CLOSE TO MADNESS, page 6
“You speak with a lot of authority on this,” Ben said. “Have you had contact with these researchers yourself?”
“I have been approached,” Manuelito said, a flicker of contempt in his eyes. “They come with their release forms and their promises of collaboration. I send them away. My knowledge is not for sale. It is not a commodity.”
"What about Haske?" Kari asked. "Do you think he would share your convictions?"
She watched Manuelito's face for a reaction to the name. There was a flicker of something in his eyes—not surprise, but a deep, weary disapproval.
“Haske,” he repeated the name as if it tasted foul. “Why do you wish to know about him?”
"He was the roadman during both ceremonies involving the two who subsequently were found dead."
Manuelito blinked at her, his face revealing nothing.
“What have you heard about him?” Ben asked.
“I have heard that he walks a new path,” Manuelito said carefully. “One that seeks the approval of outsiders. He allows them into his circle. The ones with notebooks and recording devices. The botanists who think the spirit of the medicine can be found in a chemical compound.” He shook his head, a gesture of profound disappointment. “He has forgotten that our ways do not need their validation. He barters sacred knowledge for academic prestige.”
His condemnation was exactly what Kari had expected from his online writings. It was also the perfect foundation for a motive.
“We were told Haske is a good man, a respected healer,” Ben countered.
“A man can be respected by many and still be walking the wrong path,” Manuelito said. “Some of our people are impressed by the attention from the university. They see it as progress. I see it as a slow poison.”
Yet another reference to a university—and to poison. Kari filed this away for later. For now, she wanted to learn everything she could about Haske.
She asked, “Do you think Haske would be capable of harming someone? Of poisoning them?”
Manuelito looked at her, truly looked at her, as if gauging her sincerity. “Poison is a weapon of cowards and witches,” he said, his voice low and intense. “I do not believe Haske is either of those things. I believe he is a fool. A proud man who has been flattered by the attention of white men in lab coats. His pride has made him careless. His carelessness has weakened his ceremonies. That is the poison I speak of. A poison of the spirit.”
He was defending Haske from the accusation of murder while simultaneously cementing his own theory that Haske’s spiritual failings were to blame. It was a masterful deflection.
“Mr. Manuelito,” Kari said, shifting the topic. “Where were you on Friday night?”
His gaze sharpened. “Friday night,” he repeated. “Two nights ago. The night the man fell from the cliff at Red Point." He paused. "I was at Red Point.”
Kari and Ben exchanged a quick, subtle glance.
“You were at the ceremony?” Ben asked.
“I was not at the ceremony,” Manuelito clarified, his voice laced with disdain. “I was near it. I go there sometimes to pray, to leave offerings. It is a powerful place. I saw their fire from a distance. I heard their songs on the wind. They were… weak.”
A man with a stated animosity toward the roadman’s practices, placing himself at the scene of the death. It was a stunning admission.
“And Tuesday night,” Kari continued, her heart beating a little faster. “The night Maria Sandoval walked away from her ceremony near Sanders. Where were you then?”
Manuelito’s expression didn’t change. “My sister lives near Sanders. I was visiting her. We drove past the place where they were setting up. I saw the cars. I knew what it was. I said a prayer for their protection. It seems it was not enough.”
It was too much to be a coincidence. Reasons or no reasons, his proximity near both locations was a glaring red flag. Then again, if he had done anything wrong, why would he incriminate himself so willingly?
The more she thought about it, the more she realized she couldn’t reconcile the man before her—a fierce guardian of tradition—with the cold-blooded killer their profile was beginning to suggest. There was a passion in him, but she sensed no violence.
“You believe these deaths are a spiritual consequence,” Kari said, trying to understand his worldview. “A punishment for Haske's weakness.”
"I believe that when you weaken the walls, things get in," he said. "Or things get out. The protection of the ceremony is not absolute. It requires the focused intent of everyone in the circle, especially the roadman. If his mind is on academic prestige or grant money, the wall develops cracks. A spirit in crisis can slip through those cracks and become lost."
He was giving them a perfect, supernatural explanation for the deaths, a narrative that required no killer, only a failing of faith. It was an elegant dismissal of their entire investigation.
As they stood to leave, the interview clearly over, Kari felt a profound sense of her own inadequacy. Manuelito, Haske, even Eleanor Begay—they all spoke a language she only partially understood. They saw this tragedy through a lens of ceremony, spirit, and imbalance. She saw it through a lens of motive, means, and opportunity. To solve this case, she realized with a sinking feeling, she couldn’t just be a cop looking in from the outside.
The drive away from Manuelito’s home was quiet for a long time. The last light had faded from the sky, leaving it an immense, dark void.
“He was at both scenes,” Ben said finally. “That’s not a coincidence, Kari.”
“No,” she agreed. “But did you feel like you were talking to a killer?”
Ben was silent for a moment. “No,” he admitted. “I felt like I was getting a lecture from a man who is one hundred percent certain he’s right. I don’t think he’s lying. I think he actually believes what he’s telling us.”
“So do I,” Kari said. “Which leaves us with Haske.”
