Move to Strike (29 page)

“Sounds awful.”

“It is.” He nodded. “Yep.”

“So that’s why you were up so early on a Sunday.”

“Right.”

“You don’t have to answer this either, but . . . are these dreams something recent?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they start after that night at Nikki’s? You know, the night that man chased you.”

Bob looked startled. “No, not then. Before. Last fall. After . . . you know. That’s when the dreams started, right after he died.”

Son of a gun. But why was he surprised at the notion that Bob hadn’t forgotten what was probably the most horrible experience of his young life? Just because Nina managed to erect stone wall defenses didn’t mean her son had the same talent. “You tell your mom?”

“What’s she gonna do about it? That guy killed her husband. It’s worse for her. She gets up in the middle of the night and I hear her walking around in circles upstairs.”

“She does, eh? And you wake up at dawn. So you just get up and build cities out of cereal.”

Bob flicked a Cheerio across the table with his fingers. “I can’t watch TV. That would wake Mom up. They never caught him, and they never will. Someday he’ll come back and try to hurt us. So Hitchcock and me keep a lookout.”

Paul got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. The Tahoe birds, more musical than the seagulls near his condo, were waking up and beginning the morning chorus. Better than any choir, he thought. Out there, just singing and praying louder than Baptists this Sunday morning. “There’s something I want to tell you, Bob, only you can’t tell anyone else, understand?”

“What?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“My mom says I’m getting to be an expert.”

Paul let that go by. “That guy . . . the one outside the door. The bad guy. You know who I mean. The real one.”

Bob hesitated, and his features went to war against each other, the vulnerable boy and the invincible teen vying for equal time. The boy won. “Yes,” Bob said, so softly Paul could barely hear him. Then louder, committed, he said, “The one that did it. The one who tried to kill us all. That’s who I dream about.”

“Here’s what I want you to know and this is what you can’t tell anyone, not Uncle Matt, not Aunt Andrea, not Troy . . . nobody, ever, okay?”

“My mom?”

“Definitely not your mom.”

“I don’t like keeping secrets from her.”

“She can’t know this. Ever.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . your mom is an officer of the court. She might feel obliged to do something. It might hurt me. Keeping her out of this protects her from involvement.”

Curiosity broke through his doubt. “All right,” Bob agreed. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“You promise me?”

“I swear.”

“Okay. Listen up, Bob. The bad guy is gone. He’ll never, ever come back. I’m not saying this just to comfort you. I am not shitting you,” Paul said, using the language intentionally, knowing Bob would understand he was being treated like an adult entrusted with serious information. “He’ll never come back. He isn’t out in these woods waiting to get you and your mom. He isn’t hiding somewhere else and waiting for his chance to come forward. You’re safe. Don’t waste another second worrying about that bastard coming after you. He won’t. He can’t. Got that? He can’t. You have my word.”

Bob looked directly into his eyes, and Paul saw belief beginning to dawn in the face that was lit by the foggy light now pouring through the window. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” Bob said.

“I do.”

Holding his cup out for a refill, Bob gave voice to a final, loitering suspicion. “Well, but if he isn’t anywhere, where is he?”

“Which piece?” Paul said. Then he picked up his cup and started some eggs.

And on the stairway above, now past enjoying the songs of the birds and the comforting murmur of Bob and Paul in the kitchen, Nina pulled her robe tight around her and reeled back against the bannister. Paul said what he said to comfort Bob as he had comforted her once, but somehow the assurance in his voice, the sheer arrogant confidence, hit her differently this time. He sounded so absolutely certain.

She went back to her room and lay down on the bed, putting her thoughts together.

Ten minutes later, she went down to the kitchen in her kimono. She acted surprised to see Paul, ate the eggs he set before her, and told him all about the rock shop owner and Dennis Rankin, with the claim next to Nikki’s. Paul was at loose ends and agreed right away to go out to the desert, although he insisted they make a quick stop to drop something in the box at the Post Office on the way out of town. Bob said he had homework and opted to stay behind.

Nina dressed and packed water and sandwiches. They stopped in Zephyr Cove for gas, and as they were leaving the mountains, rushing down toward the flat desert floor on the twisting freeway, she allowed herself to take one swift look at Paul, sitting beside her rubbing his leg and wearing his sunglasses.

