Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (26 page)

"But
the phone you're zeroing in on has to be turned on. Her battery's got to be
long gone," Barrett said.

I
slumped on the couch and leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling,
thinking how technology could pinpoint a lunar landing but couldn't track a
cell phone. The ice cubes clinked in Barrett's glass as she took another slug
and said, "Are you in some kind of cosmic trance too or is your neck
broken?"

It
was obvious she was feeling better.

"Lat
long," I said.

"And
you're speaking in tongues?" Barrett remarked.

I
stood up, excited now. "Latitude and longitude. We simply pinpoint her via
satellite through her cell-phone signal and get a lat long on her."

Barrett
stared at me, obviously giving my suggestion some credence. "Still
requires a working cell phone."

Grabbing
mine, I rang Wade Garner in Tulsa. Neither of us offered to spar with the
other, both of us worried about Ramona. When I hit Wade with my idea he said he
had a friend at a company back East that did cell-phone signal tracks and he'd
give him a call.

"Hey,
if you were techno-cop, you'd connect your laptop to a mobile fax, enter your
NASA code, scan the surrounds with a GPS, pull up a database, and tell
me
where
she is."

"You're
wasting time," I said, and he hung up.

An
hour later, Wade called back to say he'd set it up and now he needed Ramona's
cell-phone number. Barrett had it memorized. Armed with that, Wade said he'd be
back in touch. We all looked at each other and began to smile, pleased that
hope might be on the way.

Night
fell and all businesses back East were long closed so we hit the sack, talking
Barrett into sleeping on the couch. It was strange to have the woman I'd once
slept with sleeping in the living room and the one I was sleeping with now in
the bedroom.. .but then this was a strange trip and it had been an incredibly
long day.

At
eight a.m. Pacific time the phone rang and Wade said they had her location in
their crosshairs. He'd Googled the lat-long map and entered the degrees and
zoomed in on the terrain. He said basically she was at a point several miles
southeast of our current location.

Barrett
was so excited she kept shouting for us to hurry up and throw on our
clothes...we needed to get out there. Even Elmo insisted on going, ducking out
of the door at the last minute and standing by the car. Callie let him jump in,
saying he'd saved us twice so he'd earned a seat. Barrett looked less certain
but didn't argue, most likely not wanting to create any delays.

We
drove south out of the city over the winding highway, curving around the red
rocks and into flatter land. I pushed the trip-meter on my dash to be able to
calculate the exact mileage as Wade had described it to me. The sun blinding us
with its intensity, I turned left off 179 onto a road that was more a path than
anything else, and I realized we were southeast of the spot where we'd had the
infamous campout with Manaba. Sand kicked up around the car, creating a mist of
dirt, filtering the sunlight and making the morning appear surreal, leaving a
sand signal visible from miles away if anyone was interested.

Barrett
was leaning over the front seat checking the odometer. "We're here,"
she said, and we all looked around, clear on one thing: here was nowhere and we
were in the middle of it. Elmo, his nose pressed to the glass, sobbed.

"You're
right about that, Elmo," I said, not attempting to get out of the car.
"We have no clue where to look." At Elmo's insistence, I finally
conceded, got out, hooked him up, and we walked around among the sand burrs. He
relieved himself and stood with his ears slightly elevated, staring across the
desert.

"Barrett,
ring her cell phone," Callie said quietly.

"You're
right. We're tracking her cell phone, it might not be on her body," I
said.

Barrett
dialed the number she knew better than her own, then waited for it to ring. A
light wind rustled across the sand and nothing but silence followed.

"Shit,"
I said, and turned to get back in the car, but Elmo dug in and refused to go.
His ears were alert, his body poised, and I remembered he had better hearing
than any of us. "Dial it again, Barrett."

Barrett
rang Ramona's cell phone one more time, and Elmo strained to pull me in a
direction away from the car. "Again," I shouted, and Elmo pulled me
farther away. "Again!" I shouted to be heard over the expanse of
sand, but this time Barrett and Callie were running to us, and Elmo was pulling
me faster. Head down, he stopped where I could hear a faint sound.

Barrett
had caught up with us, and she fell to her knees and dug into the gritty earth
until the silver case of the small cell phone caught a glint of sunlight. She
fumbled with the phone, for an instant stroking its slick silver casing as if
it were the sleek silver hair of Ramona.

"It's
Mona's," Barrett said. Hearing the glacially wicked Ramona Mathers
referred to with such endearment and by her apparent nickname made me suddenly
sad that occasionally we have to see someone through another's eyes to
understand them.

There
on her knees in the dirt in the sunlight, holding the last item that might ever
be found of Ramona Mathers, Barrett made me feel as if I'd interrupted a church
service. Callie and I looked away to give her a moment to collect herself.

"So
if Little Horse is such a good guy, why is her phone out here, buried?" I
whispered to Callie, who shook her head as if she wondered that too.
"Okay, she left her cell phone on, which means she's trying to help us
find her and she hasn't been gone very long from here, because it's still got
juice," I said, trying to change the mood. Sobbing over Ramona wasn't
going to help anyone.

"Look,"
Callie nearly whispered, and pointed to a faint plume of smoke maybe half a
mile from us if we proceeded in the southeasterly direction we were already
headed. "That could be them. They might not have gotten very far."

We
jogged back to the car, and I helped Elmo into the backseat. "You're a
smart dog, Elmo," I said to him, not caring if Barrett heard me talking to
my dog. "Other dogs might not have realized the importance of that sound,
but you hung in there, and I'm proud you're my hound or, better said, that
you've allowed me to be your owner."

