The Searcher (7 page)

C
ASSIDY SAT BEHIND THE OAK EXPANSE OF HIS DESK, MOUTH SLACK, EYES
staring up at Morgan. When the doctors had told him Stella's cancer had not responded to treatment and she had only weeks to live, it had felt exactly like this, as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and what was left was difficult to breathe.

“Ramon,” he said, repeating the name Morgan had just given him.

Morgan nodded. “Ramon Alvarado. Tío's son.”

“But—what was he . . . I mean, why was he on the plane?”

Morgan shrugged. “Some trouble south of the border, I think. He needed a fast ride out of Mexico. I didn't ask for the details.”

Cassidy stared out of the tall window of his study and down the avenue of jacaranda trees that framed the church beyond the wall. Above the roof he could see smoke rising out in the desert. That's what had been filling his mind until Morgan had told him what had caused the fire. Now it seemed the very least of his worries.

“But why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't think you needed to know.”

“You didn't think I . . . but this has . . . Tío's son! Don't you think you should have run it by me?”

“It was a last-minute thing. I got a call. I made a decision.”

“You made a decision?”

“I didn't have a choice, all right? When someone like Tío calls and asks for a favor, he's not really asking. What would you have done differently? Said, ‘Sorry to hear your son's in trouble, but we're not going to help you'? Don't start blaming me for this. I didn't make the damn plane crash.”

Cassidy rose from his chair and started pacing. He looked back out at the smoke. “We need to do everything we can to speed up the crash investigation,” he said. “Get proof that it was an accident.”

“But what if it wasn't?”

Cassidy glared at him as if he had suggested the earth was flat. “Of course it was an accident.”

Morgan took his phone from his pocket and stepped into the room. “When I went out to the crash site I nearly ran this guy down.” He held the phone out.

Cassidy took his reading glasses from the desk and the photo on the screen came into focus as he put them on. It had been taken from inside Morgan's car, the air outside filled with grit that softened the image, though the figure of the man standing at the center was clear. He seemed to shine in the sunlight, his face gazing up at something the photograph did not show. “Who's that?”

“He says he can't remember, but the label in his jacket says he's called Solomon Creed.” He swiped the screen and the picture changed. “He also had this on his arm.”

Cassidy looked at the livid red mark upon the man's skin then at Morgan for an explanation.

“Looks like a kill tag to me,” Morgan obliged. “Cartel hit men get
them to show they've clipped someone important. Usually they're tattoos, but sometimes they cut themselves or brand themselves, like this.”

Cassidy looked back down at the photo as he realized what Morgan was suggesting. “You think this guy might have . . .”

“Shot the plane down? Maybe. Say he knocked it out with some missile, got caught in the blast, banged his head, and now can't remember who he is. Or maybe he knows exactly who he is and just isn't saying. The cartels use some pretty unusual characters as gunmen south of the border—gives the
norteños
something to sing about. So I don't think the notion of an albino being used as a hit man is beyond the realm of possibility. They're superstitious about albinos down there anyways. Hell, they're superstitious about everything. They think the white skin shows they got divine power, like they've been touched by God or something. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that he
might
have done it. He was there, he was running away from the crash, he even said the fire was there because of him, and he's got this mark on his arm. It's all circumstantial, but we don't need it to hold up in a court of law, we only need Tío to buy it. Someone is going to have to pay for his son's death—and I don't mean offer him cash, say sorry, and hope everything's going to go away. Blood will have to pay for blood here, so that's what we have to give him. We give him this guy. We give him Solomon Creed.”

Cassidy swiped the screen and stared hard at the picture of the pale man standing on the desert road. Then he shook his head and handed the phone back. “I think I should talk to Tío first, try for a diplomatic solution before we start . . . throwing human sacrifices at him. We don't even know who this guy is. Have you run an ID check?”

“He's not on the NCIC.”

“That only proves he's not a criminal. What about the missing persons channels—DMV, Social Security?”

“What's the point?”

“The point is, we're talking about a man's life here.”

“No. The point is, we're talking about several people's lives, including yours and mine. We're talking about the survival of this town. I don't want to know who this guy is. I don't need to know. But I'll tell you something else: he had a copy of Jack Cassidy's memoir in his pocket, personally inscribed to him by Jim Coronado.”

Cassidy felt the blood drain from him. “You think he knew Jim?”

“He says he can't remember, but when I asked him about the book he said he felt like he was here because of Jim. He said he felt like he was here to save him.”

“Jesus. He said that?”

Morgan nodded. “Asked me how he died and whether he could talk to Holly. So, whichever way you chop it up, this guy is a potential problem for us. Or maybe he's not. Maybe he's actually a solution. The way I figure it, Tío's going to find out about him sooner or later, which means he's a dead man whatever we do or don't do. So if we give him up, we win ourselves some loyalty points and hopefully cut ourselves some slack. And we no longer have to worry about what his connection to Jim may have been and whether that might turn into another problem for us.”