And it seemed to her that she had met the real Paul for the first time when she heard him talking to Bob in the kitchen, the real Paul who was an utter mystery, masking himself with joking and pranks and systematic underachievement. He was as unreadable as a—what was that mythical lizardlike animal who could kill with a look?—a basilisk! And having seen the mystery in him, she was filled with horror and wonder and unable to speak of it.

CHAPTER 23

WHILE THEY SAT stuck in traffic on McCarran in Reno, Nina took time out from her driving to observe how Paul massaged his leg. He seemed much better, but the leg must still be a bother. She puzzled over his urgent insistence that she rush Louise’s red “mixture” to Ginger for immediate analysis before they could leave town.

“But why?” she had asked.

“Let’s just say, nothing that much fun is ever innocent,” he had said wryly.

She turned her mind away from that and back to traffic while passing between trucks. Paul broke into her thoughts. “You got hold of Dr. Seisz?”

“Yes,” she answered, “but call him that and he’ll probably die of surprise. I warned Tim we were coming. He was a big help in my last—my last murder case. He’s expecting us and a fat check for his time, too. I hope this isn’t pointless,” Nina said. “We may never find Rankin.”

“We won’t if we don’t look,” said Paul.

Nina found an opening in the traffic and went for it, passing on the right of a stalled car and skipping through a yellow light to get across the next big intersection. “Nikki gave us a good idea where to look—”

“Within eighty acres.”

“We’ve got to find him. He’ll probably stay near a road or track.”

“Get a lot of work done on your motion yesterday?” Paul asked.

“Uh huh. I’m going to attack the preliminary hearing testimony in two ways.”

“I’d like to hear about it.”

“You will. I’m calling a meeting for tomorrow at eleven A.M. You, Sandy and Wish, and Ginger, who’s coming up from Sacramento. I’ll give you all a copy of the points and authorities setting out the arguments I’ll be making at the hearing and we’ll go over everything. Are you available?”

“Yeah. Then I have to come right back down to Carson City in the afternoon and look at plane parts with Chuck Davis. By the way, any word on the phone bills from the Sykes house?”

“I got the copies from the D.A.’s office and reviewed an entire year’s worth,” Nina said. “Sykes also had a cell phone that he used mostly for work. Several bills showed that he made regular calls to another cell phone number which has since been disconnected. I called Beth to check the number and she said that was her phone. She didn’t have those bills handy. She said her husband paid the bills and she was having trouble finding things but if she found them, she’d call me. She also said she lost the phone in the confusion of returning from LA after hearing about the plane crash and the murder.”

“I’m very interested in the phone call Sykes received on the night of his death,” Paul said.

“Nikki’s description of his reaction to it is puzzling. From a big smile to awful distress. I’d think the call was a notification of Chris’s death if I didn’t know the plane was still in the air around the time Nikki was watching him there at the house.”

“It won’t show up on Sykes’s phone records since he received the call. It won’t be easy to follow up on.”

“It seems that way,” Nina said. “How did it go with Beth? I don’t have your writeup yet.”

He filled her in on the scene he had witnessed between Beth and Dylan Brett.

“I knew he was too good to be true.”

“Hey, at least he’s human. I was beginning to wonder.”

“Think he had it in for Sykes?”

“I just don’t know. He’s so Gatsby, sort of ethereal and false, I can’t imagine him mustering up the depth of feeling that motivated someone to take a sword and kill. If you believe Beth, he’s all talk anyway.”

“What did you think of Beth?”

“I like her, but I have a credibility bone to pick with that entire group of women,” Paul said. “Beth seems smarter than Daria, deeper, and even though she’s grieving she’s very careful about what she says. She says Daria didn’t tell her she was at the house the night of the murder. She won’t say much about the marriage but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t close to Sykes. But man, did she love the boy.”

“How are you feeling? Leg better?”

“I’m on the cane for another month. Have to do some exercises and have it looked at then. But the pain’s down to a dull roar.”

“Good. You came back earlier than expected. I thought you said you’d be back on Monday.”

“Uh huh.”

“Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing.”

“Is something wrong?”

She didn’t answer.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Paul asked. “Did I do something?”

“Forget it.”

“You know that’s the worst thing you can do, getting me hot with anticipation and then letting me down.”

“Sorry. I’m just feeling the stress of . . . all this.”

“Why don’t you just chill? Enjoy the scenery,” said Paul, turning on the radio.

