Short Cut to Santa Fe (10 page)

When the sun finally crept over the mountaintops and touched the road, the thought of staying inside the bus became unbearable. The illusion of safety and comfort it had offered during the blackness of the night had disappeared, and the vehicle turned into a dark and hideous prison. The passengers fled into the sunshine, taking with them pieces of solid luggage to sit on. They sat hunched against the cold, dry wind that blew down between the hills, picking up sand and grit and tossing it into their faces. The scene had a two-dimensional, unreal look, reminding Harriet of those newspaper photographs that appear every news-hungry holiday weekend, showing exhausted passengers in jammed airports perched on their luggage, waiting endlessly for a flight to somewhere. But this airport was miles from anywhere, and someone had forgotten to order the plane. The passengers numbered only six now, not counting Diana Morris, still inside, still—as far as Harriet knew—struggling for her very existence. Harriet went back in to count trays in the refrigerator.

There were eight. “Do you think we should take one each and leave the rest in case the others come back?” she asked Jennifer, who had slipped in to check on her patient.

“Are they still cold?”

Harriet nodded. “Not bad.”

“Then we might as well eat them, because they won't stay cold much longer. We'll each take one and split the extras. After all, you did say you had food as well.”

There was plenty of lukewarm coffee and tea left in the thirty-cup urns to go along with Archway Tours special, gourmet-delight snack trays. The children had already classified the sandwiches in the same category as fried liver and boiled carrots, and went from tray to tray, exacting a sort of food tax, and stuffing their pockets with everyone else's peanuts, bits of cheese, and veggies. They collected as many cans of soft drinks as they could carry and declared their intention of going off to look around. Stuart intercepted Harriet's look of alarm and sighed. They were quite used to dealing with hysterical grown-ups, that long-suffering sigh indicated, and with infinite patience he launched into a well-rehearsed routine. “It's just past eight by my watch. We'll explore the road ahead for no more than thirty minutes, stop for ten minutes, and come back. So we'll be back in one hour and ten minutes or less. That's how we do things at home.”

“That's right,” said Caroline. “Then no one is allowed to worry about us until after then.” They turned automatically to Harriet for permission.

Harriet glanced around at the rest of the group, trusting in some sort of consensus from the adults present. They were all studiously regarding other things. Even John, the snake. She looked at her watch and said, “Sure,” feeling extremely annoyed that she had just been elected mother. If anything happened to them, she knew whose fault it would be. “But please watch yourselves, will you? Life will be a lot easier if we don't have to face any more disasters, even minor ones.”

“We'll be careful,” said Caroline. “If we see anything we don't like, we'll come right back. And you're supposed to tell us not to go running into the woods, or getting lost.” With that parting shot, the twins headed up the road, around the crippled bus.

As they rounded the corner out of sight, they were chattering and giggling, and poking at things they saw by the roadside. Now that the sun was shining, they seemed utterly confident that their adventure would be resolved happily. Sanders picked up his coffee and stared at it, wishing he trusted the judgment and crisis management skills of the crew sitting here—and that included himself and Harriet—as much as the children did, and wondering if he had ever in his life before felt so grateful for a cup of lukewarm coffee served in a poly cup. He looked around him. Except for Jennifer Nicholls bobbing back and forth, in and out, checking on her patient, everyone was quiet and relaxed. He nodded to Harriet and began to stroll along the road, very slowly, waiting for her to join him.

“What are you up to?” asked Harriet. “Why all these winks and nods? Conspiracy? Or are you just restless?”

“All of the above,” he admitted. “But it seems to me that some decisions have to be made. And there isn't anyone here willing to take the responsibility.”

“I'm not sure it's that,” said Harriet. “If I were Mrs. Green, I'd be feeling a little helpless at the moment, wouldn't you?”

