The Nature of the Beast (12 page)

Craig said he did. “What about the kids?”

“No sign at all,” Begay said. “They mighta come down but it wasn’t on foot.”

Jackson Craig straightened up and looked around. To the north, the wooded hills seemed to go on forever. Begay read his mind.

“They went that way the posse or the dogs will find them for sure.”

Craig turned a hundred eighty degrees. Looking south, the eroded terra firma retreated at vertigo velocity, as a series of narrow ledges gave way to a full-fledged cliff. The distant vista was of steep narrow canyons, and rocky arroyos, dotted here and there with wizened vegetation, until the desert fully encroached and the green ran out.

Once again Begay provided commentary. “Ain’t nothin that way,” he said.

“Gonna take Sheriff Trask and his boys a day or so just to get there. Another couple days to cover it all on horseback.” He sensed Craig’s distaste for the information. “Gotta pack everything in,” he said. “Ain’t no water for the dogs or the horses. Ain’t no nothing.” He gave Craig time to digest the information. “Even the Piautes used to stay the hell out of there,” he said with a grim smile. “Called it by an Indian word meant ‘mountains laying down.’ “ He pointed to the north again, moving his arm in a wide semi-circle. “Used to stop here and then travel all the way around this way, up past Jacob Lake and then on up to the river.”

“And if the kids went over that way?”

Begay thought it over, pulling at his lower lip and looking around. “Assumin they didn’t die from the fall…” he grudgingly allowed. He looked over the edge. “Dead or alive it’s too darn steep to get back up. Down’s the only way you can go.” He shrugged with his head. “After that they got maybe thirty-six hours before the desert dries ‘em up and turns ‘em to dirt.”

Begay dusted his hands against one another. “Getting dark,” he pronounced. “Probably best we be headin’ down.”

Craig didn’t argue. He turned and offered Audrey his hand. She took it. As they picked their way down the path, Begay would pause at intervals, pointing again and again at large waffle-stomper footprints moving downhill.

As the approached the cabin, Begay veered off to the left, toward the back door.

“Bigfoot come this way,” he said. “Right up here.” He pointed at the back step. “That’s where it ends.”

Craig swept the area with his eyes. Begay shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Getting late,” the tracker commented.

Craig got the message, “Thank you Mr. Begay,” he said, offering his hand. Begay took it, shook it, nodded curtly at Audrey and then disappeared around the side of the house.

“I wouldn’t want that man following me,” Audrey said.

Before Craig could agree, the cabin door swung open. Special Agent Waldrip gestured with a blue latex hand.

“They’re finished in here,” he announced. “Come on in. I want to show you something.”

To the immediate right of the back door, a small bathroom had, as a concession to modernity, been cobbled onto the side of the house. Barely enough room to turn around, a chemical toilet and a little rust-stained sink, crude but far better than any alternative Audrey could imagine.

The rest of it, under other circumstances, might have been considered charming. Kitchen and living space connected. Old fashioned wood burning kitchen stove, all polished steel and blue enamel. A natural rock fireplace centered on a pair of built in bookcases. Two bedrooms across the back. One outfitted with a single queen-sized bed and an ancient oak armoire so big it seemed they must have built the cabin around it, the other sporting faded cowboy curtains, a pair of twin beds and two small knotty pine dressers. Summer cabin USA, except that every flat surface bore traces of fingerprint powder, every door and drawer was pulled open to its limits, its contents rifled and rumpled, sticking out in panic, as if trying to flee the scene.

Waldrip ushered them into the larger of the two rooms. He gestured to the armoire. His hand was rigid as he gestured to the left side. Women’s clothes. “Mama,” he said. And then to the right. “Papa.” He used the same ‘karate chop’ hand to indicate the pair of drawers at the bottom of the massive piece. “Same thing down here,” he added. “Mama up top Papa down below.”

He shooed them back into the main room, stepped to the right and brought them into the second bedroom. He gestured toward the open drawers of the dresser on the left.

“Girl’s things. A weeks worth maybe.” He took two steps to his right and gestured toward the second dresser. An anxious five seconds passed before Audrey got it.

