by J. A. Jance
A few seconds later, Lani Walker's voice was playing to all the people crowded into the lab. "Quentin," she was saying. "Quentin, Quentin, Quentin."
"Your daughter?" Forsythe asked.
Brandon Walker nodded. By the time the scream tore through the room, Diana Walker was sobbing quietly into her hands.
"You're right," Sheriff Forsythe said, when Alvin Miller finally switched off the tape player. "It's time to pull out the stops."
Breathing a sigh of relief, Brandon Walker reached out and squeezed Diana's hand.
Quentin Walker had deposited his second load of pottery in the back of the Bronco and was on his way back to the cave for the third and last one when he saw the flashing red lights turn off Highway 86 onto Coleman Road.
Climbing up and down was hard physical labor. His head was far clearer now than it had been when he started out. Even though there was no chance of the people in the police car seeing him, he froze where he was and waited for it to go past. But it didn't. Instead, it slowed and turned left, heading for the charco.
Blind panic descended on Quentin Walker. Someone's found Tommy, he thought. And now the cops are coming for me.
For the space of thirty seconds, he stood paralyzed by fear and indecision. And then, without a thought for the other people in the cave-without even recalling their existence, to say nothing of the third batch of pottery-he turned and ran back down to the Bronco. There was a single car key in his pocket. Sweeping the camouflage cover off the top, Quentin clambered into the vehicle and shoved the key home in the ignition.
Switching on the engine, he gunned it, testing the power, trying to remember exactly how he had come to be here on the mountain. Dimly he remembered driving up here, but it had seemed lighter then. In the dark, he was hard-pressed to remember how to reverse course and get back down.
He began trying to turn the Bronco around. There was little room for maneuvering inside that little clump of mesquite trees, especially when he didn't dare turn on the headlights. Those would certainly attract the attention of the cops with their flashing red lights. Even now, the cop car was headed straight for the charco.
Realizing that's where the cops were heading drove Quentin into a frenzy. The next time he backed up, he high-centered on a boulder he hadn't been able to see in the rearview mirror. Even with four-wheel drive, the Bronco didn't come loose the first two times he tried to go forward. The third time, he really goosed it, slamming the accelerator all the way to the floor, giving the Bronco every bit of power he had.
And it worked. Too well.
With a roar and a spray of pebble-sized rocks, the Bronco shot forward-through the grove of mesquite and right over the edge of a limestone cliff that had lain, shrouded in darkness, just beyond the sheltering trees.
Quentin mashed desperately on the brakes, trying to stop, but by then it was too late. The Bronco was already airborne. It came to earth the first time twenty yards from where it had taken off. It landed nose-first and then bounced end for end. With the screech of tortured metal and to the accompaniment of breaking glass, it turned over and over. The battered remains finally came to rest, roof down, in the soft sand of the wash that skirted the bottom of the mountain. There was no fire, no explosion, only a cloud of dust that rose up into the nighttime sky and then silently dispersed.
Not having fastened his seat belt, Quentin Walker was thrown clear the first time the Bronco rebounded off the unforgiving mountainside. He flew through the air like a rag doll and then landed with a bone-jarring thump into a sturdy thicket of low-lying manzanita.
Quentin never saw Mitch Johnson come scrambling up over the landslide debris and out the crack of that second entrance, never heard him yelling into the gradually graying nighttime sky.
"Come back here, you rotten son of a bitch!"
Lani heard the engine turn over and stutter to life. The sound was faint but distinct. Other than the Bronco, there was no vehicle within hearing distance.
Mitch Johnson roared out his dismay. "Goddamn it! What the hell does he think he's doing?" Moments later, Johnson hurtled himself toward the pile of debris that blocked the second entrance. As he scrambled up it toward the crack at the top, loose rocks and pebbles rained down. A few of them smashed into Lani's legs and arms. Grabbing the pot, she scrambled to safety, stopping only when her body was pressed against the far side of the cave.
