by Paul Heald
Keeping hold of her hand, he hustled them down the path. The moon was bright enough that no flashlight was necessary to keep them on the well-worn track, and James realized as the sound of the car got louder and louder that its headlights were off. None were necessary to navigate the Forest Service road in moonshine. All he could see was a large shadow moving through the woods, until a sedan emerged into the clearing and its ignition was switched off.
A stocky man got out, closed his door quietly, and walked warily over to the two parked cars. He put his hand on both of the hoods while he peered into the woods. James thought he could see a bald pate glint in the moonlight.
“That’s the guy from your house, Mel,” Stanley whispered urgently. “He’s checking to see how long the cars have been here.”
That was all James needed to hear about the muscular intruder stalking around the parking lot. “Follow me.” He led them swiftly down the path and then stumbled as he kicked a large root with an audible thump. “Be quiet,” he whispered to himself as much as to his companions as they plunged deeper and deeper into the forest.
* * *
When Stanley looked back up the trail, he could see a bobbing light following them, probably their pursuer using his cell phone to help him scan the path. James seemed to know exactly where he was going, and the professor wondered whether the moonlight alone would have been enough of a guide. It was hard to tell how far back the man in the suit trailed them. Maybe a minute or two? James claimed that he had a plan, and Stanley hoped it was a good one.
James stopped as they reached a twist in the path, where it dipped steeply downward toward the roar of the falls. “We’re going to go down about twenty feet and then take a hard left off the trail into a bunch of mountain laurel. I’ll lead us up a steep couloir that will take us to the top of the falls. We can wait there until this dude gives up and goes back home.”
He took several swift steps down the path and Melanie followed closely behind but then gave a yelp and fell to the ground. She grabbed her right ankle and writhed in agony. Stanley hopped down to her and tried to pull her up. He looked back and saw the light bobbing steadily closer.
“I’ve twisted it.” She tried to get up and collapsed with a curse. “Motherfucking shoes.”
Stanley looked down and saw that she was wearing a pair of black leather pumps with a low chunky heel, but a heel nonetheless. James sent Stanley into the mountain laurel to the beginning of the side trail and then crouched down at Melanie’s side. “Get on my back.”
She crawled jerkily to her knees and slipped her arms around his neck. With a low grunt, he got to his feet, reached backward until he caught the crook of her knees with his arms, and ducked in front of Stanley into the dark.
They moved as quickly as possible, the noise of their footfalls covered by the growing cacophony of the falls. After a minute, they began a steep ascent up a narrow passageway, handholds of root and rock making it possible to climb nearly straight up. James soon began to struggle with Melanie on his back. He asked her to reach up and use a branch to pull herself over his ducking shoulders, and Stanley saw with relief that she could climb steadily with one good leg and two strong arms propelling her. She might not be able to walk, but on the ascent she was almost as quick as her companions.
As they neared the plateau at the top of the falls, James paused and whispered, “Here’s the tricky part. You need to keep your hand on this root and follow it to the top. You squeeze between those two boulders.” He pointed five feet straight up. “It’s the only thing you’ll have to hold on to. I’ll go first, and Stanley, you stay behind Melanie and push her up and over if you have to.”
James quickly disappeared over the ledge between the two large rocks and then reappeared with his arm outstretched to the hobbled woman. He pulled her up and Stanley followed, easily managing the last several feet onto a narrow escarpment next to the falls. There was barely enough space for the three of them to stand next to the rushing water, which plummeted eighty feet into a surging pool. Stanley leaned back on one of the boulders to create more space, but he felt it tip slightly, and he inched closer to James. The huge rock probably just had a pebble under its pivot point, but he was not in the mood to chance falling down the rock face they just ascended.
