Jersey. Lights out in all the mobile homes. I remembered the street bisecting the subdivision as freshly asphalted. In the darkness, it stretched empty and smooth, so perfectly drafted it appeared computer generated. Resumption of the tangerine light.
Deep orange on black; every night was Halloween.
"This is where Haas lives?" he said.
"First street to the right. I can show you the trailer."
He cruised past the trailers.
"Up there is parking for visitors," I said. "No visitors tonight... There's Charing
Cross. Haas's place is four units in. Look for a cement porch, a Buick Skylark, and a Datsun truck."
He stopped two houses away. Only the truck was parked in front, backed by Mike
Whitworth's Harley.
Lights out. No sign of Whitworth, and I saw Milo's face tighten up. Then the Highway
Patrol man came out from behind the trailer and headed for the bike.
Milo stage-whispered, "Mike? It's Milo."
Whitworth stopped. Turned toward us, focused, came over.
"In the neighborhood," said Milo, "so we dropped by."
If Whitworth was offended by being second-guessed he didn't show it. "No one home, nothing funny. I spotted some unopened mail on the table-a day's worth, maybe two."
"One of their cars is gone," I said. "They have family in Bakersfield. Probably traveling."
"You see any justification for breaking in?" said Whitworth.
Milo shook his head.
"I'm not comfortable with it either. Okay, let me go see if any of my guys hit a hole in one. You ready for the mountains yet?"
"On our way," said Milo.
Whitworth looked out at the black peaks, barely discernible against the onyx sky.
Country skies were supposed to be crammed with stars. Why not tonight?
"Must be pretty during the day," said Whitworth, kick-starting the Harley. "Sure you want to go it alone?"
"I'd better," said Milo. "Gonna be hard enough to avoid being spotted with one vehicle." He brandished his cell phone. "I'll keep in touch."
Whitworth nodded, took another glance at the Tehachapis. Keeping his engine low, he rolled away.
Turning the Samurai around, Milo drove back through Jersey. Lights went on in one of the mobiles as we passed, but so far we'd avoided attracting undue attention. Milo coasted without gas, looking for the service strip. Almost missing it again.
Unmarked, just a car-wide break in the peppers, topped by arcing branches.
Letting the Samurai idle, Milo got out and shined his light on the ground. "Hardpack
... maybe degraded granite... tire tracks. Someone's been here." "Recently?"
"Hell if I know. Jeb the Tracker I ain't."
He got back in and turned onto the road. The passage was unlit and lined on the north side by more chain link, on the south by a high berm planted with what looked and smelled like oleander. The Samurai traveled well below the berm level, as if we were tunneling.
The four-by-four rode rough, every irregularity in the road vibrating through the stiff frame, Milo's head bouncing perilously close to the roll bar. Nothing changed for the next half-mile: more chain link and shrubbery. Then the road ended without warning and we were faced with the sudden shock of open space, as if tumbling out of a chute.
No more gray, just black. I saw nothing through the windshield, wondered how Milo could navigate. He began wrestling with the wheel. Pebble spray snare-drummed against the undercarriage, followed by deeper sounds, hollow, like hoof-beats.
Larger rocks. The Samurai began swaying from side to side, seeking purchase on the
grit. Beneath the floorboard, the chassis twanged.
The next dip slammed Milo's head against the bar.
He cursed and braked.
"You okay?" I said.
He rubbed his crown. "If I had a brain in here I might be in trouble. What the hell am I doing? I can't drive like this. Visibility's zilch; we hit a big enough rock, this thing flips and we break our goddamn necks."
Locking the parking brake, he stood on the seat and stared over the windshield.
"Nothing," he said. "Whole lot of nothing."
I took the flashlight, got out, faced away from the mountains, cupped my hand over the lens, and tried to examine the ground with the resultant muffled light.
Dry, compacted soil, inlaid with sharp-edged stones and desiccated plants. Matted flat and embroidered by chevron-shaped corrugations. "The tracks are still going."
He got down beside me. "Yeah... maybe someone went off-roading. That wild oF
California lifestyle." He laughed very softly. "They're supposed to be the crazy ones, but they probably did it with headlights, or at least low beams. Meanwhile, I blind myself. And even without lights we're vulnerable. All the empty space, this thing's probably audible clear to the mountains." Standing, he squinted at the
Teha-chapis. "How far does that look to you?"
"Two miles," I said. "Maybe three. You're saying it's time to go it on foot?"
"I don't see any choice. If you're up for it, that is-scratch that, stupid question.
Of course you're up for it. You're the one who thinks running is fun."
He tried to call Whitworth, got no connection, walked a hundred feet back, tried again, same result. Switching off the phone, he put it in his pocket along with the car keys. The flashlight went into another pocket. He took the rifle, gave me the nine-millimeter.
"Handing a civilian my gun." He shook his head.
"Not just any civilian," I said.
"Even worse. Okay, let me get rid of this thing." He yanked off his tie and tossed it in the car. "And this." In went his jacket. Mine, too.
We began walking, trying to follow the tracks.
Moving on leather-soled shoes ill-equipped for the task. Nothing to guide us but the hint of the crisp peaks I'd seen during my daytime visit. The quarter-moon looked sickly, degraded, a child's rendering erased here and there to tissue-paper consistency. Set high and well behind the mountains, the filmy crescent appeared to be fleeing the galaxy. What little light filtered down to earth offered no wisdom about anything below the mountaintops.
