Cold Desert Sky

by Rod Reynolds

  It took me several minutes to coax her out, eventually doing so by pleading for her help to bring the other women back. She refused to give up the gun and I didn’t press it.

  We went outside and to the coupe first. Its trunk had been bent out of shape in hitting the boulder, and it needed a crowbar from Tanner’s trunk to get the job done. The screech of metal on metal prompted a new round of screams from the woman locked inside, even Nancy’s reassurances not enough to calm her. When I bust the lid open, Nancy helped the woman as she scrambled out; she was hyperventilating, overcome with relief at taking fresh air into her lungs again.

  I stepped back, giving the two women some space. As I did, on the far side of the property I saw Bryce walking back from the direction of the outcrop, carrying the woman I’d chased down. She was draped across his arms as though lifeless. I ran to them.

  ‘She’s alive.’

  I already had my finger on her neck, found a pulse. Her skin was freezing cold. ‘Get her in the car.’

  *

  Clark County Sheriff’s arrived in force. Three cruisers came racing down the track, sirens and spotter beams blazing up top, an ambulance car trailing a distance behind. I was searching the land behind the house for the two women I’d seen take off in that direction. Nancy Hill was with me and had supplied names – Ramona and Bea. I’d called for them until I was hoarse, but heard only the echo of my own voice. Rooting about in the dark, finding no sign to keep hope alive, it felt as if the desert beyond was boundless.

  I came back around the house just as the first of the sheriff’s cars skidded to a stop out front. The men piled out looking angry and scared, one with his gun drawn. An argument kicked up right away, Lang lain across the backseat of Hendricks’ car, ready to roll, the lead deputy demanding he be transferred to the ambulance. I looked around for Tanner, expecting him to intercede, but he was gone, his car too.

  It raged for thirty seconds. Hendricks emphasised what he’d learned the hard way in the Pacific – moving shot men did them no favours. But the sheriff’s boys were itching to take their anger out on someone and, at seeing a second gun being eased from its holster, Hendricks wised up and let them have the day.

  I waited until Lang was inside the ambulance and then tried to buttonhole two of the deputies to join the search behind the ranch. The shorter of the two instead slapped a pair of cuffs on me.

  *

  They kept me alone in the back of one of the cruisers. I saw them arrest Nancy Hill and stash her in one of the other cars, along with the woman from the trunk and the one who’d hidden out behind the outcrop, now revived and talking. I kicked and yelled for the deputies’ attention, and when one finally came over, I begged him to look for the two women I’d seen tear off into the desert. Ditto the third I’d seen come from the house and lost sight of right away. He said he’d do what he could and to shut the hell up.

  I managed to get Bryce’s attention and he made a protestation on my behalf, but the sheriff’s boys were angry as hell and determined that everyone there was to be taken back to the department and put through the grinder. The different ways this could unfold started to pan out before me; if the sheriff didn’t pull through, the rule book went out of the window.

  *

  It was past first light when they finally took me back to town. A crew from the county coroner’s office had taken over the scene, accompanied by fresh men from the sheriff’s day shift. It was one of them had found the barman, Landell, in the footwell of Lang’s cruiser, beaten up but alive.

  Bryce and the other agents had left sometime during the night. I’d seen them haul out, the sheriff’s men watching them go with hands on hips and hard looks. Bryce had shot me a glance that seemed almost apologetic as they went.

  As the cruiser carrying me climbed the incline on the way out, I looked back at the ranch and the desert beyond. I couldn’t see anyone searching. The rising sun laid bare the vast desolation of the landscape.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  No one was waiting for us when we arrived back at the Sheriff’s Department. It was a surprise and it wasn’t; I’d half-expected to find Colt Tanner there, wanting every detail, and reprimanding me for going off without involving him.

  There was no sign of Lizzie either. I figured she must have gone back to the motor court to keep the meet with Tanner when I hadn’t come back. I had no desire for her to see me in cuffs, but I badly wanted her to see Nancy Hill in the flesh, so she’d know that all her sacrifices had been worth it.

  They took Nancy out first, leading her across the parking lot as I looked on. She was still wearing my suit coat. It dwarfed her, making her appear smaller, younger, nothing at all like the woman I’d found hours before. They hadn’t bothered with cuffs, but her shoulders were tensed and rigid, and her eyes were wide, as though she’d never risk shutting them again.

  I realised then I was thinking of her as a trophy, something to be held up as a sign of validation – not as a young woman who’d passed a night seeing things no one should have to witness. And god knew what in the weeks before. Not that any of it felt like a triumph; with Lang in the emergency room and three women still missing in the desert, the word that kept coming back to me was botched.

  *

  Emotions were running high inside the department – you could sense it, just walking the hallways. I was marched to an empty room, pushed onto a wooden chair and peppered with questions by a new deputy. I lost track of how long for, the same ones coming around again. He shifted between threats and conciliation, the strain showing as he smoked butt-to-tip throughout the interrogation.

  I gave him the same lowdown on the gunman I’d given to Bryce. I told him I’d been deputised. I skirted the specifics of what had led to us being at the ranch, saying only that I’d been helping Lang with his investigation.

