Skeleton Canyon (4 page)

“Sorry about that,” Hacker interrupted. “I was gone for a while. Several months. My grandmother was taken ill. I had to fly back home. Fortunately, they were able to find a biology grad student from the U. of A. in Tucson to take care of my birds while I was gone.”

“I hope she’s all right, then,” Angie returned.

“Grandmum?” Hacker nodded. “She’s out of hospital now, but she’s in her eighties. She isn’t going to last forever.”

Not knowing quite what to say next, Angie fell back into her role as barmaid. “Can I get you something?” she asked. “To drink, I mean?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any coffee, would you?”

A hoot of laughter from the far end of the bar caused Angie to send a second stifling glare in Archie and Willy’s direction. “Sure,” she said. “But it’s not very fresh. It’s early though, so if you don’t mind waiting, I’ll brew another pot.”

Turning back to him after starting the coffee, Angie was puzzled. “How did you know I worked here?”

Hacker reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a thick leather wallet. From that he extracted a much-folded piece of paper that Angie recognized as her own letter.

“It says so right here,” the Bird Man said. “That you work in a place called the Blue Moon, that you’re interested in birds, and that on one of your days off you’d like to come see my parrots. I’d be happy to show them to you. If you still want to, that is.”

The outside door opened again. A gang of middle-aged motorcycle enthusiasts tramped into the room. These weren’t trendy yuppies out for a lark, hut hard-core, tooth-missing, tattoo-wearing tough guys—women included. For the next few minutes Angie was busy passing out pitchers of beer and margaritas. It wasn’t until after the coffee finished brewing that she was able to return to Dennis Hacker.

“Are parrots the only kind of bird you’re interested in?” he asked, as she set a stout china mug in front of him.

“Oh, no. I like all kinds of birds. Why?”

“Hummingbirds?”

“I love hummingbirds.”

“The problem is, I’m not in the Chiricahuas right now. I’m In the process of setting up camp over in the Peloncillos, farther east. Parrots should be able to make it there, too, eventually. But while I was looking around last week, I found a meadow in Skeleton Canyon, just off Starvation Canyon, where the whole place is teeming with hummingbirds—Anna’s mostly, but other kinds, too. I thought, if you wanted to, I could pick you up on your next day off and we could hike up there so I could show them to you.”

The mere mention of birds sent Angie Kellogg’s carefully honed wariness flying right out the window. “Anna’s?” she responded, her blue eyes sparkling. “Really?”

Hacker nodded. “Hundreds of them,” he said. “When’s your next day off?”

“Sunday,” Angie answered. “I get off at two Sunday morning and don’t have to be back until Monday at noon.”

“What say I pick you up right about then?” Hacker asked.

“At two?” Angie asked, flustered.

Hacker nodded. “In order to see them at their best, we need to be in place no later than five-thirty or six in the morning. Skeleton Canyon is a good two-hour drive from here, and it’ll take another hour or so to hike up to the meadow.”

Angie hesitated, but only for a moment. “Sure,” she said. “What should I wear?”

“Jeans. Hiking boots. Long-sleeved shirt.”

“Hey, Angie,” Willy Haskins called. “How does a man get some service around here?”

Shaking her head in annoyance, Angie started down the bar. By then some of the bikers’ pitchers were empty. During the next few minutes, as she poured more beer and mixed more margaritas, she began having second thoughts. After all, this guy was a perfect stranger. It sounded as though the place they were going was somewhere out in the boondocks. The sensible thing would be to not go at all or else to not go with Hacker unless someone else went along as a chaperone—like Joanna Brady, for instance. But by the time Angie had a spare minute to tell him so, Dennis Hacker was gone. On the bar under his empty cup, Angie found six bucks—one for the coffee and a five-dollar tip.

Instead of making Angie feel better, the out-of-proportion tip only made things worse. She had spent too many years of her life in a world where money always required something in return.

She picked up the five and examined it for a moment, as if expecting to be able to read something of Dennis Hacker’s motivation in the forbidding look on Abraham Lincoln’s face. Finally, making up her mind, she folded up the crisp, new bill and stuffed it into her shirt pocket. She would call Joanna first thing in the morning, she decided, although Angie Kellogg’s idea of morning was everyone else’s afternoon. If Joanna Brady couldn’t go along on this little adventure, neither would Angie Kellogg.

