"Oh!" I gasped. Carefully I backed off of him, trying not to do any more damage. He was stretched out flat along the side of the narrow crevice. I'd actually stumbled over his feet and legs, which were angled down into the bottom of the ditch. I crouched at his feet. "I'm sorry," I hissed as quietly as possible, but I was at his wrong end now; six feet from his ears.
"Who's out there?" The words came to me as ghostly sibilants.
"I don't know," I whispered, then thought, this is stupid. Bracing myself against the opposite dirt wall, I flung one of my legs over his and tucked my foot under his torso, then swung the other leg up over his body and collapsed in a heap on the other side. Not the most graceful move in the world, but at least I was now sitting by his head.
"I don't know who it is," I whispered again, this time close to his ear. "He's got a flashlight and was looking at my car. I don't know if he saw me or not. What happened to you? What's wrong with your leg?"
"I fell. The bastard took a shot at me. Something broke. I heard it snap. Hurt's like hell."
I rested my forehead against his for a moment and took advantage of the silence to listen. The wind sloughed through the spotty grass and brush with errant rustling, mimicking the soft night sounds of grasshoppers, mosquitoes, deer flies. Nothing else.
I raised my head slowly until I could peer over the rim of the ditch. Nothing. Then I saw a flash of light playing against the ground. I caught my breath, but the light wasn't close, and seemed to be moving away from us. I heard Max struggling to sit up. He moved awkwardly, raising himself on one knee so he too could see over the edge. We watched silently as the light moved toward the closest hill. Then the beam either flicked out, or disappeared behind the hill. Moments later the sound of an engine broke the stillness.
"He's leaving," I said, standing upright. I stretched my spine, easing the kinks out.
"Umm," Max grunted. "I wonder why? We've been playing cat and mouse for hours."
With a jolt, I remembered Max's truck. "Probably because he knows you won't be going anywhere soon."
"What do you mean?"
He swore when I told him about his slashed tires. "And he's probably done the same to mine, as well," I said bitterly.
"Help me get out of this damned ditch. Last time I tried I banged my leg and almost passed out."
That must have been when I saw him emerge from the ground and then disappear again. Thank goodness I'd seen that brief movement, or I'd never have had the courage to run out here. With my help pushing and pulling, Max got over the ledge and onto his feet—or foot—he could barely put any weight on the injured leg. Finally, with his arm on my shoulder and mine around his waist, we moved toward the fence and our probably useless vehicles.
"What on earth were you doing, Max? The message you left this morning said you were on your way home. I kept expecting you any minute."
"I thought I'd be there... any minute." He struggled to talk through the pain of moving his leg. "Decided to stop here to get some samples."
"Samples? Samples of what?"
"Rocks. Anthills."
"Anthills! What are you talking about?" For a crazy moment I thought he'd sunken into delirium.
"Evidence... More..."
But it was too difficult for him to try to talk and walk at the same time. I stopped asking questions and concentrated on reaching the fence. Then came the hard part. We decided that the only way for him to get through was to roll under the wires. Getting him down on the ground was a bigger problem. Finally, I leaned against a fence post. He braced himself against me and kind of walked his hands down the length of me until he could kneel on the good leg, holding the other straight out beside him, then he fell onto his side and was down. I held the wires up and with a certain amount of moaning, groaning and cussing he slid under.
I insisted he sit propped against the fence post for a minute while I ran to check my car, hoping against hope that we weren't going to be stranded here. But the guy had done his work quickly and well. All the tires were flat.
Chapter 21
I cursed my lost flashlight. Without it I couldn't tell if the tires on my car had been slashed as Max's had been, or if just the air had been forced out. I opened one of the car doors and looked at the interior. Nothing else appeared to have been bothered. Nor had the engine been disabled, I discovered when the motor sprang to life. I opened all the doors and turned on the headlights. The glow brightened the night, but didn't shed much light on the tires.
