Endangered (9781101559017)

by Beason, Pamela

  “Yeah, I can see it. Maybe a bloody cougar—we’ve got enough archive shots of those—or maybe a long-distance shot of rescue guys packing someone out on a stretcher.”

  “Just don’t lie—make sure it’s legal.”

  “Always.” He sounded annoyed. “I can handle the visuals. But what about the story?”

  “I just told it to you. You or Lauren have to write it.”

  “You know I can’t write.”

  “Max! This is an emergency.”

  “Oh, all right. Hang on.” Something rustled in the background. “Okay, I’m ready. Just sum it up for me again, okay? Say it the best you can, like dictation.”

  She sighed with impatience, took a deep breath, and enunciated carefully, “This morning, three armed men invaded Heritage National Monument with the intention of illegally shooting cougars. These vigilante hunters wounded not only a mountain lion but a park ranger who attempted to stop the shooting.”

  “And that’s Wilderness Westin, reporting live from Heritage National Monument,” Max intoned. “Got it. On tape, loud and clear. Audio has much more impact than just words on the screen. I’ll have it up in half an hour.”

  Wow. “I’m truly honored to be working with you, Mad Max.”

  “Likewise, WildWest. We could have been great.”

  She scuffed her boots in the dust. “It’s not over yet.”

  An object at her feet caught her eye. She picked up the small piece, turned it over in her fingers. Black plastic, flat, with a hole in the center. Some kind of button? No, the size was right, but a button would have two holes. A wheel. The missing wheel! The round bit of plastic looked suspiciously like the toy wheel Zack had shown her, right down to the tiny tread impressions.

  How many toy wheels looked like that? And how many would be way up here on a hiking trail? It had to be Zack’s.

  “You still there? Sam?”

  “Max, you won’t believe what I just found! Turn on that mike again.” She stated, for the record, that she had just discovered a toy wheel, identical to one missing from Zachary Fischer’s truck, near Temple Rock ruins in Heritage National Monument.

  “We’re back!” Max shouted into the phone.

  “Stay tuned,” she told him.

  “Me and the whole world. Adam Steele keeps calling to find out what’s new.”

  “Let him get it from the website just like everyone else.” She pressed End. Energized now, she dialed park headquarters again.

  As a busy signal beeped in her ear, her gaze traveled over the town house structures under the arch. Aside from the subterranean chambers of the Curtain, this was the only truly sheltered location in the park. The crumbling rooms and underground kivas would be perfect places to hold a child hostage. She redialed. Still busy. Damn it. She chewed her lip.

  She pressed the End button and stared at the phone in exasperation. Why hadn’t Perez given her his number before he’d left? Why hadn’t she asked for it? Disgusted with herself, she turned off the phone and stuffed it into her vest pocket.

  Seven o’clock. She was running out of daylight. She stashed the knapsack with all of her rattling equipment out of sight in a V of tree branches, hopefully out of reach of rodents. With her fingers curled around the tiny canister of pepper spray in her vest pocket, she stalked toward the dwellings, past the NO TRESPASSING notice.

  The walls of the ruins were stacked sandstone, some still chinked with red mud mortar. A two-story town house stretched up to meet the limestone ceiling of the overhang. Tiger stripes of black desert varnish cascaded down from the arch above onto the buildings, furthering the illusion that the ruins were an outgrowth of the cliff.

  The five one-story rooms that bordered the taller section had once had wattle-and-daub roofs. Now their crumbling walls stood exposed to the elements. Two kivas, the round cellarlike structures used for Anasazi men’s ceremonies, had likewise originally been covered by thick roof beams and plaster, extending the plaza’s flat surface. Now the kiva pits yawned open in front of the buildings.

  Sam skirted the kivas and crossed what remained of the plaza floor. She stood for a moment in front of the two-story structure. A gust of wind whistled through the keyhole-shaped doorways and puffed across the plaza, dislodging a tumbleweed. The sphere of dry brush rolled several feet across the plaza, then fell into one of the kiva openings. It came to rest on the bench that lined the walls and sat there as if waiting for the ceremony to begin.

