Authors: Charlie Newton
She says, "You and Bob are right; the preacher’s dead. Had to be Roland who the preacher brought back from Utah, Roland and little Gwen helped him boost his business, and when the preacher wanted to go satellite, Roland murdered him."
Little Gwen again, trapped out here in…this…vampire fucking castle. It makes me want to puke, but it fits. I add, "Then Roland stayed on…all those years, till now. When the last round of state investigators started poking ten days ago, he hit the road. But why go back to Chicago? And why’s he after me again, and John…at all?"
Tracy bites at her lip. "You really didn’t know you owned this…right?"
I look away and hear my teeth grind.
You have not been here, ever. Period
. While I’m not looking at her, shadows move. I jump back to fire…it’s clouds covering the moon; light that in a city wouldn’t register, but out here scares the shit out of me until I figure it. I follow one shadow running away and up a distinct path. The shadow runs around a low hill and into the dark. The tops of larger hills are silhouetted higher behind the path and hill. I look back at Tracy watching the same thing.
She tiptoes. "Wonder what’s back there?"
I’m thinking
bitch
and say, "You’ve got the flashlight."
"I’m sorry, okay? I was just trying to help us, you. There’s nothing we can do till Monday morning anyway." Tracy sprinkles what little fairy dust she has. "The FBI’s not here; that counts for something."
Miss All-Everything wants a gunfighter on that path with her. We’ll go, but I’ll let her lead and hope for a hungry mountain lion. I wave her forward without adding my sentiments and she inches toward the path. Surely the state police covered this ground in the daylight and found zip. We walk higher, lower, darker, lighter, and the path ends abruptly on a plateau. We’re a foot from the edge. Way, way in the distance low lights twinkle in the black. It could be ten miles or fifty, Mexico or the Indian reservation or whatever’s on fire festering in the bottom of that screw hole.
Tracy sees the lights too and says, "The superintendent’s an Indian, isn’t he? What kind?"
I answer, "Hohokam," but only because I’m concentrating on moonlit, unending western landscape seen for the first time, landscape that’s sort of like a blood pressure pill…and maybe why people live here.
Tracy draws back from the plateau’s rim, glances at me, then down the nearest edge. "If you wanted to hide something on this ranch, where would it be?"
According to Bob this place is a square mile. Eight city blocks in every direction. Searching it all will be impossible and I say so.
Tracy nods. "What’s the most valuable thing out here?"
I’m a street cop, not a detective, but this is one I can figure. "Water. The baptism well. You don’t die of thirst and it cashes your checks."
Tracy says, "Let’s go."
"Like the Staties didn’t think of that?"
She stops, stumbles for balance, and falls down the plateau. The flashlight goes with her doing cartwheels that I hope are a match for hers. I hear her land but can’t see. When she doesn’t call out, I peek, not wanting to join her more than wanting to save her. My shoe tumbles rocks down the face and I jump back. They hit bottom in a muffled flurry.
"Quit it, for chrissake." Miss All-Everything-but-Mountain-Climber has survived.
"You okay?" I’m actually smiling, which feels like the landscape looks, and think I remember that Clint shot any wounded who couldn’t finish the trail ride.
"Give me a hand."
"How? I can’t see anything." I hear rocks moving and Tracy bitching. After two minutes of scrabble noise, the top of a redhead materializes. I step farther back and reach to help. She gets closer and I step back again, arm extended. When she gets an elbow on the level ground I step forward, grab her collar, and drag her bitching to "safety."
The flashlight is still lit at the bottom but I ask if she has it. She’s sitting, rubbing her knee, and spitting desert and doesn’t answer.
"You were saying something about the well when you fell."
She thanks me for my help. I ask if she can walk. She stands with difficulty and brushes her designer jeans, torn at both knees.
"There’s something down there."
"Yeah, our flashlight."
"Fuck you, Patti. You know? Just fuck you."
The first rise I have ever gotten out of Ms. Moens.
"There
is
something down there."
"I read
Tom Sawyer
for the first time last year, bought it instead of your book. You want the flashlight, be my guest."
Tracy turns away from the edge, then retreats down the path toward the first hill and civilization beyond, but stops short. I don’t bump into her because I haven’t moved. I know this act, have seen it on the field and on the sidelines. She turns fast and says, "I’m going back down."
