Deadly Star

by CJ Petterson

  Thompson stuffed the wadded-up handkerchief back into his back pocket. He ran a hand over his receding hairline and smoothed back a few strands of mousy brown hair. When he settled the Stetson in place, Sheriff Thompson was six-foot-six inches, two-hundred-eighty pounds of California law enforcement.

  “We’re not stopping the search,” Thompson said. “The chopper will get refueled and back up in the air as fast as Kyle can get ’er done. What you need to keep in mind, though, is that every day they’re missing makes it less and less likely we’ll find them alive.”

  “You said you thought they might have gone down somewhere near Death Valley, right? What about over here? Have you searched here?” Briggs said and pointed to a spot on the map.

  “We’re looking there,” Thompson said in a tired voice. “Dan’s flight plan was going to take them from Mendocito over toward Sacramento then to Las Vegas. That means they could be near Death Valley, somewhere in the Owens Valley, or in the White Mountains. Lot of land to cover. If he followed the flight plan he filed, we’ll find them.”

  “Why wouldn’t he follow the flight plan?”

  “I’m not saying he did or he didn’t. I’m just what-if-ing here. Trying to be thorough,” Thompson said.

  Briggs massaged the crease between his eyebrows. “Has anyone checked this area yet?” He used the end of a yellow felt-tip marker to point to a line of inverted vees that designated a string of pressure ridges at the desert’s edge.

  “The search team works from the numbered grid I laid out. That area there is Kyle Jones’s assignment. I can’t tell you if he’s looked at that section yet. I’ll ask when he checks in.”

  “How about the other planes? Can’t one of them check this area?”

  The sheriff’s mouth stretched into a lipless line, and a knot popped out on his gritted jaw. “We got Jimmy Boyle’s Cessna over in this section here.” He pointed to the green outline of a square that was several squares away from the ridges. “The state highway patrol put up two planes to cover these sections down here and here. Like I said, it comes down to Kyle’s helicopter for that section. And don’t be trying to tell me how to conduct a search, Dr. Briggs.”

  Frustrated, Briggs threw up his arms and swore.

  “Dan Harbin is smart,” the sheriff said, his voice flat and hard. “He’s a solid, experienced pilot. He was a captain in the Navy and a fighter pilot. He flew in Vietnam and got called up again for Operation Desert Storm. Had to put down in the sand in Iraq and hike out.”

  “That was years ago, maybe a lifetime ago.”

  “That’s so. Still, you got to believe if anyone can get out of the desert, he can. Of course, and I don’t mean to sound real negative here, there are other things to consider. If the plane crashed, they might have died right then and there,” the sheriff said.

  “I don’t want to hear that. People survive plane crashes all the time.”

  “True again, but if we assume they survived a crash, they’re well into their second day in the desert. Even if they have water, there’s exposure to weather extremes. Up in the hundreds in the heat of day and down in the fifties at night. There’s not a lot of shelter out there that rattlers and scorpions don’t own. And, if they’re injured … ” He let the unspoken implication hang heavy between them.

  “Thanks for being so upbeat,” Briggs said.

  “Like I said, just trying to be thorough and look at all the options.”

  • • •

  Mirabel drained the last drops out of a canteen and tossed it away. She shook the other flask and twisted the cap a notch tighter. She gazed at the distant hills, their saw-tooth shape muted and quivering behind the waves of heat rising from the desert floor. The ridge didn’t seem that far away. “A couple hours, maybe.” When I get out of here, I’m going to take a very long vacation someplace watery, green, and cool. Like Lake Como, or Venice, or maybe the Swiss Alps.

  Focused on the hazy outline of craggy hills, she staggered, stumbled, and sat down hard. She heard the rattle at the same time she felt the blow. She spat the pebble out of her mouth with a yelp and jerked her leg away. She recognized the sidewinder that came with it, fangs buried in her sock above the top edge of her boot. She’d lived too long near the desert not to know that the Western Diamondback accounted for a majority of all snakebite deaths. Adrenaline kicked her heart into overdrive, thudding in her ears. Without thinking, she grabbed the dirt-colored rattler’s skinny neck just behind the triangular head that looked bigger than her fist. She squeezed hard to force its jaws open, and with a growl that erupted from the back of her throat, heaved its three-and-a-half-foot length as far as she could.

