But Michael had no time to go back for his cruiser. He had no time for anything except chasing the man down.
The scene in the bathroom kept flashing back to him with sickening vividness. Dulcie had taken her fatal wound to the throat. There had been no quick mercy for her, as with Edna. She had died over several minutes, the same minutes Michael had been waiting down in Miss Janine’s parking lot, worried that Edna wouldn’t talk to him if she thought she’d been followed. As if that mattered now.
Michael slowed as he neared an especially thick stand of tamarisk. Caution made him drop prone, even though the impulse was to keep rushing forward.
He lay as still as he could, listening over his own racing heart, watching the foliage for a stirring on this windless morning.
That’s right. Dulcie’s wind chimes had been silent. The TV had been going full blast to cover the two revolver reports that had broken the calm of the arroyo. It hadn’t been loud enough. Dulcie’s neighbor standing on his porch was proof of that.
Again, in his mind’s eye, Michael brushed his knuckles against Dulcie’s red-smeared cheek, hoping against hope that she might stir and ask him what he was doing there. But she had bled out before he’d ever burst through her front door.
Now, Michael felt as if he was getting sick to his stomach. He took slow, deep breaths.
He remembered trying to imagine on Saturday what kind of damage her hollow-point ammunition would do to him. He no longer had to imagine. The same revolver she’d held on him that evening had come to rest on the bathroom floor, only inches from her fingertips. But he’d found nothing convincing about the proximity of the weapon to her slack hand. It was no more credible than the cocktail table having been cleared of Dulcie’s stuffed animals to make room for the props of a dope deal gone bust—a bag being sampled with the aid of a cut-down straw and cash arrayed in a fan, ready to be counted. The only thing that puzzled Michael was how Carson had accomplished so much in so little time.
Michael got up and continued on.
But he hadn’t gone far when he saw a covey of quail flush from some dense growth at the foot of the ridge. He dropped again as they whirred over his head and down sailed down into the lower arroyo. The birds hadn’t made him stop. It was the sudden intrusion that had made them break from cover. He swept the open sights of his shotgun from one end of the tamarisk copse to the other. The leaves hung motionless on their branches.
One of the phones vibrated in his pocket. He rolled on his side to dig it out. Carson’s cell. He flipped it open but didn’t answer. After a moment, the man’s agitated voice came over the airwaves—and possibly through the still air itself from the ridge, Michael couldn’t tell—in a forced whisper: “Is that you out there, Long Shore?”
Michael finally spoke if only in the hope of drawing him out into the clear. “Yes.”
“Oh, thank God you’re here. I just checked on this informant of mine. She and a friend are dead. I don’t know what happened in there, but it’s a godawful scene. I’m on my way to my car right now so I can use the radio and raise Nye S.D.”
“Where’s your car?” Michael asked, hushed.
“I parked a ways off. Didn’t want to burn my informant. I saw she had company, a red Pontiac, and the crowd my snitch runs with can make an unmarked unit a mile away. Step out and give me a wave, then we can team up and drive back to the trailer in my car.”
Michael paused before saying, “Do you see me now?”
“Uh, no, where exactly are you?”
“Where are you?”
“Out in these damned rocks. Truth is I’m half lost. I’m a city guy, kiddo. What’s that cactus that leaves a spiny ball of shit on your pants and stings like the devil?”
“Cholla. I’ll walk more over to the west,” Michael said helpfully, although he remained glued to the ground, showing no more of his head than necessary for him to keep watch on the slope rising before him. He believed that Carson faced this final climb before he could reach his vehicle. “How about now? I’m farther west.”
“West of what, Long Shore? Orient me, damn it. Where are you in relation to the trailer?”
“I’m in the big clearing. Can’t you see me?”
Finally, ever so slowly, the man peeked around a salt-cedar trunk. It was enough to draw Michael’s eye to the shadowy outlines of a human figure in the depths of the foliage. Here, Carson had hunkered down to rest, most likely recovering his wind so he could plod up the steepest part of the slope.
