The Salt Maiden (22 page)

After glancing back at her, he shrugged. “I’ll try again in a few minutes. He must be driving through a dead spot. Plenty of those around here.”

Her discomfort deepened, though she couldn’t pinpoint why. “So he
is
on duty?” she pressed.

Once more Wallace shrugged. And once more he avoided her gaze. “Could be. Him and me, we’re all there is here, when it comes to law enforcement. We don’t punch a time clock. We just work whenever things need doing, any hour
of the day or night. Lots of hours lately. But sometimes we have to squeeze in our own personal business, too. And the sheriff doesn’t always check in with me about his visits to his women and the like.”

So that was it, she realized. Wallace somehow knew that she and Jay had been together, and the deputy was jealous. No, that couldn’t be it, for he’d never seemed the slightest bit interested in her as a woman. More likely he disapproved of the relationship for other reasons. Maybe he considered it a conflict of interest on Jay’s part.

She could have assured Wallace she had no intention of falling into Jay’s bed again—or onto his kitchen table, she thought regretfully. But she wasn’t about to either confirm his suspicions or acknowledge his ridiculous attempt to make her jealous.

She leaned over the desk and picked up a message pad, then jotted,
Jay, I’m back in town. Please call me,
along with the number of her new satellite phone, once she had fished it from her purse. Glancing up at Wallace, she said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d see that he gets this message.”

“Sure thing,” he told her, but his eyes said the note would be confetti before she left the building.

“I need to run down some paperwork for the insurance,” she said, though it aggravated her to have to whip up a lie to gain his cooperation. “They’re insisting I get their stupid papers signed by both the sheriff and whichever FBI agent’s in charge of the investigation.”

Wallace’s expression eased, making her wish she’d dreamed up this story sooner. Almost everyone, at some point, had to jump through insurance company hoops to settle a claim. And everyone, to a person, hated it.

“I’m kind of in a hurry,” she added. “I need to get back to my practice as soon as possible.”

“Well, the feebs—I mean, the special agents—have left town already. I’m pretty sure they’re back in Albuquerque. Still workin’ on our case, they tell me.” Wallace surprised
her with a cocky grin and added, “If we don’t beat ’em to an answer.”

“You think you’ll find out who…who shot my sister?” she asked.

“Nothing would make me happier than to be the one to do that, Dr. Vanover,” he said with what sounded like genuine conviction. “Nothing in this world.”

As Dana left the office, she suspected Wallace’s desire was based less on a need for justice than a desire to boost his own career. Clearly he had no love for the federal agents who had taken over the investigation, but she’d be willing to bet that the person he most hoped to outshine was Jay himself.

Wondering where to go from there, Dana made a pit stop in the ladies’ room. On her way out, she came face-to-face with Rimrock County’s tax collector.

“Why, isn’t this a surprise?” Estelle Hooks asked, looking as pleased as, say, the average kidney-stone patient.

“Hello, Mrs. Hooks.” Dana decided to trot out her lie sooner rather than later this time. “I’m afraid my insurance company’s made me come back for some signatures—they’re giving me a tough time about the damage to my car.”

“After all you and your family have been through!” Estelle exclaimed. “Is there any way that I can help you?”

“Not unless you can tell me where Sheriff Eversole might be.”

“He told me he was heading to an accident scene,” Estelle said. “No one’s hurt, but there’s a bull down over on Ranch-to-Market Road One-seventy.”

Dana squinted, thinking. “Is that the one I passed on the way to the adobe where my sister lived?”

Estelle nodded. “He said it was about a mile and a half west of that junction.”

“Do you think it would be okay if I drove out there? I’d, ah, I’d like to get this business taken care of as soon as possible. So I can get back to my mother.”

A slight nod attested to Estelle’s approval. “I don’t see why not. But maybe you should ask Wallace first if Jay is still there. He should have called in by now.”

“Jay would tell him?”

“Oh, yes. He always lets my boy know where he’s going and when he might be back, and Wallace does the same. Otherwise, if there was trouble, one of them could get stuck—and in this heat, that’s no small matter.”

“I see.” Apprehension tightened Dana’s stomach. So Wallace
had
been lying to her from the start. Was it only out of casual malice, or was there some darker reason that Jay was incommunicado? “I’ll be sure to check in with him, then. Thank you, Mrs. Hooks.”

A smile bloomed beneath the beehive hairdo. “I hope you won’t mind if I call you Dana. And please, it’s Estelle, dear.”

The strange thing is, he told me about this place back in rehab, told me about its empty spaces and its defeated dwellings baking in the desert sun.

