The Salt Maiden (21 page)

The writer was no Hemingway, but the message came through loud and clear. As Dana spotted Devil’s Claw on the horizon, her stomach tightened in a delayed reaction to the threat.

Up until this point she had managed to keep from focusing on the danger. Though she hadn’t wanted to get either her mother’s or the Harrisons’ hopes up by giving them the details, she’d concentrated on the fact that the father of Angie’s child was somewhere in or around Devil’s Claw, and that if she could find him, there still might be a shot at salvaging something—namely Nikki—from this horror. A shot at salvaging something worthwhile from her sister’s life.

After counting backward nine months from the child’s birth date and cross-matching the dates against her mother’s records, Dana had been excited to learn that Angie had been in rehab around that time at a facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. With a place and time period to work with, Dana felt certain she could track down the man who had fathered Nikki, especially if she could talk Jay into helping.

She couldn’t be certain he’d be willing, or that he wouldn’t insist on taking the letter to the FBI team now handling the investigation into the Haz-Vestment murders. She might have gone to them herself, except that the last time they’d spoken—in a brief call before the arrival of the letter—Agent Tomlin had informed her that the bureau’s investigation was limited in scope. He had neither the time nor the authority to expand it to include what he’d called a “snipe hunt” for the father of the child one of the two victims had given up years before.

Dana worried about keeping what could be relevant evidence to herself, and she felt guilty for lying to her mother, telling her she’d been asked to come back to be reinter-viewed about the night of Angie’s murder. To ease her con
science she instead focused on the excitement of making contact with a friend Angie had met around that time—a woman with vague memories of Angie “sneaking off ” to meet some lover. But Rainbow, as she called herself, had no memory of the man involved—couldn’t even say for certain whether he had been another patient or someone who worked at the facility. Since Rainbow had volunteered the fact that she’d been sweating out some “majorly warped” acid flashbacks at the time, Dana was surprised she recalled anything at all from those weeks.

She was also more than a little suspicious that the “memories” were manufactured, a conscious or unconscious attempt to please a grieving sister or simply gain attention. Yet Dana refused to let suspicion stop her, any more than she would allow fear to keep her from making up for the part she’d played in getting Angie killed.

She lifted her foot from the accelerator and coasted as something loped across the road before her. Though the shimmer of rising heat obscured the gray-brown form, its size and movement made her think coyote before it disappeared into the scrub.

Beside her the satellite phone began to ring. Dana considered ignoring it, since the only person with the number was her mother. Had she found out Dana had lied about her reason for leaving Houston? Or was it Jerome calling to say Isabel had taken a high dive off the deep end?

Guilt kicked in, so she answered before the voice mail could pick up. “Everything okay, Mom?”

“Dana…”

Fumbling the phone, Dana pulled off onto the road’s margin. Rocks crunched beneath the tires, sending a tan snake whipping off toward safety. With an involuntary shudder—more at the voice than the serpent—she picked up the dropped phone and demanded, “How the hell did you manage to charm my mother, of all people, into giving you this number? Do you have any idea how much money she lost on
dresses and deposits—not to mention how embarrassed she was to have her daughter dumped the way you—”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” Alex sounded like a chastened schoolboy. “It’s just…I was having cold feet, that’s all. I was so confused and…Dana, I’m an idiot.”

“At last, one thing we can agree on.” An ugly desire rocketed to the surface, a need to wound him a fraction of the amount he had hurt her. “My new lover thinks so, too.”

There was a long pause before he managed, “I guess I deserved that. But you don’t have to make up stories to get me to realize how badly I’ve screwed things up. If I could do anything to take it back, Day, if I could do anything to fix this…”

Instead of relief to hear him groveling, she felt the insult mushrooming inside her. He didn’t believe she’d found another lover. Didn’t think it possible.

“So what brought you to this conclusion?” she asked coolly. “Figure out you didn’t want little Alex clones after all?”

