The Desert Waits

by J. Carson Black

  “You killed Caroline because of her indiscretions?”

  He laughed gently. “Jesus, Alex, you’re paranoid. I didn’t kill Caroline.”

  The hopeful part of her leaped at his words even though she knew he was lying.

  Her fear was quickly turning to frustration. “Why don’t you stop toying with me and either kill me or let me go!”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not going to kill you,” he said, so earnestly that Alex found herself believing him. Or wanting to believe.

  He sounded sincere. Alex wondered if there was some way to negotiate with him, although logic—and the sight of Maybelle’s corpse—told her there was not.

  “You must have an opinion on art, Alex. The National Endowment for the Arts says one thing, but I suppose one could make a case for sofa-size paintings at the swap meet. To each his own. I create art out of human clay. Even though for all intents and purposes Maybelle is our dearly departed, there are living cells, live nerve endings, all sorts of stuff still going on, and I find that fascinating. She’s sort of evolving as we speak. Do you realize how great a concept that is?” Off on another flight of fancy, as elusive as a butterfly. “Cutting edge, Alex. Conceptual art at its highest level. What kind of pose should we do, do you think? Something with cameras definitely. Since they’re your stock and trade.”

  Even though his words chilled her, Alex realized she was feeling stronger. No one could sustain such a high level of fear over too long a time. Although it was obvious Maybelle had been shot, Ted didn’t have a gun now. At least not that she could see.

  She was a good runner. The only thing she had to decide was which way to run. The tunnel to the outside, she guessed, wasn’t far, but she didn’t know if the exit was locked. The tunnel back to the house was much farther, but she’d been there before; she knew the lay of the land. First chance, Alex resolved. First chance and I’ll bolt. In the meantime, she listened to Ted’s lies and nonsense, wondering if he was crazy or just acting like it.

  “The funeral’s going to be the hottest thing ever to hit Hollywood. We’re talking really big. I’m on Larry King Live tomorrow night, did you know that? The studio’s going all out, advertising a candlelight vigil Tuesday night—don’t think I don’t see your mind working, Alex. I see the little wheels turning. You’re looking for your chance to get me off guard, don’t deny it. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to pay attention when someone’s talking? Listening is a forgotten art in this day and age, people are so damn rude.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”

  “Good. Now where was I? I thought you might be interested in the kind of stuff we’re doing to keep Caroline’s name out there. Publicity is key. I can’t stress that enough ...” He stopped. “You’re not listening, Alex. Your mind is somewhere else, so why don’t we just cut to the chase? You tell me why I should let you live. I promise to keep an open mind.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Again Alex experienced a frustrating surge of hope. There was something inside her that refused to give up.

  “Let me speak for you. You’re afraid I won’t leave you alive as a witness. What you’ve got to understand is, I’m not worried those Keystone Kops will ever catch me. Even if they did figure it out, which I doubt, they couldn’t touch me. Ever heard the phrase ‘money talks’? Your word against mine, and I’ve got a lawyer who charges five hundred dollars an hour. So don’t be so pessimistic. If you’re a good girl—”

  “You mean sleep with you.”

  He shook his head; a professor whose student has disappointed him deeply. “You really don’t understand, do you? I don’t want just sex. I thought we were compatible. I thought we could build a loving relationship, but you turned your nose up at that. All I wanted was some goddamn support!”

  There was no way she could pin him down. It was pointless engaging in conversation with this creep, but she hadn’t generated enough nerve to take off ... yet. What if he did still have the gun? “Okay, whatever you say.”

  “Passivity will get you nowhere.”

  A roar shuddered through the tunnel, startling them both. The jaguar asking for his breakfast? Whatever it was, Ted turned his head toward the sound.

  It was Alex’s only chance and she took it. She sprinted up the tunnel. Expecting the bullet to shatter her back.

  It didn’t come.

