Murder in a Hot Flash (16 page)

Chapter
17

“Charlie, stop screaming. Find some cracks to stick your fingers and toes in and hold on to, or you'll pull me over.”

Charlie had pulled some ohshits in her life but this had to be the granddaddy of 'em all. “I'm not screaming.”

Oh, right, then how come your throat's so sore?

Charlie couldn't see anything but black. “Uh, there's nothing to hang on to.”

Then why aren't you plummeting through space? Why are you still here to hear him?

Charlie opened her eyes. Wild panicky visions of her impending free-float out and down to doom ricocheted about her brain. Dizziness and nausea and dread washed over her in surging breath-stopping waves.

“There's not a lot to hang on to up here either.” Even with the ringing in her ears, Charlie could hear his swallow come drier than John B. Drake's.

He had hold of some part of her sweatshirt, the sweatshirt trying hard to choke her. She knew she could have heard threads and seams ripping if fear wasn't bludgeoning her ears with the din of a terrified heart.

“Oh, Libby, baby, I'm sorry.” Charlie wished Mitch hadn't caught her. He was only drawing out her agony of anticipating the fall, forcing her to live it over and over before the final, real one.

Mitch was face down above her. But she could feel him slipping. Charlie should tell him to let go but couldn't quite form the words. She'd be a murderer if she didn't. A dead one.

“Kick your shoes off, see if you can get a toehold.” She could hear in the straining of his voice the enormous exertion he used to hold them even this tenuously. “But don't jerk or anything. Hurry, Charlie, we're running out of time.”

One of Charlie's Keds was half off already. Carefully, oh so carefully, she scraped the sole down the rock face and felt the prick of cold air on her toes when it fell. She heard a thump as the rock repelled it somewhere below. But she never did hear it land. It was that far down there.

How would she endure the wait once she was launched herself?

With little hope that it would be of any use, Charlie pried off her other shoe with her bare foot and then used her toes and fingers to search for cracks and crannies. At least it gave her something to do other than contemplate the inevitable.

Charlie'd always considered rock climbers raving lunatics, but could remember pictures of lunatics plastered to smooth cliff faces like spiders and with no discernible handholds. She moved one foot gradually back and forth, and then the other, and met with no opening for her toes. But the fingers on her right hand found an indentation with a warm, mossy feeling to it and grabbed its edge.

For some reason this caused Charlie to raise her left foot a smidgen and it found a slanted crack that cramped and pinched but was deep enough to slip in to the instep and support her weight. This in turn released the choking pressure of the sweatshirt and, unable to believe her luck, Charlie hugged the cliff.

Could this be merely another cruel extension of her dying?

“Charlie, I can't feel your weight. Tell me you didn't fall out of the sweatshirt?” He sounded oddly reconciled.

“I've got one foot and one hand reasonably secure. I can hold on for a while. Is there anything in the Bronco you could use to pull me up?”

“There's a rope, but I can't get to it.”

“Whadaya mean, you can't get to it? Mitch, I might have a chance here.”

“See if there's room for your free hand to get a hold where your other one did,” he told her.

Charlie didn't like the deadly calm of his tone. “Why can't you go get the rope? Are you stuck or something?”

“Christ, do I wish. If I so much as cough, Charlie, I'm coming right on down past you headfirst.”

“How can that be? You were holding me up a moment ago. Every last ounce of me.” But she moved her left hand over toward her right with sweating care.

“That was a moment ago. When I made that suicidal dive for you I didn't have time to set myself up too well here. Any luck there?”

Charlie's hands met and she held her breath to put more weight on the aching foot pinched in the crack and to move the right hand, finger by finger, over to make room for the left. “I've got it, Mitch, I've got it. If I can just find a place for my other foot.”

It was the smell that Charlie registered first. She thought of ammonia and then discarded that notion. The squawk and flutter on the air, the pricking jabs at her fingers and then at her hair signaled bird.

