by Medora Sale
He was gazing thoughtfully at her, as though her embarrassment had wiped out his own. “You’re beautiful with colour in your cheeks,” he said. “It makes your eyes shine, like—dammit—I don’t know what they are in English, and, anyway, it doesn’t matter.” He pulled her to him and kissed her, running his hands through her hair and over her body, and then drawing her closer and closer to him. “Am I hurting you?” he murmured at last.
She raised both arms and held him around the neck before letting her head fall back a little. “No,” she said, looking up. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. It doesn’t matter at all. It feels good.”
“Jesus,” he said. “A little masochist. And I forgot my whips and chains.”
“No, never,” she said, laughing. “But my body feels alive. My God, it’s wonderful. I’d rather hurt than be numb. And they’re sapphires.”
“What are?”
“The things my eyes shine as brightly as.” She pressed herself against him once more, hungrily. “How much time do we have?”
“Right now? None. In the long term—forever, if we’re lucky. Forever, Kate. Forever. But from now on, I have to call you Lola.” He grinned and then suddenly broke into laughter. “Trust Antonia to pick that name. I always hated it. There was an awful little girl in my class named Lola who used to make fun of the way I pronounced things.” He looked down at her and shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Antonia must have smelled something over the telephone. Watch her, querida. Lolita mίa. She’s a lot fiercer than she looks. And very, very sly.” And he laughed again. “Go take your shower. And I guess you’re supposed to wear this.” He picked up a bright blue silk robe that was lying on the foot of the bed and threw it at her. It floated through the space between them and landed on her shoulder, as soft as a leaf falling.
“It’s day,” said John, in Harriet’s ear. “I think I’ll head down to see what we can rescue from the van. Want to come along? It’s not far. The kids are sound asleep. And even if they wake up they shouldn’t be too scared. It’s bright out. The sun’s almost up.”
Harriet yawned. At some point—at several points—in the night, she seemed to remember snatching a little sleep, but it had not been enough. Not nearly enough. “Oh, goody,” she said. “Just what I need. A nice brisk walk.” She ran her hands through her hair and then looked at them. She felt inexpressibly grubby. “Sorry, love,” she added. “You’re right. After all, it’s mostly my stuff. Let’s sneak out of here as quietly as possible.”
“It really is just around that next curve,” said John. “You can tell by that odd-shaped black rock.”
“It wasn’t that far,” said Harriet, trying to sound upbeat and optimistic, as befitted someone in charge of a pair of twins and a wounded librarian. And, to some extent, a worried police inspector.
“I’d stay away from the front of the van, Harriet,” said John as she moved ahead of him around the curve. “It’s pretty gruesome.” He had lowered his voice to a whisper almost involuntarily as soon as they drew close to the identifying rock.
“Are you sure?” Harriet whispered back.
“Of what?” He laid his hand gently on her shoulder and looked past her. There was nothing there. No van, no body, nothing. “I’m positive,” he said. “It was just past that rock.” He stared down at the loose, gravelly surface. Here and there were the grooves that might have been made by a van running along on dead tires and metal rims. “It’s gone.”
“Look over here,” said Harriet. She had walked over to the canyon rim and was examining the dirt at the edge of the road. Her voice sounded ominously hard.
He walked over beside her, and looked closely at the soil. There were gouges and skid and slide marks all heading for the precipice. “Oh no,” he muttered and peered over the edge. Somewhere, way down there, he thought he could see the muted sheen of a cream Chevy van with four-wheel drive, filled with a hideous corpse and Harriet’s camera case. Camera case, hell. Her film. “Oh, shit,” he said. “The Kansas project. It’s all down there, isn’t it? All your exposed film. Harriet, I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” she said. “You didn’t do it.”
“No—I didn’t do it. But I could have brought your film with me. It wouldn’t have been that much more to carry.”
“Oh, John,” she said, halfway been laughter and tears, “you couldn’t have brought that and the water. And without the water who knows what would happen to us?” She buried her face in his chest for a moment and then straightened up. “The children. For God’s sake, let’s get back to those children.”
But the twins were safely asleep when they returned, panting and out of breath. The rising sun glinting on the mountain peaks across the canyon promised an end to the cold of the night. Diana Morris cried out, woke herself, sat up, and looked around.
“Who are you?” she said, looking directly at John and Harriet.
“I’m John Sanders. This is Harriet Jeffries.”
“What’s happened?” she asked abruptly. “What are we doing here?”
“You’ve been injured,” said John. “Shot in the leg.”
“You weren’t part of the tour group,” she said, looking suspiciously at them.
“No, we weren’t,” said Harriet soothingly. “We were at the airport. You may have seen us.”
Diana looked thoughtfully at the children. “The light-coloured van,” she said, searching through her memory. “The kids were on the plane from Dallas.”
“That’s right. How are you feeling?”
She stopped, as if to inventory the situation. “My leg hurts, but not excessively so. It seems to be healing. I am very thirsty, somewhat hungry, and in need of a ladies’ room, that is, a convenient bush, I suppose,” she added, looking around her. “My head is clear for the first time in a while.”
