Move to Strike

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “I’m liking this. If the blood on the sword belonged to Nikki’s father, does that mean he attacked Sykes a long time ago?”

  “Or Sykes attacked him,” said Nina. “Maybe Sykes killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But it has to be the father’s blood. I believe Nikki.”

  “Gives me the shivers,” Ginger said. “The two souls in the sword. The same sword used twice, and kept hanging on his wall as a gruesome memento. Only you would come up with this.”

  “It has to be,” Nina persisted.

  “Maybe, but nobody else would be crazy enough to imagine it,” Ginger said. “That’s your strength as well as your downfall, baby.”

  Nina went downstairs with her coffee cup and poured some more. “Bob? You need to get dressed,” she called.

  “I’m taping something,” he called back. “Later.”

  Fine, she thought. Wear your little plaid boxers all day if you want. The fabric between her and him ripped a little more, painlessly, and she experienced the secret working of Nature that would help her let Bob go when the time came. She went out with Hitchcock onto the deck that overlooked the backyard. Around her, a peaceful neighborhood hummed with the sounds of dogs and a drift of music and Bob’s drums thumping behind her.

  Why? Why would Sykes attack Nikki’s father? She knew so little about him; that he was a musician, charming, and he had been somewhat on the outs with Daria. He must share some of her flakiness. Apparently, he was the kind of man who could leave his family without a word, and the people around him wouldn’t report it to the police, wouldn’t even think about foul play.

  She didn’t know enough to say why Sykes might have attacked him. She didn’t know if Nikki’s father was alive or dead or had come back to revenge himself on Sykes and Sykes’s son. She began reviewing the testimony at the 995 hearing. Louise. Tim. Rankin. Rankin—

  The thought came, why had Sykes insisted that Dennis Rankin wait a few months before mining the opals?

  She picked the thought up gently and turned it over and over as gently as she had turned over the opals. Rankin had said it on the stand—something about an agreement Sykes had made with him. Sykes offered to give Rankin the opals if he stayed quiet about the opal strike and kept off the property for a few months. She hadn’t pursued that—she had been after something else—and only now had she remembered this odd agreement.

  Sykes had bought Daria’s share. He had wanted the land. She had assumed he wanted the opal strike kept quiet only until he owned the land.

  But maybe he just wanted the opal strike kept quiet because . . .

  Pulling her sweater around her, she thought about Bill Sykes. He had killed Nikki’s father with that damned samurai sword, faked the postcards, and sent money to Daria. She felt certain he had. And he hadn’t wanted anybody messing around on that land, the land Nikki and her father and mother had once walked on weekends . . .

  She ran for the phone.

  She saw Paul walk toward her from the little commuter plane in Reno, baggy-eyed, limping, relying on the cane. He wore blue jeans and loafers and a blue work shirt. The clock above the gates said that it was just after noon. He didn’t grab her in a bear hug or even smile, as though he understood what she was thinking about him as he came through the gate toward her.

  Good. She didn’t want him to touch her. They picked up coffee at a kiosk, and he followed her to the parking lot and got into the Bronco.

  “You look tired,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m too old to be flying back and forth across California every twelve seconds.”

  “I called Daria again. She didn’t have a detailed map, but she went there often as a child and later with her family. She said there was an old mine shaft her father warned them away from all the time. Said of course she and all her friends made a beeline for it when he wasn’t looking. It was blocked, but they could easily remove the wood and crawl inside. I didn’t explain anything.”

  “Daria’s husband was named Nicholas Zack, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. Nikki is named after him. He was thirty-three when he left. And I called Tim Seisz. I asked him if he’d seen any place on the claim where a body could be buried. He said he’d seen the old silver mine shaft too. He didn’t go inside. The opal vein was easy to spot on an exposed hill that had experienced a fairly recent landslide.”

  She waited for a smile, a nod, anything, but Paul just looked straight ahead at the sun, which had just risen over the hills in front of them. They would be heading east all the way back to Winnemucca, then turn north.

  “I couldn’t do this alone. I needed you, Paul.”

