“He did what?” I stared at Pat Tate.
The sheriff regarded me as if I’d given Finn the keys myself. Maybe that’s why Tate had driven to the city instead of prolonging our phone conversation. “The son of a bitch parked Al Martinez’s car right in Estelle’s driveway. Then he broke a wing window of your Blazer and that was that.”
“What the hell is that simple bastard up to?” I walked to the window. To the north, the plume of smoke towered like a summer thunderstorm’s anvil—hell, airline pilots were probably smelling the pine smoke at 30,000 feet. “He won’t be hard to find.”
“No. There are probably only a thousand beat-up ’84 Chevy Blazers in the state. But we got every road covered…one agency or another.”
“And he’s got Daisy with him.”
“For sure,” Tate said. “We saw the tracks of her little sneakers in the dirt of the driveway.” He sat on the edge of the bed. His fingers twined together and he said quietly, “I don’t believe we lost Paul. Twenty-two years old, for Christ’s sake.” He looked over at me, knowing there was nothing I could say that would make any difference. “We don’t have any background on this guy yet, you know that?”
I nodded. Tate continued, “We’re trying for a print match. What we need is one of those big computers that does that. We have the rifle and it might turn some prints. I think we recovered all the weapons, including that automatic of Arajanian’s. It doesn’t make sense that a punk kid like him can just plunk down a thousand bucks for a fancy gun and a goddamn silencer.”
Tate looked at his watch. “I’ve got two investigators with Kyle Osuna right now,” he said and then added with no sympathy, “That’s one scared kid.”
“He has reason to be.”
“I was there for a few minutes and heard some of the preliminaries. You know why he wanted to talk with us so bad?”
“He was scared shitless, that’s why.”
“Partly. He was in the truck, all right, with the other four. He was up in the cab with Waquie and Kelly Grider. The Lucero brothers were in the back and he says they started the ruckus with the girl, almost the minute she climbed into the truck.”
“They raped her?”
“Eventually, I guess. Osuna says they drove all the way to the head of the canyon to get some more beer at that little store… Chuga’s. Then he says they went to one of the campgrounds up that way. Had themselves a party. By that time Cecilia Burgess was trying to get away—Osuna says she tried to run up into the woods and Kenneth Lucero caught her. Osuna says he tried to stop him, but Lucero was too much to handle.”
“And after the party?”
“They drove south and Osuna said the girl was pleading with them to let her go, to drop her off when they got to the hot springs. He says they got to fighting in the back, with Waquie and Grider yelling encouragement from the front. Osuna says they were swerving all over the road.”
“And he was lily-white innocent, of course.”
“Sure. So he says. Somewhere north of the campgrounds, push came to shove. Osuna says that Kenneth Lucero lost his temper and hit the girl pretty hard. The truck swerved across the road, since Waquie was both drunk and enjoying the fight, not paying much attention to the road. He jerked the wheel at the wrong time and over she went.”
“Osuna says the truck was southbound on the highway?”
“So he says. In the wrong lane.”
“She gets tossed into the rocks and they drive on home.”
Tate nodded. “More or less. But I have trouble with part of that punk’s story. Osuna told the detectives that he went back up the canyon after a while in his own truck, found the girl, and helped her up to the highway. He says he would have done more, but then traffic came along and he spooked. He says he thought that since someone else was going to stop and take care of the girl, he could slip away.”
“There’s evidence that says that might be true, Pat. Both Estelle and I sure as hell thought it looked like someone had helped her up to the road. Maybe Osuna really did.”
It was the first time during our conversation that Estelle’s name had been mentioned, and Sheriff Pat Tate flinched perceptibly. He looked like he was ten years older than he was…physically tired and emotionally wrung out. He stood up and pushed one hand into his pocket, moving toward the door. He stopped and rested the other hand on the door pull, looking down at it thoughtfully.
“Al Martinez is fine. He’s sore as hell, but fine. But we’re not going to know anything about Estelle’s condition until probably late this afternoon…maybe even tomorrow.”
“I heard.”
“If she pulls out of it, she’s going to be one lucky girl.”
I nodded and looked out the window. I wasn’t sure I wanted Estelle to pull out of anything if she was going to face the rest of her life as a vegetable. No one had put that fear in words, but like a black cloud it hung over our thoughts.
Pat Tate turned and waited until I looked back at him. “Finn isn’t going to get away with this, Bill.” His heavy-lidded eyes didn’t blink. “I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you, but those punks in the truck had it coming. You and I both know they did. And that priest…Parris? He didn’t know what the hell he was doing when he tipped off Finn.” He shook his head in disgust. “But it’s gnawing at me, what a cold, calculating bastard this Finn is. Hell, his girl got raped and smeared on the rocks. He flips out…I can almost understand that. I’d want to kill somebody myself. If he just walked up to each one of them and blew them away, that would be one thing. But the way he did it, Jesus. And he sure as hell didn’t give you, Estelle, and Paul any notice. He just cut loose.”
