Mission Canyon

by Meg Gardiner

  I said, ‘‘Brand’s dead. Kenny killed him.’’

  Static, no reply.

  ‘‘I saw the body.’’ I ran. ‘‘Brand wasn’t the hit-and-run driver. Kenny was.’’

  Here’s what stunned silence sounds like: my own hard breathing, the catch in my throat, oleander rushing as I push past it.

  He said, ‘‘How—’’

  ‘‘He stole things from the crash scene. Isaac’s crucifix.’’

  ‘‘Oh, fuck.’’

  ‘‘I—’’

  Behind me, a snapping sound. I spun around. Downstream Kenny slid out from the shadows. He saw me.

  ‘‘Oh, God.’’ I ran harder. ‘‘He’s coming.’’

  ‘‘Don’t hang up.’’

  I didn’t. But I took the phone away from my ear to pump both arms as I ran, upstream, back toward Kenny’s house. Going flat-out. But now that he was on foot, I could return to the road. The police were coming. If they found him chasing me up the street with a meat cleaver, great.

  I started angling up the embankment toward the road. From the phone came Jesse’s voice, shouting, ‘‘Evan. Evan.’’

  I climbed. I heard a car driving up the hill.

  To Jesse, Kenny, the darkening sky, I said, ‘‘It’s the cops.’’

  But as I said it, I knew I was wrong. No sirens, no lights, no urgency in the sound of the engine. The car curved into sight. It was a Mercedes, cruising slowly. The windows were open and the driver was shining a flashlight across the hillside. When the car drove past, the beam swept over me.

  The car braked. The beam swung back. Spotlight. My legs went rubbery.

  The driver shouted, ‘‘Kenny. She’s here.’’

  Kenny had help. It was Harley.

  I had to get out of here. And I couldn’t go forward to the road, couldn’t go back toward Kenny. I ran straight down the hill toward the creek. I pounded through the tall grass, into the sycamores, onto the sandy stream bank. I heard the water slurring. I skittered over mossy rocks and into the creek. The water soaked my shoes, splashed cold on my legs, and I was across.

  Jesse shouted, ‘‘Delaney, talk to me.’’

  I raised the phone. ‘‘Kenny has help. I’m running.’’

  ‘‘Mari?’’

  ‘‘No, it’s Harley.’’

  I broke from the trees into tall grass. Ahead, an avocado orchard blanketed the hillside, spreading up the slope and over the crest. I looked behind me. The sycamores shivered in the breeze. I heard Kenny splashing across the creek.

  I ran into the orchard. The trees were mature, with slick greenery hanging low to the ground. I glanced back. Kenny was coming. Walking, the cleaver dangling from his hand. He seemed unhurried, looked calm and determined.

  Running, I talked into the phone. ‘‘I’m going over a hill into the next ravine. If there’s a road, I’ll head toward town.’’

  Here in the hills, roads got scarce. They meandered up the canyons toward the mountaintops, dying out into trailheads or dead ends. I reached the top of the hill and kept running through the orchard across the summit, until the land started descending again. I had no idea where I was.

  Ahead, I saw moonlight shining beyond the edge of the orchard. I came out of the trees above a road.

  ‘‘There’s a street. I’m going to run downhill toward Foothill,’’ I said.

  The hill crumbled sharply toward the asphalt. I turned sideways and approached the drop, planning to scoot down.

  Harley’s car was idling on the road, dead ahead. She had cut me off.

  How the hell did she figure out to double back and get here? Did Kenny call her from a cell phone to tell her where I was heading? I stopped, crouched down by a tree.

  ‘‘Ev, talk to me.’’

  I held the phone against my leg and crept through the trees. If I could get behind the car, I had a chance of crossing the road without her seeing. I scuffed down the dirt embankment and dashed across the road, ducking into brush on the other side.

  I looked around, seeing that this was the vee of another gully. The hillside rose in front of me, covered with live oaks. I found a trail and ran up it. I’d made it.

  ‘‘I think I outfoxed them. I’ll head over this rise and meet you down on Foothill.’’

  Jesse said, ‘‘You’re sure it was Kenny driving the car that night.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Brand’s BMW.’’

  ‘‘Positive. He keeps Isaac’s crucifix in a museum in his cellar.’’

  He was quiet. I wove up the trail.

