Flash Flood (15 page)

He certainly hadn't said anything about that yesterday. But wasn't it more plausible that satanic worshipers, someone from across the border, was responsible? They were close to Mexico. Maybe less than two hours' drive. That would rule out Dona Mari, too. At least, he hoped it would.

“Is witchcraft practiced openly around here?”

“Depends on what you mean by witchcraft. You comfortable with the supernatural?” Hank stopped just outside the clinic area to let two young men pass leading a yearling bull between them before he pushed open the door that exposed an absolutely spotless hospital operating room.

“I'd like to think I have an open mind,” Dan said but some might not agree to that; he thought fleetingly of Dona Mari as he followed Hank through the door.

“I've grown up with it. Once when I was seven, I came down with a high fever. My mother called in a
bruja
who was also a nurse. She put a raw egg in a glass of water and put the glass under the cot I was lying on then said some words. Before morning the egg was cooked solid and my fever was gone.”

Hank seemed to be waiting for him to say something. Difficult to discount firsthand information. “Sounds like she saved your life. Is that the calf?” Dan didn't wait for Hank to add anything more to his story but walked toward the bloated carcass of an eight- or nine-hundred-pound heifer in the middle of a heavy, green canvas tarp on the floor near a drain.

“Yeah. I had the boys bring her in earlier. They can help move her if you need a better angle.”

Dan thought the angle was probably just fine. It was the smell that needed some work. Rotting flesh and antiseptic. Shortcake Dream hadn't been frozen fresh, that he knew, and having her out here in the barely air-conditioned clinic wasn't doing her any favors.

There was something wrong with the head, but it wasn't until he moved around to the front of the calf that he saw what was puzzling him. All the skin had been removed from the jaw, pulled right down over the nose with a precision cut appearing surgically perfect and starting just below her eye. One ear was missing. Completely gone. A perfectly round incision with neat, smooth edges and a circle the size of a fifty cent piece was all that was left.

“It's like laser surgery,” Hank said.

“What?”

“Cuts like this one.” Hank knelt by the cow's head and pointed to the missing ear. “And this eye socket, this eye was removed with instruments, sophisticated ones. Trust me. It took medical training to do this.”

“The tongue's missing.” It wasn't so much a question as a comment.

“Weird, huh? The DNA and chromosomes of cattle, though, are close to human. So, some like to think that all this is done in the name of alien science. But, what do you think they'd do with an entire eye, or ear, or tongue?”

Dan didn't answer, and had an idea that Hank would tell him if he kept quiet.

“It's almost like they're collecting replacement parts for some of their clones,” Hank said.

“Clones?”

“Theory is that those big-eyed small guys are just clones. The real ‘people' stay back on the ship. They say that's why that one they found alive in '47 wasn't saved. There wasn't anything to save.”

Dan studied the carcass. There hadn't been much, if any, blood. It could have been suctioned off or it had retreated to the major organs. Then there were the sex organs, or rather lack of them. They were gone. Another surgically perfect hole in her udder, teats missing, rectum intact but anus cut away. And there was a penis, the tip of a penis from what was probably a very young bull calf, tucked in her throat.

“Anyone ever find the bull calf?”

“The one who gave up a part of his anatomy? No. We looked, too. Didn't seem to come from our herd or anyone else's nearby.”

“Was there anything else you noticed about the body when you first saw it?” Dan remembered the goo described by Sheriff Ray.

“As usual, the mouth and rear had this clear jelly around it.”

Dan let the ‘as usual' go by. It was obvious that this wasn't Hank's first brush with a so-called alien killing.

***

He hadn't called. Elaine had checked the answering machine a dozen times. It was working. She'd left a message at the Silver Spur, and it wasn't returned. Daniel Mahoney was not going to get back in touch, at least not for awhile.

And she was absolutely baffled. How could she be so far off? Wrong in her assessment of character, in her assessment of how much this budding relationship meant to him. She had relived that night a thousand times. The chemistry was explosive. She could not have improved upon the love-making. It was the same for him. She knew it.

