Then there was the business of the bow.
He had recognized the old man and his wife the moment he walked into the cabin. For a minute or two he felt a chill of unease, but they were so wrapped up in their own outrage they hardly noticed him. No reason they should, really. He was just some dumb, faceless Apache working with the cops, and the woman made it very plain from what she said about Ironheel that she didn’t like Apache, with the cops or otherwise. Which was just fine: blinded by prejudice, she was less likely to recall the circumstances of their earlier encounter.
He sat quietly to one side while the deputies questioned the couple, plagued throughout by the gut feeling they knew a lot more than they were telling. The woman did most of the talking; pale and shaky, the old man looked like he was in shock. Robbery alone wouldn’t account for that, but Kuruk couldn’t quite get a handle on what it might be. So he did what he always did, waited and watched.
The old woman’s story was simple enough. They had been in the cabin. The door burst open and two men came in with guns in their hands. The Indian – she never once used the word Apache – held them prisoner in the living room while the other one ransacked the place. They identified both men immediately from their photographs.
“And you say they both had guns?” the sergeant who’d come up with the party asked. “You’re sure about that?”
The sergeant’s name was Sam Donaldson. He was a tall man with a horsey face and jug ears, a thatch of thinning red hair and very pale skin reddened by sun and wind. His uniform hung on him like it had been made for a bigger man.
“Am I sure, am I sure?” the woman snapped, as if he had insulted her. “Why do you keep asking me if I’m sure? Of course they had guns.”
Donaldson looked at Kuruk as much as to say, What the hell do I do with this woman? Kuruk gave him a stone face.
“Might be helpful if you could tell us what kind of guns they had,” Kuruk said. “Ma’am.”
The woman looked up quickly, as though she was surprised he had been permitted to speak.
“I don’t know anything about guns,” she snapped. She jerked her head toward her husband. “Ask him.”
“The Indian had a carbine, Winchester, I think,” the old man answered creakily. “The other one had a handgun. Automatic. Don’t know the make. They all look alike to me.”
“Can you tell us again exactly what they took, ma’am?” Donaldson asked her.
She made an angry sound. “Isn’t anyone listening to a word I say? Food, I told you. Bread, cheese, some cold meat I was saving for supper. Our cellphone. And all our money. We had about two – four hundred dollars between us.”
“Is that all?” Kuruk asked her.
“All?” she glared. “Isn’t that enough?”
“The bow,” the old man put in, gesturing to the spot on the wall where it had hung. “And the arrows. The Indian took them.”
Donaldson frowned. “What kind of bow, a crossbow?”
“No, just some old Indian thing,” the woman said quickly. “A souvenir. We bought it on one of the reservations years ago.”
Donaldson’s look of puzzlement deepened.
“What the Sam Hill’d they want to take a thing like that for?” he wondered aloud. Kuruk didn’t attempt to enlighten him. No pinda’lick’oye would understand the significance of Ironheel’s action. Or the implicit message from him to Kuruk that was embodied in the theft.
“Look what he did to my guitar,” the old man said. “Cut the strings off with his knife.”
It was apparent the old man’s non sequitur didn’t make any more sense to Donaldson than the question of why, if Easton was a hostage, Ironheel was letting him carry a gun, but it did to Kuruk. He knew exactly why Ironheel had done what he had done. The fugitives had to eat. But they couldn’t use a gun to hunt because it would lead the pursuit straight to them. With a bow and arrow, however, Ironheel could kill silently. But the string of the bow he had taken from the wall would be slack and useless. Guitar strings – he hadn’t asked, but they had to be catgut or Ironheel wouldn’t have taken them – would provide a new one, makeshift but perfectly serviceable.
“You quite certain about them both having guns, ma’am?” he heard Donaldson ask again.
“Heaven’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you?” the woman said, her voice shrill. “They robbed us. Threatened to kill us. Stole our money and then ran off down the trail. Why don’t you do something about it, instead of all these damfool questions?”