I
waited for any smart remarks from Barrett and glanced in the rearview mirror to
see the expression on her face, but she was staring out of the car window
intent on the plume of smoke, her long, languid arm draped over Elmo, snuggled
up against her side. I took Callie's hand, wondering if she had opened me up to
greater possibilities in people.

Driving
slowly, trying to kick up as little dust as possible, I pulled the car about
two hundred feet from the fire. We got out, this time leaving Elmo inside with
the windows cracked. His feet were rough from the stickers and the hot ground,
and he was sagging physically. Like most hounds he was good in short bursts and
after that he needed a nap.

"Don't
let anybody in the car. We'll be back."

We
closed the car doors quietly. We must have all intuitively known whatever was
on the other side of that fire was a turning point.

Checking
to see that I had my gun with me, tucked into my jacket pocket, I led the way
across the sand. On the backside of a tiny rise of sagebrush and shrubbery a
small fire burned, and seated next to it, her back to us, was Manaba. My body,
geared for confrontation, relaxed, and my mind was disappointed.

"She's
not here," Manaba said to us without looking around to see who
"us" was.

"Where
is she?" Callie asked.

"With
the man whose whereabouts I do not know."

"We
found her cell phone so she
was
here," Barrett said.

"We
are all here." Manaba's voice held a tinge of ennui. "The end is
spoken of in the ashes of the fire."

"And
the beginning is found in the flames of desire." The voice above us spoke
evenly, startling me and I assumed everyone, except Manaba, who seemed to be
expecting Luther Drake.

"Our
grandmother used to say that." His voice was quiet like thunder in the
distance, rumbling low before it bursts upon you in deafening booms.

"She
used to say many knowing things, Yiska." Manaba sounded almost wistful.

"She
taught them to us both."

It
was as if they didn't know we were there or that our presence was insignificant
in this drama.

"Great
teachers give the message to all. The student is transformed by the knowledge
according to his own desire," Manaba replied.

"My
desire was to be with you," he said.

"Your
desire was to own my power."

And
those were the words that ignited Luther Drake like an incendiary device. He
leapt from his perch above our heads and seemed to fly across the small expanse
of sand, landing within inches of her. She never flinched but looked up into
his eyes as he yanked her to her feet.

"I
know where Little Horse is. Therefore, I know where she is, and I am going
there now to finish what you could not. No one comes between us. We were raised
together. We are of one mind, one understanding, one knowledge, and one
power."

"We
are none of those things. You broke that power when you killed Kai. You made
everyone believe she killed herself because she was jealous of my love for you,
when it was you who were jealous of my love for her. You will not kill
again."

Luther
Drake's smile was diabolic and his low laugh like the sound of tectonic plates
grinding together before the earth's upheaval, and like the suddenness of a
quake, Luther Drake grabbed Manaba by her hair with his powerful left hand.

"My
desires will be fulfilled!"

I
aimed my gun at his leg, the only place I could get a clean shot, and was
seconds from pulling the trigger when he flung his right arm toward me and let
out a high-pitched scream, a duplicate of his graveside visit. The mere gesture
knocked the gun from my hand, nearly breaking my wrist, his hand not even near
mine.

I
clutched my wrist and moaned, wondering how he'd managed to get in such an
intense blow with a single non-contact shot.

Summoning
strength beyond anything I'd imagined she possessed, Callie shouted,
"Luther Drake, the universe severs the bond that binds you to this
woman!" She swung her arm up over her head and down with the force of an
ax onto his wrist, and Luther winced and weakened his grip on Manaba.

He
spun and glared at Callie. Infuriated by her words, he slammed his forearm into
her chest.

I
screamed as she sagged to the ground, fearful a blow of that magnitude could
have altered her heart rhythm, or at the very least have broken her ribs.
Despite the attack, she appeared to be breathing steadily, and dragging her to
safety wasn't an option because Luther had regained his composure. He flung
Manaba to her knees, apparently prepared to kill her.

My
gun gone and my wrist seemingly paralyzed, I jumped him and clamped my teeth
onto his ear in a Tyson-like move designed to rip it from his head, and my
onslaught produced a deafening howl. Suddenly, I was writhing on the ground as
if I'd been run over by an eighteen-wheeler, and Callie rolled over and
clutched me to her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Barrett backhanded by a
blow from Luther, who was bleeding from the side of his head, the result of his
murderous attempts.

Manaba,
seeming to resurrect, rocket-launched herself on Luther and grabbed him by the
throat, making me believe that very powerful spiritual battles begin close to
where the Word emanates. Luther whirled and clamped both of his large hands
around her neck, and I feared it was over for her. Although large for a woman,
she came nowhere close to the kind of drug-induced strength he exhibited.

"Luther,
putrid seed of a rapist.. .defiler of Indian women!" She croaked the words
as if they would be her last.

My
mind was awash in words and images—
Cy Blackstone raped Manaba’s aunt and
Luther was the result?

Luther's
hands tightened on her neck until she appeared lifeless. I staggered to my feet
and threw myself at him at about the same time that Callie and Barrett joined
me, all of us screaming for him to let Manaba go.

Instantly,
a windstorm blew in out of nowhere and swirled what seemed like dump-truck
loads of sand around us, and Luther Drake began to choke along with the rest of
us, who covered our mouths and retreated. Angry over the unexpected force of nature,
he seemed about to explode out of his body.

The
air crackled, electricity flew above our heads, and while I was trying to
determine the cause of the fireworks, flames flared above us. Then, as if
caught up in the seething storm, Luther and Manaba bent and twisted and coiled
around each other, flashing hotter from red to white, then flew apart and back
together.

"Get
away!" Callie warned, towing both Barrett and me farther from the fight as
the air filled with electricity and the two adversaries sagged to the ground,
still gripping one another's throat. Then suddenly they fell over, as if they
were both dead.