If I were a guy, this would be my cue to assist her by jumping into the lion’s mouth. I stay put when she passes me. Nor do I speak when she crawls down over the plateau lip and disappears into the shadows. I hear the rocks moving and imagine her fingers bloody to match her knees. This is a good moment in a shit week.
The flashlight’s beam moves and she yells from under the plateau, "Take a look at this."
Out of nowhere "this" lands at my feet and I jump sideways. I avoid falling over the rim by going to a knee and slamming the plateau with my gun hand. No one but me sees this and I bite my teeth to keep from yelling.
"This" is near my shoe. It’s a tin can that up close reads…I can’t read it. Another can lands behind me, then another. I’m wondering why they were worth Miss All-Everything clawing her way back down the cliff, or ravine, or whatever it is.
She answers my unasked question in a muffled, roundabout manner, talking to herself. "The state police or the sheriffs didn’t search this. Why would they? No one had proof anything happened here, other than the ranch’s people are gone. So they’d look around, go through the papers—some of them, and write it off as a media weekend. When the authorities go home, so do the cameras."
Although I’m not party to the conversation, I agree that it makes sense. Not enough to crawl down there, but it makes sense and she continues from the dark below.
"They dig up the one grave, make a show, but don’t need to spend more county money on a crime that hasn’t happened." She pauses, then states with conviction: "They didn’t look in the well. Probably drove a few acres of the six hundred sixty and never left their cars."
I’ve seen a number of detectives "windshield" a crime scene and write a report; some from five miles away with a bourbon-and-water in hand. The "one grave" comment kind of hangs there and I wonder if I’m the only person who can count to two. I answer loud, down what sounds like a two-story basement. "So? The Staties are lazy and you found the trash dump."
"I found a safe." The word
safe
echoes. "Under all this crap, just where a Waco or Ruby Ridger would put it."
I ease closer to the rim and peer past the overhang, considering how a city cop might descend. Cans and debris clank in the dark. Her voice echoes again.
"And it’s open."
My descent is not athletic either. I arrive scuffed and sandy in a trash ravine that doesn’t feel like a basement. Tracy’s safe is big, old, and buried in a concrete vault like the bodies in the cemetery should’ve been. She’s scraped back the layers of burnt trash and desert to expose the safe’s metal door. The door is scorched gray-black, ajar six inches, and blocked open from the inside. Whoever opened it didn’t bother to close or hide it after. What little hiding the safe got when they were done was likely from Bob’s javelina rooting through the trash until Tracy slid in and rearranged the pile.
She tightens her light beam to just the door handle and what trash-pit lighting we had, quits. Now we’re knee deep in a dark trash pit with whatever desert creatures eat and sleep here. That thought motivates me to throw open the door and I use both hands when one isn’t enough.
The safe’s interior has an odd odor, letter-size metal boxes, and loose papers. Both of us politely wait for the other to reach. When that doesn’t happen I look for a stick, find none, take a deep breath, and reach.
Nothing bites me at first so I grab a box, then the flashlight from Tracy before she can react. This leaves her hands free and I shine my flashlight back inside. She hesitates like she can’t decide which cherry to pick, and grabs. Her hand returns with a box that matches mine and a six-inch centipede. The latter makes her toss the box and me flinch. Before I take my turn—we seem to be taking turns now—I use the light to check as much of the dark metal hole as possible.
We take our turns reaching until we have four metal boxes, a sheaf of loose papers, and one last look to be sure the safe is empty. Whatever’s in the pit with us, hidden under the trash surrounding our feet, must be asleep at 2:00 a.m. Only Tracy is happier about this than me. We and our boxes scramble back to the top of the plateau, then alternate with the flashlight, checking our legs and contraband for creatures.
We sit Indian style with the boxes between us. Tracy grabs the flashlight and shines it on the box farthest from her. It’s not lost on me how strange this is. I’m one of two city girls sitting on a low plateau in the Sonoran Desert, washed in dull-silver light a Chicagoan only sees at outdoor concerts. This is stranger than the two of us walking
ghetto ho
yesterday after the rain.
