Endangered (A Sam Westin Mystery Book 1)

by Pamela Beason

In his hotel room, Perez thumbed through Fred Fischer’s file, squinting wearily at the fine print that covered each page. There had to be a clue about where the man had gone. Raised in Orem. Member of a Boy Scout troop that hiked and climbed all over the state. Resident of California. Truck driver.

  The phone rang. Ranger Rafael Castillo was at the other end of the line. Perez wasn’t surprised; male law enforcement officers always reported to him, assuming that he was the leader of the FBI team. No wonder Nicole was pissed off so much of the time.

  “The Fischers’ Suzuki is in the park, in the Goodman Trail lot. The vehicle’s empty.”

  “Where does that trail go?” Perez asked.

  “It intersects the Milagro Canyon Trail just past Village Falls. If you don’t turn off to Milagro, Goodman Trail goes up past the Temple Rock ruins. Just beyond that, there’s a Y. You know ZigZag Passage?”

  Perez groaned. “Intimately.”

  “Well, if you take a right on the Y, Goodman Trail comes out of the valley near ZigZag. If you take a left on the Y, you veer off through Sunset Canyon on the Mesa Trail, which you could follow all the way across the park to the north entrance.”

  After hanging up, Perez checked the map. When they’d parted at the helicopter, Summer Westin said she was going to the ruins. From there she might take either Mesa Trail or follow Goodman to return to her camp. What were the odds that her path and Fischer’s would intersect? He hoped she wouldn’t try to cross that damn rock bridge again.

  Why hadn’t he gotten her cell phone number? Now he’d have to track it down. Even with the number, he didn’t hold out much hope of contacting her; he’d seen her turn the power off each time after she’d used her phone.

  He made several calls. The park superintendent told him there was already a watch on all entrances and exits from the park: they were doing their best to make sure all visitors were out before starting the cougar hunt tomorrow. But he reminded Perez that anyone traveling cross-country on foot could come out along the park borders almost anywhere.

  How the hell were they supposed to track down anyone with only two agents on the case?

  The local charter flying outfit reminded him that nobody flew over the park after dark. They’d take him up to the plateau at dawn. The fire department told him the same thing.

  He briefly considered hiking up in the dark. No. Ridiculous. The trail was steep, rocky, and bordered by sheer drop-offs: he didn’t know where he was going, and he probably wouldn’t arrive before dawn, anyway.

  Summer Westin was tough. He thought about her leaping down from that boulder last night, scaring the hell out of him, about how she’d handled Kent’s wounds and faced the injured cougar. Still, he wished she had a gun. He drummed his fingers on the small table in his room. A bottle of beer and a speckled water glass tinkled to the beat.

  He pushed himself up from the chair, moving like a ninety-year-old. The stiffness was getting worse by the minute. And he’d thought he was in shape. He pulled a T-shirt out of the pile on the bed, pulled it over his bare chest, and went to tell Nicole about Fischer’s car.

  She’d switched to black jeans and a gold sweatshirt. On her the combination was elegant. Her room looked as if the maid had just squared it away. His partner always made him feel like an unmade bed.

  She motioned him in, her phone pressed to her ear. Weismann, she mouthed at him. The forensic specialist of the mobile Crime Scene team. She put the phone down on top of a computer printout from NCIC and punched the Speaker button.

  “I’ve identified your skeleton,” Weismann’s voice blared into the room.

  Nicole was incredulous. “Already?”

  “The miracle of digitized dental charts.” A squeak followed.

  “Where are you?” Perez asked.

  Another squeak. “Las Rojas Police Station.” The voice slid into a whisper. “What a dump! Still in the Dark Ages—”

  “The skeleton, Weismann,” Perez prompted.

  “They do have computers here, at least. And a broadband connection. I scanned all the specifics on your skeleton’s teeth to Martino in Salt Lake. He faxed me back a couple of likely charts. Then I—”

  “Cut to the chase,” Nicole suggested.

  “The winner is Barbara Jean Bronwin. Salt Lake verified the match. She disappeared a little over three years ago from Portland, Oregon.”

