The Colt weighed reassuringly against my right hip. I said, “How will all things be made new?” and brought my arms behind me, like an attentive Sunday school pupil.
Hopwood's mad eyes seemed distracted. Again his gun wavered. I calculated the distance I would have to spring to get hold of it.
But he steadied it once more. “First the mountains and rocks must fall.”
My fingers touched the Colt's butt.
“And the star that is called Wormwood.”
I began to slip it from my belt.
“Many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”
The revolver's cylinder caught on my waistband. I couldn't free it unobtrusively.
I shrugged, using the motion to pull the gun free and said, “The waters of Tufa Lake have always been bitter.”
“Be still, mother of harlots!”
I held the Colt behind meâready, seeking my opportunity. Watched Hopwood, who watched me, strange eyes flashing their alien colorsâ
And then Ong decided to be brave after all. He sprang upward and leapt at Hopwood, hands reaching for his gun. I brought the Colt up. Saw a blinding flash. Felt rock fragments pepper my skin. As I dived to the ground, the sound of the shot echoed and reechoed.
Ong was down, too. I rolled, grasped the Colt in both hands, squeezed off a shot at Hopwood without aiming carefully. It missed, and he pivoted and dashed into the level behind him. I heard his footsteps, running away deeper into the earth. Running toward his dynamite charges.
Ong pushed up from the ground; he hadn't been hit. I grabbed his arm, dragged him toward the parallel level. He stumbled. I yanked him harder.
“Come on, dammit! He's going to detonateâ”
Ong got his legs under him and ran with me.
I'd left the torch on the floor of the crosscut, and when I searched for my guide rope, I couldn't find it. Ong was blundering through the darkness in front of me now, breath sobbing. I followed, stumbling and going down on one knee, caroming off the wall and slamming into his back. He fell. I pulled him up and dragged him some more.
Ahead then I saw a pinpoint of light. Heard voices. The pinpoint enlarged: the access tunnel. People outside to help us.
I shoved Ong into the small space. He balked, so I shoved him harder. Ong scrabbled forward, momentarily blocking the light. I crouched and dived in after him. Rock scraped my skin. Ong's foot kicked out and grazed my forehead. And then a rush of fresh air and Hy's voice, louder than the others: “Easy, easy.”
I clutched the lifting arm. “The dynamite's about to blow!”
“Christ!” It was Hy's arm. He pulled me to my feet, grabbed my hand. “Come on!”
I ran with him, stumbling and panting. Around us were the sounds of other running feet and figures blurred by the darkness. My breath came hard; pain seared my side. The beams of flashlights bounced off fractured granite; rocks clattered and rolled; a man's voice cursed furiously.
I stumbled again, lost my grip on Hy's hand, pitched headlong. He caught me, rolled with me. We came to rest on hard, level ground. Nearby I heard the sound of water.
I lay still, panting. Hy leaned over me. Between gasps he said, “You damn near doubled your loss, McCone.”
I looked up at him. His face was grim; wild curls hung over his sweat-slicked forehead. I sat up, smacking my own forehead against his chin.
Hy pulled back. I saw we were on the lower slope, not far from the stream. The mesa loomed above us, security lights ablaze.
“Hopwood,” I said. “He's in there. We've got to stop him!”
“Nothing we can do. We'll have to let him blow it up.”
I tried to get to my feet. Hy yanked me down.
I said, “We canâ”
“No way.”
“I couldâ”
“You go back there and you've got even more of a death wish than I do.”
I looked into his eyes, then back toward the mesa.
Death wish.
It takes many forms: the needle and the bottle; mountain climbing in avalanche time; games of chance when you know the deck's stacked against you; wild car rides at night. For whatever reasons, the private hell that Hy described his late wife as saving him from had probably embodied a death wish. As did my own addiction to dangerâ¦.
Many forms, but this wasn't one of them. “No,” I said, “it's not that strong in either of us.”
I looked away from the mesa. Allowed him to help me up. When standing, I noticed Ong several yards away, being supported by two other Asians.
I thought, I hope he gives you a fat bonus for this, you poor bastards.
