Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘I was after rattlers.’

  ‘You’d been in Rustler the day before, picnicking with the Olson children. Shawn didn’t go but he met you when you came down.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘On the road. I was turning in at the Stenbocks’ road-end and you were on your horse below your cabin talking to Shawn. He was on his bicycle.’

  ‘I remember now. Of course I talked to him; he’d been left out of the picnic and was upset.’

  ‘Did he think you’d taken them – or some of them – to the Cave of Hands?’

  Sarah hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said at length, ‘he did. I hadn’t, in fact; we had littluns with us and I wouldn’t split the party. Shawn didn’t believe me; he said I’d taken the older ones into the Maze and left the youngsters with Jen in Rustler. He said he was going to go up there on his own. I wasn’t much bothered about that, he didn’t have a pony; all the same I made a big thing about the snakes but he said that I didn’t get bitten and the other kids didn’t. I told him I was used to them, doing the photography and stuff for Dad, and maybe I said I was going up again next day. He must have seen me go, got the pinto from Paula, and followed me.’

  ‘And you didn’t know he was there, hiding in the rocks.’

  ‘I had no idea. I’d never expect anyone to lend him a pony to go out on his own in the first place. He ill-treated animals unless you were watching him. I’m amazed that he managed to reach Rustler without the pony throwing him. Evidently he wanted to see the Cave of Hands so much he refrained from hitting it. How I came to know he was in Rustler was that the pinto neighed as I was coming back across the park.’

  ‘What reason did he give for his being there?’

  ‘That he thought, if he followed me, I’d lead him to the cave.’

  ‘He didn’t follow you. He just watched.’

  ‘I’m only telling you what he said. I wasn’t in the Maze. I was in the park, working.’

  ‘With your horse at the Pale Hunter.’

  ‘There are as many rattlers there as round the reef. We picnic under the Hunter; that brings rodents and so there are snakes.’

  ‘And at that point you had no suspicion that Shawn had anything to do with Birdie’s death.’

  Sarah did not respond and Miss Pink gave no indication that she was expecting a response. They rode in silence, a companionable silence it might have seemed to a remote observer, someone watching from the far side of Horsethief, and then they came up to Jen and Debbie who had stopped.

  ‘How far is it?’ Debbie asked.

  Sarah looked around like someone waking from sleep. ‘About two miles after the Y; we must be coming up to it soon.’

  ‘Then we go left?’ Jen asked.

  ‘Left at the Y, and when you reach the canyon, keep back from the edge.’

  ‘Won’t you be finished talking by then?’ Debbie was wistful. She had been sent ahead with her half-sister while the grown-ups talked.

  ‘How’s the saddle?’ Miss Pink asked. Debbie had persuaded Sam Estwick to let her use Birdie’s old saddle.

  ‘It’s funny, like a chair. You can’t fall out of it.’

  ‘Be your age, miss,’ Sarah said automatically.

  Jen grinned and sped away, Debbie squealing with delight as her pony raced to catch up.

  ‘She was the calm in the eye of the storm,’ Miss Pink observed as they resumed their sedate progress. ‘But I have the feeling that she knew considerably more than she let on.’

  ‘She did.’ Sarah was grim. ‘At the rodeo Shawn warned her against Sam, said he liked little girls and never to be alone with him.’

  ‘Little girls? A lie, of course, as was the one about little boys.’

  ‘Even Debbie knew that, but she couldn’t understand its significance. She knew Shawn was lying about Sam being dangerous but she didn’t know why he should. Then when Birdie was killed and Sam was taken away (and the children thought he’d been imprisoned) she thought maybe this time Shawn wasn’t lying.’

  ‘So she told you about it.’

  ‘She mentioned it, as something that puzzled her.’

  ‘Shawn was preparing the way for Birdie’s death. The premeditation is appalling.’

  ‘I don’t think he had it worked out to that extent. He was preparing the ground, and once he’d done that he’d wait for an opportunity. He might not have done anything, at least so soon, except that the thunder was right overhead just as he was at the Estwicks’ road-end, and he bolted down there for cover.’

  ‘And he found the cabin door open and the knife on the kitchen table. And then Birdie rode into the yard. And Shawn had just come down the track and he told her he’d seen the Stone Hawk move. When did he tell you?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me that. What he did tell me, on Sunday afternoon, before the police got to him, was that he’d seen a man carrying Birdie’s body.’

  ‘So he did talk to you. And at that point everything clicked into place. You remembered the sequence of events when you were in the willows on the bank of the creek: the splash that could have been a calf, and now you realised it was her body. You remembered Shawn cleaning a knife, not stabbing anything, throwing it – and not a snake – into the water; finally he waded in and washed off what had to be blood.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sarah said levelly, and waited for Miss Pink to continue.

  ‘So by Sunday you’d guessed Shawn was the killer. In fact, you knew he was. Monday evening you came down from the picnic and met him and – did he demand that you take him up to the Cave of Hands?’ A new thought struck Miss Pink. ‘Did he say he was going to find the secret way down to the valley? You told him you were going up next day and he followed you. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t come down into the Maze after you, instead of waiting on the reef.’

