A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (16 page)

     
In Serena's C.P.S. file, Sylvia had found police photographs of the accident; the Honda had crumpled under the force of the slow-moving train, had been pushed along the tracks, eventually ending up fifty yards west of the highway.

     
She tried to picture the scene that night—warning lights flashing, the small excursion train on its way from Lamy grinding slowly uphill toward the highway, the Honda racing along 285 to impact—

     
The Toyota shimmied as it rumbled across the steel tracks and wooden ties at the railroad crossing.

     
Sylvia pulled off on the shoulder, glancing in the rearview mirror as she braked to a stop. The two-lane highway was empty. It reminded her of the naked spine of a giant. She cut the engine. They were alone.

     
The land was remarkable for the thrust and pitch of hill and valley. Barbed wire edged the road, keeping cattle and motorized vehicles from violent encounters. At a distance of a few miles, the sedimentary rock of the Galisteo formation foreshadowed White Mountain and the Ortiz Stock. The sun's rays reflected off a solitary vehicle as it emerged along the Lamy cutoff. At the intersection, the vehicle headed south toward Galisteo or Clines Corners.

     
The sun was approaching ten o'clock, not yet directly overhead, but gaining strength. At a standstill, the truck's interior warmed rapidly. Realizing that Serena had unsnapped her seat belt and was now fumbling with the strap, Sylvia reached out a restraining hand, but the child suddenly broke free. Before Sylvia could stop her, Serena had unlocked the door and scrambled from the pickup truck.

     
Sylvia followed, almost colliding with the spiny arms of a cholla cactus. Tires had ripped through this delicate desert terrain; the scars would last for a century. Shards of glass and the glint of metal littered the ground. Even with that evidence, it was hard to believe Serena had survived a collision only three nights earlier.

     
Sylvia breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the child standing at the barbed-wire fence. The relief was short-lived; Serena took off at a trot, moving south at the fence line, downhill toward the Lamy cutoff. Sylvia dashed in pursuit, stumbling over rocks and prickly-pear cactuses. Within seconds she caught up, grabbing the child with both hands.

     
Serena was all flailing arms, and Sylvia narrowly avoided a second black eye. She did take a blow to the solar plexus. She knew her patience wouldn't survive another boxing match—she'd give this field experiment another fifteen minutes, then head back to Santa Fe and her engagement party at Rosie's house. By now, the social worker had probably called to apologize.

     
Sylvia swung the child around so they were face-to-face. "Where are you going?"

     
Serena opened her mouth, then shut it tight, yanking free one arm to point down the hill toward the Galisteo Creek bed and the floodplain where the main Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe tracks ran under the highway.

     
Sylvia eyed the surrounding terrain; it had been rash to bring the child out here alone. This much wide-open space was intimidating, and she was going crazy following around this little sprite. Still, her curiosity was piqued: What was Serena after?

     
Sylvia sighed. "Get in the truck," she said finally. "I'll take you."

     
Serena considered her destination, then looked back at Sylvia and nodded.

     
When they were in the truck and on the highway, Serena seemed to settle into a trancelike stillness. Near the Lamy turnoff, there was a spurt of oncoming traffic: a sedan, a Jeep, and a rusty pickup passed them, probably headed for the tiny railroad town's Octoberfest.

     
Sylvia slowed to thirty-five miles per hour. At the rim of the dry floodplain, an overpass provided access to the opposite bank. She glanced out at the railroad tracks running under the overpass. She was waiting, watching for Serena to signal a stopping place.

     
Just beyond the floodplain, the child pointed straight ahead, directing the truck to continue along New Mexico 285 instead of turning west toward the village of Galisteo.

     
When the truck had traveled another hundred yards, Serena pulled up on the handle of the passenger door. Sylvia did two things simultaneously: she gripped the child with her right hand and steered the truck into a left-handed U-turn.

