about this.”
“Well, don’t leave the area, of course,” McDonald said, as he finished writing down Harry’s PI license and George’s driver’s license. “But I think you can go now.”
Harry and George walked outside the bar as McDonald turned to Dave Smith for his statement. The coroner was just loading No-Bath into his wagon.
Harry walked over to one of the cops, the other one who had been inside the tavern.
“Who was he?”
“Had I.D. in the name of Roger Carey and a rap sheet a yard long. Assuming he is Carey. Did you know him?”
“No. And I don’t remember him from Jones’ football game this afternoon, either. So he must be muscle. Did you run Jones’ sheet?”
“Yeah, and it sure is interesting.”
“Well, if you were to be nice, and Sergeant Packer is still speaking to us after we revealed his secret inside . . .”
“Secret?”
“Ask Officer McDonald. I sure would like it if you would fax me a copy of his sheet. Here’s my card.”
“PI, eh?”
“Yeah, insurance cases, mostly. Got Mr. Jones in a scam this afternoon. Probably why he came after me.”
* * *
Harry pulled open his laptop and booted it up. He logged on to George’s wireless network and downloaded his email. Sure enough, there was an efax from the King County Sheriff’s office in Maple Valley.
“George, look here. We have Mr. Jones’ rap sheet and those of his buddies. And he just made bail.”
“Harry, look at this one. It says here that Jones was busted two years ago for desecrating a cemetery. And three years ago, he was one of the people busted for breaking into a Catholic church and trying to steal hosts from the tabernacle.”
George turned and looked at Harry.
“Harry, he may be part of my problem, not just yours.”
“Eh, well,” Harry said. “If he is, what do we do about it?”
“Something is going to happen really soon. I can feel it.”
“Well, I know somebody who might know how to help.” Harry called up his address book, and scrolled through names until—
“Found it. Beth Jones . . . weird coincidence of names, that . . .” He pulled out his cell and dialed the number.
“Beth, hi, this is Harry Wilson . . . yes, that’s right, Sally’s husband. Yes, I know. I appreciate the thought. Beth, I . . . we . . . you’re Wiccan, right? Could you meet a friend of mine and me and talk about a problem we have? It might be related to Wicca. Right. We’re down in Puyallup. Halfway? Coco’s Restaurant in Federal Way? Forty minutes? Fine.”
He punched off. “Let’s go, George.”
They got in the old Volvo.
“Beth Jones is a friend, was a friend of Sally’s. They worked together . . . social worker. She’s also a Wiccan priestess or witch or something.”
Harry started the car, and as he turned it on, the headlights illuminated a huge black bird sitting on a fencepost across the street from George’s house.
George gasped.
“Is that your black bird?”
“Well, I dunno if it is the same one, but yeah, it sure looks like it.”
George shuddered.
“What the heck is wrong with you?” Harry couldn’t bring himself to swear, Methodist upbringing and all.
“That’s Raven.”
“What do you mean, it’s a raven? How can you tell?”
“I didn’t say it is a raven,” George said in a voice that was very small for a man of his bulk. “but you can tell. It isn’t a crow. Crows are smaller. I said it was Raven. The Raven. The supernatural totem Raven. We are either going to get very lucky or we are in deep kimchi, my friend. You know about the traditions we Indians have about trickster gods, yeah? Well just like the plains people have coyote, we have Raven. And anybody who even pretends to be a shaman like me can recognize the genuine article when we see it. That was Raven.”
They drove up I-5 North in silence through the evening twilight. It was not quite full dark even now. The freeway was clearing out though, since it was almost ten. Days were very long now. The longest day of the year was coming up, Harry mused.
They pulled up to the restaurant and piled out of the car. Beth was waiting inside the restaurant. She’d gone ahead and gotten a table. She was short, a little dumpy, and not much younger than Harry, but with bright red hair that didn’t look like it came out of a bottle. She was wearing black, with a huge silver pentacle on a heavy silver chain around her neck and nestled between her breasts. She looked up and smiled.
“Harry, it is good to see you!” She looked at George. “Elder?”
“George Mason, and how’d you know?” George demanded.
