The Searcher (30 page)

S
OLOMON PICKED HIS WAY CAREFULLY ACROSS LAND THAT SHIFTED AND
crept and fell away beneath him. The lower slopes were made from centuries of gravel and earth that had been chipped off by the weather and washed down from the higher mountains. Plants and grasses had taken dominion here, their prodigious, drought-hardy roots spreading wide and binding the earth together, though a horse and a man riding over it still showed how fragile it was. There were no other hoofprints on the land he was crossing, and anyone following him would have to do so carefully and steadily or risk losing their footing and tumbling a long way down to the lower slopes. Even so, he checked behind him regularly. He had promised Holly he would meet her at the spot where her husband had died and he did not want carelessness to break it.

He made it to the road just as the sun dropped level with the top of the mountains and stayed parallel to the road, walking the horse through gullies and rain-swelled streams. The land continued to rise and the ground became rockier with towering shards of stone pushing through it in places to create forests of craggy boulders. After ten minutes' walking he saw another slab of rock up on the road, a
white monolith with an eagle carved on the surface above the words H
ISTORIC
W
AGON
R
OUTE
.

He risked the road again, stopping by the stone marker and checking the way ahead. A hundred yards ahead of him the road curved away and disappeared behind a bluff of red rock. Beyond that was a stunning view of the valley below, with a jagged range of mountains in the distance that seemed familiar. He made his way toward it, listening out for cars, and spotted oil patches on the bend, smeared across the surface.

He reached the curve, dropped down from his horse, and led it off the road by the rope halter. He tied it to a mesquite shrub then turned and studied the road, dropping his head a little to put himself at roughly the same eye line as the driver of a car.

The surface was in a good state, no potholes, no dents showing evidence of fallen rocks that might have caused a driver at night to swerve instinctively after catching the flash of it in their headlights. There wasn't even a crash barrier in place where the outer curve of the road met the verge, nothing to suggest any danger here, and yet this was where James Coronado had left the road and died.

He stood up and looked back down the road. A car was approaching, the rattle of its engine chugging steadily up the hill. It was still some way off, so he turned his attention back to the road. He stepped out into the center, reading the story of what had happened here—the arcing brushstrokes of rubber following the gentle curve of the road, the broken edge of rock standing out against the smoother edges on either side. Something heavy had gone over the edge here, breaking off the lip as it fell. Small drifts of sharp-edged rocks and rubble showed where the same object had been hauled back up again and more oil had soaked into the dirt beside pressure marks showing where the lifting gear had parked to pull the car up out of the gully.

Solomon moved over to the edge and peered down, letting his eyes adjust to the deepening shadows. There was lots of growth at the bottom of the gully, creosote, spiked crowns of agave, tufts of hop seed spreading in thick patches across the ground, their roots clinging to the nutrient-enriched dirt that had collected in the dip. Some had been flattened, crushed by the weight of the car. A couple of saguaro grew here too, tall enough so that the ribbed domes of their tops were visible from the road. A third one lay on its side, smashed and broken, struck by the car on its way down.

The sound of the approaching car was louder now, the engine note deep and laboring. He turned and saw the station wagon struggle around the distant corner with Holly at the wheel. He held his hand up in greeting and her face lightened when she saw him. She rattled closer then pulled over onto the verge short of where he was standing, turned off the engine, and got out.

The sounds of evening were creeping in now and the light was starting to soften. She joined him at the road's edge and looked down into the gully. Solomon saw everything through her eyes now: the smashed cactus, the flattened bushes, the gouged earth and scarred rocks where the car had been dragged back onto the road. It spoke of the violence that had happened here.

“It's strange,” she said. “I avoided coming here because I thought it would be too painful. But now that I'm here, I don't feel anything at all.”

“Who first told you about the accident?”

“Mayor Cassidy.”

“Not Morgan?”

“No. I think the mayor heard about it and wanted to tell me himself. That's when he told me they would bury Jim in the old cemetery, like that meant anything. Who cares where someone is buried when they should still be walking around?”

“Did he tell you what happened here, specifically?”

“Only that Jim apparently lost control, left the road, and died of a head injury.”

“He didn't elaborate on the nature of those injuries?”

“No, but you can see for yourself.” She pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to him. “You asked me earlier about the coroner's report, so I got a copy.”

Solomon smiled and took the envelope. “Very smart,” he said, removing the report from inside. He devoured the contents, his mind flashing with information as it processed the dense, technical detail. “Interesting,” he said, looking back down into the gully, matching what he had just read with what he was seeing. He frowned and tilted his head to one side, studying the damage and picturing what had caused it.