Yet Manuelito’s words had planted a seed of doubt. He had called Haske a fool, not a murderer. His theory of spiritual weakness, while useless in a courtroom, felt authentic to her. The simple line she had drawn to Haske was now blurred.
The investigation felt like it was fracturing, caught between two powerful, opposing forces in the community. The truth was getting harder, not easier, to see.
She realized then that her own perspective was the biggest obstacle. She was trying to solve a crime that was wrapped in layers of faith and tradition she had spent her whole life avoiding. She didn’t know what was normal in a ceremony and what was aberrant. She didn’t know what a participant’s vision should feel like versus what a poisoned hallucination would. She was trying to navigate a foreign country without a map.
She needed to see the investigation from the inside, from within the community. Which meant confronting her own resistance, walking the path she had so diligently avoided. It meant that to catch this killer, who moved so easily within the protected world of ceremony, she might have to enter that world herself.
The thought was terrifying. It felt like a betrayal of her father’s logic, of her own hard-won identity as a cop.
And it also felt exactly like what her mother would have done
CHAPTER NINE
The air in the small, windowless room was cool and sterile, smelling faintly of ozone from the air purifier humming in the corner. Order reigned here. Glass beakers and flasks, scrubbed clean, sat inverted on a drying rack. A digital scale, sensitive to a thousandth of a gram, was centered on the stainless-steel worktable.
On the wall, a meticulously detailed botanical illustration of Lophophora williamsii was pinned next to a complex chemical diagram showing the molecular structure of an alkaloid. This room was a sanctuary, a place where the chaotic variables of the outside world could be controlled, measured, and perfected.
A pair of gloved hands selected a small, dark glass jar from a locked cabinet. Inside was a fine, crystalline powder, synthesized weeks ago in a delicate and time-consuming process. The challenge had been acquiring the primary precursor, a compound not easily obtained without raising red flags. It had required a carefully worded request, buried within a larger supply order, citing a tangential and entirely plausible research project.
The requisition had been approved without a second glance. People rarely questioned things that were presented with confidence and wrapped in the jargon of science.
The hands placed a clean, glass mortar on the scale and tared it to zero. A small amount of the white powder was tapped from the jar onto the dish. The red numerals on the scale flickered, then settled. Perfect.
Next, from another container, came the base material: dried, pulverized peyote, ground to the consistency of fine gray-green flour. The scent was earthy, ancient. It was a good, potent cultivar, sourced from a trusted grower in Texas.
But "good" was a relative term. Nature was a clumsy chemist, full of impurities and inconsistencies. The medicine, in its raw form, was a blunt instrument. What was being created here was a scalpel.
The peyote flour was added to the mortar. The ratio had to be exact. Too little of the synthetic compound, and the desired effect would be muted, the subject’s reaction merely an anomaly, easily dismissed. Too much, and the physical symptoms would be too severe, too immediate, pointing away from a spiritual crisis and toward simple, brutish poison. It was a delicate balance, a conversation between the organic and the synthetic.
The pestle began its work, grinding the two substances together. The movements were slow, circular, patient. The goal was not just to mix, but to bind, to create a homogenous blend making it impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.
This was not a contamination. It was an enhancement. An evolution.
A phone buzzed on the corner of the worktable. The gloved hands paused their work.
"Hello?" The voice was calm, pleasant.
A voice on the other end, tinny and distant: "Just wanted to follow up on that supply order. Did the ergotamine derivative you requested work for the fungal growth medium experiment?"
"It worked perfectly," the calm voice replied, its tone a model of professional gratitude. "The preliminary results are very promising. Thank you again for pushing that through for me. I really appreciate it."
"Not a problem at all. Happy to help the cause. Let me know if you need anything else."
"Will do. Thanks again."
The call ended. The hands placed the phone back on the table, its screen dark. The pestle resumed its slow, circular grinding.
The conversation had been about protecting important work, about furthering a legacy. The deaths, in their own way, were also about that. The ceremonies were a proving ground, a human laboratory.
But some subjects were flawed. Their unique physiologies and psychological fragilities produced anomalous reactions to the enhanced medicine. They were outliers, statistical noise that could compromise years of careful research. Their intense, negative experiences, if reported, could draw unwanted scrutiny. They represented a threat not just to the data, but to the entire project.
It was a regrettable but necessary form of purification. A culling of the weakest from the herd to ensure the strength of the whole. Each one chosen was a variable being removed from a complex equation, bringing the final solution that much closer.
The grinding stopped. The powder in the mortar was now a uniform, pale green-gray. It looked and smelled almost identical to the unadulterated peyote flour. Almost. The hands carefully funneled the mixture into a small, airtight container, which was then labeled with a simple, coded symbol. It was placed inside a refrigerated case next to several other, similar containers, each with its own unique symbol.
The next ceremony was coming up. There would be new participants, new variables. The list had already been reviewed, the potential subjects identified based on their known histories and reported sensitivities.
It was time to wonder, with a quiet, dispassionate curiosity, who would be chosen next. Who would be the next necessary sacrifice to protect something so much more important than a single, fragile life.
