Cold River Resurrection (31 page)

Tara sat up, found Steve and the others who crawled with him.  She shook her head as Myoko went limp.  “She's dead,” Tara said matter of factly.  “She and Gretchen were standing . . .”

She stared at them.  Steve and Delores and Sabrina, Robert and Carl. The professor had finally dropped. Kneeling in the grass, he looked wildly around at the rest of them. Tara gently placed Myoko’s head down.

They sat there and no one said a word.  Tara heard Delores crying quietly behind her.  Then the ammunition from the helicopter's guns cooked off in the heat from the fire, popped and crackled loudly, sounding as if a string of firecrackers had been thrown in a campfire.  Tara pressed her face in the grass, the blades sharp against her skin.  She raised her head slowly, and glimpsed men with guns slowly walking toward them, searching the opening in the rocks and the area around the helicopter.

“Stay down,” Steve said, and nodded toward the approaching men.  Tara caught sudden movement off to her right, and Mario and Ruppert jumped up and ran for the other side of the meadow.  Tara wanted to reach out and grab them, hold them.  Mario's straw hat blew off and it hung there, suspended as if it were a child's kite.   

They're only boys, playing tag in a meadow, and this isn't really happening, a woman with no feet, a helicopter burning up, people with guns. . . .

The man nearest them swung his AK-47 and fired a long burst, shooting at the two guides as they ran. Mario dropped immediately, his life ending in mid-stride, crumpling to the grass and out of sight.  Ruppert ran with blood pumping from his shoulder, limping now.  The others in the meadow fired at him, his body jerking and spinning as he went down.  Tara stared at the man who fired first, watching as the rifle shook, the long distinctive banana clip protruding from beneath it.  The shooter had short-cropped black hair beneath a straw hat.  He wore a dirty white shirt and black pants, as if he were a waiter sneaking a smoke in the woods behind a lodge.  She noticed dirt on his hands and then he spotted them.   

He held his rifle up high over his head and yelled, “Alto!”

The others then continued to fire, long after Mario and Ruppert had dropped to the grass.  One by one they stopped and looked at the man with dirt on his hands.

“Tara.”  Carl grabbed her shoulder and leaned in close, their heads touching.  “Tara,” he whispered, “they see us now.  We'll never all make it away from them. I'm going to try to slip away and get help.”

She nodded, grabbed his hand.  “Carl, you must let them know, let my
tila
, my grandfather, know what has happened.  Get to a phone somehow.”               

“Yeah, if I can.”

“Call him,” Tara whispered fiercely, her throat tight.  He had blood on his clothes, his hands. It must be from Myoko, he didn’t seem hurt.  She released her grip on his wrist and he calmly wiped his hands on his face, the blood making hideous streaks.  It reminded Tara of mourning, and she knew in a way it was . . . the death of their new friends and their innocence.  Carl slid away on his stomach, worming his way backward toward the rocks twenty feet away.

The men with rifles strode toward their huddled group.  The man with the dirty hands yelled something directly at them, but Tara didn’t understand.

Still sitting, Steve threw his hands in the air.  Tara slowly lifted her hands and watched this man who appeared to be the leader.

She counted about a dozen men in all.  As they walked across the meadow they pointed their rifles at them. 

There's nothing we can do.  They're gonna kill us.

Tara flinched, expecting to hear shots when the gunmen discovered Carl, but none came.  Their little group was surrounded.

The man nearest, the one who had shot Mario and Ruppert, the one with dirty hands, moved his rifle barrel up, motioning for them to stand.  Steve got to his feet, spoke to the man evenly in Spanish.

“We're students, we mean no harm.”

The man swung his rifle into Steve's head, the barrel connecting with a crack that made Tara jump.  Steve staggered back but didn't go down and stood there swaying.  A thin stream of blood rolled down his scalp.

Tara rose, her legs shaking until she thought they would buckle. Dirty Hands scanned her and then the group. 

She gazed past him to the meadow, the heat from the helicopter bright on her face.  She saw the cloth from the dead woman's purple and brown robe, and further over, a flash of white from where Mario lay.             

Grandfather, Tila, don't let this happen.

Steve flashed her a slight smile, and she stared at Dirty Hands as he turned the assault rifle toward them.

