The helicopter circled, darting and dipping as its pilot searched for a place to put it down. Then I heard a low rumbling deep in the earth, felt a tremor like the beginning of an earthquake. It gathered in volume and momentum.
A series of bangs, violent but muffled.
I jerked my head toward the top of the mesa in time to see the burst of fire. And then the moon and sky became as blood.
Twenty-nine
Hy and I arrived at Bridgeport in a Highway Patrol helicopter. The county choppers had been used to evacuate the Transpacific personnel, Lionel Ong—who by then had proclaimed himself savior of the day, in spite of his heroics almost having gotten both of us killed—and Bayard and his family, whose shack had been set afire by falling cinders.
By the time we left the valley, the conflagration on top of the mesa had almost burned itself out; planes were spreading retardant in a firebreak along the main street of Promiseville. Several buildings had been lost, their tinder-dry wood perfect fodder for wind-whipped sparks; Nickles’s house (along with my pea jacket) was among them. As we watched them flare and collapse upon themselves, I saw pain on Hy’s face, but when I spoke to him he turned away, pretending indifference. Beyond halting the spread of the flames, the rescue crews had little to do. Except for Bayard and his brood, the desert rats had scattered. The crews would attempt to locate Hopwood’s body, of course, but I seriously doubted they’d find any trace of him. Even from the valley floor, the force of the explosions deep within the mesa had sounded too violent not to cave in what remained of the fragile old mine workings. In a way, I supposed, the mesa would be a fitting burial cairn for the man to whom it had become the symbol of Armageddon.
Lark met us at the door of the county sheriff’s building. She was wired, crackling with nervous energy, and the first thing she said to me was, “Sharon, you look like hell.”
“Thank you.”
Her freckled face flushed. “Didn’t mean it that way. Ladies’ room is down the hall there. We’ll be in the first interrogation room.”
I followed the hallway, used the facilities, washed my face and hands. There were fresh scrapes on my forehead and cheekbones; my hair was tangled and snarled. I still wore Nickles’s wool shirt, but dirt covered it and one sleeve was half ripped off at the shoulder.
I’d rescued my bag from the Land Rover before they evacuated us from Promiseville, and now I extracted my hairbrush and set to work. After doing what I could with my long mane, I bound it at the nape of my neck with a rubber band I found on the counter. Then I leaned forward intending to study my fresh facial wounds, but the room seemed to tip. Gripping the washbasin harder, I waited for everything to right itself. When it did, I observed that my face had turned the color of cold, congealed oatmeal.
I filled the basin with cold water and splashed my face and wrists until I felt better. Only a little more to get through, I told myself as I dried off, and then you can go home and never come back to this horrible place.
I found Hy and Kristen in the interrogation room, drinking coffee. He’d freshened up, too, and his wild curls were slicked down; a drop of water glistened at the tip of his stubbled chin. I accepted a cup of coffee, but immediately set it aside; the acid had started my empty stomach roiling.
Lark taped statements from both of us, then shut off the recorder and tipped contemplatively back in her chair. “Squares with what the Nickles woman told Washoe County,” she said.
“They picked Lily up in Nevada?” I asked.
Kristen nodded. “Reno. You were right about her taking off because she’d seen something—Hopwood, hauling a case of dynamite up to that tunnel he made into the old mine. Seems she got curious again, went looking around, and spotted him. She figured something big was about to come down, so she split.”
“A good thing, too,” I said. “Her house was one of those that went.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have burned if she’d told someone what she’d seen,” Hy said.
Lark righted her chair and stood. “Well, that about wraps it up. Damned shame, all of it. Damned religious nut case. That’s the trouble with these zealots: everybody’s got a cause, and to hell with everybody else.”
“Sometimes people become nut cases like Hopwood because they just get pushed too far,” Hy commented.
She looked severely at him. “That’s no excuse. And I’m not just talking about folks who think they’ve got an open line to God. You environmentalists aren’t much better.”