The hands stripped off the latex gloves, disposing of them in a biohazard bag. The work was done. For now.
More to come
CHAPTER TEN
Two days.
It had been two full days since their interview with Thomas Manuelito, and the investigation had not moved forward a single inch. It had, Kari thought, only moved sideways, into a fog of competing theories and cultural roadblocks.
Sunday had bled into Monday, then Monday into Tuesday, and the name Haske remained a frustrating dead end, shielded by a community that refused to speak to them. Manuelito, a compelling suspect on paper, remained just that—a theory without a shred of evidence.
Kari sat at her desk, the Tuesday morning sun slanting through the dusty blinds of the station window, illuminating the particles of dust dancing in the air. The whiteboard across the room taunted her. The names of the victims, Maria Sandoval and Jerome Natanii, were written in black. The names of the persons of interest, Haske and Manuelito, were in red. The lines connecting them were a chaotic web of dotted lines and question marks.
It was a map of her own confusion.
She scrubbed a hand over her face. The case felt heavier today, pressing down on her. The initial adrenaline of finding a pattern had long since faded, replaced by the grim, grinding reality of a stalled investigation. It felt just like the first few weeks after her mother’s death—a wall of official indifference, a story that didn’t feel true, and no clear path forward.
She felt like she was failing them all.
Ben walked in, placing a steaming mug on the corner of her desk. It wasn’t coffee. It was hot chocolate, the rich smell a small, welcome comfort.
“You’ve been staring at that board for an hour,” he said, his voice quiet. He pulled up a chair and sat down, not with the energy of a partner expecting a breakthrough, but with the patient calm of a friend offering support.
“Because it’s not telling me anything new,” she said, her voice tight. “We have nothing, Ben. We have two dead people, and two men who both could have done it and who both seem like they didn’t. We’re chasing ghosts.”
"We're not," he said. "We've established a pattern. We've identified two persons of interest. We've confirmed they were both near the scenes of the crimes. That's not nothing, Kari. That's progress. This kind of case… It's slow."
“It feels like we’re losing,” she said, looking from the whiteboard to the stack of files on her desk. “The killer—if there is a killer—is hiding in plain sight, protected by the very culture we’re supposed to be a part of. We can’t get anyone to talk about Haske. We have nothing on Manuelito but his own words. We’re stuck.”
She took a sip of the hot chocolate. It was sweet, a stark contrast to the bitter taste of failure in her mouth.
“Okay,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Let’s go back to the beginning. What do we know for sure?” He was using a technique their old mentors had taught them, a way to reset when an investigation got tangled.
“We know two people are dead,” Kari began, ticking the points off on her fingers. “We know they both died after participating in ceremonies led by Haske. We know Manuelito, who dislikes Haske’s methods, was near both locations. And…” She paused, recalling something else. “And we know that outsiders have been present at some of these ceremonies.”
It was a detail mentioned by both Samuel Sandoval and Thomas Manuelito. A thread that led away from the closed circle of the community and out into a different world. The world of academia.
“The university people,” Ben said, catching her train of thought. “The researchers.”
“Exactly,” Kari said, feeling a spark of excitement. “What if we’ve been looking in the wrong place? We’ve been focusing on the roadmen, on the spiritual conflict. What if the answer isn’t in the ceremony, but in the medicine itself? Haske and Manuelito are a wall. But the university is an institution. It has records. It’s a world I understand.”
Instead of diving into online databases, she decided on a more direct approach. Her father, James Cooper, was now working with Canyon State University’s Anthropological Research Division. He was her way in. She picked up her phone and dialed.
“Kari,” her father answered, his voice a familiar mix of warmth and professional distance. “Everything okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad. I need some information. Unofficially.” She explained the situation in broad strokes, focusing on the presence of academic researchers at Native American Church ceremonies. “We keep hearing about university people, botanists, studying the peyote. We think it might be a factor. Do you know who’s heading up that kind of research in the area?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “That’s sensitive territory, Kari. Those projects are usually built on years of trust with the tribal communities. My advice is to tread very carefully.”
“We’re past careful, Dad. We’re stalled. We need a name.”
She could almost hear him weighing his professional obligations against his concern for her. “There are a few teams doing fieldwork in northern Arizona,” he said finally. “UCLA has a small team looking at linguistic preservation. And there’s a major ethnobotany project out of the University of Arizona. A Dr. Alarcon, I believe. Very well-respected. But the person you should probably talk to is right here at CSU. Dr. Miles Bennett. He’s the head of the ethics committee for anthropological fieldwork. Any research team operating in this area would have had to clear their protocols with his committee. He’d know who has active permits.”
It was the lead she needed. An official gatekeeper.
An hour later, they were walking through the quiet, climate-controlled halls of the university’s anthropology building in Flagstaff. It was a world away from the dusty roads of the reservation.
Dr. Miles Bennett was a man in his late forties with thinning hair, a friendly, open face, and an office overflowing with books and artifacts. He greeted them warmly, though his eyes were cautious when Kari introduced themselves as Navajo Nation Police.
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