by Gwen Moffat
The central reef and the perimeter cliffs were quickly covered, and then they turned their attention to the park itself. As the afternoon wore on it became obvious that a meticulous sweep search could not be accomplished before nightfall and it was thought that, if Shawn was lying in a hollow or behind a fallen pinyon, he would not survive another night in the open. So Forset told them to spread out, with a greater distance between each rider; that way they could cover more ground more quickly. Some of the mounts, particularly the children’s ponies, were flagging and, mindful of the long trail home, the younger riders were told to stop searching, to go into the shade and rest the horses. It was not before time. Even Mike made no protest, and an hour later Art Stenbock and Miss Pink dropped out of the line.
By six o’clock they had covered the whole park and everyone was exhausted. For the past hour there had been infrequent shouts as people thought they glimpsed a recumbent figure, but always it turned out to be a rock or a log. They ended the day even more baffled than they had been at the start. Dismounted in the shade, Forset’s eyes rested on the forms of children sprawled like rag dolls and he winced. ‘I guess we’re finished here,’ he said heavily. ‘There’s nothing else we can do. The horses will be giving out shortly. What does anyone think?’
Duval said: ‘The horses are finished. We need a helicopter.’
‘Police? Or Search and Rescue?’
‘Doesn’t matter who provides the chopper so long as they’ve got someone with good eyesight. But I don’t see what anyone can do on the ground other than duplicate what we’ve done. Besides, by tomorrow he can’t be alive.’
‘He’s not alive now,’ Paula said.
‘Meaning?’ Forset’s fatigue made him sound belligerent.
Paula’s eyes went round the circle and came to rest on Sarah. ‘You tell them,’ she said.
Sarah glanced at the children but they appeared to be asleep. All the same, she spoke quietly. ‘She means Shawn was murdered.’
Watch it, Miss Pink thought.
After a long silence Forset said: ‘I know why you think that, Paula, but the law says the body has to be found— ’
‘Why bother?’
He took her literally. ‘Because it’s the law, but, I agree, it’s pointless killing ourselves— ’ he checked, and changed his wording, ‘pointless wearing down the horses if he’s already – no longer alive.’ He glanced at the sleeping twins uneasily.
‘It’s time we started down,’ Duval said. ‘We’ve done all we can here. We’ll go down and call the police. A chopper should be here at first light.’
They returned to the valley, Duval leading, Forset bringing up the rear. He had stood at the entrance to the Twist, watching them file past, and Miss Pink guessed that he was counting. He was taking no risks, nor was Bob Duval; on the descent they kept the pace slow and the column orderly.
They reached Wind Whistle without incident and separated, Miss Pink handing Yaller over to Forset who had a horse trailer hitched behind his pick-up. She got in her jeep and drove home, entering the deep shade of the valley with relief. Within a moment she felt cold. She glanced up at the needles. If he was up there, she thought, Bob Duval was right; there was no way he could survive a second cold night after a day when temperatures must have been well over a hundred degrees in the shade – if he was in the shade.
Chapter 13
Something large and white fluttered on a fence post at the start of Weasel Creek’s track. It was a message from Frankie: ‘Have to see you. Come and eat whatever the time.’ Miss Pink turned the jeep and drove back to the Grays’ cabin. Frankie met her at the door and took her to the living-room. The shadows were reaching out for the Crimson Cliffs and the room was no more than warm, the windows wide open to the evening air.
She collapsed on a sofa and asked for beer. Jerome and Frankie waited on her solicitously, seeming unsurprised that nothing had been found in Rustler Park, and then she noticed that they, or at least Frankie, were waiting expectantly, waiting for her to get comfortable. That took a few minutes; although she had absorbed pints of water at Wind Whistle she was thirsty again. Even her skin, now that she had stopped sweating, felt parched. She put down her glass and sighed. ‘You’ve had some news,’ she said.
‘The police called with the results of the autopsy!’
‘He’s been found?’
‘Birdie,’ Jerome reminded her. ‘The autopsy on Birdie.’
‘Oh. My brain feels crumbly. What were the results?’
‘She wasn’t raped.’
