by Matt Hilton
‘Do you still want to live dangerously?’ Nicole had asked.
‘No, thanks, I’ve had quite enough of the wild life.’
‘So we won’t be taking that two-centre holiday we were planning in Iraq and Afghanistan?’
They’d roared with laughter then, tears streaming down their faces and they’d made so much noise rolling about on their beds that her dad had knocked on their hotel-room door to check on them. It was like they were kids again, and it was a wonderful feeling.
The sight of her dad’s face had sobered Jay somewhat. Where Samuel had struck him with the gun his cheek was swollen and a dark bruise the colour of liver had spread all the way down to his jaw. Otherwise he was OK and Jay had hugged him until he was laughing with them. When her mum arrived, along with Nicole’s parents, the other guests in the hotel must have thought they’d booked into a lunatic asylum.
Jay wasn’t laughing now, though. In truth she was hard put to hold back the tears as she went to say goodbye to Joe Hunter. She owed that man more than just her thanks, but she knew that was all he’d take. Maybe in another life things could have worked out differently. No, she then thought. She’d had enough of alternate worlds. Oz – and all other fantasy worlds – were banished from her mind from now on.
Joe had spent more time at the police station than she had. Some of his time there had been as a prisoner, but apparently he’d known better service than many others in his position. He had saved the lives of more than one person, and the two investigators in charge were indebted to him for saving their lives too. Detective Chambers had been spared when his anti-ballistic vest had taken Samuel’s bullet, but without Joe Hunter’s selfless act – his civic duty – in taking out the gunman, who knew what might have happened? All charges against him had finally been dropped.
Leaving the police station, he hadn’t returned to the same hotel as the rest of them, but to the less salubrious surroundings of a motel at the western end of town. Her dad had offered to extend his hospitality to five stars but Hunter had graciously refused. He was a private man, she guessed, who needed time to himself, the only way he could heal. She remembered their discussion the night before Samuel’s attack and how she’d thought to change him. There was no changing a man so set in his ways, she understood that now. It would be wrong to try. Hunter had his demons, his ghosts that followed him, but that was what defined him as a person and a good man.
She had walked the length of Central Avenue, past the landmark Wigwam Village, a motel where guests stay in rooms designed to resemble Native American tents. She didn’t give it much of her attention; she was too involved with ordering her thoughts as she made the journey, but now that she approached Hunter’s motel she wasn’t sure what she should say. She paused outside, studying the stucco walls that were grimy with exhaust fumes from the highway, trying to determine which of the rooms belonged to Hunter. The sun was behind her and reflecting from the windows so she’d no hope of seeing him. He could be inside now, watching her approach.
Entering the foyer, she was surprised to find it was neater than she’d expected. The air conditioning was on high and the air pleasantly chilled after her walk in the sun. The walls were whitewashed with garlands of flowers painted at the ceiling line. Soft seating upholstered in Native American blanket designs dominated the alcoves each side of a polished counter that glowed warmly under overhead spotlights. Jay preferred the atmosphere here to that of the stuffy, soulless place where she was staying. The motel was an ideal fit for Joe Hunter, she thought: the rugged exterior belied the caring heart that beat within. It was a better analogy than the wolf she’d thought of when they’d first met.
A young woman popped her head out of an office behind the counter, a beaming smile on her face. She was dark-skinned, and her teeth flashed in greeting, accentuating the highlights in her raven hair.
Jay smiled back but shook her head at the woman’s offer of assistance and pointed a finger towards the room she’d noticed to her left. She should have known where to find Hunter. He had a taste for coffee and she could smell the beans roasting from here. She walked into the small dining area and took the seat opposite him. He was nursing a large cup of coffee so black she thought of the dark side of the moon.
‘How do you ever sleep?’ she asked.
‘Would you like one?’
‘I’m good,’ she said.
‘Are you?’
She missed a beat, but then she nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I think I am.’
He lifted the mug, watching her over the rim as he took a long gulp. His irises reflected the dark liquid and the usual blue flashed chocolate-brown. As he placed the mug down she noted that it took a moment for the colour to recede, but maybe that was just her imagination. She suddenly became conscious that she’d been staring a tad too long and lowered her face in embarrassment. She could feel a flush creeping into her cheeks.
‘You look beautiful this morning,’ Hunter said.
Whoa! She placed her elbows on the table and her palms over her cheeks, then looked up at him from under her lashes. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she said, trying to sound funny.
‘Only the beautiful ones.’
She laughed in self-deprecation, but could swear that her ears were glowing furnace-hot by now. Hunter reached across and took her right hand in his. He held it across the table top. ‘I’m sorry, Jay. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’
‘I’m not embarrassed.’