And suddenly Tara knew that all was lost.  After her parents died, she still had family.  She had a Tribe.

Save me, Grandfather.

But Tila is old, and his power is for the reservation, and like the woman in the meadow, we're all going to die here.  Die away from home.  Die here with no feet.

As Tara waited with the others, waiting to be shot, she glanced down and saw her pad on the ground in front of her, the pages blown open to her latest sketch, a sketch of a woman lying in tall grass, a dead woman with no feet. 

I have always known about death before it happens.  I’m afraid to tell my best friends, my family. Maybe this will not be the worst day of my life.

Not by half.

Death follows me.

Preview to Fatal Flowers

IN THE ARMS OF A KILLER

              Ellie stumbled for the opening, the crumbling hole in the rock.

             
The voice from the opening stopped her cold.

             
“Come,” it said. “Come, you must meet my lovelies.”

             
“Nooo,” Ellie screamed. She threw herself backward and flipped over, crawling away, scrabbling.

             
Powerful hands caught her and pulled her back.

             
She clawed at the rocks, panting, grunting, her hands becoming slimy with blood as her palms and finger pads shredded, sobbing, not feeling anything except the awful burning for survival and the knowledge that she failed.

             
She was pulled back, screaming . . .

             
She met the killer.

             
And, she met his lovelies.

“Fatal Flowers
is a chillingly authentic look into the blackest depths of a psychopath’s fantasies. Not for the faint-hearted . . . Smith’s a cop who’s been there, and a writer on his way straight up. Read this on a night when you don’t need to sleep. You won’t . . .”

-Ann Rule, bestselling author of
Small Sacrifices

FATAL FLOWERS

ENES SMITH

Kindle Edition

Copyright 2011 Enes Smith

FRIDAY

JUNE

30

Northwest Arizona

Sundown

              The van showed the sand of the high desert as it slowed and pulled into the pump island of the service station.  An hour after sundown, the night air was starting to cool from the heat of the day. The bell rang twice, bringing the attendant awake in the fishbowl of the office. The attendant, a kid barely out of his teens, shook his head and tried to focus on what rang the bell. It sure wasn’t usual for it to ring at this hour. Not much business after dark.

The driver sat with his head resting on the seat back, letting his shoulders sag. He should have felt rested, having slept until noon, but he had a thousand miles ahead of him before he could stop. Before he would feel safe enough to stop.

The race up from Phoenix had drained him. He’d taken State Highway 93 northwest, through Sun City, up through the high desert country of Wickenburg and hit I-40 just 20 miles east of Kingman. The desert had resembled a solar landscape, lonely and forbidding in the twilight, eerie in the moonlight, and had not helped the feeling that someone was after him.

And maybe someone was.

It was always this way when he got tired. With a full night of rest, he knew that nothing could stop him.

The kid approached the van, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Good thing the damned van stopped after all, he thought. He needed this job, piece of shit that it was at minimum wage, and it wouldn’t do to let the owner catch him sleeping.

“Help you, mister?” It was dark inside the van, with the roof blocking out most of the floodlights that lit up the lot.

“
Fill it.” The voice was tired, disinterested.

The kid started the pump. Be damned if I wash the windows, he thought, and then he heard the whimpering coming from inside the van. Some people just didn't take care of their animals
, shouldn't be allowed to own a dog.

He shrugged and icily dug at a pimple with his fingernail. Wasn't his conce
rn.

             
Jesus, this thing sure takes a lot.              Be out here all night. Already over two hundred dollars worth and not stopping yet.
He looked up from the pump and along the van, where he caught the eyes of the driver on him in the side mirror,

“
Hey, mister, we just went over two hundred dollars. You want more?” He scratched at the pimple again, wanting to get back to his chair.

“Fill it.”

When the hose clicked to the off position, the total was two hundred twenty-eight dollars. The attendant went forward to collect. He heard the whimpering again, louder this time, eerie, and it sent shivers down his legs. Something in the van wanted out.

“
Hey, mister, that'll be two hundred twenty-eight dollars. How big a tank you say you got in this thing?”

The driver handed him
two hundred thirty dollars, and still said nothing. The whimpering came again.

“
Mister, we can let your dog out if you want. He must be pretty hot and tired now, and I heard him back there, and---.”

