by Susan Dunlap
Kiernan looked down over the cliffside and shivered. How many rifles were there down there? High-velocity varmint rifles. The will was down there. There was no way to avoid going down there again.
39
KIERNAN DROVE THE JEEP back by Zekk’s house. As she had learned to do in the autopsy room, she pushed from her mind the grief she had felt for Zekk and concentrated on working out her plan. The killer would arrive after dark, intending to sneak into Rattlesnake, get the will, and destroy it. The sight of her Jeep abandoned at the top of the road would only increase the pressure to rush down there. And down there she’d be waiting, with the McKinleys and their rifles to back her up. They should help her. They benefited from protecting the old man’s will. But how to get to them, convince them, without getting shot first—that was the question.
The sky darkened from khaki to brown. The wind picked up. Dust began to swirl. She closed the vents but there was no way to keep out the gritty dust. Choosing the lesser of evils she headed into Joe Zekk’s house to wait out the storm. The one last night had been over in half an hour.
Briefly she had wondered if the killer knew the will was down there. But one look around Zekk’s house reminded her that the house had not been searched. The killer had not bothered to root around there for the will; pointing a rifle at Zekk and demanding the information had been easier. She didn’t waste time debating whether Zekk had talked. In those circumstances anyone would talk, and Zekk faster than most.
Had the killer gone down into Rattlesnake last night to get the will? Not after driving to Zekk’s with the lights on, which would have alerted the villagers. No one would venture down there without the element of surprise.
She herself would have just a few minutes at dusk to get down into Rattlesnake and ready the trap. Any earlier and she would make a clear target for the McKinleys as she moved back and forth across the switchback road, like one of those metal silhouettes in a boardwalk sharpshooting concession. After sunset it would be too late.
Wind smacked hard against the windows. It spit dirt across the mesa. The sky grew darker by the minute, the air thicker. It masked the Jeep outside. She looked at her watch—4:41. Plenty of time …
The sky flashed white, and thunder broke over the mesa. It echoed back from the far cliffs. Rain, thick as the dust had been, filled the air. Kiernan stood by the window, watching it bounce off the hard-baked dirt.
She could convince Frank McKinley to help, she assured herself. She had done the McKinleys a favor already, showing Frank how to give his father the shot. She would remind him of that, if she had the chance to talk.
The sky grew darker still; rain slashed down in sheets.
After half an hour she accepted the conclusion she had been avoiding. This might not be a passing thunderstorm. It could rain all night. It might not stop for days.
After dark, in the rain, the switchback road would be too treacherous. The killer wouldn’t dare wait till nightfall. Neither could she.
Lightning spiked the sky and thunder rattled the windows again and again. She thought fondly of the Jeep. A Jeep could make it down that switchback road. What would Rattlesnake be like, down at the bottom of the gorge? Stu Wiggins hadn’t been exaggerating, she knew, when he talked about sudden walls of water.
But those little wooden houses in Rattlesnake had withstood many years of monsoons. No flash floods had washed them away.
She looked out at the Jeep. She could barely see it through the rain. The Jeep probably would make it down the hill to Rattlesnake. But it would never make it back up the hill.
With a last look back at the dry, safe house, she stepped out the front door and ran. Rain slapped her head, pressing her thick short hair against her skull, pulling the curls straight.
The road looked like an amusement park water slide. A channel of mud ran down the center, rounding each cutback and heading down the next straightaway with renewed force. At the bottom, lights were on in houses and the street was empty. The swollen Rattlesnake River flowed fast, bubbling into whitecaps, rushing over its banks. No wonder they had flash floods here when rivers swelled this fast.
She pushed off and headed down the steep, muddy road. She tried to hug the inside walls, but it was impossible to stay out of the growing stream of mud. Rain slapped in from the north; water streamed down the hillside, swelling the stream in the roadbed. A few yards ahead lightning cracked the air. Almost immediately thunder reverberated off the sides of the canyon. By the second switchback, she was soaked. Her running shoes felt like cement boots. She wiped the rain from her eyes and rushed on, leaping foot to foot, squishing into the mud, smacking the hard surface beneath.