His eyebrows rose and fell.
‘OK. I am. Just a little. But there’s nothing for you to be sorry for. Joe . . . I, uh . . .’
‘There’s no need.’
‘No need?’
‘To thank me.’
‘Oh, God! How wrong can you be?’
Hunter released her hand, took up his coffee again.
‘The pleasure was all mine,’ he said.
‘Nothing that happened could be defined as pleasurable,’ she said.
‘Not even making a lifelong friend?’
OK, she had to acquiesce. There was that.
He stood up and she mirrored the movement.
‘I mean it, Jay. If you ever need me, all you have to do is call.’
She moved round to stand beside him, one hand trailing on the table. She peered up at him. All the heat had gone out of her features now. Her shyness with him, like her fear, was a thing of the past. She went up on tiptoes to place a kiss on his lips, slow in drawing her mouth away, and as she did so, whispered, ‘And if you ever need me, just call.’
47
After waving the Walkers and Challinors off at Gallup Municipal Airport with a promise to join them in a few days at Jameson’s Cape Cod retreat, I drove back over the borderline into Arizona and picked up the road to Indian Wells. I didn’t like breaking promises, but this was one that I’d maybe bend to fit. Jameson had asked me to bring my girlfriend, Imogen, with me. Maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea with Jay being gripped in the throes of a crush on me. I’d beg out of the trip, say that business was taking up too much of my time and put the visit off for a couple of weeks or three. By then Jay’s romantic flush should have passed, and there’d be fewer complications. Jesus, never mind Jay’s crush, when she’d whispered in my ear I’d almost succumbed and taken her in my arms. I dread to think what would have happened if I’d given in to the weakness. Crazy redneck kidnappers and murderers I could handle, but two jealous women? No way.
I didn’t make it all the way to Indian Wells. I’d already phoned ahead and had arranged to meet with Scott Blackstock. The guy didn’t want to go to the Logan ranch alone, so we’d set up a rendezvous at the truck stop where I’d first learned of the frequency of women going missing. The old Navajo cleaner and his broom were conspicuous by their absence. I was sorry to have missed him, but when I asked other workers about him they only looked at me blankly. Not one of them knew who I was talking about.
While I waited for Scott to arrive I nursed a mug of strong coffee and mulled over th
e old man’s identity. I wondered if all the Logans’ victims had been female, and who else was buried out there in the desert. I recalled they had no love for their Native American neighbours. Plenty of ghosts troubled my dreams, but they were figments of my imagination, weren’t they? No, it was a totally ridiculous thought, but one I had trouble shaking. I was pleased when Scott finally arrived and I could turn my mind to something more tangible.
He had travelled down from the trailer park in his pick-up truck. It was battered and could do with a lick of paint, but it was still better suited to the terrain than my rental. I climbed inside the cab and Scott took the road out to the ranch.
‘My head still hurts,’ he said as we rattled along the uneven trail.
‘I didn’t hit you hard enough,’ I said.
He chuckled. ‘I don’t hold it against you.’
‘Glad to hear it. I did it for your own good.’
‘I know that now. You were trying to protect me.’
‘Nah, I just didn’t want you getting in my way.’
‘But you’re pleased I did?’
‘You saved my life, Scott. I’m indebted to you.’
‘You owe me nothin’,’ he said. ‘You avenged Helena for me.’
‘So you’re not mad I stole your thunder at the last second?’
He laughed again, but it was a melancholy sound. ‘Whatever I threatened to do to him, Samuel wasn’t going to come clean. He was just laughing in my face.’
‘Doesn’t matter now, Scott. You got the last laugh.’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘I did.’
We completed the remainder of the journey in companionable silence. The mushroom-shaped mountain that had set the stage for many of the frantic events in the desert loomed out of the dust clouds. It was a landmark I’d never forget, and, once I left this place, one I wished never to see again. We passed along the trail on the far side, unfamiliar ground for me, then entered the basin-shaped valley beyond which waited the scene of so much depravity. As we approached I first saw the sparkle of sunlight reflected from water, then the decrepit house and sheds grew out of the haze. Much of the activity here over the last few days had been in the shape of police officers, but now most of them had left. There was still one police cruiser on the scene as well as an unmarked sedan. Other vehicles belonged to the county coroner’s office, and to National Guard troopers who were still helping with the massive search area. White tents had been set up alongside the ranch, and I’d no wish to go inside any of them. I knew that each one marked a separate grave and that forensic technicians laboured at bringing the victims home in their entirety. Some of the graves were years old, one of them more recent, and the corpse within it had been preliminarily identified as Carla Logan. Her skull had been fractured. Blunt-force trauma, the coroner had said. It didn’t take too much deducing who had been responsible for murdering his sister. I put the poor woman’s death out of my head.