Slowly we moved down the slope, a ragged and wounded little army, following the streambed toward the town where so many dreams had died. As we reached the first building, I heard a helicopter overhead, glanced up at it and then at Hy.
“Sheriff's department,” he said. “The guards found one of Hopwood's dynamite charges up top and radioed Bridgeport before they evacuated.”
The helicopter circled, darting and dipping as its pilot searched for a place to put it down. Then I heard a low rumbling deep in the earth, felt a tremor like the beginning of an earthquake. It gathered in volume and momentum.
A series of bangs, violent but muffled.
I jerked my head toward the top of the mesa in time to see the burst of fire. And then the moon and sky became as blood.
Hy and I arrived at Bridgeport in a Highway Patrol helicopter. The county choppers had been used to evacuate the Transpacific personnel, Lionel Ongâwho by then had proclaimed himself savior of the day, in spite of his heroics almost having gotten both of us killedâand Bayard and his family, whose shack had been set afire by falling cinders.
By the time we left the valley, the conflagration on top of the mesa had almost burned itself out; planes were spreading retardant in a firebreak along the main street of Promiseville. Several buildings had been lost, their tinder-dry wood perfect fodder for wind-whipped sparks; Nickles's house (along with my pea jacket) was among them. As we watched them flare and collapse upon themselves, I saw pain on Hy's face, but when I spoke to him he turned away, pretending indifference. Beyond halting the spread of the flames, the rescue crews had little to do. Except for Bayard and his brood, the desert rats had scattered. The crews would attempt to locate Hopwood's body, of course, but I seriously doubted they'd find any trace of him. Even from the valley floor, the force of the explosions deep within the mesa had sounded too violent not to cave in what remained of the fragile old mine workings. In a way, I supposed, the mesa would be a fitting burial cairn for the man to whom it had become the symbol of Armageddon.
Lark met us at the door of the county sheriff's building. She was wired, crackling with nervous energy, and the first thing she said to me was, “Sharon, you look like hell.”
“Thank you.”
Her freckled face flushed. “Didn't mean it that way. Ladies' room is down the hall there. We'll be in the first interrogation room.”
I followed the hallway, used the facilities, washed my face and hands. There were fresh scrapes on my forehead and cheekbones; my hair was tangled and snarled. I still wore Nickles's wool shirt, but dirt covered it and one sleeve was half ripped off at the shoulder.
I'd rescued my bag from the Land Rover before they evacuated us from Promiseville, and now I extracted my hairbrush and set to work. After doing what I could with my long mane, I bound it at the nape of my neck with a rubber band I found on the counter. Then I leaned forward intending to study my fresh facial wounds, but the room seemed to tip. Gripping the washbasin harder, I waited for everything to right itself. When it did, I observed that my face had turned the color of cold, congealed oatmeal.
I filled the basin with cold water and splashed my face and wrists until I felt better. Only a little more to get through, I told myself as I dried off, and then you can go home and never come back to this horrible place.
I found Hy and Kristen in the interrogation room, drinking coffee. He'd freshened up, too, and his wild curls were slicked down; a drop of water glistened at the tip of his stubbled chin. I accepted a cup of coffee, but immediately set it aside; the acid had started my empty stomach roiling.
Lark taped statements from both of us, then shut off the recorder and tipped contemplatively back in her chair. “Squares with what the Nickles woman told Washoe County,” she said.
“They picked Lily up in Nevada?” I asked.
Kristen nodded. “Reno. You were right about her taking off because she'd seen somethingâHopwood, hauling a case of dynamite up to that tunnel he made into the old mine. Seems she got curious again, went looking around, and spotted him. She figured something big was about to come down, so she split.”
“A good thing, too,” I said. “Her house was one of those that went.”
“Maybe it wouldn't have burned if she'd told someone what she'd seen,” Hy said.
Lark righted her chair and stood. “Well, that about wraps it up. Damned shame, all of it. Damned religious nut case. That's the trouble with these zealots: everybody's got a cause, and to hell with everybody else.”
“Sometimes people become nut cases like Hopwood because they just get pushed too far,” Hy commented.
She looked severely at him. “That's no excuse. And I'm not just talking about folks who think they've got an open line to God. You environmentalists aren't much better.”