She'd found the ledge of a nesting bird and this was spring and the bird was a tiny dangerous mother type. Why had it remained quiet so long?

This wouldn't have been half the problem if the commotion below hadn't disturbed the tenuous hold of the man above. He suddenly fell in a shower of grit and with an anguished cry. Charlie's sweatshirt dropped back over her head to scare off the bird.

Mitch's body brushed her shoulder, his fingernails raked down her jeans and leg. He clutched her ankle for a split second as if to take her with him, and then let go.

Charlie screamed silently and clung to what was left of her world. A dark world now, even when she opened her eyes. She didn't dare look down and she didn't dare look up.

She didn't hear Mitch Hilsten land either.

Charlie wanted to let go and join him. She couldn't cling to this cliff forever. It would be better to get the terror over with. And she was the cause of a good man's death, an unnecessary death. Who would want to live on with that guilt? Not that anyone would see her hanging here in the dark and come to her rescue.

She hadn't the strength to hang on until morning. Still, she was too much of a coward to release her small hold on life. And then there was Libby. If there was the remotest possibility Charlie could survive, she had to try for Libby.

When Mitch grabbed her ankle, he'd forced her foot deeper into the narrowed end of the crevice. It was going numb. But the leg above it ached and tweaked with shooting pains, gave off involuntary jerks as Charlie now moved her dangling foot up and down in a cautious sawtooth pattern in search of another crack or protrusion or anything.

She found a slight niche that would reluctantly accept her big toe and leaned her weight on it enough to relieve the pressure on the other foot.

Whatever had formed the slight niche gave way almost instantly and Charlie scraped skin down the rock face, finding nothing else to stop the skid. She pulled herself back up by her hold on the bird's ledge and hissed at the pain the renewed weight caused her left foot.

Clinging back in her old position, Charlie found some tears that hadn't dried up with her mouth and throat. “I'm sorry, Mitch. That was such a dumb thing to do, back off a cliff like that … I'm so sorry.”

“Well, you sure as hell ought to be.”

Charlie listened to see if the voice would repeat itself and when it didn't, she whispered, “Mitch? Aren't you dead?”

“Let's put it this way, my hold isn't as good as yours, Charlie, and yours doesn't sound so wonderful from where I'm hanging.”

Hope tried to niggle its way back into her life. “Where are you hanging?”

“Somewhere below and to the left of you. I'm even right side up somehow. But I can't hold on here much longer and I can't find anything big enough to stick my boots into.”

“Can't you get them off?”

“Not without letting go with my hands to untie them.” Then after a long silence he said, “Just tell me one thing? Why did you do it? Panic and back up that way? I looked where you were pointing and I didn't see anything.”

“I thought I saw something dark rise up behind you.” Another long silence while his boots scuffled against rock and he grunted with the exertion of hanging by his hands and arms. “Mitch, in your reading … did ‘they' ever save people they scared and got in terminal trouble like this?”

“Do you notice every ant you step on? Now that it's too late, the cynic believes.”

“Right now I'd believe in anything if I thought it would save us.” That little bit of hope, resurrected when she realized he wasn't dead—yet, kept her mind searching for a possible way out. “Have you ever done anything like this in a film?”

“Yeah, watched stuntmen,” he said. “
They
have nets. And this isn't a film.”

“I don't suppose anyone could hear us yelling for help.”

“You have any idea how far it is down there?”

“What have we got to lose?” Charlie started yelling. Mitch soon joined in.

And when their chorus stopped for breath, there came an answer.

Chapter
18

“And God said, ‘Let there be light!'” a melodious, resonant voice proclaimed from out of the night below. The cliff face to their left lit up like a stage. Charlie squeaked and Mitch Hilsten whispered profanity—but reverently.

The strains of an entire symphony orchestra swelled up out of the canyon. And the light went out.

“‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'” The voice swelled above the orchestra. “‘And the earth was without form and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.'”

Cymbals clashed. “‘And God said, “Let there be light”'!”