  “Yes,” he said. “So you said.”

  “Look, I know you didn’t like having to drop everything down there. And I know that even if Nicholas Zack was killed with that sword six years ago, it doesn’t necessarily explain why Sykes and his son were murdered. But I feel the connection.”

  “You feel. Well, I don’t feel it. This could have waited. Jan Sapitto is mixed up in this. I needed to talk to her.” He was very different from the Paul she knew, hard and distant. She could see the violence she had always sensed inside him in the hard jaw, the narrowed eyes.

  She had to keep that separate for now. She couldn’t think about Paul and still function.

  “And here’s a crazier idea I just thought of,” she said.

  “I can’t wait.”

  “What if Nicholas is living out there in the desert? Maybe he . . . cracked up and is in hiding there. Daria said he used to love going out there.”

  “Cracked up,” Paul said thoughtfully. “You know, Sandy uses that word about you now and then. How would that explain the blood?”

  “Sykes hurt him but didn’t kill him? Did some neurological damage. And now Nicholas is out to pasture, living in the desert.”

  Paul didn’t even deign to reply, just gripped the wheel, frowning. They drove on in silence until they had reached Grandpa Logan’s property in the long rays of late-afternoon sun.

  “Hey,” Paul said. Fresh tracks in front of them showed that someone had been there before them, might still be there.

  But there was no sign of a vehicle where they parked. They had come to a rocky ridge with a narrow crack in it.

  “Through there,” she said. “Then to the right about a hundred yards.” She consulted the notes she had taken when Daria talked to her.

  “Watch it!” Paul said, grabbing her. “You just about stepped in that hole. Anybody ever tell you you hike like a drunk on a lost weekend?”

  “Anybody tell you lately you’re about as charming?” She pulled her arm back to herself and rubbed it. For a moment, they locked eyes. Paul looked away first. They went back to scrambling. The rocks led to a scrub-covered hill.

  “I think we’ve found our shaft.”

  She found herself unable to move. “You go.”

  He looked at the opening for a minute. It was just a hole in the side of a hill, partially obscured by brush and rocks. A thick piece of wood partially blocked it to within about twenty inches from the top. Paul positioned himself in front of it and tried to tear the wood away.

  “I left my leather gloves in the car,” Nina said. “Oh, no. And my flashlight. I’ll go get them.”

  “Wait,” Paul said. “Somebody’s been here recently.”

  Nina was immersed in concerns that undercut the certainty she had felt the night before. “I shouldn’t have brought you up here. It’s a sickness, this imagination of mine. I let it run away with me; I let it make us do things sensible people . . .”

  “Be quiet. Come help me.” It was rude but effective. She shut up and began enlarging the opening with him. They finally had a bigger, safer opening.

  “Flashlight,” Paul said, a surgeon ready to operate. Like a good nurse, she slapped his flashlight into his hand.

  They looked down. “The shaft goes straight down then breaks off into two passages, but there’s a ladder,” he said
.

  “I’ll go,” Nina said. “It’s okay. Your leg . . .”

  “I’ll go,” he said, placing the leg inside the shaft and tucking his sunglasses into his pocket. “Wait up here. One of us has to go for help if something goes wrong.”

  “Should I get my flashlight from the car?”

  “Yeah. We might need it. Go on.”

  “Be careful,” she called after him.

  Eddies of wind raised the dust and the tumbleweeds were on the move. A hawk wheeled above in private flight. Nina walked away, back toward the car.

  CHAPTER 29

  PAUL SHONE THE flashlight inside and sniffed. Dust motes floated on the yellow beam. As he left the bright desert outside he felt like he was clambering into a tomb, the tons of earth above insulating the tunnel air into a stifling coolness, the dust he was raising as he shuffled along the dirt floor moldy smelling, the pitted walls naked and ugly. Above and beside him, hand-hewn timbers kept the dirt walls from collapsing. The shaft, only about six feet at the widest, appeared to be long.