She could hear Mitch Johnson shouting at Quentin. For a moment, until the rocks quit falling, Lani stayed where she was. She might have remained there longer, but something outside herself urged her to action.
Now's your chance. Run!
Responding to that silent command, Lani stood and tried to walk. Her feet had fallen asleep. When she tried to stand on them, they were unfeeling boards beneath her. Seconds later they were alive with a thousand needles and pins.
Halfway across the floor of the cavern, she realized what she was doing and stopped cold. She had been trapped there in the cave with Mitch Johnson as surely as the spirit of Betraying Woman had been caught in her unbroken pottery. Now Lani had a chance to escape, but if the pots remained, so would Oks Gagda, imprisoned in her pottery long after the debt for betraying her people had been repaid.
Turning back toward the half-buried skeleton and her cache of pots, Lani was determined that the spirit of Betraying Woman would at last be set free.
Lani fell to her knees and felt around the dirt surface until she located the last half dozen pots-the ones Quentin hadn't been able to fit into either his first or second trips to the Bronco. Setting the one little pot aside, reserving it in case she needed to use it as a weapon, Lani set about breaking the other pots. One at a time, she heaved them against the rock wall, hearing them splinter to pieces.
At last only the little one remained. Lani reached down and picked it up. She started to take it with her, but reconsidered. If even one pot remained, Betraying Woman would still be trapped. Hating to do it, but knowing she had to, Lani raised her arm high overhead and smashed that pot as well.
There were tears in her eyes as Lani turned back toward the interior of the cave. She was truly alone now. Her first instinct was to follow Mitch Johnson up over the pile of debris, but what if he was still out there? What if she came out on the other side only to run straight into him. No, her only chance was to find the passage that led into the outer cavern.
In a sudden panic, she realized she had lost track of the exact location of the opening of the passage.
The moon had long crossed the peak of the mountain, leaving the cave in total darkness. There was no light-at least there shouldn't have been. But as Lani searched the darkness for which way to go, a light did appear. Not a ray of light, and not a beam either. It looked more like a shadow glowing in the dark. It seemed to hover there on the far side of the cave before disappearing into nothing.
Some people have claimed that what Lani saw was little more than a cloud of dust set loose by Mitch's scrambling feet. But for Lani, for someone steeped in the ancient legends of I'itoi and in the traditions of the Tohono O'othham, there was no doubt about what she had seen.
The phosphorescent cloud came from the pots, all right, but not from dust. Freed now from her clay prison, Oks Gagda herself had come to show Lani the way.
Setting off across the dirt floor of the cave once again with more confidence than the darkness warranted, Lani walked to the place where it seemed to her the cloud had disappeared. She held one arm in front of her to keep from running into the rock wall, but that wasn't necessary. At the very spot where the cloud had disappeared, the passageway into the outer cavern opened up before her.
She paused there for a moment, wondering. If Betraying Woman had deceived her own people, could her guidance now be trusted? But there were no other options. One step at a time, Lani set off down the passage. Any moment, Mitch Johnson might return to the cave to find her, bringing the spirit of his friend, Andrew Carlisle, with him, but Lani Walker was no longer alone. Elder Brother himself was with
her and so was Betraying Woman.
Lani had reached the point in the passage where she felt rather than saw the walls open out around her. She was just congratulating herself on getting that far when she heard cursing and scraping coming from the front entrance of the cave. Mitch Johnson was coming back. For one heart-stopping moment, she froze. There was nothing more she could do. Mitch had her trapped in the cave. Now he would surely kill her. Or worse. Either way, she had come to the end of her endurance.
Out of the depths of Lani's despair, Nana Dahd' s comforting words returned to the girl once more:
"Remember in the story howI'itoi made himself a fly
And hid in the smallest crack when Eagleman
Came searching for him. Be like I'itoi, Little Olhoni. Be like I'itoi and hide yourself
In the smallest crack. Hide yourself somewhere
And do not come out again until the battle is over.
Listen to what I sing to you, Little Olhoni. Do not look at me but do exactly as I say."
