She felt the pressure release, the cold, hard muzzle move away. “The fool couldn’t swim. All I had to do was watch him flail around trying to keep his face out of the water and put a boot on his back. God, he took a long time to die, and that fool cousin of his shouting how we had to help him, get him out before he drowned. Well, that was the point. I told Dallas to shut up or he’d be in the lake with him. That Indian turned white, so I knew he couldn’t swim, either. That was my mistake, my only mistake besides being taken in by you. What a shame. You and me could’ve made a great team.”
“Your mistake?”
“Not killing that sonofabitch right then. Not throwing him into the lake. I got to thinking, it might look strange. Two men, both drowning? Of course, it would’ve made perfect sense. Robert got himself in too deep and his cousin went after him. Yeah, that was my mistake, leaving Dallas around to shoot off his mouth, drag you into it. Soon as I realized he was talking to you, there was nothing else I could do.”
“You killed him.”
“It was an accident. Just like Robert drowning. Accidents, both of them. I admit I helped a little. Got Dallas to agree to meet me up here where nobody would overhear us making plans. Oh, he was greedy. Kept thinking he was going to get some of the treasure, so he drove up here. All I had to do was bash him in the head with a rock, stuff him back into the cab of his truck, and push it over the edge. Damaged the front of my truck, was the only problem.”
An awkward silence stretched into minutes. He had told her everything, but what difference did it make? He intended to kill her. They would go to the lake, where he would force her out of the car and march her into the water, and she would go. Because otherwise he would shoot her. In the water, she would have a chance. She could swim, but how far would she make it? To the far side of the lake? She swallowed the laugh that bubbled up inside her, crazy and wild. The water was freezing; she would go under in minutes.
She drove around another curve. They were high up the mountain now, in the area where Dallas’s truck had gone off the edge. She could see the lake below in the distance, silent and glistening.
“Take it easy, my love.” The menacing voice again. “We’re going to take that dirt road down to the lake nice and slow so you can enjoy the view.”
33
FATHER JOHN TURNED into the driveway past the sign that said, Vicky Holden, Attorney-at-Law. Vicky’s Ford was usually here. Annie’s car. Roger’s car. All stacked up, one after the other. The driveway was empty.
He jumped out, ran across the grass, and tried the front door. The doorknob was rigid. A door that was never locked during business hours. Anyone could walk in.
He felt a chill shoot down his spine. The man who called himself Cutter could have walked in and . . .
Dear Lord. He went to the front window and peered inside. The screen glowed on Annie’s computer. The ceiling lights shone on the tabletop and the beveled-glass doors that stood open. He could see Vicky’s vacant desk. There was no sign of anyone.
There were more rooms, bedrooms that had been turned into Roger’s office and a conference room, and he made his way around the side of the house, looking into the windows. Roger’s computer was also on. It was as if they had all vanished.
He went back to the pickup and tried Gianelli’s office again. The same assurances from the same voice, a little testier now. “As I explained, Father . . .”
A thousand images ran through his head. Cutter bursting into the office, rounding up Annie, Roger, Vicky. He would have a gun—how else could he control them? Order them out into a truck or SUV? Maybe Vicky’s Ford, Cutter in the back, the gun on Vicky. Drive where I say or she dies.
But that didn’t make sense. The other vehicles would still be here if Cutter had forced them all into Vicky’s SUV. He had to think logically. Vicky had a court hearing this morning, which meant she wasn’t in the office. Did Cutter manage somehow to force Annie and Roger to go somewhere? It was Vicky he was after. Vicky, he would suspect of having worked things out. Maybe Dallas Spotted Deer had told her more about what happened to Robert—more details than he had relayed to Father John—and Cutter had to make sure she didn’t pass on those details to Gianelli. But what if she had?
Nothing made sense. If that were the case, she would have told him, he was certain. He knew her so well, how she thought and felt about so many things. He would know if she had been holding something back. The wind knocked at the sides of the pickup, sending the cab into a swaying motion like that of a boat on a windy lake.
