Stealing Childhood Read online

  Agent Mercer shrugged. “Number of reasons. I couldn’t know them all, but if I were to guess it’s because she wants the win. She could be up for promotion, off the street team and into the office.”

  “Divorced, with kids,” Dan said.

  “How’d you know?”

  “She actually wants a desk job. Besides that, I saw her on the phone a few times. Her demeanor changed completely. That’s what you do when you want to keep track of someone, or you’re worried about them. Like me and my cats.”

  “I wouldn’t use that analogy around her,” Agent Mercer said.

  “Girls or boys?”

  “Daughters. Two.”

  “I should have known. Human trafficking is an issue if you’re not around and can’t watch your family when you wish.”

  “Worse when you’re out of town for weeks at a time,” Agent Mercer said. “So, that’s the main reason, I think,” He pulled into a small strip mall parking area. “Well, Mister Johnston, we’re here.”

  “Call me Dan.”

  “It’s actual Dr. Johnston,” Jason said.

  “No shit?” Mercer said.

  “It’s Dan,” Dan said.

  “Then you can call me Jim. Much better than all that agent stuff.”

  “And Agent Blake?”

  “Bill.”

  “Bill Blake,” Jason said. “Can we call him BB?”

  Jim Mercer looked down his nose. “I think he was bullied with that name as a kid, so I wouldn’t.”

  Inside the small bookstore, Dan found a bowl of polished stones. Peeling through them, he lifted a pink one.

  “Tourmaline,” a woman said from behind him. She had red highlights in her hair, laugh lines around her eyes, and stood about five-foot-six. A handsome older woman of about fifty-five. She reached out, and he handed her the stone. She rolled it in her palm and lifted it between her thumb and index finger in front of her face. “It’s transparent when viewed from the side and opaque from either end.” She moved it so that Dan could see. They stood eye-to-eye. Dan so wanted to write down what she said.

  “Interesting, two different looks,” Dan said.

  “Not only that, but when it’s heated, or rubbed it gets polarized.” She rubbed the stone in her hand. She smiled at Dan as she gave it back to him. “You can’t tell, but now there is a positive and negative side.”

  “This is just what I want. Do you have one mounted to a necklace?”

  She cocked her head. “A girlfriend?”

  “A friend,” Dan said.

  “I can make one up for you. I have settings that are fairly simple.”

  “That would be wonderful. I didn’t think you could do that here.”

  “I keep a few on hand. People want these on chains more often than you can image. So, how long a chain?”

  “For a teenager, rather slender.” He followed her toward the front desk as Jason and Jim wandered around the store. “Can you tell me about the stone? I mean, I know a little about Tourmaline, but…”

  As she rummaged through a drawer behind the counter for the setting, she said, “It’s not a stone that’s been used a lot in magic, if that’s what you’re asking. There are some who do so now, but you have to know what you’re doing.” She looked up for a second. “You know what you’re doing.” She went back to her work. “Tourmaline wasn’t used in ancient times. It means love and friendship, health, peace.” She looked up again and slowly said, “Courage,” with a little nod.

  Dan smiled. “You’re psychic.”

  “I dabble,” she said. “My place is called The Magic Bookshop.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Dan said.

  She dripped some glue on the setting she found, then spent some time with a tool rolling the metal of it against the edges of the stone, then rolled a few arms up to grip the piece tightly into place. “That should hold it.” She stepped to the corner of the counter and selected a nice silver chain to go with the setting. “Sorry, no gold.”

  “This is perfect,” Dan said.

  “You might be interested to know that Tourmaline aids in astral projection. And it promotes sympathy toward others.”

  “We can all use a little sympathy,” Dan said. He paid for the necklace and thanked the woman.

  “How long have you been a shaman?” she asked.

  Dan stood for a moment and smiled at her. “You’re not a dabbler,” he said. He winked at her, found Jason and Jim, and the three of them left together.

  “She was flirting,” Jim said.

  “I don’t flirt,” Dan said.

  “You weren’t, she was.”

  “Listen to him, Dad,” Jason said. “That’s the second time in as many days.”

  Dan shook his head. “So, Jim, you having dinner with us? My treat.”

  “Can’t refuse that,” Jim said. “So, what did we accomplish today?”

  Dan laughed as he climbed into the van. He held the necklace up. “Courage for our friend Koko, information from Bear about things not being as straightforward as they seem, a deeper understanding of Agent Rafsky’s motives, and we now know that our room is polarized. I’m guessing that our old room was negative, so our new one is positive. We do want to make sure we’re looking through the correct side of the stone, though.”

  Agent Mercer swung around. He had made friends with Jason, it seemed. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “Dad talks in symbols, metaphors, and similes. He also talks to plants, animals, and insects, so watch what you’re up to.” Jason patted Dan’s shoulder like a friend.

  Chapter 9

  It was at dinner when Koko wandered past the diner window. Jim had been inquiring about the shamanic work the two of them did, and they were deep into explaining altered states in several different ways. “It’s hard to pin any of this down…” Dan was saying when he saw her. He jumped up, threw his napkin down, and rushed outside, reaching into his pocket for the necklace.