Stopping on the sidewalk outside the Blue Moon, Dennis Hacker paused long enough to wipe his glasses on his shirttail and to lake a deep breath. He had carried the letter around with him for months, intrigued by the idea that there was a woman somewhere who sounded like she was almost as interested in birds as he was. What he hadn’t anticipated was how beautiful she would be. Blond, blue-eyed, and beauty pageant beautiful . Movie star—type beautiful. And yet she had agreed to go with him on Sunday morning. Incredible. Unbelievable.

“Where’d you get this funny-looking outfit?”

Dennis Hacker turned around to see that the two old men from inside the bar had followed him out onto the sidewalk mid were staring at his four-wheel-drive Hummer. They seemed harmless enough. “The dealer’s up in Scottsdale,” he told them.

One clapped the other on the shoulder. “Like hell,” he said. “I’ll bet you stole it right out from under the MPs’ noses out there at Fort Huachuca.”

Hacker was still too overcome by wonder to be offended. “Think whatever you like,” he said. Then, replacing his glasses, he climbed into the Hummer. Dennis Hacker had come down to replenish his supplies. On several other occasions, hr had arrived intending to stop by the Blue Moon and introduce himself. Each time, he had lost his nerve at the last minute and hadn’t gone inside. This time he had surprised himself.

Now, though, it was time to head for Safeway. For a change, Dennis actually found himself looking forward to the process of shopping. By nine at night, most of the housewives with their unruly little kids would have gone home, taking their offspring with them. He’d be able to lay in his supplies with a minimum of distractions. And this time, instead of just buying the basics, he was determined to pick up something special for that Sunday morning picnic breakfast.

By the light of a battery-operated lantern, Bree sat on one of two camp stools writing in her journal. With her shoulders hunched in concentration, she wrote quickly but carefully, pouring out the words that rushed through her heart and mind—her disappointment that Nacio wasn’t with her right then, her anticipation of their being together the next morning.

Beyond that small halo of light, it was dark in the Peloncillos. Suddenly the silence was sliced open by a flap of wings and the cry of some night hunting bird. Putting the pen inside the book, Bree switched off the light, hoping to catch sight of the bird. For a moment, she could see nothing. Then, gradually, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, bright stars began to appear in the sky above her head. The far-off call of a coyote was answered by another, followed by the yapping chorus of pups. There was something wild and wonderful in the sound—like infectious laughter. Bree smiled in response.

Overhead, the stars shone like glittering diamonds against a velvet sky. The starlight was so bright that the mountains, rocks, and trees around her emerged from the gloom. Sitting there in the half-lit dark, it was easy for Brianna to sense time falling away from her. This rugged almost-empty corner of the Arizona desert had changed so little that even now an occasional jaguar, roaming north from the mountains of Mexico, had been spotted by a solitary rancher. And if the wild canyons of the Peloncillos still played host to an assortment of wildlife, it wasn’t so far off to imagine that human outlaws still ranged that same habitat as well.

Skeleton Canyon, a few miles from Bree’s camping place in Hog Canyon, had been the place where Geronimo had finally surrendered to General Crook. It was also where members of Tombstone’s marauding Clanton gang had ambushed and slaughtered a band of Mexican smugglers only to be ambushed and shot in turn. That story, more legend and lore than history, claimed that the smugglers’ fortune in gold was still lost somewhere in the Peloncillos waiting to be found by some lucky hiker or hunter.

Bree and Nacio had talked about finding the gold one night and fantasized about what they would do with it. For Nacio, newfound wealth would have meant his being able to repay Aunt Yoli and Uncle Frank for their years of financial support. For Bree, having her own money would have meant independence. It would have allowed her freedom from the comfort and control of her father’s checkbook.

For Bree and Nacio together, having money of their own would have meant an end to sneaking around. That was coming anyway, eventually. Once the two of them went away to school in Tucson in September, it would be easier to circumvent parental disapproval. They would be able to do the same things they did now—they just wouldn’t have to lie about it.

Leaning back on the stool, Bree breathed deeply, thought about Nacio, and wished he were there with her to share the wonder of this beautiful night. She was still sitting that same way when she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle.

