Three Sisters (36 page)

The disarmed mountain woman made up her mind. She would not spit. But if the dog attacked, she would kill it with her bare hands. Bobbie Sue watched the tall, thin man throw her crossbow high into a spruce, where it hung on a brushy limb.

Moon fixed his gaze on the apparition Scott Parris had seen crossing the road. “You are in deep trouble.”

“No I ain’t.” She flexed her fingers. “I can take you and that hound dog too.”

“I don’t think so. But that’s not the trouble I’m talking about.”

A crafty, deceptive look hung on her face. “What
are
you talkin’ about?”

“You know.”

The shaggy head rotated on an unseen neck. “No, I don’.”

Moon put on a stormy scowl. “That snowy night when Mr. Turner’s car went off the Spencer driveway—you were there. And don’t deny it—the chief of police saw you.”

“Oh, I don’ deny
that.
”

“You don’t?”

“Huh-uh.”

Very sternly, he said, “Bobbie Sue—look me straight in the eye.”

She did.

“Now tell me the honest truth—when Turner came around that curve, were you standing in the driveway?”

“Huh-uh.”

Their gazes were locked for a long moment before Moon said, “Do you like strawberries?”

There was no indication that this off-the-wall question surprised her. “Sure do.”
An’ I likes good-lookin’ men.
The mouth curled into a leering grin. ’
Specially tall ones
.

The tall man posed another question: “What do you know about that woman who was killed on the far side of the mountain—Astrid Spencer.”

“I know the cops figger a bear’s to blame.”

“What else do you know?”

“A whole lot more’n I’m gonna tell you.”

“Maybe all you know is what you hear on your hand-crank radio.”

She grunted. “’T wasn’t nothin’ on the radio about you bein’ at Yellow Pines with all them other cops. I spotted you when the sun come up, out lookin’ for bear tracks.”

Moon had a lot to think about, and some tangles to sort out. But unanswered questions about Astrid Spencer death would have to sit on the back burner. Finding out what had happened to Andrew Turner—that was Job One. He estimated his chances of getting something out of Bobbie Sue at somewhere between slim and none. The player had one card to toss on the table. He stared at the hulk of a woman engulfed in the grizzly bear’s full-body embrace. “By late this afternoon, this place is going to be crawling with police officers. And forest rangers. A whole battalion of National Guard. Why, they’ll be all over Spencer Mountain, thick as fleas on a coyote.” He jabbed a thumb at the clearing sky. “And there’ll be helicopters.” Seeing a hint of alarm in her eyes, he laid it on thicker yet: “And a dozen bloodhounds.”

The mountain woman eyed the Indian. “Whuffor?”

“I’ll
tell
you whuffor.” The Ute put on his meanest scowl. “They’ll be looking for Andrew Turner.”

The dark eyes set in the pumpkin face resembled greasy ball bearings. “Whuffor would they think he was aroun’ here?”

Moon played his hunch. “Because you carried him up here—on your shoulder.” He held his breath.

With the comically hopeless expression of a poorly crafted jack-o’-lantern, she stared.

He stared back. Like a man holding a fistful of aces.

Bobbie Sue blinked. “I din’ do nothin’ wrong.”

An admission! He exhaled the bad air, drew in the good. “You don’t think kidnapping is
wrong
?”

The big head hung, the eyelids drooped. From somewhere inside, the close-set eyes gazed at the pointy toes of Moon’s cowhide boots. “Since I was jus’ a little girl, I allus wanted me a boyfrien’.” Slowly, appreciatively, Bobbie Sue’s gaze traced a line up his leg, lingered on the slender torso, admired the pearl buttons on his shirt, stopped on his face. “Hit gets awful lonesome up here.” The recluse glanced toward her hut. “An’ I don’ got nobody to talk to.” She suddenly shook with a great sob, startling the Columbine hound and Charlie Moon. “So when I saw the car run off’n the road and bump into the tree and that little man get throwed onto the groun’…I brung him home with me.” Another wrenching sob. “I was hopin’ when he got well enough, he’d read to me.”