Leda’ilchoo, Kuruk thought. They are lying. He wondered why. He wondered what had really happened here, tried to make a movie of it inside his head. The two of them coming down the hill, the old man and the woman in the cabin …
“Do you have a gun, sir?” he asked.
The old man looked startled. “Uh … we … it …”
“Of course he doesn’t have a gun!” his wife snapped. “What would we need a gun for?”
Lying again, Kuruk thought. They stank of it. Why, why, why?
“You’re quite sure they went down the trail?” he said to the woman. “You saw them go?”
He felt the chill of her antipathy. “Don’t you understand English?” she snapped.
Racist bitch, he thought. She resented being questioned by an Apache. Is it any wonder we hate you and all your kind? He bit back on his anger and stood up.
“I’ll wait outside,” he told Donaldson. “You sent for the choppers?”
“Should be here anytime now,” Donaldson confirmed.
Kuruk’s frown of concentration deepened. If Easton was half the cop they said he was, he would have anticipated the blocking off of every route leading to the highway. Even if he and Ironheel managed to evade the roadblocks and the waiting deputies, it was still more than fifty miles to Riverside across open country. So why rob an elderly couple, knowing it would give away their position and intent?
Unless, of course, there never was any robbery at all.
That made a lot more sense.
It meant the question now was how much of what the old couple said was true. Maybe they took food, water, he could believe that. And the bow. Not money. They wouldn’t be interested in money. That was just godich’i’, old woman greed.
They said Ironheel and Easton had gone down the hill. No reason for them to lie about that. If that was what Ironheel wanted them to think, it was a blind. So where were they really going?
Think like the enemy.
To the west lay the little town of Marcial, and miles beyond it, Junta and then the malpais. All around, the empty plains of the Dolorosa basin. Nothing for them there but trouble. So it must be east. Somewhere to the east.
What did they need? They had food. Next came shelter. They must know the hunter-killer helicopter would come roaring up the mountainside again when night fell. But where was there a place they could safely hide from its electronic eyes? Kuruk called up a mental picture of the mountains to the west, examining it like a 3-D image on a computer, checking off feature after feature. Not there. Nor there.
Then where? Where? Ironheel would try to avoid confrontation until he was on ground of his own choosing. Where was there such a place?
He heard a footfall and looked up to see Sam Donaldson coming toward him.
“We’re about done here,” Donaldson said. “You ready to move on?”
“Count me out,” Kuruk said. “I got other fish to fry.”
Donaldson’s face twisted with anger. “What the hell is this, Mose?” he said. “You were deputized. We need you up here. You can’t back out of this now.”
“Bet?” Kuruk said.
“I’m warning you, Mose. You do this, it goes straight into my report. You know what that means far as working with the police is concerned.”
Kuruk spat on the ground.
“Put that in your report,” he said. “And make sure you spell it right.”
Donaldson looked at him impotently, then turned away flexing his hands, anger in every line of his b
ody.
“Well goddamn it all to hell,” he said to nobody in particular. “Goddamn it all to hell.”
“Aw, save your breath, Sam,” Frank Cahill said, hitching up his gunbelt. “He wants out, let him go. Everyone knows you can’t rely on no damn Mescalero, anyways.”
Cahill was the youngest of the trio, probably no more than twenty two or three, skinny, callow and immature. Kuruk stood up.
“How was that again, sonny?” he said softly.
“Hey, Mose, come on, the kid didn’t mean no harm,” Donaldson said hastily, stepping between them. Kuruk said nothing but he didn’t take his eyes off Cahill.
“Jeez, Mose, chill out,” the kid said, backing away edgily. “All I meant was, up to now you was hot to catch those guys.”
“Sure that was all you meant,” Kuruk said, not taking his eyes off him.
“Come on, Sarge, this ain’t getting us no place,” the third deputy said. “Let’s move out. Sooner we run them assholes down, sooner we all go home.”
