Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (27 page)

"Good
God," Barrett yelled as earth scorched next to her. We watched, mouths
agape, trembling, and I occasionally glanced down at the two apparently dead
people whose fighting had started an unnatural attack.

"Earth,
wind, fire, and now water," Callie said, loud enough for me to hear.
Thunder rolled across the sky, lightning cracked, and a torrential rain forced
us to take cover or drown.

"Stay
away from the metal vehicle!" As I spoke, I dragged Callie and Barrett
back up onto the hillside where Luther Drake had first appeared.

A
roar unlike any I'd ever heard began up in the hills, and while I was trying to
decide what was approaching, a river of water barreled our way, a desert flash
flood, a torrent washing past us and then over the bodies below. The edges of
the newly formed stream lapped alongside Manaba, covering the right half her
body. But the water engulfed Luther Drake and, as it intensified, flopped him
over facedown and swept him along the desert floor like a maniacal Moses.

Callie
ran to Manaba and held her head in her hands, telling her to wake up, she was
alive. Manaba's eyes rolled into awareness.

"Luther?"
Manaba asked.

"You
thought earth but water claimed him," Callie said.

Callie
asked me to get her some water from the Jeep so I jogged over and grabbed a
bottle out of the backseat, quickly filling Elmo in.

"I
don't know what the hell's going on, but I can assure you that you're in the
best spot." Elmo whined, letting me know he was still nervous.

On
the jog back, I rang Wade. Reception was poor, but I managed to get in that
we'd found Ramona's phone but she wasn't there. Wade said she had to have
turned it off to preserve the signal strength, which meant she'd gone with the
Indian willingly and then gotten in trouble later and turned the phone back on.
I wasn't sure I agreed with that theory, but told him I'd call him as soon as I
knew anything.

I
dashed back to Callie, where she and Barrett were making Manaba comfortable
while Barrett grilled her, trying to find out what she knew of Ramona's
whereabouts. However, Manaba insisted she knew nothing.

Distraught
that we had obtained the latitude and longitude of Ramona's cell phone but
hadn't found her, Barrett stroked the silver phone and sat silent.

Callie
watched, her mind seeming to wander, then said, "Barrett, see if there's
enough juice left to check her messages."

Barrett
glanced at Callie and a moment of hope crossed her face. She flipped open the
case, then quickly put it down. "I don't know her code so there's no way
for me to pick up her message, even if she left one."

Callie
was silent for a moment. "Does she have text messaging, or notepad, or a
draft file?"

Barrett
clicked through the options and found the message.
Find me S. shadow lodge
pines clearing. Man armed.
The sender ID was blocked.

"Let's
go!" Barrett was on her feet along with the rest of us. Manaba, too weak
to travel, insisted we leave her there and she would follow.

"Will
she be alright?" I asked Callie, then remembered Manaba's war with Luther.
"What am I thinking, she'll be fine."

Back
in the car, Elmo took up his post next to Barrett. I asked how Callie had ever
thought about checking Ramona's own cell phone for messages.

"Uranus
in the chart indicated technology. But when we discovered her phone, it told us
nothing and I kept wondering why, thinking the answer was in there, but we
didn't know it. She's smart and she knew someone might find the phone, so she
left a text message for them."

We
backtracked up to the main road, where I pulled a GPS out of my glove box and
plugged it into the cigarette lighter.

"You
have a navigation system?" Callie was stunned.

Self-conscious,
I admitted I had bought one.

"But
you take directions from no one, you check nothing out and you're constantly
lost, and all the while you have a nav system in your glove box?"

"For
emergencies. Put in Shadow Lodge. Please."

Twenty
miles later the woman on the GPS, whose voice sounded as if she'd happily had a
lobotomy, informed me I should turn left in one-quarter mile, then right, and
proceed up the hill. Callie watched me as I obeyed the robot-woman and stared
at me as if trying to decide how she'd missed this little piece of my
personality.

"What?"
I asked as I continued to follow directions.

"It
must be her dispassionate tone."

"No.
I trust she knows where she's taking me."

"Although
she's a disembodied voice in a box."

"You
two are meant for each other." Barrett spoke for the first time. "You
go back and forth like you've been married for fifty years."

"Makes
you glad you're unattached?" I asked.

"No,"
Barrett said, and I detected a loneliness that made me feel bad for having
joked about it.

A
visitors' parking area fanned out below the spot where tourists climbed up a
few steps to experience the view from the ledge overlooking the canyon.

We
jumped out of the car, leaving Elmo safely inside, and went to the edge of the
ridge to try to find the area described. Nothing surrounding this tourist attraction
seemed to match the text message Ramona had left us.

Checking
the backside of the hills behind the parking lot, I saw a patch of scrub pines
and rocks near an open expanse of land. I waved my arms to signal the others to
join me, and we walked without talking down the slight slope toward the forest.
I felt for my gun, a habit that hadn't done me any good during the most recent
battle, but I was counting on it now. Little Horse, good guy or bad, had to be
more mortal than the people I'd encountered.

"Stay
with me." I took Callie by the hand and could feel that Barrett was
sticking right behind us. We moved through the pines that ringed the expanse of
barren land, careful to stay away from open spaces, and I hoped Elmo would be
okay as we went farther away from him, and we would be okay as we went closer
to something we couldn't name.

I
pointed toward a single fallen log that looked almost petrified. Barrett
nodded, understanding there could be something behind it. Tense and nervous, I
motioned them to stay back and crouched down, half crawling around the outer
edge of the log so I could see what was there. After a quick peek around it, I
jumped back out of gunshot range, but I'd already glimpsed something—a body in
a blanket lying up against the log.

"Over
here," I whispered, and Barrett and Callie ran to help me.

"Oh,
no," I heard Barrett gasp as we rolled the body over, not knowing what to
expect.

