by Adira August
“Ain’t a trick to locate a male at Minnie’s place,” Wes laughed.
“Better hope this one’s got some clothes on, he’s in his sixties, according to that. Take care of it.”
“Soon’s I have my coffee.”
ANNE TUSSEY managed to nap after moving to the long couch in the living room where she could lie on her good side and see out the big front windows. The world outside glowed red and gold with the last rays of the sun. In spite of everything, she felt calm and expectant.
Soon Max would drive his truck up to her porch and load the things they’d need to take with them in the morning. They’d be back, he’d told her. When things resolved, after they found a place to be quietly married, he’d bring her home and carry her over the threshold.
It was quiet in the room. The papasan chair on the porch swayed gently in a slight breeze. The movement lulled her to sleep on the thought that she hadn’t been alone in the house for over a year.
It was so peaceful.
PHILLIP WORKED the action on the Smith & Wesson nine millimeter. He hadn’t used or possessed a gun since before he’d left home to handle this situation, himself. It was too easy to get pulled in if he was caught with it. But he still knew how and the action on the S&W was smooth, the trigger not too light, and the rubber grips provided for a secure hold.
He waited in the cab of the pick-up for full dark. It came swiftly in the mountains, the ranges blocking the last rays of light. He contemplated killing her immediately, as soon as he dragged her into the woods, where he could strip and gut her. Her men were gone and Morganfeld wouldn’t be back for a week. By the time anyone found her she’d be well-scavenged. The weapon he’d dump in the river would lead them to a dead man, if the locals managed to get it to lead anywhere at all.
But he wasn’t convinced she’d given him every copy of all her data. He’d need to search, to keep her alive in case he required more information. Phillip liked a plan. In this case, like real estate, the key was location. Jefferson County didn’t have the case. Denver was still puzzling out evidence and debating time of death and didn’t have any jurisdiction in the county. This time, there’d be no stray cops wandering into his operation.
Think Tank was done with fuck-ups.
HUNTER DANE watched for a break in the traffic streaming into Bear Creek Canyon. He’d cut through Red Rocks Park to save time, but was still surprised to see Merisi’s unmarked unit pass him.
A text alert:
BEAT YA TO IT
Hunt pulled into traffic and sent an audible.
Not a race, detective.
•••
NOT ANYMORE
Hunter laughed and turned on his headlights.
MERISI’S CAR HAD BEEN nowhere in sight when he turned onto Sandy Gulch Road. Full dark came as he’d swung through the long curves up the canyon to the entrance to Hanging Valley.
Now, with Morganfeld’s about a mile behind him, he drove slowly, looking for a break in the trees.
Red eyes glowed in the darkness and something big leapt away upslope, escaping the full beams of his headlights. Hunt thought it was late for a deer, but maybe a big dog?
There—dirt tracks coming from the left, fading quickly on the asphalt.
He pulled in and followed the curved drive, spotting a few faint lights through the trees. Not like Morganfeld’s, lit up like Times Square at New Year’s.
In an unlandscaped clearing that served as a yard, he saw Merisi’s unit to his left at the far end of long porch. A Jeffco Sheriff’s vehicle sat next to it.
Backed up to the porch on his right was the pick-up from Cam’s search.
“The gang’s all here,” he muttered. He backed up to the trees, perpendicular to Merisi, far enough back that the others could get out. A light glowed and Merisi crossed in front of the cars carrying a flashlight. He raised a hand to Hunt as he mounted the porch stairs.
Hunter decided he only imagined the rookie detective had flipped him off. But Merisi was smart; there were no lights on the porch or yard. Hunter reached in back for his leather jacket. He always carried a small but powerful flashlight in a pocket. The jacket had slid off the seat into a crumpled heap on the floor. He snatched it up.
A pale face with empty eye sockets stared back from the darkness.
“JESUS FUCK!” Heart pounding, adrenaline screaming, hand reaching - gun-
“It’s me!” Asher Gamble squeaked.