  * * * * *

  At the top of the ladder, faint squeaking greeted Sam’s ears. She nervously pushed through the opening, half expecting to feel the whack of a board across her crown. The floor was covered with droppings. A flutter of movement above her head made her heart lurch into her throat. She raised her eyes. Black wings stretched and rewrapped themselves around silver-gray cocoons. The ceiling was alive with pipistrelle bats.

  One of the three-inch-long mammals hooked its wing claws into the ceiling, flipped to a tail-down position, and defecated a stream of guano onto the floor. A baby bat the size of a hummingbird clung to the white fur of its breast; the pup squeaked in annoyance at its parent’s gymnastics. The mother pipistrelle curled its feet and returned to the upside-down position, releasing its wing claws to wrap leathery wings securely around the baby.

  Sam sighed with relief. She’d take bats over murderers any day. She crawled back down the ladder, exited from the townhouse onto the plaza. The sunlight had withdrawn from the ruins and from the trail beyond. It was nearly seven forty-five. Time was running out.

  She quickened her pace, trotting from one room to the next, intent on checking all the ruins. The cougar scratches on her thigh throbbed with each step. Nothing but dust in the next room; no sign of a hidden doorway to back stairs. Rodents as well as dust in the next; a kangaroo rat leapt to a hole between the sandstone bricks. A clump of tumbleweeds loomed menacingly in a corner, but when she kicked them apart there was nothing hidden behind them.

  She couldn’t shed her goose bumps, the feeling of hidden eyes on her. Her stomach growled. She pressed a hand over it, but it didn’t do much to muffle the sound.

  A branch cracked somewhere in the brush beyond the ruins. She froze. Juniper limbs moving in the breeze? Coyote Charlie? Fingering the toy wheel in her pocket, she crept toward the edge of the plaza.

  “Mummmeeeeyyy!”

  Her heart skipped a beat. The blood inside her head continued its rush, a deafening river of sound in her ears. Had she actually heard a feeble cry?

  “Zack?” she said tentatively to the growing darkness.

  The wind blew dry leaves across the plaza, making a shushing noise. Then a distant muffled bleat. A toddler? Or just the whine of the breeze through the ruins?

  She shouted louder. “Zack!” Nothing.

  She raced toward the last two rooms, the ones she hadn’t yet searched. Dust and darkness in the first. Was that rustling? She approached the final room, slowing her pace until she was tiptoeing. Holding her breath, she placed her fingers on the keyhole-shaped door frame and leaned to peer inside. Masses of unidentified debris—at least she hoped it was debris—lay on the floor; it was way too dark to see what any of it could be. Damned if she was going to go in there and poke around without a flashlight in her hand.

  Why was she the only one up here, anyway? Crouching in the shadows, her back against a wall, she dialed park headquarters.

  “Visitors are not allowed in the ruins,” the dispatcher told her. “And you especially can’t be up there now. We’re asking all visitors to leave for their own safety by tomorrow noon.”

  “I know all about the big cougar-killing spree you’ve got planned,” Sam growled. “Listen to me! I want to talk to a law enforcement officer. Now!”

  Rafael Castillo came on the line. “Sam, you need to vacate the area immediately.” He told her about Fred Fischer. “There’s a chance that he’s armed.”

  She told about the toy truck wheel, mentioned the possibility that she’d heard a little boy’s cry. She described the awful feeling that someone was in the ruins with her.

  Rafael swore
in Spanish. Then he said, “I’ll get someone up there as soon as I can. But it won’t be before dawn. You get out of those ruins. Now.”

  She assured him that she would, that she’d call in when she got back to her camp. She turned off the phone and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop shivering.

  Yeah, right. As if her conscience would let her just trot back to camp. Zack might be crying for help; Fischer might be on the way to move him or, worse yet, to kill him. She could be the little boy’s last chance.

  She took a deep breath and tried to chafe some warmth back into her arms by rubbing them with her hands. Her gut was still twisted into knots. There was a good possibility that she was fantasizing the whole thing. Her father had always said that she had an overactive imagination. Summer, you’re letting your imagination get the best of you again. There’s nothing to get worked up about.

  He’d said those same words when she’d been frightened of her mother’s hands, gnarled into claws, when she’d been terrified by the horrible gurgling gasps the ventilator made. I have plenty to get worked up about! Kent, the cougar, the skeletons, the crying.