The sack of sandwiches and chips still sat on the passenger seat. I took the sack and the second thermos cup of coffee back to Max, who fell on them gratefully while I gathered up the other thermos and my old blanket from the perch I'd used. The coffee in my cup, which had been left open, was tepid and disgusting. I dumped it and took a few quick swigs from Max's. It was pretty awful, but slid down my gullet with a satisfying enough caffeine kick.
"Okay," I told him, ready to take on the world, "all my tires are flat, Max, but that's not as bad as your slashed ones. I figure we can drive my car to the house, farther if we have to. I know it will ruin the tires, but we need to get you to a doctor. Do you know if there's a phone hooked up at the house yet?"
"I don't know."
"Did you try your cell phone from here?"
"Yeah. No access. Probably won't work until we're on the county road."
"Do you have a flashlight in your truck? We could sure use one. I dropped mine somewhere."
"There should be one behind the seat." He offered me a sandwich. I waved it away, hoping he would eat them all. He needed the energy.
"Give me the keys and I'll get it."
"Keys are in it."
Uh-oh. "No they're not. And the doors are locked. I checked earlier."
"Bastard!" he muttered.
With the help of me and the fence post, he hauled himself upright again. Even in the darkness I could see him flinch with pain.
He reached in his back pocket for his wallet. "One good thing, I keep a spare in my billfold." He held the key up triumphantly.
"Here, give it to me. I'll get the flashlight."
"There are some papers in a folder back there, too. We'll need those."
It took a bit to find the folder which had slid down among the jumble of things stashed behind the seat. But I got it and the light, locked the doors again and shone the light over the contents of the truck's bed. Among some miscellaneous boards and pipes, there was a length of 2x2 about four feet long. I grabbed it.
I handed Max the 2x2. "See if you can use it for a cane."
"Thanks." He grabbed me around the shoulders with one arm and nuzzled my neck. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess. I feel like I'm letting you down."
"Don't be silly," I said, "we just need to get you to a doctor. Maybe we can call an ambulance from the house." I was afraid he might have done irreparable damage to his leg with the amount of walking and crawling he'd done.
I steadied him as he hobbled to the car. The cane did help, even if it wasn't long enough, but it was still a painful process.
"We'd be better off with our own wheels," he said between steps. "Ambulance has to come from Rock Springs. The construction crews have stored some equipment in the garage. If we're lucky as hell there might be a compressor."
He must have intuited my blank look. He added, "Air compressor. We can fill your tires with it. Or there might be a truck we can use."
"Let's hope, then."
I helped him into the back seat and inspected the tires again with the flashlight.
"Make sure the valve stem is still in the tire. He might have popped them out."
One was missing, but after a frantic few minutes, I found it on the ground and was able to put it back in.
I was worried about Max. His face had looked gray and drawn in the car's overhead light. I didn't want him to pass out on me, or go into shock. I couldn't hurry. There was no choice but to drive slowly, or there wouldn't be any tires left to fill when we got to the house. Driving was di
fficult, but not much worse than on some of the really rotten roads around here.
"Tell me what you did in Rock Springs this morning," I said, thinking it best to keep him alert and talking. "You got the stone tested?"
"Yes. I went to a jewelry store looking for someone who might have one of the new diamond testing tools. Fastest test I could think of." He spoke in tight, clipped phrases, pausing frequently to suck in his breath after a particularly sharp jolt. "He sent me to the college. There's a geologist there who's also a gemologist. Good rock man. The stone is a diamond. Middle grade." Another long pause. "You should see it under the microscope. Those bumps on the surface are masses of tiny triangular crystals. Beautiful. Positive identification. Tested it other ways, too."
There wasn't anything I could do about the bumpy ride, but his speech seemed strong and thoroughly coherent.
"More important," he went on after a particularly nasty bump, "though I was right in thinking there's no kimberlitic in this area, the place is loaded with lamproite which is also associated with ancient volcanic flows. Similar to kimberlite, though much rarer, and can also be diamond-bearing." Another teeth-gritting pause. "It's not like this stuff hasn't been written about, it just hasn't come my way. Hard enough to keep up with my own field," he said, almost apologetically, as if I might think him an idiot if he didn't know absolutely everything in the world about all areas of geology. Men.
