Crosscut (37 page)

 
The China Lake patrol car sped along the asphalt west of town. The sun glared off the hood. The young officer at the wheel, Will Brinkley, drove with single-minded concentration. Dad sat in the backseat behind the mesh screen. If Brinkley had noticed that I wasn’t speaking to my father, he wasn’t commenting.

A thought was nagging me. If Coyote was female, Maureen Swayze was either wrong about Kai Torrance, or she was less than truthful. The asphalt ran out and we were blowing dust behind us, heading toward the tired group of houses near the end of Jimmy’s Ranch Road.

The houses had originally been built to house people who worked at Jimmy Jacklin’s ranch. A couple were now abandoned, and the house belonging to Alma Skinner looked close to derelict as well. We pulled into the gravel driveway and a line of crows took flight off the peak of the roof, buckshot black against the blue sky.

An old Chrysler New Yorker was parked out front, paisley with bird shit. Brinkley stopped and a bolus of dust rolled over the cruiser. We walked to the front porch. A thin arm of crabgrass was nudging the cracked concrete. A wind chime banged off-key.

Brinkley pulled open the creaking screen door and knocked. As he did, my phone rang. I read the display and my heart bounced into fifth gear.
Jesse
.

When I answered it all I heard was static.

“Jesse. Are you there?”

Dad glanced at me sharply. Brinkley knocked again.

Behind the static, I heard Jesse’s voice. “Ev, can you hear . . .” Fading to a hiss.

Brinkley knocked a third time, stepped back and glanced at the windows, perhaps thinking to walk around the house. I shook my head at him and simply turned the doorknob. The door opened.

Jesse’s voice came back. “... in Hollywood, Coyote’s been . . .” Warping out.

“Babe, it’s a bad connection.” I checked. I barely had a signal. “I’m going to lose you.”

The static thickened. Behind it he was shouting. “. . . found your . . . watch out for . . .”

Dead line buzz.

Brinkley leaned through the doorway. “China Lake Police. Anybody home?”

Punching Jesse’s number, I leaned through the doorway after him. “Valerie? Mrs. Skinner? It’s Evan Delaney.”

I could hear a television droning. An air conditioner rattled. Somewhere in the back of the house it sounded as though curtains were flapping against the walls in the wind.

The warning had been in Jesse’s voice. I had heard it. I punched his number and got nothing.
No service
.

Brinkley hesitated in the doorway, unsure about whether to go in. But I had no legal limitations on my behavior, and no such compunctions.

“Val.”

I crossed the minuscule entryway into the living room. The air conditioner was going full blast. In the kitchen a television was playing on the counter. Talk-show hillbillies whined and pointed at one another while a therapist pursed her lips.

The faucet was dripping. I turned it off. The smell in here was one I associated with slobbish college boys negotiating their first apartment: rancid food. On the stove a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup was congealed and moldy.

Brinkley came in.

“Something’s not right here,” I said.

 
Mom was in the lobby at the China Lake police station when Wally and Abbie pounded through the door. Wally was gripping Abbie’s hand and talking on a cell phone to his father.

Abbie pushed her glasses up her nose. “Tell him to put the kids on the sofa and sit his butt on a chair with his shotgun leveled at the middle of the door.”

Her cheeks were red, her blond hair windblown. She looked like a Viking about to swing her sword.

Across the station Tommy was zipping his windbreaker, preparing to head to the Cantwell murder scene and complaining that he would have to ride his motorcycle because all the department’s cars were checked out. Abbie barreled toward him.

“Chang. Coyote’s killing entire households, and my kids are in a cabin near Independence with one tough old man standing between them and what’s out there.”

Tommy stopped, brown eyes alarmed. “Address?”

Wally gave it to him. Tommy told the officer on the front desk to contact the Inyo County sheriffs and get a unit out to Mr. Hankins’s house until the parents got there. The desk officer nodded and picked up the phone. Then the switchboard stopped Tommy from leaving.

“Detective, you’d better take this. We’re putting through a call from a motorist out on the rim road north of town.”

Tommy grabbed the phone. “Yes?”

A woman’s voice, talking rapid-fire, came at him. “She won’t get in the car. She’s a real mess; you need to get out here.”