  ‘Maybe he was frightened of me … Maybe he was going to go down there after I left the park but the pinto gave the game away. It neighed. So I found him and guessed what he was up to and told him it was far too late in the day, that if he went down into the Maze he’d be coming back after sunset.’

  ‘But there were cairns.’

  ‘Snakes too; they come out in the dusk. That did frighten him – so he came down with me to the valley. I never thought he’d go up again next day, and on his own.’

  ‘You were remarkably protective of a murderer.’

  Sarah made no rejoinder. They had emerged from pinyons to a white rock rim. A thousand feet below them a creek shone in the bottom of a gulch that was a winding swath of vegetation. The sides of the canyon were layered in pink and puce and ivory.

  ‘With Shawn,’ Sarah resumed, ‘warnings acted as a come-on. I told him about the dangers of the Maze. I told him not to go there.’

  ‘And you knew he would. There were the cairns, after all.’

  ‘He’d see the first cairn as he dropped down from the Pale Hunter. But they don’t go all the way to the great cove – didn’t, even before they were knocked down by some benefactor.’

  ‘And Shawn went wrong where the cairns ended? Except that there was that trio of cairns between the well with the ash tree and the top of the tower.’

  ‘Trio? I remember just two. You saw me knock them down.’

  ‘There was a third: in the well itself, or rather at the entrance to the wrong joint. There had to be because otherwise how would Shawn know which joint to take? After he’d gone along the passage for some distance, he’d see the second cairn, at the place where you turn, and then he’d come to the gully and the obvious way up through the hole, and the easy crack to the top of the tower. If he had any doubts as to whether he was on the right track, he’d step out on top of the tower and there was the third and last cairn, at the place where you can so easily jump down. There had to be three cairns.’

  ‘Probably there were, and I knocked the first one down by accident, perhaps just a duck, you’d never notice it. That will be what happened; I kicked it and never noticed.’

  ‘That’s what you were
doing in the Maze when I saw your horse below the Pale Hunter: you were building three cairns.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘They’ve been there for decades.’

  ‘They weren’t there ten days ago.’

  After a while Sarah asked: ‘How many people know that?’

  ‘Unless anyone else went up there after Dolly and me, no one other than myself.’

  ‘Dolly knows?’

  ‘No, she never saw the cairns, even the second time she went up. You must have knocked down the first one, the one in the well, before John Forset and Dolly reached you the day we found Shawn’s body.’

  ‘So only you know. That doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘Why should it? Even if I did talk, there’s no proof as to who placed those cairns; there’s no proof that ten days ago there weren’t any cairns there. A good defence lawyer would pour scorn on the concept of an elderly lady climbing a sandstone tower and maintaining there was no cairn on the top. The case would never come to trial. The cairns served their purpose and they’re gone. Were you never concerned that he was only ten years old?’

  Sarah halted and they faced each other. She said: ‘When a puppy’s born that’s deformed, like no back legs or something, you put it down immediately. If a pup with a damaged brain grows up vicious, you shoot it. The only way that age comes in is, you wish you’d known before it did any harm; you could have put down the one with a damaged brain at birth same as the one with no legs. Shawn was ten years old, but you forgot Birdie. She was six.’

  ‘It was a slow way to do it,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘On top of the tower, and all those hours in the sun.’

  ‘Actually not, he’d soon stop hurting, and for the person responsible it was the only safe way to ensure he didn’t go to prison.’

  ‘I thought it was the firing squad for first degree murder in this state.’

  ‘Or lethal injection: you’re given a choice. But that applies only to adults.’

  Jen and Debbie were waiting for them. They had stopped on a prow of rock where there was a ring of stones on the ground and people had lit fires. Sarah nodded to them as she came up and everyone dismounted, tying the horses to pinyons. The girls brought dead wood to the fire-ring while Miss Pink stood on the rimrock and surveyed the great canyon, speculating vaguely on the whereabouts of Alex Duval.

  An eagle came floating along the rim, the sun gold on its back. It regarded Miss Pink incuriously and swept slowly on, looking for prey with the same cool detachment as it had looked at her.

  There was a crackle of dry wood and she turned to see them placing green juniper on the fire. A pillar of smoke climbed above the rim. Debbie stepped forward and stood beside Miss Pink. ‘He won’t be long now,’ she said. ‘Soon as he sees the smoke he knows to come.’

  They ate their lunch, and drank lemonade, and lay in the shade, taking turns to keep the smoke rising, to watch the thread of a trail that climbed towards them out of the trees hundreds of feet below. Miss Pink dozed, waking to see Debbie asleep, her hat over her face, her tiny feet in dirty sneakers, wearing a T-shirt with Snoopy the beagle on the chest. She frowned, remembering Birdie in her Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Feeling herself observed she looked up to find that Sarah was watching her. She nodded to the girl and went back to sleep.

  Alex appeared about an hour later, coming up the trail at a steady pace. They watched and waited without excitement.

  ‘Must have been the pits,’ Debbie said. ‘Living on deer meat and water for a week. No bread, no brownies, no baked beans.’

  ‘I expect he brought some bread and stuff,’ Jen said.