Lani Walker was already inside a crack in the mountain; already in a cave very much like Eagleman's cave, with a pile of bones moldering in the far corner just the way the bones of the people Eagleman had eaten had moldered in the corner of his cave. And there were cracks inside this crack. The curtains of falling stalactites and the growing mounds of stalagmites that she had glimpsed with Quentin's flashlight earlier all offered places where I'itoi could possibly have hidden and where Lani might hide herself as well.
Lani Walker had grown up in two worlds, understanding much of each. She knew instinctively that the Mil-gahn, Mitch, might look at the pile of debris and immediately assume that she had followed him out, climbing up and out. It might not occur to him that she would stay inside the mountain; that without benefit of a light she would have nerve enough to trust herself to I'itoi' s power and move into the enveloping darkness rather than away from it.
With him scrabbling through the one passage and with Lani trapped in the other, there wasn't a moment to lose. Halfway down the passage, the man-made earthen covering yielded once more to bare, jagged rocks. She could feel the sharp edges under the soles of her boots. She remembered that just before Quentin had ducked into the passage, she had glimpsed the walls of the huge cavern receding far into the mountain.
Clinging to the dank, wet wall and using it as a guide, she turned left from the mouth of the passage and fled along the side of the cavern, into the heart of the mountain.
Into the heart ofI'itoi 's sacred mountain,she told herself. That is where I am going. Either I will be safe there, or that is where I will die.
Hardly daring to breathe, she scraped along, still clinging to the wall, testing each tentative stepping place before she put her weight down. She came to the first break in the wall. Feeling around it with both arms, she realized it was a stalagmite, one three feet wide and about that tall, rising up from the floor of the cave. It wasn't large, but perhaps it was large enough to hide her. She ducked behind it just as the first jagged beams from Mitch's flashlight flickered into the cave and then slid across the otherworldly surface of the far wall.
Lani pressed herself against the sheltering stalagmite and held her breath. She didn't dare peek out for fear the beam from the light might reveal her face glowing white in the darkness. She marked his progress by watching the bouncing ray of his flashlight as he came across the room and by the curses and moans that accompanied his every step. She couldn't make out exactly what he was saying, but every once in a while the word "knee" surfaced and there was something about "cops."
Perhaps, in clambering up and over the debris, he had reinjured the knee that had been bothering him earlier. That would explain the knee part. As for the cops, Lani couldn't imagine what he meant. It didn't seem possible that there would be police officers outside looking for her. How could there be? How would anyone know where to look?
After what seemed an eternity, Mitch disappeared into the second passageway. Lani was tempted to stay where she was, but since this was the first hiding place she had found and the one nearest the opening to the second cavern, it was also most likely the first place Mitch Johnson would look when he came searching for her again. She would have to do better than that.
Hoping the noise of his own movements would mask hers, she crept on, trying to suppress the ragged breaths that threatened to catch in her throat and ignoring the sweat that trickled down the back of her neck. Two steps farther, her foot slipped off a sharp edge into a pool of icy water. The splash sounded like an explosion in her pounding ears, but when she stopped still and waited, there was no answering sound from the other room. Perhaps he hadn't heard it.
Barely able to breathe, she moved on. A dozen more steps into the mountain, she found a gap between two stalagmites and burrowed her way into that, stopping only when she came up against solid rock.
Closing her eyes against the darkness, she let Nana Dahd's comforting words spill over her soul:
Be likeI'itoi, LittleOlhoni.
Be like I'itoi and hide yourself
In the smallest crack. Hide yourself somewhere
And do not come out again until the battle is over.
Listen to what I sing to you, LittleOlhoni.
Do not look at me but do exactly as I say.
Trying to obey Nana Dahd' s instructions, Lani pressed herself even deeper into the crack in the wall. She had just eased her way down into a reasonably comfortable sitting position on another low-slung stalagmite when she heard the roar of rage in the other room. She cringed. Now it's coming, she thought.
Now the evil Ohb knows I'm gone.