I would have expected him to become angry, but he merely shrugged and set his empty coffee cup on the table. “Better to have a cause than to go through life passionless and uncaring.”
“That's all well and good, but you've got to exercise a little reason.”
“Reason's all right up to a point. But what're you going to do when nobody will listen?”
It was a stalemate. I interrupted them. “Kristen, what about Ned Sanderman?”
Her face lit up, as if she'd just realized she had the perfect present for me. “He's right here in the next room. Son of a bitch walked in about three hours ago, gave himself up.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Not much. As soon as we read him his rights, he got seriously uncooperative, demanded a lawyer. Only one available was Tom Lindsay, our local shyster. He's with him now, and Sanderman isn't saying a word, but at least we've got him.”
“Can I see him?”
“Sure.” She motioned for me to come with her. “But if you're thinking you can get something out of him, forget it.”
Sanderman and his lawyer sat at a table in a room similar to the one we'd just left. Under the glare of the neon, Ned looked tired, scared, and somewhat sick. The lawyer, Lindsay, was a fat man in a teal blue suit with a dusting of dandruff on its shoulders. He looked like the kind of attorney who inspired jokes about no skid marks.
When Sanderman saw me, his eyes widened and he started to get up.
Lindsay motioned for him to sit down. “Detective Lark, we've been waiting for some time now. Are youâ”
I stepped forward. “Counselor, I'm Sharon McCone, private investigator employed by Mr. Sanderman's organization.”
Lindsay ignored the hand I offered. “If you're concerned about your feeâ”
“I'm concerned about Ned, Mr. Lindsay.” I pulled out a chair and sat. Lark leaned against the wall behind me, arms folded, eyes faintly amused.
I turned to Sanderman. “How are you?”
He shrugged.
“Why'd you turn yourself in?”
Lindsay said, “I have instructed my clientâ”
I glanced at him, not bothering to hide my distaste. “Why don't you just be quiet? I'm trying to help your client.”
Lindsay sputtered. “Detective Lark, I protest thisâ”
“To put it less politely, Counselorâshut up. Your client isn't guilty of the charges. He didn't kill anyone. All he's guilty of is improperly disposing of a body. ”
Lark made a surprised sound and pushed away from the wall. “What are you talking about, McCone?”
I ignored both her and the lawyer. Said to Sanderman, “That's true, isn't it?”
Looking relieved, he nodded.
“All right,” Lark asked, “if that's so, who
did
kill Mick Erickson?”
“I don't know for sure, but I'd guess it was Earl Hopwood. Ned?”
“Yes, that's who did it.”
Lindsay was staring at me, his fat mouth pursed, his jowls pouched in disappointment. I supposed he was mentally watching an extortionary fee slip away.
Lark asked me, “How do you figure that?”
“The more I thought about Erickson's murder, the more I realized Ned didn't have any motive to shoot him. Even though all the physical evidence pointed to him, there was no reason for him to quarrel with or kill his co-conspirator.”
Lark turned to Sanderman. “Are you willing to make a statement?”
“That was why I came back here in the first place. But when you said you were charging me with murderâ”
Lindsay said, “Now just hold on hereâ”
Sanderman interrupted him. “Is it possible to fire my lawyer at this point?”
“What? What?”
Lark smiled. “Maybe you better keep himâif he promises to stay quiet. I'll go get a tape recorder while you think it over.” She hurried from the room, nearly sparking with nervous energy.
Lindsay said to Sanderman, “You're being a fool.”
“If you want to stay here, keep quiet.”
“I want it on record that you're doing this against the advice of counsel.”
“Good. We'll put it on the tape.”
Lark fetched the recording equipment, and Ripinsky followed her in, shutting the door behind him. When she had it set up and had made a preliminary statement, she said to Sanderman, “Will you tell us in your own words what happened last Saturday evening?”
Ned ran his tongue over his lips and glanced at the recorder. He wiped damp palms on his blue-jeaned thighs and began to speak. “It started around six o'clock. Mick Erickson arrived at my cabin at Willow Grove Lodge to talk about the problem with Earl Hopwood.”