"Anyway, the guy gave me that file folder of information to read, and the name of a geologist with the Wyoming Geological Survey who's pretty much an expert on the area. I picked up more stuff at the library. If I'd talked to him earlier I'd have saved myself a lot of time and trouble. He was real interested in the diamond. Had to be mighty evasive about where it came from. I would have liked to tell him the whole story. Now's not the time."
The outside light at Max's adobe was a beautiful sight to behold. A harbinger of civilization. My white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel lightened. Max tried the cell phone again, but there still was no access.
"I don't know if there's a phone hooked up inside or not. I haven't paid much attention to the place. But we'll find out," he said.
"Do you have a key?"
"No, but I can break into my own house if I feel like it."
We found a window in the back that hadn't been framed. Max jimmied the casing loose and we hauled the whole thing out of its opening. I crawled in with the flashlight and turned on every light switch I came to. There were plenty of phone jacks, but no phones plugged into them. I went to the garage and opened the automatic door. Max was right. There was all kinds of stuff in there.
Luck was with us. Max found the compressor in a far corner. By this time he was doing poorly and had to depend on me to shift the damnable thing into position so we could utilize its thankfully long cord and fill the tires back up with air.
"Yes!" I said, inordinately proud of my accomplishments. "Get in the car, Max. We're on our way!"
"Hang on a minute, Thea. Let's go in the house. I've got to get rid of these samples. I don't want them dumping stuff out of my pockets at the hospital."
A sudden thought. "The diamond! Where is it?"
"Pocket."
He leaned on me heavily, and with the help of the makeshift cane we moved slowly from the garage into the kitchen. The room was beautifully decorated with all the sterile charm of a typical model home. A white ash table draped in a scarlet serape was the focal point of the breakfast nook. Without a thought Max threw back the cloth and pushed the carefully arranged centerpiece of cacti, candles and pottery to one side. He began to empty his pockets. From the buttoned one on his shirt he took the film canister that I knew held the uncut diamond. From each pants pocket he took a small collection of rocks and kept them in separate piles.
"These," he said, pointing to one of the piles, "are from the hill where the bulldozer is parked. These from the second hill. The others from two spots that, for convenience's sake, we'll just call three and four. Find something so that we can wrap and label each pile." Pockets emptied, he sank into one of the chairs.
I opened drawers and cupboards, most of which were empty. "So that's what you were doing when you were supposed to be at the sheriff's office with me?"
"Yeah. I wanted to give him this stuff along with the diamond. More evidence. I'm sure numbers one and two," he pointed to the first two piles" will test as lamproites."
I found some plastic grocery bags under the sink. With those, a scrap of paper towel and a black marker I found in a drawer, I bagged each pile of rocks with its corresponding number. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a knotted bandana; working loose the knot, he opened up the cloth; it contained a pile of dirt.
"What is that?"
"Sample from an anthill. Ants are the world's best excavators. If you want to know what kind of minerals are in an area look in an anthill. " He opened the film canister and poured the contents onto the table. The dull lump of diamond came out along with a quantity of dirt similar to the pile on the bandana. I peered closer. Scattered against the table's light wood, it was easier to see the bits that weren't dirt. I picked out what looked like tiny grains of quartz and other shiny pieces.
"And if this is chromite," Max said, touching some dark bits, "we're in business."
"What's chromite?"
"Another mineral. Comes from depths great enough to produce diamond. But more sophisticated equipment than a microscope is needed to examine this stuff properly."
"Looks like the gem gravel I saw today," I said, pointing at the sparkly grains I'd culled from the dirt. I told him about my visit to Jennifer this morning, and then also about the small pieces I'd found in the back room of Clyde's store.
He too thought it strange, but had no better explanation for it than I did.
