“I wasn’t with anyone at the Well that night, and I certainly don’t know where Ki...where that person is.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I spent a week in the hospital, had to be in a wheel chair for a few days after that little swim, what with injuries and infections in my feet. Made me sick, all that putrid water I swallowed. There’s arsenic in it. Runoff from all the mining they did on the plateau, years back. Stuff seeped into the water table and it’s still bubbling up in that sink hole.”
Then louder, “Where is she?”
Allie was angrier after listening to his monologue. If he thought he was gaining any sympathy from her, he was mistaken. She got to her feet, went to the door and stood holding it open.
Upshall unfolded his frame from the sofa and without using his cane ambled to the door with no trace of a limp. He grabbed the edge of the door. With one pull that jerked the door knob from her hand he swung the door closed. He moved in front of it to within inches of her, staring into her face.
He had trapped her. An alchemical blend of anger and fear shot through her, a bolt of alarm that raised hairs on the back of her neck.
“All right, Mr. Upshall. Take it easy. Let’s talk about this.” It felt like she moved in slow motion when she walked back to her desk and sat down. “This is too much at the end of the day,” she said, with a companionable smile. “I need some coffee before I can do this.”
She picked up the phone, and motioned for him to return to the sofa. She breathed a silent prayer that the prearranged danger signal to her receptionist would bring help. “Wanda,” she said, after dialing the extension, “Mr. Smith and I both need a cup of coffee. Oh, how do you take yours? Black. He says black, Wanda.”
Wanda’s strident voice sounded loud enough for Upshall to hear. “Coffee? Since when am I your go-fer? I do a lot of things around here, but I don’t run and fetch.”
“Wanda!” Allie's hand clenched hard enough to gouge her palm. Damn. Doesn’t she remember that’s her signal to call nine-one-one? If I live through this, I’m going to kill her!
“Get your own coffee,” Wanda continued. “And don’t forget to turn off the machine. I’m leaving for the day, and everyone else is gone too, so you’ll have to lock up.” Then the dial tone.
Allie put the receiver back with a renewed sense of dread and turned to Upshall. She was alone in the office with this sadistic nut. No help would come so she would have to handle it.
“Wanda is feeling a little cranky today. I don’t think she’s going to bring us coffee, so I’ll just tell you straight out, and save us both a lot of time. I don’t know where Kim is. I haven’t heard from her. Why do you need to know? Are you threatening to harm her? Are you threatening me, Mr. Upshall?"
He stared, un-answering.
“You need to remember that you’re on law enforcement’s radar now. Both the Sheriff’s Department and the Cottonwood police and the Maguireville fire department, even most of the hospital staff know about you. If you even think about doing something illegal, they’ll know and you won’t get away with it. Now I’ll ask again nicely. Please leave. I’m tired and I want to go home.”
He looked at her without expression. A smothering silence filled the room for a long ten seconds. He motioned with his chin at the diplomas and license displayed behind her.
“Women like you think those papers on your wall make you something special, don’t you? Well, they’re not fit to wipe my ass on, you snotty little bitch. They’re nothing. You’re nothing! I know what those stupid sluts have been whining to you about in here but they can’t prove a word of it, and neither can you. Put that on a diploma!” He rose, grasped the cane in the middle of the shaft to hold it parallel to the floor, and walked out of the office.
Her muscles felt weak with relief but Allie managed to rise from the chair and follow to make sure he was actually leaving. She was startled to see that Upshall didn’t walk toward the reception area to exit by the front entrance. Instead, he turned the other direction, walked the short distance to the other end of the hall and let himself out the employees’ door.
The heavy door, equipped with a push-bar rather than a door knob, closed behind him and locked automatically with a reassuring thump.
Allie hurried to the door, rested her trembling hands against the metal bar and looked out the small window to see him climb into a pickup truck, where he jammed a cowboy hat on his head and started the motor.