  God, what she wouldn’t give to have Special Agent Chase J. Perez and his gun by her side right now. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the town house doorway, waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Dust motes danced in a shaft of light that spilled from a tiny window near the ceiling. A rough ladder made of tree branches lashed together with rope extended from the floor through a rectangular opening in the ceiling. She anxiously studied it. She really did not want to poke her unprotected head through that dark hole. But her search had to be thorough. She climbed slowly, testing each step before placing her full weight on it.

  The upper story was snug and dark. And, thankfully, empty. Two tiny windows faced outward, one above the other. The view from the lower window was panoramic, taking in the plaza, the trail along the cliff, and the valley floor below. The Anasazi who lived here must have felt smug, possessing such a prime location where weather, game animals, and enemies could be observed from the safety of the high cliffs.

  The cottonwoods in the river valley below were molten gold among the green-gray of the willows and piñon pines. She wondered what the heck was going on down there. TV news crews trolling for stories of hysteria in the campgrounds? Armed vigilantes storming the park gates?

  Here, seventeen hundred feet above the valley, it was eerily silent. The blue-green of junipers dominated the scenery. Topping the bluff across the valley, another thousand feet in elevation, a grove of aspens shimmered in brilliant autumn colors.

  She crawled down the ladder and listened for movement outside before she tiptoed onto the plaza. As she entered the next structure, a mouse scampered across the floor, skirting the remains of a fire in the center hearth. She stretched out her fingers above the charred lumps of wood. No hint of warmth. Whoever had lit it was long gone. It was not surprising that someone would picnic here, or even camp—the ruins were a natural lure for hikers, despite the NO TRESPASSING signs. One corner of the floor appeared more dust-free than the rest, as if a rug had recently lain there. Or a sleeping bag. Graffiti scratched into the wall—BJB + KJD—was encircled with a crude heart. Why is it, she thought with disgust, that some people can’t resist leaving their imprint wherever they go? They’re worse than dogs marking their territory.

  No ladder led up to the second-floor opening. She went back for the one in the town house next door. As she passed from one structure to the other, her skin prickled. An eerie feeling. Someone out there? She stopped and inspected the area, listening carefully. Nothing.

  After positioning the borrowed ladder in the rectangular opening, she hesitated. Could someone have climbed to the second story and then pulled up the ladder? Or stashed Zack up here and then taken the ladder so he couldn’t escape? She rubbed her fingers over the pocket that held the pepper spray just to make sure it was still there. Then she sucked in a breath and started up.

  IN his hotel room, Perez thumbed through Fred Fischer’s file, squinting wearily at the fine print that covered each page. There had to be a clue about where the man had gone. Raised in Orem. Member of a Boy Scout troop that hiked and climbed all over the state. Resident of California. Truck driver.

  The phone rang. Ranger Rafael Castillo was at the other end of the line. Perez wasn’t surprised; male law enforcement officers always reported to him, assuming that he was the leader of the FBI team. No wonder Nicole was pissed off so much of the time.

  “The Fischers’ Suzuki is in the park, in the Goodman Trail lot. The vehicle’s empty.”

  “Where does that trail go?” Perez asked.

&nb
sp; “It intersects the Milagro Canyon Trail just past Village Falls. If you don’t turn off to Milagro, Goodman Trail goes up past the Temple Rock ruins. Just beyond that, there’s a Y. You know ZigZag Passage?”

  Perez groaned. “Intimately.”

  “Well, if you take a right on the Y, Goodman Trail comes out of the valley near ZigZag. If you take a left on the Y, you veer off through Sunset Canyon on the Mesa Trail, which you could follow all the way across the park to the north entrance.”

  After hanging up, Perez checked the map. When they’d parted at the helicopter, Summer Westin said she was going to the ruins. From there she might take either Mesa Trail or follow Goodman to return to her camp. What were the odds that her path and Fischer’s would intersect? He hoped she wouldn’t try to cross that damn rock bridge again on her own.

  Why hadn’t he gotten her cell phone number? Now he’d have to track it down. Even with the number, he didn’t hold out much hope of contacting her; he’d seen her turn the power off each time after she’d used her phone.

