Watching Eagles Soar

by Margaret Coel

  Dennis had found the animal, probably knelt down, judging by the depressions in the grass. And there was something else: the glint of a gray metal cartridge. She scooped it up and rolled it around her palm. A rifle cartridge. She spotted two more cartridges, which she dropped into her vest pocket with the first. Then she started following the tracks across the meadow, glancing about as she walked. Her skin felt prickly; the rifle a dead weight in her hand.

  She reached the outcropping on the far side and made her way around the boulders, losing Dennis’ trail, and then picking it up again in the snow. There were other boot prints; hard to tell which belonged to Dennis and which belonged to . . . a hunter? As she came out on the far edge of the outcropping, she spotted the blood-spattered boulder.

  “What the hell happened up here?” she said out loud, startled by the sound of her voice in the quiet. She clambered back up onto a boulder and peered around the area. A vehicle had been parked in the trees. She could see the depression made by the tires.

  A picture started moving in her mind, like an old film, jumpy and black-spotted, cutting off and starting up again. You had to pay attention to make sense out of it, but it was all there, in front of her. Dennis had found the doe in the meadow and had shot at the hunter. The cartridges were from Dennis’s rifle. The hunter had been hit, but he’d gotten to his truck and driven away.

  And—the film rolling to the climax now—Dennis had gone after him. Which meant he knew where the hunter was headed. Halfmoon campsite, where most of the hunters in the Mount Massive wilderness stayed.

  The hunter was wounded, she reminded herself. If he had any sense, he’d drive straight down to town and find a doctor. But she knew hunters; knew the type. He’d want to collect his camping gear. He’d figure he had plenty of time: he had a vehicle and Dennis was on foot. But Dennis knew every inch of the mountain. He’d head straight downslope, and when the hunter drove into the campground, Dennis would be waiting.

  Shelly grabbed her radio and pressed the cold plastic against her face. “Deputy Maginnis here,” she shouted into the mouthpiece.

  “Where the hell are you?” The sheriff’s voice crackled back at her.

  She gave her position and told him what she’d learned. “I’m on my way to Halfmoon,” she said.

  “Negative. Get back . . .”

  Shelly cut off. She stared at the inert plastic in her hand, and then clipped it onto her belt. It clanked next to her handcuffs. Mrs. Lockett’s voice sounded in her head, as sharp as if the woman were next to her: You gotta find him before he kills somebody.

  * * *

  The rifle shot jolted the truck, sending it swerving across the campground. Mickey fought the steering wheel for control and tapped on the brake, finally bringing the truck to a stop next to the fire pit. Another shot crashed through the windshield.

  Mickey rammed down the door handle and slid onto the ground, hunkering close to the front tire. He peered around. There was an orange flash in the trees on the north edge of the camp. He spit out the wad of acid that had welled up in his mouth. How the hell did that crazy coot get there so fast?

  Mickey gripped his wounded shoulder—it was numb now, and stiff—his eyes following the orange in the trees. Should’ve gone straight down to Leadville, he told himself. Now he was facing off with a nutcase, nobody else in shouting distance.

  Okay. He drew in a long breath; the cold air burned in his chest. He’d faced worse in Nam, gooks in front and gooks in back firing away at him. He’d taken a couple slugs in the gut that made the shoulder graze look like a splinter. He was a survivor.

  “Come and get me, you bastard,” he shouted at the orange weaving back and forth.

  “Why’d you kill Pretty?”

  Hello, looney tunes! The guy’s voice was as high-pitched as a girl’s, and real shaky, like he was scared shitless. Scared killers. In Nam, they were the most dangerous.

  “She ain’t dead, you fool,” Mickey shouted. “Look over there on the right. She done followed you.”

  A half second was all he needed. The orange jacket hesitated, and then swerved to the right. Mickey reached up, grabbed his rifle out of the front seat, and ran into the trees on the left.

  The orange vest had turned around. Mickey saw the rifle come up. Another shot fractured the air between them. A cloud of dust and snow swirled around the front of the truck, and one of the wheels sank into the ground.

