The driver, no doubt scared out of his wits by this apparition in camouflage, did the only sensible thing and turned around, so sharply the top-heavy vehicle nearly teetered over. However, it soon righted itself and fled toward Ridgecrest.
Tiffany chased after the lumbering van for a few seconds, then gave up with a bellow that rolled out into the dunes: “Fuck!”
Michael’s relief was short-lived, for he caught sight of a new problem on the way.
A single headlamp was vibrating along the dirt road from Woody’s trailer toward the highway. The recluse had jumped on his Electra Glide and was riding down to investigate the gunfire, which he had to have heard by now.
No, Woody, go back.
Michael fell into a shambling gait, up and down over the drifted silt, all the while trying to spot where Tiffany was lying in wait for Woody.
Mentally, he took stock of his remaining ammunition. He had learned to double any figure he came up with in the stress of a running gunfight. So out of a magazine of fourteen cartridges, he estimated that he had half of that left. Tiffany had spent a flurry of bullets to drop Higgins, but then had resorted to the agent’s shotgun for his further attacks on Michael.
The motorcycle had reached the highway.
Come on, Woody, go north, go north—use the phone at Panamint Springs, if you must do something.
But the headlight blazed over the dunes as Bryant turned south, directly toward Tiffany, who had strolled out into the middle of the highway and was waiting for him.
Michael was now close enough to see the bloodstain on the right side of the deputy’s uniform shirt. The wound must have been no more than a crease along the ribs, for Tiffany was standing straight, looking alert and in command of himself.
As Woody rapidly approached, the deputy reached down into a thigh pocket, drew his handgun and gripped the weapon behind him. He wasn’t going to rely on his badge this time.
Michael ached to warn Woody with a shout, but knew he wouldn’t be heard over the Electra Glide’s motor. Besides, if Tiffany became aware that Woody was Michael’s friend, the hermit’s value as a hostage would only go up.
Instead, Michael went to a knee, sucked in a breath and steadied his pistol with both hands. Still, at a distance of more than fifty yards, the attempt was no more than a potshot.
Tiffany didn’t hear the report but must have felt the heat of the slug whiz by his face. It was enough to divert his attention from Woody. The deputy half-whirled, searching for Michael—just as Bryant thundered past him. He pivoted again and started to line up his sights on the retreating motorcycle, but then changed his mind once more, as if he’d reset his priorities and needed to deal with Michael more than he needed the bike.
Now it was his turn to have night-vision problems. The glare of the Electra Glide’s headlamp had left the deputy seemingly blinded. He peered myopically out into the dunes.
Michael used these fleeting seconds to move forward again. Yet, he advanced no more than a few yards before his leg gave out completely and he fell on his face, jerking his finger from the trigger guard just before he struck the ground.
Tiffany aimed at the sound of Michael’s collapse, his bullets zipping several feet over his head.
Incredibly, Woody, who had been doing figure-eights a quarter mile down the highway, began accelerating toward Tiffany again. The backwash of his headlight clearly showed him, beard flapping as he hunched over the handlebars, naked except for his buckskin loincloth and a pair of fringed leggings.
As Tiffany visibly struggled with the meaning of this insane phantom tearing up-and-down the highway, Michael crawled to the last dune before the road embankment. Finally, he was within decent range of his target. Again, he took hold of his pistol with both hands, bracing them on the top of the dune. He pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Tiffany strolled over to the edge of the roadway, his towering silhouette edged in gold by Woody’s approaching headlamp. The deputy used his free hand to shade the light out of his eyes and sneered down into the dunes over his gun-sights. Michael propped the big-cell flashlight on the dune, pointed the lens toward the man, then switched it on and rolled to the side.
Tiffany blinked furiously into the beam, then let go a fusillade.
Michael could hear the bullets splatting into the dunes all around him as he examined his pistol for the malfunction. The casing to his last shot had stove-piped, sticking in the ejector and jamming the trigger. Hands trembling, he cleared it and swung around—to find that Tiffany was looming over him, no more than ten feet away.
The bore of the man’s handgun looked enormous.
But at that instant, a roar descended on both of them.
Tiffany flinched and instinctively wheeled toward Woody. Michael hesitated a split-second, but only long enough to make sure the motorcycle had streaked completely through his sight picture.
Then he fired.
There followed the thud of a bullet hitting home. Tiffany was buffeted but didn’t go down. He staggered as Woody’s light receded and the darkness gathered around his silhouette again. The deputy was still wearing his Kevlar vest, Michael realized, and a wave of despair fell over him as he watched Tiffany, black now against the stars, shake off the blow, then take methodical aim.
Michael believed his own magazine was empty. Still, on raw hope, he squeezed the trigger.
A flame erupted from Michael’s barrel and illuminated Tiffany’s shocked face as a hole appeared in his brow. The deputy went down like a skyscraper—ankles, knees and then hips folding under him.
Michael lay limp for a few seconds, then crawled up the embankment on his elbows. He was sitting beside the body when Woody rode up and asked over the rumbling idle of his engine, “Michael...?”
“Yes, Woody.”
“He wanted to take my bike, didn’t he?”
Michael could only nod.
Woody looked sadly down at Tiffany. “Then I’m not as altruistic as I imagined. I didn’t want to give it to the mother fucker.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Michael awakened.
He raised his wristwatch to his eyes: 4:37. Only an hour had passed since he’d finally drifted off, having made a sweep of the valley and finding that all was well.
