The Searcher (19 page)

S
OLOMON WATCHED THEM DRIVE AWAY AND LISTENED TO THE SILENCE FLOOD
back into the house. The rain had almost stopped now, the thrum of it falling on the roof replaced by gurgles and drips as it ran off the sun-baked land.

He breathed deeply and caught the gun-oil and boot-polish smell of the cops mingling with the faint, citrus scents of Holly and the house and the greasy hay overlay of the intruder.

There had been something odd about the cops and their unwillingness to engage with him. He would have understood if it had been regular small-town unfriendliness, but that would usually manifest itself as suspicion and some kind of territorial power display. They had done neither of those things. Instead they had practically ignored him, and he wondered at this as he sat on the couch, brushed away the loose dirt and dust from his feet and pulled the socks then the boots over them. He stood up and walked around. They were solidly built but the leather was supple and well broken in by the man who owned them. A phrase floated into Solomon's mind, one that had been coined by Cherokee Indians then stolen by the colonial invaders along with everything else:

Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes.

He liked wearing James Coronado's boots. It felt right somehow. He liked the sound they made, the hard leather soles staccato across the oak floorboards as he walked into the back of the house. He saw a door that hadn't been open before and paused by it. Holly had left her bedroom door open in her hurry to leave and the citrusy smell of her flowed out from it, mingling with soap and the chalky odor of crushed sleeping pills. He stepped across the threshold and followed his nose to the closet, opened the door, and picked up the bag of white powder, easily enough to put an adult to sleep permanently. He thought about the sequence of events that had brought him here and how his insistence on coming to talk to Holly had probably saved her life. He glanced into the bathroom and saw her funeral dress in the bathtub, wet and ragged like a shed skin. He thought of her now, in the back of the car with the two cops who hadn't met his eye. Then he turned and headed out of the room.

Mulcahy watched the cruiser drive away, then looked back at the house.

The street was still quiet, no new cars or activity. The rain was easing, so he imagined people would stay down at the city limits longer. Even so, he needed to be quick. Now that he'd sent Tío the photograph of the blackened skull he would need to show him something else to prove his value and make sure the anger Tío would feel at the evidence of his son's death would not be turned on him or Pop.

He checked the Beretta and the Glock one last time, slid the long, silenced barrel of the Beretta into his shoulder holster, the Glock into his waistband at the back beneath his jacket, then he opened the car door and stepped out into the street.

S
OLOMON RETURNED TO THE STUDY AND WENT STRAIGHT TO THE MAP
pinned on the wall. His heart was beating hard, though from anxiety or excitement he couldn't quite tell.

His eyes moved across the drawn contours of the land, north to where the airfield was marked and beyond. A straight line cut across the desert showing where a storm drain marked the boundary of the airfield. Beyond it haphazard tracks cut across flat land and converged about a mile or so outside of town at a cluster of buildings with “Tucker Ranch” written next to them. He recalled the dying words of the burned man.

Tell her I'm sorry
, he had said.
Tell Ellie Tucker I'm sorry.

He stared at the map, committing it to memory, then moved to the desk and picked up the formal invite to the sheriffs' dinner. Tucker had been at the dinner too so he would know what had been said there. Most likely he wouldn't share that information, but Solomon wanted to look him in the eye when he asked him the question. Besides, he had a promise to keep to a dead man. His eyes shifted to the monitor where James Coronado was still frozen. Two dead men.

He hit the space bar to set the message playing and listened again to the voice of the man he was here to save, a dead father talking to his dead son.

Mulcahy moved quickly across the street and up the slope of the drive. He softened his footfalls as he mounted the wooden steps of the porch and stopped by the door. He checked the street once more, then reached inside his jacket for the Beretta and pulled the screen door open. The main door was unlocked, like he'd expected it to be. He had seen Holly leaving with the two cops and she hadn't paused to lock it. Why would she when there was someone still inside?

He pushed the door open and heard a man's voice coming from somewhere in the back of the house. He moved inside, closing the door quietly behind him, then across the floor and past the couch, checking around as he went, zeroing in on the voice.

He passed an open bedroom door, checked that it was clear, and continued down the hallway toward the voice.

He already knew what would happen here, had planned it all while he'd been sitting in the car. He would put the guy down, then plant the Glock on him, fire it at the wall before he left so it would look like he'd come second in a gunfight. He would tell Tío the stranger had been working for the Saints, because that's what he wanted him to believe. It didn't matter whether he was or not, he was collateral, that was all, a pawn about to be played in a bigger game.

He reached the door, the voice loud now, loud enough to cover any noise he might have made though he knew he had made none. He took a breath. Swung the long barrel of the gun into the room and followed it in, eyes wide, following where it pointed, almost enough
pressure on the trigger to fire but not quite. Instinct would add the rest as soon as he saw someone appear at the end of his barrel.

Except no one did.

He swept the gun around fast, checking all four corners of the room, but there was no one here and nowhere he could hide.

He moved around the desk so he could see the screen. A man was looking out and talking to the empty room. The clip reached the end and it jumped back to the start again.

Hi. I just found out you were coming and felt like I wanted to talk to you . . .

Mulcahy tapped the barrel of his gun on the space bar to stop it.

He listened in the silence that followed for movement, or the creak of a floorboard, or breathing, or—anything. All he heard was the trickle of water outside. There was no one here. The house was empty.

Solomon watched the man tap the keyboard with the long barrel of his gun and listen. He was in the garden, crouched low behind some clumps of deer grass that formed a natural screen. The garden was deep, running all the way back to the desert, no fences to hem him in. He could see the house but no one looking out would see him.

