The Salt Maiden (18 page)

Dana blinked to hide the misting of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid my mind’s been wandering. And I’d better not have more tea or I’ll be squatting behind every bush from here to Carlsbad. I have enough troubles without getting a bunch of spines in my keister.”

She shivered at a premonition of Bill Navarro volunteering to pull them out. And kiss the hurt to make it better, while he was at it.

Mrs. Lockett smiled, showing yellowed dentures. “If you’re still thinking of Sheriff Eversole, why don’t you go and see him?”

“I
do
need to ask him a few questions about the investigation. And thank him for bringing me my purse and clothes.”

Kindness settled over the old woman’s expression. “Call it what you like, dear.”

Dana’s face heated, and her gaze drifted toward the closed shades of the front window, which looked out onto the courthouse, as well as the spot where Jay habitually parked his county SUV. Before sitting down to breakfast she had twice peered out, but had seen only Wallace’s blue pickup. Mrs. Lockett must have noticed—or heard something in her voice.

“He probably won’t be in till later,” she said, “but you can take my car to his place if you’d like. I imagine it would do you some good to get out on your own a spell.”

Dana looked at her, surprised—not so much that Mrs. Lockett had picked up on her concern for Jay, but at the offer of the ancient relic gathering dust behind the house. “It…The car still runs?” she asked, and then heated as she realized how snobbish her question must have sounded. “I-I’m sorry. Of course, it must. Or you wouldn’t have offered.”

Mrs. Lockett laughed. “Say what you want about my Edsel. Like you and me, she’s built to last.”

Except for the high-clearance part, the cream-colored Edsel turned out to be everything Dana wanted: low-flash, slow, and put together like a Sherman tank. Even so, she kept nervously checking her mirrors on the way to Jay’s place, looking for the big grille of the shooter’s truck.

He was only after Angie
, she told herself.
And before that, he wanted to keep us away from the other woman he’d killed, the Salt Maiden.
An image of Angie’s sun-bleached hair merged with a memory of the weaving on the loom.
He’s not after me, not really…

But Dana couldn’t stop thinking of her night in the adobe, when he’d crept so close with what might have been a rifle. Had he mistaken her for Angie that night? Or had his rage spilled over onto her?

One thing was for certain: Jay would have a fit about her driving out here all alone. It was the sole reason she hadn’t
called to let him know that she was coming. If she had, he might have driven into town to see her, but she needed time alone before she saw him to collect her thoughts.

Don’t make it complicated. Just tell him good-bye.
But that was her head talking, not the part of her behind the wheel.

The good-girl portion, the one that made top grades and sensible decisions, hadn’t made much headway by the time she pulled into his driveway. She was relieved to see Jay’s SUV there and pleased when Max raced over and wagged his little stub tail feverishly.

“Hey, Maxie,” she said as she climbed out of the car to greet him. “Down, boy.”

The dog broke off his attempts to slurp her face and dropped into a down position, though his whole body wriggled in frustrated enthusiasm.

“Somebody’s been working with you,” she said as she bent to scratch the silky fuzz behind his ears. Feeding him well, too, from the way he was beginning to fill out.

“That somebody would be me,” Jay said, from behind her. “Too bad you’re not as amenable to following directions. I thought you’d keep a low profile. Isn’t that what we agreed on?”

She turned her head to see him dressed in khaki shorts and a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt. That took her by surprise, since she’d figured him for country all the way.

She leavened her shrug with a smile. “I’m not the obedient type. So sue me.”

He answered with a wry grin. “Maybe I just will. Rumor has it that you’re loaded.”

She snorted. “You’d better hurry, before my next credit-card statement shows up. You wouldn’t believe the cost of a last-minute, one-way flight from Carlsbad to Houston. And then there’s the fact that I’m not working.”

“That could make two of us soon.”

“So I’ve heard. I’m sorry, Jay. Sorry about everything, including the way our last talk ended.”

Their gazes locked, and she saw in his a reflection of her struggle, her ambivalence about leaving the only good thing to come out of her trip here. Because as unlikely as it was, the connection between them felt real. As real as anything she’d ever known.