  “That’s right,” Mickey said under his breath. “You think you got me pinned by the truck. Come on, bastard. Come on.”

  The coot stepped out of the trees, hesitated, and then started walking at a diagonal from Mickey, the rifle trained on the truck.

  Mickey lifted his own rifle and sighted in the orange vest.

  * * *

  The rifle shots thudded through the trees.

  Shelly was running full out down the slope, gripping the rifle in both hands, crashing through the branches and scrub brush. She could see Dennis standing in the middle of the campsite, arms raised into the sky, eyes wide with surprise, like those of a deer suddenly aware he was in the hunter’s crosshairs.

  A rifle lay at his boots.

  She stopped running. Her chest felt like it was going to explode. Someone else—a man—was crouched in the clump of trees directly below, a rifle pointed at Dennis.

  “Drop the gun!” Shelly shouted. “Sheriff’s officers!” She reached down for a dead branch and threw it as hard as she could to the man’s left, desperate to make it seem that there were others, that she wasn’t alone.

  “We got you covered,” she yelled, working her way down the slope.

  The man didn’t move. His rifle was still on Dennis.

  Shelly lifted her own rifle and fired into the air. She scrambled backward with the recoil.

  “Set the gun on the ground,” she yelled. She was about fifteen feet behind the man. He knew—she could see it in the drop of his shoulders—that she was close enough to blast a hole in his back. He set the gun down.

  “Kick the guns to the side, both of you. Do it now!”

  The man stuck out his boot and gave the rifle a shove.

  “Harder!”

  He shoved the rifle again. It was more than an arm’s length away.

  Dennis was reaching down. “Don’t touch the gun!” she shouted. “Kick it away.”

  “Shelly! That you?”

  “Do like I say, Dennis, or we’re gonna have to shoot you.” Her heart was hammering. There was no we.

  Dennis prodded the rifle with his boot, then sent it skimming over the ground. “He’s a killer, Shelly.”

  Shelly walked down and picked up the other hunter’s gun. She could see the blood-matted spot on the shoulder of the tan jacket. Stepping back, she shoved the gun into the scrub brush.

  “I got a right to defend myself,” the man said. “Guy’s crazy. Shot me up at the meadow.”

  “Shut up and get down on your stomach,” Shelly said, trying to keep her own fear out of her voice. “Face into the dirt.” She waited while the man flattened himself around the brush and rocks. Who would believe it? she was thinking. She’d run to the campsite to save some hunter, and now it looked like she’d saved Dennis. She had no idea who the hunter was, but she knew Dennis. She had to take a chance on what she knew.

  “Get over here, Dennis,” she shouted.

  He started walking up the slope, his hands shaking at his sides, as if they’d come unstuck from his arms.

  “He killed Pretty.” It sounded like a whimper.

  “I know.”

  “I was just gonna punish him.”

  “You can’t take the law into your own hands, Dennis. You know that.”

  “I got a license to kill that damn deer.” There was a hard resolve in the hunter’s voice. He was dangerous.

  “Scoot yourself over to the truck,” Shelly said.

/>   “You alone, ain’t you, lady.”

  “I got this.” Shelly fired the rifle again. “Do like I say, or the next shot’s for you.”

  The man started pulling himself forward on one elbow, dragging his wounded shoulder, digging the toes of his boots into the ground. His stomach bumped over the rocks. Finally he lay still next to the truck.

  Shelly unhooked the handcuffs from her belt and tossed them to Dennis. “Get a cuff on his left wrist,” she said.

  Dennis stared at the cuffs as if they were fireworks about to explode in his face.

  “Do it, Dennis.”

  He started shuffling toward the truck, and Shelly moved closer to the man stomach-down on the ground. “One wrong move, cowboy,” she said, “and you’re a dead man.”

  Dennis leaned over and clamped on the handcuff.

  Shelly said, “Raise your left arm alongside the truck, cowboy.”

  He started to turn on his wounded shoulder, winced, and dropped his forehead on the ground. Slowly, his left arm started scrabbling up the side of the truck. “You’re gonna pay for this.” He spit out the words. “I gotta get to the hospital.”