  She ran as hard as she had ever run in her life, willing her sinews and muscles to break free of gravity with every fiber of her being. Pain stabbing as she flexed her thighs, coaxing every ounce of speed. Alex strained her ears for footsteps behind her. She expected a violent and agonizing end to her desperate flight any moment, but kept running anyway. She couldn’t hear anything but her own labored breathing, couldn’t feel anything but the concussion of her feet on stone, couldn’t smell anything but the earth closing in around her and the wild-animal smell. She was in a vacuum, running, running, running.

  The curve in the tunnel came right before the jaguar exhibit. And then she would be in the house.

  Safe, in the house.

  “Come on, come on,” muttered Nick. He knocked on Alex’s door again. The old wood shuddered in the frame, but there was no answer within. The cat was sitting in the window. Forming a tunnel with his palms, Nick peered into the room. A rollbag sat on the bed. She hadn’t checked out.

  Ted Lang had. When Nick heard that from the desk clerk, a tiny sprig of hope had started in his chest. Maybe Ted wasn’t interested in Alex at all. Maybe he’d just been toying with her, enjoying the misery he caused.

  Sociopaths did that.

  Nick had dealt with sociopaths all his working life. Although they came in different shapes and sizes, they were as alike as peas in a pod. How had he missed all those signals? The pathological lying, the stories about his power in Hollywood, obviously inflated. The strange non sequiturs. How had he missed it? Because he was impressed by a producer from Hollywood? Or had he simply underestimated Ted because he came across as vapid, boring, harmless?

  Alex was gone. Uneasiness eroded the relief Nick had initially felt when he’d learned of Ted’s departure.

  He checked the parking lot. Her Jeep was gone.

  Although common sense told him Ted must have accompanied his wife’s body back to LA, he couldn’t let it go. Something wasn’t right. Maybe it was only that he wanted to see for his own eyes that she was safe.

  At least he knew where she’d be. He pointed the Crown Vic up the winding dirt road toward Groves Canyon.

  Safe. The murky, green room seemed like an oasis after the claustrophobic tunnel. Alex paused in the doorway, catching her breath. Her pulse pitter-pattered in her ears, but she could still hear other noises and there was nothing coming from the tunnel behind her.

  All she had to do was go out the way she’d come and—

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.”

  Ted stood at the other end of the reptile room, a big grin on his face. He did have the gun, but he didn’t bother to hold it on her. His arm hung at his side, the muzzle of the gun pointing downward. Casual. Cocky even. As if he had all the time in the world. “You’re wondering how I got here so fast. There’s a walkway from the other end of the tunnel that leads right to the back door. You see, Alex, you can’t beat me. I’m smarter than you.

  “You saw the jaguar. Impressive, huh? The only animal more impressive, to my way of thinking, is the African lion. The most efficient predator in the world. Gets his womenfolk to do the work, but when he has to shake it up, get it in gear, he’s pretty damn impossible to beat.” He walked forward until he could reach out and touch her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  His grin was easy. “I’m a lion, Alex. You’re just a gazelle. Quick, yes. Pretty. But no match for someone like me.”

  “I thought you were an artist.” Keep him talking. He’s so full of himself, he loves to hear himself talk, and that’s w
hen he loses his concentration ...

  “I know what you’re thinking.” He tapped his forehead. “I can read your mind. Everything you feel I can see on your face. You’re like a cornered animal, trying to figure out how to escape. You really don’t get it, do you? There’s no hope. Just like the gazelle. But to answer your rather inane question, a lion can be an artist. A lion is an artist. Take a look at a gutted zebra sometime, the shape, the color. Of course, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but I do.” He glanced at his watch. “Oops, I’m going to miss my plane if I spend any more time shooting the breeze with you. I figure, one minute to kill you, and ten to make you all pretty for your deputy boyfriend—”

  Alex shoved the nearest terrarium off the shelf. It toppled and crashed to the floor, whacking Ted’s knee as it fell.

  He screamed in agony and bent double. He grabbed his knee with his gun hand, cursing. The other hand shot out, grabbed the upturned glass cubicle for balance.

  Just as the denizen of the terrarium made it up over the lip of the glass.

  Ted went rigid at the sight of the two-inch-long arachnid. All the color went out of his face as the solpugid sprinted with lightning quickness across the glass and onto his hand.