He tossed aside the hammer he’d been holding, dropped the bag of nails into the dirt. When she took a step forward he met her, clasping her against him and pulling her into a blazing kiss. Her every nerve ending fired at the contact, and the tears trickling from the corners of her sore eyes signaled joy instead of pain. As his tongue slipped into her mouth, stroking and exploring, a white light seared away the cold, black shadow of her grief.

His hand skimmed along her side before sliding between them to stroke her breast.

He thumbed the nipple, and she pulled her mouth away to whisper, “Yes, Jay. Yes, this, please—before I have to go.”

As his hardness sprang against her, Dana thrilled to the thought that she had caused it, that she meant to set off a lot more than hydraulics. Without a word he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the RV, his only pause to struggle with its stubborn door.

Breathing hard, he said, “This doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not for you and not for me—and if those federal agents see us, I’m in even deeper shit than—”

“Just open the damned door and shut up,” Dana told him, “unless you want them to spot me doing you right here.”

Inside they didn’t make it to the bed. Instead he cleared the breakfast things from the table with a sweep of his arm that sent a coffee mug, a small plate, and a stack of papers flying. Something shattered, but she didn’t see what, didn’t care as he pushed up her T-shirt and made short work of her bra’s front closure, his mouth sucking in her nipple and sending more bliss streaking southward.

She nearly screamed with the pleasure of it as tiny detonations quivered low and deep, building to the first real
shudder as he stripped her of her shorts and panties, then laid her out like a dessert and started kissing at two tiny, reddish scars on either side of her lower abdomen.

And then he shifted, kissing his way around her navel and flicking his tongue around its dimple.

“You aren’t going to…” she began, some primly proper corner balking as his lips tickled the inside of her thigh. “People have to eat here.”

He looked up, his eyes laughing, and said, “Damned straight. People do.”

He delved lower, sinking to his knees for access, stroking the center of her until a storm of mindless pleasure crackled all around her. Her neck arched back until she saw nothing, heard nothing but the rasping of her breath, the building of her moans, then the thrumming of her blood like thunder in her ears. When two of his fingers tested her depths she exploded, her cry so loud that from some distant recess she heard Max bark outside.

When the waves at last subsided and she could see again, Jay was fumbling with his own clothes, searching through a pocket, looking. Cursing softly.

Smiling, she told him, “You don’t need a condom. The surgery I mentioned…those scars…I’ll never get pregnant, and I’m not sick.”

“There’s been no one else but you,” he said, “not since the army gave me a clean bill on that count.”

“Why don’t you come up here,” she invited, patting the table as she rose from it, “and let me give you a very personal examination?”

They tangled in another deep kiss that tasted of her own excitement. When her mouth dropped to his neck and her fingers tweaked his nipples, she smiled at his sharp intake of air.

“If you…” he said as she trailed kisses lower. “I won’t last if you don’t stop that.”

She pushed him backward, smiling. “I’ve been told you should lie back and think of England.”

“It’s not working,” he said as she kissed along his length.

She feathered touches, eliciting a low moan that made her smile at the thought of her own power, a power that remained to her despite the surgery. “Then try the queen. That ought to do.”

Apparently it did, for he not only survived what came next, he rallied well enough to flip her over afterward and take her from behind.

She moved in time to his thrusts, her own excitement building as he reached around to touch her, setting her ablaze. As he cried her name and spilled the river of himself inside her, the table cracked and canted and they had to scramble off to keep from sliding to the floor.

“That was some kind of good-bye,” she said as she leaned her head against his chest, nuzzling the coarse hairs. “But I am sorry about your table.”

He kissed her, then smiled down like sunlight. “Maybe someday we’ll take ourselves a trip to England. Seems like I should stop by and thank the queen.”

Sometime later, as he sat with Dana nestled in his arms, Jay felt the shift of her emotions in the warmth of tears against his skin.

“If you’re going to do this every time we make love,” he said as he kissed her temple, “you’re going to give me some kind of complex. You know, on top of the ones I have already.”

