Canyon Sacrifice (23 page)

Janelle's phone single-buzzed three times as he made his way through the forest. Each time, the phone displayed an incoming call from Clarence's number. Chuck let the calls go to voicemail. When he reached the edge of the trees behind Maswik, he punched in Janelle's voicemail ID, the numbers corresponding to the first four letters of Carmelita's name, and listened to all three messages. Each was from Janelle, and each was more frantic than the last. She asked where Chuck was, insisted he call her back, then, her voice breaking, begged him to call her the instant he was able.

The messages sounded legitimate—so legit, in fact, that it was all Chuck could do to keep from calling her that minute. But he wanted, needed, something to report to her first.

He put away the phone and stowed Rachel's night-vision goggles in his pack before making his way across the well-lit grounds of the Maswik complex. Two hundred yards east of here, Janelle and Clarence were working their way through the
trees, looking to meet up with him. To the west, emergency lights flickered blue and red from the grove of trees surrounding the railroad wye.

Chuck left the front of the complex and approached Center Road, the village's main thoroughfare. The two-lane road, running in front of Maswik Lodge and behind the string of hotels facing the canyon rim, was lined with parked vehicles. Though its driving lanes were bumper to bumper with passenger cars and RVs during daylight hours, Center Road was little traveled this time of night. He waited until the road was clear of traffic, then hurried across it and up a sloping rear driveway that led to the lower, service-level entrance of El Tovar Hotel. In his pocket, Janelle's phone continued its double-buzz announcements of incoming texts from the group of tourists. He wondered if any were reports of his having been sighted passing through the Maswik complex and crossing Center Road, but didn't take time to find out. His best response to any such sightings was to keep moving.

An empty ranger patrol car was parked at the rear of the hotel in the shadows of the service-entrance loading dock. Chuck slipped past the car, climbed the stairs to the dock, and crossed the concrete landing to the service door with its small window of wired security glass. The gray metal door into the hotel's lower level was unlocked. He ducked inside and eased the door closed behind him.

A darkened hallway led into the bowels of the building. The deserted passageway smelled of bleach and detergent. He made his way down the corridor past a large unlit room lined with commercial-size washers and dryers. Beyond the laundry room, the hallway turned a corner. Chuck peeked around it. The corridor continued deeper into the building past a lighted open doorway. The murmur of voices came from the opening. Chuck crept down the hall and paused, listening, at the edge of the doorway.

“ . . . agree with you,” came the sound of a male voice Chuck did not recognize.

“Who else could it be?” came Rachel's voice in response.

Chuck stepped through the doorway into a windowless office. A balding, round-faced man wearing rimless glasses sat at a desk before a large monitor, his hand controlling a computer mouse. The man's forearms were thick and corded. His shoulders were broad and heavily muscled under his blue sport shirt. Rachel sat on a corner of the desk studying the monitor over the man's shoulder.

Chuck's sudden entrance startled Rachel and the man at the computer. They stared open-mouthed at him. Rachel's hand darted to the gun at her waist as the surprise in her eyes gave way to deep-seated sorrow; she'd known Donald since she'd started at the park a decade ago.

“Chuck, Conrad,” Rachel said, dropping her hand and indicating each with a jut of her jaw. “Conrad, Chuck.”

The auditor looked Chuck over before going back to studying the monitor in front of him.

“Looks like we found her,” Rachel told Chuck.

“And?” He leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the monitor. Janelle's phone continued its double-buzzes against his thigh, announcing group text after group text. Had he been spotted slipping inside El Tovar? Were members of the tourist group converging on the hotel's service entrance? Were rangers close behind?

“Francesca Calderon, that's her name. But, as you'd expect, there's nobody registered under it,” Rachel said. “Plus, quite a few people are paying cash, fifty or so between all the South Rim hotels. That's the bad news. The good news is, they're pretty much all Europeans avoiding currency-exchange fees.”

“That's still fifty rooms,” Chuck said.

Conrad explained, “I sorted and batched the cash-only
names and ran them as a subset. There are Heinrichs from Frankfort, de Fleurs from Paris—and one Francisco Contreras, supposedly from Santa Fe.”

“You think?” Chuck asked the two of them.

“Registering under a guy's name?” Rachel said. “She might have tried that. But the Santa Fe thing? Who else could it be?”

“She's in Maswik,” Conrad said. “Building One, Room 211.”

“Bingo,” Chuck said. Carmelita was little more than a hundred yards away.

“Just like you thought,” Rachel told him.

“I'm already there.” He pivoted to leave the auditor's office.

Rachel's hand returned to her gun. “You know I can't let you do that.”

Chuck turned back into the doorway. “Go ahead, shoot. It's the only way you'll stop me.” He left the room and hustled down the hall. A backward glance told him Rachel was jogging to catch up, with Conrad close behind her.

Chuck stopped at the end of the corridor to look out the window in the service-entrance door, allowing Rachel and Conrad to catch up.

“I have to call this in, Chuck,” said Rachel at his shoulder. “I have to.”

“Go ahead. I'll still get there first.”

Seeing no signs of movement in the shadowed loading-dock area, he opened the service door and stepped to the edge of the dock. Rachel muttered beneath her breath and followed. From the raised dock Chuck had a clear view up and down Center Road—and there, to the west, nearly a quarter mile away, was someone, no, two people, walking up the sidewalk alongside the road in the direction of the hotel. Rachel followed his gaze and held out a hand, bringing Conrad to a halt at the edge of the loading dock beside her.

The two pedestrians grew more distinct as they continued
up the sidewalk beneath the glow of the streetlights lining the road. One of the two was overweight. The other was much smaller and moved with a girlish gait.