We hadn’t come here out of ghoulish fascination.
As Scott drew up alongside the police cars he let slip a ragged breath.
I reached across and patted him on the shoulder.
‘You want me to take the wheel from here?’ I asked.
‘Please.’ He could barely see for the tears welling in his eyes.
As he slid over into the passenger seat, I got out and walked around to the driver’s side. Chambers and Witherspoon were standing by their car; both men nodded silently and got in. They drove past the watering hole and I followed. We went at a respectful speed across the desert towards the ridgeline where I’d so recently hidden Nicole and Ellie Mansfield.
I pulled up alongside the Lincoln, looking up towards the caves as I’d done when bringing Jay to her reunion with her friends. One of the small hollows bore a ribbon marker at its entrance. Two National Guardsmen stood sentry at the foot of the cliff. Jesus, I thought, the cave was barely fifty feet from where I’d been. The body of a naked woman had been discovered inside it. Either before she’d crawled here across the desert, or as a result of a fall while trying to reach her hiding hole, the poor thing had broken a leg. She had escaped the monsters torturing her, fled to safety, but then fate had dealt her a sorry hand. The coroner approximated her date of death, and I could only hope she hadn’t suffered in torment as long as he thought she had. He couldn’t be sure, but from his estimate it looked like she’d succumbed the same night that Nicole and Ellie had hidden in the neighbouring cave. If only I’d known it then . . .
I couldn’t think like that.
‘Are you ready, Scott?’
He sniffed, rubbed his sleeves over his face. When he sat up there was a hint of steel in his jaw.
‘I’m ready,’ he said.
‘Then let’s go and bring Helena home.’
Afterword
I have taken certain liberties in the writing of this book – known to us writer types as ‘artistic licence’ – where a modicum of suspension of disbelief is expected of the reader.
For the purposes of the story I’ve grown Holbrook, Arizona, into a much larger city than it actually is, introducing motels, hotels and truck stops that do not genuinely exist there, although entities like the Wigwam Village do. I set much of the latter third of the book in and around Holbrook as it is the nearest major conurbation to the desert lands featured in the earlier segments, and it would be logical for the city to be the base for any police investigation into the fictional crimes conducted by the equally fictional Logan clan. I hope that the residents of Holbrook and their law enforcement community take the story in the spirit of thrilling adventure that I set out to write, and allow me this latitude with their fine home town.
Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP) is real but very rare, with approximately thirty individuals in the USA diagnosed with the condition. Persons with CIP cannot feel, and have never felt, physical pain, although cognition and sensation – though not always temperature – are otherwise normal. Usually there are no physical abnormalities associated with CIP, though some people with the condition suffer fractures to their bones, wounds and infections due to their lack of recognition of the severity of their injuries. CIP does not make anyone super-human; they can be injured as easily as anyone else, and in many cases are more prone to injury. Again I have allowed myself a certain latitude with the condition when assigning it to the chief villain, Samuel Logan. There is no suggestion that persons with CIP have sadistic tendencies: Samuel Logan’s need to hurt others is purely a fictional adaptation and a product of the family environment in which he was raised, and I hope that this is evident from the story.
Matt Hilton
Thanks and Acknowledgements
When I sit down to list the recipients of my grateful thanks, certain individuals immediately spring to mind: my agent, Luigi Bonomi, Alison Bonomi, my editor at Hodder, Sue Fletcher, Swati Gamble, Eleni Fostiropoulos, and Alice Wood. It is these individuals who work tirelessly and passionately to ensure my excitable ramblings come up to a publishable standard. Without their input I feel that Joe Hunter’s adventures just would not be the same. I thank you all.
I would also like to thank the following authors for their friendship and support: Adrian Magson, Sheila Quigley, Col Bury, Lee Hughes, and Jim Hilton. Then there is the wider pool of authors, friends and supporters who have helped with my writing in ways they might not realise: Richard Gnosill, Stuart Hall, Ann Magson, Pete Nicholson, Val Steventon, George Steventon, Sean Black, and Chris Ryan. And of course my family: thanks to every last one of you.
May I also extend my thanks to you, the reader, for taking the time to read this book? I hope it was time spent in enjoyment.
Last but not least: my undying gratitude and love go to my wife, Denise, whose efforts equal mine in bringing the latest Joe Hunter thriller to the page. Someone has to crack the whip, I suppose.
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