The Salt Maiden (15 page)

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

—Robert Frost,
“Desert Places”

Despite the cutting-edge black outerwear, Jay was plenty wet by the time he slid past the sole remaining news van to park beside the courthouse. Using a key on a large, old-fashioned brass ring, he opened the door and slipped inside, hoping to remain unnoticed. But either the news crew was sleeping or had accurately predicted yet another no-comment, for no one came to bother him as he stripped off one bag and plunked the second—full of sodden currency—on top of his desk.

After pulling out the special agents’ numbers, he called and woke Petit, a younger agent who had grown up only an hour outside of Rimrock County. Though he hadn’t played the hometown-boy card too hard, he’d seemed friendlier than the veteran, Tomlin, who had turned out to be even more stiff-necked than he’d seemed at first. After a brief preamble to apologize about the hour, Jay explained the situation as thoroughly as possible.

“Disturbin’ the scene,” said Petit. “That was strictly necessary, was it?”

Jay hesitated, catching the disdainful note in the special agent’s words. Jay guessed he’d been with the feds long enough that this was the kind of amateur-hour fuckup he’d expect from such a small-town yokel. But since Petit didn’t come right out and say so, Jay let it slide and laid out the reasons for his choice.

That got a grunt of acknowledgment, followed by a request that he not handle the evidence, meaning the money, until both agents showed up. “Just so there aren’t any mis-understandin’s later,” Petit added.

Allowing that comment to slide was not an option.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” Jay said. “I’m not planning on stuffing a bundle down my pants. If I had stealing in mind, I never would’ve called you. Unless you think I’m such a hick, I’m too damned stupid to cover up my theft.”

There was a pause before Petit said, “They call me Cowboy in the bureau.” The sourness of his voice indicated he was less than pleased with the handle. “On account of the way I talk and how some smart-ass Houston cop spread it around that I used to ride the bulls in high school. So I could tell you a thing or two about what these federal boys think of rural Texas lawmen. And how I’d hear about it if you did anything that might be
misconstrued
.”

“Got it,” Jay replied, glad that he’d remembered to take the stray hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and put it in the bag.

“Besides that,” Petit said, reverting to what Jay took to be the bureau’s latest don’t-rile-the-natives manifesto, “we need to be certain that any remaining forensic evidence survives intact.”

Jay knew damned well that any possible forensics had already been hopelessly contaminated, but he decided, at least for now, to ignore the insult.

“We’ll be there in two hours, tops,” Petit told him.

“I’ll be here waiting,” Jay said.

Once the call ended he looked at the bag that sat dripping on his desktop. Sandy soil clung to the black plastic, but it was the bag’s interior that had him curious. Some of the currency he’d blindly thrown in had been loose, but far more of it was bundled. How many packets had he gathered?

It would take only a peek to note the bills’ denomination, to see if all of them were hundreds like the one he’d picked off of his door. And a half minute’s more work to count the
number of intact bundles among the unbound notes. Then he could take a stab at answering the questions chewing his insides. How much money did it take to turn an honest lawman dirty? How much had proved irresistible to Uncle R.C.? And what could the bachelor sheriff have wanted with it in the first place?

Jay touched the plastic with a mud-spattered hand. Yet he hesitated, doubt seeping through his curiosity. Had it been enough to have cost the man his life? The medical examiner had had no reason to look beyond the obvious burns and smoke inhalation as R.C. Eversole’s cause of death. If he went back and re-examined the body, would he find blunt trauma to the head, a stab wound, even a bullet he’d missed during his first examination? Or had Uncle R.C. been drugged before his house was set on fire?

Jay swore, knowing he had already ruined any chance of answers, since he’d respected his uncle’s wish to have his body cremated. Not even the ashes remained, since Dennis had scattered them on the desert as requested.

The phone rang, interrupting Jay’s remorse.

He picked up the receiver, but before he got his name out a woman started screaming, crying out his name.