“Certainly you know how,” Beth said flatly.
George turned to Harry.
“She’s the real thing, okay, Harry.”
“I kinda thought she might be,” Harry said, pulling out a chair and sitting in it. “Sit down, George, we got some talking to do.”
* * *
“So that’s what we know, Beth,” George finished.
“Can I see those rap sheets?”
“Sure.” Harry handed them over. Beth opened the folder, and flinched as she saw the first picture.
“What is it?” Harry asked.
“Well, that’s my brother Darryl,” she began.
“Beth, he’s a bad one. I’m sorry to tell you,” George said.
“I know. He’s always been. When we were little, he always wanted it easy. You both may know that although we claim to be the Old Religion, the Wicca we practice is actually very new. Too many things were lost during the Burning Times . . .”
“Yeah,” George interrupted. “That’s why I’m such a crappy shaman, too. Not enough tradition to be traditional. Got to make it up as I go along sometimes.”
“Well, we were brought up Wiccan. Our parents were members of a coven in Portland, and when we moved up here, they joined another. I kept on with it. Darryl didn’t. Or I thought he didn’t. Now I am not so sure.”
Harry thought, then asked, “What would make Darryl or Darryl and his friends want to make a hole between the worlds? That’s what George thinks is happening. And whether Darryl is doing it or is just part of it, he’s the one we know about.”
“Well, this is the time to do it. Tomorrow night is Midsummer’s Eve, the Summer Solstice. The walls between the worlds are supposed to be very thin tomorrow night. Remember Shakespeare?
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
?”
“Yeah, but that was just a play,” Harry said.
“Based on some very old traditions, though,” Beth said.
“And not just white man traditions,” George added.
“That’s a spooky night for us Indians too.”
“Well, if we are going to stop him, or them, what do we need to do?” Harry ran his hand through his hair, suddenly conscious of its thinness and very conscious of Beth as a woman. He really hadn’t felt that way for a long time, not since Sally died. Beth seemed to feel his regard, and she smiled at him.
“I’m going to need to make some phone calls,” Beth said. “I’m going to have to make some preparations . . . spiritual ones, too. George needs to do that, too. And Harry, how good a Christian are you?”
“Um, well, I go to the Methodist church . . .”
“Not a very believing one, then.”
“I believe. I just don’t advertise.”
“Then you need to spend some time praying tonight. Saint Michael might be good to talk to. I’ll call you when I find out something.” Beth stood, hugged each man, and was gone before any of them could say more than good night.
George sat there folded into himself for a few seconds, then he shook his head as if to clear his eyesight.
“Wow. That’s some kinda woman, Harry.”
“Yes, yes she is.”
“Well, you better take me back to my place. I’ve got to sweat in the sweatlodge tonight.”
* * *
Harry paced his living room. It was near dawn now, and he hadn’t been able to sleep. He was still having trouble believing that he’d gotten mixed up in pagan rituals, demons, and who knows what all. He was also having a really hard time praying. He hadn’t prayed much in the last few months, since Sally died. He realized that he’d been really mad at God, and when you’re mad at someone, you really don’t like to talk to them.
He let the corgis out. Dylan and Caleb had really been Sally’s, and, thankfully, the neighbor girl was willing to feed and exercise them when he was out on a job. Harry got their bowls and prepared to feed them. Suddenly it penetrated that the dogs were growling and snapping, as if they had something cornered in the yard. Harry flipped the floods on and saw the dogs at the fence, their hackles raised and their fur standing up so straight that they looked double their size. Between them and the house was a bundle—a large one— lying on the grass. As Harry pushed open the door, he heard something very large running off through the woods that his house backed up on.
Dylan came away from the fence and nosed at the bundle on the ground. It moved. Harry was there now, bending over a blanket-wrapped young man. The young man was thin, dark complected, and had shiny black hair and black eyes.
“Call George,” he croaked, then fainted.
George arrived as soon as he could. Harry had carried the young man or boy into the house and laid him on the couch in the den. He’d covered him with a throw that Sally had made and had gone to make some coffee.
When George arrived, they found the young man sitting up on the couch, wrapped in the throw.