"Put the anthill stuff together. It won't matter. I couldn't find the hills again, anyway."
I scooped the loose stuff up and put it on the bandana and retied the knot. He put the diamond back in the canister and gave it to me.
"You need to take this and give it to Rusty right away. The phone should work when we get on the county road. We'll call him and tell him everything that's been happening."
"Hospital first, Max."
"Maybe he can meet us someplace." The fact that he didn't argue told me the pain was getting worse.
"Okay." I gathered up the packets. "Let's get you out of here." He looked ghastly, and it took all our effort to get him back into the car. As soon as we were on the county road he began trying the phone, only to be told by the night dispatcher, when he finally got through, that Rusty was not available; he was out on a call. Max wouldn't speak to anyone else.
He'd no sooner hung up then we saw flashing red and blue lights on the road ahead. The spinning lamps were intermingled with other headlights, some aimed askew into the sky. I slowed, stomach churning in an automatic response to the sight of any accident.
"A wreck, Max," I said.
"Probably the call Rusty's on."
When we were opposite the cars, I pulled off the road. One of the vehicles was an ambulance. A cluster of men stood in the road. Max rolled down his window. "There's Rusty. See if he'll talk to us a minute."
The overturned vehicle was an open Jeep. "Oh, no," I gasped, thinking of the lay brothers on their happy mission. I jumped out of the car and ran across the road. Rusty shone a light briefly under my chin so he could see my face. "May I help you?" he asked guardedly. But my eyes were on the still form that had just been placed on a stretcher.
"Pussyfoot," I breathed.
Chapter 22
No attempt at resuscitation, or any other life-saving process, was being made on the still figure. He was dead. All his cockiness was gone. He seemed as small as a child, diminished, as if fat and muscle had withered away along with the breath of life.
"You know him?" Rusty asked sharply.
"I knew who he was. Was he alone?"
"Yes, as far as we know. Why?"
"I
saw him today. Just this afternoon. He was showing some lay brothers... monks around Clyde Bodie's land. They were so nice. I was afraid they might still be with him."
Two men lifted the stretcher and the acrid smell of liquor wafted in the air as they carried him to the open back door of the ambulance.
Rusty took my elbow. "Why don't you go back to your car?"
"Oh," I said, remembering my purpose. "Max is in the car. He needs to talk to you a minute. He broke his leg. I'm taking him to the emergency room in Rock Springs."
He gave me a hard stare, then, still with a firm hand on my arm, marched me across the road to the car.
I got in the driver's seat and started the engine. Rusty leaned on the open window by Max. "Where were you this afternoon?" he asked.
"It's a long story, Rusty, and one you need to hear. Give him the film canister, Thea. I think it's too dangerous for you to hang on to."
I took the container from my purse and passed it to the sheriff.
"There's a rough, uncut diamond in there," Max said. "We found it in Thea's house and think it's what the guy who ransacked the place was looking for. When can we get together?"
"We have a lot to tell you," I broke in. "But I need to get Max to the hospital."
Rusty was a cool customer. He put the canister in his pocket and said nothing other than, "I'll meet you there when I'm finished."
I drove like a fury, determined not to stop for anything else. "That was Pussyfoot, Max," I said, my mind still filled with the picture of the crumpled body. "He's dead. He must have been drunk; there was an awful stench of whiskey. I can't believe it. I just saw him, Max. Hours ago. Oh, and he wanted to talk to you. It seemed urgent." Now there was nothing urgent left for him, I thought gloomily. It was all gone. I couldn't help but think that if I died now all the turmoil surrounding me in the past few days would simply vanish—for me. Well, I'd rather have the urgency, and I'm sure Pussyfoot would have, too.
I told Max about my earlier meeting with him and the brothers, and how I'd seen him the day before in some kind of altercation with Ivar Norquist. "I couldn't tell if they were arguing or making some kind of deal. I just got the impression that there was something furtive going on. Do you suppose the two of them were working together?"
Dead in Hog Heaven (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book Three) Page 18