“Thanks. I may do that.”
Chilton moved away. I scanned the room, looking for Cornell. Adrianne had reappeared and she gave me a look of dark distaste before she walked away. I’d probably overplayed my hand with her. I didn’t want to think she’d tell her brother what I knew, but she was capable of that.
Felicia passed me again. “They’re about to cut that chocolate cake if you’re interested. It looks great.”
“I’ll have some in a bit. Have you seen Cornell?”
She glanced around. “He was here a while ago. He might be in the kitchen. I saw him talking to Adrianne. He might have left to pick up the kids at the baby-sitter’s. I hear he’s a doll about things like that.”
“I’m sure. Thanks.”
I crossed to the front window and peered out to the darkened street. Justine’s sedan was still there but Cornell’s truck was gone. I didn’t like that. His departure seemed abrupt. Maybe it was true he’d gone to pick up his kids, but it was also true he knew the search for the murder weapon was heating up. I let myself out the front door, struck by the chill night air after the suffocating level of artificial heat inside. My thrift store jacket, which had probably belonged to Justine once upon a time, was too light to offer much protection from the cold. I readjusted my shoulder bag and broke into a trot, heading for Dolan’s car.
I unlocked the door and slid in under the wheel. I jammed the key in the ignition and turned it. The car coughed and died. I tried again. No deal. I pumped the gas pedal twice and then realized I was only flooding the engine. I sat and waited and then tried again. The starter ground and turned over. I gave it way too much gas and the engine roared to life. I pulled out, tires chirping as I took off. I turned on the heat, hoping to warm up. My sense of urgency coupled with the dry cold was making me shiver.
Half a minute later, I was on Highway 78, driving north toward Quorum. At this hour of the evening, traffic was light. I thought I caught a glimpse of Cornell’s truck up ahead. There were four cars on the road between us and I was having to peer around and through them to keep an eye on him. Approaching the Tuley-Belle, the car in front of me slowed and I realized that, at the head of the line, Cornell had slowed to a stop. His turn signal winked merrily and he turned left as soon as oncoming traffic allowed.
I slowed as I passed the entrance, watching his taillights disappear into the dark. I drove on a hundred yards and pulled over to the side of the road. I doused the headlights, set the handbrake, and let the car idle while I debated with myself. I’d be foolish to follow him. The Tuley-Belle was a mile and a half from the main road, not only isolated, but riddled with hiding places better known to him than they were to me. I peered over my shoulder and stared into the darkness, picking up the parallel rounds of his headlights, now facing me. He hadn’t driven to the complex. For some reason, he’d turned the truck around and was now parked by the road, facing the highway. I saw the headlights go out. Soon after that, I picked up a faint smudge of light off to the right of the four-lane blacktop. What was he doing out there? Burying the murder weapon? Digging it up to move it? But why take that risk? Simple. He knew the sheriff’s investigators had been and gone. He also knew they’d return the next morning to start the search again. Todd Chilton had described the terrain the deputies had covered. If the weapon was out there, he could either move it into an area they’d already searched or remove the weapon from a section yet to be combed. Why would the tire iron be out there in the first place? Because he didn’t want the damn thing hidden anywhere close to home? Because he hadn’t had time to dispose of it anywhere else? Whatever he was up to, he must have decided this was his only opportunity to act.
I reached up and snapped the cover from the dome light and unscrewed the bulb. I got out, pushing the door closed without snapping it shut. I walked to the rear of the car and opened the trunk. I wasn’t worried about the trunk light. Nothing on the back end of Dolan’s vehicle worked, including the taillights. I felt my way across the darkened space until my hand came down on Dolan’s Smith & Wesson, snug in its holster. I picked up the gun and the holster, eased down the lid of the trunk, and returned to the driver’s seat. I slipped under the wheel again, leaving the car door ajar. I fumbled in my bag until I found my pen light. I snapped it on and placed it on the passenger seat, keeping my inspection process well below the level of the dashboard. This was the gun Dolan carried on duty; a 9mm Parabellum, with a clip that held fifteen rounds. I hit the clip release button and checked the magazine—fully loaded—and then smacked it back into place. I pulled the slide back and released it, then checked to see that the safety was on. I hefted the weight of the gun, close to twenty-eight ounces, feeling its clumsiness in a hand as small as mine. At least it was an equalizer, wasn’t it?