  That galvanized him.

  “Get it off me! Get it off me!” he screamed, shaking his hand.

  The solpugid clung to the web between his thumb and forefinger. Its enormous pincers sank into Ted’s flesh.

  “It bit me!” His hand thwacked against the saddle blanket curtains and the solpugid dropped onto the shelf and skittered away. Ted huddled against the wall, cradling his injured hand and shaking uncontrollably.

  Now was her chance. She glanced at the doorway into the tunnel. Tensed her legs to turn, to run.

  The gunshot deafened her. She flew backward onto the floor, feeling as if the world had dropped out beneath her.

  Her ears rang like a deafening bell clapper. And something stung her side, close to her abdomen.

  She’d been shot.

  Ted pointed the gun at her. His eyes were feverish in his head, staring. Spittle ran in a string down to his chin. “You did this, you bitch. You bitch, you bitch! I’m going to kill you right now!” He lifted the gun. Alex stared into the black hole of the barrel. She couldn’t move, thought she must be paralyzed. Her mind flailed for something, something to help her survive, as Ted shouted invectives at her and screamed that he’d been poisoned.

  That wasn’t true, the stunned voice in her head spoke up. He wasn’t poisoned. The solpugid was harmless ...

  “I’m going to die, but you’re going with me!”

  Hideous, but harmless.

  “There it is again!” Ted had another fit, shaking his hand and scrambling back against the wall, his feet paddling. Now was her chance, but she couldn’t move. Ted was out of control, scared to death that he’d been bitten by a poisonous insect.

  “Ted, don’t move.”

  Was that her speaking? The voice seemed to be coming from her. She opened her mouth and her half-formed thoughts poured out, picked up momentum. “Don’t move a muscle, it’ll only make the venom work into your bloodstream faster. You’ve got to keep it from getting to your heart.”

  His gun wavered. He looked at her almost pleadingly. “How—how do I do that?”

  The answer came, sure and swift. “Your arm. You have to raise your arm. High, that’s it, raise it above your head. You were bitten by a wind scorpion. The venom is bad, Ted, I’m not going to lie to you. It’s worse than a rattlesnake bite. It attacks the central nervous system, but if we get you to a doctor in time—”

  “Please!” His eyes were as moist as a spaniel’s. “Don’t leave me, don’t let me die.”

  “I won’t, Ted. But you’ve got to trust me. Keep it up!” she shouted as his arm relaxed. “I’ve got to call 911. If they can Air Evac you into Tucson within an hour, you’ll live. But I’ve got to get to a phone.”

  “Don’t leave me,” he pleaded.

  “I have to call—you know that, don’t you?”

  He nodded and slid down to the floor. The gun in his other hand had fallen between his splayed legs. His back was flat against the shelf, his arm straight up but beginning to waver. “Okay,” he said, shuddering. “Go and call. Hurry, oh God hurry!”

  Alex didn’t know if she could even get up. She felt as if her whole right side had gone to sleep.

  “Hurry!”

  “I’m trying. You shot me. I don’t know if I can get up.”

  “Crawl then, goddamn it!” he said through gritted teeth.

  Alex heaved herself to her knees and crawled toward him.

  Ted was oblivious to the gun. Sweat ran down his face as he tried to keep his arm up in the air.

  Her side stung. She wondered if she was losing a lot of blood. She didn’t dare look down to see the damage, if she just pretended it was a—

  Flesh wound? The joke wasn’t so funny now.

  A gray fog lingered just outside her vision. Calm. Speak calmly, show him you know what you’re doing. “The phone is in the other room. I’m going to call 911, but you’ve got to help, Ted. You have to keep that arm up. Can you do that?”

  He nodded vigorously, eager to please.

  Alex was almost even with one of his feet. Although she didn’t look up, she knew the gun was only a foot away. If she just reached out ...

  She glanced over at it.

  Like lightning, Ted’s hand clamped down on the gun and he held it up above her as if he were playing keepaway. “You lied, didn’t you Alex? That thing, whatever it was, it wasn’t poisonous. Was it? Was it?!” he yelled. “Don’t think you can fool me. I can read your mind, or are you forgetting?” He grabbed her and shoved the gun up against her head.