As she wiped at her green eyes she tried to laugh, but her expression trembled before collapsing into misery. “I-I’m sorry, Jay. It just seems wrong. Being with you this way. Laughing as if nothing’s happened. And then there’s the part where I stepped outside myself this morning, coming here and throwing myself at you like some sort of a—”

He stopped her with a lingering kiss. When he felt her
tension melt into it, he cupped her face and stared at her, intent on memorizing each beautiful detail.

“There’s nothing in the world wrong in this, with us,” he said. “It’s only simple, human comfort at a time we both can use it. And I expect we’re both behind on our quota of laughter these past few months. God only knows we’re due a share.”

“But this afternoon I’m leaving,” she said. “I have to go home to my mother. To my clinic.”

“To your life,” he finished for her. “I wish it could be different, but we both know it’s the right thing. Me and you together—it’s something to fill a need, that’s all. It could never work out long-term. I think we both know that.”

It hurt to say those words, hurt to know that they were true. Because impossible as it was, he wanted her at his side—not in a place like Rimrock County, but in a community with all the advantages and comforts she deserved. The trouble was, though, back in her city she had friends and family and her own expectations about the kind of man she would accept. None of which had anything to do with some shell-shocked reject who might easily end up out of work and on the street.

“I know it, but I want…” She squeezed him tight around the middle. “I need…”

She sighed and let him go. “I need to grow up, that’s what. This is crazy, thinking there’s some way for us…Even if it weren’t for the logistics, Jay…I’m as barren as this desert, and twice as prickly.”

“Prickly?” he asked. “You? Maybe by Houston standards, but you can’t hold a candle to the average Rimrock County resident. Or its vegetation.”

He started dressing as she did the same. Once they had finished he added, “And the desert isn’t barren, Dana. Come out here a minute. Let me show you.”

He took her outside, where the air was heating, then
moved to the ladder at the back of the RV. “Climb it,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Dana looked distrustfully at the ladder. “Oh, come on, Jay, it’s got to be ninety already, and I’m sore and—”

“It’ll be worth it, I promise. And I’ve tested and retested this ladder. It’s secure as it can be. Come on, Dana, just for a minute.”

She shrugged and muttered, “In the spirit of humoring you…” before making her slow way up the ladder toward the top, with Max barking in frustrated longing from below.

“Hands to yourself,” she groused when he tried to boost her bottom.

“I just thought, with all that groaning you were doing—”

“That it would be a great excuse to cop a feel?”

“Hadn’t thought of that angle,” he lied, grinning, before he joined her on the top deck. “Careful of that rusty spot.”

“So what,” she started, “was so important to show me up…here…”

Her words trailed off as she looked out at the vastness of the desert all around them: a vista unbroken, save for the earth-colored adobe ranch house and outbuildings, by any other sign of human habitation.

“It’s…it’s so
green
.” Her words were hushed with reverence. “And I see flowers—right there.”

He followed the line of her slim arm to where she pointed out a mass of bright purple blooms decorating a stand of cholla cactus. “And over there? What’s that?”

He spotted the pale yellow-green patches clothing rocks that had been dull gray days before. “That’s lichen. And over there, those little white blossoms—tangled fishhooks. And enough grass to keep the cattle chewing quite a while.”

In the distance he saw several cow-and-calf pairs doing just that, and he felt the first stirring of eagerness to be out there among them working, a job that Dennis Riggins had been tending in his stead since Uncle R.C. had died. Den
nis was keeping his uncle’s horses, too, a pair of sturdy geldings sometimes used for desert searches.

“But how can this be?” asked Dana. “Just two days ago this was all…empty.”

“Dormant,” he said, “that’s all. Just waiting for the rain. Never barren, Dana, any more than you.”

As if to hide her face, she turned. “Thank you so much for showing me, Jay. There really is a beauty here if you know where and when to look.”

He inhaled the dry air’s clarity, gazed out across the salt flat to the foothills that looked for all the world like shapes cut out of purple construction paper…

Where he formed a silhouetted target within a distant rifle’s scope.