  He made several calls. The park superintendent told him there was already a watch on all entrances and exits from the park: they were doing their best to make sure all visitors were out before starting the cougar hunt tomorrow. But he reminded Perez that anyone traveling cross-country on foot could come out along the park borders almost anywhere.

  This was a nightmare. How the hell were they supposed to track down anyone with only two agents on the case?

  The local charter flying outfit reminded him that nobody flew over the park after dark. They’d take him up to the plateau at dawn. The fire department told him the same thing.

  He briefly considered hiking up in the dark. No. Ridiculous. The trail was steep, rocky, and bordered by sheer drop-offs: he didn’t know where he was going, and he probably wouldn’t arrive before dawn, anyway.

  Summer Westin was tough. He thought about her leaping down from that boulder last night, scaring the hell out of him, about how she’d handled Kent’s wounds and faced the injured cougar. Still, he wished she had a gun. He drummed his fingers on the small table in his room. A bottle of beer and a speckled water glass tinkled to the beat.

  He pushed himself up from the chair, moving like a ninety-year-old. The stiffness was getting worse by the minute. And he’d thought he was in shape. He pulled a T-shirt out of the pile on the bed, pulled it over his bare chest, and went to tell Nicole about Fischer’s car.

  She’d switched to black jeans and a gold sweatshirt. On her the combination was elegant. Her room looked as if the maid had just squared it away. His partner always made him feel like an unmade bed.

  She motioned him in, her cell phone pressed to her ear. Weismann, she mouthed at him. The forensic specialist of the mobile Crime Scene team. She put the phone down on top of a computer printout from NCIC and punched the Speaker button.

  “I’ve identified your skeleton,” Weismann’s voice blared into the room.

  Nicole was incredulous. “Already?”

  “The miracle of digitized dental charts.” A squeak followed.

  “Where are you?” Perez asked.

  Another squeak. “Las Rojas Police Station.” The voice slid into a whisper. “What a dump! Still in the Dark Ages—”

  “The skeleton, Weismann,” Perez prompted.

  “They do have computers here, at least. And a broadband net connection. I scanned all the specifics on your skeleton’s teeth to Martino in Salt Lake. He faxed me back a couple of likely charts. Then I—”

  “Cut to the chase,” Nicole suggested.

  “The winner is Barbara Jean Bronwin. Salt Lake verified the match. She disappeared a little over three years ago from Portland, Oregon.”

  AT the top of the ladder, faint squeaking greeted Sam’s ears. She nervously pushed through the opening, half expecting to feel the whack of a board across her crown. The floor was covered with droppings. A flutter of movement above her head made her heart lurch into her throat. She raised her eyes. Black wings stretched and rewrapped themselves around silver-gray cocoons. The ceiling was alive with pipistrelle bats.

  One of the three-inch-long mammals hooked its wing claws into the ceiling, flipped to a tail-down position, and defecated a stream of guano onto the floor. A baby bat the size of a hummingbird clung to the white fur of its breast; the pup squeaked in annoyance at its parent’s gymnastics. The mother pipistrelle curled its feet and returned to the upside-down position, releasing its wing claws to wrap leathery wings securely around the baby.

  Sam sighed with relief. She’d take bats over murderers any day. She crawled back down the ladder, exited from the town house onto the plaza. The sunlight had withdrawn from the ruins and from the trail beyond. It was nearly seven forty-five. Time was running out.

  She quickened her pace, trotting from one room to the next, intent on checking all the ruins. The cougar scratches on her thigh throbbed with each step. Nothing but dust in the next room; no sign of a hidden doorway to back stairs. Rodents as well as dust in the next; a kangaroo rat leapt to a hole between the sandstone bricks and scurried away. A clump of tumbleweeds loomed menacingly in a corner, but when she kicked them apart there was nothing hidden behind them.

  She couldn’t shed her goose bumps, the feeling of hidden eyes on her. Her stomach growled. She pressed a hand over it, but it didn’t do much to muffle the sound.

  A branch cracked somewhere in the brush beyond the ruins. She froze. Juniper limbs moving in the breeze? Coyote Charlie? Fingering the toy wheel in her pocket, she crept toward the edge of the plaza.