“I figured out I wanted
you.
I want to stand by you through this crisis.”

She rolled her eyes and thought,
How freaking
noble
of him
.

“I…I heard about your sister,” he added, “and I’m so, so sorry.”

She was tempted to agree that yes, he was certainly that. But since her last bit of vitriol had backfired, Dana forced herself to take the high road and to acknowledge what this phone call must have cost the man in pride. “I appreciate that, Alex. And I understand it’s natural, after a transition, to have second thoughts. But—”

“Don’t say ‘but,’ Dana. Please don’t close the door on what I’m saying. Please don’t close the door on us.”

She spotted first the dust cloud and then the dark blue pickup heading her way. But it barely registered, so caught up was she in the swirl of her emotions.

“You made me feel like garbage, Alex. Like some broken piece of trash. You humiliated me and then skipped town so
you wouldn’t have to face people looking at you like you were the biggest jerk in Houston—which, I might add, you were. You even stuck me with returning all the gifts with ‘I’m sorry I’m such a pathetic loser’ notes.”

Notes she’d begun tackling a few days earlier, since putting it off hadn’t solved the problem—or gotten rid of all the boxed gifts stacked in her condo’s dining room.

“I’m the one who’s a pathetic loser,” he told her. “And if you give me one more chance, I swear I’ll spend every day of my life making it up to you.”

As the pickup closed the gap between them, a frisson of alarm skated up her spine. She squinted through her sunglasses, but she honestly couldn’t tell if the truck’s grille looked familiar. And the sun’s glare across the windshield prevented her from seeing inside.

As it neared, the truck slowed.

“I have to go, Alex.”

“Just tell me I’ve got some chance. If you want, I’ll fly out there and help you. Your mom said you could use a man looking out for you in that place. I saw it on the news, Day. It’s appalling, practically a third-world country—and after everything that’s happened—”

“Sorry. No chance at all, but thanks for calling. Gotta run now.” Every tiny hair stood on end as Dana switched off the phone and jammed her rental back in gear. What was she
doing
, sitting on the roadside, presenting a target for anyone with a good pair of field glasses—or a rifle scope?

But before she could mash down on the pedal, the pickup’s driver’s-side window glided downward, giving her a glimpse of a face she had been hoping to avoid.

Heart pummeling her chest wall, she rolled down her own window.

“You’re back. Surprised to see that,” Bill Navarro said. His sun-creased blue eyes were as flat as his voice.

“Umm, yes. I have a few last things to wrap up.” Clearly
she’d offended him the last time they had spoken. She wondered if he still had that enormous pistol of his tucked beneath his front seat.

“Don’t mean to intrude or anything, but I was on my way to pick up some supplies in Pecos when I saw this vehicle pulled over. Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t overheated. Or broke a belt or something. Hot day like this one, person could expire walkin’. ’Specially a woman not used to the sun.”

“My rental’s fine, thanks.” Dana tried to keep a quaver from her voice but only partially succeeded. “I just stopped to take a phone call.”

The disturbing emptiness of his expression made the explanation seem important, to let him know she was connected, in case of an emergency. His gaze lingered on hers for several moments longer before he tipped his hat and nodded.

Both rolled up their windows, but Dana didn’t breathe again until Bill continued on his way. Leaving her to wonder why he was heading off toward the New Mexico border instead of south toward Pecos, as he’d claimed.

DEVIL’S CLAW, July 13—Area rancher Bo “Weevil”Jenkins, 47, complained to Rimrock County Commissioners that the recently hired sheriff, embattled Jay Eversole, has failed to adequately investigate the deaths of three Angus heifer calves in separate range incidents occurring over the past two months.

“They all had the exact same damage,”Jenkins reported. “Missing eyes and lips and parts that I won’t mention in a lady’s presence. And there was [were] grooves down their flanks, too, like they’d been carved up with a knife.”