A belief developed in the Middle Ages that the ingestion of the preserved flesh of the Egyptian mummy could cure all manner of infirmity and illness. This practice, which persisted well into the nineteenth century, accounted for the looting of innumerable desert tombs in order to support the grisly trade.

When mummies were no longer readily available, the dried, ground flesh of executed felons or diseased poor ensured that profits could continue to flow uninterrupted.

—From
Medical Oddities Through the Ages,
Professor Elizabeth Farnum, Ph.D

An explosion of scarlet, flecked with shards of skull and splatters of gray matter. A burst of will communicated in the trajectory of a single, deadly missile.

A pulse of lethal power,
his
power, that would fall like a killing bolt from the clear blue.

The Hunter hardened with the thought of it, with the justness and the rightness. With an answer to the frustration and raw hatred that cut like broken glass inside him. With the avalanche of pain and destruction he would hurl down at the bitch’s sister…if he but squeezed a little harder on the trigger of his gun.

Sweat poured off him, more in response to the weight of his decision than to the day’s heat. As he stared through the rifle’s scope, the salt sting forced him to pull away, to blink.

And to consider the sacrifices he had made to get that money. And the sheer stupidity of killing the one woman he could have forced to lead him to it.

If he had only run the sisters to ground that storm-slashed night as he had planned, had only held his gun to Dana Vanover’s head and started flaying strips of her flesh
with his skinning knife. Then Angelina surely would have told him the location, would have wept and begged him to let her take him to it.

But instead he had allowed his hunting instincts and his rage to call the shots—that and his terror that Angelina would escape beyond his reach. If he had been smart enough to think beyond that, he would have aimed high to pin the pair down until he could get to them.

But his intentions hardly mattered, since he had been unable to track them in the darkness. Worse yet, he’d later learned that he had killed her—accidentally shot dead the one person in the world who could have led him to the cash.

Fury and frustration crashed around the Hunter, deep red waves as thick and salty as congealing blood. After all the sacrifice, all the deprivation, to lose his prize through such stupidity…

Sometimes he heard the woman he had murdered laughing from the grave. For she’d unearthed his due, leaving it for Sheriff Jay Eversole to find.

And that bastard had turned it over to the goddamned FBI…

The Hunter’s index finger spasmed, and he barely controlled the urge to squeeze off a killing shot. Or better yet a pair of them, to take out both of those who had helped to ruin everything for him.

But this time he pushed back the predator, which allowed his human remnant to think through the likely consequences—the law officers that would swarm like angry hornets, stopping at nothing to seek him out.

Through his scope he saw that Eversole was moving, climbing down from the RV after Dana Vanover. Even from this distance he saw their casual touches, the body language that hinted they were either lovers or soon would be.

At the realization the Hunter’s finger moved to stroke the rifle’s barrel and then caress the well-worn handle of his favorite skinning knife. His breathing intensified as his
thoughts turned to the smooth strips of pale flesh he had peeled from the pale body, to the sweet-salty iron taste that he had held for hours between his teeth and gum.

As a youth he had been taught to honor the valor and the cunning of his prey by taking such a tribute, and he still recalled the first steaming sliver of buck’s heart pressed bloody to his lips. When he had gagged at that initiation, his father’s friends had mockingly asked if he was certain that he wished to be a real man, had had themselves a good laugh at his expense.

Never guessing that much later the lesson would sink in.

Never guessing the bitterness of his regret that he had lost the chance to taste of Angelina, who had been by far the worthiest prey that he had ever taken. Brilliant and resourceful, strong enough to elude him on his own turf for months, in spite of her condition.

Was it possible Angelina’s sister was all she had been and more? For twice she had escaped his bullets. Her sister, who was charming the county sheriff, just as Angelina had before her.

A smile pulled at dry lips until the lower split and oozed out bloody droplets. Because the thought of Dana Vanover gave the Hunter an idea…

One that had him smiling as he stroked both the knife’s shaft and his own.

Dana’s gaze lingered on the pickup’s rearview mirror as the tiny clutch of buildings disappeared over the horizon. One hand fiddled with the truck’s air-conditioning vent in an attempt to direct some cool air toward her face. What breeze she felt was hot and gritty, dry as the afternoon outside.