He claimed he hated it, that he was never going back there.

Yet who should I run into within days of my arrival but the man who now pretends he doesn’t know me?

For old times’ sake, I pretend right back, even though it hurts like hell and has me wishing for a bottle or a little magic dust.

For anything to take the edge off of the memories…

But I’m finished running.

Finished, so I breathe in a deep draft of desert and turn back to my loom.

—February 3 (loose page)

Angie’s sobriety journal

(recovered following close of investigation near Red Wolf Wildcatters bunkhouse)

“Looks like it’s just you and me, dog,” Jay told Max, who stood panting in the shade of the Suburban.

Still jittery from his struggle to slow his vehicle without rolling over, Jay glared down at his cell phone’s tiny screen. Not a single bar, of course—though he’d had service earlier, at the location of the alleged accident. And Estelle and Wallace either didn’t hear his radio or wouldn’t answer.

If he stuck around this county, Jay vowed to convince the commissioners to fund the cost of a foolproof satellite communications system. His second order of business, he determined, would be finding someone other than a damned Hooks to watch his back. Or better yet, he’d throw in with
Dennis to run the whole bunch of them right out of Rimrock.

If
Dennis was still speaking to him…

Jay pulled a gallon jug from the emergency stash he kept in the rear of the Suburban. The water was warm and tasted of plastic, but it would keep both him and Max going through the tire change.

One way or another, Jay would have ended up doing the work himself, but he’d feel better if he could have told someone his location. Though the sun rested on the horizon, the rock and soil cast off a day’s worth of hellish heat, enough that Jay would bet his next cold beer that it remained close to one hundred in the shade.

Even a healthy man could die exerting himself in such conditions. He took another drink and looked to see what had happened to his tire. The roads were so rough around here, he expected to see a spot where a sharp stone had torn through the shoulder. He was surprised to find that neither rock nor rut had caused this flat.

Instead he spotted a slash across the sidewall. Though it would be impossible to prove, it looked to him as if someone had sliced through it with something sharp. A hunting knife, perhaps, and the idea nudged a memory. Something he’d discussed with the agent from Monahans, Steve Petit. What the hell had it been? Tough to remember at the moment, with both heat and fatigue pressing in on him. Hard to concentrate…He shook his head in an attempt to clear it.

As Jay twisted off each frozen lug nut and laid it in his upturned hat’s crown, he cursed Hooks, Navarro, and Schlitz under his breath. Angry that he’d turned the tables on their attempt to intimidate him, one of them must have done the damage while Jay was busy with the dog. Probably they’d simply meant to cause him the aggravation of a tire change, but because the cutter had been in a hurry the tire hadn’t immediately gone flat. Instead, after heating and bumping
along the dusty road, it had suddenly given up the ghost—in a manner that could have gotten Jay killed if he’d been driving any faster.

As he pulled off the ruined tire, a different sort of remains came to mind. Miriam Piper-Gold’s, to be specific, or whatever her real name was.

The medical examiner had made note of the strips of flesh removed from the body’s thighs and abdomen.
That
was what Jay had been trying to remember—Petit’s suggestion that the victim might have been tortured antemortem by someone with a sharp knife.

And Jay recalled something else as well. The three young heifers Weevil Jenkins thought had been slaughtered by some weird cult, or maybe aliens. Though Jay hadn’t been around when the first two animals died, he remembered hearing his uncle complain about Weevil’s passion for conspiracy theories. Besides, the third carcass hadn’t looked particularly suspicious. Sometimes predators brought down an animal and got scared off by something before they finished eating. Other times they killed when they were too full to do more than nibble on the tenderest portions.

He’d assumed that was all it had been, but when he put it into the larger context, Jay now wondered if the pattern might be part of something more disturbing. Something that involved one of the three men who had lured him to the desert far from town before slashing his tires.

Dana’s best-laid plans went awry when Mrs. Lockett flagged her down on her way out of the courthouse.

“Come in and have some cheesecake,” she’d invited. “I made some for the children, but they haven’t come in from playing yet. I could have sworn…I think…I don’t know.”

The old woman turned around, the hem of her thin housedress fluttering around her bony knees. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she asked, “Where
are
those children off
to? Trudy-Lynn, Nestor, Sheldon! Come inside—it’s getting dark.”

She looked so bereft in her confusion, so vulnerable and hopeless, that Dana had gone in and had a slice of cheesecake with her. She’d intended to stay only long enough to set the old woman happily adrift among her memories, but when Dana caught sight of a huge—and undoubtedly painful—abscess on the orange tom’s neck, she decided to do a makeshift procedure to alleviate the old cat’s suffering.