‘Now, my dear, they didn’t say that— ’
‘Not necessarily raped.’
‘How could they tell?’ Miss Pink’s tone was flat.
‘They couldn’t,’ Jerome admitted. ‘I’m wondering just how competent the pathologist is. He’s certainly imaginative. He put forward a theory that the body could have been cut to disguise the fact that she wasn’t raped. Apparently it’s been done before. Now what do you make of that?’
Miss Pink was alert, thirst and fatigue forgotten.
‘Isn’t it odd?’ Frankie was saying. ‘And now no one can tell whether she was or not, the body was washed so thoroughly by the flood. The blow to the head would have killed her; that was another finding of the autopsy, and the weapon was probably a piece of wood like a branch. And the knife from the creek fits the stab wounds, and those injuries were done after death because there’s no bruising. Isn’t it diabolical – I mean, cutting a dead body? And what difference does it make anyway?’
‘A great deal,’ Miss Pink said. ‘There was something on similar lines in a Scottish city – Glasgow or Edinburgh. The murderer was a woman who’d been taunted beyond endurance by the victim: a small girl. The purpose behind the mutilations then was to suggest that the killer was male, and a rapist. Sam’s been framed.’
‘A woman!’ Frankie breathed. ‘A woman could do that! No, it’s impossible.’
‘Men don’t have a monopoly in cruelty,’ Miss Pink said drily. ‘And Birdie was dead, so torture wasn’t involved. If you forget the knife wounds and concentrate on the blow to the head – done in anger, perhaps? – then a woman could have done that easily enough.’
‘My God, that widens the field. How fortunate for Paula that she was coming home with Lois at the time. But then Paula would never have used the knife afterwards?’ Her voice rose uncertainly. The others were not paying attention. She went on: ‘There’s me, Dolly,’ – her eyes widened – ‘Sarah!’
‘Hi,’ she said quietly, coming into the living-room, dropping into an easy chair. She looked pale. Jerome stood up and went to the refrigerator.
Frankie said: ‘The autopsy reports came through. There’s a theory that Birdie wasn’t raped at all; the woundings – after she was dead – were a cover. So a woman could have done it. I was listing the ones who had the opportunity.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’ Sarah took a Coke from her father. ‘Why me?’
‘You just walked in! I was greeting you!’
‘These two are worn out.’ Jerome was kindly but firm. ‘I suggest we feed them and put them to bed.’
‘I’ve got to go and give my horse more water,’ Sarah said.
‘You leave the horse tonight. I’ll see to everything.’
‘His back’s sore too, Dad. Will you see what you think? And I didn’t check his feet.’
He went out. A strained silence descended on the room. Coyotes were calling on the far side of the valley. Miss Pink and Sarah drank deeply, Frankie looked from one to the other, Miss Pink set down her empty glass and it sounded loud, peremptory. Frankie brought another bottle of beer from the kitchen. Miss Pink said: ‘I shan’t be able to drive home.’
‘You’re staying here,’ Frankie said.
She slept for twelve hours in a guest room, waking to a sound that was familiar but so much out of context in the surroundings that she failed to identify it until she caught the rhythm of the rotor blades. The helicopter had arrived.
In fact it ha
d arrived shortly after sunrise and had already flown up Horsethief and over Rustler Park: ‘Covering all the ground we searched yesterday,’ Sarah pointed out as the Grays and their guest drank coffee on the shadowed balcony. Their eyes followed the aircraft now coming up the line of Salvation Creek from Gospel Bottom.
‘What’s it doing there?’ Frankie asked.
‘They’re covering the whole area,’ Jerome said.
‘But Shawn has to be somewhere between Rustler and Wind Whistle!’
‘We don’t know how their minds are working,’ he reminded her. ‘And don’t forget: everything they’ve been told they’ll treat as hearsay; they don’t trust any of us.’
Miss Pink went home to find a familiar car in front of her cabin, and Sprague and Pugh coming round the corner of the building.
‘Have you been waiting long?’ she asked icily.
‘We thought you’d disappeared,’ Sprague said, ‘so we were looking to see if you’d left any indication as to where you’d gone.’ He regarded her mildly. ‘Or to see if there’d been a break-in, foul play, something like that.’