“Sorry, Dana, but this old girl’s AC takes a few miles to get crankin’.” Bill Navarro patted the dashboard, then pulled a bandanna from his pocket and brushed at sun-faded plastic as if he’d noticed the thin film of dust there.

Dana sneezed twice, which had him stammering more
apologies as he tucked the blue cloth in the front pocket of a freshly pressed shirt.

“Please don’t do that,” she said. “Say you’re sorry, I mean. I really do appreciate your taking half your day to drive me.”

A smile warmed a deeply tanned, broad face that smelled of drugstore aftershave. A decent-looking face, since he’d taken time to clean up. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

She nodded before turning in her seat to look out the rear window, desperate for a last glimpse of the place—of all the godforsaken places in the country—her older sister had chosen to call home. Here it was less green than Jay’s ranch, but nevertheless, patches of bright color caught her eye.

Jay’s voice flowed from her memory, cool and unexpected as a wellspring in the rocky soil.
“Never barren, Dana, any more than you.”

She wished he was here now, that he could have put aside his duties to drive her to the airport. Even though she knew it would only make it more difficult to leave him.

“If you’re worryin’ about that nutcase coming after us,” Bill told her, “you don’t have to.”

He hunkered low and reached beneath the seat between his feet, then drew out the largest pistol she had ever seen.

Her eyes widened at the sight of it, as well as at the memory of Angie bleeding, dying, a bullet in her shoulder.

“I feel much safer,” Dana said too quickly. “Now could you please put that away?”

When he blinked at her blankly, she added, “My…my sister. That’s how she…”

His tanned face reddening, Bill shoved the gun back out of sight, his movement so abrupt that she lifted her feet for fear he might squeeze off a shot. He looked disappointed at her reaction, maybe even angry, but he didn’t push her.

As the trip wore on she felt guilty for playing the grief card, using it as an excuse to draw into herself for the remainder of their journey. Clearly Bill had harbored hopes of
a little conversation. But even for the sake of manners she couldn’t manage such a thing.

Not with her heart aching for both the hope and the man she was leaving behind in Rimrock County.

Later that same afternoon in his office, Jay talked to Special Agent Steve Petit. With the officious Tomlin busy elsewhere, Petit loosened up a little more as he talked about his years in the town of Monahans, where his father still raised cattle, a living he supplemented by hot-shotting oil-field equipment from site to site in his old pickup.

Jay listened, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Petit never said a word about the news reports regarding the theater incident. Probably the agent already knew far more than the reporters. The bureau could have his medical records opened in a heartbeat, or those of any present or past member of the military.

More than likely both Petit’s reticence and his trip down memory lane were tactics meant to ease the local yokel into talking about his uncle’s possible corruption. Still, Jay found himself confessing his suspicions that R.C.’s death might be related to both the Piper-Gold and Vanover killings. As he pulled a couple of sodas from his office fridge, he suggested, “Maybe we could brainstorm together. God knows I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.”

Petit immediately agreed.

“No idea’s too wild,” the special agent said, setting the ground rules for the exercise. “So no calling bullshit on me, saying this old buddy or that neighbor would never do such a thing.”

Jay felt a muscle tic in his jaw, but he nodded all the same. However difficult this might be, it would keep him from being shunted aside, then bulldozed by the widening FBI investigation. And it beat the hell out of staring at the clock and wondering if Dana had yet reached the Carlsbad
airport, whether she had boarded the plane that would take her out of his life once and for all. He wondered, too, about Bill Navarro, in a truck alone with her for an hour and a half. Would the rough-hewn and short-tempered rancher have it in him to play the gentleman so long? Jay worried that he should have insisted upon taking her himself, in spite of his appointment with Petit and Dana’s insistence that she could handle Bill.

“We’ve gotta consider the possibility”—Petit’s voice pulled Jay’s thoughts back on track—“that R.C. Eversole was murdered by Piper-Gold and her husband. Maybe the money wasn’t so much a bribe as blackmail. He could’ve figured out their angle, but eventually he squeezed a little too hard.”