He stopped and rubbed the door pull with his thumb, idly polishing the chrome finish. “I’m surprised he gave you a second chance, Bill. When it comes to killing, he’s no beginner.”
“He used Arajanian,” I said. “I’m sure of it. The boy did exactly as he was told. Cold-blooded as a goddamn lizard. I’m beginning to think that it’s when Finn had to act on his own that he started making mistakes.”
“I want to know what other connections he’s had,” Tate said. He pulled open the door. “We’re going to find out who Finn is, Bill. And when we catch him, I’d straddle him over an anthill and let him take about three weeks to die, if the law would let me.”
“Keep me posted,” I said. He nodded and had almost closed the door behind him when my memory played a tape I didn’t even know I had. “Pat!”
He peered back in the room and lifted his chin in question.
“When Finn came back to the tent, he picked up the little girl, Daisy.”
“And?”
“He called her Ruth.”
“Ruth?”
I nodded. “His pet name for her. I don’t know why. The first time we talked with him at the springs, he called her that. Ruth. We didn’t think it was important then. But now…it’s something… it might lead somewhere.”
Pat Tate frowned and I could see the wheels turning. No easy answer held up its hand. “When I find the son of a bitch, I’ll ask him,” he said.
“I want to be there when you do.” He nodded and I took that as a promise.
By late afternoon of the next day I was stir-crazy. Worse, I hadn’t seen Francis Guzman, hadn’t heard about Estelle…I was god-damned marooned in that stupid little room. There was nothing wrong with me other than a few stitches. “Admitted for observation” might be a nice way of saying that I’d been sidelined on purpose.
The manhunt for H. T. Finn was centering on the western half of the state…it was top-of-the-hour news on both radio and television and splattered a headline across both the evening and morning papers. No reporter had sought me out. Sheriff Pat Tate had hidden me away.
Shortly after 3:00
p.m.
, I was sitting in the hard vinyl chair by the window of my hospital room. I’d had a fitful night’s sleep and, for want of anything better to do, a short morning nap. The only medication they forced on me was a mild painkiller and I took that gladly. My back hurt worse than my shoulder.
The first rifle bullet had blown through my vest and skinned across my back just below my shoulder blades. The projectile had never broken the skin, but the bruise and burn on my back was two inches wide and nine inches long.
I’d been lucky with that one. The other bullet had done more damage, ripping first through the edge of my vest and then through the muscle over my right upper arm bone. The bullet hadn’t actually hit the bone, although the shock wave had caused all kinds of “neurological confusion,” as one of the doctors put it. An hour in surgery had put stitches in all the right places. One of the doctors told me that in two weeks I wouldn’t even know I’d been nicked. Two weeks was forever.
There I sat, newspaper folded on my lap, looking ninety years old, when the door opened. Dr. Francis Guzman looked about as old as I did. And now that we were face-to-face, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him. He closed the door behind himself and leaned against it. He may have needed to. The bags under his eyes were black and deep.
I rose and he waved a hand at me. “No, don’t. Sit.”
“I’ve been doing nothing but sitting all day, Francis.”
He pushed himself away from the door, walked slowly across the room, and shook my hand. His grip was firm and he hung onto my hand for just a moment. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Fine. What’s the word?”
He grinned—barely that…just a weary twitch of the lips and a little dance of light in his eyes.
“I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to get up here more often to see you,” he said. “I looked in on you a couple times yesterday, but you were either under the anesthetic or asleep. Sheriff Tate told me last night you were getting antsy.” He grinned. “I dropped in this morning and you were sleeping in that chair.”
“Yeah. The hell with that. How’s Estelle?”
“She’s doing as well as we could hope.”
He started to say something else, but he was sounding just like a goddamned doctor. I interrupted him. “That doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, Francis. Just tell me in simple English.”
“She’s going to live, barring complications.”
“Complications?” Francis looked around the room for something to sit on. “Take the bed,” I said. He flopped down and fell back, arms over his head. After a moment he pulled himself up to a sitting position.
“Whenever the brain is injured, there’s all kinds of problems,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot harder making sure all the bleeders behave themselves.” He pointed his finger as if it were a pistol. “Apparently the bullet hit the point of her skull right here.” He tapped the rear crown of his head. “A glancing blow, but…” He took a deep breath. “With a high-powered rifle there’s just so damn much force involved. She has a serious skull fracture.”
I waited while he decided what he wanted to say. “At first they thought that some skull fragments might have penetrated the dura, maybe damaged the brain tissue itself.”
“And?”
“She was in surgery a long time. She’s strong, and the docs did a fine job. The wound is clean. No chips. Hell of a lot of bruising, and that’s always worrisome with the brain. But they did a fine job.” He grinned with a little more energy. “I was there to make sure they did.”
“Any paralysis?” I said, and my voice was husky.
He shook his head. “Not that we can tell yet.”
“Is she conscious?”
“In and out, but that’s to be expected for a couple days.”
“I’d like to see her.”
