Where Echoes Live (30 page)

“In a way that's just as well. I can enlist Ned in stalling any discussions and just try to avoid Hy.”

“And do what?”

“I'll decide that after I meet with Kristen Lark at Hop-wood's cabin.”

“Shar, there may be a problem with the Coalition paying you after today. Ned's always been opposed to our bringing in an outside investigator, and now that he's in charge—”

“I'll stay anyway. It's almost the weekend.”

She stood, pulling her robe tight against the chill in the room. “Dammit, I hate going off right in the middle of this! I hate the idea that the Coalition feels it can just order me here and there.”

“Well, maybe when you stop in Sacramento you can talk with someone there, go over Ned's head. Besides, it won't take all that long in Humboldt county; then you can go back to headquarters and deal with the BLM.”

The thought seemed to cheer her. “Maybe,” she said—and yawned.

“Why don't you go back to bed?” I suggested. “You've got quite a drive tomorrow.”

“I guess I'd better. What about you?”

“I haven't had much sleep in days, but I'm not at all tired. I'll have a drink; maybe that'll relax me.”

She nodded and went back to her room. I had no doubt that she'd be asleep in minutes.

I poured some brandy and sipped it, but the shabby living room quickly began to depress me. It was too much like the one at Hopwood's cabin, and my thoughts kept turning to what might have happened there. Finally I took my glass onto the porch and sat on the steps.

It was after two now. A strong wind had sprung up; it rattled the brittle leaves on the overhanging trees and made their branches rasp together. I thought of the Mark Twain line Hy had quoted, about Mono Lake to the south, but equally applicable to this place: “wild, gloomy, foreboding … suggestive of sterility and death.” Maybe Twain had been right after all.

Of course, once I got to sleep I did so with a vengeance. As a result I was speeding through Stone Valley, half an hour late for my appointment with Lark, when I spied a curious sight on the stream bank. I braked, veered to the right, and drove over there to have a closer look.

Bayard, the used-up hippie, and a woman with an abundance of dark matted hair hunkered down at the water's edge, their heads close together as they tinkered with a piece of machinery. Three undernourished kids played listlessly in the dirt nearby. I glanced around for his shotgun and when I didn't see it, got out of the Land Rover and went up to them. My initial impression had been correct: the machine looked like Lily Nickles's hydraulic concentrator. I doubted she would have loaned it to anybody, much less someone as shiftless as Bayard.

As I approached, the woman twisted around toward me. Her thin face was suntanned, but with an unhealthy yellowish undertone. Curiosity flickered in her dark eyes, and she poked Bayard in the ribs. He looked up at me without recognition.

“Hey, Bayard,” I said, “remember me—Lily Nickles's friend?”

Slowly he nodded.

“She loan you that?” I motioned at the concentrator.

It was the woman who spoke. “Sold it to us, along with her other prospecting gear. And now the fuckin' thing's busted.”

“Sold it? When?”

“Last night before she took off.”

“Took off for where?”

The woman shrugged and scratched her armpit.

Bayard glared down at the concentrator. “Bitch made us give her every cent we'd got saved from my disability, and now it's busted.” He didn't sound overly angry, though; I gathered such calamities befell the pair with regularity. He thumped on the machine and tried to start it; the engine gave a feeble cough.

“Bayard,” I said, “I think it needs gas.”

“Gas.”

“Yes, it sounds dry.”

“Gas,” he said again as if he'd received a divine inspiration. Without another word he stood and meandered down the streambed in the direction of their shack.

The woman watched him go, her dark eyes unreadable. “Bay ain't too smart,” she said after a moment. “I knew what the trouble was, but he don't like his woman telling him what to do. You, now—that's different.”

“Lily didn't say where she was going?”

“Uh-uh. But she was going for good. Otherwise she wouldn't've sold her gear. And that Jeep was packed with all her other stuff.”

“How did she seem? Was she happy? Sad? Frightened?”

