But Quince is shaking his head even before I can finish the thought. “Not sure what you think you saw or think you heard.” He leans back and rests his palms on the rock. “Maybe you were hallucinating.”
I close my eyes against a growing sense of futility. In the end, all Quince cares about is fishing. Crack a joke, get a few laughs, then hit the next trout hole. It’s probably where he’d be right now if he thought Duniway would let him get away with it.
But thought of the chief deputy makes my eyes pop open again. Quince hasn’t moved from his seat. As I stare at him, I think back to the moment when I came upon the two of them on the bridge, to the way they spoke and what they said. Duniway could barely restrain his anger. Quince, twitchy and on edge, couldn’t stop pacing. What had he said after Duniway drove off? “I did not sign up for this shit.”
Whatever is going on between them, they’re reluctant allies. I have to hope that when Duniway shot Jeremy, the alliance suffered a mortal wound too.
I take a couple of steps toward Quince, scratching my thigh with the gun sight. He shifts, rocking his ass against the stony hump.
“You probably know I was seeing Deputy Chapman. I mean, everyone knows, right?”
He doesn’t say anything, but his shoulders move up and down in acknowledgment.
“It was just a lark for me, but Jeremy took it seriously. He thought we should do things together. Date, I guess, like a real couple. That’s not what I wanted, but Jeremy didn’t give up easily. He said we could start simple, maybe with a picnic in some out-of-the-way place where we wouldn’t run into people. As it happens, one of the spots he suggested was that lookout at Eagles Lift.” I pause to let the words sink in. “He said the view was spectacular.”
Quince has gone uncharacteristically still.
“I’m not really a picnic kind of girl, but Jeremy could wheedle with the best of them. Sooner or later, he might have worn me down, cajoled me into going up there just to shut him up. Did you know that about women? Sometimes we agree to things because it’s just easier. I mean, you motherfuckers can be relentless.” I make no effort to hide my anger. “But now Jeremy will never get the chance to wheedle me ever again, will he?”
“What do you want from me?”
“You can start by telling me who was in that pickup. And then you can drive me to the sheriff and tell him.”
“The headlight was in my eyes.”
“How much fishing do you think you’ll get to do in prison, Quince?”
He has no answer to that.
“I know you stole the bodies. No one else around here knows how to fire up that ancient crematory.”
“Someone coulda looked it up on the internet.”
“Did someone look up how to make a murder look like an accident?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“I heard you and Duniway talking, Quince. You’re in this up to your bony ass, but I’m willing to forget about that if you give up Duniway and anyone else involved.” I’m making promises I don’t have the power to keep, but he doesn’t have to know that. “We can leave together, go straight to the sheriff, or even the state police. I was there, Quince. I know you were just as shocked as I was when Duniway killed Jeremy. You can get your side of the story on the record before he even knows you’re gone.”
He’s shaking his head, but whether at me or the weight of circumstance I can’t tell. Did he help kill Pride too? Anything’s possible, but the way he was acting earlier makes me think not. Quince has always been a hired hand. Disposing of remains is one thing, even driving the Stiff. But helping kill someone is a whole ’nuther matter.
“You said it yourself, Quince. You didn’t sign up for this shit. I know you’re not happy about what happened tonight.”
“There’s a whole lot of river between not happy and stupid.”
“Let’s just go to your truck while there’s still time.”
He stands and shakes his head. “Sorry, Spooky, but I didn’t drive.”
As if to emphasize the point, he shoots his arm out and turns his wrist as if he’s looking at a nonexistent watch. I step back, and nearly trip on a loose stone in the scree berm. “About ten minutes.”
“What?”
“Response time when they see something on the security monitor.” He points at the top of the dark wall. “There’s perimeter cameras at every corner. Night vision and everything.”
My onrush of panic seems to infuse the air with a surreal luminosity. I scan the wall as if I expect to see a glass globe with a glowing red dot.
“How ’bout that, Spooky? My ride is here.”