“You know, if you’d have this boy neutered he wouldn’t get into so many catfights,” she suggested, “or leave the neighborhood knee-deep in kittens, either.”

Mrs. Lockett tittered and waved off the suggestion. “But Eleanor’s a girl cat. I named her after Mrs. Roosevelt.”

“And a fine name it is, too,” Dana told her,
except
this
Eleanor has testes.

“Why, just this winter she had the cutest babies,” Mrs. Lockett claimed. “The children had such fun playing with them.”

The woman was too disoriented to be left alone, Dana decided, before she went to the old woman’s telephone, where she kept a list of numbers posted.

By the time her son Nestor arrived and Dana was able to leave—along with the part-time preacher’s thanks and a bag of fresh-baked muffins—the desert sky was strewn with stars, and her rental was the sole remaining vehicle outside the courthouse.

“Well, damn,” she muttered, then decided that now that it was dark, Jay was likely to be home. She tried his number, only to get voice mail. Might as well stop by his place anyway and show him the letter she’d received before she headed to the hotel room she’d reserved in Pecos.

If
I need the room.

No sooner had the thought slipped through than Dana slapped it down. She wasn’t putting Jay’s job at further risk;
nor was she climbing back aboard the emotional roller coaster—not for a few scant hours’ pleasure.

She groaned, fighting the memory of his hands and mouth on her heated flesh.
No more hiding from reality
, she told herself.
It’s time to face the facts and get on with your life.

As she headed out of town, she concentrated on that thought. As if, with repetition, she could force it to sink in.

With each long scrape of blade against steel, the knife sang, a whirring note that rose to a bright
zing
.

A thrill of sheer excitement set the Hunter’s pulse to racing as its music blended with the memory of the spatter of hot blood and the bawling of the half-grown heifers. For Angelina’s sister had been lured by his letter like a doe drawn to a feeder on the first day of open season.

Or the first
night
, better yet. Because after the last failure he had made some preparations, one of which involved a very special addition to his arsenal: night-vision field glasses that would allow him to track her in the dark with the efficiency of a big lion. He expected to use them, but not quite yet.

Not when he could easily follow the taillights as they receded on a lonely road heading out of town. He wasn’t certain where Dana Vanover thought she was going.

But he damned sure knew where she would end up before this night was through.

One of the strangest plants of the desert, the night-blooming cereus is a member of the cactus family that resembles nothing more than a dead bush most of the year. It is rarely seen in the wild because of its inconspicuousness. But for one midsummer’s night each year, its exquisitely scented flower opens as night falls, then closes forever with the first rays of the morning sun.

—“Night-Blooming Cereus,” entry by A.R. Royo,
from www.DesertUSA.com

“I’ll head out tonight—should be down your way first thing in the morning,” Special Agent Steve Petit told Jay over the phone. “Meanwhile, I wouldn’t advise you to go out on any calls alone.”

Jay put his coffee down on the kitchen counter and rubbed his burning eyes. “Sure, Petit. I’ll be puttin’
all
our vast reserves on babysitting duty.”

“No need for sarcasm. It’d put me to a lot of trouble if I had to investigate your murder along with all the rest.”

All the rest
, Jay knew, included both his and the agent’s presumption that R.C. Eversole, too, had met with foul play, later disguised by the fire that ravaged his home. With the forensic evidence—including the body—gone forever, their only chance to prove his murder would be to solve both the Vanover and the Piper-Gold killings. Once a suspect or suspects were in custody, there was always a chance of wringing out a confession, particularly if the investigators played one conspirator against the other.

“Hell knows, I wouldn’t want to put the FBI to any
inconvenience
,” Jay said. “But I don’t imagine Hooks and his buddies will come after me. For one thing, they know I’ll be
watching for ’em. And they’ll have to figure I’ll pass their names on to you and Tomlin.”

“Speaking of which, I’ll get started on those background checks tonight,” Petit promised. “See if the FBI computers turn up anything of interest on the three of them.”

“While you’re at it,” Jay suggested as he stifled a yawn, “maybe you ought to take a look at Bill Navarro. He’s supposed to have had some kind of a drug thing a few years back. And Wallace Hooks, too, just to see. Since he
is
Abe Hooks’s son.”

“Your deputy? His record’s clean, as far as we’ve learned, other than the one marijuana-possession charge back in New York City about ten years ago.”

Jay wasn’t terribly surprised. As an aspiring actor just out of high school, Hooks had probably been trying to fit in with a faster-living crowd. Or the arrest had simply been a part of what he sardonically referred to as his “wild oats” years.