The Indian, as the old saying goes, could have been knocked over with a feather.
A hummingbird
feather. “
Read
to you?”

“Uh-huh.” She wiped away a tear with the back of a grimy hand. “I got me lots of magazines with pichurs. An’ even some books.” Her sigh was like a sudden gust of wind. “I figgered if he stayed long enough, he might even learn me to read some words.”

Moon’s voice could barely be heard above a breeze that was rattling waxy aspen leaves. “Is Mr. Turner injured?”

A shrug. “A little bit.”

“Then he needs to go to the hospital.”
Turner’s probably in her shack. But she might have him stashed somewhere else. Someplace where I’d never find him
.

Bobbie Sue took the measure of the armed man. Also the dog, who had taken up position beside him.
I could take the both of ’em.
Her expression reflected an intense inner struggle, which the innocent shared with her adversary: “I jus’ don’ know what to do.”

“That’s easy—take me to Turner.”

But of course it was not easy. She turned her face up, squinted at the bright, midday sky. Watched a pair of red-tailed hawks soar on a thermal.
That’s where I want to go when I die. An’ fly an’ fly an’ fly
…She heaved a great soul-lifting sigh. “If I do, would you make me a promise—cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“You got to make sure that no cops or sojers comes up here to hunt me down and put me back in that crazy house.” Her big hands clenched into formidable fists. “Before I’d let ’em lock me up with all them loonies, I’d hide in a hole in the ground. And if them hounds picked up my smell and cornered me, I’d kill as many dogs and cops and sojers as I could—and then I’d cut my throat an’ bleed to death.”

Moon knew this was no idle threat. “Bobbie Sue, I give you my word—if you’ll take me to Andrew Turner, I won’t tell a soul that you’re here on the mountain.” Fair play demands full disclosure. “But I can’t promise that no one will come looking for you.”
If he’s able, Andrew Turner will talk his head off about you.

“Then I guess I’ll have to go away somewheres where nobody can ever fin’ me.” From somewhere deep inside, a low moan. “But I been on this mountain mos’ of my life.”

“There are others places to live. Better ones.” He waited three heartbeats. “Now take me to Turner.”

The lonely illiterate mumbled, “C’mon.”

With the hound tagging along at his heels, Moon followed the enigmatic woman into the box canyon. The hulking figure in the grizzly pelt moved with graceful ease, making no more sound than the grass-scented breeze. When they were within a few paces of the shack snugged up against the base of the vertical canyon wall, Bobbie Sue stopped, pointed at the tattered buckskin flap hanging over the entrance. “He’s in the back.”

The Ute hesitated.
This seems too easy.

Following the aim of her finger, the Columbine hound started to go inside.

“No,” Moon said.

The dog paused, looked at the Ute.

Moon told Bobbie Sue how it was: “If Mr. Turner isn’t in there—or if my dog gets hurt—or if you try to pull any kind of fast one, there’ll be ten kinds of hell to pay. And you’ll get the entire bill.”

She appeared to be genuinely hurt. “He’s in the back.”

Eager to go exploring and evidently having picked up a scent, the hound whimpered.

Moon exchanged looks with the dog.
Okay, pardner. Go find him.

Sidewinder slipped into the innards of the shack. After sniffing around, he began to whine. Presently, the gaunt dog stuck his head through the door hole, squinted in the filtered sunlight, looked up imploringly at the human being he had adopted several years ago. In dogeese, his expression said, more or less,
Hey—what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?

Charlie Moon was about to suggest that Bobbie Sue lead the way, when he realized that the huge woman had vanished without making a sound.
She’s pulled a fast one on me—Turner’s probably not within a mile of the place
. He swept his gaze over the forest. Didn’t see anything that looked the least bit like an Amazon dressed in a bear suit.
Well, while I’m here, I might as well have a look
. He addressed the dog: “Stay outside, pardner. If she comes back, you let me know.”