His words are like a kick in the gut. The glimmer in the air intensifies and a car or truck engine guns, loud enough to drown out the river. Quince’s teeth glow ice white beneath the shivering black holes of his eyes.
He knew what would happen this whole time.
FORTY-EIGHT
Spirit
As I lurch past Quince, I clip his forehead with the gun barrel. An accident. Maybe. He yelps and falls back, clawing at my legs. My boot heel lands on his hand, and his yelp becomes a scream.
“Now I bet you wished you’d pushed him in the river, little sister.”
The long asylum wall looms to my left. To my right, the ponderosas all look the same, cracked pillars in a black void. Ankle screaming, I lumber along the shifting, rocky berm until the vehicle rounds the corner and bathes me in light. A car door slams. A man shouts. I skid on pine needles as I lunge into the trees, but manage to stay upright as the shadows close in around me.
More shouting, mostly unintelligible. “—the fuck … she go—!”
“—can’t … forest—!”
Navigating by headlight, I stay just inside the trees until the asylum wall ends, then falter. I’ve missed the old path, but I can’t risk going back. In the dark, they could be upon me before I see them coming.
Counting Quince, there’s at least two of them, maybe more. Unhurt, better rested. No doubt familiar with the forest around the asylum, including the old trail. Hell, half the trees might hide surveillance cameras. Night vision and everything.
All I have is a gun that might blow up in my hand.
At the edge of the trees, I crouch in the shadow of a twisted oak. The wall seems to fluoresce under the headlights, but the glare drops off in the open space between the asylum and the cemetery. Beyond, the tombstones look like broken teeth in the moonlight. Where the forest intrudes among the grave sites, the ground starts to rise.
“—see her—?”
“—cutting … river—”
“—too far—”
The first hint of dawn is just showing in the east. In the distant river valley, people will soon wake to a long day of fishing, rafting, or hiking. Out in the rangeland, ranchers will be filling Thermoses and fueling ATVs in preparation for an even longer day performing the many tasks necessary for their precarious livings, unaware of the drama in the high country. In the days ahead, will the Samuelton Ledger carry a piece about Melisende Dulac, the apprentice mortician who went mad, defiled the dead, and murdered her cop lover? Or do I still have a chance to write a different story?
Keep going. Tell the truth. Don’t give up.
It’s all I can do.
The trailhead and Crestview are both above me. No matter what, I have to climb. In a crouch, I cross into the cemetery, feeling my way among the tombstones toward the Hensley grave and the forest beyond.
As I near the monument to the mother and daughter who inspired the asylum, the praying hands of Mary crack and a granite shard strikes my cheek. Half a second later, the gunshot sounds. With a shriek I dive behind the tomb.
“—got her! I got—!”
I scrabble through dirt and leaves, still warm from the previous day. Great spot for a rattlesnake.
“Over here!”
Another gunshot sounds, loud and too close. I spot movement among the tombstones. Without thinking, I thrust the gun around the granite colum
n, thumb the safety, and pull the trigger.
I almost drop the gun when the shot goes off. Ears ringing, I squeeze again, once … twice before daring to look.
There’s no one in sight, but as the echoes of the gunshots die, the unmistakable voice of Xavier Meyer hollers, “Get your goddamn ass over here!”
I crab backward into the forest. The shadows feel too thin. When I smack against the bole of an oak, I push myself up. Meyer shouts again. I jam the gun into the back of my pants, then charge around the tree. The barrel feels hot against my ass.
The ground rises sharply. Almost at once, I’m climbing as much as running, grabbing at branches I can barely see. A couple of shots ring out, but I don’t look back.
“They’re just trying to spook you.”
It’s working.
Soon the slope is so steep the trees grow at an angle out of the ground. “Keep going. Don’t give up”. I aim for the deepest shadows, hoping darkness means space between the trunks. When I guess wrong, branches tear at my face and arms. I smell blood and taste acid. My lungs burn, and every step makes my ankle scream. Half the time, I drag myself up by the roots of trees growing above my head. My left hand is useless, leaving my right to do all the work. A year of moving the dead may be the only reason I have the strength to make the climb at all.
