by Jan Burke
“Why?” Frank asked. “Has something—”
“Nothing. Nothing to be alarmed over. Not yet.”
Frank’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Does Parrish have something planned?”
“Undoubtedly.” At Frank’s look of alarm, Newly quickly added, “I don’t know what he has planned, and I don’t know if it involves your wife, except — well, no, I don’t have any idea of what he has in mind.”
“You’re his lawyer!”
“Yes, but he doesn’t confide in me. Not at all — I’ll swear that to you, if you’d like. If I didn’t feel certain that he’s about to do something that will endanger his chances of avoiding the death penalty, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”
They had reached Newly’s street, and the lawyer gave Frank his address. It was all Frank could do to concentrate on the house numbers painted on the curbs. It was an expensive neighborhood. Not many criminal defense lawyers made it this big, he knew. He found Newly’s sprawling Spanish-style home. He pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.
“You think he has some plan for Irene,” he said to the lawyer. “You started to say so earlier.”
“Nick Parrish . . . studies her. Stares at her.”
Frank swore.
“Yes,” Newly said. “I agree.”
“I need to know — I need to know everything you can tell me about where they were headed. Yes — I wrote down the coordinates. But where were they going from the last position?”
“I don’t know.”
“Newly—”
“I don’t know! Punching me in the nose won’t help you.”
He relaxed his hands, made himself think. “The ranger who took you out — was he going to rejoin them?”
“Yes.”
“How? Did they name a place?”
“No . . .” Newly grew thoughtful. “I was not very clear-headed at the time, but . . . oh! Now I remember! He said something to Andy, the botanist, about leaving trail signs. Does that help?”
“Yes,” Frank said, almost laughing with relief. “Let me help you get settled in the house. I have a few more questions.”
Newly sighed. “I thought you might. But I demand a price.”
“Oh?” Frank said, wary again.
“I cannot tell you how anxious I am to throw these boots away. . . . I don’t think I’ll recover if I have to keep looking at them. Once we’re inside, would you mind dropping them in the trash compactor for me?”
“With pleasure,” Frank answered.
14
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, MAY 17
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
He lay on his back, drawing in one deep breath after another.
He modestly acknowledged to himself that he had failed to envision how magnificent it would be. The excitement of it bordered deliciously on the unbearable. A weaker man would have been forced to seek some kind of release. Not him. No, not him.
Earlier, before they had opened the plastic, he had dared to touch himself, just once, but he knew better than to try that now.
Her death scent was on all of them, but especially on those who had stayed closest to the grave throughout the day. The guards had taken turns, had gone to see her. They couldn’t resist, of course. Pilgrims drawn to a holy place, he thought, remembering his delight as each returned, bathed in her incense.
But that little tease had been nothing compared to the moment when they brought her back. The memories of their time together — he had almost grown dizzy under the spell of the recollection.
Sheridan and Niles positively reeked of her, of course. That was delightful. How he envied Sheridan. Yes, it really was something near to jealousy — he had touched her. Thinking of Sheridan’s gloved hand on her hand — oh!
He was drawn tight as a bow now, thinking of that, and so he made himself move his thoughts to safer ground.
He thought of Merrick roughing him up. Childish! Nothing could have made him feel better. He’d met Merrick before, in one form or another. Bullies. Schoolyard bullies, like Harvey Heusman in seventh grade. He knew how to handle them. He’d done it before. Harvey had been one of his first victims. He wondered idly whether they had ever found him. It had been many years since he had visited Harvey’s grave, and realizing this, he felt a moment’s remorse — not for killing Harvey, of course, but for failing to keep his appointed rounds.
Like a favorite story that had been read and re-read again and again, recalling the killing of his childhood enemy had long ago lost its power to excite him, but that did not make him less fond of the memory. Visiting the older burial sites could make him quite nostalgic, and he was not one to ignore them. He was good about paying homage to — well, to himself, really! The thought amused him.
Ah, that little humorous moment was enough to ease the tension a bit.
He returned to his very detailed recollections of this afternoon, about to reach his favorite moment. Yes, here she was, pale and looking a little tired — she didn’t sleep well. He would have liked to believe that he caused her late-night restlessness, but on the first evening he had heard the sounds of one of her nightmares, and knew some other terror visited her. That was all right. He’d focus her fear where it belonged, all in due time. For now, it was enough to see the dark circles beneath her blue eyes, her hair falling forward across her face as she looked down for a moment as she walked.
She was coming closer now, closer, and — oh yes! She had the scent. He had breathed in deeply as she walked by him, smelling her scent and the dead woman’s scent together, mingled and lovely, lovely, lovely. Thinking of it made him tremble.
Oh, it was so right, so exquisite! Anticipation hummed through him like an electric current. Everything was working so perfectly, and with everything working so perfectly, it was all that he could do to be still, to lie on his back in this tent, simply feeling his own blood moving through his veins, every nerve thrumming with the strength of his desire.