  Alex felt she was in a nightmare, but this time there would be no waking. She felt lighter than air, her ears ringing with muffled shouts.

  She was too numb to respond.

  “That was cute, Alex, but you can’t fool the lion. And now I’d say I’m done playing.”

  Twenty-eight

  In a strange twist today, the Caroline Arnet murder case has been reopened ...

  —Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News

  As Nick rounded the curve near Maybelle’s house, he glanced to the left.

  The driveway was cluttered with Game & Fish, US Fish & Wildlife, and state police vehicles.

  He shouldn’t be surprised. When he’d talked to Cindy Gallego earlier today, he learned that Game & Fish had been building a case against Maybelle Deering for almost a year. Now that they knew about Sheriff Johnson’s part in the smuggling, and Doug Childers would most likely plea-bargain, they had more than enough probable cause for a warrant.

  Nick had figured it out when it finally dawned on him, looking out the window of the substation, that a sheriff of a county this poor wouldn’t normally buy a new Lexus every year.

  Kyle Johnson had punished Nick with the Crown Victoria for calling Arizona Game & Fish about the jaguar. Since then, the calls he’d been sent on had escalated—a lot of false alarms.

  Doug Childers was doing a lot of driving, too, but he was getting a lot more done.

  Nick guessed that Doug had been afraid to lie to the medical examiner about the details of the pilot’s death and that was why he hadn’t attended the autopsy. Doug Childers’ emotions always showed on his face.

  Beyond the trucks at Maybelle’s, Nick caught a glimpse of candy-apple red.

  He hit the brakes, backed up, and drove in. It was Alex’s Jeep.

  He glanced around the driveway. Ted’s Infiniti wasn’t there. Relief drenched him.

  He was halfway to the side door when the explosion ripped the air in two.

  One minute, Ted held Alex in a viselike grip; the next, there came a deafening crash of thunder and blinding light. Everything seemed to implode, caving in around her. Glass shattered. A screaming wind deafened her as the green room turned murky, yellowish-black.

  She lay on shards of glass. Her visi
on darkened, thoughts whirling in a maelstrom of images and fragments. A faceless army in black visors, the word POLICE, black on yellow. Stomping and shouting magnified a hundredfold to hurt her ears—what happened?

  Something moved beside her, its motion causing ripples of air to be displaced. She stared, momentarily uncomprehending.

  The something was a snake. A rattler. Confused, it wound sluggishly through the glass, its tail entangled with another snake, around and through a forest of big black boots—

  “Police! Get down get down get down!”

  Her bewildered mind was still preoccupied by the snakes. There wasn’t just one snake or two snakes, but a dozen of them, looping and undulating across the glass-littered floor. A scorpion darted over her arm, running for its life.

  She shuddered, her natural instinct to flee tempered by the knowledge that at the moment the snakes were as dazed as she was. She didn’t want to be the one to distract them.

  Boot heels on glass. More yelling—get down, get down!

  As Alex’s senses crept back, she realized that most of the reptiles were on the other side of the room, locked together in a somnolent mass. Still trying to recover from the—

  Flashbang? Was that what had happened?

  Alex realized she was experiencing the stunning aftermath of a concussion grenade. Something SWAT teams used to “distract” their target. But why?

  “Police! Get down!” yelled a voice. “Do it now!”

  Why was he yelling at her? She was down.

  Alex was rolled over onto her stomach, her face pressed rudely against the glass-strewn floor. Cuffs clicked onto her wrists. Rough hands jerked her unceremoniously to her feet. Her side throbbed.

  A cabinet had fallen between Alex and Ted. A black-visored robot shoved him to the floor and pinned him there. Alex recognized the weapon slung over the SWAT team member’s shoulder—an MP 5—and the armpatch—US Fish & Wildlife.

  Between the cabinet and a rucked-up Navajo rug, she saw something that made her heart seize. The dark, tapered tail of a black mamba.