  “Okay, Dennis,” Shelly said. “Cuff him to the door handle.”

  Dennis looked around, like a deer about to bolt.

  “You can do it, Dennis.”

  Dennis stood frozen in place.

  “Come on.” Shelly motioned to him with the rifle. “I don’t wanna have to shoot both of you.”

  “For Crissakes,” the hunter shouted. He raised himself up on his knees and snapped the other cuff to the door handle. “You happy now? Get this nutcase’s rifle before he kills you and me both.”

  The hunter was right. Dennis’ eyes were sliding toward the rifle about fifteen feet away.

  “On the ground, Dennis,” she said.

  “I ain’t gonna hurt you, Shelly.” Dennis did a half turn toward the gun. She could sense his muscles coiled for the sprint.

  “I know that. Your mother sent me up to find you.”

  “Huh?” He swung toward her.

  “Sit over there.” She nodded toward a large rock and held her breath. If he went to the rock, she could get between him and his rifle. “Your mother’s been real worried about you.”

  Dennis rolled his head around, as if he expected his mother to walk out of the trees. “She don’t understand.”

  “I understand. You’re a deer now.”

  The man handcuffed to the truck let out a loud guffaw. “What is this, Disneyland?”

  Dennis looked as if his legs had started to melt beneath him. He stumbled backward, grabbed for the rock, and dropped down.

  “How’d you know?” he said.

  “Your mother said something about it.” Shelly moved sideways to the rifle. She picked it up, then walked over to the trees and pushed the gun into the shadows, out of sight.

  Still keeping her own rifle on Dennis, she fumbled for the radio and called the sheriff.

  “Damnit, Maginnis.” The sheriff’s voice burst through the static. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m at Halfmoon,” she said. “I’ve got Dennis and another guy covered. They’re both disarmed. Could use some backup about now.”

  “Ellis and Moore are on the way. You gonna be able to hang on?”

  “Looks like it.” Yes, she could hang on, she was thinking. Everything under control. She heard the sound of her own breathing—slow and regular.

  She shut off the radio and smiled at Dennis.

  “Tell me about Pretty,” she said.

  Santorini

  Maddie looked gorgeous. Standing in the narrow doorway to my suite, diamond sparkling on the hand that gripped the doorknob, silk dress as blue-green as the Aegean, and silver, high-heeled shoe tapping out my baby sister’s impatience. “We mustn’t keep the captain waiting, Jules,” she said, tossing out the nickname she’d come up with when we were kids, knowing it always made my blood boil.

  “Julia,” I said, correcting her for the millionth time.

  Maddie shrugged and headed down the corridor, leaving the door ajar. I took another look in the mirror, adjusted a piece of copper-colored hair that refused to stay in place, patted a little more powder over the freckles on my nose, and shook my head at the black, go-everywhere dress I’d packed for the elegant evening at the captain’s table, which I’d predicted even before we’d booked the expensive cruise through the Greek Isles.

  I’d had to do some fast talking to get Maddie to agree. “Think of the sympathy factor,” I’d told her. “Wealthy young widow grieving over the untimely, tragic death of her husband, cruising the Greek Isles in search of forgetfulness.”

  “Just how do you propose we pay for the cruise?” Maddie had flashed her checkbook at me. She hadn’t totaled the balance since Norton died, but I did a quick calculation in my head. About fifty-seven thousand dollars, her entire inheritance after the bank canceled the credit cards and she pawned the diamond rings, bracelets, and other jewelry that Norton had given her, and cleaned out the cash that he’d stashed in a bedroom safe. It was enough to play the role of wealthy widow for a while.

  “Rich men do not take cheap cruises,” I reminded her. “How else do you expect to meet another man like Norton?”