  “Mummmeeeeyyy!”

  Her heart skipped a beat. The blood inside her head continued its rush, a deafening river of sound in her ears. Had she actually heard a feeble cry?

  “Zack?” she said tentatively to the growing darkness.

  The wind blew dry leaves across the plaza, making a shushing noise. Then a distant muffled bleat. A toddler? Or just the whine of the breeze through the ruins?

  She shouted louder. “Zack!” Nothing.

  She raced toward the last two rooms, the ones she hadn’t yet searched. Dust and darkness in the first. Was that rustling? She approached the final room, slowing her pace until she was tiptoeing. Holding her breath, she placed her fingers on the keyhole-shaped door frame and leaned to peer inside. Masses of unidentified debris—at least she hoped it was debris—lay on the floor; it was way too dark to see what any of it could be. Damned if she was going to go in there and poke around without a flashlight in her hand.

  Why was she the only one up here, anyway? Crouching in the shadows, her back against a wall, she dialed park headquarters.

  “Visitors are not allowed in the ruins,” the dispatcher told her. “And you especially can’t be up there now. We’re asking all visitors to leave for their own safety by tomorrow noon.”

  “I know all about the big cougar-killing spree you’ve got planned,” Sam growled. “Listen to me! I want to talk to a law enforcement officer. Now!”

  Rafael Castillo came on the line. “Sam, you need to vacate the area immediately.” He told her about Fred Fischer. “There’s a chance that he’s armed,” he warned.

  She told about the toy truck wheel, mentioned the possibility that she’d heard a little boy’s cry. She described the awful feeling that someone was in the ruins with her.

  Rafael swore in Spanish. Then he said, “I’ll get someone up there as soon as I can. But it won’t be before dawn. You get out of those ruins. Now.”

  She assured him that she would, that she’d call in when she got back to her camp. She turned off the phone and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop shivering.

  Yeah, right. As if her conscience would let her just trot back to camp. Zack might be crying for help; Fischer might be on the way to move him or, worse yet, to kill him. She could be the little boy’s last chance.

  She took a deep breath and tried to chafe some warmth back into her arms by rubbing them with her hands. Her gut was still twisted into k
nots. There was a good possibility that she was fantasizing the whole thing. Her father had always said that she had an overactive imagination. Summer, you’re letting your imagination get the best of you again. There’s nothing to get worked up about.

  He’d said those same words when she’d been frightened of her mother’s hands, gnarled into claws, when she’d been terrified by the horrible gurgling gasps the ventilator made. I have plenty to get worked up about! Kent, the cougar, the skeletons, the crying.

  The two remaining rooms beckoned. She had a flashlight in her knapsack. An energy bar, too: she’d eat it to soak up the acid in her stomach and come back with the flashlight to finish the search.

  Walking hesitantly now, listening for any threatening sound, she exited the ruins and stumbled over the uneven ground through the dark brush. The flashlight would be welcome company.

  The knapsack was in the tree where she’d left it, but it now dangled upside down, hanging from one shoulder strap. The pockets were unzipped.

  18

  SAM stared at the knapsack, her heart pounding. The leaves of a nearby Mormon tea bush fluttered in the wind, dislodging a small white moth sheltering there. No other sign of life.

  She pulled the knapsack down and quickly inventoried the contents, more through feel than sight. Her flashlight was missing, and so was the radio. Damn! The camera, batteries, and storage cards were safe. Her credit cards and car keys were right where she’d left them. What kind of a thief leaves the valuables? In addition to the flashlight and the two-way radio, her crackers, her energy bar, her jacket, water bottle, and pocketknife were gone. Shit.

  Shouldering the now much lighter pack, she turned to survey the ruins, rubbing the goose bumps on her arms. The top of the sandstone walls burned red in the last rays of sunset. The dark rows of windows staring out to the west reminded her of the multiple eyes of a lurking spider. Was someone watching from those spider eyes?

  The sun had completely disappeared behind the escarpment to the west. The temperature was dropping by the minute. She checked her watch. It would be pitch black in less than fifteen minutes. Only an occasional glimpse of sky peeked through patchy clouds: there’d be little moonlight tonight.