I would have expected him to become angry, but he merely shrugged and set his empty coffee cup on the table. “Better to have a cause than to go through life passionless and uncaring.”
“That’s all well and good, but you’ve got to exercise a little reason.”
“Reason’s all right up to a point. But what’re you going to do when nobody will listen?”
It was a stalemate. I interrupted them. “Kristen, what about Ned Sanderman?”
Her face lit up, as if she’d just realized she had the perfect present for me. “He’s right here in the next room. Son of a bitch walked in about three hours ago, gave himself up.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Not much. As soon as we read him his rights, he got seriously uncooperative, demanded a lawyer. Only one available was Tom Lindsay, our local shyster. He’s with him now, and Sanderman isn’t saying a word, but at least we’ve got him.”
“Can I see him?”
“Sure.” She motioned for me to come with her. “But if you’re thinking you can get something out of him, forget it.”
Sanderman and his lawyer sat at a table in a room similar to the one we’d just left. Under the glare of the neon, Ned looked tired, scared, and somewhat sick. The lawyer, Lindsay, was a fat man in a teal blue suit with a dusting of dandruff on its shoulders. He looked like the kind of attorney who inspired jokes about no skid marks.
When Sanderman saw me, his eyes widened and he started to get up.
Lindsay motioned for him to sit down. “Detective Lark, we’ve been waiting for some time now. Are you—”
I stepped forward. “Counselor, I’m Sharon McCone, private investigator employed by Mr. Sanderman’s organization.”
Lindsay ignored the hand I offered. “If you’re concerned about your fee—”
“I’m concerned about Ned, Mr. Lindsay.” I pulled out a chair and sat. Lark leaned against the wall behind me, arms folded, eyes faintly amused.
I turned to Sanderman. “How are you?”
He shrugged.
“Why’d you turn yourself in?”
Lindsay said, “I have instructed my client—”
I glanced at him, not bothering to hide my distaste. “Why don’t you just be quiet? I’m trying to help your client.”
Lindsay sputtered. “Detective Lark, I protest this—”
“To put it less politely, Counselor—shut up. Your client isn’t guilty of the charges. He didn’t kill anyone. All he’s guilty of is improperly disposing of a body. ”
Lark made a surprised sound and pushed away from the wall. “What are you talking about, McCone?”
I ignored both her and the lawyer. Said to Sanderman, “That’s true, isn’t it?”
Looking relieved, he nodded.
“All right,” Lark asked, “if that’s so, who did kill Mick Erickson?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess it was Earl Hopwood. Ned?”
“Yes, that’s who did it.”
Lindsay was staring at me, his fat mouth pursed, his jowls pouched in disappointment. I supposed he was mentally watching an extortionary fee slip away.
Lark asked me, “How do you figure that?”
“The more I thought about Erickson’s murder, the more I realized Ned didn’t have any motive to shoot him. Even though all the physical evidence pointed to him, there was no reason for him to quarrel with or kill his co-conspirator.”
Lark turned to Sanderman. “Are you willing to make a statement?”
“Tha
t was why I came back here in the first place. But when you said you were charging me with murder—”
Lindsay said, “Now just hold on here—”
Sanderman interrupted him. “Is it possible to fire my lawyer at this point?”
“What? What?”
Lark smiled. “Maybe you better keep him—if he promises to stay quiet. I’ll go get a tape recorder while you think it over.” She hurried from the room, nearly sparking with nervous energy.
Lindsay said to Sanderman, “You’re being a fool.”
“If you want to stay here, keep quiet.”
“I want it on record that you’re doing this against the advice of counsel.”
“Good. We’ll put it on the tape.”
Lark fetched the recording equipment, and Ripinsky followed her in, shutting the door behind him. When she had it set up and had made a preliminary statement, she said to Sanderman, “Will you tell us in your own words what happened last Saturday evening?”
Ned ran his tongue over his lips and glanced at the recorder. He wiped damp palms on his blue-jeaned thighs and began to speak. “It started around six o’clock. Mick Erickson arrived at my cabin at Willow Grove Lodge to talk about the problem with Earl Hopwood.”