“Help us. You have to help us. Please—we’re out at some…I guess it’s a bunkhouse for oil-field workers, but no one’s here now. The door…the door says ‘Red Wolf Wildcatters,’ and it’s…I don’t know where—”

“Dana?” He jolted out of his seat, his nerves buzzing like a wasps’ nest. She was supposed to be staying in Pecos, so how could she have gotten all the way out past Arroyo Hueso, here in Rimrock County?

“Jay—please. My sister’s been shot. You have to come. You have to come right now.” Her words burst out in a torrent, followed by another gush so fast he didn’t catch it.

“Calm down. Take a deep breath and repeat that, only slow it down a little.” His heart was pounding so hard, he struggled to take his own advice.
You can’t help her if you can’t
think. Can’t help anybody if you put your gut—or heart—in charge of your brain.

“Please. Call the helicopter, the medevac people. She’s…she can’t die.” Still, Dana was all but screaming, far from the self-possessed woman he had come to know, the woman who had so quickly regained control after her own injury.

“I’ll call,” he said, though he was far from sure that anyone would be flying in this weather, in the darkness. “And I’m on my way—twenty, twenty-five minutes, tops. Meanwhile, you’re going to have to do what you can on your own. It might’ve been with animals, but you’ve been trained to handle medical emergencies. So settle down right now and focus. Hear me?”

At the sharpness of his tone she sucked in a startled breath. When she spoke next she sounded calmer. “Okay, okay. I found a first-aid kit here…but her injury is way beyond that. What if she’s already lost too much blood?”

“I’ll be there quick as I can, Dana. Just hang tight. You can do this.”

He heard her draw a deep breath, heard her fighting off a sob. “Jay—”

Static crackled loudly.

“Dana? Dana, are you still there?” he asked.

But the line had gone dead, leaving him to pray the interruption was the storm’s doing, not a man’s.

Dana held on to the sound of Jay’s voice like a drowning woman clutching at a lifeline.
Settle down right now and focus
, he had told her, and she used those words to float above the chaos roaring in her ears.

The rain had resumed, as hard as ever, just after she’d half dragged, half carried Angie inside a small building marked with keep out signs. As the storm pounded out a rattling rhythm on the metal roof, Dana lowered her now-incoherent sister to the dry floor near the door and went in search of light.

The switches were all dead, but she had found a
rechargeable flashlight hanging on the wall. A quick scan of the small space showed a Spartan bathroom, a minifridge beside a sink, and half a dozen bunks tucked against the corrugated-metal walls. One of the beds contained a stack of folded blankets. Since she didn’t have the strength to drag Angie another inch, much less lift her onto a mattress, Dana settled for using the blankets to cover up her sister where she lay. Afterward she also came across a first-aid kit and an old black wall phone, which—miracle of miracles—had worked long enough for her to call Jay.

Long enough to gather a measure of his strength and let it flow into her aching limbs to steady her. After rubbing life into her arms, she knelt and set the flashlight on the ground so that it pointed at her sister.

The light cast deep shadows on a hunger-ravaged face. Though it was impossible to judge her color, Angie’s breath seemed quick and shallow and her eyes remained closed tight, even after Dana called her name repeatedly and shook her.

“Please wake up.” She felt panic scrabbling at her, eager for a toehold.

Stifling a sob, Dana forced herself to make a thorough examination. Still, she could find no wound other than the quarter-size hole in the upper humerus, which meant the bullet was lodged somewhere in the shoulder joint or possibly deeper. There was no way to measure blood loss; the rain could have washed away a few teaspoons or a few pints, but the blood she saw now seeped instead of gushed. Even so she found a blanket wadded up a corner and wedged it carefully to conserve every drop of life she could.

Dana rummaged through the meager contents of the first-aid kit and put aside the antibiotic ointment, since the wound would have to be thoroughly cleaned at the hospital. Instead she pulled out gauze and tape and opened one of several wrapped sanitary napkins included in the box to
provide a sterile dressing. After patting the area as dry as she could, she jury-rigged a proper pressure bandage.