  After my third description of the shooter revealed no further details, he ran out of steam. The questions came at a slower clip until they petered out all together. There were gaps as wide as a canyon in my story, but he skimmed over anything didn’t pertain directly to the trigger man and his movements – identifying and locating him their only focus for now. Satisfied he couldn’t glean anything further from me on that score, he kicked me back to a holding area next to the booking desk.

  From there I was ignored. It felt as though they didn’t know what to do with me now, all their attention elsewhere. I saw Nancy Hill and one of the other women being taken from one room to another and I resisted the urge to call out to her. After an hour, I asked a passing officer when I could go and was told only to sit down.

  As I retook my seat, a commotion flared at the booking desk. A man was jamming his finger into the tabletop, demanding to be taken to his client. His suit was too well cut to be local – LA or New York, maybe – and his act smacked of courtroom theatrics. The duty officer was working hard at keeping a lid on his temper, and it confirmed my thought the attorney had to be a heavy hitter to garner that measure of leeway in a tinderbox situation. I heard the sergeant direct the man to calm down, calling him Mr Curzon as he did. The name rang a bell – the lawyer Lang had told me always showed up to spring Siegel’s men. The sergeant was insistent: ‘We don’t have him, Vic. I’m telling you we don’t have him.’

  Curzon threatened to inspect the cells himself, but was already heading for the parking lot. He hadn’t put a name to his client, but it had to be Rosenberg he was there for, and a picture started to emerge. The last I’d seen Rosenberg he was sitting in Tanner’s car; Tanner slipped away before the sheriff’s men turned up; now even Rosenberg’s own attorney didn’t know where he was at. Putting it together, it seemed plain Tanner had decided Rosenberg was too big a prize to give up to the locals.

  I turned that over some more. Tanner had been insistent about keeping his operation a secret from Siegel and his men. Taking Rosenberg brought an end to all of that – meaning he had to feel he was close to his end game. His plan was always to break Siegel’s outfit open from the ins
ide – and there was no one better placed to do so than Rosenberg. Keeping him out of the hands of a Sheriff’s Department bent on exacting revenge might be leverage enough. The logic felt solid, even if it represented a change of tack for Tanner. It made me sick to think Rosenberg would be the man to catch a break when the hammer came down.

  I watched the room. Some of the night shift from the ranch were hanging around, dusty and dead on their feet but waiting for word from the hospital. Scuttlebutt held that the rest were out with the day shift hunting for the green Pontiac carrying the shooter – that part of my story being accepted as fact, it seemed. Figure they were trying to corroborate it with the others they’d swept up. I thought back over how it’d all gone down, Nancy Hill still behind the house when Lang got shot. I’d heard nothing in the chatter to suggest Lang was awake, so either they believed my story, or someone else was talking.

  I asked to use a telephone to call my wife. The expected denial never came, reinforcing my sense that the prevailing state among the men was exhausted confusion. I was taken to a desk and a clerk stood over me as I dialled. I made a show of fumbling the receiver and asked him to remove the cuffs. He went off through the crowd and then returned with a key, looking over his shoulder as he came back, distracted by something in the adjoining room.

  The operator connected me to the motor court but there was no answer from our room. I had the call re-routed to the office, asking the man that picked up if he’d seen Lizzie, but he told me he’d just come on shift for the day and had no idea if she’d been back there. The clerk waiting with me was fully diverted now, so I pretended to carry on the conversation while I cut the call and dialled Colt Tanner’s office in Los Angeles – but the line just rang out. I couldn’t stop remembering Rosenberg’s threat about Lizzie, and the only thing that gave me hope was that if I couldn’t find her, neither could anyone he might send after her.

  I was still holding the receiver when the first cheer went up. It started in the adjoining room, the one the clerk was looking towards, and quickly spread into the holding area where I stood. The place was filled with the sounds of clapping and whooping, and it had to be that good news had come in from the hospital. Two bottles of bonded appeared from nowhere and were passed around the sheriff’s men, riding on a wave of back-slaps and handshakes.

  A deputy came through from the inner office and met with a hail of questions. He flipped a box to stand on it and started recounting the details of the call – Lang was awake and talking, the doctors saying he was out of the woods.

  Every head in the room was turned towards him. The clerk watching me pressed into the back of the crowd, trying to hear better. No one was paying me any mind. There was a corridor a short way along from me. I hugged the wall and inched towards it. The deputy reeled off his victory line – ‘Sheriff’s wife says the docs want him to stay there as long as he can ’cause you’re all so damn ugly the sight of you could kill him!’ When the laughter kicked up, I slipped around the corner and into the hallway.

  I jogged along it, trying to get my bearings. I passed an empty muster room and two closed doorways, then the corridor turned ninety degrees and passed a staircase that I recognised as the one I’d been led up from the cell block. I carried on, almost running now. I went through a set of double doors and then there were rooms on either side of me, the doors shut. I went from one to the next, pinballing along the corridor and peeping through the small windows, seeing one office after another.