Cassidy felt sick about what they were discussing. He gazed up at the stern portrait of his ancestor. He had always felt like Reverend Jack was looking down on him, judging him and how he was running the town he had built. He had faced some tough challenges over the last few years, real tough challenges, but nothing like this. This was like Armageddon, apocalyptic—world ending.

Outside, the wail of a siren rose and he glanced up to see a cruiser come to an abrupt halt on the driveway, its spinning lights painting the oak paneling red and blue.

“There's my ride,” Morgan said, heading to the door.

“Where is this guy?” Cassidy asked. “You taken him in for questioning?”

“No. I thought it best to keep him off the record, in case he has to—disappear. Last I saw, he was heading to the church.”

Cassidy stared out of the window at the white stone of the church beyond the wall. “Let me go talk to him first.”

“Now why would you wanna go and do that?”

“Because if I'm going to sacrifice a man's life to save my town, the least I can do is have the courtesy to look him in the eye first. And I still think we should establish whether the crash was an accident or not.”

Morgan shook his head and took in the room. “Must be nice, living in your oak-paneled world where everyone plays by rules and any disputes can be resolved with a handshake. Let me tell you how things work out in the real world. Talking to this guy is going to achieve absolutely nothing. If anything, it's going to complicate things. You don't strike up a friendship with a man you're about to execute. And it won't matter a damn to Tío whether the crash was an accident or not. His son died and someone is going to have to pay for it. Someone—or something. Ever hear of a place called El Rey?”

“Rings a bell.”

“It's a little town up in the Durango Mountains. The local banditos took it over and it became a sort of Shangri-la for criminals fleeing south across the border. Anyone who made it there with enough money to pay for protection could stay as long as they liked, knowing no law would ever touch them. El-Rey is also Tío's hometown. Or it was. It's not there anymore.”

“What happened?”

“Tío happened. I don't know the exact details, but when Tío was
a kid there was some kind of family tragedy involving his father and brother. Could be they fell afoul of the bosses or something, but whatever happened, Tío never forgot it. When he rose to power years later, he got his revenge. El Rey was the headquarters of the old bosses, so it made sense for him to take it over. But he didn't. What he did was massacre every living soul in the town and burn the place to the ground. It was symbolic, I guess: out with the old and in with the new. But it was also revenge, pure and simple, an old-fashioned blood vendetta. Tío did the killing himself, the way I heard it. Showed the world what would happen if anyone dared to hurt him or his family.” He pointed out of the window at the smoke rising beyond the church. “And his son just died, flying into our airfield. So you think about that when you talk to this guy. I'll be at the control line if you need me.” Then he opened the door and was gone.

S
OLOMON STOOD INSIDE THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH LETTING HIS EYES
adjust to the gloom after the fierce sunlight outside. Huge stained-glass windows poured light into the dark interior, splashing color onto what appeared at first glance to be a collection of old junk.

To the left of the door a full-size covered wagon stood behind a model of a horse and a mannequin dressed in nineteenth-century clothes. A fully functioning Long Tom sluice box stood opposite with water trickling through it, making a sound like the roof was leaking. A collection of gold pans was arranged around it, beneath a sign saying Tools of the Treasure Hunter's Trade. There were pickaxes too and fake sticks of dynamite and ore crushers and softly lit cabinets containing examples of copper ore and gold flake and silver seams in quartz. Another cabinet contained personal effects—reading glasses, pens, gloves—all carefully labeled and arranged, and there was a scale model of the town on a table showing what Redemption had looked like a hundred years ago. And right in the center of the strange diorama a lectern stood, angled toward the door so that anyone entering the building was forced to gaze upon the battered Bible resting on it.
Solomon walked forward, feeling the cold flagstones beneath his feet. He could see the remnant of a lost page sticking out from the binding, its edge rough, as if it had been violently torn from the book. The missing page was from Exodus, chapters twenty through twenty-one, where Moses brought God's ten holy laws down from the mountain on tablets of stone.

“The Church of Lost Commandments,” Solomon muttered, then continued onward into the heart of the church, breathing in the smells of the place: dust, polish, candle wax, copper, mold.

The commandments were everywhere: carved into the stonework and the wooden backs of the pews, inscribed in the floor in copper letters, even depicted in the stained glass of the windows. It was as if whoever had lost the page from the Bible had built the church in some grand attempt to make up for it. The altar lay directly ahead of him, the large copper cross standing on a stone plinth. As he drew closer he studied it, his eager eyes tracing the twisted lines and spars identical to the cross he wore around his neck, hoping for some jolt of recognition. But if he had ever been here before or stood and gazed upon this cross and this altar he couldn't remember it and he felt frustration flood into the place where his hope had been.