  The moment he stepped outside the door, she was gone. Only a few young boys were on the sidewalk coming toward him from a block away. She was good at that disappearing act. He closed his eyes and waited for a sign. His left ear heard a sound like a broom brushing over a floor. “Snake,” he said as he speeded toward the corner to his left. There was an alley half a block up, and he turned down it. She stood there facing him.

  “No one’s with you?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t trust them. Maybe your son. I couldn’t get a bead on him. You’re okay.”

  “You can trust Jason. But why me? I didn’t think you—”

  “The room was bugged. But you knew that.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know.”

  “I have something for you.” Dan lifted the necklace and opened his palm.

  “What’s it do?”

  “You’re a smart girl to ask that question.”

  “My dad knows some stuff.” She winked, which confused Dan. “You are what you know you are, not what others think you are,” she said.

  “Sounds like your dad knows who he is.”

  She laughed. “You’re pretty smart, too.”

  It was good to see her smile. He nodded as she took the necklace. “It’ll give you courage and make astral projection easier. Those are probably the most important things.”

  “Astral projection?”

  “Out of body experiences. It’ll help you stay invisible when you want to be. You can move around in your mind when you’re not moving in your physical body.”

  “Disconnect,” she said.

  “Do you check out sometimes?”

  “It’s easy for me.” She winked again.

  Dan felt as if he were missing something. “That’s good and bad.

  She looked older than what Cora had told him she was. She wore too much makeup, but that could have been planned. He suspected her dad had something to do with her involvement, not a boyfriend. That would account for her not telling him. “I’m going to say
this, even if you don’t listen to me. Don’t go back in there. I can do this. I can take care of it.”

  “If I do go,” she held up the necklace, “I’ll be okay?”

  “I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll do everything in my power,” he said.

  She tightened her lips and gave him a quick grin. “I have to go. But let me request something.”

  “Anything.”

  “Stay out of it. Both of you.” She got serious. “Please. It will only get worse.” Then she looked over his shoulder. Her eyes widened.

  Dan turned around. The three boys he’d seen walking down the street had turned down the alley behind them. “Go on,” Dan told Koko. “I can take care of this.” He heard quick footsteps behind him as he turned to face the boys.

  One of them moved to go after her and Dan tripped him.

  “What the fuck, old man?” The kid stood, and the other two were right in front of Dan in no time.

  Dan thought to wait for them to make a move but changed his mind at the last moment. He dropped his notebook, then rammed his flattened hand into the jugular of one of the two boys in front of him. That boy peeled to the left, choking and holding his throat. Then Dan took a deep step forward and brought his knee up and into the groin of the second boy, who then folded over and dropped to the ground. The boy Dan had tripped held a knife and was mid-attack when Dan blocked him a slight bit late. The knife caught Dan above the eyebrow of his right eye, but Dan was still able to grab the boy’s wrist and twist it back until the knife fell out of his grip.

  “Who the hell are you?” the boy yelled.

  “No one you want to fuck with,” Dan said. And stay away from that girl.” Dan lifted the boy’s arm, forcing him to stand on his tiptoes.

  “Okay, okay, man.”

  Dan let the boy go, picked up his notebook, and walked back around the corner, down the street, and into the diner. He sat back down. “Thanks for not following.”

  “I know better,” Jason said. He reached toward his dad’s eye. “What happened?”

  Dan reached up with his napkin and brushed blood from above his eyebrow. “Ran into something in my haste.”

  “So, you found her?”

  “No,” Dan said. “She disappeared.”

  “Really?” Jim asked, his mouth open.

  “No,” Jason said, “not literally, but she is able to appear unimportant, easy to miss.”

  “You guys are stranger than strange.”

  “Only the half of it,” Dan said. He refolded his napkin and set it next to his plate. His meatloaf was cold. He didn’t mind.

  Back in the room, Jason looked Dan in the eye, raised an eyebrow and said, “Sorry Koko got away again.”

  Dan reached into his pocket, pinched the material at the bottom, and pulled the pocket inside out. “Me too.”

  “Figured,” Jason said. “What really happened to your eye?”

  “Couple of small-time hoodlums. Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  Jason laughed. “I bet you surprised the shit out of them.”

  Dan looked at his watch. “We have time. You still want to journey?”

  “What on?”

  “I think that woman at the bookstore satisfied the eye-to-eye comment Bear mentioned. The tourmaline has a negative and positive. We’re in the positive area now, so I’m glad we didn’t change hotels altogether or be put into an adjacent room. What I’m curious about, though, is the mirror image.” He turned around and reached for his drum. “Opposites, what could all that mean?”

  “No questions about Koko?”

  “Make sure she’s okay. Maybe that’s all we can do for her right now. The tourmaline operates the same for her as us, positive and negative.”

  “But you gave it to her.”

  “I carry it in spirit. That’s good enough.”

  Jason lay on his bed and placed his hands on his chest over his heart. “Ready when you are, Dad.” He looked pleased to be included.