15
THURSDAY, EARLY MORNING, MAY 18
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
The rain held off until just before dawn the next morning. The rainfall was not hard or steady — just a series of intermittent gentle showers for the most part — but the first of these awakened me as its chilly droplets struck my face. In my fitful sleep I had moved off my open sleeping bag, and so I came awake lying faceup, halfway outside the tent. The part of me that was still on the thin insulation mattress was fine, but the other thirty percent or so wasn’t so comfy. Especially the part that was getting pelted by cold water.
I moved back inside only long enough to change and pack up my gear. When I emerged, I saw the others were already breaking camp. No one wanted to linger here. Although weather might delay the plane’s arrival, last night it had been decided that we would hike back to the landing strip to wait for it.
Occasional but unpredictable gusts of wind made taking down my small tent a tricky business, and those who were managing the larger tent that had housed Parrish nearly lost control of it more than once.
I wondered if the trail would be muddy. Our progress had been slow before, and even though some of the weight of the food was gone from our packs, the body would be an awkward burden to steer through the terrain we had covered on the way in.
The rain briefly lessened the body’s lingering odor, to which I had almost become accustomed, and brought the scent of dampened earth and woods to replace it. But when the first storm passed, and the air became still again, the scent returned. Perhaps it was the moisture in the air that seemed to increase the scent’s power, or that short respite now resulted in a renewed awareness of it, but whatever the cause, its presence was soon unmistakable.
We set out just after a quick breakfast, which I made myself eat because I knew I’d need the energy for the hike, although my appetite was nearly zilch. I tried to cheer myself with the prospect of going home, of seeing Frank again, of being finished with this sad business. But I would not be finished with i
t, of course; the Sayres awaited me, and my editor expected a story.
As we began hiking, I saw that while the ground and grass were damp, there wasn’t much mud yet. The wind had steadied, and was not much more than a strong breeze. J.C. was in the lead, assuring us that he could now take us on a much more direct route back to the plane. Bob Thompson and the guards followed with Parrish, who seemed lost in his own thoughts — I hoped they were distressing visions of spending the rest of his life in prison. Bingle walked with me, while David and Ben took the first turn with the stretcher.
We reached the ridge between the two meadows — not far from where the coyote tree stood — and stopped to rest so that Andy and J.C. could take over the task of bearing the stretcher. We only planned to stop for a few minutes. But here, just after David and Ben had gently laid down their burden, two things happened that changed the course of our journey.
The first was that Nicholas Parrish said to Thompson, “I thought you would have shown more initiative, Detective Thompson. To find only one body, when my lovely tree surely tells you there are more here.”
After a moment’s silence, Thompson said, “Are you volunteering information, Parrish?”
“Do I need to say more than I have? Not all of my works are as enchanting as dear Julia — I do wish you’d let me have a peek at her. Her fragrance is so enticing!”
“Out of the question,” Thompson said, then reconsidering, added, “if you show me the other graves, I might be able to work something out.”
Parrish laughed. “You’ve made your forensic anthropologists frown at you, Detective.”
“He’s just stalling,” Duke complained.
Thompson nodded. “We’ll discuss your other victims when you’re back in your cell, Parrish.”
“Oh no,” he said. “It’s now or never.”
Thompson began pacing.
“You can count, can’t you?” Parrish said. “Count the coyotes.”
“A dozen. I know, I know,” Thompson said, still not decided. “If you knew there were more, why did you get rid of your lawyer? You know we can use everything you say to us against you.”
“He was boring. As you are becoming boring. I will show you another grave, Detective Thompson,” Parrish said, “but if we continue to hike, we hike away from it. We both know that I won’t be allowed to accompany you on another expedition, so as I said — now or never!”
“It’s a trick of some kind,” Manton said. “If there were more bodies, he would have negotiated for whatever he could get while his lawyer was still here.”
“Ms. Kelly,” Parrish said. “Can you understand why I don’t want my dear ones to be left behind?”
I thought I knew the answer, and why he asked it of the only member of the media he could appeal to at that moment. But I didn’t especially want to be involved in this decision; I was there as an observer. And the things I had observed — after looking into Julia Sayre’s grave — made me certain that I didn’t want to aid Parrish in any way, shape, or form. The others were looking at me, waiting.
It was Ben Sheridan who answered, almost exactly as I would have. “Mr. Parrish takes pride in his work. He doesn’t want it to remain hidden. That’s why we’re up here in the first place.”
“Yes!” Parrish said warmly. “You surprise me! You understand perfectly!”
Thompson was besieged by arguments for and against, mostly against.
It was then that the second thing happened, the one that decided the issue.
The wind shifted.
Later, I would look back at that day and wonder what would have become of our group had the wind blown in some other direction. But it shifted — shifted toward us — a stiff breeze coming off the other meadow, up one sloping end of it, to the ridge where we stood, and beyond.
Bingle raised his nose and then pitched his ears forward. He looked back at David. I had seen that intent look the day before.
“¿Qué pasa?” David asked Bingle.
