Desert Noir (9781615952236) (35 page)

I'd worked up a thirst scavenging the car in the warm morning sun but I couldn't worry about that now. I had too much to do before it got really hot. I untied Evan's feet, tucked them under my armpits, and inch by miserable inch, dragged the unconscious man further away from the car. As I worked, sweat ran into my eyes, stinging me, and I had to stop once to fashion a makeshift sweatband out of the hem of my T-shirt for my forehead. When I'd finally dragged him about twenty feet from the car, I lowered his feet to the ground.

“Hurts,” he muttered, having regained some semblance of consciousness during the torturous trip.

“I'm sorry.”

He managed a feeble smile. “S'okay.”

I smiled back, wondering why I felt pity for such a cold-blooded murderer. “We're going to make it, Evan. Just hang in there.” I didn't bother retying his feet. He didn't look like he'd be able to do any traveling soon.

God, I was thirsty. The sweat I'd lost while dragging Evan had dehydrated me badly, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. I still had to get the sun's rays off Evan.

I rooted around on the desert floor, found a small stone, and popped it into my mouth to help with the dryness. Then I took Evan's pocket knife and cut three limbs off the mesquite. After checking on the angle of the sun, I got between Evan and the sun and drove two of the mesquite's limbs as deep into the earth as I could. Then I shook the car cover out of its duffel bag.

Taking the penknife, I slashed the hems of both the car cover and the bag and pulled out their drawstrings. Measuring carefully, I stretched the longest drawstrings from one mesquite limb to the next, creating a northeast to southwest line. Then I looped one end of the car cover over it, securing the car cover to the horizontal line with shoelaces from Evan's Nikes. Now I cut the other mesquite limb into eighths and, using a heavy wrench from the toolkit, hammered the mesquite stakes through the earth end of the car cover and into the ground so that the hot desert wind wouldn't blow it away.

It wasn't fancy, but the rough lean-to would protect us from the morning sun's assault. When the sun traveled towards the west, I would simply flip the car cover over to the other side and secure it again. As a bonus, the waterproof, reflective surface of the car-cover would provide additional protection.

I crawled into the lean-to and discovered that Evan had slipped into unconsciousness again.

“Evan? Evan! Wake up!”

Nothing.

He was still alive, though. I could hear him breathing, but it seemed to me that his breath was growing ragged. Alarmed, I felt the carotid artery. His pulse was uneven, too. Not a good sign at all. It occurred to me, then, that attempting to save the life of the man who'd three times tried to kill me was an odd way of spending what might be my own last day on earth, but I couldn't help myself.

Besides, Evan couldn't hurt me now, and it might be nice to have some company until Search and Rescue finally arrived.

If they ever did.

I had two more chores to perform before I was finished for the day, before the merciless sun climbed to its zenith and I'd be able to do no more than hunker down in the lean-to next to Evan.

During our many camping excursions, my Baptist foster parents had impressed upon me that water could be found in even the driest desert. All you had to do was look. Once they had even shown me how.

Using one of the Infiniti's hubcaps for a shovel, I dug a hole far enough away from the lean-to and the car to ensure the hole would stay in the sunlight. When the hole was about three feet across by two feet deep, I lined it with buffalo grass I'd harvested from the desert floor. After cutting off the top of the radiator overflow bottle, I wetted the grass down and placed the now-empty plastic container at the bottom of the hole. Now I cut the plastic cleaning bag in half and set one half aside for later use. I very loosely covered the hole with the other half, securing it to the top of the ground with several large rocks. I took a smooth rock with no jagged edges and set it carefully in the loose bottom of the plastic, creating an unopened funnel that ended just above the empty plastic container.

If this gadget worked the way the Baptists said it would, the sun shining through the plastic would evaporate the contaminated water I'd poured onto the buffalo grass. The evaporation would condense onto the sides of the plastic, then dribble down into my makeshift cup. I'd get only about one cup every eight hours, but as soon as it was dark, I'd dig another hole and use the remaining sheet of plastic.

I felt better already. The prospect of having water in about eight hours stilled the pocket of fear in my chest but I noticed that my thirst was increasing. In the desert, it was dangerous to let this go on too long, because by the time you realized you were dehydrating, it was already too late. I had to get a drink and I had to get a drink RIGHT NOW.

And I'd better try to get some liquid down Evan.

Ignoring the heat, I got busy again. My eye on the climbing sun, I used the heavy wrench to batter a hubcap into a scoop, then picked over Evan's clean laundry until I found a white cotton dress shirt. No polyester for the Hyaths, thank you very much. I took the tire iron, my scoop, and my second plastic container over to the nearest barrel cactus. Using the same vicious motion I'd used at Evan's head, I swung the jack at the top of the cactus. The top came off with a sickening crunch, not unlike the sound Evan's head had made when I connected. For a moment, my stomach heaved and bile rose to my throat. I choked it back down. Vomiting would cost me too much liquid.

I approached the cactus carefully, since there was no point in adding to increasing discomfort by getting stuck. Once I made certain that the liquid oozing from the severed head of the cactus was clear, I put a handful of sand into the plastic container. I scrubbed and scrubbed until I was certain that no remnants of denatured alcohol remained to poison me, then set it aside. I spent the next few minutes with my hubcap scoop, dumping moist cactus meat into Evan's clean shirt.