  Then – jackpot: Nancy Hill sitting alone on a gurney. I opened the door and curled my arm. ‘Let’s go.’

  She startled, trying to look past me as if it were a trick.

  ‘We’ve got ten seconds to get out of here. Come on.’

  ‘Go where?’

  I opened the door wider. ‘Home. Anywhere you say. It’s now or never.’

  She slipped off the bed and stopped.

  ‘Please.’ I glanced behind me, checking the corridor. ‘Please.’

  She started then – across the room in two steps, then out into the corridor. I closed the door behind us, overtook her and grabbed her wrist. We ran a few paces back past the staircase, made a right and burst out the back exit.

  *

  I flagged a cab a block from the department and gave him directions to the motor court. I sat in the back, along from Nancy Hill, both of us breathing hard.

  ‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ she said, looking at me and then out the back window.

  ‘I had to get you out. It’s my fault you were there in the first place.’

  ‘You said … you told me you were with the sheriff.’

  ‘I was – but he’s the only one can vouch for me. I don’t have time to wait for him to recuperate and tell it.’

  She looked at me again, her mouth ajar but saying nothing, as if too many questions were coming to her at once. Finally, she said, ‘My mother, you spoke to her.’

  I nodded. ‘She’s worried sick.’

  ‘What did she say?’ She feathered the skin along her collarbone. ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I didn’t know anything to tell her, except that I was looking for you.’

  She studied me a long moment. ‘Why were you looking for me? Have we met?’

  I looked away sharply, shaking my head. ‘It’s a long story.’

  She watched me, waiting to see if I’d offer any more. We turned into the motor court and the cab pulled around to a stop. I fished a bill out of my pocket and held it out for the driver. Nancy said, ‘When can I see Ben?’

  *

  The man from the motor court’s office watched us through his window as I opened the door of our room. It was unlocked but Lizzie wasn’t inside. Our bags were on one of the beds and I tried to remember if that was how we’d left them the day before. Looking for a clue to Lizzie’s whereabouts where there was none.

  There was no couch in the room so I dragged over one of the wooden chairs and held it for Nancy to sit. She flattened the back of her skirt with two hands as she did so. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘About Ben.’

  I was scouting around the room, checking if Lizzie had left a note for me. I stopped and looked at her. ‘Meaning Ben Siegel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I straightened slowly, the fondness in the way she spoke his name like a cockroach in my ear. ‘What do you want him for?’

  ‘He’ll be concerned.’

  I could feel despair creeping over me at her words. I perched on the edge of the bed and a standing mirror opposite confronted me with my own reflection. The cuts Rosenberg left on my face were matted with dust and sand, almost black; my cheekbone was bruised and swollen; my white shirt was now a shade of grey, torn in several places.

  I looked away, trawling my mind to think where to start looking for Lizzie. That I couldn’t think of a single safe place she might run to served as an indictment of the life I’d made for us.

  I was thinking what the hell to say to Nancy next when I heard a car pulling up outside. She heard it too and snapped her head around to look. I snuck across the room with my finger to my lips and stood behind the drape. I expected to see a sheriff’s cruiser. Instead, I saw Colt Tanner.

  I whipped around. ‘Go hide in the bathroom. Keep the door shut.’

  She was already on her feet. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I’ll explain after. Go.’

  ‘Is it the police?’

  ‘Yes. Go.’ I squared it as a white lie.

  She crossed the room on her toes and shut herself inside without making a sound.

  Tanner knocked on the door. I took a breath and opened up. ‘Is Lizzie with you?’

  He frowned, shaking his head and stepping around me to come inside. ‘They let you out fast.’

  I saw the man in the office peering over at us and got wise. ‘You have the manager keeping watch for me?’

  He frowned, as if I were fussing. ‘I didn’t know when you’d get out.’


  I stared, unblinking, wondering if the man had mentioned Nancy Hill being with me. It felt like I’d been silent a beat too long; I blurted the first thing came to mind. ‘My wife’s missing, do you know where she is?’

  He arched his eyebrows. ‘No.’

  ‘She hasn’t tried to contact you?’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘The Los Angeles number? Is anyone manning the—’

  ‘Charlie, I haven’t heard from her. I’d tell you.’

  I slammed the door closed. ‘Rosenberg threatened to kill her. At the ranch, if I didn’t let him go.’

  He nodded, his face grave. ‘He was cornered, I wouldn’t pay it undue heed.’

  ‘Clark County Sheriff’s don’t have him.’

  He kept his face empty.

  We eyed each other like card players, except we both knew I didn’t have a hand.

  Finally, I said, ‘Did you let him make any calls?’

  He remained impassive. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Goddammit, Colt, quit with the bullshit. I don’t care what you did with him, just tell me you didn’t let him make any calls.’

  He looked at me dead on. ‘I’m not about to admit to knowing anything about Mr Rosenberg’s whereabouts.’

  ‘I brought you this far and you’re hanging me out to dry now?’

  He stuck his thumb in his chest. ‘Me? You’ve played me for a fool every step of the way.’