He paused and looked down. At this point in their stroll, the previous winter's snow and rain and wind had washed away a section of the road and he reflected that it had been a miracle that either clumsy vehicle had made it this far in the dark. The canyon bottom looked to be very far away. “I wish I knew where we were,” he said, pulling a road map out of his back pocket. It had been folded to the area surrounding Santa Fe. “First of all, I don't think we're anywhere near Taos. If anything, we're miles south of where we started out. I'd guess we were on this road,” he added, pointing, “and then went off onto unmarked tracks somewhere between here and here.”

“Maybe isn't much help, is it? Under the circumstances.”

“No. The thing is, they won't be looking for us down here, will they?”

“You mean, when they get around to noticing that a bus has disappeared off the face of the earth?”

“They've noticed. Don't worry about that. This is a busload of tourists with hotel reservations in Taos. We have two kids whose parents expected them to jump off the bus somewhere in the middle of nowhere into their waiting arms. They'll be frantic. We're being searched for with helicopters and dogs and Ouija boards and God knows what else right now. Except I haven't seen or heard a single helicopter. Have you?”

“No, I haven't,” said Harriet. “And I've been looking. So we can't be anywhere near where they expected to find us. And that means it could take them quite a while before they spread out in this direction. What I was wondering about though—” She paused.

“Yes? You were wondering?”

“All those people who left. Why did they go? And do you think they know where we are? Or are they out there alone, lost and starving? Have we been abandoned or are we in the process of being rescued? That's the question, isn't it? Why did they leave?”

“How about because they thought they were going to be shot?” said Sanders lightly.

“Don't be stupid, John.” Harriet was getting exasperated. “They ran after the goons had taken off. Otherwise they would have tripped over them as they were charging out the door.”

“Maybe one of them had a reason to leave,” Sanders observed.

“Possibly,” said Harriet. “Who wants to stick around with a fresh corpse you're responsible for? What about the others, though? If they went for help just as soon as they could—right after the goons left—and if they know where to go, then all we have to do is sit here and survive. If they were just fleeing a sinking ship for dirty motives of their own, we could be waiting a long time.”

“Maybe one of the others knows something we don't,” said John.

“Then let's go back and ask them.”

“Of course we know that a bus has disappeared. The Archway Tours bus. The governor is very concerned. And we're on top of the situation, Mr. Deever.” The governor's personal assistant—or one of them—was sweating visibly as he clutched the telephone hard against his ear, white-knuckled, listening to that cold, angry voice. “It just means we're on top of it. The investigation is going well and we expect a report any moment from the officers in charge. If you don't mind my asking, what's your particular interest in the case? In case the governor wants to know.”

“My fucking wife is on that bus, that's my interest in the case,” said Deever, clearly and precisely. “And I want her back, Frankel. Me, personally. And
we're
working on that. So listen to me, shitface. I don't want any interference. I don't want her talking to some stupid deputy sheriff who thinks he's Superman or something. I want to know what the cops have figured out so far, and I want to know exactly what they're doing, every minute of every day. Do you hear me, Frankel? You'll make sure of all this, won't you, Frankel? Unless you want to go back to that rattlesnake-infested patch of sand and rock your family calls a farm. In a little bag. For good.”

A spasm caught Frankel around the throat. He tried to swallow, failed, and shook his head like a baffled horse. “I'm not sure,” he started. His voice squeaked. “I'm not sure I can get that level of cooperation from the state troopers, Mr. Deever—not minute by minute.”

“Then the governor can. And I expect him to.”

Walt Frankel stared at the telephone in his hand in panic. The last time he had approached the governor on the subject of Carl Deever the reaction had been explosive. Sure, Carl Deever was rich. And money was important. But it seemed the governor had never cared for him much, and since the Santa Rosa hearings he had become pure electoral poison. And Deever didn't understand that. Just because he hadn't been indicted, he seemed to think he was clean. But one murmur in the press that the governor had done anything to ease Deever's path in life and they'd be collecting signatures for a recall.

The stupidest thing Walt Frankel had ever done in his short life had been to exchange a single word with Carl Deever. It had been at the first fancy party he'd been invited to as the governor's new personal assistant. Elated with expensive Scotch and drunk with the magic of his position, he had murmured vaingloriously in Deever's ear that he and the governor were close, that close, and he could deliver him, any time, any issue. And Deever was the kind of bastard who took you literally. The money started coming in.