Sheriff Eversole, 34, dismissed Jenkins’s claims that “some weird cult”was responsible and suggested that the damage to the one carcass he was called to examine was consistent with natural predation by the area’s coyotes or possibly a mountain lion. After Eversole was called away to respond to another matter, a heated debate broke out regarding his possible “preoccupation” with matters related to the recent salt-dome project murders.

County Judge Abraham “Abe”Hooks, 62, said, “Regardless of any other issues, Rimrock County officials, including whoever holds the office of sheriff, must remain mindful of the welfare of the ranchers who have forged the area’s past and will continue to shape its future.”

—Front page item,
Pecos Enterprise

It was late afternoon when Jay took the accident report: Hereford bull versus TV news van on the ranch road leading toward the Lost Lake area. No human injuries, but the bull was down and bellowing, and according to a furious Henry Schlitz, the female field reporter was bawling her fool head off.

Just what Jay needed to cap a week already brimful of aggravations: a hysterical reporter and a rancher spitting mad about the loss of his valuable herd sire, which would almost undoubtedly end up as ground beef before the day was out.

After asking Wallace to stand by in the office and letting Estelle know where he was headed, Jay piled into the Suburban with Max, who was back on duty, and raced toward the scene, his hurry due in part to a desire to prevent Henry from making hamburger out of the news crew. Who—the way Jay’s luck was running—would probably have a camera rolling with a live link, via satellite.

As he crossed the metal grating of a cattle guard, Jay automatically slowed down and scanned the area for loose stock, as every local had been brought up to do. Outsiders, unfortunately, rarely paid the warning signs much heed. It simply never occurred to most that there were rural areas where the grazing was so sparse that cattle were allowed to freely cross public roads for better forage. Predictably this resulted in periodic collisions, which killed not only cattle but the occasional driver.

Even more predictably, Rimrock County ranchers shed more tears about the former losses than the latter, which they considered a fitting punishment for the stupidity of those behind the wheel. But as Jay approached a trio of familiar pickups—evidently Henry had called in reinforcements—he saw no sign of either the news van or the injured bull, only miles of desert and a twinkling, pale expanse that bore witness to what had once been a salt lake.

No van, no beef, no accident, he realized. Only a different brand of trouble, one he ought to have seen coming.

He parked behind a truck he recognized as Abe Hooks’s before striding toward the assembled men. Their arms were crossed and their expressions hard beneath the shadows of the hats’ brims. Beside him Max growled softly as Jay recognized Carl Navarro standing at Abe’s right, and Henry Schlitz, who
took the left flank. Jay fought both the urge to grimace and the impulse to rest his right hand on his Colt’s butt.

They appeared to be unarmed, though Jay didn’t have to look to know that each truck’s gun rack would hold at least one rifle. He tried to remember that these were the same men who had welcomed him back to Rimrock County, that each had worked his ass off rebuilding the burned house he now called home. In the past few weeks they’d drunk his beer and swapped old stories, commiserated over the “hard luck” of Haz-Vestment as if they were old friends.

But what had passed for camaraderie had abruptly ended after the report of Jay’s past troubles had hit the news. Abe Hooks had been the most outspoken, openly suggesting that the county had mistakenly “acted on sentiment instead of good sense” in choosing R.C. Eversole’s nephew to complete the dead man’s term of office. So it didn’t surprise Jay when the county judge stepped forward to signal his intention to speak for the group.

Rather than allowing Hooks to start or asking pointless questions about the so-called accident, Jay snatched the offensive. “You three had better have a damned good explanation. Otherwise don’t think I won’t charge you with filing a false report. You could get six months for that, along with a stiff fine.”

The threat hung in the heated air. Though all three knew the odds of Jay’s getting a conviction in this county ranged from long to laughable, they also knew he could throw their asses in jail and drag his heels with the proceedings, creating an ordeal as inconvenient as it would be embarrassing.

Abe raised his palms as if in supplication. “There’s no need to get excited, Jay. We just wanted a private word, that’s all.”