“There’s nothing since then,” Petit told him. “And nothing suspicious about his banking situation, either.”

“You dug into Wallace’s
accounts
?” Annoyance flared at the invasion of privacy.

“Well, yeah, we ran him earlier, when we checked on…We had to check out both the local—”

“There’s no need to play coy,” Jay said. “I’ve long since figured you’ve thoroughly investigated me. Can’t say I’m thrilled about it, but I would’ve done the same in your shoes.”

Petit hesitated before saying, “You should know that my partner, Agent Tomlin…he’s not so sure you’re fit for office. Not after the incident in Dallas, and what we read in the VA file on your…medical history.”

Jay waited for his irritation to flash over before responding, “Then I guess it’s a lucky thing for me he’s not a county commissioner in these parts. So what about you? You think I’m a few fries short of a Happy Meal, too?”

“Hell, I think
anybody
who’d willingly live in that one-horse hellhole fits that description.” The chip-toothed grin
came through loud and clear, though Jay couldn’t see it. “But I don’t suppose you’re any worse than most.”

“Comin’ from you, that means a whole lot…
Cowboy
.” Jay smiled as he tossed off Petit’s hated nickname.

Petit lobbed back a good-natured but anatomically impossible suggestion before sobering. “Seriously, Eversole. If I didn’t think you were okay, would I have faxed you copies of those extra journal pages we recovered inside the wall of that adobe? Especially with my partner suggestin’ we keep you out of the loop.”

“So why’d you do it, then?”

“Thought maybe all that crazy journal stuff would make more sense to you than us, since you’ve been digging into this mess longer. So did it?”

As Jay considered the two entries, something important hovered at the edge of his awareness. But when he tried to bring it into focus, his tired brain lost its grip.

“Let me get back to you on that,” he said. “I need to take another look.”

“Meanwhile,” Petit told him, “you need to stay alive till I can get there. These people may be playing for a lot more than we thought. We’ve uncovered evidence that Miriam Piper-Gold took a hell of a lot more than fifty K with her to grease some wheels in Rimrock County.”

“How much?”

“As far as we’ve determined, it could’ve been a million, maybe more.”

When he’d served as a cop in Dallas, Jay had been in on million-dollar drug busts. Though his salary as a public servant was far humbler, he had grown used to seeing ads touting multimillion-dollar mansions and reading reports of million-dollar-plus contracts for everyone from CEOs to sports stars. After a while the number had begun to lose its magic.

But here in Rimrock County a million dollars was still considered an obscene amount of money. A wild dream that the average man could work his whole life without approaching.

Even a man as grounded as his uncle might have his head turned by such a figure. And a man like Abe Hooks, who had scrambled for decades to build a two-bit empire, might be willing to kill to secure a portion of that sum.

“Way we hear it,” Petit said, “Roman Goldsmith was mad as hell when he discovered the amount. Wish we could get a line on that slick son of a bitch, but so far, nothing. I’m starting to think he’s fled the country.”

“If he isn’t dead.”

“Could be. But those kind of scum suckers are like roaches. No matter what else has gone down, we usually find ’em hiding under some rock. Eventually, anyway.”

“So where do you go from here?”

“Believe it or not we’ve been talking to some people at
America’s Most Wanted
. Walsh lives to go after assholes who fleece little old ladies out of their life savings. Besides, goldsmith’s starting to look good for his wife’s death, and with the public’s interest in the Salt Maiden mummy and the tie-in to an adorable cancer kid, this story has more than enough sex appeal to turn over his particular rock.”

“Amen to that,” Jay said. Amen to anything that would bring justice for his uncle, as well as Dana’s wayward sister. And if the program motivated more Americans to volunteer as marrow donors, maybe a match would turn up to save Nikki Harrison.

Though he knew it was a long shot, he fervently hoped so, not only for the child’s sake, but for Dana’s. With all the losses she had suffered, he couldn’t imagine how she’d shoulder the death of Angie’s daughter, too. Once more he found himself wondering how Dana was doing, where she was this minute, and what she was thinking. A craving to call her nearly bowled him over, though he knew damned well that hearing her voice would only inflame his need to have her for his own.

And even if she didn’t turn him down flat, the last thing
she needed in her life was a wreck of a West Texas sheriff—even one who loved her beyond all reason.

The thought blindsided him, but he couldn’t deny it. Like a damned fool he’d gone and fallen for a woman he could never have. The thought deepened the shadow threatening to overwhelm him—a darkness he was no longer certain he wanted to keep fighting.

“Still there, Eversole?” asked Petit.