“
Where can I eat in Kingman?” the driver demanded. The attendant started to lean in the open window. There was something about this man, something that caused the hair to come up on his neck and arms as he got closer. The whimpering started again. He felt the van shift as something moved inside . . . something trembled . . . and he started to back away, shaky. “Really, you can let your—.” The hand shot out and grabbed him by the neck so fast that all the air was shut off from his throat.

“
Look, shitass,” the driver growled in the kid's face. Tell me where the fucking restaurant is, and I'll take care of my own animals, okay?"

He pulled the attendant up from his already sagging knees.
“Just nod your head if you really understand me.”

The attendant was shaking so hard he couldn't tell if his head was nodding. The man's breath was in his face, cold. He was starting to gurgle. The fingers clamped to his throat loosened, and he sucked in a ragged breath. The fear came up again, and he could feel the fried egg sandwich he'd eaten just sitting there, right below the hand.

The whimpering was louder now, the dog or dogs in the van starting to shake it. The driver released the attendant's throat. The kid gasped and pulled some more air in, then remembered the command.

“
One mile.” He bent over in a fit of coughing.

“
One . . . uh . . . one mile that way.” He pointed north down the highway. The van pulled out, accelerating onto the highway, and the kid held onto the pumps, waiting for the sickness to pass. When he thought that the van was far enough away, he raised his hand and jabbed his middle finger at the darkened back window.

“
Motherfucker,” he croaked, rubbing his throat on his way back inside.

He thought later that the whimpering really didn't sound like a dog after all.

Phoenix  11 a.m.

CHAPTER

1

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport baked in the late morning sun, the heat shimmering off its runways a visible, living thing. The temperature was 93 degrees Fahrenheit. In the shade. The hot part of the day was still hours away.

Inside the terminal, the temp was a cool, almost cold, 75 degrees. The concourses were surprisingly crowded for the start of summer, the off season for the sprawling desert community that would be a giant sauna for the next few months. The travelers were mostly women, retired, wid
owed by husbands who were planted somewhere in New York or New Jersey, victims of stress and cholesterol and gotta-have-enough-money-so-we-can-retire-in-Florida-or-Arizona. They came south with friends and tour groups, wondering why they didn't do this when Norwood or Bert or Harry was alive.

On her last day, Ellie Hartley had a drunk removed from one of her shops at the airport.

What a miserable jerk, Ellie thought. She stood in the doorway of her office and watched the customer hustling Donna, her new clerk, listening to his not very original line of boozy seduction. She was vaguely aware of the stream of travelers going by on the concourse that ran the length of her store.

The drunk was getting loud, insistent, his slurred speech dissonant, out of place among the morning travelers and
shoppers at the airport. He staggered backward and caught his balance in a way that defied both the law of gravity and that of substance abuse, the stagger a strangely smooth roll on ball bearings, a curious kind of break dance, a dance in slow motion that only drunks can do. The customers and clerk watched.

The drunk didn't seem to notice.

This kind of thing didn't usually happen so early in the day, although Ellie knew that some people used a morning flight as an excuse to start drinking as soon as the stews could serve alcohol. She left her office and started through the store, her irritation growing as she listened.

“
C'mon honey, you just slip out from behind that counter and I'll buy you a drink,” the drunk said. His face was flushed, his eyes watery. He lurched forward this time, over the glass counter. He was wearing some kind of godawful yellow jacket, a reincarnation of an old leisure suit, with a black shirt open down his chest, complete with gold chains. His stomach pushed the bottom part of the shirt out and onto the glass display case. Christ, the guy must be all of fifty or fifty-five, Ellie thought, trying to hustle a nineteen-year-old college kid.

She could see his yellow, tobacco-stained teeth from across the store. Why me, and why today? She had too much to do on this particular Friday. The sour knot beginning to form in her stomach reminded Ellie how much she hated this kind of unpleasant confrontation. Maybe the guy would get discouraged and leave.

“Cmon, I said, le's go have a drink,” he yelled, his face thrust closer yet to the new clerk.

“
Sir . . . I, uh, I can't do that,” Donna said, flustered and uncertain.

The drunk suddenly reached across the counter for the girl, hitting a display of Bic lighters in the process. The lighters scattered on the floor behind the counter, spreading out like a school of multicolored fish. Donna jumped back,
scared, and threw a wild look in the direction of Ellie's office.

