Ill Wind (33 page)

Cold was settling into the low places and Anna’s spirits settled with it. In the wee small hours of the morning, as the song went, was when she missed him most of all. The long and most thoroughly dead Zachary, the husband of her heart—or as Molly caustically put it when Anna waxed maudlin—the husband of her youth, back when all things were possible, all dreams unfolding.

Stacy’s haunting brown eyes had a ghost of Zachary’s intensity, a shadow of his remembered wit. Unfortunate as Meyers’ death was, Anna knew it saved her from making a complete ass of herself. Had the affair become full blown, her life would have disintegrated into that morass of guilt, deceit, and recrimination even the most carefully orchestrated adultery engenders.

Despite Stacy’s avowals of dedication to Rose, Anna had little doubt that the affair would have blossomed. Lust leveraged by memory was a powerful force. Ultimately it must have disappointed them both. The Hindus preached that there were three thousand six hundred gates into heaven. Anna doubted adultery was one of them. Like alcohol, it was just a short vacation from life-as-we-know-it.

Stanton’s long fingers closed around her knee and Anna was startled into thinking a short vacation might be just what the doctor ordered.

“Listen,” he whispered.

She strained her ears but heard nothing. “Sorry, too much loud rock-and-roll music in my youth.”

“Shhh. Listen.”

An engine growled in the distance. “I hear it now.” They fell quiet again, tracking the sound. Anna frisked herself, loosened the baton in its holster, unclipped her keys from her belt, and put them in her shirt pocket where they wouldn’t jingle when she moved.

“If the tracks are any indication, the truck will pull in, headlights on the slash pile, turn perpendicular to the canyon, headlights pointed somewhere south of us, then back as close to the rim as possible to make the dump.” Stanton went over ground they’d covered in earlier discussions. “I’ll stay here. Maybe work my way further around where I can get some clear pictures of the truck, the license plate, and, if we’re lucky, the driver actually unstoppering the tank.”

“Nothing like a smoking gun,” Anna said. Then, because it was safer than assuming, she spoke her part: “I go behind the car, get the shotgun, stay put, shut up, and hope your career as a photographer is long and uneventful.”

“Let’s do it.”

Anna felt Stanton squeeze her knee, then he was gone without a sound, like the mythical Indian scouts in children’s books. Moving as quietly as she could, Anna was still aware of the crack and scuffle of her footfalls. She comforted herself with the thought that it was like chewing carrots, more audible to the doer of the deed than any accidental audience members.

In less than two minutes, she’d popped the trunk, unsheathed the shotgun, and was in place by the left rear fender of the car, trying to regain the night vision the trunk light had robbed her of. “Damn,” she cursed herself. It was those details that got one killed. If the flash of light from the trunk had been seen, they’d either be in for a fight or the truck would simply keep going, taking all the good, hard courtroom proof of malfeasance with it.

Prying her mind from this treadmill of extraneous thought, Anna slowed her breathing and opened her senses. A feeling of clean emptiness filled her, body and mind receptive to the physical world: the earth firm beneath her feet, the smooth wood of the shotgun stock against her palms, the breeze on her right cheek, the weight of her duty belt, the smell of pine, the sounds of the night and the engine.

Fragments of light began filtering through the trees. She closed her eyes and turned her head away as the truck grew close. Spots of orange danced across her eyelids. The drone became a roar and she felt a moment’s panic that she would be run down.

Lights moved, the roar grew louder. She opened her eyes. Headlights stabbed into the woods on the east side of the clearing. Confident the din would cover any sound, she moved to the end of the slash pile and took a stand behind a dead pine branch.

Racket and exhaust filled the clearing, then the sound of clanging as a big red water truck backed toward the canyon. When it was less than a yard from the cliff edge, the roar settled to an idle and the clanging stopped. Placing her feet as much from memory as sight, Anna moved to the rim of the canyon. Twin sandstone blocks, each the size of a small room, were at her back. To the left, between her and the cliff, were three stunted piñon trees. They were scarcely taller than she, but on this harsh mesa, could’ve been a hundred years old or more. A bitterbrush bush eight or ten feet tall screened her from the water truck with spiny brown arms.