Another flash of lightning seared the color from the road and the cacti and the tombstones. Everything looked dead. Thunder shook the hillside.
At the bottom of the road, she looked toward the village. The river had leapt its banks; it fanned over the village street, gathering broken branches and debris; it lapped at the steps of the houses. On his porch stood Frank McKinley, rifle pointed.
She started into the street toward him. Water rushed over her ankles. An ocotillo branch slapped against her shin. The air was almost too thick to breath. She was halfway across when Frank stepped to the edge of his porch.
“Pa died last night,” he yelled. The cold fury in his voice cut through the drumming of the rain. “I gave him the shot, and he died!”
Despite the steamy rain, she shivered. No men came toward her this time. Because no one was going to haul her into the house this time. Because Frank was going to shoot her. Frantically, Kiernan sought for questions—keep him talking. The will? But of course the old man had signed it. That’s what the two witnesses Frank had called were for. Frank gave him the shot only after he’d signed the will.
“Run!” Frank ordered.
She didn’t move. Rain pelted her shoulders.
Lightning crackled, and a crash of thunder bounced off the cliffs, slamming against her ears. Against the dark porch Frank McKinley’s face shone granite-white, unyielding.
“Run!” he yelled. “I like a moving target.”
“Frank—” There was no cover on the switchback road, nothing to protect her from the McKinleys, or from Vanderhooven’s killer, who’d be coming down into her “trap.”
He aimed and shot. The bullet hit the water by her feet, spraying her legs. “Run. Woman.”
She turned and started back toward the road, wiping at her eyes as the rain streaked down her face.
“Faster,” he yelled.
She reached the switchback road and broke into a trot, pushing her feet against the muddy surface. How much of a cat-and-mouse game was this with McKinley? Would he shoot her here, or wait till she was close enough to the top to think she might live? Close enough for Vanderhooven’s killer to pick her off first.
Lightning flashed, the thunder almost upon it. The picture of Joe Zekk’s splattered head filled her mind. She started to run, looking up the hill for a rock big enough to shield her. None. The cemetery, maybe—
A great crash shook the air, like a hundred thunderclaps—but no lightning had preceded it. Rocks tumbled down the hillside, bouncing off the hard undersurface of the road and over the edge, down the hill. She raced on past the switchback over the broken ground toward the cemetery.
Below her men yelled. She kept running.
Another crash cut through the air. An explosion! The hillside shook; boulders leapt into the air, avalanching down, knocking others loose in their path. Kiernan flung herself, panting, behind a gravestone. In the village below, figures were running toward the houses, yelling. Frank’s porch was empty. She looked up at the top of the road where the explosion came from. No one was in sight.
Explosions weren’t part of her plan. How had …? She thought of the rocky fist overhanging the end of the valley. Her body went cold. No wonder the McKinleys had let her go; they had a much greater danger to deal with.
Water rushed down the hillside, slewing around t
he gravestones. She started up the path between the two halves of the graveyard, where she’d sat with the boy only yesterday. The rise was steep and her feet slipped on the mud. Thrusting her weight forward, she grasped the top of a gravestone and pulled herself up. The stone gave. She fell back, landing hard.
Through the pounding of the rain and the smacking of the rocks rolling down the hillside she could hear shrill voices from the village. How soon would one of the McKinleys remember her and assume she was connected with the explosions? She grabbed at another headstone and pulled herself up.
Another explosion resounded from the top of the canyon. Rocks crashed down to her right. If boulders dammed the valley, the fast-running Rattlesnake River would soon put the whole place under water. Veering to the left, she climbed upward, planting a foot, and pushing off before it had time to slip. How long would it take to set the next explosion? Two minutes? Less? She reached for an outcropping of rock. Her hands slipped; she slid backward. She hooked her fingers around ocotillo, ignoring the thorns, pulled, grabbed another just as the first snapped.