The church seemed gloomier here, as if the walls around the altar were made of darker material, and as he drew closer he saw the reason for it. The stonework, bright white in the rest of the building, was covered in dark frescoes. They depicted a desert landscape at night, populated with nightmarish creatures: hunched men and skeletal women; children with black and hollow eyes, their clothes ragged and tattered. Some rode starved horses with ribs sticking out from sunken hides, their eyes as hollow as their riders'.

Beneath the ground, emerging from a vast, burning underworld, were demons with sharp, eager teeth and leathery wings that stirred
the dust and taloned hands that reached up through cracks in the dry land to grab at the wretched people above them. A few of the demons had snagged an arm or a leg and were gleefully dragging some poor soul down into the fire while their terrified eyes gazed up at the distant glow of a painted heaven. And there was something else, something moving in the shadows—a figure, pale and ghostly—walking out of the painted landscape toward him. It was his reflection, captured in a large mirror that had been positioned so that anyone looking at the fresco became part of what they observed. On either side of the mirror were two painted figures—an angel and a demon—gazing out of the picture, their eyes focused on whoever might stand and gaze in the mirror.

Solomon moved closer until his reflection filled the frame. He studied his face. It was the first time he had seen himself properly and it was like looking at a picture of someone else. Nothing about his features was familiar, not his pale gray eyes or his long, fine nose or the scoops of his cheeks beneath razored cheekbones. He did not recognize the person staring back at him.

“Who are you?” he asked, and a loud bang echoed through the church as if in answer. Footsteps approached from behind a curtained area in the vestry and he turned just as the curtain swept open and found himself facing a modern version of Jack Cassidy. They held each other's gaze for a moment, Cassidy's face a mixture of curiosity and suspicion as he looked him up and down, his eyes lingering on his shoeless feet. “You must be Mr. Creed,” he said, walking forward, hand extended. Solomon shook it and his mind lit up as he caught the hint of a chemical coming off him.

Napthalene—used in pyrotechnics, also a household fumigant against pests.

He saw a small frayed hole in the pocket of his jacket—Mayor Cassidy smelled of mothballs. It was a dark suit, a funeral suit. “You
just buried James Coronado,” Solomon said, and the pain flared in his arm at the mention of his name.

Cassidy nodded. “A tragedy. How did you know him?”

Solomon turned back to the painted landscape. “I'm trying to remember.”

There was something here, he felt sure of it, some reason the cross around his neck had brought him to this place where its larger twin sat.

“Impressive, isn't it?” Cassidy said, stepping over to the wall and flicking a switch. Light faded up, illuminating the fresco in all its dark and terrible detail.

There were many more figures populating the landscape than Solomon had first thought, their black arms and shrunken bodies almost indistinguishable from the land, as if they were made from the earth and still bound to it. The ones with faces had been painted in such realistic detail that Solomon wondered if each had been based on a real person, and what those people had thought when they had seen themselves immortalized as the damned in this macabre landscape. They seethed over the desert, their faces ghostly, their eyes staring up at the too-distant heaven. Solomon looked up too and saw something he had missed when the fresco had been sunk in shadow, something written in the sky, black letters on an almost black background.

Each of us runs from the flames of damnation

Only those who face the fire yet still uphold God's holy laws

Only those who would save others above themselves

Only these can hope to escape the inferno and be lifted unto heaven

The brand on his arm flared in pain again as he read the words, bringing back the feeling he'd first felt back on the road that he was
here for a reason, that there was something particular he had to do.

Only those who would save others . . . can hope to escape the inferno . . .

“
I'm here to save him,” he muttered, his hand rubbing at the burning spot on his arm.

“Who?”

“James Coronado.”

Cassidy blinked. “You're . . . but we just buried him.”

Solomon smiled. “I didn't say it was going to be easy.”

A noise outside made them both turn, a siren howling past, heading somewhere in a hurry. Solomon could smell smoke leaking in through the open door.

The fire.

. . .
Only those who face the fire . . .

The whole town would be heading to the city limits now, preparing to defend their town from the oncoming threat. Most of them would have known James Coronado. Maybe his widow would be there too.

“Are you okay?” Cassidy asked, stepping closer. “You seem a little shaken. Maybe you should head to the hospital, get yourself checked out.”

Solomon shook his head. “I don't need the hospital,” he said. “I need to go back to the fire.”

He looked back at his reflection, trapped between the angel and the demon, their painted eyes looking at him as if asking: “Which of us are you?”

Let's find out
, Solomon thought, and the pain in his arm flared again.