“James,” Melanie said, with more than a hint of panic in her voice, “I’ve got to sit down.” She was standing on one foot, balancing herself with a hand on the rock face that penned them next to the torrent. Stanley backed up as far as he could and looked on doubtfully as Melanie slowly slid into a sitting position, threatening to push James either into the water or over the ledge to the sand spit at the base of the falls. The journalist deftly placed his feet on either side of her legs and straddled her while she slipped. As her legs extended, they kicked a small pile of rocks and twigs over the ledge.
“Shit,” Melanie cursed her clumsiness and looked up in alarm.
Stanley grabbed a boulder and leaned out over the empty space, trying to see if the noise had alerted their pursuer. Back-lit by the moon, he was rewarded with a flash of light from the beach and the ping of a bullet ricocheting off the stone behind his head. He pulled himself back and another shot rang out a moment later.
“Fuck! That was meant for me! The stones must have landed right in front of him.” He looked at James. “Is there another way out of here?”
Their guide shook his head. “Not with Melanie.” He pointed to the river. “It looks crazy, but if you’ve got good balance and strong legs, you can walk across the top of the falls pretty easily, but there’s no way she’s doing that in the dark.”
“Why don’t you cross and go for help?” Stanley offered. “I’ll stay here with her.”
James looked doubtful and squeezed past his companions to the ledge over the couloir. Pressing his head against one of the two boulders at the top, he snuck a peek downward. “Forget it. He’s coming up. It’d take me two hours to get to civilization from here and he’s going to be up in two minutes.”
Melanie grabbed Stanley by the wrist and James by the calf. “Think of something quick! At least give me a rock or something!”
Stanley’s eyes met James’s and saw they both had resolved to share the fate of their hobbled companion. “You got another plan?”
He was surprised to see James offer a grim smile, nod, and sneak a quick peek down the narrow chimney.
“He’s almost up,” the journalist said. “Sit down next to me and put your back against the rock face and your feet against the tippy boulder.” Stanley squeezed tightly next to him. He could feel his new friend’s leg tense against the stone. His whole body was rigid. James turned his head and their foreheads briefly met. He whispered, “When we hear him right below us, we’re going to push about five hundred pounds of granite down on this fucker’s head.”
Stanley could hear the scuffling of their pursuer’s ascent right beneath them and saw James nod.
“Push!” The journalist grunted, and they both strained against the weight of the boulder. For a moment, nothing happened, then suddenly it tipped forward and rolled through the cleft at the top of the ledge. It disappeared and they heard a sickening thud and then a series of crashes as it careened off stone and branches down to the base of the falls.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I was a little kid,” James said solemnly.
Stanley gave him a shocked look. “What? Crush somebody?”
“No!” James shook his head. “Roll that rock off the cliff!”
James scrambled back up to a standing position and looked down at their handiwork. “I don’t see him, so I don’t know if we just knocked him down a bit or squashed him like a bug.” He looked at his companions. “Should I go down and take a look?”
“No!” Melanie said firmly. “Even if he’s badly injured, he could still get off a round and kill you. Stay here. You keep a lookout down the chute, and we can wait until morning to see what’s happened.”
“I think she’s right, James.”
He smiled at his new friend and gave an appreciative nod. “Nice plan, by the way: rock and roll.”
The night grew cooler as they settled in on the ledge, James positioned on the side closest to their morning descent and Melanie sheltered between them, shielded from the mist of the river’s rushing current. No one slept much, but they stayed warm enough as they watched the moon set and the stars take over the job of lighting the night sky, until the yellow glow of dawn revealed the comfort and the horror of the men’s handiwork.
XXVIII.
SANCTUARY
Melanie opened her eyes to find James and Stanley hanging over the ledge and looking down at the base of the falls. From their conversation, she entertained little doubt that the man who had pursued them now lay dead far below. She tried to stand and see for herself, but an electric jolt from her left ankle knocked her back into a sitting position. At her yelp, both men turned.
“Let me take a look at that leg.” James crouched down and gently took off her shoe. The ankle was swollen and discolored, but not twisted at any sort of unnatural angle. “It’s probably just sprained. If you’ll trust me, we can get the swelling down a bit and make it back to the car.”