He was about thirty, dark and compactly built. Of the three he was the only one who hadn’t bitched about the pace Kuruk was setting as they came up the mountain. His name was Charlie Fourtino. Kuruk figured he had Navajo blood, even if Fourtino didn’t know it himself.
“Meat ain’t meat till it’s in the pan, Charlie,” Kuruk said. “You watch your ass down there, case them two double around behind you.”
“Why in hell would they do that?” Donaldson frowned.
Clearly he found the thought unsettling and Kuruk was perversely pleased. White men had no stomach for fighting in the dark shadows of an unfriendly forest where the enemy might materialize without warning and kill you without a sound. Apache had always known that.
“Guy like Ironheel, you never know what he’ll do,” Kuruk said, piling it on. “Apache don’t fight like white men. He’s liable to cut your balls off as not. You boys keep a good lookout.”
He could see Donaldson wanted to tell him to shut up, but didn’t dare. The deputy settled for a sour look and turned away.
“Okay, you guys, less move out,” he snapped, putting on a show of authority. Kuruk went back to his rock and watched Donaldson lead his men down the hill until they were out of sight.
Good riddance.
He had his own agenda and it didn’t include cops. The only reason he had accepted this assignment in the first place was so he would be on the ground when the fugitives were sighted. They were close, he sensed that. He could see them clearly in his mind’s eye, shadows among the trees. Tonight, when he called the big bird up the hill, it would find them. And he would make the kill.
After a while he stood up, hefting his rifle in his hand. Then he moved off up the flank of the slope behind the cabin, heading for the ridge. The sun was still hard and hot. Ignoring the steep angle of the incline ahead of him, he climbed at a steady, ground-eating pace. Behind him helicopters buzzed noisily up and down the canyon, the sound of their engines fading as he moved away from them, heading east toward the summit of the ridge.
By the time he reached it, the sun was beginning to move down the side of the sky. If they didn’t find Ironheel and Easton before dark – and they wouldn’t – the cops would stake out the lower canyons and phase the operation down until morning. He smiled, satisfied.
Tl’é’yú. It was going to be a night hunt.
Chapter Thirty-Two
On the crest of the second ridge they stopped in a small clearing to drink some water. It had been another exhausting climb, rising fifteen hundred feet in a mile. Easton’s shirt was wet with sweat and he could feel the now-familiar long ache in his wounded side. But there was satisfaction, too; Peachtree Canyon now lay below and behind. One more descent to negotiate, one more ridge to climb.
All around cicadas droned soporifically. A tanager flew past, a flicker of red, yellow and black, making its hoarse call: pit-ik, pit-ik. Sitting with his back against a tree, he took the cellphone from the cabin out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment, weighing the risks. Ironheel waited watchfully. It wasn’t difficult to guess what he was thinking.
“Who you going to call?” he said finally.
“Kit Twitchell. Robert Casey’s daughter.”
Ironheel said nothing. He could make a point pretty well without saying a word.
“We can’t stay in these mountains forever,” Easton reasoned. “And Kit is the only one near enough I can trust.”
“That’s what you meant about getting help in Pacheco?”
“Right.”
“Won’t Apodaca expect you to contact her?”
“It might occur to him. But he’d feel pretty sure she wouldn’t help the man who killed her father.”
Ironheel didn’t offer any argument but Easton sensed his lingering doubt. Hell, if truth were told, he shared it. He hadn’t so much as talked to Kit for two, maybe even three years. She might just tell him to go to hell. Or call Apodaca the minute he put down the phone. He dialed the number.
“Señora Twitchell, por favor,” he told the maid who answered.
“May I tell her who is calling?” the girl asked in Spanish.
“It’s a surprise.”
“Momentito, por favor,” she said.
He waited a moment and Kit came on the line. “Hello?”
“Kit,” he said. “It’s David Easton.”