“Slow down. Back up,” he said.

“I said, we saw this woman jump out of a pickup truck onto the highway. The truck was a big black thing with a bull bar and lights on top.”

“You got the plates?”

“I gave them to the nine-one-one dispatcher. We tried to help but the woman wouldn’t let us. This woman, she’s weaving along the shoulder of the highway on foot and screaming at us when we try to get near. She’s asking for her friends. Says she wants Abbie and Evan.”

Tommy glanced up sharply.

“What?” Abbie said.

The motorist sounded edgy. “This gal, she’s like a cancer patient or something. Every time I try to get close to her she acts like she might attack me. Somebody’s gotta get out here, like right now.”

Tommy glanced at Abbie. “It’s Valerie.”

He explained. She looked at Wally.

“You meet the sheriffs at your dad’s. Tommy and I will get Valerie.”

“We’ll have to wait for a uniformed officer to get back here before we can take a black-and-white,” Tommy said. “When she sees it she may get aggressive.”

Abbie held up her keys. “Big-ass van to the rescue. Wally can take his car to Independence. You go with me. Come on.”

 
Jesse hit her number again. “Answer, Ev. Answer.” He looked at Swayze.

“Coyote’s in China Lake, isn’t she?”

In the living room, Swayze continued pawing through Coyote’s things. She tossed items off of the coffee table and dumped out a backpack.

“I don’t know.”

The phone didn’t ring. He heard static and clicks and blank air.

Swayze let out a sound halfway between surprise and triumph. In her hand she held a necklace: a silver chain from which hung a set of dog tags and a strange, corkscrewed shard of gray metal. It swung, clinking in the sunlight.

“We’ve got her. It’s her talisman. She’ll have to get this, more than if she were a junkie and this was her fix. She thinks it’s her power.” She looked astringent with victory. “Come on; we’re getting out of here.”

He heard the thin wail of sirens in the distance. “That’s the cops. I can’t leave.”

Evan’s phone was out of service. He hung up, found the slip of paper with Phil’s number, but couldn’t get through on that either.

Swayze walked to the kitchen table. “If you stay here, you’ll be arrested for wrecking a murder scene. At this point, your only chance of getting what you want is to come with me and help draw Coyote in.”

Maybe, maybe not. He knew only one thing for certain: He had to get hold of Evan, or somebody who could put her under armed guard. All of them. Now.

“We have a bargain. I get Coyote; you delete that e-mail.” Clutching the talisman, she shook it in his face. “I’m keeping my part. Keep yours. Move it.”

Swayze grabbed Coyote’s computer from the table, shoved it into the grocery cart, and headed for the door.

“Last chance. Once the LAPD rolls up you’re spending the afternoon under interrogation. No phone, no way to get hold of Evan, no way to help her.”

She walked out the door. The sirens were clearer now.

He had to call the China Lake Police Department, but he didn’t have the number, and getting it would take a minute he didn’t have. The sirens were virtually down the block. He heard Swayze’s heels and the grocery cart creaking down the hall.

“Shit.” He went after her.

 
Officer Brinkley and I left the kitchen. In the living room, table lamps were on and an ashtray sat full of cigarette butts. Last week’s issue of
People
magazine was open to a story about the celebrity adoption du jour. Dad was standing in front of the mantel, examining some framed photos. The air conditioning was raising goose bumps on my arms.

Brinkley paused at the head of a hallway. The doors were closed and music was playing. His right hand went to his holster. Unsnapping the latch, he began walking down the hall. I followed him, step by slow step. Again I heard a beating sound, like heavy cloth batting against the walls.

“I think there’s a window open back here somewhere,” I said.

Brinkley put his hand on a doorknob. “Hello?”

He knocked and opened the door. Inside was a tidy bedroom filled with porcelain dolls and fluffy pillows. We kept going. The music got louder. A second bedroom revealed an unmade bed and a suitcase open on the floor, full of women’s clothing. Brinkley continued down the hall, toward the door at the end. I moved to follow him, stopped, and turned back around, looking at the suitcase on the floor. The clothes inside were bright and blowsy.

The music played, singsong. Once more I heard the beating sound. It seemed busy, multilayered, eager.