“What?”

“This report says your husband died of a cerebral edema caused by a major trauma to the right temporal bone. The temporal bone is here—” He pointed to a spot above and in front of his right ear. “That's not where you generally get injured in a car crash. Usually the frontal bone hits the windshield or the steering wheel. He could have slid off the road sideways, of course, lost control then banged the side of his head as he hit the bottom of the gully, but then where are the tire marks? A slide like that would leave rubber on the road, and he would need to have been traveling at a fair speed in order for the impact to break his skull as comprehensively as this report suggests, but when his car left the road he was only traveling at around ten to fifteen miles an hour.”

“How do you know that?”

Solomon pointed at the smashed cactus. “Look at the saguaro. You see where the impact was? It's in the middle section; the top is
relatively unscathed, only a few splits and dents from where it hit the ground. A car traveling at any speed would have taken the top off it and hit the bank over there somewhere.” He pointed to a clump of untouched sagebrush on the far side of the gully. “And look at the roots.” His arm swung down to a large hemisphere of knotted ropes that had been partially lifted from the ground. “It was growing only about six or seven feet away from the edge, so the fact that the car hit the midsection suggests it must have almost fallen off the road. I'm going down to take a closer look.”

He followed the faint tracks left by work boots along the verge, then dropped down the slope and slipped his way to the bottom. There were deep gouges in the gully wall where the car had been dragged back up to the road, and splintered branches and twigs showing where the car had come to rest at the bottom. Solomon dug the toe of his boot into the ground. It was soft and loose, not compacted and baked hard like most of the desert. The bushes were soft too, and the saguaro would have slowed the car further as it fell.

Slow speed. Soft landing.

He scanned the quiet gully, half in shade, half in evening sunlight. “Your husband did not die here,” he called up to Holly. “Not from the car crash, at least. Everything here's so soft he might as well have landed on an airbag. I'm coming up.”

Holly was smoldering mad by the time he made it back to the road. She was staring down into the gully, her jaw set tight. “I should have shot Morgan with buckshot instead of salt,” she said.

Solomon smiled. “There are better ways to get even than with a blast from a shotgun.”

She shook her head. “Not many.”

He moved over to his horse, untied him, then led him back to the road. “Ever wonder what your husband was doing here on the night he died?”

Holly looked around at the lonely stretch of road, then out to the view of the darkening valley. “Not really. He used to take off sometimes to clear his head. Some guys fish, others hunt, some go bowling. Jim liked to drive. I guess that night he just ended up here.”

Solomon followed her gaze out to the distant mountain range. “I don't think so,” he said. “I think he was here for a reason. What's farther up this road?”

“There's a viewing platform a mile or so on where you can see down the whole valley, then more road and mountain passes until you hit Douglas.”

“What about a campsite?”

Holly frowned. “Actually there is one. It's not permanent, there are no facilities or anything.”

“Is it easy to find?”

“Should be a sign on the road for it somewhere.”

Solomon hopped up onto the back of the horse and settled. “Then that's what your husband was doing on this road.” He dug his heels into the stallion's flanks to get it moving. “Come on,” he said. “Light's fading. I'll meet you there.”

M
AYOR
C
ASSIDY WAS SITTING IN HIS OFFICE, STARING OUT OF THE WINDOW
at the evening light when the first armored personnel carrier rumbled into the square.

Since hearing of Pete Tucker's murder he had been facing up to the very real chance that he might not make it through the coming night. As a result, the world shone now with a different light. Everything he did carried extra meaning as he considered that it might be for the last time: the last time he would drink a cup of coffee, the last time he would see a sunset, or watch the evening light darken on the slopes of the mountains, or catch the movement of it in the jacaranda leaves.

The truck pulled to a halt in front of the church and men emerged from the back wearing uniforms the same blue-black color as the vehicle. They were carrying guns and wearing helmets and dark visors. Some wore full-face combat masks that made them seem sinister and not altogether human. A tall man got out of the front passenger seat and looked over at the house.

“Thank God,” Cassidy whispered, rising from his chair and checking his phone for messages. Where the hell was Morgan?

He hurried down the front steps and across the grass toward the church as a second vehicle pulled up and more men got out. In the quiet of his study, he had been imagining the night ahead like some old-style western, the town defended solely by a few lawmen and some plucky civilians with shotguns and rifles against hordes of professional killers. There had to be twenty or thirty men here, trained men with modern weapons. This was more like it.