Harriet scrambled to her feet. “Let me take you behind those rocks,” she said. “You may find you have some trouble walking.”
When they returned John filled their sole plastic mug with water and handed it to Diana Morris. She drank cautiously. “What is the water situation?” she asked.
“We had three gallons yesterday, and have used a bit since then. You’re the one who needs it most, given your physical condition.”
“Where are we, exactly? And how did we end up here, just the five of us?” she asked. “What’s happened to the others?”
“We’re not sure where we are. We’ve been trying to get the van out. Some of the others are with the bus. Some disappeared the first night.”
“The first night? How many nights has it been?”
“Only two,” said John. “It’s Sunday.”
“Oh,” said Diana. “Why bring me out, and no one else?” she asked. Suspicion seemed to be her major emotion.
John took a deep breath and started to explain.
“And for some reason,” said Harriet, as he wound up his account of the last forty-eight hours, “it looked as if you were being systematically drugged.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Diana, and with a click you could almost hear, changed the topic. “What food do we have?”
“Three apples, and the remnants from one box of crackers,” said Harriet. “That’s it, I’m afraid. We of course had expected to reach civilization by last evening.”
“Then we’d better make a run for it, I’d say. We could stay here for a hell of a long time waiting to be rescued if they don’t want us rescued.”
“A run for it,” said Harriet. “But you’re—”
“It’s not that bad. I could use a heavy stick to lean on, if anyone can find one, and maybe I won’t be able to carry my share, but I can make it to a point where we can flag down a car. I suggest we drink lots now, eat a little, and carry what we can.”
“Maybe we should wake the kids up first, before we go,” said Harriet, who was beginning to find this wom
an irritating.
“Of course. Look, I’m sorry to be pushy, but I have reason to believe—as they say—that it would be a good idea to start moving.”
Lesley Carruthers had been in bed for three and a half hours when someone leaned on her doorbell. Its high-pitched, irritating buzz filled the bedroom, penetrated her dream, and at last dragged her awake. She blinked. The sun was shining. Then the doorbell was joined by the strident whirring ring of her alarm clock. She slammed her hand down on it. It stopped; the doorbell didn’t. Her mouth still tasted of a surfeit of beer and taco chips; her head pounded in resentment at this untimely summons. “For Christ’s sake, hang on a minute, will you?” she muttered.
She had thrown the window open before she realized she had nothing on. She picked up a shirt from the floor and, holding it to her chest, leaned out to see who her early visitor was. “Would you get your finger off that fucking buzzer?” she yelled. The noise stopped. Behind her, in the sweaty bed, something male snorted, rolled over, and began to snore. The smell of stale booze polluted the morning air. “What do you want?” she went on.
“Lesley Carruthers? Miss Lesley Carruthers?”
“That’s me. What do you want Lesley Carruthers for?”
A hand held a leather folder containing a picture and identification up as high as it would go. “Federal Bureau of Investigation, miss,” the voice intoned. “We have a few questions we’d like to ask you.”
“We?” she said, and realized that someone else, equally large and menacing-looking, but not as loud, was lurking around the bushes. “Just a minute and I’ll let you in. I have to put some clothes on first.”
Five minutes later, after a rapid shower, Lesley Carruthers looked very carefully at the ID being presented to her through the crack in the door, undid the chain, and let in the two agents. She had been told that FBI men looked like accountants with badges. They didn’t. These looked like mean cops in pin-striped suits. A glance into the living room of the house she shared with three other graduate students told her that the party lingered on. Some unlovely creature was asleep on the couch, and another dozed uneasily in the easy chair. “Come into the kitchen and I’ll make coffee,” she said. “You guys sure as hell get up early on Sundays.”
“We like to get to people’s houses before they’ve left for the day,” said the doorbell man. “It’s more efficient that way.”
“Not to say tackling them when they’re at their lowest ebb as well. Sound military tactics. Right?” As she talked she put on the coffee, stacked beer bottles in boxes near the back door, cleared off the kitchen table, pulled up three chairs, and sat down.
The two agents sat down as well.
She got to her feet again and opened the refrigerator. “With luck,” she muttered. “Aha. Some angelic person brought OJ last night and didn’t drink it. What luxury. Want some juice?” She pulled out a cardboard container and poured herself a glass. The two men shook their heads. “Okay,” said Lesley. “Shoot. What do you want from me?”
“Miss Carruthers, did you hear anything about a bus hijacking on Friday—”
“Hear anything? My God, of course I did. Did you know that should have been me? If I hadn’t quit my job. I was scheduled to take that tour—I used to work for Archway as a guide, part-time. But I guess you knew that or you wouldn’t be here.”
They nodded, in unison.
“Want some coffee?” she said, getting up and pulling the pot out from under the filter. “Don’t worry,” she added, seeing their looks. “The dishes are all really very clean. It’s just our friends who are slobs.” She took out three mugs, showed them to the agents very solemnly, and put them on the table. She got out a quart of milk and some brown sugar cubes and poured coffee in a very civilized manner. “Anyway,” she went on, “why the feds? And not the local police?”