“Wha- … what … what …”—he grabbed for breath—”the HELL are you doing here?”
“Can I get out? I really have to pee.”
6:35pm - Toho
* * *
Asher made a dash for the house and Hunt grabbed him by the collar and hauled him behind the nearest tree.
“You don’t breathe without permission, you understand?”
Asher was too busy unzipping to answer or protest. Hunter turned away to give Asher a feeling of privacy while keeping the boy in his peripheral vision.
He slung his jacket on against the rapidly cooling night air. Finding the small flashlight in his pocket, he checked the batteries and turned it on, mostly so Asher could pretend Hunt couldn’t hear the stream of urine hitting the ground. The beam showed him how uneven the ground was, broken by tree roots, littered with deadfall.
Hunter Dane rarely had trouble making action decisions on the job, but what to do with Asher was a problem. He didn’t trust the boy to remain in his car while he went inside. Even with a Jeffco deputy already there, Hut was loathe to leave Merisi alone in a potentially dangerous situation.
But taking Asher anywhere near that house was unthinkable, even being this close was reckless.
Morganfeld’s was a minute away. He’d have to take Asher to his grandfather and come back. He thought he might handcuff him to his bed, while he was at it.
“You finish-”
pop-pop-pop
He hit the ground with the Colt in his hand and Asher underneath him. The flashlight went flying, the beam strobing the surroundings as it spun in the air, and bounced off a tree trunk to the ground.
pop-pop-POP
Holding aim on the front door, every muscle in his adrenaline-drenched body screamed at him to run for the house, to find Merisi.
Max CRASHED through the front door, glass shattering. He raised his gun back toward the doorway. Max was silhouetted in the light from the front window and Hunt fired as he turned. Wood splinters flew where the bullets hit the door jamb where Max’ head had been.
Merisi quick-looked around the doorjamb as Max leapt off the porch, running at Hunter and the boy. The beam of the fallen flashlight had stopped on them.
“C’mon.” Asher yanked at Hunter, trying to get out from under him.
Hunter couldn’t acquire a target with Asher jostling him.
“Get him outta here!” Merisi bellowed at Hunter. Three flashes from his gun.
The Bronco’s windshield cracked and buckled as Max dove inside through the door Asher had left open.
Hunter rolled the boy away from the vehicle, ending up on one knee, gun raised, pushing the boy behind him. “Run! Get home, call the police!”
Asher yanked at him, again. “Not without you!”
Merisi ran off the porch, gun pointed at the Bronco. The back door on Hunter’s side opened a crack. Hunt and Max fired at the same time. Hunter’s Colt almost tore his finger off when a bullet ripped it out of his hand.
Hunter grabbed Asher and ran.
Several shots—Merisi screamed.
NAHONGVITA.
Stay strong.
The Hopi word repeated itself in his mind with every stride up the steep side of the canyon.
They’d run about a quarter mile when Hunter heard the truck start. He grabbed Asher under the arms and swung him up and over the retaining wall on the upslope side of the road and jumped the wall himself.
Asher scrambled up the eighty-degree slope ahead of him, sometimes on a
ll fours, using tree roots for hand-holds. Hunter grabbed a foot to stop him. They froze about fifty feet upslope from the road as the truck roared by.
Hunter let him go and patted his calf to tell him to go on. They moved more slowly, carefully. The sound of the truck did not fade. It went silent.
Max had stopped.
“Fast and quiet,” Hunter told the boy quietly. And so their long climb had begun.
Most people would assume they had gone downhill. Perhaps taken the jogging trail instead of the road. Easier. Faster. Maybe Max had gone down, too.
But somehow, Hunter knew he hadn’t. Max was coming for the boy. Hunter was contending with a sharp mind, a calculating machine of a man, who deposited his goods into a police lock-up as if it were his personal safe deposit box. A stone-cold killer Hunter was sure was exponentially smarter then he was.
The steep grade, the tension, the need for silence vying with the need for haste, all took its toll. His body ached, his index finger seemed to be dislocated, his thighs were on fire.