The woman considered, biting at the inside of her lower lip. “Oh, I'd say she was frightened.”

“Of what?”

“I don't know. Only natural to be frightened out here.” She glanced at the broken granite peaks that towered above us. “Me, I'm frightened all the time.”

There was nothing I could say to that, so I merely thanked her and went back to the Land Rover. Instead of continuing to Hopwood's cabin, I turned uphill toward Nickles's house.

A pile of trash that hadn't been there before lay at the foot of the newly mended steps. I walked toward the house, calling out to Nickles. There was no response. When I mounted the steps I noticed that the rocker and jumble of prospecting gear were gone from the porch. Inside I found only more trash and the furnishings abandoned by the original owners. A single beer can stood in the dry sink. Nickles had taken off, all right.

Why? I wondered. On Sunday she'd told me she was going to stick it out in Stone Valley for another season. Although she admitted to being afraid of what might be happening up on the mesa, even after finding Mick Erickson's body she'd remained relatively undaunted. Between then and now what had happened to drive her away?

I hurried back to the Land Rover and drove to Hopwood's cabin.

Its door stood open, and I could hear voices inside. Lark was conferring with one of the lab personnel next to a sheriff's department van. She turned and scowled at me.

“Christ, McCone,” she said, “I told you to get some sleep, but this is ridiculous.”

“Sorry. I'd have been here sooner, but I stopped to talk with Bayard because I saw he had Lily's hydraulic concentrator, and it turns out she's left the valley.”

“Whoa—stopped to talk with
who,
who had Lily's
what?”

“There's an awful lot I have to fill you in on.”

“I know.” She turned back to the lab technician. “You got all that?”

He nodded.

“Good. I'm here if you need me.” To me she added, “I don't suppose you've got any beer in that truck.”

“Uh, no.”

“Well, I just happen to have a six-pack.” When I looked surprised, she explained, “Technically I should be off duty, and there's nobody here who'll complain. And the department isn't picky about deputies transporting their groceries in official cars.”

We went to the cruiser and she got out the beers. Then we sat down on the rocks at the edge of the stream. The afternoon was hot now, but a peculiar high overcast made the sunlight watery and pale. I glanced up at the sky.

Lark said, “Gets like that when it's edging into winter. In a few weeks there'll be snow on the ground, and by Christmas it'll be so deep that a lot of the roads, including the one into this valley, will be pretty much impassable except for snowmobiles.”

“What do people do?”

“Hole up or move into town. That's when we start earning our pay. People get itchy from being cooped up; tempers rub raw. We break up a lot of bar fights—family fights, too. My first homicide was a woman who cracked her husband's head open with an iron skillet. Didn't even take the eggs out of the pan first.”

“How'd you get into police work?”

“My dad was county sheriff years back, and my brother's a deputy. It just never occurred to me to do anything else. What about you?”

“I trained as an investigator with one of the big security firms in San Francisco, mainly because I couldn't find any other job after I got out of college. By the time I had my state license I knew there wasn't anything I'd rather do.”

“Funny how people fall into things. Let's hear what you've got.”

I outlined what had happened since I'd left her office on Monday. Lark took notes on a pad she pulled from her shirt pocket, occasionally interrupting with questions. When I finished, she frowned, pulling at a short lock of perspiration-soaked hair.

“Well,” she finally said, “I can't say as I'm sorry they won't be mining the mesa. And if what you say about the shenanigans with the BLM is true, there won't be any resort development, either. But as for the rest of it … ”

“The rest is a real tangle. I wish Nickles hadn't gotten away before I could talk with her. I'd like to know what scared her off. Will you put out a pickup order on her?”

“Sure. But it would help if I knew where she might have headed.”

“Sunday she told me that if she left the valley she'd go back to Nevada. I suppose that's what she did.”

“Well, then, I'll request that the authorities there hold her. She's a material witness and shouldn't have left without contacting us.”

I stretched out my legs and leaned back on extended arms.