‘My car wasn’t here.’
‘That could have been stolen.’
‘But you’re here,’ Pugh said brightly. ‘You been out searching, ma’am?’
‘I need a bath badly. Perhaps you would postpone your questions for half an hour.’ She moved towards the porch.
‘It can’t wait,’ Sprague said. ‘This is a murder investigation.’
‘If you’ll come round the back,’ – Pugh was playing polite boy to Sprague’s heavy – ‘it’s cooler in the shade.’
There was no way that they could inveigle her ‘round the back’ – a loaded phrase – and out of sight of the valley. She was becoming paranoid; they would be out of sight in the cabin too. They were watching her closely. ‘We’ll go indoors,’ she said, and produced her key.
‘You lock your door, ma’am?’
‘Since the murder, Mr Pugh.’
She opened the windows in the cabin and they sat and regarded each other expectantly. Sprague produced a sheet of paper.
‘This is a list of all local people over the age of sixteen. I want you to tell us where everyone was on Wednesday.’
‘Wednesday? Today’s Friday. Ah, you mean the day that Shawn disappeared.’ She was amazed. ‘I have no idea where everyone was.’
‘Just the ones you can remember,’ Pugh said kindly. ‘We’ll fill in the gaps later. Everyone is being asked the same questions, of course.’
She didn’t miss his use of the present tense. People were being asked at this moment; there must be a swarm of police in the valley. There was no opportunity to compare notes in advance.
‘Let me see that paper.’ Her own name was at the top of the list. ‘Wednesday,’ she murmured. ‘Everyone was very active: visiting and discussing events. I called on Myrtle Holman in the morning, then I went to see Mrs Olson, across to Mrs Estwick – do you really want all this?’
Sprague said: ‘If everyone tells the truth – or everyone except the killer – one person’s not going to check out.’
Pugh was making notes. She raised her eyebrows. No tape recorders?
‘Now, as to times,’ Sprague prompted.
‘I can’t help you there. Time’s of little consequence down here.’ She didn’t add that the only time that could interest them in this context was the time it took a person on horseback to go up to, and return from, Rustler Park. Sprague sighed. She counted the names on the list. There were nineteen. ‘You can eliminate many of these straight away,’ she said, and waited, but no one contradicted her. ‘So Lois Stenbock is out because she can’t ride, and probably Glen Plummer for the same reason; in any case neither owns a horse. You do realise someone had to ride up Horsethief and probably as far as Rustler Park in order to intercept him?’ They nodded, their eyes intent. She went on: ‘Myrtle Holman and Maxine. This is bizarre, but you seem to be listing everyone in the canyon. They don’t own a horse and I doubt if either can ride. Now, four men are eliminated straight away; Forset, Stenbock and the Duvals were working cattle together; it was they who saw the loose pony on the way down, so the – accident – had happened by that time. The Gray family? I spent most of the day with them, and so did Dolly Creed. It was an extremely hot day, too hot to move away from the pool; if anyone had taken a horse out in that heat it would have been noticed and remarked on— ’
‘If they’d been seen,’ Sprague interrupted.
She looked up the valley through the open door. ‘It appears wooded but that’s deceptive. There are gaps in the cottonwoods where a horse and rider would be visible. People gleam in this brilliant sunshine – well, not the riders, but the horses’ coats reflect the light. However – how many does that leave?’
‘Seven,’ Pugh said.
‘Erik Olson?’ Sprague asked.
‘He was with Paula Estwick before lunch.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And Paula Estwick?’
‘She was home in the afternoon because Sarah Gray took her some cakes or something.’
‘She went on a horse?’
‘No. I said: it was much too hot. She went on her bicycle.’
‘And came back?’ Sprague sounded tired.
‘She was gone less than an hour.’
‘That leaves us with the pretty Olson girls and their mother,’ Pugh said, smiling. ‘Although I understand the older “Olsons” are really Warmans.’
‘If that was the first husband’s name. The older children were irrigating that day.’ She was looking at the list. ‘You’ve got Sam Estwick down here.’
‘That’s a mistake,’ Pugh said, adding gallantly: ‘The same as regards your own name, ma’am.’