Another thought hit him then, like a fist to his stomach. Suppose Vicky hadn’t gone to court? Cutter could have waylaid her before she got there. He could have gone to her apartment. The court clerk would have called the office and Annie and Roger—dependable Annie and Roger, looking out for Vicky as if she were family—had gone in search of her. They would start at the apartment.
He rammed the gear into reverse, sped backward, squealed onto the street, and drove forward. Taking the corners fast, rolling through the stop signs, all senses alert. He took in everything at once, the street ahead, the cross streets, the other cars lumbering along as he drove past. He saw the lights flashing a block away, the congestion, the gawkers coming down the sidewalk. Oh God. Please, no. Please, no.
He spotted Annie huddled with a bunch of people outside the apartment building as he swung into the parking lot. She had seen the pickup, because she was running toward him when he jumped out. He left the door open behind him. “Where’s Vicky? Where is she?” The sound of his own voice clanging around him, frantic, angry.
“Oh, Father!” Annie burst into sobs. Beyond her was a blur of officers at the entrance to the apartment building, Roger gesturing with both hands. “She’s gone.”
She told him the rest of it, sobbing and trying not to sob, struggling to make sense out of the senseless, fit the pieces into an order that kept dissolving into the chaos of reality. How an elderly woman on Vicky’s floor had heard a loud argument, how a man told her everything was fine, just a quarrel with his fiancée, and how she knew that wasn’t right because that nice Indian lawyer didn’t have a fiancé. She had called the police, but by the time an officer arrived, they were gone, Vicky and the man. A tall, dark man, looked Arapaho, and she didn’t know how they had left, because she had been watching through her peephole and they hadn’t taken the elevator.
“Cutter took her,” Annie went on. “He was always around. Everywhere you looked, there he was. Wanted to be helpful, he said, but there was something wrong. Oh, I see it now. Something wrong, and now he’s got her.” She started sobbing hard, mopping at her cheeks. “I don’t know where he could have taken her.”
“I do,” Father John said. A policeman had walked over, and he told him to get ahold of Agent Gianelli. “The man who killed Robert Walking Bear and Dallas Spotted Deer has Vicky. Tell him he has taken her to Bull Lake to kill her.”
He swung around, ran back to the pickup, and drove out of the lot, past the officers milling about, the cars slowing along the street, the gawkers and neighbors standing on the sidewalk, the blue and red flashing lights, and nothing clear except the road ahead, the strip of asphalt leading through the reservation and into the mountains.
* * *
“WHO ARE YOU?” They were parked on the dirt path that ran between the campsite and the lakeshore. Keep him talking, Vicky thought. Cutter, or whatever his name was, liked to talk about himself and, in some strange way, she understood that he wanted to tell his story. He was proud of what he had done. Gotten away with killing two men, making the deaths look like accidents. All that careful planning, and no one would ever know. He had to brag to someone, and she would not live to tell anyone else.
“Who do you want me to be? Your brave warrior taking care of you, walking ahead to make sure the path is clear for you, keeping you safe?” He paused, and for a moment his features dissolved into a sad, wistful look. “Th
at was all I wanted, to be your warrior.” He let out a deep sigh, as if an impossible future had somehow melted away.
“You are an impostor.”
“Please.” He turned toward her and smiled. “Tell me, Vicky Holden, attorney-at-law, who isn’t an impostor? We all remake ourselves, don’t we? Become different people as we go along. It is necessary, you know. We put on a certain face, depending upon where we are and what we want to accomplish. What’s that quote from Shakespeare? A man can smile and smile and still be a villain?”
“You came here pretending to be James Walking Bear. You are an impostor with a made-up story. Fowler Oil Company has never heard of you, right? All of it was part of your story.”
“And I have lived it very well, I must say. The cousins fell all over themselves to welcome James home. James would’ve been pleased.” He pointed the gun at her head; his other hand worked the door handle behind him. “It’s time to complete my mission.”