The noble beast whined, seated himself by the shack’s entrance. Like all of his wolfish kind, Sidewinder was ready to do whatever was necessary to protect his friend.

The bearskin-woman’s den was surprisingly uncluttered. Bobbie Sue’s single room had neither table nor chair; her bed was a pile of hides in a corner. Moon frowned at two of several wall hangings—a pair of uncured German shepherd hides.
She wasn’t kidding about eating dog meat.
In another corner there were a few dozen cans and jars of food. A rusty fifty-five gallon oil drum served as her stove. On the crimped-on lid, a battered steel bucket of flesh and onions bubbled. Venison, Moon decided.
That must be what Sidewinder caught a whiff of
. Beside the makeshift kettle, a gallon lard can half filled with black water.
That must be her coffeepot.
A sturdy plank shelf supported an assortment of old, worn magazines:
True Romance
.
Dangerous Romance
.
Sweet Romance
.
Forbidden Romance
.
Young Romance
.
Teen Romance
. There were a few paperback books with lurid covers:
My Latin Lover
.
My Pirate Lover
.
My Vampire Lover
.
Lust in Little Havana
. But there was no sign of the man Moon was looking for. Or, for that matter, anyplace where he could be concealed. Even so, Moon called out, “Turner—you here?”

Silence.

Then, at the rear of the shabby room, from behind a tanned elk hide hanging on the stone wall: “Oh, God—is that a human voice?”

Moon lifted the makeshift drape, stared into the inky shadows, smelled the man before he saw him. He found a book of Lulabelle’s Dixie Restaurant matches in his pocket, ripped a half-dozen pages from
My Vampire Lover
. The makeshift torch illuminated the entrance to a horizontal mine shaft that swallowed up the puny glow of light. A few yards away, Andrew Turner—half covered in a filthy strip of canvas—was flat on his back on a bed of dead oak leaves and dried grass. The haggard, bearded face might have been that of a man twice as old; the wild eyes stared at the light.

“Who’s that?”

Turner heard the Ute’s deep voice: “Charlie Moon.”

“Oh, thank God—thank
God!
” The captive began to weep. “Please, get me out of here before it comes back!”

“It?”

“That horrible creature that brought me here…please hurry!”

“How bad are you hurt?”

“I think my ankle’s broken and I’m too weak to crawl. All it feeds me is half-cooked meat and raw pine nuts and roots and—” A gasp for breath. “Oh, please get me out of this stinking place!” His clawlike hand reached out and grabbed Moon’s shirt. “If that monster comes back and finds you here, it’ll murder both of us!”

“I’ll not let any harm come to you.” Ignoring the pleading protests, the Ute gently removed the grasping hand from his shirt, placed it on the terrified man’s thin chest.

Turner’s pleadings did not cease. “Look, I’ll do anything, anything. Get me out of here, off the mountain—I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars—hell, I’ll pay you a
hundred
thousand, and I’ll even give you my sixty-thousand-dollar sports car….” For a moment, the face frowned as the mind tried to find a missing piece of a jumbled puzzle. He whispered, “What happened to my Corvette?”

“It hasn’t been located yet, but we figure it’s at the bottom of the Devil’s Mouth. Under the snow.”

“Oh, right. The snow. I’d forgotten all about that. It was dark, you know, and I came around that sharp bend in the driveway—” Turner began to shiver and shudder and mutter madly, “They were right there in front of me—so I cut the wheel hard and hit a tree and then I was on the ground, rolling in the snow and—”

“They
who
?”

“What?”

“You said you came around the bend and
they
were in front of you.”

“Did I?” A big-eyed stare. A blink. “I guess it must’ve been some deer.” A few raspy breaths. “I don’t remember much after that, except being terribly cold—until that hideous, stinking creature picked me up and carried me off and I said to myself, Andrew, you have died and this devil is carrying you straight to hell!”

“You’re not dead, Mr. Turner.”

“Please…please—don’t go away and leave me here!”