I stripped off my jacket. Dolan’s shoulder holster had a Velcro and leather strip shoulder strap that I adjusted and secured under my left arm, the gun tucked snugly in place. I pulled on the jacket again, tugging at the front until it lay flat. I kept an eye on the rearview mirror, waiting for a break in the flow of cars. As soon as I was clear in both directions, I made a wide U-turn, swinging across the two-lane highway and onto the berm on the far side of the road. I eased the car along on the berm until I found a spot that seemed to provide at least a modicum of cover. I was now facing in the direction of Creosote instead of Quorum on the same side of the road as the entrance to the Tuley-Belle. Cornell was laboring away somewhere to my right, though I couldn’t really see him from where I sat.
I killed the engine, tucked the keys in my jacket pocket, and got out of the car. It wasn’t my intention to do anything dumb. I wasn’t going to tackle the guy or try to make a citizen’s arrest. I just wanted to see what he was up to and then I’d slip back to the car and be on my way. Even so, if there’d been a public phone in a five-mile radius, I would have bagged my scheme, called the Sheriff’s Department, and let them handle him.
The entrance to the abandoned property had been blocked by bright orange plastic cones and a sign mounted on a sawhorse designating the entire area as a crime scene. Someone had moved the No Trespass warnings aside and the sawhorse now lay toppled on its side.
The thin crescent moon worked to my advantage. The road itself was dark, but the sky was a muted gray. The landscape—largely sand and gravel basins—gradually came into focus as my eyes adjusted to the dark. I could make out a number of features: clusters of tumbleweeds, like giant beach balls, creosote bushes, bayonet cactuses, yuccas, and the leggy branches of the palo verde trees. Ahead of me, I caught glimpses of a stationary light, possibly a lantern or a good-sized flashlight. I was getting closer, but as I’d noticed before, distances were difficult to calculate.
I could hear the peeping of ground frogs, probably poisonous, and the intermittent hooting of an owl. Unbidden, my brain suddenly played back in excruciating detail Dolan’s earlier recital about Mojave insect life, specifically the tarantula hawk, a species of desert wasp, the female of which sniffs out a tarantula, stings it into a state of paralysis, drags it back to her burrow, and lays an egg in its abdomen. Once hatched, the tiny grub feeds daintily until its final moult, then rips open the spider’s abdomen, thrusts its head and part of its thorax inside and devours everything in sight. Sometimes the tarantula is even dead by then. I was grossing myself out. This is the very same Nature that some people find spiritually uplifting. I picked up my pace, trying to block the interminable list of other insects he’d mentioned, scorpions and fire ants among them. Whatever else happened out here, I wasn’t going to sit down.
The road made a slight bend, and I found myself not ten yards away from Cornell’s white pickup truck, its engine still ticking as the metal cooled. Tucked in behind Cornell’s truck was Justine’s dark Ford sedan. I stared in disbelief. The last time I’d seen it, it was parked in front of Felicia’s house. Apparently, while I was struggling to get Dolan’s car started, Justine left the house in her car and followed him. By the time I was finally under way, it hadn
’t occurred to me to glance back and see if her car was still there. She must have caught up with him, passed him, and turned off the highway before he did. She was the one who’d moved the barrier from the entrance to the place. She’d been back in her car and heading up the road before I’d caught sight of him making his turn.
I reached out and laid a hand on the hood of the truck, steadying myself, then eased to my left, using the cab as cover. I could hear the persistent chunking of a spade. He was digging. Were they burying the weapon or digging it up? I lifted on tiptoe. He’d set the flashlight on the ground. I saw the occasional distorted shadow as one or the other crossed the path of the light as the work progressed. I could hear them arguing, but the subject wasn’t clear. I wasn’t sure if they’d collaborated from the first or if Cornell had done the killing and she’d finally figured it out. My heart began to bang and a cloud of fear, like indigestion, burned in my chest. I tried to get my bearings, noting two nearby Joshua trees and a clump of sagebrush on my left that formed a mound the size of a pup tent. Directly across the road, there was a massive flowering shrub where white moths the size of hummingbirds had gathered to feed. Their wings beat audibly in the still night air, like the far-off thrumming of helicopter blades.