Nahongvita.
Like a whisper in the underbrush.
Something rustled on his right, some creature they’d startled. He wished they would not be afraid and remain still, for every sound might tell their pursuer where they were. He thought he should have a plan, but there weren’t many choices, except to not think of what might have happened to Merisi, or the old woman, or the deputy.
He had to focus on Asher. His plan was to get to the top of the canyon. To stop, and wait and listen. To hope the killer was looking in the wrong place.
Asher skirted around a rock tumble into a dense stand of trees and there was a terrifyingly loud hoot. A great horned owl glided away on wide, silent wings.
Asher jumped and stumbled. Hunter put a hand on his back. He was sweating. They couldn’t stop. The canyon rim was only about twenty feet above them.
At the top, Hunter pushed Asher up and over the side. He mounted the rim like throwing his leg over the back of a horse and rolled away from the edge. Asher was on hands and knees head down, catching his breath.
Hunter picked him up and settled them on the ground behind a stand of scrub oak. He lay on side, with Asher half underneath him. Tucking the boy’s head under his chin, Hunter wrapped his jacket around him, including his head, completely encasing him, then bent down, his mouth at Asher’s ear.
“Not a sound.” It wasn’t even a whisper, just breath shaped into syllables.
He felt Asher nod against his neck. Hunter reached for his phone … the phone in the charger in his Bronco.
It would be okay. Merisi could not be dead. He had a dinner date. Jeffco would be there immediately. Probably on an officer down. The hillside would be bright with blue and white lights.
He held the boy tightly, for the first time in his life cursing the perfect weather. The crystal air allowed the half-moon in the western sky to cast them in light almost bright enough to read by.
But the shadows were dark, his coat was black, his face down. Still, he knew—whatever such knowing was called—the man was on the mountain seeking them. His only aim: to kill this child.
It seemed like a long time passed. Asher’s breathing slowed, Hunter’s lower extremities cooled. He became aware he was very thirsty. Soon, Asher’s grandfather would look for him. Perhaps at Minnie’s.
Downslope, something moved. Many things moved at night. Porcupines and weasels, skunks and raccoons.
You do not allow this asshole to take this boy.
He didn’t have to close his eyes to conjure a vision of Toho in a ceremony Hunter had been forbidden to attend. A ceremony he’d snuck into. Tall and strong, fierce, terrifying, fans of feathers like ears, white rings over blackened eyes, dagger teeth, stomping and sweating and whirling and crying out.
Very, very far off, Hunter heard a siren.
Much closer, he heard a dry branch break.
“If I go, you stay,” he breathed in Asher’s ear.
The boy clutched at him and looked up. Asher Gamble could be fierce and frightening, too. The message clear: I’d go with you.
The sounds were still downslope, but moving left. They had the least cover on that side. If he came up out of the treeline there, he’d see them.
Hunter planned his move. When Max mounted the ridge, Hunt would roll, crawl, dive toward his feet, knees. It was surprisingly easy to miss a target a few feet away when it was on the ground moving toward you. If Hunter could knock him off his feet, he could take him hand-to-hand.
Asher’s hands were on Hunter’s ears, fingernails digging in, pulling him down and forward, laying his forehead against Hunter’s. He shook his head slowly, deliberately, rocking his forehead back and forth three times.
No. No. No.
The sirens were closer. Not close enough.
A rock rolled, maybe twenty feet below, near the tumble of boulders, Hunter thought. Hunter tensed to throw the boy off. Asher wrapped one leg around Hunter’s waist and glared at him.
There was a noise, a noise weighty but soft. The scream that rent the air was barely recognizable as human. A wet, garbled, choking thing that twisted Hunt’s gut in atavistic terror. He stilled more completely than ever in his life. His arms were iron around Asher Gamble, who’d ducked his head and covered his ears.
Then low rustling of leaves. Something heavy was dragged away.
Silence.