The
blanket was slightly wet. The contents' stillness and weight suggested that if
someone had been alive in there, they were now long gone.

We
rolled the blanket toward us and peeled back the edge, catching sight of a
bound ankle, and I could tell by the way Barrett recoiled that we had to be
unveiling Ramona Mathers. As we continued to work the blanket loose, we heard a
stifled moan. Barrett dug in now, ripping at the blanket as if it were
Christmas.

"She's
alive." Barrett's voice cracked and I too recognized the moan as Ramona's.
Pulling out a pocketknife, I sawed away on the rope bindings around her wrists
and ankles as Barrett pulled the tape off her mouth. It looked like a bad
episode of
Miami CSI.
We all asked the standard questions in rapid fire:
Was she okay? Who had done this to her? Did she know where Nizhoni was?

She
said Little Horse had come to the cabin to ask her help after Luther saw the
animal bones, because he knew Luther would be looking for Nizhoni again to kill
her. Little Horse asked Ramona to come talk to Nizhoni to see what she could do
to help him find her a place out of state and to prosecute Luther. On their
trek, a man intercepted them and tried to kill him.

"This
man who attacked us wanted the girl and became furious when Little Horse led
him in circles, so he bound me and left me for dead, not wanting the burden of
dragging me around, then told Little Horse to take him to the girl or he would
kill him on the spot. Law enforcement here obviously has its issues," she
said dryly, exhibiting her first sign of humor.

I
asked Ramona if the man who attacked them had a limp, and she confirmed the
description of Dwayne-Wayne. Luther had apparently enlisted Dwayne to expedite
the killing of Nizhoni, and more than likely that's why Dwayne had attacked Cy
Blackstone— in an attempt to get him to reveal where Nizhoni was.

"Did
you get my text message?" Ramona asked.

"Yes,
you're brilliant!" Barrett hugged her. "I'm going to find the man who
did this to you and kill him."

"Delighted
that you're going to take up the gauntlet to protect me." Ramona tried to
sound jaunty, and she put her arm around Barrett, who held her up lovingly.
"The night was so cold, I had to think of everyone I'd ever slept with to
stay warm. You kept me the warmest."

Barrett
kissed her gently and rubbed Ramona's wrists and ankles to restore circulation,
then got her coat and put it around Ramona. The coat, a rugged corduroy garment
with leather piping, hung jauntily over the beleaguered Ramona's shoulders. As
she draped it around her, Barrett's arms followed, holding the tall, slender
Ramona who, even with her hair awry and no makeup, had a fascinating elegance.
Like a great silver heron, she bowed her head, her body still stiffly at
attention, and rested her forehead on Barrett's shoulder.

"You
two stay here. Callie and I will get the Jeep and pick her up. I don't think
she can walk."

"I'm
perfectly capable—" Ramona began.

"We're
picking you up because we want to, not because we need to," Callie said,
and we left them alone in the moonlight and walked back to the car.

I
assimilated the pieces like a crime-mosaic. "Sounds like Little Horse was
pulverized by Dwayne-Wayne, who in addition to being Luther's friend could be
his dealer."

"What
makes you think so?" Callie asked.

"Watching
Luther, I'm thinking he's on PCP—horse tranquilizer—makes the druggies nuts.
When I was on the force and we got a call to deal with some guy on PCP, it took
six grown men to bring him down."

"I
went to get your menopausal herbs and saw a man picking up something, and it
dawned on me it probably wasn't for hot flashes."

"That
would explain a lot of Luther's power."

"But
not all," Callie said.

I
rang Wade and told him the good news about Ramona. He felt relieved enough to
take credit for the entire operation, and I was relieved enough to let him.

When
our car came into view I pulled my keys out of my pocket and clicked the
automatic door lock. The cab light came on and I froze. Seated behind the
steering wheel was a large, perfectly still figure. My first thought was that
whoever it was had come to kill us, and my second thought was for Elmo's safety.

I
pounced on the car and yanked the door open. Manaba was slumped in the front
seat unconscious. Elmo was sound asleep in the backseat, and my next thought
was how in hell she got into my locked car. But she stood in fire, so Chrysler
engineering was probably nothing to her.

Both
began to stir when they heard my voice. Manaba offered an apology, saying she
hadn't meant to startle us. She and the dog, as she termed Elmo, were fine.
Apparently Elmo didn't buck spiritual leaders even if they invaded his space.
He was smarter than me in that way.

We
told her what had been going on and that Dwayne had forced Little Horse to take
him to Nizhoni somewhere up in the canyon. I refrained from telling her that
most likely Dwayne-Wayne had killed them both. Manaba remained quiet.

"Can
you travel and look for them?" Callie asked, and I had the feeling she
meant by mind, not Mazda.

"I'm
very weak, but I'll try," Manaba said, clearly stating her condition as
fact, not a source of sympathy.

As
we drove back to get Barrett and Ramona, Manaba seemed to be out of her body
again and I was silent, thinking about that particular skill set. Why couldn't
people travel out of their bodies without people like me thinking they were
nuts? If we'd been riding around on horseback in the 1700s and suddenly told
our companions that one day they could walk on the moon, they'd have made fun
of us. So maybe these tribal people were way ahead of us.

"I
like what you're thinking." Callie took my hand.

"I
like that you always know what I'm thinking.
It saves a lot of time." I glanced down at the zipper on her small jeans.
"What am I thinking now?"

"The
thing you never stop thinking," she whispered and rested her hand in my
lap. Electrical current rushed through my body, exciting every cell.

I
would have expected Barrett and Ramona to be sitting on the first red rock with
their thumbs out, anxious to get out of the middle of nowhere, so I was
surprised to find them out of the general view, pretty much where we'd left
them, huddled in each other's arms.