Extreme Measures (46 page)

Bernard Nelson tightened his seat belt for the fourth time since takeoff, and silently prayed that the
huevos rancheros
he had been foolish enough to have for breakfast would find some sort of quiet resting place within his body.

The Cessna 172 was patched in places with duct tape, but its owner and pilot, a man named Chippy, seemed interested enough in his own survival to dispel the most strident of Nelson’s misgivings. It would have helped, Bernard acknowledged, if he had a better idea of what they were looking for in the craggy desert west of Moab. But what he
did
know was that the late Donald Devine had made any number of trips to Moab, and had filled up twice in the area almost every time. The man had to have driven somewhere.

He also knew, from an hour’s experience, that asking the laconic residents and gas station attendants of the town if they had seen a hearse cruising off into the desert was not the quickest way to make friends or gain confidences.

“How much fuel do we have left, Chippy?” he asked.

“Another hour, m’be,” the pilot said. “How far we go on’t ’pends on the wind.”

Chippy was a dark, weathered man in his fifties—Indian or part Indian, Bernard guessed. He flew with effortless confidence, and spoke in a patois that was, at times, almost unintelligible. It seemed as if he left out almost as many syllables as he pronounced. Bernard checked the detailed map he had bought in town.

“In that case,” he said, “let’s fly to Hanksville, and then over to St. Joseph. Can we do that?”

“We can. Ain’t nothin’ t’ either place, though.”

“That’s okay. Try to stay around three hundred feet if you can.”

“It’d help if ya knew whachas lookin’ for.”

“I know it would.” Bernard thought for a time, then decided to chance adding one more name to the list of those who thought him crazy. “Chippy, someone’s been driving out here at least once a month. From what I can tell, he was driving a hearse. I’m trying to figure out where he was going, and what he was up to.”

The pilot, who seemed unsurprised by the revelation, drummed his fingers on the control wheel. Then he put on his earphones and motioned for Bernard to do the same.

“Moab, this’s Cessna Two One Papa Delta,” he said into his radio. “D’ya copy? Repeat, this’s Two One Papa Delta callin’ Moab Air.”

“We hear you, Chippy,” a voice crackled.

“Morton, put Marianne on, will ya?” He turned to Bernard. “Jes’ had me a thought,” he said.

“Hi, Chippy, it’s Marianne.”

“Say, beau’ful, how’s it goin’?”

“You coming back soon?”

“ ’Nother hour, m’be. We’re out here ’bout twenty miles north of Hanksville. Do you ’member a ways back tellin’ me ’bout some ghost town near here?”

“That’d be Charity. It ain’t no ghost town, though. It’s a hospital of some sort now. A mental hospital, if you can believe that. Set up, oh, two or three years ago. But the head doctor there sent a notice around forbiddin’ any overflights.”

Bernard nodded quickly.

“Jes’ wondrin’, thassall,” Chippy said. “Where ’bouts is’t anyway?”

“Twenty or twenty-five miles west of St. Joe’s. Don’t you cause no trouble, now, Chippy Smith. For all I know they’re listening to us right now.”

“Hey, do I cause trouble? Well, we’ll jes’ be swin
gin’ by Hanksville an’ back. See you in a hour. Papa Delta out.”

“Can you find it, Chippy?” Nelson asked.

“I kin try.”

Bernard gazed down at the vast, rugged terrain, rocky and barren of all but the simplest vegetation, yet in its way serenely beautiful. Of primary interest to him, though, were the dirt roads and tire tracks that from time to time skimmed past.

They had flown northwest for twenty minutes when Bernard caught the flash of sunlight off something metal or glass.

“Chippy, there, over there,” he said. “Did you see it?”

The pilot nodded and banked to the east. It took another five minutes of circling before they spotted the Jeep, which was largely covered with dust and almost completely hidden from the air by a rocky overhang. Smith dipped down to 120 feet and made a second pass. Beside the vehicle was an elongated mound of dirt. Protruding from the mound were what looked like shoes and pieces of clothing.

“Can you set us down?” Bernard asked.

“If I do, the takeoff’s gonna use up our tourin’ fuel.”

“Can we still get back to Moab?”

“Pro’bly.”

“Go for it.”

Smith shrugged and pulled back up to 200 feet. Minutes later, he dropped down over what might have been a roadway or dried-up creek bed, and neatly set the Cessna down in a cloud of dust and pebbles.

“You’re a hell of a pilot,” Bernard said.

Chippy smiled. “I try,” he said.

They located the Jeep with little difficulty. Its canvas roof was intact, although covered with half an inch of fine sand. Together, they walked around to the mound they had seen. Two skeletons, locked in each other’s arms, lay in the shadow of the vehicle. Their
tattered sneakers and the bleached white stalks of their legs protruded obscenely from beneath the covering dust.

“You can wait over there for me if you want,” Bernard said. “I’m going to try and figure out who they are.”

“Ain’t much that upsets me,” Chippy Smith said.

They used a rag from the Jeep to brush the dust away from the bodies. The flesh had largely rotted or been eaten away from the two skulls, but from the ragged clothing, jewelry, and what hair and gristle remained, they were able to determine that what they were seeing had once been man and woman.

Bernard knelt beside the two forms and caught a whiff of the fading scent of death. He noticed the bulge of a wallet in the jeans of one of them, and reached for it. The pocket fell open at his touch.