  Someone had dug this thing using God knew what kind of equipment under the hard sun, worked like a fool for a dream that led to nothing but failure and dashed hopes, that had wasted months or years and probably ruined his health. The tunnel was the tomb of a dream. It had lasted much longer already than its maker.

  The tunnel branched. His light disappeared down one of the passages. He went left, the sinister direction, the way he always went at the movies when there was a choice. Hunching to avoid touching the lowering ceiling, he made his way forward tentatively, not wanting to upset a delicate equilibrium that had lasted for a hundred years or more. Almost immediately, he jumped as he stumbled over a pile of something that clattered dully. His hand reached for the gun in his shoulder holster.

  Bending down, he picked up tin cans and an old metal spoon, moving the light over them. The labels, if there ever were any, were long gone. The spoon was crude, dented and bent. Tucking it into his knapsack, he moved on a few more steps, then stopped, pointing his light ahead. The tunnel continued at a slightly downward slope, and after about thirty feet, split into two more sections. Again he went left.

  He looked back toward the light. The tunnel entrance could have been the spot on the retina when a flashbulb goes off and the eyes close, tiny, insistent, and brilliant.

  Stepping around small cave-ins where ceiling and side timbers had fallen and lay in splinters and dirt, he walked around a bend. If he continued, he would lose sight of the light entirely.

  Another bend. So be it. He followed the tunnel a long way until it narrowed and both side walls brushed his skin as he walked, all the time thinking about turning back. Why would anyone immure himself any farther into this place? Whoever had made those tracks must be long gone.

  The queasiness in his stomach was getting worse. He hated enclosed spaces. He poked at a timber above him with the flashlight, stupidly, and wood flakes showered down.

  Stopping once more, he turned the light toward the walls of the shaft, and ran it over the ceiling. If there was something else Bill Sykes had been hiding besides what they suspected, he might see it there. The cold air and darkness began to work on him. Who knew how long the rotten support timbers would hold? In spite of the almost frigid air inside, he was sweating, a cold edgy sweat, and breathing shallowly.

  He was about to give up and go back when the tunnel branched once more. To his amazement there seemed to be a little light coming in from above in this new, wider shaft, but he saw nothing in the dimness.

  What was that? A sound! The hair on his arms stood up. He pressed himself against the wall, hardly breathing, and flicked off the flashlight.

  A guitar? Someone was ahead of him, underground in the uncertain dimness, playing a guitar. He couldn’t see anything, though his eyes squinted and blinked.

  Over the music, he heard another sound. Rustling.

  Nicholas?

  CHAPTER 30

  A MAN BEGAN singing with the guitar. His voice was light and young. Paul could hear perfectly.

  “Summers have passed since you caught my eye,

  You were too beautiful to pass by,

  I never believed I could hunger like this . . .”

  Paul heard a moan. A voice, moaning in the background.

  “Obsessed with your face, obsessed with your kiss . . .”

  Another moan, ripped from a woman’s lungs.

  “Nothing else mattered. Emptiness . . .”

  He had been edging forward, his gun in hand. What was the man doing to the woman? Her moan was a chronic sound, like they had been doing whatever they were doing for a while, not the cry of active distress, so Paul could stay cautious and reconnoiter a little longer. The tunnel was widening into a sort of chamber, and now he saw the amorphous shadows at the far end coalescing into an outline, and he saw . . .

  In the dim, cold cavern beyond, a huge figure sitting on the floor of the cave. No, no, two figures, one propped against the wall, one leaning on a large rock away from the wall, his back to Paul, holding a guitar. So the woman was against the wall in that intent posture, leaning forward.

  The man sang on, but now the woman was talking as he sang. They were at least fifty feet ahead of him and didn’t seem to have heard him.

  Her voice repeated the lyrics softly, and each syllable was clear. “Oh, it’s very true, it’s all emptiness . . .”

  But the man didn’t answer her. He sang on.

  “You took me right out of myself,

  Yes you made me into somebody else,

  Took me right out of myself . . .”

