Yellow Lies

by Susan Slater

  “Bet you’d like to know, wouldn’t you? Let’s just say that he’s alive but not very well and not likely to see the light of day anytime soon.” More laughter.

  Julie opened the opposite door. Thank God, she’d rented a four-door.

  “Hey, let’s toss those out on this side.”

  She brought the car door closed but didn’t latch it before she tossed the recorder in his direction. But Carl wasn’t paying attention. He had moved to rummage in the trunk. Then, stepping back where she could see him, he began wiping his head with a towel, smearing the udder cream and cursing when it didn’t come off easily, ducking down to study his image in the outside mirror.

  “Jesus, this stuff is crap.” He scrubbed at his head. “But I guess it was worth it. Not a bad way to earn a few hundred thousand, if you look at it that way.” He chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. He had removed a stocking cap from a back pocket. A couple more swipes and he’d be done, Julie thought. She needed to make a decision.

  Julie eyed the gun still tucked in his belt. She had edged closer to the opposite door while she gathered up the cloth bag of notes and tried to see past the jumble of waist-high rocks to her right. They had climbed about fifty feet into the outcropping of rock that rose from the edge of a field. But it wasn’t a sheer drop from where they were parked, rather a gradual sloping descent into a field of corn. If she ran, zigzagging, keeping her body low, she might have a chance. The gun was a revolver, small caliber, meant to be shot at close range, not very accurate beyond fifteen feet. Did she have the guts to risk injury but foil sure death?

  “Check the inside pocket in my bag.” Then she heaved the bag out the door and didn’t look back. She simply dove through the passenger-side door, stumbled, gained her balance, scrambled over the first boulder, rolled, righted herself in time to hear the ping of a bullet glance sharply off the rock to her left followed by his angry curses; bent over, she slipped, fell, leaped up in a crashing descent toward the field of waist-high tassels—not much camouflage, but better than nothing. The second and third pings sent bits of rock spraying across her neck. Close. She could hear him panting, grunting with the exertion. Just another twenty-five feet and then she could run toward the highway. She could find help, flag down a car. Traffic was slowing because of the roadblock. Maybe someone would see her from the road. She didn’t stop to think that he might catch up with her before she reached safety. She just knew that she had to try. That it was probably her only chance. He was close. He fell, cursed, shouted at her, then in a rain of pebbles, crashed forward. Another bullet missed. Four down. Two more. Waste two more, she prayed.

  She didn’t allow herself to look back. Her jeans were torn at the knees, her hands bleeding, palms scraped and raw. The next bullet grazed her shoulder. In a reflex motion she grabbed her arm but kept going. Fifteen feet to the bottom. Just fifteen feet. She could make it to the field and to the highway. She had to make it to the highway.

  She hopped, twisted, stubbed her toe, jumped over a rock. It was more even now. He only had one bullet left. But the small avalanche of rock told her he was still in pursuit, and almost on top of her. He hadn’t stopped to reload. But if he missed with the last bullet, he could do enough damage with his bare hands. She could hear his breathing. Could she make it?

  She wouldn’t allow herself to think otherwise.

  When he swiped at her arm, she deftly ducked and dodged left. More cursing, then a lunge that knocked her flat. The breath whooshed from her lungs and she gasped, struggling to refill them. She rolled over to see him at her feet, on all fours, breathing hard, then he slammed his knee down, pinning her ankle, and pointed the pistol. She had almost made it—had almost made flat ground and the highway. He was trying to catch his breath. His knees and hands were as torn up as hers.

  “You stupid bitch.” He gulped air before continuing. “You thought you’d get away.”

  He straightened, then pushed to his feet standing over her, chest heaving, the pistol surprisingly steady. The crack of sound followed by an echo of percussion pierced the air and seemed to coincide with .22’s suddenly being jerked upward and back to lie just out of reach, blood already foaming from the hole above his eye. He lifted his head, the hand holding the pistol wavered but was still pointed her direction.