  ‘‘My nightmare. The man is Kenny,’’ he said.

  ‘‘I know.’’

  ‘‘He crashed into us and came back to see if we were dead. He walked down the hill. . . .’’ A pause. ‘‘In the dream I’m always faceup, staring into the sun. He flipped me over.’’

  ‘‘He thought you were dead.’’

  ‘‘Or the girlfriend heard Stu Pyle’s plumbing truck coming and—’’

  I got it. ‘‘Mari was with Brand that night.’’

  ‘‘If Brand wasn’t in the car, neither was she.’’

  ‘‘The anonymous call,’’ I said. ‘‘They set Brand up.’’

  I was climbing up the trail now, trying to watch my step over the ruts and rocks.

  Back on the road, Harley’s voice rang through the dusk. ‘‘Kenny, I’ve got her heading up the trail.’’

  Got me? How? I looked back. She was U-turning. How did she know where I was? The car swung around and she aimed her flashlight at my side of the road, sweeping the bushes until she spotted the path.

  ‘‘Kenny!’’ she said.

  I started running again, up the trail. ‘‘Jesse, she’s tracking me.’’

  ‘‘Tracking, how?’’

  How indeed? I thought about it. There was only one thing it could be: my cell phone.

  ‘‘Oh, dammit.’’

  My phone had a global positioning system. It could alert police or rescue crews to my location. And if certain settings were activated, it could broadcast to anybody else with an emergency scanner.

  ‘‘My phone’s a beacon,’’ I said.

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘They rigged my phone to send a locator signal. That’s why it runs down all the time. It’s been constantly transmitting my location.’’

  They’d probably also programmed it to deny 911 access, I realized—and another thought snapped me between the ears. ‘‘They may also have a cell phone scanner.’’ They could be listening to our conversation right now.

  I heard the car roaring. Harley wasn’t waiting, knew I wasn’t standing still.

  ‘‘I have to get rid of the phone,’’ I said.

  I kept running up to the top of the ridge. I was breathing hard now.

  ‘‘I’ve probably come a mile east from Kenny’s house,’’ I said.

  Jesse’s voice changed. ‘‘Okay. You know where to go.’’

  I didn’t.

  ‘‘There’s only one place.’’

  Hearing the solemnity in his tone, I understood. He was right.

  ‘‘I’ll be there,’’ I said.

  ‘‘So will I.’’ His voice turned hard. ‘‘Rudenski, are you listening? Your time is up. You’re done, you sack of pus. Finished, cocksucker. You shit-eating, rat-fucking—’’

  I threw the phone into the bushes and ran. Toward Mission Canyon.

  34

  Scraping through the tall grass, I hurried down the slope toward the road. Ahead I saw eucalyptus trees gleaming silver under the moon. Below, where Mission Canyon spilled open at the foot of the mountains, I glimpsed city lights. This was the crash site.

  Running across the road, I edged over the dropoff and lay down below the lip of the shoulder, out of sight. The grass rasped at me.

  Come on, Blackburn, throw that big-block engine into high gear and take these curves.

  I knew he hadn’t called the police again. If his cell calls were being intercepted, telling the cops
to come to Mission Canyon would have given Kenny my location and a head start.

  Besides, Jesse wanted to kill him.

  I had to get out of here, and I had to make sure that Jesse didn’t turn tonight into an exclamation point on his own life, a fast trip to prison.

  An engine droned in the distance. I raised my head. Headlights arced around the curve below me. Come on, Jesse. Anchor leg. Bring it home.

  It wasn’t him. By the shape of the headlights I could tell that it was the Mercedes. I crabbed backward down the slope. The car slowed to a creep and the flashlight brushed the hillside, white light bleaching the shoulder of the road and the tree trunks above my head, but missing me. I held my breath. The light lingered.

  And moved on. The car drifted up the hill.

  She didn’t know I was here. I put my head down in the dry grass. My temples pounded. She was gone, but the road dead-ended four hundred meters uphill. She’d be back. At most I had a few minutes.

  And Kenny was out there in the dark.

  Flattened in the grass on the steep slope, I thought: This is where Isaac died. I felt no sense of him, no pain, no lingering spirit. Only my own dread. Not least because his brother’s rage, Adam’s star-bright fury for revenge, was coming in the form of Jesse Blackburn.