  Was it possible Nina’s incredible theory had been right, and the man had chosen this hole in the ground as a hideout of some sort? All sorts of clammy thoughts struck him as his brain struggled to understand. Nicholas Zack must be insane. Had Sykes injured him terribly six years before? Had Nicholas avenged himself with the same sword?

  Was it Zack? Was Daria with him?

  His neck ached from holding it rigid for so long. He pulled back and rubbed it with one hand. What now? he asked them silently. Why do you meet here in this dead place?

  The man stopped singing abruptly. His fingers made a clicking sound. Paul heard the woman murmur softly, “It’s such a miracle to find you again,” she said. His eyes caught a flash of blond hair.

  Jan? Was Jan in there with Daria’s husband?

  The whole thing was making him damn nervous and a lot more emotional than he should be.

  “I don’t have much time, my love. She’s coming soon to look for you. She thought of this place, not me.”

  The woman must be talking about Nina. Nina had called Daria to ask her about the property just before she called Paul.

  He waited for the man to answer. Nothing. “Obsessed with your face, obsessed with your kiss— my love. My lying darling. Emptiness and more emptiness. You made love to me, but it was all a lie,” the woman said in that half-crying voice. “You brought it out. You made it so nothing else mattered. It wasn’t my fault. You brought out the monster.”

  Paul stiffened as an image from his dream intruded itself into the blackness in front of him. The lizard, leaping into the air.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she cried.

  Oh, Christ, Paul thought. Painfully, his emotions in a twisting dark place and resisting all the way, he got himself off the ground and into a crouch, ready to move.

  Why didn’t the man answer? Working hypothesis: he was angry, he wasn’t going to accept the woman’s apology, he was drugged, or mentally ill. Maybe all three. But the woman was still talking, and something still kept Paul from going out there where she could see him. He squinted, trying to see them better.

  He wanted to hear more about her monster. Instead she moved toward the man and he let the guitar fall to the side, but there was something passive, weird about the way the man let her move to him and embrace him, that same weird indifference. Now she had her arms around him, and was sobbing into his chest.

&nbs
p; Gently, she separated from him. The man seemed to have something in his hand. She was holding his arm; she seemed to be helping him to raise his arm and there was definitely something in his hand—it was raised toward her head—a gun . . .

  Reacting instantly, Paul ran forward in a crouch. Somewhere down there his bum leg was on fire. His own gun raised, he ran toward them. “Freeze!” he shouted. “Drop the gun!”

  He halted uncertainly, both hands outstretched, standing now about ten feet away, holding his gun directly on them.

  The gun dropped from the man’s hand and the woman caught it in her lap. The man’s head fell forward. He toppled over at an odd angle. Paul drew closer, closer.

  A grunt of shock escaped from his mouth. Involuntarily, he stepped back.

  It was a body, dead for a long time.

  “Daria,” he said, about to tell her to toss that gun out of harm’s way. But then he saw it wasn’t Daria, and this second shock made him stagger.

  It was Beth Sykes, sitting there quietly with a portable boom box next to her. Her face was very dirty, and her eyes . . .

  Emptiness.

  Paul glanced quickly to the heap in the dirt, face-up, legs akimbo. Shreds of denim and bone, hanks of hair, and a desiccated head with skin still stretched tightly over it. He who once had had a wife and a daughter now had nothing but a big, gaping smile for no one. For the first time in Paul’s professional life that he could recall, he felt paralyzed by indecision.

  She had been embracing this mummified corpse. She had pressed her gun into the dead hand, raised it.

  His skin crawled.

  “Beth,” he said. “The gun. Toss it toward me. Please.”

  A pause. “Go on, shoot,” she said. “Please.”

  “No. I don’t want to do that. It’s me. Paul. I work with Nina, remember?”

  “Shoot me. Shoot me!” He listened as the air eddied up the passageways and swirled around Nicholas Zack, and felt its fingers chill his arms.

  “The gun, Beth.”

  She just sat there, her hands in her lap with the gun. This was a very dangerous situation. Paul thought she could probably shoot herself before he could stop her. His gun was useless since she wanted to die.