Headlights were switched off. The night drew close. Far to the west heat lightning flickered from cloud to cloud. If there was distant thunder the truck drowned it. Engine noise filled all available space, creating confusion where stillness and clarity had reigned.

Tingling in her fingers let Anna know she’d tensed, her grip was too tight. Again she opened her mind, rocked on the balls of her feet, and moved her hands slightly on the shotgun. Over the idle of the engine she heard the slamming of a door. In her mind she heard the click of the camera shutter as Stanton captured the driver on film, the door, the truck, the license plate.

A shadow came around the back of the water truck, bent down, and began pulling or pushing at something. Envying Stanton his infrared scope, she strained her eyes, opening them so wide tears started, but there was no more ambient light to be gathered and she could see nothing more.

Metal clanked on metal and a liquid hiss followed as something cascaded onto the packed earth. Anna smelled almonds. Memories from old movies and Agatha Christie novels flooded sickeningly through her mind. Cyanide gas was said to smell of almonds. She stopped breathing—a temporary solution at best and one not conducive to clear thinking. Shrinking back toward the slash pile, she hoped the down-canyon winds would carry the fumes in the opposite direction. From all reports these night dumps lasted only minutes.

Sudden light flooded the clearing. The figure was spotlighted and Anna sucked in a lungful of almond scent. Not a man but a creature with a human body, the head of an insect, and one long, clawed arm hunkered there.

In an instant her mind recoiled from appearance to reality: a human wearing the self-contained breathing apparatus found on fire trucks stood in the spill of light brandishing a pipe wrench. Liquid, rainbow bright in the headlights, gushed from a line of sprinklers on the rear of the water truck in a fine, even rain. It would take only a beam of moonlight to turn it into a spirit veil.

Like an afterthought, blue overheads and the ululating wail of a siren added to the confusion. Someone shouted. A door banged.

“Goddamn it!” Anna whispered as Jennifer Short, fumbling her .357 from its holster, ran into the light. Once again the woman had neglected to call into service or Frieda would have headed her off.

“Freeze! Freeze!” Short was shouting like a cop in a TV movie. The insect head turned slowly, the pipe wrench fell from sight, hidden behind a trousered leg.

Anna stepped clear of the sheltering brush and chambered a round of double-ought buck. The unmistakeable sound cut through the low-grade rumble of the engine and the siren’s whine. Insect eyes swiveled toward her. She shouldered the gun. “Drop the wrench,” she shouted. “Drop the wrench.”

The pipe wrench was moved away, held out to the side, the eye plates of the mask black, unreadable.

“Drop it.” Anna leaned forward, flexing her knee, ready to take the recoil if she had to pull the trigger. A cold vibrating in her stomach and the feel of the butt of the shotgun against her shoulder were all she was aware of. The world had shrunk, her vision tunneled till all that existed was the creature with the pipe wrench, clear and contained as a figure viewed through the wrong end of binoculars.

Movement pried open her field of vision. Jennifer, her pistol worked free of the holster, circled to the west, putting the insect directly between herself and Anna’s shotgun.

“Jennifer, stop!” Anna cried. Either deaf from noise or adrenaline, Short ran the last yard, completing the line. Now she and Anna stood less than forty feet apart, guns pointing at one another.

The insect realized it as Anna did. Glittering eyes turned from her to Jennifer. The wrench disappeared behind a leg. Slowly, mesmerizing, with the gauntleted hands and inhuman head, it walked toward Short. Jennifer was shifting her weight, her feet dancing in the dirt. Even from a distance Anna could see her hands shaking. “Stop where you are,” Anna shouted. Nausea churned in her stomach and she wondered if it was nerves or whatever she was breathing.

Aware that if she pulled the trigger, when the smoke cleared Jennifer might be dead as well, the insect ignored her.

To Anna’s left was the canyon. If she shifted right the water truck would block her target. “Jennifer, move!” she ylled. “Move, damn you.”

“Stop. Stop now. Don’t come any closer,” Jennifer was shouting. Shrieking like a banshee, the masked figure dodged right and charged. Anna saw the flash from the barrel of Short’s .357 and hurled herself to the ground. High-pitched and ringing, a bullet struck stone. Sparks flew and Anna felt the sting of rock splinters hitting the back of her leg. Two more wild shots rang out, then a scream. Anna looked up to see Jennifer clubbed to the ground by the pipe wrench. The monster-headed figure leaped from sight behind the far side of the truck.