  Julie didn’t wait to see more, she bolted upright, and ran, not looking, not caring, just forward out into the field of shoulder-high plants, falling, staggering to her feet only to slip again, dreading to feel the burning sting of Carl’s last bullet.

  “Julie, Julie. It’s okay. .22’s dead. It’s me. Look at me. It’s Ben.” Strong arms had caught her, pinned her as she flailed about. But Ben ... ? Was she safe? Was it true she had escaped? All feeling drained from her body, and she slipped to the ground in the midst of trampled corn. Ben cradled her as she tried to catch her breath between sobs of relief, and he kissed her and said he’d never been so frightened in all his life. Then they both laughed when she said she thought she had the corner on fright, thank you very much.

  “Looks like you’re going to live.” Tommy stood at the edge of the rocks, a deer rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Thanks to you,” Ben called back. “You ever put in some time on a SWAT team?”

  “Used to keep the family in venison every winter. That’s about all.” But he grinned his appreciation of Ben’s admiration.

  Julie thought Tommy was being overly modest, remembering the single, life-ending bullet in Carl’s head.

  “If you want to go back to the village, have that arm looked at, I’ll meet you at the clinic in about an hour,” Tommy said then turned away as one of his patrolmen walked up.

  “I don’t think I’m really hurt. Cuts, bruises, a crease in my shoulder—”

  “How’d this happen?” Ben gently tipped her head sideways to look at the discolored bump above her ear.

  “You don’t want to know. Have you found Sal?” She changed the subject and struggled to her feet with Ben’s help. Better to get him off the topic of her injuries. In fact, she felt a little ridiculous. She was the one who had insisted .22 was who he said he was. She was the bright one who thought she could tell the difference—even went back to the house to pick him up in order to help Ben—or prove that she was right, probably, more of the latter.

  “Not a trace. Did .22 say anything?”

  “His name’s Carl. He’s Hannah’s nephew. He killed the trader who was in on some kind of deal. He also said that Sal is alive, but not well—I think that’s how he put it. Oh yeah, said Sal wasn’t going to see daylight again, something like that.”

  “Hannah’s nephew. That puts a twist in things. But explains how he could resemble her. It’s obvious that they’ve gotten Sal out of the way, to get the notebook.”

  “What’s all this about a notebook?” After Ben finished telling her what Daisy had discovered in the fetish jar, Julie stood quietly and thought of the corn maiden with its perfect Jumping Sumac beetle and the necklace with an identical beetle stuck in the bear. She should have known that the odds of one man finding two such perfect specimens of the same insect were improbable.

  “I feel so stupid. It was right there in front of me. And he tried to tell me. He was so mad that I’d paid all that money for a fetish necklace that wasn’t even real.”

  “Am I going to be mad, too, at how much you paid?” Ben was teasing as he put his arm around her and guided her toward his pickup.

  “Listen, buster, separate checking accounts are more important than two bathrooms in any marriage.” She teased back but loved the feel of being alive, of having her life ahead of her, of being able to lean against Ben, draw on his strength. She felt almost drunk with the prospect of having a future. She got into the truck with probably more help from Ben than she needed, then slipped across the seat, ignored the pain in her shoulder and put her arms around his neck as he swung behind the steering wheel.

  “I love you.” Anything else she had wanted to say was cut off by hi
s kiss.

  “If I didn’t think you needed medical attention, I could suggest one or two activities—” He began.

  “There’s always later.” She snuggled against him, then became pensive. “Can you imagine someone keeping his head raw and covered with salve all this time? He fooled a lot of people.” Julie noticed Ben grimace. Oops. Foot in her mouth again, but she wasn’t thinking about Ben’s testing him; she was thinking of Tommy’s mother.

  “Has Hannah been picked up?”

  “Tommy sent a patrol car out to the trading post. I don’t know if she’s under arrest. I was a little more concerned about someone else.” He reached over to put an arm around her shoulders after he’d pulled out onto the highway.

  “You know, I can’t help but feel that Sal’s whereabouts is right under our noses, too. I should have been smarter about the amber, should have snapped to its being too perfect. And I should have believed you about .22. I have the same feeling about Sal; I should know where he is. I’m thinking I do know, if I can only put it together,” Julie said.