“So we’re going somewhere north of Winnemucca?” Tim Seisz said, climbing into the back seat of the Bronco. He had been standing beside his pickup in the main UN parking lot, dressed for prospecting in a straw hat, leather boots, and jeans, and toting a long heavy pack.

As Nina zipped across 80 to 395, Paul explained. “We’re looking for a certain piece of property owned by a fellow named Dennis Rankin, an antisocial character, by all reports. We want to talk to him. We have a geological map to guide us to his claim, which we can read, although unreliably. We need your help to find it.”

“Simple enough.”

“We’re also hoping that you can tell us if someone might have made a strike of black fire opals on the claim next door.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be that simple. What do you mean, the claim next door?”

“His claim is contiguous with a forty-acre property in which we have a strong interest,” Nina said briefly.

“And we have permission to be on this second property with a pick and shovel?”

“The adjoining property, yes,” Nina said. Daria had granted permission, saying her sister wouldn’t mind, and she would speak with her about it. “Rankin’s property, no. I don’t expect him to be friendly. He may actually be dangerous.”

Tim raised his eyebrows at this. “But I told you before, Nina, that color of opal has only been found in the Virgin Valley, north toward the borders of Oregon and Idaho, unless you go to Australia. These stones are incredibly rare. The geologic conditions that produce them don’t happen just anywhere.”

“Then we won’t find any,” Paul said.

Tim unfolded the map and studied it. “This claim is nearly a hundred miles from the Virgin Valley.”

“Well, this is just an off chance. You’re not going to say the whole state has been so thoroughly prospected that it’s impossible, are you? We have black fire opals, and we have a pair of mining claims back-to-back, and this fellow Rankin, who has one of the claims, may also have had the opals at one time.” In truth, Nina had absolutely no idea how the opals fit into her case. She desperately wished to know. She thought Rankin had some idea, though, and thought having an expert along couldn’t hurt when they finally did talk with him.

They settled into the ride, Nina driving, Tim and Paul chatting about airplanes. Paul seemed pleased to learn that Tim was a licensed private pilot and had a million questions.

Time passed. Nina concentrated on the scenery. Caught by her eye like perfectly rendered animals in a painting of nineteenth-century bucolia, cows browsed a narrow strip of green alongside the Humboldt River. Brown and black hills with scruffy vegetation lined the horizons, and the occasional distant antlike hiker recalled images of Humphrey Bogart and his crew squabbling over gold in a similar two-toned desert. Witch’s water mirages formed and disappeared in the small hills of the road. “I love it here. I love everything about it,” she said.

Tim, hacking away on a hand-sized electronic organizer in the back seat, said, “ ‘The stars speak of man’s insignificance in the long eternity of time; the desert speaks of his insignificance right now.’ Or so a man named Teale said once. Anyway, it’s ninety-four out there. Just pray the air-conditioning doesn’t fail.”

At Winnemucca they stopped for more gas and a pit stop. The river town rose out of the desert like another mirage and just as quickly fell behind them as they headed north. This part of Nevada was empty except for the occasional ranch homestead. Now and then they passed a sign directing them to some old mining town that hadn’t survived when the silver and gold ran out. As they rolled toward the distant Idaho border, down blacktop so hot they could smell it, the landscape shifted from blowing tumbleweed to low green brush on sand surrounded by hills and mountains painted with blue and purple.

After an hour and a half of hard driving, they turned onto a side road. The pavement narrowed, dropping off on both sides into gravel slopes. Eventually they came to the end of that too. Wind shook the SUV. All around, the bare and silent sands stretched far away.

“Is this the place?” Nina asked.

Tim consulted the map. “No.” He got out of the car and walked around. Finally, he pointed. “That way.”

Nina and Paul followed him. “But . . . where’s the road?” Nina asked, looking down a narrow, rutted path that seemed to go straight uphill.

“That’s it. Typical for a mining claim.”

“No way,” she said. “Too steep.”

“We could walk,” Tim suggested. “It looks like it’s only four or five more miles. I brought plenty of water.” He gestured toward his backpack on the back seat.

But Paul had pulled himself into the driver’s seat of the Bronco, shifted into four-wheel drive, and lunged forward. “That’s what these cars live for. Not your perfectly flat freeways and groomed mountain roads. Hop in.”