She dumped out Angie’s sodden backpack to see if there was anything inside that might prove helpful. Digging through the meager contents, Dana found only a pocketknife, a disposable lighter, a half-empty water bottle, and a key only a little smaller than one for a car’s ignition.

It must be to the ATV her sister had mentioned. Though Dana hadn’t seen it in the darkness, she saw no point in looking for it now. Little more than a three—or four-wheeled motorcycle, it couldn’t carry an unconscious woman, and even if she could figure out how to drive it, the ride would leave them both exposed to the storm’s fury.

She pushed aside the backpack and the items it held and rubbed life back into her own arms, which trembled with exhaustion. She felt chilled, too, with her wet clothes clinging to her skin. To fortify herself against the pain of her scratches and bruises, she dry-swallowed a couple of aspirins from the kit. But she was powerless to head off the fatigue that swamped her, the nearly overwhelming urge to close her eyes for just a moment…

Focus
, her brain prompted her, but the mostly dark room started spinning, stars sparkling at its edges, and the snare-drum rattle of the rain turned to a hiss.
Have to stay alert, awake for Angie. Have to…but right now I’d trade my practice for a strong, black cup of coffee, for anything to keep me warm and moving.

Her sister moaned, her head turning to one side.

Dana blinked and straightened. “Angie? Can you look at me? Can you squeeze my hand?”

The cold fingers didn’t tighten, but Angie’s eyes moved behind their deeply shadowed lids.

“Help’s coming,” Dana promised. “A helicopter with a paramedic on board. And the sheriff’s coming, too, soon.”

Agitated, Angie tossed her head from side to side.

“Who was in that truck?” Dana asked her. “Who was it that shot you?”

But as her moaning ceased, Angie Vanover went as still as she was silent.

Jay found them lying on the bare floor, their damp bodies wrapped haphazardly in blankets. Dana was curled around her sister with her arm draped over the frail form as if to offer her protection against further violence.

His breath froze in his lungs, and his heart stumbled. A vision of the Baghdad checkpoint’s carnage spun through his mind. Too late—he’d been too late
again
, and this time he had no idea how he could survive it.

Then his flashlight’s beam caught the gentle rise and fall of Dana’s chest.

“Oh, God.
Dana.
Dana, wake up,” he said as he knelt beside the pair. Unprofessional as it might be, he leaned his head down to hers and hugged her to him in sheer relief.

He kissed her temple before whispering, “I’m here now, so you’re safe. It’s going to be all right.”

When Dana looked up at him, Jay realized she had neither been sleeping nor unconscious. Dirt and scratches marred her tearstained face, but they could not hide the misery there.

“It’s going to be all right,” he repeated.

But before he could say more, she sobbed, “It’s never going to be all right. Not now, not ever again.”

Alarm catapulting through his system, Jay checked on Angie. But even before he found her first pulse point, he understood that Dana spoke the truth.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

—Thomas Gray,
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

“If I was the sheriff, we for damn sure wouldn’t be out here sweatin’ our balls off, playin’ Stepin Fetchit for some feeb,” Wallace growled as he and Jay plucked twenties from the thorny stalks of a sticklike ocotillo.

The federal agent stood in the scant shade beneath the house’s eaves, offering assistance in the form of supervision. Though he’d abandoned his suit jacket, loosened his collar, and pulled off his tie, Emil Tomlin was no match for the noon heat. The skies had cleared to brilliant azure, but last night’s rain had left the air stiflingly humid by desert standards.

Since he’d been up the whole night, Jay wasn’t thrilled about this detail either. And he sure as hell was in no kind of mood for any more lip from his own deputy.

“You
aren’t
the sheriff, Wallace, and you damned well never will be if you don’t quit your constant bitching and your sucking up for cameras.”