  I thought about the hit-and-run. How we hated Franklin Brand all these years for a crime he didn’t commit. Thought about Kenny driving Brand’s car—he could have stolen Brand’s keys and taken it from the Mako parking lot. Or from Brand’s house, or Mari’s. The mechanism wasn’t important. The real question was: Why did Brand flee? Why didn’t he turn Kenny in? Why did he agree to take the rap?

  Because Kenny had something on him.

  Brand was embezzling from Mako. Kenny must have discovered that; must have found out that Brand plundered the Segue fund, stealing money earmarked for i-heist. After the crash, did Kenny convince Brand it would be better to take the blame for manslaughter than to be charged with grand theft, securities fraud, and have a pack of hyenas like i-heist on his tail?

  Vehicular manslaughter. That had been the charge. That’s why Brand left the United States for the length of time he did. The statute of limitations for manslaughter was three years.

  Brand came back to Santa Barbara three years and three weeks after the crash, because he thought he was free and clear, that he could no longer be prosecuted for the crime. But he hadn’t studied the law carefully enough. The statute didn’t apply, because a warrant had been issued for his arrest, and charges filed. He should have gotten legal advice.

  Rather, he should have gotten good legal advice. Not counsel meant to deceive. Like a rockslide, the pieces tumbled in my mind. Of course. Harley had misled him.

  I heard a car coming up the canyon. The engine was whining, had to be redlined. I scuffled toward the lip of the slope and saw the Audi curving along the road. Relief splashed over me. I scrambled up the bank and started waving.

  Kenny was standing on the far side of the road. When he saw me, he charged.

  I was screaming when he hit me, my skin, bone, muscle shivering, seeing the blade. But he slammed me with his chest, threw his arms around me, and pushed me toward the dropoff.

  He wanted to get me off the road and down into the darkness that would camouflage his hacking. I had to stay in sight, right here. I squirmed, tried to plant my feet, and he kept pushing me toward the shoulder. Pity will get you hurt. I clenched my hand into a hitchhiker’s fist and flailed my arm around. My thumb hit him in the eye, the nail sinking in.

  He howled and grabbed at his face. I ran.

  He came at me again. Tackled me around the hips. I went down, elbows and chin cracking against the road. He landed on my back. I heard the cleaver scrape against the asphalt, felt his breathlessness and sweat. I writhed beneath him. Sounds poured from my own throat, growls and cries.

  Jesse’s car came screaming around the bend. The headlights were blinding white. I was shouting and Kenny was clutching at me. We were facedown on the center line.

  Jesse braked hard, tires squealing. He spun the wheel and the car skidded.

  Yelling, I turned my head away and tried to shrink into myself. Thinking, So loud, big damn engine and all that momentum—

  And the tires shut up.

  I peeked. The car had stopped sideways on the road. It was five feet downhill from us, back end toward the dropoff, engine guttering and the tires wafting scorched rubber.

  Kenny lay on top of me, sweaty and hot, his breath scratching in and out.

  I said, ‘‘Ding-dong. Herpes calling.’’

  From the car, Jesse shouted, ‘‘Rudenski, this is done. Throw the hatchet away and get off her.’’

  ‘‘I’ll kill her,’’ Kenny said.

  ‘‘Not with me watching. Even you aren’t that stupid.’’

  ‘‘Like you can stop me?’’ He grunted to his feet, pulling me up by a fistful of shirt. ‘‘You and the Paralympic team?’’

  ‘‘You won’t get us both,’’ Jesse said. ‘‘And I’m the one you want.’’

  Kenny wrestled me toward the car, pushing me down onto the hood and leaning on me. The metal was hot, painful on my chest. I squirmed and kicked.

  Kenny struggled against me, shouting at Jesse, ‘‘Get out of the car.’’

  ‘‘I’m the last eyewitness to the hit-and-run. Let her go,’’ Jesse said.

  ‘‘How’d you like her with fingers missing? How’s she gonna look without a nose?’’

  Jesse’s voice kicked up. ‘‘Let her go and I’ll get out.’’

  I fought. ‘‘No, Jesse, don’t.’’

  The car was all he had, his only weapon. If he got out, that was it.

  Kenny said, ‘‘Turn off the engine.’’

  Jesse did it. I could see him through the windshield, face like a steel beam.