The didn’t move for several long minutes. The sirens were louder, approaching. Asher raised his head and looked past Hunter at something.
“Toho.”
Hunter Dane followed Asher Gamble off the mountain.
Friday, March 3rd, 2017
1:27am - On Death and Dying
* * *
Michelangelo Merisi didn’t make it to dinner.
Hunter looked down at his still form for a long time before he noticed the small man sitting in a chair in the corner. He was about Hunt’s age, compactly-built, with neat chestnut hair and a kind of quick intelligence in his eyes.
“You’re Hunter Dane, aren’t you?” he asked. “Cal Derriksen.”
Hunt shook his hand. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Can you tell me what happened? Are you allowed? I mean …” Cal looked around, seeming a little lost. “We aren’t anything legal.” A tear tracked down the side of his face.
“Police reports are public record,” Hunter told him. “I can give you a verbal report, but that’s all I have, myself, right now. I wasn’t there and things have been, well, you know. Hectic.”
Cal nodded.
“You know he was in a gunfight and the suspect shot him,” Hunter began. Cal’s face clouded up, but he just nodded again. “I was told that after he was shot, he got himself back inside the house, where a Jefferson County deputy sheriff had also been shot.
“Mike called for help using the deputy’s portable radio because he didn’t want a cell transmission to be picked up and alert the suspect. He managed wrap his shirt around a major bleeder in the deputy’s upper arm. Mike got the deputy on his side, so he didn’t choke on aspirated blood, before he lost consciousness.
“When help arrived, I understand he’d wrapped the shirt around his own wrist, and was lying on top of it. Like he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep holding on. In other words, Mr. Derriksen, what happened tonight was Mike Merisi was a hero.”
There were tears from Cal Derricksen, but there was also a smile.
Hunter leaned over and put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “I think he’s just after a promotion.”
“Fuckin’ A.” Mike’s voice was thick and raspy.
Cal leapt out of the chair and offered him cup of of water with a straw in it. He drank gratefully.
“Nice work, detective,” Hunter told him. “I never figured you for the vest-wearing type.”
Mike cleared his throat, and sounded more normal when he spoke.
“Accountant. I know how thin margins for error are
.” He winced as he tried to push himself up. Cal used the remote to raise the back of the bed a little. “Deputy Wes said the door was open when he got there. Place seemed empty. Max was on the back deck, in that hot tub. He fired through the open window.” He stopped, took more water. “Houston. Did they find her?”
“She’s downstairs with Gordi,” Hunter said.
Merisi knew Hunter was referring to the morgue and glossing over the fact of her death because Cal was there.
“Did that man, the one who hurt everybody?” Cal said. “Did he really get killed by a mountain lion?”
“He did,” Hunt said. “It’s rare, but it happens. After sunset in that terrain, walking around alone, perfect prey. They said from the bite radius it was a big cat, male, could go 180 pounds or more. Typical attack. Dropped onto him from a height, held on, severed his spinal cord.”
He stopped short of the man being dragged into the woods and eviscerated.
“They’re looking for it. The animal that killed him.”
A hard look crossed the small man’s face. “I hope it gets away.” He took Mike’s hand.
Small and strong, Hunter thought. Cal Derricksen reminded him a little of Asher. He’d need to be strong. The bruising from a nine millimeter at close range, even with body armour, would be quite dramatic. The scars from the furrow in Mike’s cheek, from the second bullet that went on to almost sever his ear, would be painful, daily reminders of what Mike risked when he walked out the door.
“You need anything before I go?” Hunter asked Merisi.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “When you tell the story at my hero award dinner, skip the part about me screaming like a girl.”
“Too late,” Hunt told him. “Besides, I already told everybody your first name’s Michelangelo.”
ONCE AGAIN, Hunter’s Bronco had been towed from a scene. Cam was waiting in the R8 when he left the hospital. He helped Hunt into the car and buckled his seat belt. Then he propped Hunt’s right arm up with a pillow he cadged from a storage room.