  + + +

  Sal drew a hash mark on the wall. Number six. Then snapped off the flashlight. He had to conserve the batteries. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Six days. Five nights. But not that he could tell the difference. He sat down heavily on the cot. His strength was going. How long could he last? He had water. The sink in the corner had been put in for the lab. It was well water, unfiltered, and tasted slightly metallic. But it was wet. He could drink and wash. Was it comforting to think someone would find a clean body? If anyone ever found him.

  He slept most of the time now. Years ago he’d read a study on cave dwelling, about an experiment at Carlsbad Caverns. After a couple weeks underground, a person’s perception of time became warped. There was no difference between night and day. A person began to sleep ten, twelve even fourteen hours at a time. Sal had started doing that, sleeping like he was still drugged.

  He stretched out on the cot. He no longer fought the darkness. He’d found some candles in his tool box, but they were long spent. He thought he could detect a lingering scent of bayberry. Whatever that was. The flashlight was his only illumination. He turned toward the wall after bunching his pillow, and tucked the round cylinder under the mattress. The flashlight was important to him. It would be like losing his sight if anything happened to it, thrusting him into a blindness that he didn’t think his sanity could recover from.

  He dozed but couldn’t drift off into the black bottomless sleep he was used to. There had been no visitors—no Atoshles in his dreams, threatening him. But didn’t the visits by Atoshle have something to do with .22 and Hannah? Hadn’t they been trying to scare him? To make him give up the amber? .22 who wasn’t .22 after all? And Atoshle, who wasn’t Atoshle but was .22? It made his head hurt.

  He knew Hannah planned to move, just up and go and leave him underground. He had exhausted himself trying to find a chink—one weak link in his underground cell that would let him escape. But there was none. Noise didn’t seem to carry. He had banged on the metal workbench, on the sink, on the pipes exposed for two feet before they disappeared behind the rock wall. No one came, but his head had rung for hours, even with his hearing aid in his pocket.

  He had tried to force the bit of a hand drill through the trapdoor but struck what was probably half inch metal. He was in a fortress. And maybe he had just given up. Finally, he simply resigned himself to whatever was to be. He put his trust in his guardian fetishes that still perched above the cot. He carried the obsidian turtle in his pocket now and often drew it out to run his thumb over its cool smoothness. Long life. The turtle could give him that. Did he dare hope?

  At first the scraping didn’t register. The sound was muffled and sounded far away. But the ray of light that flooded the top of the stairs was real. Someone was opening the trap door. Sal pushed to his feet as it clanged shut, leaving darkness surrounding the single beam of a flashlight.

  “Stay where you are.”

  “Hannah?”

  What could this mean? He tried to keep down the joy that bubbled up, burst through his being sending shock waves to his brain. She’d relented. She’d come for him. “Hannah, yes, I knew you’d come. You couldn’t kill me. I knew that. I—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Let’s go now. There’s no need to wait. Let’s leave.” He heard himself babbling, but couldn’t stop. “I need to get something to eat—”

  Sal heard her cock the semi-automatic, and he stumbled back and sat down hard on the cot and closed his mouth. He wasn’t going anywhere. But why was she going to shoot him?

  “Two cop cars pulled in. They’ve got him. I know they do.” Her voice was quivering, and she seemed to be talking to herself. She was on the verge of tears or already crying, he couldn’t tell which.

  “Who? Got who?” he asked.

  “Carl. I didn’t want him to go with Julie. But he was so sure. Said it was the only way we’d get the notebook. I knew it was trouble. Something must have gone wrong.”

  “This Carl is .22? Where’s the real .22?”

  “Dead. And don’t think I murdered him. I didn’t have to. He died of pneumonia, the spring he was nineteen.”

  “So who is Carl?”