  ‘‘Rudenski, I know you took trophies from the crash,’’ Jesse said. ‘‘I know about your museum, your little toy stash. What do you do down there, you necrophiliac cum-wad? Do you go down and jerk off?’’

  ‘‘Shut up,’’ Kenny said.

  ‘‘You think about dead race-car drivers and burned bodies and you slap your dick around? Look at you; I can see it in your face right now. You’re hard just thinking about it.’’

  Kenny’s voice got louder. ‘‘Shut up. I’ll do it, I’ll kill her.’’

  ‘‘You’re so wound up about it you don’t even know where you are, do you?’’

  Kenny pressed against me. I tried to get leverage, to get out from under.

  Jesse said, ‘‘This is it. This is the place where you killed Isaac.’’

  I felt Kenny hesitate, take a breath.

  ‘‘You’re done taking trophies. Let Evan go,’’ Jesse said.

  I heard, in the distance, the sound of the Mercedes coming back.

  Kenny shuffled his feet. ‘‘Get out of the car!’’

  ‘‘On one condition.’’

  ‘‘No conditions.’’

  ‘‘Tell me the truth. When you got out of Brand’s car and came down the hill to check on us, was Isaac already dead?’’

  Kenny laughed. ‘‘That’s it? You want closure?’’

  ‘‘I need to know that there wasn’t anything I could have done for him.’’

  Kenny’s laugh was almost hysterical. ‘‘Christ, you are such a fucking Boy Scout.’’

  ‘‘Tell me.’’

  ‘‘Let me make you happy. Yeah, the dude was dead. His head was smashed flat on one side. It was just gone, caved in; he looked like a Picasso painting.’’

  Jesse said nothing. I could see him through the windshield, his eyes dark. He gripped the steering wheel, staring at Kenny, his face starting to crack.

  ‘‘Out of the car, now,’’ Kenny said.

  Jesse lowered his hands from the wheel. His shoulders dropped.

  ‘‘Don’t,’’ I said, struggling, kicking ineffectively at Kenny. ‘‘Jesse, don’t trust him.’’

  Jesse reached toward the dash
board, I thought to take the keys out of the ignition. I heard a clicking sound.

  He pulled his cell phone out of the hands-free mount and put it to his ear.

  ‘‘You’re off the speakerphone now,’’ he said. ‘‘Did you get all that?’’

  ‘‘What are you doing?’’ Kenny said. ‘‘Get out.’’

  Jesse held up the phone. ‘‘It’s for you.’’

  Kenny laughed again. ‘‘Hey, Mr. slick-ass lawyer, you know the cops can’t use that as evidence. You record somebody without his permission, the court has to throw it out.’’

  ‘‘It’s not the cops,’’ Jesse said. ‘‘It’s your father.’’

  It must have taken less than five seconds, but Kenny’s breakdown felt as if it lasted a year. He began shaking, groin to fingertips, so hard that the cleaver tap-danced against the hood. His voice melted into a bray.

  He went for Jesse. Straight for him. With animal frenzy he elbowed me aside and attacked the Audi’s windshield with the cleaver. One blow, two, huge thunking swings, the cleaver ringing as it cracked down.

  The safety glass spidered but didn’t break, and I reeled back, hearing Jesse fire up the engine. I heard the Mercedes coming down the hill from above us. This was it, my last chance to escape. I had to get into the Audi. But as soon as Jesse started the engine, Kenny gave up on the windshield and grabbed for the passenger door’s handle. It was locked.

  ‘‘You’re dead, Blackburn. You’re fucking dead.’’

  He swung the cleaver into the passenger’s window and the glass collapsed like a wall of ice.

  The Mercedes came back down the hill. It purred around a bend, coasting toward us. Harley braked to a stop about sixty yards away. Pausing, idling, perhaps wondering what was going on. The headlights lit up. High beams, full effect, showing Kenny center stage: screaming obscenities, chopping away at the crumbled safety glass that clung to the window frame.

  Now playing: My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

  Jesse pushed his door open, shouting, ‘‘Ev, get in.’’

  Kenny cleared the glass from the frame and reached inside, fumbling for the door lock. Jesse, trying to stop him, threw the car in reverse. I ran around the front end of the car, trying to figure how to jump into a moving vehicle onto the driver’s lap while he was steering and Kenny was—