Vicky felt her mouth go dry, and that was odd because tears were blurring her vision. She fought to keep herself from breaking down and crying. She would not go to her death crying! “Mission?” she said, grabbing for a lifeline, anything to keep him talking. He was a madman, a chameleon, two people, three people—who knew how many—at the same time. Dimly, as if she were already underwater, vision blurred, gasping for breath, she saw that this was her only hope. “What mission? An old map to a treasure that doesn’t exist?”
“Doesn’t exist?” He tossed his head back and laughed. The gun waved in his hand. “A smart lawyer like you, and you don’t get it. Well, that means nobody else is going to get it, either. No matter how many rumors might float around on your moccasin telegraph that Robert found the treasure, I can just sit tight for a year or two until everybody forgets. Then I can cash in.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Let me help you. A wooden box, twice the size of a cigar box, dirt lodged in the wood, the hinges rusted, and a lock that looked pretty solid, I have to admit. Robert wanted to break the box open with a rock, and I had to stop him. We weren’t sure what was inside. I took the rock and struck the lock, and it fell off.”
“You’re lying,” Vicky said, but part of her wasn’t sure. A part of her had never been sure about this man.
“Stacks of gold coins, beautiful as the day they were minted. They shone in the sun like—well, like treasure. Real treasure. We started shouting and laughing. We danced around the campfire and threw the coins in the air, and you should’ve seen us scrambling to get them all. In the bottom of the box were stacks of banknotes and old bills. Who knows what they’re worth? A fortune, a fortune, and for that I can only say, ‘Thank you, Butch Cassidy.’”
Vicky stared at the man. A treasure people had been hunting for more than a century, that most people—sane people—had never taken seriously, had never believed. Something for the tourists. Keep them amused.
“You’re telling me that Robert found the treasure?” True, he had been looking for years. He had taken the matter seriously; for him, the treasure had been real. And he had gotten the map from his grandfather’s barn, a map that could have been genuine after all.
“He never would have found the treasure without me.” Cutter had moved the gun back into his lap. He stared out the windshield as if the scenes of a movie were unfolding in the lake ahead. “The man couldn’t read a map, that was his problem. He had it oriented all wrong. Mountains on the west so everything else was supposed to fall into place. But Butch had oriented the map from that strip of land over there.” He nodded toward the shoreline where a finger of land jutted into the lake. “From over there, the mountains look like they are south, not west. Once I figured that out, I knew we had to look in a different place. We started at the strip and walked forward. According to the map, there was a tree with a horseshoe nailed on it, but that tree was gone. We kept walking until we found the four ponderosas that Butch had drawn, and twenty paces off—just like the map said—there was another clump of ponderosas. They were still there, and that’s where we started digging, on the spot Butch had marked with a big X. We weren’t three feet down when we hit the box.”
“You wanted it all to yourself, so you killed Robert.”
“I’ve been looking for treasure for a long time. I’m an expert at reading old maps.” He spoke like a ventriloquist, lips clamped together. Vicky could almost smell the determination and outrage. “Robert would have spent the rest of his life looking, but he never would have found it. I wasn’t greedy. I told him I wanted half, my fair share. I figured Robert could give Dallas a little out of his share—the cousinly thing to do. We would’ve all been happy. Sit on our treasure box for a while and then live like kings. But Robert . . .” He tossed his head back and studied the roof. “He was greedy. Claimed it was all his, that he got the map from his grandfather, and the treasure was his inheritance. So . . .” He let the rest of it hang between them.
“You killed him.”
“I tried to make him understand. He wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“So you dragged him to the lake and threw him in. Why didn’t Dallas try to stop you?”
Cutter grinned at whatever images were flashing in his mind. “It’s a lot of gold. He figured he’d get a bigger share.”
She understood now; the whole sordid account lay between them like the carcass of a buffalo. This man had strung Dallas along, letting him think he would get half of the treasure, and when Dallas realized Cutter had no intention of giving him more than a few coins—and maybe not that—he had started making anonymous phone calls, and for what reason? Blackmail a killer? Give me half or I’ll go to the police?