“Well, you damned sure could’ve picked a cooler spot for it.” But not one less likely to be witnessed.

“The last few weeks have been pretty rough.” Carl
scrubbed his hand over whiskers silvered with an early frost of gray.

“Rough on everybody.” Peering from behind his round-rimmed glasses, Henry Schlitz crossed thick arms over a barrel chest. “And ’specially on you, what with them federal agents runnin’ you off your own case and that bullshit story playin’ on the TV—like anybody gives a rat’s ass that you pounded some towel-headed asshole.”

Though Jay had heard worse slurs during his time overseas, he winced. The need to dehumanize the enemy was the common denominator in all conflicts—one that had damned sure left a bad taste in his mouth.

“That was a mistake,” he said, “and not one that I’m proud of.”

“The thing is,” Abe Hooks said, “that’s the kind of mistake that opens the county up to a chance of getting sued. If something happens, that is.”

“Nothing else’s going to happen,” Jay said, as if Angie Vanover’s dead body hadn’t been making nightly appearances in his recent Baghdad nightmares. More disturbing still had been his dream of making love to Dana, only to find her flesh drying like a mummy’s and peeling away with every touch, and her eyes staring, opaquely white, from her dead face. Though it had left him exhausted and irritable, he’d spent the better part of the past few nights pacing and downing strong black coffee, for fear that the images would return to haunt him if he lay down again.

“I know what’s real and what isn’t,” he said, willing it to be so, “and what’s appropriate.”

“Do you?” Abe asked. “Because the way I see it, screwing a missing woman’s sister
isn’t.
And it looks even worse since Angelina’s turned up dead.”

Jay stared, wondering if Abe really did know about him and Dana. Or was he just guessing, bluffing in the hope that the new sheriff would simply admit the impropriety and leave town? Jay was pretty sure that Wallace had figured out
where Dana had spent the night after she’d left the adobe. Had he bitched about it to the old man the way he’d bitched to Jay about R.C.’s supposed affair with Miriam Piper-Gold?

It seemed plausible—one more step in his deputy’s campaign to snatch the top job—but Jay wasn’t so certain. Because for all of Wallace’s flaws, he had his own notions, like his mother, of the right and wrong of any situation. And if he was to be believed, those opinions had prevented him from reporting the last sheriff’s affair with Miriam Piper-Gold.

“I do my job,” Jay told them, “and I do it without prejudice. Whatever you think of anything that might or might not happen during my off time.”

“What we were thinking”—Abe’s voice was as icy as the sun was blistering—“is that you might be happier somewhere else.”

The statement hit Jay with the precision of a laser-guided smart bomb. So these three were among those who had worked with his uncle to root out Rimrock’s “undesirables.” And now they had decided he was one of them.

“And if I refuse, what’s next? The ass-whipping, or will you jump straight to the arson? Because I promise you, not even all three of you together want to meet me on a dark night. And I wouldn’t recommend you get within ten miles of my place with gasoline and matches either. I’d hate to accidentally leave Estelle a widow, or your Mae-Anna, Henry.” He zeroed in on Carl. “Just like I’d hate to get on the wrong side of Bill’s temper. But I’d do it.”

His words had an immediate effect. Henry turned pale behind his round-rimmed glasses, and Carl’s normally placid demeanor fell away, revealing a barely controlled fury. Abe’s upper lip curled back, reminding Jay of Dorothy Hobarth’s “smiling” terriers. Clearly they understood that someone had been talking. One of their own, or maybe even one of those assembled.

“You might want to look for someplace else,” Abe said,
“that’s all. Of course, we didn’t mean to threaten, if that’s how you took it.”

“That’s a damned good thing,” Jay told them as the dog trotted over to investigate a rustling near the base of a tar-bush, “because even in the unlikely event that you got the drop on me, two dead Sheriff Eversoles would raise a lot of eyebrows. From the FBI to the Texas Rangers, this county—and your asses—would come under the kind of scrutiny that’d turn this past week into a pleasant memory from a bygone day. You get my meaning?”