I turned back, suddenly aware that the chunking sound had stopped. I looked again. Cornell was on his knees, reaching into the hole. He hauled out the tire iron and wrapped it in a fold of cloth. The two of them started kicking soil back in the hole, intent on eradicating any evidence of their work. Justine picked up the spade and used the flat of the blade like a spatula, smoothing the sand like frosting. He bent and picked up the flashlight and gave a cursory sweep to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind. They headed toward me.
I pivoted and ducked, silently retracing my steps, hoping to gain the bend in the road before the two reached Cornell’s truck. If they climbed into their respective vehicles and returned to the highway, their two sets of headlights were going to pick me out of the dark like a startled bunny rabbit. I heard the slamming of two doors. I left the pavement and scurried out into the dark. I spotted a furrow in the earth, a channel where flash flooding had cut a shallow trench. I dropped flat and propelled myself on my elbows, belly-crawling, until I reached the shallow ditch and rolled into it. I put my head down, my arms folded under me, and waited. Only one engine sparked to life. I expected the flash of passing headlights, but none appeared. Cautiously, I lifted my head and peered in time to see the taillights of the pickup truck. One or both of them were on their way to the Tuley-Belle. I scrambled to my feet and ran. If I was mistaken and she’d been left behind, posted by the sedan, I was in bigger trouble than I thought. I slowed my pace as I rounded the bend. The Ford was still parked by the side of the road and there was no sign of her.
I reached her Ford and snatched at the door on the driver’s side. She’d left her keys behind, dangling in the ignition. I got in and started the car. I released the hand brake, left the lights off, and made a wide sweeping turn, bumping off the road and back, this time driving, as they had, toward the sprawling complex ahead. If they intended to hide the tire iron at the Tuley-Belle, it might never turn up.
When I was as close as I dared drive, I took my foot off the gas pedal and let the sedan coast to a stop. I turned the engine off and put her car keys in my pocket, again reaching up to disable the dome light before I opened the car door. I took out Dolan’s Smith & Wesson. I moved off the road, circling out and to my left so that I was approaching the complex at an angle across raw land. Cover was better out here. The huddled shadows tended to form and reform, shifting, as the wind pushed the tumbleweeds across the uneven ground. I spotted the truck, which Cornell had parked between the two half-finished buildings, looming silent and dark. In the second building, upstairs, I saw a glimmer of light. I moved forward with caution, hoping Cornell had left his keys behind as she had. If I could steal their only means of transportation, it would force them to walk the mile and a half to the main highway. By the time they reached the road, I could be speeding back to Creosote and return with help. Let them explain to Todd Chilton what they’d been doing out there. There was no motion in the patch of darkness immediately surrounding the truck.
I circled the vehicle, noting that the window was rolled down on the driver’s side. I peered in, catching the glint of his keys right where I’d hoped they’d be. In my mind’s eye, I was already opening the truck door, sliding under the wheel. I’d turned the key in the ignition, slammed the gear lever into drive, and sped off, leaving the two of them behind. As it turned out, I celebrated my achievement prematurely. I heard a scuffling behind me and a little voice inside piped up, saying “Uh-oh,” but by then it was too late. I turned, expecting to see Cornell, but it was Justine sailing toward me. With her pale flyaway hair and her icy pale green eyes, she looked like a banshee sweeping out of the dark. Cornell must have left her to stand watch, acting as a sentinel in case a horny pack of teenyboppers showed up at the Tuley-Belle for a midweek screwfest. Maybe I hadn’t been as quiet as I’d thought. Perhaps, given the peculiarities of desert acoustics, she’d heard my every step and simply waited for me.
She had the shovel in her hands. I saw her lifting her arms, raising the shovel overhead like an axe. I had to admire her strength. What she was doing wasn’t easy. The shovel looked heavy and I hadn’t thought she’d developed that much upper-body strength. Still, from her perspective, this was an emergency, so she might have been calling on reserves she didn’t know she had.