Pulling the car door shut behind her, Nina said, “I’ll bet they never saw a road like this in Detroit.” Once Tim was in and securely belted, Paul pushed on.

The pathway up was so narrow that grasses and brush screeched as they passed by, scratching tiny gouges along the sides of the Bronco. So pitted was the road, Nina kept her tongue firmly in her mouth, afraid she would bite it. On the steepest parts, she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, unwilling to look, only half-trusting Paul and her faithful Bronco to keep them alive. Five miles on a normal road didn’t take long. Five miles up and down harrowing mountain roads took forever.

Finally, Paul pulled the Bronco to a halt. They had gradually climbed along a high valley to the foot of a moderate mountain range. From this close, Nina could see wind-eroded passages into the rocks that led to tiny higher isolated valleys. There would be caves and box canyons. Nothing was moving anywhere except a restless breeze which had sprung up and was protecting them from the worst of the heat.

They got out and looked back toward where they had come from. The valley was like a long narrow plateau, its edge visible in the dry air, half the state of Nevada spread below it like a satellite picture. Nina smeared sunblock all over her face and hands and covered her hair with a bandanna. Paul threw a couple of pills down his throat and squirted water into his mouth. Tim shouldered his bag.

“Onward,” he said.

They had been walking about fifteen minutes into the mountains following the opening Tim indicated, when they came to a shanty with a tin roof. An old Jeep sat out front. All around they saw the desiderata of the prospector: empty plastic water jugs, wood stacked against the wall, rusting metal equipment and tools. A card table had been set up a few feet away, under a large bush which provided a modicum of shade, and Nina could see that it was covered with plastic trays of small rocks in various stages of sorting. Nearby was a wheel-barrow and a pile of dirt and rocks about five feet high, covered with white dust. “Nobody here,” Paul said, peering inside through a flapping screen.

“This way,” Tim said.

They set off down a well-worn trail which led to a set of switchbacks, trooping silently, Paul in front using the cane as a walking stick, Tim bringing up the rear. Suddenly, Paul stopped. Nina grabbed his arm so that she wouldn’t fall off the trail and looked ahead. Paul had his finger against his mouth and was motioning toward a gully on the left.

Now that they had stopped, she could hear what he had heard: the rhythmic thud of a pickax against rock.

They crept forward and looked down into the gully.

A man stood with his back to them, about a hundred yards away and down, swinging a large pickax against the other side of the gully, raising a cloud of dirt. After each ten or fifteen strikes against the rock he would stop, lean over, and examine the rocks he had pried from the rock face. With a slovenly beard and hair clumping down to his shoulders, both thick with dust, he was sweating brown streaks. His torso was powerful, the shoulders twice as wide as the hips, the straining arms huge. He hadn’t heard them.

Nina nodded. They got up and started down the gully. He heard them now, and turned around, pickax in hand, red-faced, coughing, wiping the sweat off with the tail of his shirt.

“You must be Dennis Rankin,” Paul called out pleasantly. “What luck.”

“And you must be trespassing,” said Rankin. The big man wore jeans caked black and a striped shirt with one sleeve rolled up, exposing a fat, filthy bandage around his elbow. Next to him on the ground sat several metal buckets laden with rocks and several more containers of water. The rock face had been wetted down and Nina smelled damp earth.

“We came a long way to talk with you,” Paul said.

“Why?”

“We’re interested in black fire opals.”

“I’m interested in getting you the fuck off my property,” Rankin said. He stood his ground, his dark eyes focusing on them hard enough to pierce skin.

Tim let out a yell. He held his foot in one hand, face contorting with pain and fear. “Something bit me!”

“What’s out here?” Paul asked. “Scorpions?”

“I think it was a snake!” Tim cried. “Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.”

“Tim, don’t panic,” Nina ordered. “It’s probably an insect bite.” Just to make sure, she surveyed the ground near him. Seeing no sign of any crawling things, she took him by the hand, leading him toward the rock face, stepping right past Rankin, who swayed but made no move toward them. Pulling a canteen out of Tim’s backpack, she lifted his pant leg.

“See,” he said. “Right there. Shit!”

“Cool it,” Nina said. “Don’t get hysterical. I don’t think it’s a snakebite. Now, do you have a first-aid kit in there?” She poured water over a spot Tim indicated while he mewed like a kitten, then unzipped the canvas pack and began feeling around inside.