Most of the stiffness from my fall on Tel Hill was gone, and the mirror had shown a marked improvement in my face that morning. “What did you find in there?” I asked, nodding at the cabin.

“Just what you said we would. I won't know more until I see the lab report, but I suspect we might get a match between the stains and Erickson's blood type.”

“Or they might match Hopwood's. Or someone else's, somebody we haven't even thought of.”

“You're right. I'm just trying to make my job easier again.”

“Keep this in mind, too: Hopwood and Erickson were family.”

“Only by marriage, and you say that had pretty much busted up. Besides, I told you about the woman with the skillet full of eggs—purely a family matter.”

A family matter.
The words called up a hazy memory.

“Anyway,” she added, “I'll put out pickup orders on Hopwood and his daughter.”

A family matter.
It was the explanation Margot Erickson had given me for her separation from her husband—the same explanation Mick had given his secretary, Connie Grobe. Grobe assumed it related to having or not having children, since she didn't consider Mick and Margot a family in the usual sense. But if you took into account other relatives, such as the wife's father …

“McCone? You woolgathering on me?”

“Sort of. How soon do you think you'll have the results back from the lab?”

“Not soon enough, given it's Friday afternoon. We're looking at next week, I'm afraid.”

“Damn.”

One of the lab men came out of the cabin and beckoned to Lark. As she scrambled to her feet she said, “Don't leave yet.” I remained on the stream bank, sipping at the last of my beer and thinking about what sort of family matter could have caused a serious rupture of the Erickson marriage. When Lark stepped out of the cabin some five minutes later, she motioned excitedly to me.

“Look what we have here.” She held up a plastic evidence vial.

As I came closer I saw it contained a bullet.

“Lodged in the wall behind the couch,” she said, “and there was a faint blood spray around it. Since it's in relatively good condition—that pine is real soft wood—I'd say it passed through the fleshy part of the victim's body.”

“Meaning that whoever was shot was only wounded.”

“Or killed by a second bullet that lodged in the body.”

“What about the shot path?”

“It's interesting. From the blood-spray pattern on the couch and the angle at which the bullet lodged, I'd say whoever did the shooting was close to the floor. That indicates he or she might have struggled with the victim, been knocked down before firing.”

“Self-defense?”

“Possibly.”

“What caliber is that?”

“Looks like a forty-four.”

“The same as the Magnum you found in the glovebox of Erickson's Bronco—the one that had been fired.”

“Uh-huh. And we haven't been able to get a registration on it.” Lark looked thoughtful, then added, “Powerful weapon—too damned powerful to be used for anything but killing people. There're plenty around here. A lot of macho assholes think they need them, but it's just plain stupid to keep that kind of gun around. You've got proof of that in there.” She jerked her head at the cabin.

I nodded in agreement. “I guess this rules out the cabin as the scene of the Erickson homicide.”

“Yeah. What we've got here is a second victim. Just when I thought maybe my job was getting easier.” Lark scowled at the vial containing the bullet. “Well,” she added, “the only thing to do is go back to Bridgeport and sit on the lab people until I get at least an informal report—weekend or no weekend. Where'll I be able to reach you?”

“Willow Grove Lodge, at least through Sunday.”

She gave me a thumbs-up sign and went back into the cabin.

I was driving along what used to be the main street of the town when I saw Ripinsky's Morgan idling at the far end; it looked as if he was waiting for me. When I pulled alongside, he leaned out his window and said, “Saw you coming and decided to save wear and tear on my suspension.”

“I'm surprised you'd come out here in that car.”

“It's tougher than it looks. Besides, a car's for driving. Why else keep one around? What's with the sheriff's people? I spotted them going this way when I was headed into town. More trouble?”

“Not exactly.” Given the efficiency of the local grapevine, there was no way he wouldn't hear about the lab team going over the cabin. “They're checking out Hop wood's place. There're some bloodstains in the living room that make it look like someone met with foul play there.”