The canyon top by Zekk’s house was twenty feet above her now, but the wall was sheer. Somehow she found a toehold, then another. Her breath was coming in quick pants. Near the top was a boojum tree, a single, succulent stalk. She grabbed it, swung herself around it, and planted her feet.
The edge was five feet above her head. She caught an outcropping of rock halfway up, pulled, braced her feet, and looked up, ready to reach for the edge.
Bud Warren stuck a hand down. “Kiernan!” he yelled over the roar of the wind and rain and the river below. “I saw you down there. Thank God you’re safe. Can you reach?”
His hand was too far away. She felt a wave of panic. “Bud, come closer.”
He leaned toward her.
Keeping hold of the rock, she reached beyond his hand and grabbed his sleeve.
He jerked back, ripped his arm free, and lunged at her shoulders. She went flying backwards, butt over head in the mud, and smacked into the boojum tree.
Mud filled her mouth and nose. She spit and spit again. Her feet slipped. She clutched the tree, barely aware of the sharp spines cutting into her hand. Half-dazed, she looked with blurred eyes down to the village, Watching the splotches of color that had to be people rushing out of houses. Rocks tumbled down the hillside, crashing below. Bud Warren would still be up at the top of the hill, behind her. She wiped the mud from her eyelashes, pushed herself up, and turned around.
Warren was gone!
Or had he just taken a couple of steps backward, to get better leverage for a shove that would send her crashing down through the gravestones to the boulders below?
Holding on to the tree, she leaned back and tried to see over the canyon edge. No hand or foot was visible. Cautiously she continued up the hillside, digging her toes in farther, making each hold deeper. She grabbed a root right below the edge, leaned in against the wet hillside and listened. The dull roar of the rushing river was broken by the staccato clacks of rocks smacking together and the frantic yells of the people below. Over it all, like a thick drape, was the thrumming of the hard rain. Bud Warren could be right above her. There was plenty of noise to muffle any sound he might be making.
She planted her feet, pushed off, and swung herself up and over.
Warren wasn’t there.
Her hands stung; the skin was ripped. Her head throbbed, and her arms and thighs ached. Forcing herself to run, she headed to the side of the house and made her way around it to the front. She stopped and listened, then looked down the length of the plateau in time to see Warren move behind the dome wall.
She ran, pressing her feet into the soft earth, forcing herself to move faster across the wet ground. She flung herself, panting, against the dome wall.
Was that a noise inside the dome wall? Warren could be in there. He certainly knew how to get in. He’d been in “Austin’s little prayer dome with the pink glass window”—both he and Beth had used those words—often enough with Beth. Hoisting herself up, she peered over the wall. The door to the dome was open. Zekk’s feet were visible. But there was no sign of Warren.
Beyond the dome was nothing but the narrow peninsula that led to the jagged outcropping of rock. The giant fist of rock. Kiernan’s body went cold. One explosion there and those huge rocks would crash down, setting off an avalanche that would dam the canyon. The flood waters would fill it faster than the villagers could clamber up the slippery hillside. It would form a lake over Rattlesnake, the McKinleys, the old man’s will, and over her own corpse.
She raced around the dome wall, stopping just short of the narrow arm of the peninsula. Fifteen feet long, a yard wide, slick with rain. Beneath it nothing but the canyon bed. Warren was out at the far end near the rocky fist. He was right in front of the dead tree. His dark hair flopped in his face. He was bending, planting wires. Explosive wires.
He stood up. Mud sprayed over the edges of the peninsula into nothingness. He stared at her, his face etched with fury. He raced forward. Still on the mesa itself, she leapt to the side. His momentum propelled him on.
Desperately, she looked at the dome. There’d be no safety there. Warren was twice her size. There was only one place she would have a chance, where her agility could save her and she could use his size against him. If she could get him to move fast enough.
She ran out the narrow arm to the fist of rocks. The dead tree was behind her. Inches away on either side of her the ground dropped off. Rain pelted her face, ran down her body. It bounced off the muddy ground into the abyss. She turned to face Warren. Stooping, she yanked at the wires. Her feet skidded to the side. She hung on to the wires and scrambled to pull her feet back from the edge.