Though the deputy’s hat shaded eyes hidden by sunglasses, there was no mistaking Hooks’s glare. “I told you I was sorry about that interview. I explained how that guy sort of tricked me into—”

“Save it.” Jay rubbed sweat from his face with a forearm and pointed to a grouping of low, spiny plants. “There’s more money stuck on those shin daggers. Go and grab those, will you?”

Wallace did it grudgingly, but that didn’t stop him from bitching about how his work gloves were already in tatters.

Jay wished him a lacerated tongue, too, while he was at it. He didn’t have time for his chickenshit petulance and second-guessing. He simply wanted to get this done and escape from Special Agent Tomlin’s endless questions, which were feeling less collegial and more like an interrogation all the time. Both Tomlin and his partner, Petit, who was currently transporting the recovered money to a secure location, had had problems with Jay leaving the bag locked in one of the empty upstairs jail cells after Dana’s frantic call last night. He supposed he could have called in Wallace to look after it, but how could he have delayed with lives at risk?

Though neither of the agents could answer that question when he’d posed it, they seemed to disapprove of it—along with every one of Jay’s decisions. Or maybe it was his relationship to the former sheriff that had them suspicious, considering the evidence.

Jay would have gladly dealt with the special agents’ scorn if his actions could have saved Angie Vanover or eased her sister’s grief. The thought of Dana, battered, wet, and weeping last night, made his gut clench and his eyes burn, and he wished that he could get away to see how she was doing.

Wallace glanced back toward the agent and abruptly broke out laughing. Jay turned to see what could have possibly amused the deputy in his foul mood.

The tall, graying fed had drawn his gun on something and was backing away from it as it crawled past. Jay couldn’t help joining in Wallace’s laughter at the man’s reaction to what must be a male tarantula, driven from his home by water and looking for some love. He and Wallace had already spotted several of the hairy-legged suitors, including one as big as his hand.

It was always the males who went out searching, and he’d heard that between the spiders’ predators and their exertion, they didn’t live long after they got laid. The females, on the other hand, might last through twenty years and al
most as many lovers, as long as they stayed in the place where they belonged.

It made him think of getting Dana back to her safe, clean home in Houston before the same desert that had broken her heart found some way to stop it, too.

Dusk cloaked the small bedroom where Dana awakened. Or maybe it was dawn; she was as unsure of the time of day as of her location. Where on earth
was
this?

When she sat up to rub her eyes, their gritty soreness surprised her. Blinking did nothing but reveal another mystery: the flowered nightgown she was wearing. Edged in lace, it looked nothing like the worn sleep T-shirts she usually favored. Looked more, in fact, like something from Gramma Gifts “R” Us.

She couldn’t remember dressing in it, couldn’t remember anything after…

A cry caught in her throat, and an electric impulse quivered through her muscles. No, that couldn’t be. It had to be a nightmare; that was all.

As she rolled onto her side she pulled her knees toward her breasts. Pain lanced through her muscles, a tearing soreness that made her clamp down on another cry. Had she been hurt somehow? Was that it? Maybe an accident of some kind…Some incident with her car teased the frayed edge of a memory.

Frowning, she studied the dim shapes of the furnishings around her: the old-fashioned dresser-and-mirror set, the nightstand, the small chair, and the looming presence that turned out to be an armoire in the corner. She twisted the brass key of an electric hurricane lamp. With a click it bathed the room in quiet yellow light. From the rag rug to the crown-of-thorns Jesus picture to the faded, moss green walls, the room remained utterly unfamiliar—and about as far from a hospital as she could imagine.

Outside the closed door a floorboard creaked beneath a heavy footstep. Moments later a soft tap followed.

A premonition prickled in her stomach, a sense that whoever came would solve the mystery of where she was and how she’d come to be here, and that the answer to those questions would be far more difficult to bear than curiosity.

By the time the door cracked open, she was trembling.