When I thought I had enough, I closed the shirt up and wrung it over the plastic container. Pure cactus juice dribbled out. I kept wringing until the juice stopped flowing, then tossed the pulp away. Hunger wasn't my enemy. In fact, the digestive process used up much of the body's water stores, so anyone stranded in the desert was wise to not eat at all.

Satisfied with my morning's work, I took my water over to the lean-to.

“Evan!” I nudged him with my foot. “Wake up!”

“Uh.” One eye fluttered open again. It was his good eye, and I could tell that he saw me.

I stooped down, holding the plastic container up to his lips. “I brought you something to drink.”

With my hand holding up his head, he managed to get some of it down. A few precious drops, though, dribbled to the earth.

I tried not to think about them, and drank the rest. Slowly. Sensuously.

I stayed in the lean-to with Evan the rest of the day, conserving my energy, taking care not to let panic lure me into a fruitless search for help. Hypothermia and dehydration were the desert's two most vicious weapons, and I wasn't about to give them the advantage. Who knows how long we'd be stuck out here? It was Sunday. Because he'd worked on Saturday, I'd told Jimmy to keep his butt out of the office until Tuesday. Dusty would be tied up with the ranch guests until Wednesday night, and might not even get a chance to call. And Kryzinski? He'd probably just think that I'd gotten too busy to sign my complaint about the shooter (about Evan, I reminded myself ), and just put it down to my usual ditziness. Which meant that no one was going to miss me for at least forty-eight hours.

Time enough to die.

As I sat hunched in the shade of the shelter, the day heated up. I'd removed one of the pieces of cardboard inserted in Evan's shirts, and used that as a makeshift fan for us both. It helped some. Once a small dust devil whirled across the desert floor, picking up buffalo grass, dried mesquite leaves, and sand, flinging them towards us. As debris spun towards me, I wrapped Evan's head in another clean shirt for protection and tucked my own between my knees, hoping that the dust devil wouldn't destroy the shelter. I'd hate to have to build it all over again under the afternoon sun.

But we lucked out. After making life miserable for the tiny lizards that scampered in all directions from its path, the whirlwind danced away to the south, leaving the lean-to untouched.

“How you doin', Evan?” I asked, rearranging the shirt over his head. “You hanging in there?”

He didn't answer but I could tell by the slow rise and fall of his chest that he was still alive. And was it merely my imagination, or was his pulse stronger?

I threw a glance over at the Infiniti, making certain that a gopher hadn't scuttled off with the .45. To my relief, I saw that it was still there. If Evan regained his strength, as he appeared to be doing, I'd need to get to it in a hurry. I didn't kid myself that he'd be so grateful I'd taken care of him that he wouldn't try to murder me again. I'd already learned from the Hyaths that it was possible to like someone—love them, even—and still kill them.

Towards late afternoon, when the heat was on the verge of sucking the very breath out of my body, Evan woke up. “Lena?” The word was clear.

I turned towards him and saw that both eyes were open, but the pupil in the right eye looked even more dilated than it had before. Despite the heat, I shivered. I didn't want to share a lean-to with a dead man.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Thirsty.” His voice was faint but its earlier slur was gone. Maybe this was a good sign.

I patted him on the arm. “I'll get you something to drink.” 

On the way to the barrel cactus, I stopped at the car and scooped the gun out from under it. After tucking the .45 into the waistband of my jeans, I picked up the jack and attacked another barrel cactus. Soon I was back at the lean-to, giving Evan all my hard-won water.

“Tastes awful,” he mumbled.

“Thanks ever so.”

“Sorry.” Evan sighed, closed his eyes again and for a while I thought he'd gone back to sleep. But after a few minutes, he spoke again. “I'm s-sorry, Lena. So sorry about so m-much.” 

“You should be.” I looked at him more carefully and noticed a thin line of blood dribbling from his left ear. Knowing what that meant, I decided to untie his hands. I couldn't save him, but at least I could make him comfortable.

He smiled his gratitude and the handsomeness in his face briefly returned. “God, you are… you are one helluva w-woman. I wish… I wish I'd met you earlier.”

I dabbed the blood away from his ear. New blood quickly replaced it. He was dying and I think he knew it, because he began to tell me everything.

When Clarice had refused to sign the development contract for the Hacienda Palms Golf Course, she had inadvertently signed her own death warrant. Evan had truly cared for Clarice, and the grief he'd displayed after her death had been genuine. But like his parents, he'd loved money even more than he loved anyone.

It was the Hyath family curse.

Once Evan made up his mind to kill her, he was smart enough to know that he'd be a prime suspect, unless he could point the finger at someone else. It hadn't taken him too long to realize that in Jay Kobe he had the perfect fall guy. All he'd needed to come up with then was the means and the opportunity.

Enter Gus Baylor. In the one true coincidence of the case, Baylor had applied for a job laying flagstones at Tudor Hills right around the time Evan, out of money and desperate, made up his mind to murder Clarice. No mean man with a computer himself, Evan checked Baylor's background and discovered the old murder conviction. The ex-con's subsequent behavior must have had Evan swooning in pre-murderous delight. Then, when Gus got into that high-profile fight at the Tudor Hills construction site, Evan decided it was time to strike.