He wondered who this man was, stalking him with a weapon designed to kill quietly, and why the police were clearly helping him. The sight of him with the long, lethal gun in his hand stirred a burning anger inside him, boiling and dangerous and ready to explode. He wanted to steal back in the house, pluck the gun from the man's hand, shoot him in the knees, and ask him who had sent him while he writhed on the ground. He could picture it clearly in his head, hear the pops of the bullets and the howl of his agony. It would be so nice to give in to it, but he knew he could not. He tensed every muscle and remained perfectly still, then relaxed them
one by one, blowing out a steady stream of air like he was letting off steam.

It had been the cops' refusal to take him in for questioning that had made his instincts bristle, that and the sight of Holly's funeral dress. She had accused Morgan of using the funeral to get her out of the way, which made him think they were doing it again, only this time they were getting her out of the way so someone could get to him. The man standing in James Coronado's study proved he'd been right.

He watched him move over to the window and stare out into the garden. It looked like he was staring straight at Solomon but knew he couldn't be because his skin and hair were almost the same color as the sun-bleached grass and he was staying perfectly still. He wondered who he was and why he had come to kill him. The man turned away from the window and disappeared from view. Solomon imagined him searching the house, looking for him or whatever James Coronado had found and most probably died for. He was now almost certain that he had been killed and that his part in James Coronado's salvation was to find out why.

After a while he heard a car engine start up on the far side of the house then drive away, its tires hissing across the wet road. He waited a few minutes longer. Watching. Thinking. Then he stood and turned his back on the house James Coronado had called home and walked straight out into the desert.

There is only one good—knowledge; and only one evil—ignorance.

              —
S
OCRATES

Extract from
Riches and Redemption—The Making of a Town

The published memoir of the Reverend Jack “King” Cassidy

The blood was fresh.

It stained the sandy bottom of a shallow pit that had been clawed through the layer of dry mesquite straw that covered the ground and into the dry, rocky earth beneath. There was another hole close by. Another farther along, all with the lighter dirt thrown out around them like a dog had passed through searching for a buried bone.

I slipped from my saddle, aware that my mule was laboring after its long ride here and badly in need of both rest and water. I tethered it to the low branch of a mesquite bush, unhitched the pack saddle, and let it fall heavy to the ground, relieving the poor exhausted beast of its burden, then continued on foot, searching for the missing man I knew must be here.

The bosky ground crackled dryly beneath my boots as I followed the trail of shallow holes, some barely more than a few inches deep. Blood darkened the dirt around them and the grooves of finger marks showed the painful desperation of their construction.

I found him a few hundred feet from his wagon, facedown in the dirt, his body inert except for his ruined right hand, which clawed at the ground as if it were the only part of him still living. His left hand clutched a square of folded paper stained red by his torn flesh.

I dropped to the ground by his side, my breath puffing the dry dust as I called him, “Eldridge,” the name I had seen etched on the side of the discarded wooden chest. I hoped that the familiarity of it and the sound of a human voice might drag him up from whatever desolate place he had sunk to, but so far gone was he in his grief and exhaustion that he did not seem to hear or acknowledge me.

I reached for my canteen and carefully dripped a few drops of my remaining water onto his neck and the shock of it made his hand scratch at the land more fervently and a single word croak from his dry throat—“Water.” I poured a little more on the side of his face near his mouth, holding my hand beneath his mouth to catch the drops then placing my damp palm on his forehead. His skin was burning from fever and whispered words tumbled from his mouth. He kept saying the Devil was following them, had been close behind them for days, and they needed to get to water, for the only thing the Devil was afeared of was water.

I tried to reassure him by saying that the only thing following him had been me, but this sent him flinching away, crawling over the dirt to the gnarled trunk of a mesquite bush that he clung to, staring out at me with wild eyes. I believe in his fevered delirium he thought that, if I had been following, then it must be I who was the Devil.

I held up my canteen and poured a little water over my face, catching the drips with my tongue to show him I had no fear of it as proof that I was a friend. Then I told him I would search for the water we both knew to be here someplace and fetch him to it once it was found.

I left him with my canteen in the shade of the tree and followed the terrain down to its lowest point, hoping to find a strand of green
that might indicate where water could be found. I knew Eldridge would join his family in death if he did not have water soon, though perhaps that would be a kind relief. I found a hollow that might once have been a pool where cool water eddied and was now filled with mesquite straw. I kicked through it, hoping to discover mold in the mulch or any other small sign of moisture, but the bottom layer was as dry as the top. I continued scuffing my way across the lower contours of the land in this fashion, kicking through the straw and rolling rocks aside, making sure I examined every inch in search of the slightest evidence of moisture.

It was hot work and even in the shade of the trees I could feel the wooziness of heat fatigue starting to fall heavy upon me after my hard ride in pursuit of the wagon. I had been incautious, emboldened by the prospect of human company and of soon finding water. Now I was aware that if I found none, it would not only be Eldridge who breathed his last breath in the shade of these trees. I figured there had to be water here somewhere or the trees would not grow, though I had searched everywhere and found nothing. Then I realized with a cold feeling of dread that there was still one place I had not yet searched.

I headed back, past Eldridge and past the spot where I had left my mule tethered to where the covered wagon stood ghostly and still in the shade of the trees.

I pulled my neckerchief up and over my nose to try and filter out some of the stench, but it seemed to make little difference. I tried breathing through my mouth but found I could taste the stink, and the thought of what flavored the air made me breathe through my nose again. The land beyond the wagon fell away into a shallow gully thick with bushes and here I headed, hoping that the smell might lessen. If anything, it was worse. It was as if the
foul stench had pooled into this lower depression to form some kind of rank and malodorous puddle. I could hardly breathe, the smell was so solid, and when I pushed through the thicket and down into the gully I saw at once why the smell of death was so strong here.