When he pulled away, she noticed a rifle displayed in a gun rack in the rear window. Dangling from the rear bumper were two golf balls tied into a section of nylon hosiery--a facsimile of a scrotum, what Mike would call 'truck nuts.' A laugh of derision rose in her throat. Fear choked it back.
She rushed back down the hall to the front entrance to make sure the door was locked, then down the hallway of the other wing to the other employee door, which she found closed and locked. No one was in sight in that area of the rear parking lot.
Returning to her office, she reached for the phone before she realized she needed to search her file for Kim’s telephone number. Kim had completed her court-ordered counseling and Allie hadn’t seen her in weeks.
She fumbled with the paper that had the number on it and then the telephone, feeling her adrenaline rush recede. In its wake, exhaustion and feelings of defeat filled her. She should have known; she had been in denial but now she knew that Kim and maybe even Crystal had been involved in the attempt to kill Upshall.
She waited for Kim to answer her phone, wondering what she hadn’t said or done, what could she have said or done, to prevent this horrible mess?
A business-like female voice in a recorded message told her the party she was trying to reach was either out of range or not available. The receiver clattered as she all but tossed it back into the receptacle. Then she grabbed it back to call Crystal. She would know how to reach Kim to warn her.
***
On Monday morning, she almost ran into Wanda in the door way of the break room as Allie entered and Wanda left with her coffee. Wanda stopped so abruptly a few drops splashed to the floor. “Hey!” she said, with an indignant look at Allie.
“Speaking of coffee, Wanda, did you forget the safety plan? The prearranged signal that you were to call nine-one-one?”
“What safety plan? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That clinches it,” Allie told her. “I don’t like the work you’ve been doing here, Wanda, and I intend to talk to the office manager about it, today.”
Wanda jerked her head at Allie in a dismissive gesture and walked back to her desk with her coffee.
Allie left the office and drove two blocks to the police station, where she talked to a very nice, uniformed police officer about concealed weapon laws and what did and did not constitute a threat of bodily harm. She left feeling both disgruntled and reassured. Nothing Upshall had said or done was against the law. They would do a courtesy 'welfare check' on Kim and get her perception of what interest Mr. Upshall might have in her. Allie or Kim could get an order of protection or file harassment or stalking charges if he contacted them in spite of their warnings to stay away.
Chapter 11
In early morning of the same Monday Kim felt sunlight, weak as tepid water against her closed eyelids, something hard and cold on her face? She started, wary of danger, then remained motionless with eyes closed.
Awareness returned gradually. Her body prone but pain free and warm, no sound but that of her own breath and the tentative twitter of a bird. That cold thing? One of her hands resting on her cheek.
She opened one eye. She lay on her right side, her right eye and face buried in the soft folds of a sleeping bag. Her left hand lay curled against her nose, circling her left eye. She watched the morning light as it struggled to top the ridge, as if through a spy glass.
Yes, she remembered. The Black Hills above Cottonwood, the Silverbell Mine. She drew her right hand down into the warmth of the sleeping bag. It felt like a ch
unk of ice warming between her thighs. She had survived her sixth, or was it seventh night, here in the forest?
The pressure of her bladder announced its need for relief, telling her the number of days was irrelevant. She stirred and pulled her wool hat down further over her brow, but couldn’t bring herself to desert the warmth of the 'freezing-to-ten-below-zero' sleeping bag.
Six mornings ago, her brother had driven her up Highway 89 and stopped at the place where she knew a two mile hike cross-country would bring her to the mine. Her brother seemed curious but was cooperative about her latest camping jaunt, after he told her she was crazy to camp in cold weather.
Before she got out of the car with her backpack, she gave him instructions not to plan to pick her up. From here, she would go to stay with friends and she might not see him for some time. She made him promise not to tell anyone where he had left her. It was unlikely he would give away her exact camping location since he had never been to the mine and might not even know it was here.
There had been plenty of time to think in the past few days as she lay in her sleeping bag or went about the daily tasks needed for survival.