“David? David?” she said, and he could hear the astonishment in her voice. “How on earth … You’ve been all over the news. Where are you?”
“Kit, don’t talk, just listen,” Easton said urgently. If her phone was tapped, he needed to minimize the time any monitor would have to pinpoint his location. “I want you to ask your mother to come up to the ranch tomorrow.”
She was silent.
“Kit, please, trust me. I have to talk to Ellen.”
“She’s here now,” Kit said. “She’s been ... very upset.”
“I hate to intrude on your grief, Kit, but this is—”
“It’s not that,” Kit said. “Something … happened.”
He frowned, conscious of the seconds ticking away. “What?”
“Wait,” Kit said. “She wants to talk to you.”
“David? Thank God! Where are you?”
He recognized Ellen Casey’s voice immediately. “I’ll explain everything in a minute,” he told her. “First, I need to ask you a question. Remember you once told me if I ever needed help I should come to you?”
“Of course I remember. How can I help?”
“I’m not a hostage, Ellen. I’m protecting a witness who saw Joe Apodaca and another man kill your husband and Adam. I don’t know why yet, but I do know Apodaca and Olin McKittrick are mixed up in it. They’re trying to kill us. Shut us up. That’s why we’re on the run.”
There was a long, long silence at the other end of the line.
“Ellen, please,” he said. “I can’t stay on the phone much longer.”
“I’m sorry. It’s … something else happened. Here. Something … devastating. I didn’t … I don’t know what to do.”
“Tell me.”
“I found … some DVDs hidden in Adam’s closet,” she said. He could feel her disciplining herself not to let her voice quaver, but she wasn’t being entirely successful. “They’re … disgusting.”
Unbidden, a picture of Tom Cochrane came into Easton’s mind, his eyes dark and brooding. Fish stinks from the head, Dave.
“David, David, are you still there?” he heard Ellen say.
“I’m here,” he said. “Can you tell me what that means?”
“They’re … awful. Men … dying. Out in the desert, like animals.”
“You mean movies?”
“Not movies, David. Real men. The real thing.”
It didn’t make sense. Why would Adam have videotapes of men dying? Why would he have hidden them?
“Is there anyone at the ranch beside you and Kit?” he said, thinking rapidly.
“Only the maid,” she said. “R
alph’s in Santa Fe.”
“Wait for me. I’ll try to get there tomorrow.”
He heard her indrawn breath. “Is that safe?”
“It is unless the sheriff has someone watching the place.”
“Nobody has been here since ... a detective, when they were asking about Adam.”
“You’ll have to tell Kit,” he said.
He did not put his concern into words but she caught it anyway.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice was firm now and resolute. “I’ll take care of … all that.”
“You remember where Kit and I used to meet? Just answer yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll try to be there tomorrow.”
He broke the connection and looked up to see Ironheel watching him expectantly.
“What was all that?” he asked.
Easton repeated what Ellen Casey had told him. Ironheel thought about it for a moment, frowning.
“You think maybe there’s a connection? Between these DVDs and the murders?”
“I don’t know, James,” Easton said grimly. “But I plan to find out.”
Once again he caught that fleeting expression of surprise on Ironheel’s face and wondered why. Then he realized why: he had used his first name. Was it some breach of Apache etiquette, or was it the unexpected camaraderie?
Ironheel stood up and stretched, letting out a long exhalation of breath as if it had been inward tension.
“We need a place that chopper can’t find us,” he said.
“Amen to that.”
“When I was a boy my father used to tell stories about an old man, a hermit, who lived up in these mountains,” Ironheel said. “They called him El Maricón de las Cuevas.”
“The crazy man of the caves?”
“His name was Bob Brookshire. He was a stone-mason, made gravestones in exchange for his keep.”
“And you know where the caves are?”
Ironheel nodded. “Round the flank of El Marcial, there’s a big granite formation. Apache call it Chimney Rock. The caves are just below it.”
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