Jay apologized and told him, “Too much on my mind, I guess.” And with the lack of sleep, his focus was unraveling more quickly by the minute.

As they ended the call, Jay tried Wallace’s cell number. Though the deputy should have been available, his number rang a few times before going to voice mail.

“I need a word with you.” Jay wondered if he was crazy to trust his deputy to choose duty over his own father. Despite Petit’s assurance that he and his partner believed Wallace to be clean, Jay relied on the same instinct he’d once used to tell whether the men and women of his unit could be trusted and how far they might be pushed. But if he was wrong, the consequences could be disastrous, maybe even fatal. “Tonight, if possible. Had some trouble earlier that I need to get your take on. Could be something ugly brewing—and you might want to check on your aunt Dorothy tonight. Just drive by her place and keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

You mean
Uncle
Dorothy?
Jay could almost hear his deputy asking with a wicked grin on his face.

If there had been a call he needed Wallace to take, Jay would have tried the Hooks’s house phone number, too. But since either Abe or Estelle might answer, Jay decided he could wait for Wallace to check his messages, something he was normally conscientious about doing.

Jay laid his phone down on the kitchen counter and took out a filter before making a fresh pot of coffee to help him stay alert for any signs of trouble. He sat, intending only to
wait out its gurgling cycle, but before he knew what hit him his head nodded toward his chest.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he jerked back to wakefulness at the sound of Max’s toenails clicking on the tiled floor. Rising from the bar stool, Jay followed the shepherd into the living room, where the animal growled softly, as if he heard something—or someone—outside.

Jay felt the rise of his own hackles. Could Petit have been right about the threat to him? Were Hooks, Navarro, and Schlitz out there, skulking around with guns and gasoline cans in the hope of getting to him before he mentioned their names to outsiders?

With a muscle twitching at the side of his mouth, Jay switched off the lights and drew his handgun. He moved through the house with deliberate stealth, his senses straining for an unfamiliar sound, a smell, a flicker or vibration…

For anything to warn him that the enemy he and his troops had come to ferret out of this apartment complex awaited him with their machine guns and their homemade bombs, with the Molotov cocktails that cooked men alive inside their body armor.

That isn’t right
, some distant recess of his tired brain whispered. But adrenaline overrode the warning as he heard an engine rumble to a stop outside.

That would be the hajjis, pulling their bomb-rigged vehicle close to the building’s base—where they meant to detonate it while Jay’s men searched the floors above.

If he didn’t somehow stop the bombers they’d bring down the building, killing not only U.S. soldiers but innocent civilians. And hadn’t he seen children playing in the streets around this building—those beautiful Baghdad children with their dark eyes and mischievous laughter?

No way could he let them die. He refused to be too late again.

Jay crept to the back door and pushed past the K-9, who was wagging his docked tail and whining to get outside.

“Stay in here,” Jay whispered to him as he heard the vehicle door shut. “Stay.”

If the enemy heard barking he would set off the car bomb for certain. Jay’s only chance was to slip up on the combatant holding the remote detonator and take him out before he could accomplish his murderous mission. The enemy was probably moving a safe distance from the blast zone, but Jay knew from hard experience that such terrorists were willing to die to carry out their missions—not only willing, but eager, thanks to the martyrs’ glories they believed awaited them in heaven.

This
isn’t
right.
More adamant this time, the warning shook him. But when Jay caught sight of the silhouetted figure, he crept forward, propelled by the fearful power of his waking dream.

The house had gone dark, though Dana was almost certain she had seen a window lit as she’d pulled in. Had he already gone to bed?

She walked a few steps from her vehicle, her hunger to see him—to touch him, if she were being honest with herself—warring with the oppressive blackness closing in around her. With no sign of the moon, the only illumination was the ancient star shine from ten million distant suns.

Far too distant for her eyes to make out anything but a few deeper patches of shadow around her. It was too dark, in fact, to move any farther from her vehicle for fear of tripping on a rock or catching a leg on yet another spiny plant.

A distant yowl shattered the stillness, what sounded like a woman in excruciating pain. With a yelp catching in her throat, Dana lurched back toward the safety of her rental before recalling something she’d read about the area’s mountain lions—how their cries were often mistaken for the sounds of women screaming.

But coupled with the darkness, the eerie sound had left her shaken, reminded her that the desert held a host of crea
tures at home with the night. Unnerved, she decided to make the drive to Pecos and hole up in her brightly lit motel room. Tomorrow she would come back—by the light of day.

Resolved, she reached for the SUV’s door handle. But a split second before she could retreat to safety something slammed against her, cracking both her head and shoulder hard against unyielding glass and metal.