Abe shrugged and flashed a creased version of his son’s sullen look. “You’re mistaken. But we heard you loud and clear.”

Jay stood sweating in the heat as all three filed past his Suburban on the way to their respective pickups. As he turned to catch Max’s collar and—with some difficulty—drag the dog from the spot where he was industriously digging, doors clunked shut and engines started. Jay looked up in time to see the gritty sand from each truck swirl up behind it, and watched until three dust devils danced on the horizon’s heat waves like harbingers of hell.

So it should have come as no surprise, when he was driving home some ten minutes later, that his right front tire failed as he hit a bump.

The click of Dana’s low-heeled sandals echoed off the marble of the Rimrock County courthouse. The sound conspired with the musty smell to resurrect the memory of the first day she had arrived here, exactly three weeks earlier. Only that day she’d had no idea of what she was walking into.

Anxiety pulsed inside her, for this time she knew that the venom found in so many of the desert’s creatures extended to its human inhabitants as well. Or at least to some of them, she thought, recalling Mamie Lockett’s kindness and the way Estelle Hooks had stepped up to help her after Angie’s
death. And Dana would never forget how Jay had touched her, the words he’d used to chip away at her self-loathing.

But all that’s over now
, she warned herself, unable to bear the thought of walking away from that beautiful mirage again. He had been right when he’d told her there could be no future for them. Just as she’d been right to say that it was time for her to grow up and take care of what she must.

And right now she was here to take care of her niece and not her own needs. Jay was a means to that end and nothing more. But before she could convince him to help her with her search, she had to find him. And she figured that Deputy Wallace Hooks, whose pickup sat beside the empty spot where Jay most often parked, would be the best person to tell her where his boss was.

She paused to read the absolutely no press—this means you sign taped to the door, and smiled to see that some frustrated reporter had scrawled,
Read Up on the First Amendment, Sheriff! This Means
You!

She tapped on the door before poking her head inside. Wallace, who was on the telephone, took his feet off of his boss’s desk and gave her a wait-a-minute gesture, irritation spreading across his handsome features like a rash.

He might have been politely respectful after Angie’s death, but Dana suspected that his manners formed no more than the thinnest veneer over his disdain for her sister’s lifestyle choices. She recalled Jay telling her that Wallace had found Angie drunk once, not long before her disappearance. Though her journal had made no mention of a time she’d fallen off the wagon, Dana had seen such lapses in the past and knew that they weren’t pretty. Her sister could have easily earned the deputy’s contempt that day, and then some.

“I’ll check it out as soon as I can,” Wallace said into the telephone. “And I’ll be sure to pass on your message to Eversole as soon as I hear from him.”

The deputy cradled the old-fashioned black telephone’s receiver, then came around the desk and gestured to a chair. “I hadn’t heard anything about you coming back.”

Instead of sitting she offered him her hand, and for the first time realized that at five-six she was a shade taller than he, in spite of his boot heels. His mouth gave an irritated twitch, as if he noticed, too, and didn’t like it. What
was
it with men and their obsession with height?

“I thought I was finished here, too,” she explained. “But something else has come up, and I’d like to discuss it with the sheriff. Do you know if he’s out on a call somewhere? I tried him a little bit ago, but I wasn’t able to reach him.”

Even as she said it, a disturbing thought struck her, provoked in part by the sight of Wallace sitting at the sheriff’s desk, comfortable enough to rest his feet there. Could Jay have been dismissed already? She recalled how adamant he’d been about refusing to accept help from the government in the form of either disability or treatment. What on earth would he do if he’d lost his job? And how would she figure out the identity of Nikki’s father without his help?

“You know, I haven’t been able to get hold of him either the last little while,” Wallace told him. “Don’t know where he’s off to at the moment.”

His gaze skated toward the window. Was he looking for a sign of Jay’s SUV or avoiding her eyes to hide his own dishonesty?