Chuck's heart skipped a beat. It couldn't be, could it?

The two stopped at a white compact car parked at the near side of the road. The larger figure climbed behind the wheel while the smaller took the passenger seat.

Chuck leapt from the waist-high loading dock to the parking area below. Rachel hopped down with him.

“It has to be them,” he told her breathlessly.

“You're sure?”

“A little girl like that? This late at night?”

“But she wasn't forced into the car.”

“She knows to do as she's told. Hell, she may not even understand she's been kidnapped.”

The car pulled a U-turn and headed east on Center Road, approaching the hotel.

“Come on, Rachel,” Chuck said urgently as the compact passed below them, its interior hidden behind the sheen of the streetlights shining on its windows. “They're getting away.”

He hurried to the passenger side of the patrol sedan and tried the door, but it was locked. Rachel moved to the driver's door, her eyes on the receding compact. Chuck laid his arms on top of the sedan, his wrists pressed together.

“Cuff me and throw me in back,” he begged. “I'll be your prisoner.”

Rachel ignored him and slid into the driver's seat. Chuck watched the taillights of the compact grow dim as the car headed east out of the village.

“Whatever you do, don't lose them,” he commanded, stepping back from the patrol car as Rachel slammed her door. She gunned the car in reverse down the service drive and bounced backward into the road. She braked to a stop, turned hard, and
accelerated in pursuit of the white compact, her emergency lights flashing.

Chuck studied Building One of Maswik Lodge on the far side of Center Road. “I could use your help,” he told Conrad. Chuck led the way at a run down the sloping service drive and across the road to the front of the complex, the auditor's pounding steps following.

The sound of a siren rose from the east. Rachel had the compact in sight. More sirens sounded from the clearing at the end of the railroad wye to the west as rangers took up the chase. Chuck slowed as he approached Building One. A string of patrol cars, lights flashing and sirens screaming, sped by on Center Road. Conrad drew abreast of Chuck.

Like the other five Maswik buildings, Building One was two stories tall, forest green with a shake-shingle roof. The scuffed brown doors to its rooms opened onto a sidewalk on the first floor and an open-air balcony on the second. Chuck led the way across the strip of xeric landscaping surrounding the building to the foot of the nearest stairwell. He hurried up the stairs and along the second-floor balcony to Room 211. Wasting no time, he rapped on the door as Conrad caught up with him.

“
¿Quien es?
” came an inquiry from inside the room.

Chuck put his mouth to the edge of the closed door. “Clarence,” he responded in a deep, Ortega-like voice.

The door to the room swung open and the woman from Albuquerque filled the doorway. Francesca Calderon's eyes widened. Before she could slam the door shut, Chuck put his shoulder to it and piled into the room.

Francesca fell backward to the nearest of the room's two double beds. She was barefooted and wore jeans and a black T-shirt. Chuck caught himself and straightened just inside the room. The sound of the receding sirens came through the doorway as the rangers raced eastward out of the village. Janelle's
phone single-buzzed in Chuck's pocket, indicating an incoming call. He stepped aside and motioned Conrad to keep an eye on Francesca as he yanked out the phone.

“Janelle!” a woman's voice screeched into the phone the instant Chuck took the call. “They're chasing us! They're after us! What do we do? What do we do?”

It was Dolores. The sound of a lone siren came over the phone in the background.

Shocked, Chuck stood rooted in place, the phone pressed to his ear. The small pedestrian with the girlish gait had been Dolores making her way up the sidewalk in her tippy sandals, while the larger of the two had been Amelia. The generic white compact, Chuck realized, was Amelia's car. Janelle's friends had ignored his admonition that the members of the tourist group not drive to and from their assigned posts throughout the village, and now Rachel was pursuing them.

“Dolores, is that you?” Chuck said, speaking fast.

“Yes!” Dolores shrieked.

“Listen. It's me, Chuck. You've got to tell Amelia to slow down.”

“They're after us! They're after us!”

“Slow down. Stop!” Chuck pleaded. “They won't do anything to you. They're rangers.”

“Look out!” Dolores screamed.

In the motel room, Francesca sat up on the bed, ready to make a break for it. Before she could so much as stand, however, Conrad stepped to her side, spun her by the elbow, and planted her face down on the bed. He put a knee to the small of her back and twisted her forearm up between her shoulders.

“Jesus!” Francesca cried out, her voice muffled by the bed's flowered comforter. “You're breaking my arm.”

“Snap it in two if you have to,” Chuck told Conrad grimly.

The squeal of tires issued from the phone, followed by a second
of silence. Then Dolores breathed, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“Dolores,” Chuck barked. “Are you all right?”

“That way!” Dolores screeched suddenly. “Amelia! Left, left,
left!
” Her voice was distant, as if she'd lowered her phone to her side.

“Dolores!” Chuck yelled. “Can you hear me?”

“Chuck?” Dolores asked, her voice full in his ear again.

“Where are you?”

“Some big building. A paved circle. We spun around, almost hit the car chasing us.”

The paved circle had to be the shuttle-bus turnaround in front of the South Rim Visitor Center at the east end of the village. And the car they'd almost hit was Rachel's.

Should Chuck try to reach Rachel and tell her to give up the pursuit? No. Making the call would take too much time. Nor was there any chance Rachel would answer her phone in the middle of the chase. His only hope was to stay on the line with Dolores and, through her, convince Amelia to pull over.

“Left. You said left. Which way are you headed?” he asked, trying to keep Dolores talking.

“Away somewhere. It's dark. No more lights.”

Over the phone, Chuck heard the whine of the car's engine as it climbed through its gears, gaining speed.

“We gapped ‘em,” Dolores said, a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “Bought ourselves some time.”