More than two hundred yards away, the man was beyond the kill range of Michael’s shotgun. He could try his pistol, but that was a forlorn hope too, more because of accuracy.
He would now gamble on being in better shape than the middle-aged man. But first, Michael needed to distract him. “It looked like you caught Edna Boskovich flat-footed on the couch.”
“Say what?”
“I read the scene inside the trailer this way—Edna or Fanny—whichever you prefer—expected you to show up right behind her this morning at the trailer, particularly after you two touched bases on that call to the pay phone in Lathrop Wells. What she didn’t expect was for you to shoot her with the revolver after you took it away from Dulcie. Do you always use blood to cover your tracks?”
“What’re you talking about, Long Shore?”
“Dulcie, mostly. I never knew Edna. Dulcie must’ve been struggling all the way down the hall into the bathroom. You must be scratched up pretty bad. Did you realize you cracked the paneling behind the toilet when you jammed her in there? What’d you plan for? A clean head shot? That’d make it look more like a suicide. Sudden remorse after murdering Edna, or something like that? But Dulcie was still clawing and fighting, so the revolver went off too soon. You had to settle for a throat shot when you missed her temple. You can’t stage a fucking suicide with two shots to the same victim. I mean, possible but not probable, right?”
“Have you gone off your rocker? I’m with the Investigation Division out of Carson City, like you thought all along. I’m a cop, for godsake. The Kincannon gig was just a sideline for me, something to keep the big man happy. Happens I was already working a narcotics case on some whores down here in southern Nye. Dulcie Kincannon was one of them. Don’t let that ingénue façade she had fool you—she was a trafficker, and if I hadn’t turned her...”
Michael let him go on ranting. He’d put the phone in his shirt pocket and was moving at a crouch through knee-high sagebrush. Holding his shotgun low, he headed for a boulder that lay east of the salt cedars in which the man was hiding. As Michael dropped in behind it, he calculated Carson’s line of sight—the man would have to fire through the thickest part of the copse to get a shot off at him. Safe for the moment, he turned his attention back to the call:
“Are you listening, Long Shore...?”
“I’m listening.”
“I had nothing to do with this Edna what’s-her-name showing up. She wasn’t even my informant. Like I said, Dulcie was, and you’ve got to believe me when I tell you she was a mess. I half-expected her to do something like this long before now. She attempted suicide once before when she lived in Vegas...”
Michael was rearing up to check the cedars again—when a bullet glanced off the boulder just inches from his face. He jerked his head down into his shoulders as the crack of report belatedly reached him. He could smell rock dust, the round had come that close. A pistol shot, he believed.
“What the hell was that?” Carson asked, gasping, trying to sound surprised.
“Same as this!” Michael let the phone fall to the ground as he squeezed off two rounds of his own over the top of the boulder. He returned fire with his handgun, keeping his shotgun a secret for the time being. He ducked back down again, pressing his back against the cool stone, and cradled his semi-automatic in his lap as he studied his outstretched right hand. It was reasonably steady.
“What the fuck was that about, Long Shore?” Carson’s voice said faintly from the ground. Michael picked the cell up
and held it to his ear. “This is insane, kiddo. There’s no reason for two cops to behave this way. What do you say we call it quits here and now? We both turn and walk away. No hard feelings. What do you say?”
“Dulcie was never your snitch.” Michael took a moment to calm his voice. He was hyperventilating. “And Edna was more than your snitch.”
“That’s some insinuation for you to make, a guy who sent most of Saturday night shacked up in the trailer down there.”
“Not what I meant. Leave Dulcie out of this. Leave her in peace. I’m saying Edna was your business associate. And that puts you in bed with some folks in Vegas, maybe not on their payroll but at least willing to do some contract work for them now and again.”
“Sorry, Long Shore, I don’t see that this conversation is going anywhere. Like I said before, let’s call it a draw and both go our separate ways. Maybe we can get together for a drink sometime after everything cools down.”