     
She didn't ease her grip on the child—
it was like holding onto a lizard!
—until the brake was set and they were both out of the truck. A battered white Plymouth sped past them, and Sylvia caught a glimpse of the driver, a weathered rancher, glancing curiously at the child who tugged the woman. The car left behind an invisible track of exhaust.

     
Nikki was whining from the back of the pickup. Sylvia welcomed her presence; she wasn't sure where Serena would lead her. Beyond the fence line, there was no sign of humanity. Just land.

     
But the dog would be a liability, likely to race after rabbits, deer, or cattle—and then Sylvia would be dealing with an unpredictable child
and
an AWOL animal.

     
Just as Sylvia turned away from the truck, Serena pulled free and set off at a run. She scrambled through the barbed-wire fence and continued up a small slope.

     
Unmoving, Sylvia watched her go. She smoothed her hair back from her face, straightened her clothes, brushed burrs from her shoes. The canvas pumps weren't designed for outdoor sports. She followed at a leisurely pace.

     
As she ducked unceremoniously under wire, she noticed the fence was down just a few feet away. Some of the vegetation near the break was crushed. Adjacent to the injured plants and clearly visible, black skid marks stood out against gray, worn asphalt. At some point in the past, a vehicle had come to an abrupt stop.

     
Sylvia returned her attention to the path ahead. The earth was hard-packed and studded with gravel. Here and there, small junipers and low scrub marked the topography. She traveled beyond the fence, and the countryside took on new and surprising aspects. There was subtle variation in vegetation—native grasses, cholla, scrub, chamiso. Rock teeth jutted from the earth.

     
She gained on Serena as the child moved tentatively forward, toward a low outcropping of rock. Several large shapes loomed in the distance. Cows surveyed Sylvia disinterestedly; there wasn't a bull in the bunch.

     
Ahead, the child scrambled from patch to patch, rock to rock, circling back on her previous location. She was hunting for something. She would crouch down, stand, search the horizon. But landmarks were few, and each hillock looked much like its neighbors.

     
Sylvia followed Serena's movements from a distance of forty or fifty feet. She sat on a nicely rounded sandstone, stretched her muscles, and surreptitiously produced a cigarette from her pocket. She was hot and sticky. She lit the cigarette and inhaled gratefully.

     
By her watch, they had another five minutes. She took one more drag on the cigarette, exhaled smoke, tamped the butt between two fingers, and dropped it into her pocket.

     
Serena had come to a standstill at a rock outcropping. Sylvia was about to call out when she noticed a shoe lying a few feet away. It was leather, good quality, and it looked quite new. She bent and retrieved it from the dirt. She was dusting it off when her eye was drawn to something shiny embedded in dirt—a silver belt buckle. She was beginning to feel very uncomfortable when she heard the child's plaintive cry.

     
Sylvia stumbled on loose earth, racing to reach the child's side. Here the smell of decay was strong. Below the ledge, the outcrop gave way to the next lip of rock. Between the two rocks a shallow cutaway had eroded over centuries. It was roughly the size of a grave. It sheltered a corpse.

T
HE DEAD MAN
was lying on his side, face bared; most of his features had been destroyed by predators and exposure. By the look of his physical form and his gray hair, he had been middle-aged. One arm was trapped between rock and earth. The other was flung casually across his chest. The fingers of his exposed hand had been eaten away. His shirt was stained with fluids—Sylvia didn't want to think about what type of fluids—but the tightly woven fabric had been high-quality. His trousers were nondescript. His legs were akimbo, one foot bare and toeless, the other covered in a sock. A single men's loafer lay askew nearby; the leather was smooth and supple. It was a match to the shoe she had discovered moments earlier.

     
The scent of death and decomposition was unbearable. Protectively, Sylvia gripped the child to her side, lifting her away from the rocky cleft—she had to restrain Serena from flinging herself upon the body.

     
"He's dead, Serena. You can't help him. He's dead."

     
Serena shook her head, then she stared at Sylvia, eyes wide with shock.

     
Sylvia managed to guide the child far enough away from the corpse so that its grim form was no longer fully visible.