Could he be one of those types who got immersed in his work? Forgot about all else? Well, she wasn't one to sit around. Serve him right if she wasn't there when he decided to call. And she knew he would. Someday. When chasing down clues about dead cattle got old.

Simon nudged her arm for another bite of French toast.

“If and when your father comes back, you better remember what you learned in school and don't tell him about begging at the table.”

It was like she had been abandoned with a child. At least she knew he'd come back for his dog. Comical. It smacked of junior high. Will he call? Should I call? Guess things were a little more straightforward today. She remembered the calls that Matthew got, girls on the regular line, girls on call waiting. She'd given him his own phone two years ago.

Still she wasn't exactly knowledgeable about the rules. She'd been married for almost twenty years. Maybe she had misread the situation with Dan. One thing was for certain, she needed to get on with her life. Make decisions about the sabbatical, get away for a few days. No more waiting around looking eager.

“Simon, how 'bout a trip?” At the sound of his name, Simon pushed to a sitting position and watched her intently.

“Why don't we go to the woods? I bet a certain city dog hasn't chased a squirrel outside a city park.”

The chairman of her department had a cabin in the Jemez Mountains northwest of Albuquerque, an easy half day's drive from Roswell. He was offering it all the time. Well, she'd take him up on it. Just three or four days. Solitude, long walks, maybe some fishing. Simon would love it. She would love it. No phones, so she couldn't be caught sitting around waiting for one to ring.

It was set. The cabin was vacant. She loaded camping equipment into Matthew's pickup, thank God she'd talked him out of taking it with him; food for one human and one dog, fishing poles, tackle, a cooler of ice and soft drinks and was on the road by two. She'd left a note on the back door and a message on Dan's answering machine at his apartment. Didn't want to get caught dog-napping.

Simon was thrilled. He sat beside her on the front seat for the first one hundred miles then leaned against her and sort of slid down to sleep with his head pushed into her side. He felt good; she missed Buddy. This was just the sort of trip Buddy had lived for. She wasn't certain that Simon had too many car-trips under his belt, but he was a trooper. With frequent stops and a couple snacks, the four and a half hours whizzed by.

They reached the cabin just as the sun was setting. Elaine emptied the car then returned to the cabin's roughed-out front porch to watch the rose and cream of the sky spread above the mammoth evergreens. Everything smelled fresh with a lingering scent of pine. Simon couldn't seem to stop running, investigating one tree, marking it before bounding further into the woods and then racing back to make sure she was still there.

Elaine poured herself a Diet Coke, grabbed a sweater, and returned to the porch. Solitude. Somehow she was feeling better already. Simon finally tired and lay beside her sprawled on his side, feet twitching with some happy puppy dream of game that got away.

It was cold before she went inside and lit the oil lamp so that she could see to build a fire. Rustic was perhaps an understatement. The cabin's log frame needed repair. There were chinks between the beams that framed the two windows. A good reason it was best to visit in the summer. The first week in September was pushing it. The one room was spacious—for two people or one and a dog. There was running water and a tiny bathroom to one side of the kitchen. Sparse, but perfect. Exactly what she needed.

Simon watched her as she spread the foam cushion in front of the fire, unrolled the sleeping bag on top of it, and stretched out. Simon flopped down at the foot of her floor-bed and was instantly asleep.

Watching fires had always been soothing. She roused once to throw on another log and let Simon out. While she waited for him to return, she slipped into a long flannel night shirt. Simon came snuffling back to the door and was asleep before she had gotten back into the sleeping bag. She was beat but relaxed and felt better than she had in days.

She hadn't brought a clock but her watch said eight when she awoke to the sun pushing its way across the floor. She hadn't meant to sleep away the day. Simon wolfed a bowl of dry dog food and begged to go out. She fixed coffee and sat on the porch listening to the birds. It was so unbelievably tranquil in the woods. She always wondered why she didn't get away more often. She'd make sure the sabbatical included lots of getaways.

The fishing poles were a little worse for wear. She couldn't remember when they had last been used. It had been years. She and Matthew had wet a few lines together. She could remember him so well at ten or twelve. How did he get to be eighteen?