  The viper left a fang in the loose folds of her sock. She tweezed out the still-poisonous, claw-shaped tooth with her fingernails, let it drop and disappear into the sand. She pulled the little red knife from her pocket and opened it, ready to slice an “X” over the bite to make it bleed out as much poison as possible. She wasn’t sure that was what she should do, but it always worked in the movies. As she shoved her sock down, Mirabel started praying because she was too far away from help to survive a bite for very long. She searched for two bloody dots, rubbed her leg, gently at first, then scrubbed it with her fingers. There were no fang holes in her skin. No scratch.

  A laugh that was more of a bleat burst out. “How lucky can I get?” The most she’d hoped for was a dry bite, a scratch that injected no venom, but the rattler had missed altogether. Too dehydrated to shed tears, her eyes burned. Mirabel shuddered and forced back another rising panic attack. She alternately sucked in her breath between clenched teeth and pushed it out through pursed lips. A look around showed that she’d fallen to the ground nearly on top of the snake’s burrow next to a spindly cactus. Her sudden appearance had startled the snake into action. She got to her feet, stowed the knife in a pocket, and braced her hands on her knees until her trembling slowed.

  “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’” she whispered aloud, happy to hear the sound of her voice. “Another of Dan’s lessons I forgot. ‘Don’t get so tired you forget where you are. Carelessness and death work in tandem in the desert — rattlers, scorpions, and dehydration are just the slow killers,’” she recited and let out another nervous laugh. “I gotta take a break.”

  Mirabel worked the orange out of her pocket then checked the sand all around her before easing down with a stiff-legged plop. She sipped warm water then dug her fingernails into the rind and peeled off a wide strip. The sweet smell started her stomach rumbling. She bit off the white fibers, her teeth occasionally nicking into the bitter peel, sucked juice, and slowly chewed pulp out of half of the orange. Her thoughts returned to the crash.

  Why would Dan think the crash wasn’t an accident? Was he into something? Not possible. He was delirious.

  She pushed her mental exercises aside and got to her feet. After wrapping pieces of peel around the exposed pulp, she stowed the half-gnawed orange in a pocket and plodded on.

  Mirabel turned away from another watery illusion and looked again toward the faded hills. She stuck a fresh pebble in her mouth, rolled it around with her tongue until it came to rest next to a salivary gland. “Okay, Mr. Pebble,” she rasped. “Help me out here. I don’t want to end up like a dehydrated prune. So when you start to stick, I promise to take a sip of water then we’ll be fine.” Breathing through her nose to reduce moisture loss, she started walking.

  • • •

  When the crackle of the car radio penetrated the hangar, Thompson slid a pair of aviator-style sunglasses over his eyes and walked out of the hangar onto the sun-baked asphalt. Briggs hid his hazel eyes behind a pair of fashionably mirrored Dolce and Gabbana’s and trailed the sheriff out. Thompson reached through the open window and lifted the mic off the seat. He arched another stream of tobacco juice onto the ground and then turned his back to Briggs.


  “This is Sheriff Thompson. Go ahead.”

  “Kyle here. I’m gassed and ready to go,” the hollow voice of Kyle Jones came back. “Got any changes?”

  “Have you checked the east end of the valley? Near the Nevada line?”

  “Grid six?” Without waiting for a response, the pilot continued, “I was up there earlier, but I’m not far from there right now. You want me to check it again?”

  “Keep to your pattern for now. If you don’t find them then make one more pass over that grid before you call it a day.”

  Briggs’s temper flared, and he stepped around the big man’s shoulder. “What are you saying? He can’t call it a day. You don’t care — ” He snapped his jaw shut when Thompson aimed a thick finger in his direction.

  Thompson studiously examined the condition of his alligator-hide cowboy boots while he waited for the pilot to acknowledge his instructions.

  “Gotcha,” Kyle said. “Make another pass over six.”