  “Good, isn’t he? I don’t think I’d have ever thought of having him impersonate Harold if I hadn’t seen what a good mimic Carl was. When they were younger, it was cruel. Carl would follow Harold everywhere, two steps behind walking just like him. At the table, he would torment Harold by eating like he did. And they looked alike through the eyes. Carl was only three years older.”

  “Your sister’s son?”

  “Yes. After Harold died, it seemed a simple thing to do, set it up to appear Carl had died of pneumonia and turn the real Carl into Harold. He had Harold’s behavior down pat. I researched the psych part—how he could fool experts, get by on the test. We practiced. It was all going to be worth it; I’d get my money that way. I could collect on the will. That bastard Ed wouldn’t get the last laugh.” Her voice was flat. She stopped, then added wistfully. “We were going home, to Maine. I’d live with my sister and make amber. There would have been enough money for all of us.”

  “Until Carl killed the trader?”

  “He had to. Ahmed was getting in the way, demanded that we include him as a partner—threatened to go to the police. It was my idea to scalp him and pin the murder on you. But even then, we could have gotten away. It was you. You and your stubbornness. Your refusal to give up the recipe. You made Carl risk his life.”

  Sal flipped on his flashlight. The beam crisscrossed the light from Hannah’s flashlight, but there was a gun all right. Light reflected off the barrel. She was standing three feet in front of him now. The gun was a semi-automatic, petite, maybe a Lady something-or-other but deadly. “Hannah—”

  “We’ve talked too much. I have to do this now, then wait until everyone’s gone and leave after it gets dark. Nobody remembers this cellar is here.”

  “Wait. Hannah, please—”

  + + +

  “Have you found Hannah?” Ben asked as Tommy walked through the door to the clinic’s emergency room.

  “Nothing yet.”

  He looked tired, Julie thought. The nurse was bandaging her shoulder and reminding her again how lucky she’d been.

  “Hannah’s car is still there. I think she sensed something was wrong when you and .22 didn’t come back, or maybe she saw the patrol car and took off on foot. We’ll find her. It’s only a matter of time. She couldn’t have gone far.”

  “Can we go back to the boarding house?” Julie was thinking about changing clothes—what wasn’t torn was dirt-streaked, stiff or discolored with blood.

  “It should be okay. My men have searched the house. I’ve left them out there just in case she tries to come back.”

  “I’m going with you. After the death of Harold, she’ll need someone. I think she’d rather hear about the death from me,” Dr. Lee said from the
doorway. “But I must tell you, I find it very difficult to believe what I’ve been hearing—all this about Harold being someone else. This could look bad for all of us if—”

  “Harold was an imposter. It appears he was her sister’s son. Hannah perpetuated the sham and meant to profit from it. Miss Conlin is alive because Ben saw the dust kicked up by her car going up the side of that outcropping of rock between here and Gallup. There was no mistake about what this .22 intended to do. The young man was killed in the act of threatening the life of Miss Conlin. My report will reflect this.” Tommy sounded terse and not in a mood to take anything from anybody—especially an overbearing doctor, Julie thought.

  “Ah, well, yes, but I would like to verify this information on my own,” Dr. Lee countered.

  “We have every reason to believe Hannah Rawlings could be armed and dangerous.”

  “You’ve got to be joking. I’ve known Hannah for five years. I’ve never found her to be anything but a loving mother, accomplished anthropologist, and dedicated to maintaining her place of business.” Dr. Lee sounded exasperated.

  “I am not asking you to stay out of this investigation; I am ordering you to do so. I will accept your offer to stand by as a physician. That is the extent of your involvement that will be approved by my office.” Tommy looked at his clipboard as much as dismissing Dr. Lee, who then turned to Ben.

  “I’ll follow the two of you in my car. I think we need to be going.”

  After Dr. Lee had left the room, Ben shrugged and helped Julie off the examining table.

  “What do you think, Tommy? Is it okay if he tags along?”

  “It’s difficult to turn down your boss.”

  + + +

  “Let’s go through what we know about Sal’s disappearance one more time,” Julie said. She sat forward on the front seat of the truck, legs tucked under her, facing Ben, her cuts and bruises forgotten.