He pointed to the water flowing rapidly past her perch. “Slide over to the edge.”
She nodded warily, and James helped her scoot to the stream, where he nudged her injured foot in an eddy of freezing water. “Goddamn, that’s cold!” Her foot felt as if it were stuck in a pail of jellyfish ice cubes.
He smiled. “That’s why it works. In about fifteen minutes, the swelling will be a lot better and you’ll feel good enough to climb down.”
“After fifteen minutes, I won’t feel anything at all,” she snorted, but she forced herself to keep the foot in the icy whirlpool. “I can kind of move it around a bit,” she added with a wince. “You’re right. It’s probably just a sprain.” After a few minutes of frigid agony her foot went completely numb and the sensation of the moving water felt almost therapeutic.
When James was satisfied with the condition of her ankle, he slipped over the rock ledge down into the couloir and told her to follow him, sliding feetfirst on her belly. Stanley guarded her from above, and she maneuvered between them as she slowly picked her way down the rock chimney. Descending was far harder than going up had been, and several times she had to trust James to place her good foot in a solid notch before daring to proceed. The handholds were easier to manage, except for a slippery knob about a third of the way down, which left her fingers bloody with a remnant of their pursuer’s rapid and involuntary descent.
When they got to the bottom, Stanley found her a stout walking stick, and she was able to hobble without help, as long as she did not try to move laterally on her bad ankle. She followed the men out of the rhododendrons at the base of the couloir and out onto the sand spit, where she saw the body of a large man in a dark suit, his bloody head cocked at an impossible angle on the edge of the water. The boulder that had knocked him there lay three feet into the pool.
“If I were a better law-enforcement official,” she proclaimed, “I’d tell you not to disturb the crime scene, but you need to go through this guy’s pockets.”
The men checked the back of his pants, and then flipped the body over to check the front. When they moved his torso, his head remained grotesquely in place, embedded in the sand and fraying at the neck. Melanie felt her gorge rise. She vomited over the side of a mossy log and sent an iridescent-green beetle scuttling under a rock. She sat down and waited for the professor and the journalist to return with the dead man’s belongings.
“We found a money clip with plenty of cash and a Mexican driver’s license for a Jose Morales.” James’s expression was grim. “The picture looks like him … as far as we can tell.”
“We’ve also got his cell phone and the keys to the car,” Stanley added. “There could be more stuff in the sedan.”
She reached for the phone and he handed it to her. The small, conventional handset still held a charge. She quickly clicked through the call history and the address book. “It’s just a burner. It’s only ever been used to call two numbers, one of which has a foreign prefix.” She handed it back to Stanley. “Take good care of that. I’ve got an idea about what to do with it, but let’s get back to the cars and get the hell out of here first.” She looked at her watch. It was a little after six o’clock, enough time to search their assailant’s car and get out of the forest before someone visited the falls and discovered the body.
The pain in Melanie’s ankle faded to a dull throb as they walked back, and as long as she strode straight ahead, she found she could maintain a relatively normal pace. A tightly wrapped Ace bandage, and she’d be as good as new. When they arrived at the small parking area, they found the three vehicles still alone in the glade. As they approached the Mexican’s rental, Stanley clicked the keyless entry and Melanie cautioned them before they searched. “Eventually, someone is going to find Jose back there and put two and two together, so don’t leave any fingerprints and don’t disturb anything more than you have to. James, why don’t you take a look inside while Stanley and I check out the trunk.”
The trunk was pristine and completely empty. Stanley used his elbow to snap it shut, and the pair turned their attention to James’s careful inspection of the interior. Using a wad of Kleenex, he searched the glove compartment and other interior storage areas, finding nothing except a pair of sunglasses and a black metal device sitting in the passenger seat.