  The two remaining rooms beckoned. She had a flashlight in her knapsack. An energy bar, too: she’d eat it to soak up the acid in her stomach and come back with the flashlight to finish the search.

  Walking hesitantly now, listening for any threatening sound, she exited the ruins and stumbled over the uneven ground through the dark brush. The flashlight would be welcome company.

  The knapsack was in the tree where she’d left it, but it now dangled upside down, hanging from one shoulder strap. The pockets were unzipped.

  18

  Sam stared at the knapsack, her heart pounding. The leaves of a nearby Mormon tea bush fluttered in the wind, dislodging a small white moth sheltering there. No other sign of life.

  She pulled the knapsack down and quickly inventoried the contents, more through feel than sight. Her flashlight was missing, and so was the radio. Damn! The camera, batteries, and storage cards were safe. Her credit cards and car keys were right where she’d left them. What kind of a thief leaves the valuables? In addition to the flashlight and the two-way radio, her crackers, her energy bar, her jacket, water bottle, and pocketknife were gone. Shit.

  Shouldering the now much lighter pack, she turned to survey the ruins, rubbing the goose bumps on her arms. The top of the sandstone walls burned red in the last rays of sunset. The dark rows of windows staring out to the west reminded her of the multiple eyes of a lurking spider. Was someone watching from those spider eyes?

  The sun had completely disappeared behind the escarpment to the west. The temperature was dropping by the minute. She checked her watch. It would be pitch black in less than fifteen minutes. Only an occasional glimpse of sky peeked through patchy clouds: there’d be little moonlight tonight.

  She rummaged through her vest pockets, came up with a stub of a candle and a book of waterproof matches, her emergency supplies for starting campfires. No way would the candle throw enough light to hike for three miles to her camp. Then, aha! Her fingers wrapped around her penlight. Tiny, but it had a fairly powerful beam. She switched it on, grateful for the small spark of light.

  Something whined above her head. She stopped, every tendon in her body tense. Uuummmmmeeeeeeee. She pointed the penlight upward. A shower of pale leaves spiraled down toward her. The plaintive screech of two limbs rubbing against each other. Was this what she had heard? Her mind played back the faint cry in the ruins: Mummmeeeyyyyy! The whine of the wind mimicked the mournful sound: Uuummmmmeeeeeeee.

  Just the wind in the trees? She hadn’t heard a child’s cry? And maybe her pack had been rifled by a hiker, just passing by and in need of a radio and food. Right.

  But no matter who—Coyote Charlie or Fred Fischer or the bogey man at the end of the path—was skulking around up here, he wasn’t going to get away with scaring her off. She would check that last room. Detouring from the path through brush and boulders, she approached the far side of the ruins, where the plaza met the cliff. If someone was lying in wait for her, she wouldn’t accommodate him by taking the most predictable route.

  Her booted toes struck the first inch-high unseen step and she pitched forward in the dark. Her wrists took the brunt of the fall, but the shock radiated up to her sore neck muscles and down her aching back. She clenched her jaws to keep from yelping in pain. On impact, the penlight winked out, rolled away from her. She retrieved it, banged it against the palm of her hand. Nothing.

  Tears of frustration stung her eyes. She forced them away, swallowing hard, and zipped the now-useless metal cylinder into a pocket of her vest. She crawled up five more steps on her hands and knees, trying not to think of snakes and scorpions, before the surface flattened out and it was safe to stand.

  The rising breeze gusted flurries of fallen leaves through the ruins. Not much chance of detecting another person by sound alone. The susurration of the dry foliage would easily mask the shuffle of footsteps. Every few seconds she threw a hurried glance over her shoulder to make sure someone wasn’t sneaking up behind her.

  At the rim of a yawning hole in the plaza, she paused. She hadn’t inspected the kivas, either. The wind blew out the first match. Shielding the flame with her body, she struck a second, touching the match to the candle wick as soon as it flared up. The illumination provided by the small candle was minimal; only vague clay-colored shapes flickered below. A circular stone bench with a circular shadow beneath it. One little splash of red. Zack’s sneakers had been red. So had his pants. She stepped carefully down the short pole ladder into the ceremonial chamber, brought the flame nearer to the object she’d spotted. A wrapper from a stick of cinnamon gum. She turned to climb out.