Bingle turned back into the breeze, lifted his nose in short quick motions, sniffing, eyes half-closed, then brought his ears up again and stared at David. This time, the dog’s tail was wagging.
“What’s going on?” Thompson asked.
“Bingle is alerting,” Ben said.
Thompson turned back to Parrish with a gleam in his eye. “Maybe we won’t need you to show it to us! Maybe the dog is going to take us straight to it!”
Parrish shrugged in indifference.
“I thought we needed to get to that airstrip,” Manton said.
“Go ahead,” Ben replied. “We’re going to see what the dog is after.”
“Maybe he’s just smelling the body J.C. and Andy are carrying,” Manton persisted.
“No,” said David. “He’s finding it on the wind. The wind is coming up the slope, off that meadow. The wind isn’t in the right direction to carry scent off the body. And he’s not excited about that find now. This is something new.”
But Thompson’s certainty had been shaken. “What if it’s just a dead deer or something like that?”
“He won’t alert to nonhuman remains,” David answered, after commanding Bingle to sit quietly. The dog shifted on his front paws like a kid that needs to go to the bathroom, but obeyed. “He was interested in that meadow when we walked there two days ago. I’m going to check it out.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Ben said, then turned to Thompson. “Go on to the plane. We’ll catch up.”
“Catch up?” Thompson said. “What if you find something? How are you going to get it out?”
“We’ll mark it and come back later,” Ben said.
But only yesterday Thompson’s mind had been filled with visions of glory for bringing in a second body, and he wasn’t going to be left out of a chance to make those visions a reality, especially not after Parrish himself had hinted that there were as many as eleven other burials. “No way,” he said. “You stay, we all stay. We’re in this together.”
“Suit yourself,” Ben said.
David had by this time put the leather working collar on Bingle. Bingle was staring at him intently, and began barking.
Andy and J.C., who had been standing near the stretcher, were deep in conversation. I saw Andy nodding. Just as David managed to quiet the dog, J.C. said to Thompson, “Let the two of us go on to the airstrip with the body.”
“That’s a lot of hiking for the two of you,” Ben said.
“True,” J.C. said, “but we can manage it. And I’ve got an idea. The plane should be back soon, if it isn’t waiting for us there already — the weather hasn’t been bad enough to keep it from landing. When we get to it, I’ll radio the ranger station for a chopper. They can pick me up at the landing strip, and I’ll show them where to find you. They won’t have any trouble landing in this meadow. And leaving by chopper won’t give your prisoner many opportunities to make a break for it — not as many as a walk through the forest might.”
The idea of skipping the hike back to the airstrip obviously appealed to Thompson, but he hesitated. “You can get one in here before nightfall?”
“No problem. Without Parrish leading us on his goofy side routes, it shouldn’t take us long to reach the airstrip. You can have him locked up before the end of the day.”
Thompson looked over to see Parrish frowning. Caught at this, Parrish gave a sugary smile to the detective. Thompson hesitated.
“The guards are looking tired,” J.C. said. “This hasn’t been easy duty. This way, they won’t have to backpack, watch the trail, and keep an eye on Parrish all at the same time.”
“Okay,” Thompson said.
Ben extracted a promise from Andy to stay with the body while J.C. came back for the others. “I don’t want anyone claiming that the body or evidence was out of our control at any time.”
David and Bingle went down into the meadow first, at a fairly fast pace. Ben and I followed not far behind them, carrying the excavation equipment. Flash carried some of this as well, along
with his camera equipment. Thompson, Parrish, and the guards moved more slowly.
The wind died down, but David didn’t seem to be bothered. He used the opportunity to rest the dog, set down his backpack and equipment, and pick out a place to wait for the chopper. “J.C. was pretty optimistic about the weather,” he said, looking up at the sky. “I don’t know. It’s not bad right now, but I think we might get more rain yet.”
“I thought the same thing,” Ben said. “I have a feeling that we’ll be spending the night here. On the other hand, J.C. knows these mountains better than we do. If the plane is waiting for him when they reach the airstrip, and the chopper gets up here fast enough, we may be okay. But I don’t want to be rushed if Bingle finds something.”
“I’ll stay here with you even if Thompson and the others want to go back,” David said. He paused, took out the squeeze bottle with the powder in it and tested the air. The powder drifted slowly off toward the ridge. “Look at that. A really fine breeze. This is better for working than that wind — it could have been blowing scent from a mile away.” Bingle, standing a little apart from us, was alerting again.
“¿Quieres trabajar?” he called out. Do you want to go to work?
Bingle’s tail wagged, and he gave a bark.
“Find us a good spot, Ben,” David said, moving toward the dog. “Haven’t heard any thunder yet, but if there is a storm, I sure as hell don’t want to be standing out in the middle of a meadow like a lightning rod.” To Bingle he said, “¡Búscalo! ¡Busca al muerto!”
Dog and handler began to move in a crisscross path down the meadow, much as they had done when I followed them the day before.