“Sure.” Michael disconnected.
Then he counted to three before rolling out from behind the boulder, clutching his pistol with both hands before him. He thought he glimpsed Carson in black gloves again, leaving the tamarisk and starting to trudge up the slope. But that image was almost immediately lost in a spray of sand that flew into his eyes. Half-blind, he crawled to safety again.
“Merda!” he growled.
If Carson didn’t look much like a professional hit-man, he could certainly shoot like one—three or four near misses now in the space of five minutes. But Michael knew he would have to risk another one, unless he was willing to let the man slip away.
He wasn’t.
Wiping away the sand-tears on the sleeve of his Aloha shirt, he holstered his pistol and took his shotgun from where he’d leaned it against the boulder. Then he hoisted himself to his feet and began rushing up the slope. He couldn’t see the man above him. He couldn’t see much of anything, but the good news was that no shots barked down at him. But that also probably meant the man had already crested the ridge and was within minutes of driving away.
Keenly now, Michael could feel the oncoming cold in his chest. The cold Dulcie had given him.
He reached the dirt road he’d spotted from below, but sank to his knees to recuperate a minute. The sound of a yelp siren came thinly out of the distance. Michael held a burning breath so he could fix its location. North. It was coming from Beatty and sheriff’s substation there. Help was on the way—no doubt, after all the shooting of the past few minutes. But that help was double-edged. It could both save him and prevent him from nailing Carson before a slick Vegas attorney could intervene in his behalf and completely befuddle a jury as to what had gone down in Dulcie’s trailer this morning.
Michael staggered up again.
To his right, the road descended along the north slope of the ridge, all the way down to Highway 95 and a point near the quail sign. Michael was looking that direction when a Nye sheriff’s cruiser came into view, emergency lights twinkling red and blue. The deputy turned onto the road that ran alongside the brothel and eventually up to Dulcie’s mobile.
To Michael’s left, the dirt road on which he stood cut through the spine of the ridge. On the far side, Carson had hidden his vehicle before coming down the slope to the trailer this morning. What made Michael relatively sure of this were the fresh light-truck tire impressions in the soft dust of the road bed. He took several strides along it before realizing that this route would deliver him directly into the grille of the onrushing vehicle, which could be expected at any moment. Added to that was the disadvantage of facing the mid-morning sun. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost his sunglasses.
So he left the road and clambered up the embankment, avoiding the ridgeline.
Fifty yards later, he decided that he’d gone far enough east. Forcing himself into a trot, he climbed again to the crest. On the opposite side, less than a hundred feet from Michael, the ridge-top road ended in an eyebolt-shaped turn-around in a swale. There, among a tangle of willows fed by underground springs, waited a brand new Dodge pickup. He knew it was new because of its flawless black paint and the temporary receipt in a corner of the windshield instead of license plates.
Draped over the hood was Carson, his suit a dusty shambles, as he steadied his pistol for a shot.
Michael charged him in a headlong sprint, vaulting over brush and shouting, “You son of a bitch!”
He wasn’t sure if he fired first, for the twin rumbles of his shotgun blasts blotted out all other sounds. But Carson was flung backwards, his head snapping more violently than the rest of his body as he crashed into the willows behind him. Briefly, he wobbled on this mat of bent-down branches, then quit moving.
There was enough damage to Carson’s bald head to tell Michael that the man was gone. Still, his ears ringing, he kept his shotgun aimed on the body.
A shadow passed across the sun. For a split second, he believed it to have been a large bird, a hawk perhaps.
But then he heard a muffled shot. It came at close range. He whirled into the sound and squeezed the trigger once. Only once, for he’d known even in the confusion of the instant that he’d had but three cartridges left. He couldn’t see the figure, who was expertly using the sun to cover his circling movement.