My God. Vicky dipped her face into her hands. Her cheeks felt hot and moist. The man beside her had already killed twice for the treasure. And no one was coming to the lake. They had been talking for at least thirty minutes, and no one was coming.
The man who called himself Cutter must have sensed the same thing because he leaned over, yanked the keys out of the ignition, and swung them in front of her. “Like I said, I keep the keys this time. Get out.”
She stopped herself from saying, You’ll have to shoot me here, because she understood that he would. And he would concoct another story, make it look like somehow she had shot herself. She pushed the door open and made as if she were about to turn sideways to get out, her mind racing with the possibilities. The freezing lake loomed ahead; she would never survive. Cutter got out, slammed the door, and started around the SUV, waving her out with the gun. She was on automatic now, no longer thinking, a robot going through the motions. She kept her eyes on him and dug into her bag on the seat next to her, past her wallet, her glasses case, a package of tissues. Then she had them, the cold, sharp edges of her keys in her fingers. Cutter still waving the gun, starting down her side of the SUV. She opened the door not more than an inch and jammed the key into the ignition. He was close, half a foot from her side mirror. Grinning. Grinning. She took hold of the handle, threw her weight against the door and slammed it against the man with everything she had. He staggered backward, a startled look replacing the grin. She pulled the door in as he lunged toward her, then slammed him again, and this time he went down. She turned the key, stomped down on the gas pedal and drove off, the door still open, banging back and forth. She kept driving. In the rearview mirror, she saw Cutter getting to his feet and racing after her. Then he stopped and went into a crouch, the gun steady in both hands.
She swung the SUV off the road to the left, and the bullet blew out a rear window. Driving like a crazy woman now, weaving back and forth, on and off the road, gunshots crashing around her, until she was tearing along the highway, barely slowing for the sharp turns, rocking back and forth. Finally the lake and Cutter and the gun lay far below, out of sight, and she slowed down a little and drove on.
She was halfway down the mountain when she saw the red pickup coming toward her. She pulled o
ver and rocked to a stop, and in the next moment, she was in John O’Malley’s arms, no longer able to hold back the sobs.
Everything moved in slow motion now. Pulling herself back, choking out the words: Cutter at the lake. Cutter had a gun. John O’Malley held a cell to his ear, shouting to someone on the line to get officers to the lake. The man calling himself Cutter had abducted Vicky Holden, but she had escaped. She was safe. Then repeating her own words: He had a gun.
John O’Malley put the cell back into his pocket and guided her toward the pickup, his arm firm about her waist. And she was safe, she was thinking. She was safe now. “Let’s get you home,” he said.
The panic rose again, stopping her breath, as he drove up the mountain—back toward Cutter and the gun. A wide spot on the road, a deep shoulder, materialized. John O’Malley turned around and headed downhill. The panic began to lift, like a fever that came and went. She willed her heart to stop racing, her hands to stop shaking, and started to tell him what Cutter had told her, then stopped herself. A dim realization moving like a shadow through her thoughts. She was the only one who knew, and she should be dead. If Cutter evaded whomever John O’Malley had called, he would come for her. And he would come for the man beside her.
“Tell me,” John O’Malley said, as if he had read her thoughts, and the words burst forth, a dam breaking. She told him how Cutter had helped Robert find the treasure, how they had quarreled, how Cutter had thrown the man into the lake and pushed him down, how Dallas had seen it happen and hadn’t done anything to help Robert. The treasure was all that mattered, and Dallas had started making anonymous calls to force Cutter to give him half.
“Do you think he was telling the truth? That they really found the treasure?”
Vicky shook her head, coming back to herself now, acutely aware of John O’Malley beside her. “Dallas thought so.”
The reservation was rising toward them when she saw the flashing blue and red lights on the vehicles racing up the mountain. John pulled over and got out. The lead car stopped, two officers in the front seat. She caught a part of the conversation: John O’Malley saying that Vicky had left Cutter at the lake and that he had a gun, and the officer saying something about a SWAT team.
The Man Who Fell from the Sky Page 24