It ends abruptly when I reach for a branch and pitch forward in darkness. My broken finger explodes with pain as my arms crumple, and I slam into the ground. For some time, all I can do is sprawl in the thick litter of crumbling pine cones and dry needles, head spinning. But little by little, my ragged breathing eases, and the pain recedes to a dull background throb.
Even then, I force myself to lie still, listening. The forest is a cold, silent tomb.
Wincing, I ease onto my hands and knees, then get to my feet. The effort leaves me dizzy. A wall of trees drops away behind me, with thick forest stretching along the rim of the escarpment. But ahead, in the distance, moonlight shines into a clearing. The overlook where the teen moms smoke comes to mind.
Could I have climbed that far?
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I whisper. I can’t even be sure I’ve come the same direction.
The soft carpet of pine needles wants to slide beneath my feet. Here and there, shafts of moonlight break through gaps in the forest canopy. A crisp breeze stirs the pine boughs and drives some of the heaviness from the air. Once, I hear an owl call.
The farther I go, the lighter and more open the forest becomes. Soon, I can see ahead to an open space maybe fifty yards across and extending well out of sight to my right and left. Beyond, the forest climbs again. On the near side, a shallow bank rises just before the trees end.
Not anxious to leave shelter just yet, I pause. A branch snaps at my back.
“Hold it right there, young lady.”
I wheel around to see Xavier Meyer twenty paces back, his gray hair shining in a shaft of broken moonlight. In a fumbling panic, I claw for the gun but manage only to hook the trigger guard with my thumb as he throws himself sideways behind a rotted stump. Pivoting back, I lunge toward a depression half-hidden by a tilted pine at the edge of the forest, maybe fifteen feet away. Too late, I realize my mistake. What I thought was a clearing is no high meadow, and no lava field. The depression drops into a long gully slicing down through a steep canyon wall.
Skidding too fast, I claw at the leaning tree. There’s no guardrail here, no river below. My chin cracks bark and the gun spins off into empty air. I catch a limb with my left hand. A scream rips out of me even as I scrabble at the tree with my good hand.
Meyer’s crew cut appears above the brink.
“Please—”
Eyes cold and empty, he brings the butt of his gun down on the swollen knuckle of my broken finger. Somehow, shrieking, I hang on. Through tears, I watch Meyer raise his gun again.
But before the blow lands, our eyes lock. His mouth gapes wide and a tiny sound escapes, a disbelieving whimper. Then he somersaults over me, the toe of his boot clipping my forehead as he flies past. His long, trailing scream dies with a sickening crunch somewhere below.
Before I can make sense of what just happened, my left hand loses its grip. I snag a trailing limb with my right but almost at once, slick with sweat, it slips … slips. There’s nothing else to grab. I kick at the gully wall but manage only to dislodge a cascade of dirt and pebbles.
“Help, anyone, help! Quince—!”
As if only waiting for my cry, a figure appears and reaches down. Not Quince, but a gleam among shadows, spectral white and flowing like fog in the wind. Shrouded in moonlight, she flickers in and out of view like an image projected through falling leaves. Her face is made of pale gold.
Molly Claire?
“Grab me, damn it. I can’t do this without your help,” she says.
Her strained voice shatters the illusion. As she clutches at my shirt collar, her dirty white hoodie, “CENTENNIAL SOCCER” in block letters across the front, resolves in front of me. Not the costume of a pioneer woman dead for more than a century.
“Tell a story often enough,” Aunt Elodie said, “and it gathers substance in our minds.” But this is no phantom brought to life by dint of imagination or delusion. This is a girl, a living girl who’s come out of nowhere to save my life.
The branch cracks. My collar goes tight around my throat. I slam against the gully wall. Clawing wildly, I grip fabric and hang on tight as she drags me over the gully’s rim by the back of my shirt. We tumble into a heap with my head on her chest. She’s warm and soft and smells of sweat. I can hear her heartbeat.