“Ernie Cassidy,” he said, extending his hand over the top of the wall to the tall man who had the air of command about him. “I'm the mayor here, and boy, are you ever a welcome sight.”

“Andrews,” the man said, crushing his hand in a reassuringly solid handshake. “Any idea where I might find Chief Morgan?”

“I'm sure I can rustle him up for you. I presume he's apprised you of the situation here?”

“He has. Don't worry, sir. We got this.”

Cassidy glanced past his shoulder at one of the masked soldiers standing guard behind him. “How are you going to . . . I mean, what's your plan here?”

“The fewer people know that, sir, the better our chance of success.”

“Of course, I understand. Only, there are people here. Shouldn't we warn them? Get them to stay indoors at least? Evacuate?”

“We do that, we risk scaring off the target. If we don't get him now, he'll only hit you again later. We can't guard the town forever. We took a risk coming in heavy-handed like this, but we understood the need to secure the town. We took the decals off the trucks and the uniforms, so if anyone asks, you can say we're here because of the plane crash.”

“I understand,” Cassidy nodded. “Just make sure you get him.”

“Oh, we intend to, sir. Make no mistake about that.”

The county coroner's car crunched to a halt beside them and Morgan got out.

“Captain Andrews?” he said, moving toward the commander and shaking his hand. “Chief Morgan. Thanks for getting here so fast. What do you need from me?”

“We need to cover the three main roads into town,” Andrews said, walking toward the middle of the square and taking Morgan with him. The stone wall prevented Cassidy from following and he lost the conversation. Andrews started pointing out of town and up at the roofs of the higher buildings and Cassidy felt a pang of sadness at finding himself excluded from the business of defending his own town. It was like being a kid again and not being asked to play ball.

He looked around at the black-uniformed men with their automatic weapons and body armor. Maybe he would see another dawn after all. And when the smoke cleared and the questions were inevitably asked, he would tell the truth and take whatever was coming to him. Saving the town was all that mattered to him now.

S
OLOMON FOLLOWED THE LINE OF THE RISING ROAD, KEEPING AN EYE
on the distant escarpment and watching the subtle shift in the landmarks. After about half a mile he came across a wooden sign planted in the ground next to a dirt track running up and away from the main road. The words painted on the sign were cracked and flaking but still legible—S
PIRIT
M
OUNTAIN
C
AMPSITE
. A smaller sign hung beneath on metal loops: “Closed for the summer—mid April to mid October.”

He could hear the rumble of Holly's car behind him and waited until she came into view before easing his horse forward and up the softer ground of the track.

The camp was hidden around the curve of the hill, far enough back from the road to give campers the impression of being way out in the middle of nowhere, but close enough to the road so they could drive back to town in twenty minutes if they needed to. It was little more than a collection of traditional ramada shelters with woven branch roofs supported by mesquite poles. A mountain creek burbled nearby, swelled by the recent rainwater, and Solomon rode over so his horse could drink, passing fire pits ringed with white stones. He
imagined faces gathered around them, eating food hot from the fire, listening to ghost stories while they stared into the flickering flames. James Coronado's face had been one of them once.

He slipped from the horse's back and let it walk over to the stream. He could see the whole valley from up here—the burned desert, the airfield, the town with its streetlights starting to wink on as the evening gloom deepened. The sun was sinking fast and casting long, deep shadows across the ground, as if night was leaking up from the earth to drown the day. The mountain range opposite was silhouetted against the sky, making the
V
-shaped niche stand out. Behind him he heard the rumble of the old engine struggle up the track and stop. It cut out and there was the squeal of a door hinge, then Holly walked over to where he was standing.

“This is where your husband came the night he died,” Solomon said.

Holly looked out at the view and around at the deserted campsite. There was nothing to indicate anyone had been here in months. “What makes you think that?”

Solomon pointed at the
V
in the distant mountain range. “That niche is in the background of every group photo hanging in his study. He'd been camping here since he was a kid. This was a safe place with happy memories for him, a private place—especially at this time of year when it's out of season—the perfect place to retreat if he felt under threat.” He nodded down at the town nestling in the valley. “He could literally gaze down on his problems and put them in perspective.”

The horse snorted and tossed its head, clearly bothered by something. It pawed the ground and moved along the stream and away from the camp.

“What is it?” Holly asked.