Erickson, Sanderman went on, told him that he’d been staying in one of the trailers at the mine site for the past few days and had twice met and attempted to reason with his father-in-law at his cabin in Stone Valley. Hopwood had been difficult to reach because he was no longer living there but camping out somewhere while he continued his harassment and vandalism at the Transpacific property. On the second occasion—that morning—they quarreled and Hopwood pulled a gun on him. Erickson took it away from him, accidentally inflicting a flesh wound.
“It shook Mick up a lot,” Sanderman said. “He liked the old man and never intended to hurt him. And he was afraid of what it might do to his chances of reconciling with his wife. But it had also given him the idea that it might be necessary for Hopwood to, as he put it, meet with an accident. Anyway, we kicked that idea around for a while, but neither of us was really for it. I was nervous, though; it would have destroyed me with the Coalition—with the entire environmental movement—if the deal had fallen apart and they had found out that I’d sold out Promiseville.”
“Why did you do that?” Lark asked. “Money?”
“Yes. A lot of it.”
Behind me, Ripinsky hissed.
Sanderman glanced at him. “It wasn’t for myself, though—it was for the Coalition. Transpacific made two substantial cash payments to me, which I donated, and they promised a much larger one once construction began on the project. Some people”—he threw an accusing look at Hy—“don’t realize the costs of running our campaigns. The administrative expenses alone … Sometimes you have to jettison one cause in favor of a more worthy one.”
Ripinsky remained silent, but I could feel his rage building.
“Go on with what happened that evening,” Lark told Sanderman.
“We’d been talking for about an hour. Somebody knocked at the door and I went to see who it was. At first I thought he was one of these mountain men—wild eyed, unkempt—but Mick came forward, called him ‘Mr. Hopwood.’”
Sanderman had also thought Hopwood drunk, although he’d soon realized he was seriously unbalanced. He and Erickson quickly took up their quarrel where they’d left off earlier, and soon Hopwood was reeling around the cabin, raving and making strange accusations.
“What kind of accusations?” Lark asked.
“Archaic-sounding things, like he was quoting Scripture. He called Mick a deceiver and a fanged serpent. Said he was a servant of Satan.”
“Was Mr. Hopwood armed?”
“No, Mick had kept his gun after he shot him, locked it up somewhere.”
“Go on.”
“Things were seriously out of control. Hopwood ran into the kitchen. Mick went after him, yelling something about knives. Then there was a shot. Mick started to fall. Another shot, and then Hopwood leapt over him, carrying my twenty-two, and ran out of the cabin.”
“Where did he get the twenty-two?”
“From the refrigerator. It’s a good hiding place.”
“How do you suppose Hopwood knew it was there?”
Sanderman looked blank.
I motioned to Lark. She frowned, switched off the recorder. “What do you want to tell us, McCone?”
“I think Hopwood saw the gun when he broke into the cabin right after Ned came up here.”
She nodded, looked back at Sanderman. “Was it in the fridge the whole time you were staying there?”
“Except for one time when I went back to Sacramento.”
“Okay.” She restarted the recorder, recapped what we’d said. “Now, Mr. Sanderman, what did you do after Mr. Hopwood ran away?”
“Went to see if Mick was dead, of course. He was. Then ...for a while I couldn’t do anything. Finally I realized I had to get the body out of there. If I called the authorities, it would all come out and I’d be ruined. It was awfully difficult; he was heavy, and I couldn’t move him very far. Finally I just dragged him down to the lake.”
Ripinsky made a disgusted noise. I knew how he felt; it hadn’t helped that Sanderman had spoken in a self-pitying whine.
Lark kept her expression neutral. “And then?”
Sanderman sighed, as if the effort of recounting it made him weary. “I drove the Bronco he’d been renting into town and parked it on the highway. Walked back and started to clean up the blood. There was a lot of it, so I went back to town for some cleaners. While I was scrubbing the floor I realized I couldn’t locate one of the spent shell casings from the gun. I looked everywhere, but I never did find it.”