Reaching over, he parted the curtains to the sliding glass door. The full moon was hovering above the crest of the Panamints, ready to make its exit before Tabe, the sun, took over the skies. The moonlight gave the ridges and canyons of the surrounding mountains a wash that was nearly monochromatic, everything cast in either gray or bluish white. Only Tabe had the palette to ignite the badlands with vivid color.
He sat up, cradling his face in his palms.
The moment felt dreamlike, except for its startling clarity. He had no idea why he was fully awake. And so restless. He’d heard nothing over his air conditioner. Yet, the backs of his arms were in gooseflesh. Long ago, this would have been the hour a Mojave raiding party hit a Shoshone camp, when the warriors were sluggish and slow to react. Had he been dreaming of shrieks and cries for help from those ancient women and children?
He couldn’t recall.
Rising, he stepped into his Levi’s and a pair of flip-flops. He didn’t grab the flashlight from the nightstand. It was so bright outside there was no need. But he was reaching under his pillow for his pistol—when something made him stop. He couldn’t quite make himself close his hand around the grips. It seemed faithless, although he had no idea why.
So, unarmed, he rolled back the glass slider and crept out onto the porch off his bedroom.
The air was hot, unstirred by the slightest breeze.
The temperatures of early August were only slightly less than what they’d been in July. Relief wouldn’t come until late October or even November, the season in which the people would have returned to their valley camps from the gathering places high in the mountains, laden with baskets of pine nuts. The season of reunion, of feasting and laughter.
Gazing all around, Michael was struck by the surreal beauty of the night. Mature tamarisk trees lined the back lanes of the resort, and the moonlight was transforming their lacey foliage into pewter sprays, the trunks themselves standing bold and immovable like metallic statuary. There was no wind at ground level, yet stains of cloud shadow were rippling across the valley and up into the mountains. Things no longer seemed answerable to the ordinary laws of nature, but rather to some spectral whim that made anything possible. The hour felt like a much earlier time, when men and animals were equals and spoke the same language, and the fantastic could occur at any instant.
He checked on his cruiser, a new Ford Expedition to replace the one he’d wrecked two weeks ago on the airport runway. All appeared as he had left it, but he went to the passenger side and, instead of jiggling the fly-swatter under seats, gave the vehicle a shake.
No skirling rattle came from the interior.
He turned, looking all around again.
Someone had just been here. He was sure of it. And the trespasser had left behind strange eddies, not of air but of crackling tension, the same kind of electricity that made his neck hair stand in the midst of a thunderstorm. Instinct told him that this presence had come to his bungalow, only to linger briefly and withdraw again, into the south, the direction from which it had materialized.
He followed, passing quietly and quickly between the other bungalows and out onto the open gravel fan, his slight limp more from habit than discomfort now.
Near the old beach the earth softened, and foot tracks showed. Sharply defined by the moonlight, they were small enough to have been laid down by a juvenile. Or a woman. They struck toward the Great Salt Pan. It glistened before him, with tiny, snow-like sparkles on its smooth extents and then big mirror-like glints off the larger chloride crystals.
He scanned the playa for movement.
But there was nothing unusual out there, although on a night like tonight the taller salt pinnacles could masquerade as human forms and even appear to move if you stared at them too hard.
Tabe was rising fast now, eclipsing the effects of the moon on the eastern ranges and turning them a deep lavender. Michael was pivoting from this sight when he caught something that made his heart skip a beat—a distant figure threading along the dry shore. Out there, hidden among the pickleweed and salt grass, was a footpath known but to locals. It had skirted the beach when waves lapped the gravel, thousands of years ago.
This trail also led down to the reservation.
Along it, a woman was scurrying away from him, a matron hunched with age, short and squat. Her hair was so white it seemed crystalline, but despite her arthritis she made quick progress, measuring out her strides with jabs of her digging stick.
Michael smiled.
He knew now that his bungalow hadn’t been visited by a pillar of salt, a memory animated by the equal pull of the moon and sun.
Still, he was far from disappointed.
He turned for the ranch, eagerly.
The moon was down by the time he got back to the bungalow. He bypassed his open bedroom slider and rushed around to the front. There, a brown-paper sack was leaning upright against the door. In it was a large piece of grease-bread, that culinary relic from the early reservation period when native lands were bought with surplus government commodities of flour, lard, salt, sugar, baking powder and powdered milk. The result was grease-bread, a form of manna to sustain the people on their travels to a better time and place.
Michael sat on the top step and ate. The piece was still warm from his grandmother’s skillet. He savored every bite as he watched Tabe break free of the Funeral Mountains. He could think of nothing more he needed or desired at that moment, and of this he felt sure Kant and Schopenhauer would approve.
The End
Kirk Mitchell
www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/mitchell.htm
Kirk Mitchell was born in Pasadena, California, in 1950. He was graduated magna cum laude in English from the University of Redlands. Prior to becoming a full-time writer in 1983, he completed the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Academy and served as a deputy sheriff on the Indian reservations of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, joining a desert patrol force that included Paiute, Shoshone, and Comanche deputies. This experience sparked an enduring interest in native culture and modern tribal life. He concluded his law enforcement career as a SWAT sergeant in Southern California. He has had fifteen novels published. His thriller HIGH DESERT MALICE was nominated for an Edgar award.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by Kirk Mitchell
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
About Kirk Mitchell
Under the Killer Sun: A Death Valley Mystery Page 27