Brinkley knocked on the door at the end of the hall. “Police.”

The beating sound became frantic, swelling to the same level as the radio. Brinkley put his hand on the doorknob. My stomach went hollow.

“Officer, don’t—”

He opened the door.

The window was broken, the drapes swirling. The beating sound became frenzied and the birds, the flock of crows that carpeted the bed, rose in flight. The air shattered black with wings. Cawing, clawing, they flew at us. I screamed. Brinkley reached for the door but they filled the hallway and crashed against the walls and I kept screaming.

“Evan!’ Dad came running. “Hell on earth—”

Wings, beaks, claws, and stink caromed around the hallway. I dropped to the floor in a ball, heard them fly overhead, and got to my knees and crawled for the living room. Behind me came the sound of Brinkley discharging his gun into the bedroom. A wall of sound shrieked from the room, crows cawing like banshees.

My glimpse inside the bedroom had lasted only a second, but I had seen. The birds were feasting. They were fighting one another in a pile three feet deep, ripping chunks of flesh out of a carcass on the bed.

 
The rim road paralleled the edge of the base north of town, a black strip running through bare desert in tandem with the razor wire. Fifteen miles out into the emptiness Abbie saw Valerie staggering down the center of the asphalt.

Tommy put his hand on the dashboard. “Oh, crap, look at her.”

She was limping away from them, trying to run. Abbie pulled to the side of the road behind her and opened the door. Tommy grabbed her arm.

“Wait.”

“What?”

He scanned the uneven terrain. “Something’s off. Where’s the motorist who called in about this?”

Abbie looked around as well. At every turn there was nothing but sand and scrub.

She waved at Valerie. “Then let’s get her and get out of here.”

Valerie turned to face them.

“Oh, my God,” Abbie said.

Her hair was a mess, her wig askew. Her face was worse, bright red with scratches, as though she’d hit a cactus. Her blouse was torn. A patchy streak of blood ran diagonally across it.

Tommy took his gun from the holster. They got out and walked quietly toward her, Tommy holding the revolver at his side, barrel pointed at the ground. His eyes swept the desert, the hills and rocks and gullies. Heat swelled off the asphalt. As they approached Valerie began backing away.

“No,” she said.

Her eyes looked at Abbie without recognition. One was blue, pinprick pupil. The other was dilated wide open, deep and black. She raised her hands to fend them off. Abbie stopped on the center line of the road, ten feet from her.

Valerie waved her arms. “Keep back.”

Abbie raised a hand. “Val, it’s me. It’s Abbie.”

Val pointed at Tommy. “Look out; he has a gun. Put away the gun; put away that fucking gun.”

Tommy calmly holstered it. “Val, it’s cool. Come on; it’s just us.”

She looked around wildly. “Where is he? Is he gone?”

Abbie gave Tommy a sidelong glance and spoke quietly. “We have to get her to the hospital asap.”

“I know.”

Valerie backed away from them. “Where’s Evan? Evan was with me before. I want to see Evan; get her out of the car.”

“Evan’s not with us, Val.”

“Where is she? What’s wrong? Why isn’t she here?” She pointed at them. “She ran away to the safe place with your kids, didn’t she? Why won’t you tell me where everybody’s going?”

“What happened to you, Val?” Tommy said.

“Jumped out of his truck.”

“Coyote?”

“Opened the door and jumped out.”

“Where’d he go?”

She pointed west, toward the long miles of slope heading toward Highway 14.

Sweat creased its way into Abbie’s eyes and tickled its way down her back. She inched toward Valerie, wiping her hand across her forehead.

“Val, we have to get you in the van. It’s cool in there. We have a first-aid kit. Come on; you’re safe now.”

Valerie turned, tried to run, and fell. They rushed to her side. When Abbie put a hand on her back, Valerie flailed at her. She fell back to the asphalt, chest heaving.

Tommy said, “Come on; let’s get her in the car. This whole scene reeks.”

“What do you mean?”

He kept looking around, but there was nothing to see but sand and rocks and the road.

“Val escaping from Coyote in this condition?” He shook his head. “I have a bad feeling. Like Coyote let her go.”