After a moment Lark asked, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?”
Sanderman shook his head, eyes closed.
Kristen switched the recorder off. “Mr. Sanderman,” she said, “I’ll tell you right now in the presence of your attorney, this doesn’t look too good for you. Your story’s uncorroborated. You admit the weapon was yours, and now you can’t produce it. Why should I believe you aren’t conveniently pinning this crime on a man who’s dead and can’t contradict you?”
I said, “Because he doesn’t know what happened in Stone Valley, doesn’t know Hopwood’s dead.”
The startled look on Sanderman’s face confirmed that.
“Besides,” I added, “Hopwood had the twenty-two with him in the mine tunnel.”
Lark stared at me, unblinking. Her expression said she didn’t believe me. “You saw the gun, McCone?”
“As I stated earlier, Hopwood fired at Lionel Ong and me. It was a twenty-two automatic. If you run a check, you’ll probably find that Hopwood didn’t own one.”
“You didn’t mention the type of gun in your earlier statement.”
“I didn’t think of it. It didn’t seem important.”
“And now it’s buried under tons of rubble with Hop-wood.”
“I guess so.”
Lark regarded me steadily for a moment. “You’d testify to that?”
“If I had to.”
“Sanderman,” Kristen told him, “you owe McCone a big one.”
Quickly I flashed him a look that said, Don’t thank me. As Lark began packing up the recording equipment, I wondered why I’d come to Sanderman’s aid. I had no idea what kind of gun Hopwood had held on Ong and me in that tunnel, couldn’t truthfully testify to what I’d said. But I believed Ned’s story and wanted to help him. Why? I didn’t like the man one bit. He was a type we’re seeing more and more of: passionless, programmed opportunists who will cheat and lie and—yes, if they can get away with it—murder, not for personal gain but to further a program.
Not a cause, a program. Not something they deeply believe in, but an agenda that is merely an exercise in management skills and control. I dislike that bloodless kind of individual, and, more important, I fear them all. They are the ones who someday will sell out t
he world if it means they will win at their own particular intellectual games.
So why help Sanderman?
Perhaps because under all his lies and self-serving statements I’d sensed a smoldering of humanity. Because under the false things he’d told me there lurked a trace of truth— and pain. I remembered his face when he’d told me that all his life he hadn’t related; I heard the hollowness of his voice when he tried to speak proudly of his self-imposed isolation. As I’d told Hy that night when we drifted together on the lake, maybe there was something. Maybe there was hope for Ned Sanderman….
Lark said to me, “Chopper’s about to take a run down to Stone Valley. If you two hurry, you can catch a ride to Vernon.”
I glanced at Hy. He nodded and stood. I followed suit, not looking back at either Sanderman or his attorney. Lark accompanied us to the door.
“Sharon,” she said, clasping my hand, “I owe you, too. Plenty.”
“Maybe someday I’ll need to call in the debt. Who knows?”
“In the meantime, you come back up here. We’ll go fishing, hell around in the bars, whatever. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, knowing I never would.
On the way out of the building I glanced at Hy. His jaw was bunched with anger—whether at Sanderman or at me for backing up Ned’s story, I couldn’t tell. He asked, “Now what?”
“I want to go home.”
He nodded, didn’t protest. “I’ll fly you to Oakland.”
Back at the Vernon airstrip, I called Hank and asked him to meet me at General Aviation in Oakland. Then I sat drinking a Coke with the owner while Hy gave the Citabria its preflight check. I hadn’t wanted to return to the lodge for my things; too many questions would be asked, and I couldn’t bear to face Margot Erickson yet. Hy said he’d tell Rose Wittington to ship my bag down to the city.
Dawn was bleeding over the eastern hills as we took off. I watched the lake staining pink, took a last look at the alkali plain and the cones of the fire mountains to the south. Then I dropped into an uneasy sleep.
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