  He waved as he came nearer and they all waved back. Now they could see his horse was labouring, and they heard its heavy breathing. Horse and rider were wet with sweat. They came out on the rim and Alex dismounted with a grunt. He gave the reins to Jen, and Debbie took him by the hand, leading him to the shade where there were sandwiches and beer and cakes. His eyes sparkled as the younger girls waited on him, their voices like the gentle twittering of small birds. Miss Pink watched from a distance, her head cocked, a smile on her lips, thinking that there was something sweet and sexual, yet innocent, about the picture, hearing Sarah say: ‘You start back with Debbie when we’re ready. Jen and me will ride with Alex and tell him what happened.’

  She agreed, appreciating that it could well be easier for him to learn of events from friends and without the presence of a comparative stranger which might be inhibiting, realising as well that information would have to be doctored for his ears.

  So she rode back through the pinyons with Debbie, the sun hot on their backs, their hat brims shading their necks. Miss Pink was considering what subject she should broach that was appropriate for a little girl but which did not seem contrived, when Debbie said quietly: ‘Sarah is telling Alex what happened. You have to be careful with him because he doesn’t like it when people get hurt.’

  ‘No one does,’ Miss Pink said weakly.

  Debbie threw her a speculative look. ‘Most people are kind, but some aren’t. Like Shawn. He was wicked, but Alex is so gentle he may get upset about Shawn being hurt, so Sarah has to leave out some of it.’

  ‘Sarah told you that this was how she was going to – work it?’

  ‘No, but I know Alex gets hurt easy and – well, I know; that’s all.’

  ‘I believe you do. Tell me, how much do you know?’

  ‘I know about Birdie, and then what happened to Shawn.’

  ‘The – accident?’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

  The horses’ hoofs slopped in the dust below the pinyons. The trail was drying out and the puddles were long scoops of cracked mud.

  ‘Everyone else can say it was an accident,’ Debbie went on, ‘but we know.’ She smiled sweetly at Miss Pink.

  ‘We?’

  ‘You and me.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘’Course you do. It was the Stone Hawk.’

  Miss Pink slumped in the saddle. ‘What was the Stone Hawk?’

  Debbie sighed. ‘Look, Shawn thought there was a way down through the Maze, right? And the pinto ran away when Shawn was in Rustler. He couldn’t walk home, not without he could find the way down through the Maze – which isn’t there, but he thought it was. Maybe someone gave him the idea there was a way down. We all know the real trail, the one to the Cave of Hands, starts when you get the Stone Hawk in line with the Blanket Man. He seems to have got it mixed up: the proper trail and the pretend one. He got the Hawk lined up with Blanket Man and came down through the Maze and walked off the last tower.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with the Stone Hawk? She can’t be seen from the place where Shawn fell.’

  ‘That’s it! The Stone Hawk moved.’

  Debbie made no attempt to break the ensuing silence, thinking correctly that her companion was working it out – not, of course, visualising a rock pinnacle moving over two miles (although after a night and a day on the bare cap of the tower Shawn would be hallucinating) but recalling Sarah’s unshakeable confidence, and the fact that, whatever the fantasy, Shawn had died at the foot of the painted bird. As if Sarah had built the cairns merely as a pointer, a false guide, and left the rest to the Stone Hawk.

  RAGE

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Introduction

  After the man died the body hung motionless. The legs were in shadow but when the cottonwood leaves shifted in the breeze, sunshine flickered over feet that were bare and delicate and covered with small burns.

  The sky was cloudless, bleached pale by the heat. On the far sid
e of the river the mountains rose in tiers of cliffs to a crest like torn brown lace. The river ran through a desert where there were no side streams.

  The water was wide and shallow. Not far from the grove of cottonwoods was a ford marked by hoofs and tyres. Closer to the trees and on the same bank was a pool, its surface a few inches above the level of the river, its outer rim reinforced by concrete. At ten o’clock in the morning the surface of the pool was glassy: a part of this hot bright world where the only movement came from the river, the cottonwood leaves, and an armadillo scavenging under the hanged man. Suddenly the armadillo checked and listened, its snout twitching, then it ambled away into the undergrowth.

  People were coming along a path towards the pool. They were all elderly, some quite old. They wore shorts and bright clean slacks, and their flesh was tanned to the colour and texture of old leather. The men had bulging paunches or skeletal frames and the women had long ago given up the struggle to resist rich food. They moved purposefully and with a confidence born of familiarity. Reaching the pool they separated as if under direction: men to one clump of willows, women to another. After a few moments they reappeared, their ageing bodies revealed, and even flaunted, by psychedelic swimwear.

  They eased themselves into the pool until they were sitting facing inwards: a circle of disembodied heads, all their attention concentrated on the sensation, real or imaginary, of warm mineral water soothing arthritic joints and various unidentified conditions.

  ‘What was that?’ grunted Frank Ward – an old pharmacist from Illinois – thinking he’d heard his wife gasp. He adjusted his hearing aid and looked to see what had attracted Bett’s attention.

  ‘Gross,’ she exclaimed without feeling. ‘Alien, like flying blood, you know? Only a redbird,’ she added quickly, before anyone could say something snide about ghouls or Alzheimer’s.