Nacio’s coming,
she thought joyfully.
Uncle Frank must
have come home and let him off work after all.

On other nights, lying together in the back of her truck, cuddling in the warmth of a double bedroll, Bree and Nacio had heard an occasional and virtually invisible vehicle pass by on the Forest Service road half a mile away. Now, though, staring off in the direction of the road, Bree was able to make out the glow of slow-moving headlights. Holding her breath, Bree waited to see if the vehicle would pass on by or if it really would turn left at the turnoff.

Long moments later, it did. The headlights that had been moving eastbound suddenly turned north. Clutching her journal to her, Brianna O’Brien leaped to her feet and hurried to meet her lover. She could hardly wait to see him. She wanted nothing more than to share the glories of this wonderful night with him. She wanted to lie in the bedroll with their bodies entwined and tell him how much she loved him.

The headlights were closer now, flickering through the darkness, when Bree decided what to do. She loved Nacio with all the devotion of newly awakened passion. She knew what plea-sure he took in her body and she in his. And now, with the headlights flickering toward her, Bree knew there was a gift she could give Nacio—a gift only she could offer.

She had to hurry. In the process she put the journal down on a nearby rock and then failed to notice when it slipped off to one side. By the time the laboring engine of the approaching vehicle rounded the last outcropping of rock, she was ready and waiting.

Twin rays of light stabbed through the night and caught her there like a deer frozen and alert in the brilliant glow of a pair of high beams. Her arms were outstretched in greeting. A welcoming smile parted her lips.

The surprise for Nacio Ybarra—Bree’s gift to him—had nothing to do with her arms or with her lips. It had to do with the rest of her, impaled on those piercing rays of light. She was smooth and pale and beautiful and as unashamedly naked as flay she was born.

CHAPTER THREE

Dennis Hacker came home from his shopping trip and unloaded his supplies. At six-one, he had to be careful not to clip his head on the ceiling as he moved around the little two-wheeled caravan that Americans insisted on calling a trailer.

Once the groceries were put away, Dennis glanced at his cell phone before crawling into bed. It would be morning in England. If his grandmother, Emily Lockwood, was well enough, she would be downstairs, drinking her morning tea in her sunny kitchen and looking out at the beginnings of a lush summer garden.

He thought about calling her. That was why he had parked the trailer in this particular spot. It was the last usable place on Geronimo Trail where he could still send and receive a cell phone signal. He thought about telling her she might be right once again when it came to his contacting this young woman who had expressed such an unusual interest in Dennis Hacker’s beloved parrots.

Dennis considered calling his grandmother, but after some reflection, he didn’t. It was too soon, way too soon. Besides, Sunday morning was when she usually called him. Leaving the phone alone, he clambered up into the upper bunk. He had to lie on a diagonal in order to fit his frame into the bed. He fell asleep almost instantly.

Hacker had lived alone in the wilderness for so long that he was comfortable with the animal-punctuated silence that surrounded him. He had just settled into a sound sleep when something startled him awake. The unusual noise was gone before he was fully conscious, but he could tell from the total silence around him that the animals had heard it as well. They, too, were hushed and listening.

Swinging down to the rag rug–covered linoleum floor, he opened the door and stepped out onto the wooden step. Under a star studded sky, the Peloncillos were dead silent. After a minute or two, a coyote finally howled in the distance. The coyote’s plaintive yelp seemed to settle Dennis Hacker’s jangled nerves. Closing and locking both the metal door and the wooden screen door, he climbed back into bed and soon was fast asleep once more.

Long after Jenny’s bedroom light went out, Joanna lay sleepless in her own room. Over the months since Andy’s death, she had learned to sleep in the dead middle of the bed. It blurred the lines between his side and hers, making the bed seem smaller and not quite so lonely.

For a change, Sheriff Brady wasn’t worried about something at work. For the past two weeks all of Cochise County had been amazingly quiet. Other than rounding up the usual quota of undocumented aliens there had been no murders, no ugly domestic violence cases, no fatal traffic accidents, and only a few drunk drivers. The lack of new incidents had allowed her two detectives, Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal, to go back over a few old and still-unsolved cases to see if there was anything new that could be brought to bear.