“Dana? Mrs. Lockett thought she’d heard you stirring, and I saw the light under the door.” Jay’s voice floated over her, quiet and reassuring. “Are you awake?”

She turned toward him, her eyes full of tears that she still could not explain.

“Hey, now. Dana, I’m so sorry.” He sat on the bed beside her and let her fit herself into his embrace.

As he rubbed her back and rocked her, knowledge seeped in slowly. The nightmare hadn’t been a mere dream; her sister had drawn her last breath in her arms.

Tensing, Dana pulled away. “I have to tell my mother. I have to tell her about Angie.”

“It’s all right,” he assured her. “I’ve already taken care of it. Your father’s with her—”

“My stepfather,” she corrected without thinking.

“That’s right, your stepfather. He’s taking care of her. I told them, too, that you refused medical treatment, but you were in no shape to go anywhere. Mrs. Lockett said you’re welcome to stay at her house for as long as you need to.”

“Mrs…Mrs. Lockett?”

“Mamie Lockett. Remember the elderly lady from the café the day that you were bitten by the snake?”

Dana shuddered at the memory of a skinny, gray-haired woman fluttering around the kitchen, searching for the biggest knife she could find. “The one who wanted to carve up my leg?”

“She meant well, I’m sure of it. Mrs. Lockett doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Bakes the best cookies in West Texas, too. Would you like me to bring you a couple?
Or how about one of those muffins to hold you over until dinner?”

Dana shook her aching head, her stomach rebelling at the thought.

He pulled her even closer. “You’re going to have to eat and drink. You’ve slept straight through the whole day.”

“I didn’t remember anything when I woke up. Couldn’t imagine how I’d gotten here or why I was dressed in this.” She pinched at tiny flowers her sister would have laughed at. She could almost hear a younger Angie teasing,
“The nursing home staff called this morning. They want the nightie back, but they’ll let you hold on to the adult diapers.”

“You were pretty out of it,” Jay said. “I probably should’ve dragged you to the hospital in Pecos, no matter how much of a fit you pitched. But Mrs. Hooks and Mrs. Lockett volunteered to clean you up and put you to bed, and it seemed like the best thing at the moment—”

“Mrs. Hooks did?
Judge
Hooks’s wife?” Dana’s face went hot as she remembered snippets of the two women helping her dress. “But I thought Fry Cook and the missus hated me.”

“Estelle’s got her notions of what’s proper, that’s all, but that includes treating someone who’s been through a bad time with Christian kindness.”

Dana thought about the way Jay’s neighbors pitched in during times of trouble. But she was an outsider, with a sister who’d caused trouble and whose death would only bring more unwelcome publicity. Dana’s throat tightened, and she felt the salty sting of tears at the corners of her eyes.

“I tried to hold on to her. Tried everything I could think of to keep her from slipping—”

“You did all the right things, Dana. It wasn’t your fault—”

“That I let her die, or that I led him to her?” She struggled free of his arms, the words painful as acid on her tongue. “Because that had to be what happened. He must have followed me from Devil’s Claw when I went out to meet her.”

“Even if that’s true, you meant to save your sister. You were doing everything you could to—”

“Tell that to the Harrisons,” she said bitterly. “Tell that to my mother.”

He looked at her a long time, his blue eyes wells of sadness. “I know what you’re doing, taking everything on yourself. I did it, too, after Baghdad. The other guys, my superiors, they all kept explaining that it was the suicide bomber’s act that killed my men, and I’d shake my head and say, ‘Yes, sir, I understand that.’ But I damned well should have realized she was reaching for the detonator a split second sooner. Should have shouted out a warning so they could’ve stopped her.”

Dana wanted to tell him that was war and this was different, that in war, death was expected. Not like Angie’s, not like being hunted and helpless in the stormy desert in the dead of night. But the pain in his expression was so present and the fatigue shadowing his eyes so deep that Dana crushed the lit fuse of that impulse. “I’m sorry, Jay. It must have been horrible.”