  That’s when I also reminded her that we had to make certain the next so-called rich man had real money, unlike Norton, who turned out to have a bank account of three hundred thousand, about a tenth of what we’d expected, and about a million dollars’ worth of debt. I was at the lawyer’s office when he gave Maddie the bad news. She’d almost slid off the leather chair, and I’d had to hold on to my own armrests to keep from sliding with her. We’d had to help each other to the elevator. When we’d gotten to the house in Palos Verdes, which the bank took possession of three days later, I fixed us each a gin and tonic. Then fixed three more. Maddie had gulped hers down in between jags of crying and cursing as it dawned on her that Maddie and Julia were just as broke as when they’d been hustling drinks in the bar at Redondo Beach, gazing up at the big houses tucked into the hills in the distance, sun glinting off the windows that faced the ocean, and swearing that, damnit, there had to be a way to get up there.

  Well, we figured we’d found the way. Thad Norton. All two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of fat and bluster, flashing a thick wallet around the bar, buying drinks for the surfers and the tanned, bleached-blond bimbos that crowded into the booths as soon as the sun set, and who partied until we had to sweep them out at closing. Buying drinks for everybody, that was Norton, with his big house and flashy Mercedes, bragging about how he’d made piles of money in the dot-com business, forgetting to mention how he’d lost 99 percent of it, and all the time, not taking his beady, hungry eyes off Maddie.

  Maddie was different from the other bimbos in the bar. She had class. She looked like she came from somewhere, not the shithole we actually came from. Norton saw that right away. He was always saying, “What’s a beautiful lady like you doing in this dump?”

  Maybe Maddie had the class and the looks, but I had the brains. We made a good pair. We’d looked out for each other since we were kids. That is, I looked out for Maddie. I was the one that kept Mom’s current boyfriend off her when he was drunk. Pulled her out of the way when Mom went into one of her flying rages. Convinced Maddie when we were fourteen and sixteen that we could make it on our own.

  And I was the one that said, Maddie, all you have to do is get Norton to marry you and we’ll be living in his big house up in the hills. There were a few days when even the prospect of the big house and the credit cards and shopping on Rodeo Drive and all the other stuff we thought Norton could afford didn’t stop Maddie from rolling her eyes every time I brought up the subject. It wasn’t until I mentioned that she would make a beautiful widow that she got the idea. A beautiful, rich widow.

  I gave myself a last go-over in the mirro
r, wishing that I had half of Maddie’s looks, then stepped into the corridor. Maddie was about to swing around the banister and start down the wide staircase, and I hurried to catch up. What an appearance she made, blond hair swept up and clipped into place with a comb that everyone would assume was banded in diamonds, the blue-green dress shimmering against the gentle swells of the Aegean as she strolled along the railing. There wasn’t a man in the crowd outside the dining hall whose eyeballs weren’t falling out.

  Just as Captain Jelenik had run into a little eye trouble when we came aboard this morning. He’d made a beeline through the other passengers, white hat cocked forward, gold buttons about to pop off the white jacket that strained around his enormous stomach. He grabbed Maddie’s hand, telling her how pleased—how very pleased—he was to meet her, holding on so long that another officer in a white uniform had finally urged her free of the captain’s grasp.

  “I give him fifteen minutes,” I’d told her when we got to our adjoining suites on the upper deck. I was wrong. Ten minutes later the same officer was pounding on Maddie’s door with an invitation for both of us to join the captain for dinner that evening. We were off to a good start. The richest, most important passengers would be at the captain’s table on the first night out.

  Maddie headed toward the carved double doors to the dining room, passing through the crowd of passengers like the Queen of England, nodding and smiling, with me two steps behind, like one of the royal attendants. The doors swung open, and another officer escorted us across the dining room. The subdued lighting danced over the white tablecloths with their bouquets of pink and white flowers, and shone in the silver and white china and the tall, crystal wineglasses. The knives and forks looked heavy enough to anchor the ship.

  Captain Jelenik, in white uniform with gold buttons flashing, was weaving through the tables toward us. “So pleased you could join me this evening,” he said, taking Maddie’s hand again and throwing a half glance in my direction. The other officer peeled away, and the captain guided us to the knot of people standing around the large round table at the head of the dining room. I did a quick count: two balding men with their dumpy, thick-waisted wives, and a single man, at least six feet tall and handsome, with a broad forehead, hair as thick and black as the night, and dark, intense eyes, which were fastened on Maddie.