“I won’t. I’m taking you with me.” Moon laid the fading torch aside, rolled Turner up in the canvas bedcover. Considered carrying him in both arms. Reconsidered.
I’d better keep my gun hand free.
As Turner grunted and moaned, Moon eased the tightly wrapped man across his left shoulder. As he got to his feet, it occurred to Moon that at night in a snowstorm, a person with a quirky imagination might mistake him for a Sasquatch toting an oversize burrito. Dismissing this comical thought, the Ute ducked through the curtain into the cabin, across the little room, into the bright sunlight.

Sidewinder was at the door, panting happy breaths.

Bobbie Sue was nowhere to be seen. Not necessarily good news.

With the emaciated man folded over his shoulder, Charlie Moon started down the mountain in long, deliberate strides. He never slowed, never looked back. The surreal trip slipped by quickly—it seemed only minutes later when he laid his burden down in the bed of the Columbine pickup. In the bright light of day, he unrolled Andrew Turner from the filthy canvas.
Looks like he’s passed out
. Moon checked for a pulse, felt a rhythmic thump under Turner’s jaw. The injured man was breathing in intermittent gasps. Moon put in the 911 call, Clara Tavishuts answered on the second ring. He explained the situation, was assured by the GCPD dispatcher that assistance was practically on the way. While the rescuer waited for medical help to arrive, he had a few minutes to turn some interesting details over in his mind, also to look at the big picture this way and that. Before the silent sea of sky was churned up by noisy helicopter rotors, the tribal investigator had pretty much figured things out.
I’ll tell Scott what he absolutely needs to know
. But not everything. Charlie Moon had a promise to keep. Moreover, a moral dilemma to deal with.

Scott Parris arrived in a unit driven by Officer Alicia Martin. With due attention to his recent injuries, the chief of police got out of the low-slung Chevrolet just in time to wave at his Ute friend and watch the arrival of the chopper. The emergency medical technicians had boots on the ground before the rotating-wing aircraft had quite touched down. Tall grasses and spindly young aspens twisted in the machine’s self-generated tornado.

Holding on to his Stetson, Charlie Moon pointed at the Columbine pickup.

In the bed, covered by a Columbine horse blanket, the EMTs found a patient who had a decent pulse (54 per minute), pupils that responded to light, edgy blood pressure (88 over 45), a coolish inner-ear temperature (95.1 F), and raspy breaths at the rate of nine per minute. Whether Mr. Turner was merely deeply asleep or unconscious, he did not respond to stock questions like “Can you hear me?” and “What’s your name?” Evidently, the talkative part of his brain was at rest. The efficient medics stabilized him with a saline IV spiked with glucose and other restorative ingredients, placed his foul-smelling body onto an ultralightweight gurney, buckled nylon straps across his chest and legs, and inserted him into the Air National Guard rescue helicopter, which lifted off in a swirl of dust and debris.

Parris informed his uniformed chauffeur that she would return to Granite Creek without him. His plan was to hitch a ride with Charlie Moon, and in the quiet atmosphere of the Columbine, get the whole story. Soon, the sleek GCPD unit was out of sight, the earsplitting sounds of the aircraft were but a memory.

Parris was getting into Moon’s pickup—when a terrible wailing was heard from someplace on the mountain.

In response, Sidewinder threw back his head and howled,
Hooo-ooooww…Oooow-oooo…

His skin prickling, Parris did not ask,
What was that?
He thought he knew.

Moon was the one who knew.
Poor thing—she’s all by herself now
. He headed the old pickup downhill, leaving the lonely woman behind.

As they passed through the open gate, Parris put in a call to the GCPD dispatcher, directed Clara Tavishuts to get in touch with Andrew Turner’s wife. Clara was already on top of it. She had contacted the local travel agencies, found out that Beatrice was in San Diego, placed a call to her beachfront hotel. The last of the Spencer sisters would be on the next available flight to Colorado Springs, where she would take a charter flight to Granite Creek Municipal Airport.