Since that didn’t sit well with him, Jay threw in, “Or maybe they killed him after he
wouldn’t
take their cash.”

Petit looked doubtful, which was natural, considering the money buried outside of R.C.’s bedroom window. But he obeyed his own rule, which prompted Jay to mention his earlier suspicion that Angie Vanover had killed his uncle before her own eventual murder.

Petit nodded. “Could’ve been her way of shutting down the project, if she believed Eversole was bought off. She could’ve murdered the woman you found in the cavern, too, maybe at the same time. But if Vanover killed one or both, who’d be left to look for her?”

“Roman Goldsmith,” Jay guessed. “Maybe after
he
killed his wife, he figured out she really hadn’t known the location of the money.”

“That’s a possibility, especially considering that we’ve linked Goldsmith to an unsolved murder in Miami, where he was running a real estate scam back in the nineties.”

“Seems off, though, somehow, doesn’t it, to have a city type traipsing out to a salt cavern in the Rimrock County desert?”

“Not necessarily, since Haz-Vestment did a survey of the area around the domes to make their scam look legitimate. Goldsmith could have known about that cavern…Or maybe your uncle had a local partner who wanted to avenge his death. And find the missing money, if Angie was the one who hid it.”

“Considering the skull and petals I found in the bedroom, that part seems to fit.”

Both men lapsed into silence as they thought for several minutes.

Petit spoke next. “Or what if somebody else found out about the money? Someone local with a pressing need for it.”

Jay recalled Dennis Riggins’s reaction to the news of Haz-Vestment’s investigation. Remembered, too, Abe Hooks saying,
“You don’t really know that bastard. Nobody knows him the way I do.”

“Have you taken a good look around here? Just about everybody living in these parts scratches out a pretty thin living,” Jay said instead, thinking it was bad enough speculating about his uncle, but at least R.C. Eversole was not around to hear it. Dennis, on the other hand, would die a thousand deaths if agents came to question him. Better that Jay should talk to him, though Dennis might try to kick his ass for daring.

Petit grinned, revealing the chipped front tooth. “If people in Devil’s Claw’re anything like folks where I’m from, the whole damned bunch of ’em would just as soon starve as admit it.”

A beep interrupted, alerting Jay a moment before the fax machine hummed and spit out the first of several pages.

“Let me check this, see if it’s anything important.” Jay put down his Dr Pepper and stood from where he had been sitting on the corner of his desk. After walking to the low ledge of the counter, he said, “It’s from the El Paso ME’s office. A summary of their preliminary findings.”

“Already?” Petit rose from the straight-backed chair where he’d been taking notes. Reaching for the papers, he said, “That was mighty speedy, even with an FBI rush on it.”

Jay turned from his proprietary grab. “Not so fast. This isn’t Angie Vanover’s autopsy. It’s Miriam Piper-Gold’s—and that’s my name on the cover sheet.”

Petit looked disgusted. “Listen, Sheriff, you know as well as I do her death falls in our territory.”

“The name’s Eversole, not Sheriff. And since I found this body and rode herd on this examination, let’s just say we look at the report together.”

Petit regarded him coolly for a minute, and in his gaze Jay saw the battle raging between West Texas good old boy and the bureau’s more-professional-than-thou way of thinking. Shrugging, the agent opted for the path of least resistance.

“All right,” he said. “I don’t see any reason why we can’t have it your way.”

Jay pulled his desk chair around the corner and laid the papers out where they could both see. He frowned as he read.

“So they’re ruling it a homicide.”

“Just the way you figured,” Petit responded, giving him his due.

“But I didn’t figure this.” Jay reread a few lines to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood them. “They’re calling the facial injuries postmortem, especially in light of the damage to the fingers.”

“What damage?” Petit asked. “I don’t remember your saying anything about that.”

Jay shook his head. “Because I missed it, even though I was the one who bagged her hands.”

He tried to recall the fingertips, but he’d been mostly concentrating on the nails, which might hold evidence beneath them. These and the general condition of the mummified body had prevented him from focusing on one macabre detail: the fleshy pads, it seemed, had been pared away.