The drawers were empty. No boy’s clothes. She stepped forward. Same with the lower drawers. Her heart became audible in her ears.

“You don’t bring a five year old out here into God’s country without several changes of clothes,” Waldrip said.

“I’m betting he took the boy with him,” Audrey said.

Waldrip blanched and turned away. “God,” he whispered. His sour expression said he would prefer to believe nearly anything else.

Waldrip continued to shake his big head. “Why would he do something like that? Why burden himself with a little kid? That makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

Unless…you know he’s got some ulterior…” Waldrip couldn’t bring himself to say it. The implication hung in the air like an oily mist. Craig looked to his partner for advice. She didn’t hesitate. “Among other things, we’ve got serious identity issues here,” Audrey offered. She jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. “The nipples…the obvious hatred of women…” She paused. “…combined with the…as Special Agent Waldrip said, the absolutely inexplicable kidnapping of the boy.”

She allowed her hands to drop to her sides with a slap. “These kinds of perps are usually classified as either being ‘organized’ or ‘disorganized.’ You know…somebody who plans what he’s going to do and takes at least minimal precautions so as to not get caught, or a guy who’s just a prisoner of his glands. He sees it; he wants it; he takes it; worry about the rest of it later.” She cut the air with an angry hand and then stole a look at the cabin. Somebody inside was whistling
Claire de Lune
as they worked.

“This guy shows signs of both extremes,” she said. “Almost like there’s two completely different people at work here. One who’s got an agenda and is desperately trying to do things in an organized manner…trying as hard as he can to complete his mission and another guy so angry he can barely keep under control. No matter how hard our perp tries to be rational, Mr. Hyde keeps spilling out and mucking things up.” She made eye contact with Craig. “It’s the kind of mental strain the human brain can’t endure for very long. Sooner of later the dam breaks and the perp climbs up a tower with a high powered rifle. If I had to guess, I’d say this one’s only a couple of exits from going completely out of control.”

A technician in a white plastic nuke-suit appeared in the doorway. His outstretched glove held a half sheet of paper which he extended toward Jackson Craig.

“For you sir,” he said.

Craig thanked him. The craggy contours of his face sharpened as he read. Finished, he handed the page to Special Agent Waldrip, who slipped his glasses onto the end of his nose and perused the document.

“I’ll have somebody get you back to the airport post haste,” Waldrip said when he’d finished reading.

As Waldrip hurried out of the cabin, Jackson Craig turned his attention to Audrey Williams. “One those Witness Protection identities has turned up in Rock Springs, Utah,” he said. “Local law enforcement claims they know where to find him.”

22

Becky was blind and missing a shoe. She groped around in front of her body, feeling the powdery dirt squeeze between her fingers as she pushed herself to her knees. The motion broke her tenuous purchase on the incline; she began first to slide, raking with her fingers as she gained speed and lost hope, finally dragging the only shoe, digging the toe in hard, nearly breaking her ankle as suddenly she went completely out of control, tumbling head over heels, becoming airborne for what seemed forever, landing with a terrific thump, driving the air from her lungs as she bounced again and again, her limbs flailing and fluid like a discarded doll, until gravity brought her skidding to a stop. A wet groan escaped her lips.

Fortunately, her mouth was facing downward when she began to vomit. Her body convulsed, spasm after spasm until the urge to purge outlasted the contents of her stomach. Still resting on her elbows, she bowed her head and began to cry. Her nose touched the warm puddle beneath her face. Reflexively, she jerked her head back, an action which, as she’d feared, sent her into motion once again, sliding, then rolling until...bang, in the second before gravity put her out of her misery, she came to a shuddering stop. The ribs on her right side throbbed. Something dry and brittle showered onto her. Becky hiccupped in pain, reaching for the injury. Something impeded her hand.

She imagined the smooth surface beneath her fingertips to be bone. A protruding rib perhaps or, worse yet, that she’d burst open like a recycled plastic bag and was somehow feeling her own backbone in the moments immediately preceding what was sure to be a prolonged and excruciating death. She wanted to scream, to demand redress, to call for her…

She settled for a single sob and inched her hips forward, once and then a second time. Tentatively so as not to dislodge herself again, Becky reached for her aching side, expecting to trace the carnage with her fingertips, to feel her punctured skin awash in the wet refuse of her exploded organs.