“Not sure.” Solomon sniffed the air and followed the horse's gaze. He took a step forward, reaching out with his predator's senses for any sight, smell, or sound from whatever had spooked the horse. The shadows were deepening as the light leaked away, making figures appear in the folds of the rock face that stretched up behind the camp. He took another step. Saw movement in the shade of the farthest ramada. Sniffed the air again and caught something that made the hairs prickle on the back of his neck and arms.

Blood. But not fresh.

He followed the scent deeper into the camp to one of the fire pits. There was a pile of blackened ash in its center, whereas all the others were filled with mesquite straw and dry grass blown there by the summer winds. Someone had been here. They were still here. He could feel their eyes upon him. He looked up. Scanned the campsite, his body tensing. Night was falling fast and smothering what little light remained, turning the campsite into a place of darkness and deep shadows. He saw something, close and to his right. Movement. He turned to it and his eyes widened when he saw what had caused it.

Holly appeared next to him, following his gaze. “What is it?”

“Your husband did come here,” Solomon whispered, staring deep into the shade of the ramada. “He died here too.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he's still here. I'm looking at him right now.”

The ghost of James Coronado stood in the dark crease of the shadow, confusion clouding his face.

Holly followed Solomon's gaze. “I can't see him,” she said, frustration and emotion fraying her words. “I can feel him, but I can't see him.”

“He's by the post at the edge of the shadow,” Solomon said. “He's staring right at you.”

A sob burst out of her. “Tell me what he looks like.”

“Like he did in the photograph, though the color has gone from him. He looks a little like . . . He looks like me.”

Holly wiped a tear from her cheek and took a step toward him.

“He's fading,” Solomon said. “When you move closer, he starts to melt away.”

Another sob. She walked faster.

“He's going,” Solomon said, but she didn't listen. She stepped into the shadow just as the ghost vanished entirely and hugged the air where he had been. She stood like that for long moments, rocking from side to side, whispering that she loved him, that she missed him, that she would give everything to see his face again.

Solomon moved over and put his hand on her shoulder. She turned to him and let her arms drop, realizing that whatever had been there was gone. She smiled a sad smile, then stepped forward and kissed him full on the lips and held him tight, as if, in her mind, she was holding somebody else.

“Thank you,” she said. “He wasn't supposed to die. We were supposed to have a life together. I never got to say good-bye. This was closer than I thought I would get, so thank you for that.”

Solomon touched his lips and in the empty depths of his memory a truth floated up. He had not been kissed for a long time, not in the tender way she had kissed him, and the thought made him feel very alone. But there was something else in the kiss, something his mind identified and that made him catch his breath at the significance of it.

“Do you think this is where he died?” she asked, looking down at the ground.

“No,” Solomon said, sniffing the air and following the scent of blood with his nose to the edge of the fire pit. There was a stone missing from the ring that surrounded it. He surveyed the campsite but couldn't see it. It could be anywhere: in the stream, hurled away down
the side of the escarpment, tossed out of the window of a moving car. He didn't need to find it to know what it had been used for. He crouched down and raked his fingers through the mixture of soft earth and dry straw by the missing stone. The ferrous smell of blood became stronger.

“This is where he died,” he said. “Right here. He was hit on the side of the head with that missing rock. That's why he had a fractured right temporal. He was most likely hit from behind by a right-handed man. Be hard to hear someone creeping up with the sound of the wind and the hiss of the mountain stream. It's dark here too.” He looked around at the place, rapidly sinking into shadow. “Whoever did it must have followed him, killed him here, then staged the crash back on the road.”

“Morgan.” Holly said it like she was cursing.

“Probably.”

Holly knelt beside him, ran her hand over the darker ground as if she was caressing it.

Solomon looked back at the place where the ghost had been then rose from the ground and walked over to it. Night had made the shadows inside the ramada solid now and he couldn't see well enough to search the area. “Do you have a light?” he called over to Holly.

She moved over to him, pulling her phone from her pocket. She handed it to him and the bright screen cast a cold glow on the ground and the upright of the post where it stuck into the ground. There were marks in the wood, cut with a knife a long time back and darkened with age. Solomon rang his finger along it, tracing the letters—
JC
.

“This is where your husband used to sleep on his camping trips,” he said, imagining him working his name into the wood after lights out, leaving his mark here for the future. Solomon studied the ground and realized why the ghost had drawn his attention to this spot.

“The mesquite straw has been disturbed here,” he said, sweeping it aside with his hand. The ground beneath was not hard and compacted like the rest was.

“There's something buried here,” he said, and started scooping the loose earth away with his hands.