Her mind returned to the past as if on an endless loop, as if an exhaustive review of her past life would reveal the twists of fate that had brought her here, how she had become a failed murderer and now a fugitive.
She remembered Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, the red sandstone building the University called 'Old Main'. When she refused to continue modeling and chose instead to pursue an education, she graduated from high school with honors and enrolled there.
The institution had some of the best programs in the country for Forestry, Geology and other Earth Sciences. With many good choices, she still wasn’t able to settle on a major. The college social scene and by dorm life turned her off.
By her sophomore year, she lost interest and dropped out. Now she was just a woman who worked in a hardware store, a woman without a family of her own or even a boyfriend, a woman who had cast herself in the role of 'instrument of karma', on a mission to right wrongs, defeat injustices and defend the weak.
As a Supergirl, she decided, she had been a failure. Was this her karma, then, to be a fugitive from a maniac who justifiably, or at least understandably, wanted to kill her?
She thought about Allie and told herself a superhero’s cape wasn’t required wardrobe in the helping professions. Allie had helped her, and she knew that even Crystal had become calmer and more reasonable of late.
Crystal’s new antidepressant medication must be working, but Allie’s counseling had produced a larger part of the change.
For a moment she pictured herself in Allie’s office, in Allie’s chair, a counselor herself, perhaps talking with a wife whose husband had just assaulted her or with a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Could she play that role? She waited for an inner response. It was 'no.'
Her thoughts turned, inevitably, to Upshall. She had heard that he and his Z were under repair now, on the mend, so to speak. Her panicked glimpses of him in his truck a week or so ago revealed they were both tricked out for a macho, cowboy image. How stereotyped and how absurd was that? She and Upshall were locked in a cowboy-against-Indian fight to the death.
She rolled her head from side to side, then rubbed her eyes trying to brush the sleep from her face with both hands, one warm, the other cool.
If only she had found the micro memory card from his phone. Those incriminating pictures were worth a thousand words of accusation. After searching her clothing and shoes a last time, she had concluded with a now familiar sinking sensation of defeat, that she had indeed lost it.
The pressure in her bladder won against the need to stay warm. She wormed her way out of the sleeping bag and crawled from the rough lean-to, much like her ancestors’ wickiups. She had built it on a bed of pine needles in a grove just to the east of the mine entrance.
Kim had explored the Silverbell and numerous other mines in the area as a girl. She marveled at their natural mineral formations, the lichens and other microscopic growths, the insect life and swarms of bats. Those impressed her more than the detritus of human endeavor, metal rail car tracks, ladders and other implements.
At least a dozen of these abandoned mines dotted the mountains surrounding the Verde Valley. In them, dreamers and driven workers once dug for gold or silver or copper.
Some of the mines caved in or flooded with water and were now impassable. Others were deep, vertical shafts surrounded by vegetation in the otherwise natural terrain, perfect pitfalls for wildlife or the occasional human on two legs or four wheels.
The Silverbell had a more traditional, horizontal entry shaft framed by wooden beams. A dead tree with stiletto branches stood sentry beside the entrance, an open doorway to a deep unknown. Tacked to the ancient frame of silvered wood a metal sign proclaimed, 'NOTICE Entering Silverbell Mining Claims Please No Vandalism No salvaging' and attached to that a smaller sign, 'Federal Mining Claim'. Its small print, complete with legal citations and other legalese, provided evidence that typical government bureaucracy had reached the wild west many decades ago.
Hugging herself against the cold, she made her way several yards downhill to the slit trench she had dug for sanitation. She had chosen a sheltered, private spot for her toilet, even though any human eyes had to be dozens of miles away. It was in a declivity fifteen feet from a south-facing outcropping of rock that overhung the leaf and needle-covered soil.
The stone of the outcropping was an unusual red color for this terrain due to the high iron content in the soil there. Its overhang formed a shallow, cave-like hollow. When she had relieved herself and filled in the last inches of the trench, she went down on her hands and knees and began to dig another with the help of a small, folding shovel.