“Boy, this guy traveled light,” the reporter commented. “The only thing here is the obvious—the electronic thingy.” He took out another Kleenex, pulled the oblong device out with two hands, and set it on the hood of the vehicle. All three took turns looking at it and shaking their heads.
“Any ideas?” Melanie asked.
“No,” replied Stanley, “but let’s turn it on. There’s a little switch on the side.” Before anyone could object, he flipped the toggle with his wrist through the cuff of his shirt and a GPS screen appeared, covered with terrain contours and snaky black lines.
James leaned over it closely and used his hands to cut the glare shining on the screen. “That’s here,” he pointed. “It’s a digital map of where we are right now.”
Stanley took a peak. “That doesn’t look like any GPS that I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Melanie exclaimed, as she pushed them aside and squeezed in for a closer look. “I know what it is. It’s a professional-model LoJack. I wondered how the hell that guy knew we were meeting here! If you crawl under my car, I’ll bet you a million bucks that you find a tracking sensor.”
Both men flopped on the ground beside her car and in less than five minutes Stanley emerged holding up a small black disk like a trophy.
“Check under James’s car, too, just in case, and then let’s get out of here.”
* * *
Thor had not shared a bed with anyone for several years, and as he leaned on the crook of his arm studying the peaceful form of Miriam Rodgers, he was not sure whether he ever wanted to go back to sleeping alone. Her face was completely relaxed, no sign of the lines that appeared sometimes when she was excited or worried. He marveled at how beautiful she was and hoped that he might be able to hang on to her for a while. All the more reason to wow her with a stack of blueberry pancakes, fresh fruit salad, and a pot of his tastiest organic, fair-trade, songbird-friendly, shade-grown, Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. He slipped out of bed without waking her and went to work in the kitchen.
He didn’t know if he had impressed her in the bedroom, but she was clearly appreciative of his work in the kitchen, and breakfast progressed lazily from carbohydrates in his little dining nook to the New York Times and coffee in the living room. Miriam seemed in no hurry to go home as long as Thor topped off her cup, and they were both still lounging on his sofa when a buzz from the intercom announced they had company. Miriam retreated to the bedroom while the priest checked to see who had come calling.
; He was surprised to hear James Murphy asking in a semiserious voice for “sanctuary” for himself and two friends. The priest buzzed them in and shouted a warning to Miriam. When he opened the door, he was confronted by James, accompanied by the woman from the US attorney’s office in Atlanta, and a man in his mid-thirties whom he didn’t recognize. All three looked exhausted. The men’s jeans were creased and dirty, and Melanie’s smartly tailored blouse and slacks were torn in several places.
“You weren’t kidding,” he said as he waved them in. “You look like you do need sanctuary!”
“Thanks, Father,” James said. “We need to avoid my house and Melanie’s place in Atlanta for a while.” He motioned to his companion and offered a non sequitur. “And Stanley’s from Los Angeles.”
“What the heck is going on?” The priest said, as he waved them to the kitchen table and began to brew another pot of coffee. “Do you want something to eat?”
All three nodded vigorously, and while he mixed a new batch of pancake batter, they took turns explaining the events of the last twenty-four hours, filling in the relevant background details of Stanley’s trip to Geneva and the professor’s research into the cotton case. Thor interrupted repeatedly as the trio of friends connected the dots from the attempt to bribe the WTO in Geneva to the murderous fallout of Brenda and Jacob’s plan to expose it. He was dumbfounded by the tale of their pursuit into the mountains.
“So, who is after you?” Thor asked.
“We’ll know a lot more after I track down the numbers in the Mexican cell phone.” Melanie speared the last piece of pancake off her plate and turned down the priest’s offer to make her another stack.
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’m going to be bad,” she said with a dangerous smile. “I’ve got a pending request to trace about a hundred different numbers in a huge drug case that we’re prosecuting. I’m just going to bury the cell’s numbers in with the latest affidavit and see what pops up.” She sighed and accepted a refill of her coffee. “But first I need to find out whether it’s even safe to go in to work.”