Head and torso behind the right rear wheel, Short lay without moving.

Another fracture of sound and a muzzle flash came from the boulder beyond where Jennifer lay. Stanton. Like Anna, he’d ended up their fools’ chorus line.

Flickering blue lights lent his body the fast-forward movement of early films as he ran.

Anna was on her feet running, the shotgun clutched to her chest. Siren and engine roar clouded her brain, clogged her thoughts. Cacophony or cyanide was eroding her synapses. A car door slammed. The ground was uneven and becoming slippery. A stabbing pain, muscles outraged by sudden movement, nearly tripped her.

Stanton was shouting. Then a loud regular clanging cut through the engine’s throb. The water truck had been thrown into reverse, the warning bell ringing the intention to back up. Through the shimmering curtain of toxic waste, Anna saw the rear wheels begin to tear free of the mud, crush the strip of ground between themselves and Jennifer Short.

No time to think. Anna threw the shotgun from her, guaranteeing the canyon would be the first to claim it, and hurled herself backward, clear of the moving vehicle.

The tire, silhouetted by garish blue light, filled her field of vision. A couple feet away, in its path, Short lay on her side, an arm thrown above her head reaching toward Anna. A glistening line of blood ran down her temple, over her closed eyelid and onto the bridge of her nose.

In a heartbeat the water truck would roll over her, cut her in two. Scrambling till her butt was on the ground and her feet splayed to either side of the unconscious ranger, Anna grasped Short under the arms and dragged her back, pulling her up like a blanket. Digging heels into the ground Anna shoved both of them back. Something gouged deep into her side, raking the flesh from her ribs: a stick from the slash pile. Ignoring the pain, Anna pushed hard with her feet. The broken end of a branch had caught where the butt of her .357 hooked up and back, and push as she might, she could go no farther.

The gap between the tire and Jennifer’s legs was gone. No time: Anna unsnapped the leather keeper that held her gun in the holster. Again she dug heels into earth and shoved back with all the strength in her legs. A tearing at her hip slowed her, then the gun broke free of the break-front holster and with it the stick. Loosed like an arrow from a bow, Anna shot back several feet, dragging Jennifer with her.

Light was eclipsed, noise crushed down. The truck with its burden of poison rolled toward the cliff ’s edge. Trees snapped like gunshots as the rear axle crashed over the lip of sandstone. Blue lights scratched across Anna’s vision. She was seeing them from beneath the chassis of the truck. Tons of metal levered into the air, headlights stabbing wildly into the sky to rake the bottom of the low clouds.

Screeching wrenched the night and the underbelly of the truck scraped down, pulled backward by the weight of the load. A moment of shocked silence followed, broken only by the oddly peaceful sound of small rocks pattering after. Then a rending crash and stillness so absolute the faint oscillating whine of the patrol car’s overheads was clearly audible.

Jennifer’s head was on Anna’s shoulder, her weight pinning her to the ground. “Hope I got your feet out in time,” Anna whispered into the stiff web of sprayed hair that fell over her mouth and nose. She worked her right arm from beneath Jennifer’s and found the seasonal’s throat with her fingers. A pulse beat reassuringly in the hollow of the woman’s neck.

“Hallelujah.” Anna’s voice rang loud in the new-made quiet and she wished she’d not spoken. As gently as possible, she eased herself from under Short and pushed up to her knees.

“Anna!” Stanton’s voice.

“Here.”

“Anna!”

Stanton was beginning to annoy her. “What the fuck . . .”

“Behind you!”

Anna dropped and rolled as a metal bar crashed into the ground where she’d been kneeling. White light flashed off the sightless eyes of the insect head. A heavily gloved hand raised again, the pipe wrench swung in a deadly arc.

Anna scuttled backward, fell to her left shoulder, and rolled again, grappling for her revolver.

The branch had torn it free of the holster. It lay somewhere in the dirt between her and her attacker.

Crouched, pipe wrench on shoulder like a ball player at bat, the insect ran toward her. Bent low and pressed close to the slash heap, the gamble was Stanton wouldn’t shoot for fear of hitting one of the women.