Gently, she pushes me off and sits up. I just want to lie there, but dread still has hold of me. I have to be sure about Xavier Meyer. Groaning, I crawl to the edge of the gully and peer down into the canyon. Far below, I can just make out his body in the shadowy gloom, bent and broken on a heap of fallen rock.
Aunt Elodie may say we don’t stand in judgment of the dead, but I think I’ll make exception this time. Good fucking riddance.
“There’s another guy out there,” the girl says when I turn away from the edge. “I heard them yelling to each other.” The shadows are still dense under the boughs, but away east, morning is approaching. In the twilight I can see she’s sixteen or seventeen. Her eyes are hollow and dark, and her ash-blonde hair hangs lank and tangled around her face. Her nails are cracked and filthy, her black yoga pants ripped at the knees.
As I climb unsteadily to my feet, I’m struck by a sudden feeling of familiarity. At first I think she must be one of the girls I saw at the Hensley School, one of the teen moms holding her newborn or visiting with family. Yet if she’s a Hensley girl, why does she look like she’s been living in a cave? Where’s her blue blouse with the billowy sleeves?
“Where did you come from?” I say, my voice hoarse.
“It doesn’t matter.” She stands and brushes the pine needles off her arms and legs. “Can you walk?”
A little pressure on my ankle is rewarded with a lancing pain, but it quickly subsides. “I think so.”
“Then we should get out of here.”
“Wait.” I can’t shake the sense I’ve seen her before. “Who are you?”
The girl looks away. “If that other guy shows up, I’m not waiting around.” Her resolve seems at odds with her battered, filthy appearance. Not Hensley, I decide as she jams her hands into her hoodie muff. The block letters on her shirt front stretch, stirring a dim memory: Nathan Harper’s Facebook pic, him laughing and giving the finger to the camera. According to his profile, his favorite movies were the Fast and Furious series. He went to Centennial High School.
He died at the crossroad.
I look at her with growing wonder. The old rancher had pointed out a pale figure in the desert. Did you see her? As the flames crackled in the grass, I did see something, if only for an instant. A figure at the tree line, then gone. Afterward, no one believed me.
Hell, I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.
&
nbsp; “Were you there?” I say. “The night of the crash, were you at the crossroad?”
Her body goes stiff, and her eyes flash with suspicion. She takes a quick step back, then freezes. “What do you know about that?”
Only that I have more questions than answers.
I can see a storm in her eyes. A moment ago, she killed a man to save me. Maybe it’s starting to sink in, causing her to question herself. And who could fucking blame her? If she was at the crossroad, she’s been on the run for a week. It’s possible the last person she saw was whoever shot Nathan Harper in the back.
“Listen, I was the first on the scene that night. I know something terrible happened.” The fire, the wreckage, the bodies. “I found …”
I almost say Nathan, but bite it back. If she really did know him, I can’t be who tells her. Not here, not like this. I don’t speak to the bereaved.
But the girl’s eyes flash and she surges toward me. “Who did you find?” Her voice is choked with a sudden desperate need. “A little baby girl? Is she okay?”
The mother, I think. I’ve found the baby’s mother. For a second, my tongue seems to tangle in my mouth. “She’s safe,” I manage. Placed in foster care, according to Joanne at Cuppa Jo. “I promise.”
With that, the girl sags, and for a second I’m afraid she’s going to collapse. I take a painful step, not sure what I could do to help. Collapse with her? But she waves me off. For a long time she stands still in the brightening dawn, her chin on her chest. When she looks up at last, relief has replaced her suspicion.
“We should go.” Her voice sounds wrung out.
“But …” I still have so many questions. Why did those boys came to so far that night, and what really happened when they arrived at the crossroad? If this girl is the baby’s mother, who was the fourth body found in the retort? Is she who Pride was really looking for? Is she why he had to die? But I know the questions will have to wait. As the girl said, Quince is still out there. While I can’t imagine him giving chase himself, surely he’s called Duniway by now. Still, there’s one thing I have to know.
“Please, just tell me your name.”
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