He sat motionless at his beautiful desk with its telephone and computer, in his office filled with well-tended, lush green plants. He reckoned that there was more growing here in his office than grew by nature over the entire acreage on his parents' miserable ranch. Frankel could feel the sun burning into his neck and taste the fine sand coating the inside of his mouth. The sand that blew in ceaselessly on the wind that never stopped rushing over their dry land. God—how he hated that wind and the sand. As soon as his bank balance was the right size, he was buying himself a chunk of Oregon, where the rain fell and the trees grew and there wasn't any sand. Not that he knew of, anyway. He stared at the blob of dark blue ink on his hand from the pen he'd been chewing. Shit—his mouth must be covered in ink. Ink. Ortiz. Ortiz owed him a big one. The governor's signature would never have landed on that piece of paper if it hadn't been for Walt Frankel. It seemed like a good time to collect.

Johnny Andreas hated trouble. He was willing to go miles out of his way to avoid trouble. That was why he always bought top-of-the-line equipment; that was why he paid top dollar to his permanent employees; that was why he always hired graduate students with top references to shepherd his tours. His buses and refrigerated equipment almost never broke down. His two drivers were always there, on time, cheerful and happy. Why shouldn't they be, as they built up bigger and bigger funds for their retirement? His graduate students were nice, polite, and well educated, and so desperate for money they were eternally grateful to him for their ten-day stints, no expense spared. Of course, that meant he had to run a top-of-the-line set of tours to pay all these exorbitant prices and salaries. But then, profits were good on top-end tours. People loved them and came back for more. He had people who'd taken at least one of his tours every year since he started running them. And now, after all this care and attention to detail, look what happens.

He was sitting in his tiled breakfast room/conservatory, overlooking the patio, at his beautiful tiled breakfast table, with a cup of excellent coffee by his hand, looking at a cop. Who was also sitting with a cup of coffee and had just finished explaining to him what they thought might have happened to his best, his newest state-of-the-art bus.

Johnny Andreas pulled himself together and started with the easiest question to deal with. “What's this ‘relief driver' shit?” he asked. “I didn't call in a relief driver. Bert hasn't missed a tour since I hired him ten years ago. Bert's golden, absolutely golden. I had to call in a relief guide. Lesley Carruthers—she's my regular on the mysticism tour—booked off sick. But I always have a backup ready to call in.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Andreas. You said that you never called in a relief driver on Friday? That Mr. Samson didn't call in sick?”

“Bert didn't call in at all. He just picked up the bus from the service area like always, cleaned and ready, loaded with everything—food, water, you know. And then as far as I know, he drove it over to get it filled and headed for the airport at Santa Fe. That's what he always did.”

“Do you know it was Bert Samson who actually picked up the bus? Because it wasn't Bert Samson at the airport. Charlie Broca saw the driver, and he knows Bert.”

“Sure he knows Bert. Everyone knows Bert. Just a minute.” He grabbed a cordless telephone from the shelf behind him and punched the number two button. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the tiles in front of him while waiting for a response. “Joyce,” he said. “Johnny here. Did Bert sign out number six on Friday?” There was a pause. “Personally? Like someone didn't come in and say he'd sign for him or any crap like that?” He nodded. “Thanks.” He slid the phone back into its place. “Weekends are our busiest times. My staff gets off during the week, Monday to Thursday. To make up, everyone gets a month vacation. They like it,” he added aggressively. “Okay. Bert came in and chatted with Joyce and signed the bus out himself. Wait a minute, though.” He hit button seven. “Tim? Were you working Friday when number six went out?” There was a pause. “What do you mean it didn't go out? And you didn't report it?” He raised an eyebrow and shook his head in disgust. “Good point. We'll have to fix that.” He clicked off the phone and looked over the table. “I can tell you one thing.”