  “Satisfied, Dr. Briggs?” Thompson said.

  Briggs spun on his heel and strode back into the hangar. Thompson spat his exhausted wad of tobacco into the weeds at the edge of the blacktop and followed Briggs out of the sun.

  “Sounds like you think a lot of Mirabel,” the sheriff said.

  “You trying to make a point?”

  “The point is I appreciate that you’re upset she’s turned up missing, but there’s no call for you to say I don’t care about what might’ve happened to Mirabel and Dan.” His voice turned hard. “They’re good people, friends of mine, and have been since before you” — his forefinger stabbed the air between them — “ever set foot in this town.”

  Briggs angrily stood his ground. “If they’re such good friends, why are you so ready to call off the search?”

  “I’m not calling off the search, Dr. Briggs.” Thompson’s voice rose. “But we’re running out of daylight here. You can see that for yourself.” His hand swept around toward the hangar door. “People are looking hard. If we don’t find ’em today, we’ll start out tomorrow at first light. I can promise you that, but I want you out of my face.”

  Briggs didn’t want to risk being shut out of the search so he retreated to a position just inside the hangar doors to calm down. He watched the sun drop lower in the sky as he took swigs out of a bottle of designer water.

  Just before dusk, Kyle Jones’s voice crackled over the radio again. “I’m up north of grid six, sheriff, and I got one of them in sight.”

  The sheriff reached the car at a half-run. “Which one?”

  “Too far to … Looks like Doc Campbell. She’s upright, waving, and just set off a flare. I’ll get back to you soon as I get her on board.”

  “Doc!” Sheriff Thompson called, raised an arm, and waved his fingers in a come-here motion to Briggs who was keeping vigil in the shade of the hangar. “Kyle’s got a visual on Mirabel.”

  Briggs sprinted in the sheriff’s direction, thrusting his hand up and down above his head as if pulling the cord on the air horn of an imaginary eighteen wheeler. “Yes.” The word trailed into a hiss as Briggs gripped the sheriff’s beefy hand and levered it like a pump handle. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He pulled off his sunglasses and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of a well-manicured hand. “What about Dan?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  • • •

  The blue helicopter hovered directly over Mirabel then moved off about thirty yards and touched its skids to the ground. She turned her back to the rotor wash that whipped up a storm of dust and sand, dropped to her knees, and covered her face with her hands. Tiny missiles stung her back as they bit through the fabric of her shirt. The blades slowed, and a few seconds later, the pilot squatted next to her with a canteen and international orange first-aid bag in hand.

  “Dr. Campbell, remember me? Kyle Jones?”

  She nodded and smiled, and tasted blood when her sun-dried and swollen bottom lip cracked open. “Dan’s friend,” she croaked.

  He uncapped the canteen and handed it to her. “Couple of swallows, okay?” He touched his hand to her forehead and then peeled away the dirty gauze on her leg.

  She fingered out the pebble stuck to the inside of her cheek and raised the canteen to her mouth with unsteady hands. “Good to see you, Kyle Jones.” Mirabel’s voice was breathy and coarse. “Very good to see you.” She rinsed her mouth, spat out the dusty water then took a single deep swallow. With trembling hands, she dribbled water over her face. Then she began to chug.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Kyle pulled the canteen out of her hands.

  Her vision blurred. She shivered then leaned over and threw up. Kyle handed her a dampened cloth and continued to examine her injury.

  Mirabel wiped her face then wrapped the cloth around the back of her neck and took another sip of water. “Dan died last night. I didn’t think he got off a mayday.”

  “Nobody heard one,” Kyle confirmed. He squeezed a column of white antiseptic cream over the hole in her thigh and put a fresh gauze wrap around it.

  “He’s a day’s walk in that direction,” she said. “I laid out an SOS in the sand and set a fire. Maybe it’s still smoking.”

  “We’ll find him,” he said and hung the canteen over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

  Kyle half walked, half carried her to the helicopter. He belted her in and wrapped a thermal blanket over her shoulders. She moaned softly.

  “You hurtin’?”

  She shook her head. “I used a thermal blanket to make a shroud for Dan.”