Jesus, that was
yesterday
?
Tracy is not as taken with our surroundings and says, "Open it."
I do; it’s a box full of…
Watches. Maybe fifty. Old ones. I immediately think dead people. A serial killer’s souvenirs. The preacher Triple A did this? But where are the fifty bodies? Only eleven marked graves up front and they were showy—probably part of the new pilgrim tour. I glance at the desert beyond our flashlight that goes on forever—a cemetery no psycho could fill in one career.
That answers the
where,
but why kill your pilgrims?
Tracy fishes through the watches, inspecting two, then a third. None bite her.
I answer my own question. "Maybe he didn’t kill them. Maybe it’s give up your watch, join the ranch, screw the grid. A symbol, you know? These bullshit artists love that shit."
Tracy’s reading an inscription and says, "Huh?" I repeat both thoughts—serial-killer dead people or just off the grid.
"He…they killed all these people?" She hesitates with that thought while trying to 360 her shoulders. When she comes back she says it again but with less reporter glee.
"Could’ve."
"That would be…messy."
We try to read the inscriptions. Only two have any, and neither of them are names. I toss the last Timex back in, an old one with a fake alligator band. Tracy reaches for the next box. It’s sturdier than the others and empty, other than two crumpled pages and a rock. No, not a rock, a nugget of massed cubes. We both hit Lost Dutchman Gold Mine in the same instant—flashing on the calendar that was pinned above Roland’s file cabinet. I’m dumb enough to say it out loud.
She sneers and says, "Long way from here, east of Phoenix," but continues to examine the nugget. It shimmers against the light and she says, "Could be something," then hands it to me to assay in the dark. I try while she reads one of the pages with all the flashlight.
"It’s an assayer’s report: ’Pyrite.’ Fool’s gold." She looks up and frowns at my attempt to polish ’pyrite’ into gold ore. "Probably why the ’divine’ water made ’em all smell like sulfur."
Uh-huh. I’m thinking I might need to peruse that page myself. She reads my mind because the bitch seems to be able to do that and hands me both pages, then the flashlight. Page one says what she said it did and I hand it back, but keep the rock…nugget. She notices; I smile her pageant smile.
Page two is more interesting. It says the first assayer’s report may be wrong. Unfortunately, the stationery heading is gone, as is the bottom half of the page, so it’s tough to know what the paragraph means out of context. I put the rock and the page back in the box and stack it on top of the watches box.
Metal box three is cinched with leather clasps. Tracy fights it open as the breeze picks up to wind again, and colder still. I don’t like the timing and check a phosphorescent desert on low-dimmer that runs as far as Mexico and maybe outer space.
Voodoo
.
That’s my first thought when I turn back—after I peer into box three, after seeing Tracy’s face go blank.
Voodoo kit
. Inside box three are bleached bones that might be four-toed feet, incisor teeth—one of length and sharp—two talons with reddish tips, a nine-inch curved backbone, and another nugget. Behind the nugget is a compass and under it a red cloth that shines like velvet does when it’s wet. Tracy pulls and half the cloth falls away in red flakes. The cloth must be hot because she drops it, recovers, then shrugs. "Beats the hell out of me…"
I frown at memories that aren’t good anywhere, even here. "Relics." My chest tightens and I’m hot and cold at the same time. "Circus bullshit if you’re selling religion. Make your ’holy artifacts’ from weird animal parts."
Tracy mimics me and asks the box, "We found His Pentecostal City’s Shroud of Turin?"
I didn’t need to hear that; I absolutely hate organized religion’s false hope. Hate it to the point I can be violent. I
want
the shroud to be true, to believe that God is out there and She gives a shit. And in a place like this it’s easier—somehow the weirdness of it all, the brilliant…emptiness suggests She’s possible. But all the bullshit relics in the world don’t change one day with Roland, not a fucking minute of his hands and—
"Patti?
Patti
."
I snap back to Tracy shining the light in my eyes. I block and twist sideways. She lowers the light but keeps in on me.
"We okay?"
"Keep the damn light out of my eyes."
She does but continues staring at me and my tone. These little side trips I keep taking must be painted across my face. If that’s true, and I know it is, one has to give Miss All-Everything credit for staying with me.