As with many moments of crisis in life, the swiftness with which the ensuing events unfolded created the reverse effect, emerging with the soft, dreamy qualities of slow-motion footage. Like a sequence of time-lapse photographs, Justine’s arms continued to rise until the shovel reached its apex. I saw the first shimmering instant of its descent. I curled to my left and lifted my right arm, trying to aim and fire Dolan’s S&W before the shovel hit its mark. If she’d brandished the shovel with the blade perpendicular, striking me side-on, she probably would have chopped my arm to the bone. As it was, the flat of the shovel collided with my forearm and the gun spun off into the dark. I never even heard it land. The shovel came down again. A ringing pain radiated outward from my left shoulder and disappeared. It was odd. I knew she’d landed a blow, but I was so flooded with adrenaline the pain vanished. I staggered, my knees buckling, nearly felled by the impact.
I spotted the Smith & Wesson lying six feet away. The shovel came down again, this time clanging against the top of the truck cab with a force that wrenched the tool from her grip. I ran at her and shoved her as hard as I could. She stumbled backward but managed to catch herself before she hit the ground. She was making guttural sounds, probably trying to marshall her forces to yell for Cornell. I grabbed the shovel and used it like a scythe to crack her across the shins. She screamed. I looked back and saw she was down. Cornell came running from the building. Just as he spotted me, I saw Justine scramble to her feet and reach the truck door. She yanked it open and got in on the driver’s side, screaming at him, “Get in the truck! Get in the truck!”
I scrambled forward, snatched up the gun, and pushed off the safety.
He flung himself at the tailgate as she started the truck. She backed up and shifted gears, gunned the engine, and turned the wheel, peeling out. I watched him haul himself over the side and into the truck bed, disappearing from view. I turned and extended my arms, both hands on the gun as I aimed. It helped that I was pissed off. I was talking aloud, admonishing myself to take my time. There was no reason to panic. The ground was flat and I’d be able to see them for a long time. I located one of the rear taillights between the niche in the gun’s rear sight and the niche in the foresight as I squinted down the barrel. I hadn’t paid attention to Dolan’s choice in ammunition, but if I remembered correctly, the baseline 9mm 100-grain slug moves out at muzzle velocities of between 1,080 and 1,839 feet per second, depending on slug rate. My figures might have been off, but not by much. I
fired. The recoil was like a quick sneeze, kicking the barrel up and back. I missed, corrected, fired again, and heard a tire blow. Cornell had flattened himself in the bed of the truck. I altered my sights slightly and fired again, missing. I took aim again and fired four more rounds, trying to make each one count. By the time I paused, both back tires were flat. After that, the truck veered off course and came to a stop almost of its own accord. I approached on foot, taking my time, knowing I had sufficient rounds left to take care of business if Justine and Cornell still felt like arguing.
Epilogue
Justine was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with a string of related offenses thrown in to sweeten the pot. Edna and Ruel prevailed on Cornell to hire a lawyer of his own, and his lawyer, in turn, persuaded him to make a deal with the DA. After all, he’d had nothing to do with the murder of Charisse Quinn and he’d had no part in Pudgie Clifton’s death. That Saturday after I’d gone to the house to talk to Justine, she’d panicked and begged for his help in moving Pudgie’s body and subsequently burying the tire iron with which she’d killed him. Cornell pled guilty to being an accessory after the fact, for which he’s serving one year in the county jail. Edna and Ruel have taken on the responsibility for Amelia, Mary Francis, and Cissy McPhee until their father’s release.
Justine’s motivation wasn’t difficult to fathom. She’d killed Charisse for seducing Cornell and trying to steal the life she’d envisioned for herself. It was indeed Pudgie who’d stolen the Mustang and loaded Charisse’s body in the trunk. While Justine packed the dead girl’s clothes and forged the note explainingher fictional departure, Pudgie drove the body to Lompoc and dumped it at the quarry Iona’d told him about. Justine waited a week and then called the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, pretending to be Charisse’s mother and claiming her daughter was safely home again.