Michael was going to draw his pistol and save his last two shotgun rounds—when it felt as if his left leg was sinking into quicksand. Before he knew it, he was down on his face and unable to rise. The ringing in his ears had faded enough for him to hear the siren again and estimate that the Nye deputy was close to reaching the trailer. Backup was just minutes away. If he could hang on.
He fired three quick shots with his pistol, hopefully to keep his attacker at bay. Carson had brought help along—that explained the remarkable marksmanship. Michael had been confronting two gunmen, not just one. Two men had invaded Dulcie’s trailer.
Michael crawled a few yards to the shade of a large sage bush. Somehow, he felt safer in that shade. There, he reached down to explore his wound with his fingers. The bullet had torn into the calf muscle and out again, leaving two holes three inches apart. The bleeding was copious.
From down in the swale came a grunt, that of a man lifting something heavy. Michael would have risen up to investigate, but his vision was beginning to dim. Everything was turning fuzzy and gray, like the coastal California sky. He heard a truck door slam, then another, followed by the grind and roar of the engine being started. He realized that he could either blindly spray a few more rounds or strip off his belt and use it as a tourniquet. He decided to bind his wound before he passed out.
Chapter Twenty
A ruddy moon rose over a field of white. The whiteness stubbornly refused to come into definition, but the ripples on its surface suggested dunes of gypsum sand to Michael. Only gypsum shone that luminously in a twilight as deep as the one that enveloped him. Gradually, the shadows gave up Gorman’s round and florid face. It was filled with a look of detached curiosity. Michael couldn’t recall asking, but the sheriff responded as if he’d just been asked: “You’re in ICU at University Medical Center in Las Vegas.”
ICU explained the artificial gloom that was punctuated here and there by the greens and reds of instrument-display screens.
Michael tried to speak, but nothing came out. His throat was sore and dry.
Gorman anticipated the question. “It’s Tuesday morning, ten o’clock...” There was the scraping noise of a chair being scooted closer to the side of the bed, then a thud as the sheriff sat ponderously. “...a full day after Nye County found you bleeding like a stuck pig.”
Michael lifted his head off the pillow to look down.
Gorman chuckled—he’d always found fear in others amusing. And useful. “You’re all there, Long Shore. It was the exsanguination that almost got you. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? The bullet clipped some branch of the tibial artery—you can ask the medicos, if you’re interested. Never figured you for a bleeder… The gunshot wound wasn’t all that bad, but your bl
ood flowed like cheap red wine. You’d be under the dirt if you hadn’t managed to tie your belt around your thigh before you passed out.”
Michael was cold, but he wasn’t about to ask Gorman to tuck a blanket around him. He did need something to wet his voice so he could speak. “Water,” he managed to croak. He saw that he wasn’t the only patient in ICU when the sheriff got up and swiped somebody else’s water pitcher and spare tumbler. With his vision still blurred, Michael wondered if the patient might be Carson. But then the image of the man’s head came back to him, riddled by double-aught buck from Michael’s shotgun. No, his neighbor was an elderly man with a bluish tint to his skin. Michael suspected his own complexion was the same color.
Gorman filled the glass and plopped a straw into it. “Cheers.”
In reaching for the water, Michael realized that he was hooked up to an IV.
“Yeah,” the sheriff commented, sitting again, “your crankcase is still low a quart or two. And if that isn’t enough, you have a flu bug too.”
Michael took a few sips. Although he was ravenously thirsty, he stopped drinking as soon as he felt his voice had come back. “Dodge,” he rasped.
Not hearing him, the sheriff leaned closer. “What’s that?”
“Did...get away?”
“Who?”
Fatigue crashed over Michael as he began to appreciate the superhuman effort needed to sort through all this.
The strain must have shown in his face, for Gorman said, “Relax.” But he didn’t mean it, for then he asked, “Who got away, the bald middle-aged guy?”
Carson, he no doubt meant. But that left Michael only more bewildered. Was the sheriff saying that the Nye deputies had recovered the body?
Under the Killer Sun: A Death Valley Mystery Page 17