Moist humus and leaves flew as she dug, until a sound froze her. An unmistakable rattle. It was a sound that bypassed the frontal lobe of the human brain to target the atavistic fear center at the brain stem. It turned her spine into a rod of ice.
Without moving her head, she searched the ground. There, under the overhang, a rattle tipped tail pointed to the sky and around it, diamond shaped patterns, colors of tan and black, a few lazy, sinuous movements beneath the ground cover. Rattlesnake! Many rattlesnakes!
She had aroused them from semi-hibernation and they were resentful. They would be fatally resentful if she wasn’t careful. She dared to draw a breath. Her mind began to work again and she estimated she was not within striking range. Still unwilling to stake her life on it, she began a slow motion withdrawal, first her upper body leaning back, then a backward crawl on her knees until she was twenty feet away.
The rapid fire rattling slowed, its volume decreasing to a softer, more intermittent death knell. With her eyes glued to the spot and heart still pounding, she rose and returned to the relative safety of her camp site.
***
In the early evening of the Friday Upshall visited Allie at her office, Crystal waited until the agreed-upon time when Kim would hike to a place near enough to a tower for reception and turn on her phone. When Kim’s number showed on her caller ID., she didn’t waste time with a greeting. “Kim, he’s looking for you again! He asked Allie about you. Are you sure you’re safe there?”
“Safe, yes, but comfortable, no. My Native blood isn’t making this winter time camping any easier. How quickly we become civilized. Heck, I’ve been acculturated, assimilated, downright homogenized.”
Crystal ignored the words she didn’t understand. “You left in a hurry. I’ll bet you don’t have much to make you comfortable. Should I come and bring you something--another sleeping bag or some more food and water?”
“No. After what happened this morning, I decided to find friendlier accommodations. I have a Supai friend who’s coming on Sunday to pick me up. She'll bring me down to Havasupai to stay with her. He’ll never find me there.”
“The Grand Canyon. How cool is that? Close as we are, I’ve never been there. But w
hat happened this morning?”
Kim laughed, relief in her voice. “What happened this morning is that I disturbed a den of rattlesnakes.”
“A den? I didn’t know they lived in dens.”
“A den, a pit, a nest. Most often they're solitary, but not in winter. In summer, they hunt for shade and coolness. In winter, they come out to congregate under sunny rocks, for the warmth. I thought a spot near the abandoned mine was a perfect place to camp because if it rained or snowed I could shelter inside. I built my wickiup in a grove of pinon pines near the entrance.”
“They were in there, in the mine?”
“Not in the mine. About twenty yards away, where I started to dig my sanitation trench. That south-facing overhang in the abutment of red rocks. It's a warm, sheltered place, all the pine needles and oak leaves.”
“I know that place. You took me to the mine when we were teenagers, remember? That outcropping of red rocks is the only one around there. So your friend is coming Sunday, day after tomorrow? I don't like you being there with rattlesnakes.”
“I won't bother them and they won't bother me. But it will be nice to stay in a house down in the Canyon for a while.”
Neither spoke until Kim blurted, “You should come too, Crystal, with the kids. Down to stay with the Supai Indians. I know you couldn’t stay forever like I could if I needed to. It's just...I know you won’t feel safe for yourself or your kids, until he’s either dead or in jail.”
Crystal was silent.
Kim said, “I couldn’t find the memory card, Crystal. Maybe I should report him, just me. You wouldn’t have to be a part of it at all.”
“No. Not now anyway. Just go, Kim, be safe, enjoy the canyon and the waterfalls and everything. I’ve heard it’s beautiful down there. We’ll both think it through and figure something out.” She ended the call, “Love you, Kim.”
By late afternoon on Saturday, Crystal felt her mood lighten as she imagined Kim hiking or mule training to the bottom of the Grand Canyon tomorrow, safe at last. She spent the remainder of the weekend with her husband and children almost believing that things were normal; things were all right again.
The Well - Book One of the Arizona Thriller Trilogy Page 20