  Dan began drumming, softly, but steadily. Jason took three breaths. Dan matched his son’s breathing, closed his eyes, and without dropping into an altered state, allowed his mind to open to new ideas, a new path as he had suggested earlier that day.

  Chapter 10

  Jason sat up with a start, threw his legs over the side of the bed, and took a deep breath. He placed his face into his hands and rubbed. When he looked up, a visible fear ran through his eyes.

  Dan sat the drum down and went to sit next to Jason.

  “I’m worried,” Jason said.

  “What happened?”

  “The place is a maze. Some girls run free, others are trapped and for sale. There are different wings. One place felt like a dungeon, cold and damp.”

  “Did you have an animal guide?”

  “Fox,” Jason said.

  “Shit, shit, shit. You’ve dealt with fox before.”

  “I followed Fox into his den. There were so many paths shooting off in every direction. No matter which one he turned down, several more shot off from that one. I got turned around so quickly. In some paths were trapped baby rabbits, in other paths the rabbits were allowed to run free. It was working for me on one level. I understood. I knew those rabbits were the girls, of course. Then this whole mirror thing happened…before I knew it the confusing pathways had mirror pathways where I understood the possibility was that I’d get lost in a different altered state and not be able to get back to the one I was in. I got scared and asked for a different guide.”

  “You can’t do that,” Dan said. “You can only ask for an additional one and hope the first one goes away.”

  “I know, Dad.” Jason slapped the bed and stood, then walked away and turned back around. “Jesus, could you just stop teaching me and listen.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “My fear got the better of me, and I drove deeper and deeper into the maze. Fox tried to direct me, but, knowing Fox and his ways, I didn’t always listen. Sometimes I’d do the opposite and he’d disappear for a short while then show up again farther into one of the tunnels. I’d follow him for a while again then stop and go in a different direction. I was so scared that Fox might not show back up, but he always did.” He sat back down on the bed. “Like you, I didn’t think of asking about Koko until the very end, and it was too late. I made my last turn away from Fox, found my way out just as you were finishing the return. I didn’t even have time to ask about her.”

  “She’s involved somehow.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I don’t know. I just needed to say it.”

  “So, my question is, why the trickster?”

  “You know why. Look where we are. We’re on a reservation. It may not look like it, but we are. So far, since we’ve been here we’ve moved twice, we know the laws are entangled, everything appears to be polarized, even the operations we’re tailing—not yet, but soon—are odd. That’s the trickster.”

  “How do you operate like this?”

  “You did it. You made your way out.” Dan smiled. “I’m proud of you. You followed your natural instincts. You could have been lost in there.”

  “How do you know I’m not still?”

  He patted his son on his shoulder. “Do a body scan. You tell me.”

  Jason closed his eyes, and when he opened them he was smiling. “I’m fully here,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “How could you know?”

  “I was sitting next to you. That’s why I came over. You were upset. In order to be sure you made it back intact and didn’t leave a part of yourself there, I sat close enough for me to feel your emotional energy. Your energetic aura overlapped mine. I knew where my baseline was and felt for where yours differed, checked for anomalies while you were talking.”

  “You’re going to have to teach me that.”

  “Are you sure, you said—”

  “Don’t tell me what I said. I know. You were just being inappropriate with your timing.”

  �
��You must have learned your relationship skills from your mother,” Dan said with a quick laugh.

  “Could be worse,” Jason said. “So?”

  Dan put the drum back into the suitcase. “So, what?”

  “Did you journey? I know you do that sometimes.”

  “Opened up for a new path. But I think you brought it back. This isn’t going to be easy, and we’re going to have to play it by ear, sometimes follow and sometimes go out on our own. There may be a way we can get some help with this. I hope.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We’ve got to find out who the FBI is working with. We’re on reservation land, they must be dealing with an Elder. The tribal council has seven people, maybe one of them…”

  “Will they give us that information?”

  Dan looked into the corner of the room as though talking to their bug. “If they don’t, I can’t help them and this operation will fail. I can guarantee that.”

  The next few hours, the two of them relaxed, read, watched some television, and waited for Rafsky and her team to show up with food or offer to take them somewhere. About 7:00 that evening, the knock came. Dan opened the door, and Agent Rafsky walked into the room with Agents Mercer and Blake behind her. They crowded into the small space between Jason’s bed and the desk and dresser along the wall.

  “I wasn’t going to mention him,” Agent Rafsky said.

  “Who?” Jason asked.

  “The Elder,” Dan said. “Why would that make a difference? I’d have to find out eventually. I mean, who is it?”

  “Richard Running Deer,” she said.

  Dan smiled broadly. “I thought to contact him from the start, but didn’t think I’d have the time or leeway to visit. Elder, huh? I’m surprised on one level and should have known on another level.” He turned toward Jason. “An old friend.”

  “I didn’t know you were that connected…”

  Agent Rafsky shook her head. “Your father worked here for six years. Lived here. Richard was his liaison much of that time. He wasn’t an Elder then, though.” She kept glancing at the other agents and back to Dan, kept her eyes from meeting his directly, and continued to take deep breaths. Finally, she said, “I’ll ask him to meet us here or in his office tomorrow sometime.”