Ellie walked quickly through her store toward the counter, anger rising visibly to her face. She slipped around the clothing racks hung with
Arizona State University sweatshirts, blouses, swimsuits, and evening wear. She was wearing a stylish beige linen suit with a pale blue silk blouse, and had the store been full of customers, several heads would have turned to watch the pretty, blond, thirty-year-old owner of Karen's, Inc., approach the counter.

There were only four other customers, three of them elderly ladies waiting several safe steps behind the drunk, each clutching her purchase to her like a well-worn purse, trying not to look at the scene at the counter. An Indian man, older yet than the ladies, stood behind them, his head appearing well above their blue hair, his face weathered into wrinkled parchment. Ellie thought that he looked something like the old Indian-turned-movie-actor, Chief Dan George.

He stood with his arms crossed, looking at the stupid drunk white man with the gray hair—hair that was slicked and swept forward like that rock and roller Elvis used to wear his.

“
I'll take over, Donna,” Ellie said, and got a grateful look as Donna stepped back to let her into the space behind the cash register. The drunk saw her for the first time.

“
Hey, now, girlie, jus'a minute . . . I was talking to the guh—.”

             
“She has other things to do,” Ellie said evenly. "Now, may I help you, sir? I believe these ladies behind you would like to . . .”

“Hell with what they'd like,”
he said loudly, thrusting his blotched face within inches of Ellie's, the sour booze on his breath invading the small space.

Ellie's heart jumped up in her chest, and then began skipping along, fairly humming as she closed the fear down
tight, letting her anger up through it. Take control, Ellie girl, she thought, willing her heart to slow down, wanting to tell the drunk to get the hell out of her store and leave them alone. Always the diplomat, she tried to appease him instead.

“
Sir, if you would like to make a purchase—.”

             
“I don't want to buy any of your shit, lady!” he yelled, cutting her off, his face even more flushed. The smell of his booze and anger jolted Ellie's stomach, and she took an involuntary step back. The ladies flinched at the yelling and recoiled in a wave, as if they were one person.

“
I was just talking to the girl here, and you came along and—what the hell--!”

The drunk screamed.

He was suddenly yanked off his feet, legs twitching out of control. Ellie caught a glimpse of the Indian's weathered face above the drunk, expressionless as when he was waiting in line behind the ladies. He spun the drunk around and gave him a push. Ellie let out a slow breath, and then the jerk was gone, or at least out of the store, judging by the yelling out in the concourse.

The three ladies were still standing with the items they had picked out, hesitant. Poor dears are probably scared to death, Ellie thought. She smiled and called to them, seeming more cheerful than she felt. Her knees were still shaking. She hated that helpless, scared feeling.

“Ladies, can I help you?” They came to the counter and solemnly presented their purchases. Ellie laughed and said, "Too much tequila in the morning, what do you think?”

She soon had the ladies chattering and laughing, and they left the store, with promises to come back when their vacation trip ended. Donna came back behind the counter and began to pick up the lighters.

“I'm sorry, I guess I didn't handle him very well.”

“
I didn't do very well myself,” Ellie said as she kneeled to help Donna. She threw her arm around the younger girl and gave her a hug, getting an appreciative look in return.

Ellie laughed again, feeling better, her anger dissipating.

“Bet that jerk will look around a little more carefully before he tries that again. Did you see the way his feet dangled?” she said, and they both gave way to laughter. Donna dropped her share of the lighters and leaned back against the display case.

“Did you see that asshole's face?”
Donna shrieked, and then stopped, looking over at Ellie. “Sorry.”

“
He was an asshole,” Ellie agreed. “No need to apologize.” They laughed again, and bumped into each other on the floor, getting the last of the lighters. Ellie straightened, and looked into the weathered face of their savior, He gave her a hint of a smile and dropped a five on the counter for a sack of Bugle cigarette tobacco and some Top “roll your own” papers.

“
Thanks for saving us from that .              . . uh . . . unpleasant man,” Ellie said. Donna started to giggle beside her. Ellie wanted to present him with a gift, or at least give him the tobacco, but thought, correctly, that he would refuse and insist on paying for it. She took the five and gave him his change.

The parchment-faced Indian winked at her and left the store, slipping into the crowded concourse.