  Something rustled behind her. Pivoting slowly, she held the candle out at arm’s length. At the base of the stone bench across the room, among a drift of fallen leaves and tumbleweeds, something was moving.

  “Zack?” She took a step closer. Mottled brown and black scales gleamed in the flickering light. A glassy eye regarded her with hostility. Snake? The creature suddenly lurched toward her.

  Stifling a curse, she stepped back, smashing her knapsack with a clunk into the ladder and sloshing a spatter of melted wax over her fingers. She winced in pain. Damned lizard.

  Filled with the dry autumn debris and then covered with a canopy of snow, the kivas would make good winter burrows for reptiles. It looked as though this one had decided to immerse itself in Native American archaeology for this year’s hibernation.

  Out of the kiva, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, staring into the darkness that surrounded her. A few weeks from now, this would seem like a bad dream. Maybe she’d write about this whole exhausting escapade later in a novel. Providing she survived.

  * * * * *

  The living room was empty, with only the corner lamp on. No TV tonight. His two older girls were spending the night at a friend’s house, Rafael Castillo remembered. Good, maybe he could finally get some sleep tonight, at least a few hours. And he didn’t care if he was still on call, he had to have a beer: his nerves were shot. If the Daniel Boones this morning hadn’t been falling-down drunk, if Leeson and Taylor hadn’t shown up when they did, he’d probably be in the hospital with Kent Bergstrom right now, if not in the morgue.

  According to the FBI agents, it looked like Fischer had sent the ransom note. What did that mean? Was he trying to cover up whatever he’d done to that poor little boy? And now he’d disappeared into the park, and might be skulking around the ruins where Sam Westin had found the wheel to a kid’s toy. And if it really was from Zachary Fischer’s toy, what did that mean—that the poor baby was up there somewhere? Alive? Not likely.

  The FBI Crime Scene team was doing God knows what up on the plateau; the feebs wouldn’t share with park rangers. And to top it off, Thompson had the USDAWS hunters showing up tomorrow. The world had gone crazy. But there was nothing more he could do about any of it tonight. Maybe he’d have
a shot of tequila along with a beer, then hit the sack.

  From the bathroom came a splash, a low voice, a giggle. Anita must be bathing their two little ones, Enrique and Katie. Some time with his sweet babies would be welcome right now. His hand was on the bathroom doorknob when he heard a deep voice say, “Now, Enrique, Katie, we’re going to play a secret game.”

  What in the—? The door snagged on the throw rug. He pulled the scrap of apricot shag flat with the toe of his shoe and shoved the door forward again.

  “Papi!” Katie and Rique faced each other, their dark curls wet from splashing in the tub. Russ Wilson sat on the floor, tiny shirts and underpants strewn around him, a towel over his lap. One hand was on Katie’s bare back; the other clutched the side of the tub. He turned a startled face toward Rafael.

  “Your wife is—” he started. “Miranda will be back any minute. She’s taking some pans down to—”

  “Watch, Papi.” Enrique pulled himself up on the tub side and held out a plastic measuring cup. He poured a cupful of water into the tub with a big splash.

  Did Wilson’s gaze stray to the boy’s privates for a fraction of a second? He tried to analyze the expression on the man’s face. Surprise, certainly. Had there been a certain slyness in Wilson’s eyes before he’d recognized the ranger at the door, a certain sick pleasure?

  Rafael put his hand on the butt of his pistol. “You’d better leave,” he said. “Now.”

  * * * * *

  Sticking to the shadows, Sam groped her way toward the last unexplored room. At the doorway, she pulled the pepper spray out of her pocket. She stepped quickly into the room, holding the cylinder in front of her with both hands. The wind gusted through the doorway behind her, creating a whirlwind of leaves that spiraled around a dark heap in the center of the room. She willed her pupils to adjust quickly. Her head pounded with tension, accompanying the banging of her heart.

  She heard a hissing sound. An inhaled breath? Her skin prickled as she waited to feel the grip of icy fingers around her throat, the barrel of a gun pressed against her temple. Another puff of wind blew in. Scratchy fabric suddenly raked across her left cheek. She gasped and stumbled back, collided with the wall, jerked her head sideways, raised a hand to fend off the attack. Her fingers rasped across serrated edges as she batted the object away.