He nodded an acknowledgment. “More than I can tell you. But I didn’t say it for your sympathy. I only wanted you to know that what you’re doing, it’s like swallowing a fistful of razor blades. They’ll cut you all to pieces on the inside. Pieces that will bleed where no one sees. If you have to be pissed, be pissed, Dana. Mad as all hell at the son of a bitch who killed her. At me, for not finding her soon enough. Even at Angie, if you have to. But don’t swallow all this down. You’re too…I can’t stand the idea of your hurting yourself any worse than this bastard’s already hurt you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Praying that maybe when she opened them, she’d wake up in her hotel room in Pecos. Or better yet, at home in Houston the day before she’d learned of Nikki Harrison’s existence. Angie would be somewhere, on the lam as usual, always in the back of Dana’s mind but no better or worse than ever. And Dana would spend her
day off writing notes, returning gifts, and mailing that jerk Alex a present of her own: a beautifully wrapped, beribboned box of dog shit for his birthday.

But when she counted to ten and looked again, all she saw was Jay, gazing back at her.

Time to face this
, she thought, for what other option was there? Sadness overpowered her, cloying as the scent of lilies at a funeral.

“We never even got a chance to talk,” she said.

“Not at all?”

“Not about anything that mattered—except…except I said that Nikki needed her. I told her she had to keep trying for her daughter’s sake.” Dana sank into his arms again. “And now she’ll never even get the chance to meet her.”

“It’s a hard thing. I understand that,” he said as he enfolded her. “Still, I have to ask you: have you remembered any more? Anything about the shooter or his vehicle?”

Bits of last night came at her, assembling themselves into a warped jigsaw with several pieces missing. “Angie didn’t tell me who. I asked, but by then she’d…” Dana bit her lip as another fragment of memory snapped into place. “There was something about an ATV, I think.”

“We found it—out of gas. It had been reported missing a couple of weeks ago. We’re guessing that your sister ‘borrowed’ it to get around in the desert.”

“But other than that I don’t remember anything.”

Jay didn’t try to hurry her. He simply pulled her into his arms and held her, the steady beating of his heart and the rhythm of his slow breaths a guide that she could follow. He pressed a tender kiss against her crown, and before she could stop herself she tipped back her head to meet his lips. Warm and lingering, the kiss settled over her like an unexpected benediction. But the bittersweetness of it tilted into shock as hunger slipped in uninvited. She needed to lose herself in the wet heat of hard kisses, the ripple of muscle beneath tanned skin, the ancient rhythm called up when he had
moved inside her. She wanted desperately to bridge the gap between raw grief and the place where the pounding of their two hearts would hammer her emotions flat.

She withdrew from him once more, shame throbbing through her. She had no right to visit that place, not with Angie lying cold and friendless, shrouded on a slab.

“Dana.” Jay’s voice was weighted by exhaustion and a longing that made her own name sound foreign to her. But with a shake of his head he dismissed whatever he’d been about to say.

Unable to meet his gaze, she forced herself back to the only subject that should matter. “I never really saw the shooter, but I’m pretty sure he drove a pickup. Could’ve been an SUV, but my impression was a truck.”

Within the space of a few heartbeats he struggled back to sheriff mode. “Do you know what make or model the truck was? Did you catch a glimpse of the paint color?”

She shook her head. “Something on the darker side. I’m not certain, though. And as for what kind, I have absolutely no idea. Even if there’d been light, I’ve never paid a lot of attention to truck styles. Wouldn’t know a Ford from a Chevy from a…well, I don’t know. Who else makes a pickup?”

“Was it older? Newer?”

“I’m so sorry. I want to remember it,
want
to think of something that will help you catch him. But aside from the lightning it was pitch-black out there, so dark he must have fired toward the sound of my voice. He couldn’t even see what he was shooting. If I’d only kept quiet when the thorns caught—”