  “We’ll get him home soon.” Kyle flipped switches; the blades began to spin, and he got on the radio. “Sheriff, I’ve got Doc Campbell. I’m headed to the Mira Linda Hospital in Placerville.”

  “I need to tell him about Dan.” Mirabel reached out for the mic, missed, and slumped against the seatbelt harness. The lights on the cockpit instrument panel spun into a kaleidoscope of reds, blues, and greens then disappeared into blackness.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Good to see you awake,” Sheriff Thompson said when he pushed aside the curtain to the ER cubicle.

  Mirabel was sitting up, adjusting an intravenous tube taped to her arm and connected to a clear, plastic bag hung on a pole. Her face and arms glistened from a thick slather of antibiotic cream. “Was I out long?” she asked and took a sip of orange liquid through a plastic straw bent into a right angle above the rim of a Styrofoam cup.

  He rolled his wrist to check his watch; the silver-dollar-sized face rested against the base of his left thumb. “Maybe a couple of hours. Not so long for what you’ve been through.” He spun his hat brim around in his hands and smiled, showing small, even teeth yellowed by tobacco, then waved his hat in the general direction of her drink. “Bet that tastes good.”

  Mirabel wrinkled her nose. “Not even close. It tastes like a mediciny sports drink. Supposed to rebalance my electrolytes, whatever those are.”

  “Ah. Prescription Gatorade. What’d the doc say about the leg?”

  “I’m good. A few stitches is all.” She touched the bandage that encased her leg from thigh to knee. “Supposed to keep it bandaged for a day then go easy for a couple more.”

  “Puts your early morning jogs on hold for a while, I guess,” he said in a way that told her he didn’t expect an answer and that he knew more about her routine than she’d thought. “Kyle said you mumbled something about a rattler when he picked you up.”

  “I almost sat on the thing. Think I scared it as much as it scared me. I was lucky it missed.”

  “Doubly lucky by my count,” Evan said before his smile faded, and he moved from idle conversation to official investigation. “What happened out there, Mirabel?”

  “One minute everything was okay then the engine went boom and everyt
hing went in the toilet.” She muffled her sobs behind a hand. “Oh, Evan. Dan is dead, and it’s because of me.”

  “I thought it was an accident.”

  She dragged her fingers across the tears on her cheeks. “But if I hadn’t asked him to fly me to Vegas … ”

  “Tell me what you remember,” Thompson prodded.

  “Dan had a brand-new, rehabbed engine, but it just exploded. The radio caught fire while he was calling his mayday. Then Dan said the backup radio was dead, and the transponder quit. He couldn’t believe so many things could go wrong all at once. He said that shouldn’t happen. What are the odds of all those things failing at the same time, Evan? A thousand, a million to one?”

  “I failed statistics,” Evan said, “but rehabbed engines sometimes blow up. When the engine goes, the electrical stuff just naturally follows. Doesn’t make any sense, but it happens. But it sounds like Dan thought it was deliberate. You and Dan into drugs or something?”

  “You know Dan better than that, Evan. Me, too.” Her voice sounded like a dry rattle in her ears. “He’s never flashed any money around town, and he drives an old rattletrap of a pickup. You came to the party last year when the bank gave him the loan to buy the plane. Dan wasn’t into anything. It’s more likely I’d be the reason for sabotage before him.”

  “Why?”

  She dropped her head back on the pillow and stared at the holes in the acoustic ceiling tiles for several seconds. “I’ve been thinking about that. The only thing I can come up with is way out of left field, but I wonder if it might be connected with the genomic research.”

  He frowned. “The what?”

  “The genomic sequencing project I’ve been working on.”

  “Sorry I asked. Sounds like sci-fi nonsense to me.”

  “To quote the British philosopher Alfred Whitehead, ‘Nonsense today is tomorrow’s truth.’ I’m not talking sci-fi. This is real, cutting-edge science.”

  “I’m not following you. What’s cutting-edge about the genome? It’s been in the newspapers for years. Doesn’t seem likely that whatever you’re doing would be that impor — ” He looked at the wall for a second. “That dangerous.”