Face red with rage, Warren started toward her, striding more slowly now, confident in his physical advantage. His dark hair clung to his face; his soaked work shirt outlined his muscular body.
She backed up against the trunk of the dead tree. She could thrust her arms behind her, and she could hang on.
One chance, she thought. Just one. Got to make him move faster. She reached down for the wires, and pulled.
“Leave them,” he yelled.
She yanked again. The ground gave. Dirt and mud and water shot over the edge of the outcropping into the empty air below. The wires lifted, almost free.
Warren raced across the muddy ground toward her. She flung her arms back, grabbed tight around the tree behind her. He was four feet away, coming fast. She let out a yell. He lunged at her. With both feet, she kicked. Grazed his hands. Slammed her heels against his eyes. Instinctively, he grabbed his face. He stumbled back. One foot skidded to the side. He scrambled for footing, fell forward. Kiernan watched his fingers slip through the mud as he clawed for a hold in the wet ground. Slowly, he slipped over the edge.
His scream reverberated off the canyon walls.
40
WAYLON JENNINGS WAS SINGING “Ladies Love Outlaws.” Every table in the tavern was filled. The smoke was so thick you could cut it. The whole place reeked of beer. Dusty men in faded jeans and boots bellied up to the bar rail. Each one held a beer—the round of beer she had bought. Patsy Luca was in heaven.
“What do you think of it, Stu? It’s great, isn’t it?” Patsy yelled over the beat of the jukebox.
“Great,” he muttered.
“See the guy at the end of the bar, the one in the “Outlaws” sweatshirt? He’s the one who gave me the tip on that old Packard I traced last year. And the guy three down from him—”
“So what’re you going to do with your earnings, Patsy?”
Patsy grinned. “I’ve got my eye on a Winchester four-ninety. Guy who owns it wants way too much. But I’ll get him down. What about you?”
Wiggins leaned back in his chair, momentarily balancing on the back two legs. The jukebox stopped, but the noise level decreased only slightly. He waited till Patsy leaned in close enough so he didn’t have to shout. “Well, you know, I’ve been thinking that a few days
on the beach might not do an old codger any harm. Don’t have to worry about the sun ruining my looks.” He laughed. “And now that we’ve got this invitation to San Diego …” He shrugged.
Patsy stared, amazed. She thought the world of Stu, she really did. But sometimes the man got strange ideas. To throw away his money, to pay to leave Phoenix … Especially now, when the word among her sources was that there was a hot-car ring operating out of a house on East Ellis Drive in Tempe. Maybe if he had another beer …
41
A LONG, EASY RISE in the gray-green Pacific surf swept up to an arc, poised motionless a breathless instant longer than seemed physically possible, then spilled raucously over the edge and crashed down on the rocky beach. Above, Kiernan sat on her deck, her feet on the rail. The afternoon sun was still hot, but she hadn’t been out long enough for her stomach to be red, even the part not covered by Ezra’s gray furry snout. Ezra was snoring.
Kiernan scratched the wolfhound’s head. Eyes closed, he moaned with pleasure. In his excitement he had been up most of the night. But now, his kingdom in order once again, he was sleeping the sleep of the satisfied. Kiernan leaned back, noting how welcome was the cocoon of home after a case like the one she had just finished. And yet she missed the intensity. She picked up the phone and started to dial Stu Wiggins’s number. But no, the case was over. She compromised and dialed Sam Chase.
“Chase here.”
“Hi, Sam. It’s Kiernan. I’m back.”
“I figured you might be. I just talked to the archbishop’s office. They’re not pleased about your fee. If you want to see red silk fly …” He laughed.
“I take it that means no problem, for us.”
“Oh no. They’re not pleased, but at least the murderer wasn’t one of their own. And so far, the media hasn’t mentioned the seamier details of Vanderhooven’s death. Their focus is on Warren planning the murder to protect his water rights.”