“Richard Colson, Santa Barbara, California,” he read, sadly looking from the smiling face in the driver’s license photo to the grotesquely grinning skull.

Chippy found a purse on the floor of the Jeep, and from the wallet inside they learned the name and face of Colson’s wife.

“Nice-lookin’ couple,” he said. “Any idea how they died?”

“None, except I don’t think they were shot. How close are we to that Charity place?”

“Ten miles, m’be.”

Bernard slipped the wallets into his jacket pocket.

“Think you could keep this a secret for a while?” he asked.

“You police?”

“Private.” He fished his ID from his wallet and flashed it, along with a hundred-dollar bill.

“That ain’t necessary,” Chippy said, pointing at the money. “I’ll jes’ take whacha owe for the flight an’ keep quiet.”

Bernard handed the bill over anyway.

“I promise these folks’ll get taken care of properly,
” he said. “I just don’t want anybody at the hospital alerted yet until I get a look at what they’re up to. These two may not be connected at all with what I’m looking for, but then again, they just might.”

The two men stood in silence for a time, gazing down at the ghostly remains. Then they turned and headed back to the plane. As the engine roared to life, a scorpion crept out of the eye socket of Marilyn Colson’s skull and scampered across to the safety of a nearby pile of rocks.

E
xcept for a single tiny window built at eye level into the steel door, the room at the rear of Warehouse 18 was like a vault—a hollow cube of concrete, perhaps twelve feet on a side. In one corner of the room were a plastic bottle of water and an empty metal bucket, presumably for holding human waste, and along one wall was a stack of four quilted packing blankets.

For more than an hour Laura Enders had been alone in the room with her brother—or rather with what remained of his mind and body.

After whipping the two of them down with his pistol, and coolly murdering the hobo named Rocky, Lester Wheeler had driven through a side gate at the docks and then around to the front of the warehouse. The huge hangarlike doors had opened for them without a signal, allowing Wheeler to drive straight down a long aisle between packing crates to the back room. There, two men—whom Laura recognized from her close call on the docks with Eric—undid the manacles
binding her to Scott and shoved her alone into the bleak cell.

Several times over the hour that followed she heard her brother’s sickening screeches from somewhere in the warehouse. She pounded at the door, screaming until her hands and voice could do no more. Then she sank down on the foul-smelling blankets and cried. Finally, Scott was thrown in with her, moaning and barely conscious. His breathing was even more labored than before, and his face and hands were bloody. When Laura knelt to tend to him, she realized that several of his fingernails had been torn off.

Now, as she paced from one side of the narrow prison to the other, Scott slept, at times moaning, at times crying out softly like a child. She ached for his pain, for his crippled body and memory, and for the hopelessness of their situation. And she struggled to ignore the gruesome, fleeting wish that his breathing would simply stop.

Outside the small window she could see men working as if nothing were amiss. One of them drove a forklift, transferring crates from one section of the huge warehouse to another. Several others wandered by, laughing or talking or drinking beer. One of them actually looked over at her and smiled.

“Damn you,” she muttered. “Damn you all to hell.”

She tore off a piece of her shirt, dampened it, and gently wiped Scott’s face. His eyelids fluttered and then opened. He focused on her with an ease that surprised her.

“Have they hurt you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Not yet. Did you tell them what they wanted to know?”

“I … I don’t think so. Right now that videotape is keeping us alive.”

“You
do
remember the tape then?”

“Yes. So much is still missing for me, but I do
know that. The receiver’s locked in that Aphrodite trailer, just as you said.”

“And how much else do you remember?”

Scott winced as he propped himself up on one elbow.

“Some little scenes or details clear as day. Most things not at all. I wish I could say I remember you, but I really don’t. Were we close?”

Laura stroked his hair from his forehead.

“Yeah,” she said hoarsely. “We were very close.”

“I’m glad.”

He pushed himself up until he was sitting, and leaned against the wall. His eyes seemed to hold a remarkable power. If anything he seemed stronger than when she had found him in Rocky’s lean-to.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

“What?”

“That cop is either going to use drugs or he’s going to do something to you in front of me. Whatever it is, we can’t wait around to see.”

“Scott, there are a bunch of men out there, and this place is like a fort. There’s no chance.”

He pushed himself to his feet, grimacing at the pain but refusing to cry out.

“There’s always a chance,” he said. He tried unsuccessfully to stifle a thick cough.

Laura stood in front of him. “Can you move enough to do anything?”

“I made it this far, didn’t I?”

Laura heard the new forcefulness in his voice, and knew that he had summoned it for her. He was still so lost and in such pain; they had taken nearly everything from him. And yet he seemed able to reach within himself for more.

“Scott, you know what you did for a living now, don’t you?” she said.

He forced a thin smile and touched the clotted blood on her cheek.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I do.” He peered out
the window at the workmen. “Tell me, those big doors we drove through, did they open upward or to the side?”

“To the side, I think. Yes—yes, I’m sure of it. They folded open in sections on a track.”

Scott glanced out the small window and then knelt by the door and studied the keyhole. Laura had to help him up.

“Bring that over,” he said, motioning to the bucket. She did as he asked. “Do you have a belt on?”

She pulled off her belt, which was fairly wide and fastened with a metal buckle that had some heft. Scott tried undoing his own, but his clumsy hand and torn fingers made the task impossible. Laura undid it for him.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.