Summoned by Sheriff Bill Forsythe, a loose coalition of officers from several jurisdictions converged on the Walker home in Gates Pass. They were just starting to work when the doorbell rang and Brandon went to answer it. Standing there was FBI Agent in Charge, Brock Kendall. After years of working together, Kendall and Brandon Walker had gone from being colleagues to becoming friends.
Kendall held out his hand. "I heard you were having some trouble," he said. "How does that old saying go? I'm from Washington and I'm here to help."
Brandon Walker's face cracked into a pained grin. "Thanks, Brock," he said. "Come on in."
"How bad is it?"
Walker shook his head. "The worst," he said. "About as bad as it can get."
"And the perpetrator may be Quentin, your own son?"
As a father, Brandon could barely stand to answer that question. "Yes," he said. "That's the way it looks."
Even with Brian Fellows and Dan Leggett doing the briefings, it still took precious time to bring all the players up to speed. Brandon Walker tolerated the seemingly interminable interviews as best he could because he knew they were necessary. And he understood that a meticulous crime scene investigation conducted by FBI-trained personnel was equally essential. Even so, it was hard not to fall prey to the thought that nothing much was happening.
At six o'clock in the morning he went into the bedroom. Diana, fully dressed, lay on the bed, staring dry-eyed up at the ceiling. "What's happening?" she asked.
"Brock Kendall is here, on an unofficial basis, of course, unless it starts looking like someone crossed state lines or until he can clear the way under missing and exploited children. Detective Leggett just sent out for a search warrant for Quentin's apartment over on Grant. Dan's a thorough kind of guy. He isn't going to make a move until he has all his ducks in a row."
"If Lani's already dead, what difference will being thorough make?" Diana asked despairingly.
"Don't say that," Brandon returned. "Don't even think it."
"You heard the tape," Diana said. "What else is there to think? And why would Quentin do such a thing? What did Lani ever do to him? Is it jealousy? Is that what this is all about? We would have done exactly the same things for Tommy and Quentin that we did for Davy and Lani if they had ever shown the slightest interest. And every time we tried to do something, Janie was right there saying it wasn't good e
nough for them. No matter what we did, it wasn't enough."
"Shhhh," Brandon said, laying a finger on Diana's lips. They were as parched and dry as if she had been running a fever. "It isn't Janie's fault that Quentin's gone off his rocker," Brandon said. "Don't waste your time blaming her, and don't blame us either."
"That's what you're saying then? Quentin's gone crazy and what's happened has no connection to the book? Nothing tonight has anything to do with the danger Fat Crack warned us about?"
Brandon slumped wearily against the headboard on his side of the bed. "I can't see what the connection would be," he said. "Insanity is the only thing that makes sense."
Just then there was a tap on the door. A young deputy poked his head inside the room. "Brock Kendall was trying to use your phone a few minutes ago. He said there's evidently a message on your answering machine. He said you should probably listen to it just in case it happens to be a ransom demand. We're in the process of setting a trap on your line. This call must have come in before that."
Brandon played back the message. Using the speaker phone, they both listened to Wanda Ortiz's voice.
"Gabe and Baby just left for Rattlesnake Skull Charco," Wanda said. "He wants you to meet him there. He says that's where you'll find Lani."
By the time the message ended, Brandon had already slipped his shoes back on and was bent over tying them. "What are you going to do?" Diana asked.
"You heard Wanda. Fat Crack wants me to meet him at Rattlesnake Skull Charco, and that's where I'm going."
Diana started to slide off the bed. "If that's where she is, I'm going too."
"No, you're not."
"Why not?" Diana demanded, slipping on her own shoes. "Why the hell shouldn't I? Lani's my daughter, too."
Brandon didn't want to say the real reason, that he was afraid of what they would find at Rattlesnake Skull Charco-afraid of what they would see. He couldn't seem to do much, but at least he could spare Diana that.
"One of us needs to be here to answer the phone," he said. "What if a ransom call does come in?"