I looked away, to the Whitewater riverbed below me. Sometimes, driving by on the highway, you’d see swimmers who’d ignored the fence and the warning sign wading in the cool water that flowed briskly over the rocks toward Palm Springs. But the river was dry right now, with rocks and large boulders strewn along its banks and weeds poking through the cracks in the parched soil. I stepped closer to the fence, trying to read the sign. Some of its lettering had been sandblasted away by the windblown dust.
DANGER!
NO SWIMMING ALLOWED
THIS CHANNEL IS SUBJECT TO SUDDEN FLASH FLOODS AND UNANNOUNCED OUTFLOWS FOR IRRIGATION PURPOSES. CURRENT MAY BE DANGEROUSLY STRONG.
COACHELLA VALLEY WATER DISTRICT
Cars whizzed by on the freeway above. Semis lumbered over the hot concrete, flinging highway grit into the air. The wind gusted stronger now, rattling the fence and the metal sign hanging from it, and blew my hair into my eyes. It pushed at my back and whipped my shirt violently. I looked past the sign and saw the valley spread out in front of me behind the chain-link fence.
I reached up, hooked my fingers through the latticework and pulled myself up. The flimsy fence shook precariously under my weight. Straddling the top, I rested a moment while the twinge in my abdomen subsided, then hoisted my other leg over and jumped down to the opposite side. One of the jagged wires at the top caught the inside of my wrist on the way down and ripped a bloody track in my forearm. I landed and rolled in the dust, scraping the wound painfully against the ground. Got up and brushed the blood-moistened dirt away, ignoring the pain.
I made my way carefully over the rocks lining the riverbed, to the caked and hardened soil below. I started walking away from the freeway with no destination in mind, following the line the water had cut through the desert. The sun beat down harder than ever, reflecting off the banks and the hardpan at my feet, and the wind did little to cool the sweat on my body.
I heard a faint rumbling above the noise of the freeway and the moan of the wind, and wondered if the mountain was speaking, shedding large chunks of itself, or if the earthquake faults in the vicinity were trembling and shaking once again.
When I turned around it was already too late, and I barely had time to steel myself against the onrushing water. It was knee-high, white and foaming as it slid over the rocks faster than lightning, a raging torrent that knocked me down and bore me away, kicking and floundering, while I struggled to keep my head above the surface. I swallowed lungfuls of cold water, the swift current tossing me back and forth.
I felt a jagged rock at the river bottom slice across my ribs and another one cut into my thigh, and prayed for a way to save myself. Up ahead, through the white spray of water, I could make out a sharp bend in the river, a split-second glimpse, before my head went under. Then my weight and momentum shot me up onto the rocks at the side of the river, where I was plastered like a piece of wet laundry on a large boulder, clinging for life as the water roared past.
I choked and gagged violently, expelling the water from my lungs onto the warm stone beneath me—solid, blessed earth—turned my head up to the bright blue sky, and breathed in deeply the hot desert air.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Astute readers may have noticed several liberties I took in the telling of this story. Calipatria Prison is a state prison, not a federal prison. Also, I slightly modified part of Manhattan for my own purposes and depicted the Palm Springs area of a few years ago, not the vastly expanded and more populated Coachella Valley of today.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
A STRANGER LIES THERE. Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Santogrossi. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
Photography by Inna Kleyman
ISBN-10: 0-312-36441-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36441-0
First Edition: May 2007
eISBN 9781466857117
First eBook edition: October 2013
A Stranger Lies There Page 26