Francis Guzman nodded but held up a hand. “It’d be best for both of you to let it wait until tomorrow.” He stood up and rolled his head around, trying to loosen the neck kinks. “Give her a few more hours of rest. We’ll know more then, anyway.”
“Francis…”
He looked at me, one eyebrow cocked—just like his wife.
“What about the baby?”
The young physician smiled, and my relief was like ocean surf. “She told you, huh, Padrino?”
“Yeah, she told me. She didn’t lose it, did she?”
“No. She’ll be fine. Tough stuff. She really is.”
“I’m sorry this happened,” I said, sounding lame and dumb.
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he said. He stuck out his hand again, and I got up. “We’d all be geniuses if our foresight was as good. Who knows what might have happened if you’d waited. But she’ll be fine. So will you. And the next time you have a vacation, we’re all going to go to Lake Tahoe or somewhere where neither one of you can get into trouble.”
“It’s a deal.” His spirits sounded upbeat, but I knew he was working at it. I followed him to the door, my shuffle just about as fast as his.
“And by the way…remember Nolan Parris?” Francis asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s downstairs in one of the reading rooms. They won’t let him up. He spent the night, I guess. But Tate set some tight rules on this one. Takes an act of Congress to see anyone or find out anything. You want to see him?”
“I don’t know if I do or not.”
“As I said, he spent the night. He must be pretty worried. Nobody’s talking and he’s concerned about the little girl. He means well, I think.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Finally, he’s worried. We all are. But I don’t know what it would accomplish to see him or…” and I stopped. My brain was beginning to work. I shrugged like I was making a hell of a concession. “Yeah. Send him up. No, wait. Forget it. I’ll take care of it. I’ve got a phone.”
Francis nodded. “I’ll try to drop in on you later this evening. Behave yourself.” He smiled.
“And you get some rest, kid. You look like shit.” It felt good to be able to tell someone else that for a change.
Dr. Francis Guzman left, and I called the hospital gestapo to ask them if they’d let Father Nolan Parris enter the “R” zone. I had no desire to hash over his problems or his guilt that was no doubt rampaging after what had happened. It was simpler than that. I needed wheels, and Parris had access to a station wagon.
Age sixty-two is too late to worry about growing up and following the rules. There wasn’t anything wrong with me that wouldn’t heal as well elsewhere…where I might be more useful.
Nolan Parris hadn’t found his way through the multilevel labyrinth to my room when the telephone rang. I grabbed it. It was Tate. The old bastard must have been a mind reader.
“Bill, are you dressed?”
“Hell, no. I’m sitting here in a goddamn robe pretending I’m a nursing home patient. What’s up?”
“We got a break. A private pilot who was going to fly over and look at the forest fire says he saw Finn’s Blazer on one of the back roads of the reservation.”
“It’s not Finn’s goddamned Blazer and where was this? Which reservation?”
“Northwest of Grants somewhere…over by Haystack Mesa, they called it. He’s cornered at an old wildcat uranium mine. There’s dozens of them out that way. We’ve got it pinpointed on the map. A chopper is going to pick me up here in a minute.”
I was about to interrupt him and tell him that if I got left out of this one I’d curse his firstborn for generations. But there was a light knock on my door, and Nolan Parris stepped into the room. He was wearing his clerical suit, complete with white collar. I turned my attention back to the telephone.
“You have to pick me up, Pat.”
“That’s why I called. I cleared it with the hospital already. You need to get your old ass in gear, get dressed, and be at the helipad on the roof in about thirty minutes.”
“You got it.”
“And, Bill…”
“Yep?” I was already impatient to be off the phone.
“I’m not doing this as a favor to you. I want you to know that from the start. If it was up to me, you’d be locked in that hospital room for a week or so. I’m doing it because I was told to do it.”
I slammed on the brakes. I couldn’t imagine Pat Tate taking orders from anyone. “This is your case, Pat.”
“Damn right it’s my case. And it’s going to stay that way. But he’s got the child and this may be our only chance.” I heard the steady whup-whup of a helicopter in the background, and someone shouted at Tate. “I’ll talk with you in a few minutes. Finn must know he’s not going to slip through the net. He’s cornered, Bill. And he knows it. Now he wants to talk to you.”
“Finn wants to talk to…”
“Thirty minutes, Bill. Don’t make us wait.” Tate hung up and I stared out the window, the phone still in my hand. If the media had pried enough information out of Tate to know that the hospital was treating two survivors from the war on the mountain, Finn would have heard the news on any radio station. He knew my face. If he’d rifled through the glove compartment of the Blazer, he knew my name. The bastard wanted to negotiate.
I had forgotten that anyone else was in the room. Nolan Parris had heard enough though.
“Sheriff,” he said, and I turned around to look at him.
“You have to let me go along.” Parris limped across the room and touched my arm. He repeated his request, and I hung up the phone and pushed myself out of the chair.
“Why the hell not,” I said. If another passenger on the helicopter was all right with Pat Tate, it was fine with me. I didn’t know how they’d managed to corner the son of a bitch, but the rules had changed. Maybe the services of a priest would be useful.