     
She felt rather than saw the child's intense stare, and then a small finger touched her cheek. She pressed Serena's damp hair away from her reddened eyes, murmuring reassurances. The sound of her voice hovered on the air. Then she let the silence envelop them both.

     
She became aware of the ache in her own legs. Thigh and calf muscles were cramped by her contorted posture. Gingerly, she straightened herself, clutching Serena with one hand. But the child didn't respond. She was crouched down—hands clasped, eyes closed. Her lips were moving, mouthing words that were audible only as the faintest of whispers. It was a good thirty seconds before Serena allowed herself to be guided away from the body and back toward the road.

     
They had almost reached the highway when a car broke the small rise to the south. The thin whine of hot engine grew louder. A nondescript sedan flew past, quickly growing smaller with distance as Sylvia raised her arms to flag it down.

     
Serena was tugging insistently on her hand. Sylvia looked down, then followed Serena's gaze to see something that confused her; she was already functioning on overload. A vehicle was parked in front of her truck—dark green, four-wheel-drive. There was no sign of the driver. There was no sign of another person in the immediate area. She was maddened by the slowness of her thoughts.

     
Abruptly, her imagination ran wild. Was it a motorist with car trouble, a hiker, the rancher who owned the land, a roadside rapist?

     
She shook off the free-falling panic. She was on a public highway in broad daylight. The car must belong to someone who had stopped to see if she needed assistance. She did.
They
did.

     
She suddenly became aware of Nikki; inside the pickup, she was barking ferociously. The camper shell rocked and shook as the animal threw her weight around.

     
Sylvia's skin formed gooseflesh. She knew the dog could sense what she could not—the location of the car's driver. The awareness of danger sharpened her senses; her mind pulled back into a state of analytical calm.

     
Sylvia guessed she and the child were standing fifteen feet short of the barbed-wire fence. They were so close to the road, she could hear the
tick-tick-tick
of the other car's cooling engine. With her free hand, Sylvia searched for her keys in her pants pocket. She carried no weapon; the semiautomatic she usually kept locked in the glove compartment of the truck was at home on a high shelf—unloaded and hidden from Serena.

     
She imagined she could feel eyes touching her skin. Her brain was taking in everything at once—the car, proximity of escape, the child's reactions, her dog—and scrambling to process it all.

     
Very slowly, she half crouched and peered under both vehicles. No feet, no legs, no sign of a driver in view.

     
She whispered in Serena's ear. "I want you to stay right beside me. Don't let go of my hand unless I tell you to." The child's grip tightened painfully around Sylvia's fingers.

     
Woman and girl darted forward, dodging undergrowth and barbed wire. Sylvia grabbed the fence. She pushed Serena under the taut strand, then followed. She was only half conscious of tearing fabric. She figured the distance—eight, seven, six more feet. But what the hell was going on with Nikki? The dog's adrenalized cries were so intense it sounded as if she were being tortured.

     
Serena froze—she was facing the front end of the truck. Sylvia saw the toe of a shoe protruding just beyond the far tire. A man.

     
She became aware of the hum of an engine. From the corner of her eye, she saw another car approaching from the south. Instinctively, she rushed toward the road, waving her arm, intending to stop the passing car. As she moved, she lost her grip on the child's hand.

     
Out on the pavement, she could see the startled look on the faces of the car's driver and passenger, man and woman. She had a fleeting thought—the man resembled her father. And then they were gone.

     
Sylvia pivoted, reaching out again for Serena, but the world had shifted—the child wasn't there. She heard a scream, turned toward the sound.

     
The man was tall, thin, and dark-haired. He was dragging the struggling child between the two vehicles. With his left arm he held Serena possessively across the throat. He gripped a gun in his right hand.

     
He yelled a sharp command in Spanish—words that registered faintly in Sylvia's consciousness. She heard the report—understood he'd fired the weapon—and ducked as a bullet shattered the side window of her truck. She lunged alongside her vehicle, her hands sliding across paint and glass, toward the rear gate.