The lack of spatial cues made it feel as if we'd entered a huge, dark room as big as the world; every step was tinged by the threat of vertigo.
Reduced to stiff, small movements, I edged forward, feeling the rocks rolling under my shoes. Larger, sharper fragments caught on the leather, like tiny parasites attempting to burrow through. As the stones grew progressively larger, contact became painful. I got past the discomfort but remained unable to orient myself.
Clumsy with indecision, I stumbled a few times, came close to falling, but managed to use my arms for balance. Several feet in front of me, Milo, encumbered by the
rifle, had it worse. I couldn't see him but I heard him breathing hard. Every so often the exhalations choked off, only to resume harsher, faster, like a labored heart making up for skipped beats.
Ten more minutes seemed to bring us no closer. No lights up ahead. Nothing up ahead but walls of rock, and I started to feel I'd been wrong about Crimmins returning to the scene. A fourteen-year-old in his grasp, and we were baby-stepping toward nothing.
What else was there to do but continue?
Three times we paused to risk a quick, cupped flash-lighting of the path. The tracks endured, and immense boulders started appearing, sunk deeply into the ground, like fallen meteorites. But no rocks directly in front of us, so far. This was a well-used clearing.
We kept moving at a pitiful pace, shuffling like old men, enduring the loss of orientation in angry silence. Finally, the moonlight obliged a bit more, revealing folds and corrugations in the granite. But I still couldn't see two feet in front of me, and each step remained constricted, tension coursing up my tailbone. Finally, I got a handle on walking by pretending I was weightless and able to float through the night. Milo's breath kept cutting off and rasping. I got closer behind him, ready to catch him if he fell.
Another hundred yards, two hundred; the peaks enlarged with a suddenness that shook me, as if I'd taken my eyes off the road and were headed for collision.
I reassessed the distance between Fairway's eastern border and the Tehachapis. Less than two miles, maybe a mile and a half. In daylight, nothing more than a relaxed nature stroll. I was sweating and breathing hard; my hamstrings felt tight as piano wire, and my shoulders throbbed from the odd, stooped posture that maintaining balance had imposed on me.
Milo stopped again, waited till I was at his side. "See anything?"
"Nothing. Sorry."
"What are you apologizing for?"
"My theory."
"Better than anything else we've got. I'm just trying to figure out what we do if we get there and it's still nothing. Head straight back, or trail along the mountains just in case they dumped a body?"
I didn't answer.
"My shoes are full of rocks," he said. "Let me shake them out."
A few thousand baby steps. Now the mountains were no more than a half-mile away, reducing the sky to a sliver, dominating my field of vision. The contours along the rock walls picked up clarity and I could see striations, wrinkles, dark gray on darker gray against black.
Now, something else.
A tiny white pinpoint, fifty, sixty feet to the left of the track.
I stopped. Squinted for focus. Gone. Had I imagined it?
Milo hadn't seen it; his footsteps continued, slow and steady.
I walked some more. A few moments later, I saw it again.
A white disc, bouncing against the rock, widening from sphere to oval, paling from milk white to gray to black, then disappearing.
An eye.
The eye.
Milo stopped. I caught up with him. The two of us stood there, searching the mountainside, waiting, watching.
The disc appeared again, bouncing, retreating.
I whispered, "Camera. Maybe she's still alive."
I wanted to run forward, and he knew it. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he whispered softly but very quickly: "We still don't know what it means. Can't give ourselves away. Backup would be great. One last try to reach Whitworth. Any closer and it's too risky."
Out came the phone. He punched numbers, shook his head, turned off the machine.
"Okay, slow and quiet. Even if it feels like we'll never get there. If you need to tell me something, tap my shoulder, but don't talk unless it's an emergency."
Onward.
The disc reappeared, vanished. Circling the same spot to the left.
Focused on what? I yearned to know, didn't want to know.
I stayed close behind Milo, matching my steps to his.
Our footfalls seemed louder, much too loud.
Walking hurt and silence fed the pain. The world was silent.
Silent movie.
Images flooded my head: herky-jerky action, corseted women, men with walrus mustaches, mugging outrageously over a plinkety-manic piano score. White-lettered captions, framed ornately: "So it's carving you want, sir? I'll show you carving."
Stop, stupid. Keep focused.
Fifty yards from the mountain. Forty, thirty, twenty.
Milo stopped. Pointed.
The white disc had appeared again, this time with a tail-a big white sperm sliding along the rock, wriggling away.
Still no sounds. We reached the mountain. Cold rock fringed with low, dry shrubs, larger stones.
Holding the rifle in front of him, Milo began edging to the left. The nine-millimeter was heavy in my hand.
The disc materialized overhead. White and creamy, bouncing, lingering, bouncing.
Gone.
Now a sound.
Low, insistent.
Flash. Whir. Click.
On. Off.
No human struggle. No voices. Just the mechanics of work.
We moved along the mountain undetected, got to within twenty yards before I saw it.
A high, ragged rock formation-an outcropping of sharp-edged boulders, sprouting like stalagmites from the base of the parent range. Clumped and overlapping, ten to fifteen feet high, pushed out twenty feet.
Natural shield. Outdoor studio.