The Jemez river was no more than thirty feet from the back of the cabin. She almost tripped over Simon as she half climbed, half slid down the steep bank. Once at the bottom she followed the narrow river to a bend that formed a deep pool around a cluster of rocks. Perfect for trout.

The day was warming rapidly so she stripped to a cotton short-sleeved shirt and shorts, discarding sweater and jeans on the bank. This was more like it. In fact, wading seemed more inviting than fishing. At least Simon thought so. With all his splashing, the fish were probably in the next county by now.

Slipping off her hiking boots, Elaine stood at the edge of the river where the bottom was covered with small smooth gravel. The water was like ice, joltingly fresh.

She walked upriver collecting rocks, ones with sparkling mica caught in layers or their surfaces tumbled shiny by the river; she lost track of time but knew that she was at peace, that she didn't want this feeling to end. She whistled for Simon. He'd disappeared into the woods on the opposite bank and had been gone too long. She whistled again. No dog.

Then she saw Simon in the distance walking beside a man still half hidden by the trees. Dan. Yes. Didn't she have a feeling that he'd find them? She'd left a map with her note. But as she watched, she knew it wasn't Dan. But how could this person be so familiar? When she first heard the screams, she had no idea they were hers, no idea that she was stumbling backward cutting her feet on sharp rocks, scrambling up the bank to safety. Safety? How could you be safe from a dead man?

And then she stopped. Stopped the running, the screaming and sank to her knees in the tall grass and stared. She practiced taking long deep breaths until, when he was splashing across the water to join her, she could say, “I should never have buried an empty box.”

His laugh hadn't changed. He stood there looking down at her, amused, more handsome than she remembered with a body chiseled from years in the prison gym. Self-contained, self-centered or both. The smirky smile, the lock of hair that fell forward, a world of memories blocked her from thinking clearly.

“So, what's new, kiddo?”

She laughed, leaned back, a hand shielding her eyes. Here was Eric, alive, standing in front of her like nothing had happened. Like he hadn't been gone for seven years; like he hadn't died. Laughter bubbled up from some recess, not a reaction to humor but that first step after screaming when the conscious mind doesn't want to believe. And she could feel herself slip closer to the edge of some cliff, some abyss, a black hole she'd never get out of. She mentally kept this vision from fully forming, struggled to push it far back where it couldn't come forward to envelop her and simply said,

“Something tells me your life's been more interesting.”

He held out his hand to help her up and she hesitated, maybe only a nanosecond, but she felt reluctant to touch him. It was sort of like someone had held out a bowl of peeled grapes at Halloween and told you after you'd felt them that they were dead men's eyeballs. But his hand was warm and very much alive. Yet in a rush she realized what was trying to sift to the surface of her thinking—she was feeling disappointment. Bitter disappointment. She had wanted this man dead, out of her life. She was rocked by the enormity of it. Could she really be thinking that? What kind of person rejoiced in another's misfortune? Or was it like her shrink had said, it was easier to accept death as an ending than continue to work through her feelings and reach conclusions, however painful?

“Should we go back to the cabin?” Eric said.

She nodded, then pulled her hand away. “I need to find my shoes.”

Eric talked on the way back of the flood, how lucky he'd been to be washed free of the car, how he'd been living on a little money he'd put away but was stealing what he could, food, clothing, gun, the motorcycle he'd ridden up here. There was a lot of bravado, but then hadn't there always been?

Eric dragged another chair onto the porch. They sat in silence both watching Simon patrol the edge of the woods. Elaine found herself curious about what Eric wanted to do now. There was still the question of why he had waited this long to step forward. Why had he wanted to stay dead? Still wanted to, it seemed. Elaine broke the silence first.

“What advantage is there to hiding?”

She thought he looked like he might not answer. The muscle in his jaw in front of his ear twitched, then stopped. But she knew she would demand an answer. She wasn't going to play games, ones that could ruin her reputation, cost her her job. Maybe she had made some decisions without knowing it. But she had to be on guard, keep herself from relaxing, slipping back into the old familiar, not questioning, just “going with the flow” behavior of so many years.