And sure enough, the light came back to the cliff face. It began moving toward Charlie and Mitch. Charlie reassessed her religious beliefs.

“‘And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness'!”

“Charlie, when the light gets to us, try to wave with one hand and not fall.”

“Wave to who? What's happening?”

“And God called the light DAY!'”

“Try, Charlie. All I can do is kick my feet.”

“‘And the darkness he called NIGHT!'” And the light went out.

“Oh boy.”

“Hang on, Charlie.”

Charlie hung on. And God went on about the firmament splitting the waters from the waters and calling the firmament heaven and gathering all the water together so dry land could appear. “‘And God called the dry land EARTH'!”

And the light returned, catching Charlie full on. She waved one arm and yelled, knowing no one could hear her over the mighty music. There was some scuffling below her and she supposed Mitch was swinging his feet to attract attention.

But the light moved off down the cliff face and God continued creating as though He hadn't seen them. He was creating grass and flowers hundreds of feet down the canyon when the voice cut off in mid-sentence and the music stopped.

Charlie thought she heard tiny voices shouting below. The light started creeping back along the cliff toward them. “Mitch, I think they've seen us. How much longer can you hold on?”

“I don't know.” He sounded exhausted. And like he might be giving up.

The light reached them and stopped. Cliff birds stirred and complained from holes and ledges above Charlie's head.

“I think I've figured out what all this weirdness is.” If she kept talking to make contact with Mitch, maybe it would give him the strength to hang on longer. “Remember the advertising on that
River by Night
show?”

“They take people in big flatboats on the river and a light truck runs down the road next to them. The speaker and the music are canned. I'd already figured that out. I can't talk anymore.”

“Please don't give up now. There, hear it? It's a siren.”

He just groaned. It had taken them twenty minutes to traverse that steep, winding road up here. If help was that far away she wasn't sure she could make it and Mitch didn't sound like he had twenty minutes in him.

Then, from the other side of the canyon rim, came the rapid thudding of helicopter blades.

“Oh great.” Mitch Hilsten had tears in his voice. “Damned heroes … they'll blow us off the fuckin' rock.”

Charlie jammed her face against the cliff face and tried to cringe into it. She clamped her eyes shut but could feel the dust in the air. The wind stirred up the odor of bird nests.

Something slapped against the rock next to her, but Charlie couldn't force herself to turn her head to see what it was.

A few minutes later, something slapped her in the back so hard she almost lost her grip. Hands jerked at her waist. “Let go.”

I can't.

“I'm in a sling chair,” Mitch yelled. “You can sit on my lap and they'll pull us up. Damn it, Charlie, let go.”

God, Charlie hated cliffhangers.

If Dean Goodacre called himself the cavalry one more time, Charlie was going to slug the television. A lavish, large television with a remote yet. She sprawled on one of the two queen-size beds in a room that didn't stink. It adjoined Rita Latham's and Mitch was watching the same thing on the lawyer's TV. Least they left the door open.

Charlie discovered that nearly getting a man killed did nothing for a relationship. They were both aching, bruised, silent, and embarrassed. Charlie with her feet wrapped in bandages and her fingernails surgically trimmed to the quick. Mitch with both hands wrapped in bandages.

Rita Latham must have clout to get two rooms like this. He'd probably sleep in Rita's room tonight, which would be fine with Charlie. Men as a gender were okay at work, but in personal life they were a disaster.

Both sets were tuned into CNN for godsake, not the little local cable, which would have been bad enough. And every gory embarrassing detail of Cabot's murder, Edwina's arrest, and Mitch Hilsten's latest “affair” with the woman with whom he almost died.

Charlie imagined Libby watching this with Lori Schantz and her traditional family, Edwina by herself in a jail cell.

To have come within 99 percent of dying was bad enough, but to watch Dean Goodacre, the helicopter rescue cavalryman, who had seemed like a normal nice guy the day before, burlesque all their lives in front of the whole world …