“Kidnapping,” said the door man. “Federal offense.”
“Of course. Basic civics. Well—what do you want to know?”
“You called in sick on Thursday evening.”
“That’s right. The very latest possible time to do it, really, if they’re to find a replacement and get her up there.”
“Were you actually— You said something about quitting. Was there anything—”
“Weird about my not being on that tour? Is that what you want to know? Because the answer is yes. And I was planning on having a fast talk with the police today about it. I only found out about the hijacking yesterday afternoon and we had this party last night so—”
“What was weird, Miss Carruthers?”
“Well—some guy comes to see me two weeks ago, on Sunday—no, Monday. Here, at the house, which is weird because my official address—the one everyone has—is my department at the university. Only a few close friends knew about this house until last night. Anyway, he comes here and says he has a little proposition for me. His niece, he says, is on the waiting list for a tour job with Archway. She needs the experience, he says, because she hasn’t had many jobs, and he is willing to pay me a thousand bucks to call in sick at the last possible moment. Well—I get five hundred plus room and board a pop from old man Andreas, so if I accept this crazy offer, I am up five hundred and I don’t have to work. Then on Wednesday I found out that I’d won a research fellowship, and that I could get a last-minute ticket on a charter flight. I decide that I’d better quit. It’s a nice job, and I like Andreas and the work isn’t hard but it’s really time-consuming—one week out of four, usually, and my professors are getting really pissed off at me. Anyway, if I take this guy’s offer, and quit on Thursday evening, I get the extra thousand. And that means I can take that money and go on my dig this summer, and next fall when the grant comes in I have lots of money to live on. So that’s what I did. I felt sorry for Andreas, because he had to scramble to fill the hole, but not a thousand bucks sorry.” She looked over at them, her eyes bright and clever again, all their morning fogginess dispelled. “And when I heard about the hijacking, I realized that they wanted to get me out of the way so they could put their own person in to facilitate things. I felt terrible. Until it occurred to me that they could also have arranged to have me mugged a little too energetically instead of just asking me. In this neighbourhood, who would question it?”
“Can you describe the man who came to see you?”
“Of course. In fact, if you don’t mind waiting just a second, I can do better than that.” And she jumped up and ran out of the room. They heard her bare feet on the stairs going up, at least two at time, and then bouncing down. “Here,” she said, waving a large pad of paper. “I tried to get him on paper as best I could as soon as I realized it was important. It’s not too bad a likeness, if I say so myself.”
They stared, mesmerized, at the pencil sketch in front of them. “You draw well, Miss Carruthers,” said the second agent in respectful tones.
“I came to archaeology because I bombed out of fine arts. All I could do was the painting and drawing component, and the pots. I hated all the other stuff-confusing, boring, or worse. I’m not good enough to make a living at painting, so I headed for the pots.” She craned her neck to look again. “Yeah—that’s what he looks like. Mean-looking bastard underneath, isn’t he? Basically. Pleasant exterior, plausible, smooth, and educated-sounding. Now—he did mention something about me losing a few fingers and maybe an ear or two if I didn’t keep this whole transaction to myself, but I figure once they break the law all bets are off.”
“I wouldn’t take these particular men lightly, Miss Carruthers. You might be in more personal danger than you think once they realize—”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Miss Carruthers. “I’m long gone by nightfall. The thousand bucks has already turned into a plane ticket, and my dig starts on Wednesday. This was a bye-bye party. I’ll be out of here before those guys in the living room wake up.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry.
You can reach me through the university. And, at the rate you guys work, I’ll be back in time to testify. Look—I hate to run, but my cab is coming in an hour or so, and I have to finish packing.”
It was a tattered little band that began the long march into civilization, carrying all that they could and leaving the rest. Some of the remaining water had gone to soaking the bandages off Diana Morris’s leg. She’d insisted with almost insane vehemence on looking at the bullet wounds. “I really think we should leave it as it is until we can get to a doctor,” said Harriet. “After all, we’re not—”
“I’ll tell you what I know. That woman who bandaged me would just as soon have slipped a knife between my ribs. God knows what she was doing trying—or pretending to try—to save my life. I don’t trust her not to have rubbed road dirt into the wound while she was at it. Besides, she’s tied it too tight. I won’t be able to walk. It’s a wonder I haven’t developed gangrene.”
“You know that,” said John. “That she was out to get you.”
“I know it.”
“Just the way she knew you were a trained and professional law officer,” John observed.
“I see. She said that, did she? It would go a long way toward explaining her attitude.”
“It had something to do with the way you reacted to the presence of armed men and to gunfire. You definitely didn’t behave like your average librarian. Several people remarked on it.”
Diana frowned in annoyance. “Doesn’t follow. I could have been in the army before I became a librarian.”
“Perhaps you were,” said John. “It doesn’t matter to me, but Mrs. Nicholls did mention it.”
“It’s irrelevant now,” said Diana. She pulled up her split pant leg and looked coldly, almost indifferently, at the mess underneath it.