‘Why are you treating Shawn’s disappearance as murder?’
Sprague appeared astonished. ‘Why? He could identify the person who killed Birdie.’
‘I’m not so sure of that. Shawn wasn’t the soul of honesty.’
‘You’re using the past tense,’ Pugh said.
‘If he fell off his pony, he couldn’t survive two nights, in addition to a whole day without water. He must have been unconscious because he never responded to our shouts, so he had to be injured, and probably seriously – a head injury; that would make him even more vulnerable to hypothermia and dehydration. I’m afraid he’s no longer alive.’
‘I agree,’ Sprague said. ‘But it wasn’t a fall from his pony killed him. He wasn’t alone up in that park – or in Horsethief Canyon.’
Miss Pink was expressionless. ‘It couldn’t have been Sam Estwick. He was in Nebo.’
‘That’s right; Sam didn’t kill young Shawn. In fact, Sam’s back home right now.’
‘Good.’
The silence was loaded. Dust motes flicked through the sunbeams. ‘The one we want now,’ Sprague said, ‘is Alex Duval.’
‘Why him?’
‘He’s got a record— ’ Sprague checked as his colleague cleared his throat. He started again: ‘Alex Duval was charged with rape once but never convicted. The victim was a young girl— ’
‘What were the circumstances?’
‘I don’t think we need go into those.’ She didn’t press the point. ‘After Birdie’s murder,’ he went on, ‘Alex disappeared, took off for the canyons. And we want him. People in the helicopter are watching out for him as well as for Shawn’s body but they’ve not seen Alex yet. There’s a hundred places back in the empty country where a man could hide himself and his horse and live on deer meat, particularly a man as knows the country like these Duvals do. We’ve told his brother we need to talk to Alex but Bob’s not going to go up and warn him in broad daylight while the chopper’s about. He’ll wait and go up after dark, tell Alex to be sure he stays hid. Bob says he’s camped up there looking after cows, but there’s no sign of a camp in the Straight Canyons, the chopper pilot says.’
‘I understood that the day that Shawn went missing, Alex
was with the others working the cattle.’
‘So they say.’ Pugh smiled benignly.
‘This is a difficult case.’ Sprague lowered his voice confidingly. ‘Here we’ve got a small community, very close, very loyal folk; they don’t care for authority – they don’t need it here: very law-abiding place, Salvation Canyon, like it always was with the Mormons – on the surface. If there’s any nasty business going on they keep it to themselves, all in the family.’
‘What kind of nasty business are you referring to, Mr Sprague?’
He looked at Pugh who said, with an air of diffidence: ‘People out here in the sticks go a bit weird sometimes. They don’t make a parade of it – but things go on behind closed doors.’
‘You’re talking about incest?’
Sprague blinked unhappily but Pugh was cool once the word had been pronounced. ‘It happens,’ he said.
‘I don’t see how it applies in this case.’ She was genuinely puzzled. ‘What would it have to do with Shawn?’
‘Not so much what was done to him,’ Pugh said, ‘but what he knew.’
Sprague was nodding. ‘You see? And I’ll tell you something else: why we won’t find him, why you didn’t, why no one will. He’s buried.’
‘It’s all speculation,’ Jerome said. ‘No one can have any idea what happened to Shawn until, and unless, the body is found.’
‘He could have been kidnapped,’ Sarah said. ‘He could be hundreds of miles from here, and still alive.’
Miss Pink looked at the girl thoughtfully. It was lunch time at the Grays’: iced soup and open sandwiches by the pool; Miss Pink, Dolly, and Glen Plummer were the guests.
‘It’s not impossible,’ Miss Pink said. ‘But that theory comes under the same heading as the one of the hiker or hobo coming into the canyon and murdering Birdie.’
‘It could be the same person,’ Plummer said, eager to exclude villainy from the local community.
‘The same person,’ Miss Pink repeated. ‘But not a stranger, unfortunately – and I agree with the police: Shawn knew too much. I don’t think his body is buried because there isn’t enough soil in the canyons, it’s all bedrock, but it could have been dropped in a crevice.’