Her fingers, however, told another story. Her skin was intact. Nothing was broken. Nothing was oozing. She reached lower on her body, down by her hip now, finding the same spot her fingers had explored a moment before…hard, smooth…wood. It was wood. She grabbed it with her hand. The movement shook lose another barrage of material from above. She pawed the air above her head.

A thick lace of branches and old dry leaves scratched at her hands.. She was under a bush of some kind. She plucked one of the leaves from her hair and for some science-class reason ground it between her fingers and then sniffed at it. Smelled like that black gunk they put on railroad ties.

Every joint and muscle in her body felt as though it had been ruptured. She groaned again and began to inch upward. The angle was steep; the ground was loose. She would crawl and then slip backward, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing ground until finally, she was able to hook her right leg around the bush, allowing herself to slide down to where the trunk rested between her legs, preventing further slippage.

23

Mostly, Utah was dark. Interstellar space dark, broken only here and there by mercury vapor galaxies before fading to black for a few more light years.

The company plane was descending. Audrey switched off her overhead light and sat back in the plush seat. She pinched her nose and blew, trying to clear her ears. Unable to do so, she clamped her jaw, stared straight ahead and despite her efforts to sit still, began to squirm in the seat.

From across the aisle, Jackson Craig sensed her discomfort and sought to divert her attention from the impending landing.

“Other than a desire to annoy your long suffering parents, what else made you decide you wanted to join the Secret Service?” Craig asked affably.

“Believe me, I’ve asked myself that question every day since I signed up,” Audrey said with an ironic snicker.

“Have you come to a conclusion?” he pressed.

Audrey checked her seat belt again. “Not really,” she said. “I mean…” She waved a diffident hand in the darkness. “And it’s not like I haven’t tried to convince myself of every self-serving motive I could think of. Believe me…I have.”

“Serving your country…doing your family proud…” Craig intoned.

She laughed again. “All of it,” she said. “Believe me, no avenue of self-aggrandizement was left untrodden.”

“And?”

“I know this sounds corny, but I really wanted to make a difference in the world. I wanted to do something that mattered and…of all the opportunities staring me in the face at the time, the Secret Service seemed like the best bet.”

“And now you wish you’d chosen something else.”

“I’m not sure what I wish,” she said. “In some ways the service was everything I imagined. In others, it was beyond my worst nightmares.”

“How so?”

She thought about it. “I never imagined just how stratified and political the organization would be.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been doing this for nearly three years and it’s like I still haven’t had a chance to show anybody what I can do. As far as I can tell, the Secret Service is an exercise in doing
exactly
and I mean
exactly
what you’re told to do, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Facelessness is a virtue in this job.”

She shrugged. “That’s just it. I’m not sure I’m self-effacing enough to do this for the rest of my life. I have ideas. I have opinions. I can’t be walking around like a zombie for the next twenty years doing only what I’m told. I want somebody to ask me what
I
think, how
I
’
d
go about whatever it is we’re doing. I’m beginning to think I wasn’t designed to be a worker bee.”

“You’re young, there’s no hurry,” Craig scoffed. “Thirty, unmarried.”

She frowned into the darkness. “How do you know about my personal life?”

“I read your file,” he said.

She sputtered, swallowed hard and then asked. “Do I get to read your file?”

“My file is classified.”

“Well, you’re certainly not married either,” she countered.

“How do you know? Maybe I’ve got a frau and a couple of kiddies stashed in Europe somewhere.”

She laughed out loud. “Not a chance,” she scoffed. “You’re way too unbending for a married man. A married man learns to compromise.”

“Compromise is nobody getting exactly what they wanted,” he said.

“What did you do, memorize Bartlett’s?”

He chuckled but didn’t answer. The tone of the engines changed as the pilot throttled back and eased the nose down. Audrey tightened her belt. The cabin lights flickered and then went out.