The Other Side of Silence

by Bill Pronzini

  “How much farther?”

  “Forty-five minutes. You okay?”

  “Do I look okay? It feels like we’ve been riding for hours.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “I can’t stop you.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Where? Where you found me?”

  “No, I mean Death Valley. Nearly four hundred miles from San Diego.”

  “I came from Las Vegas, not San Diego.”

  “Why were you in Vegas?”

  “Fool’s errand,” she said bitterly.

  “Is that where you got those bruises? In Vegas?”

  “. . . You really want to know?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

  For a time she was silent. Then abruptly, staring straight ahead, she said in flat tones, “A man called me a few days ago. He said his name was Banning and he knew where Court and Kevin were living, but he wanted two thousand dollars for the information. In cash, delivered to him in Las Vegas.”

  “Somebody you know, this Banning?”

  “No.”

  “But you believed him.”

  “I wanted to believe him,” Casey said. “He claimed he’d known Court years ago, mentioned the names of people I knew. He said he’d heard that the detective I’d hired had been asking questions about Court.”

  “Did he say how he’d heard?”

  “No. I know I should’ve asked him, but I didn’t.”

  “What’s the detective’s name?”

  “Sam Ulbrich. He managed to trace Court and Kevin to Las Vegas last week, but that was as far as he got.”

  “You tell him about Banning’s call?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Why not send him instead of going yourself?”

  “He stopped working for me when I couldn’t pay him anymore. I had nothing left to sell, nobody to borrow from.”

  “What about your family?”

  “I don’t have any family. Except for my son.”

  “So you couldn’t raise the money Banning demanded.”

  “Oh, I raised it. I went to Vegas with two thousand dollars in my purse.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  It was several seconds before she answered. Then, in the same flat, lifeless voice, “I stole it.”

  Fallon didn’t say anything.

  “I was desperate,” she said. “Desperate.”

  “Stole it where?”

  “From the man I work . . . worked for. From the office safe. And I drove to Vegas and gave it to Banning.”

  “And it was all just a scam,” Fallon said. “He didn’t know where to find Spicer and your son.”

  “Oh, he knew, all right. He knew because Court set the whole thing up. That was part of the message Banning delivered afterward.”

  “Afterward?”

  “After he beat me up and raped me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Your ex-husband says you’d better stop trying to find him and Kevin, otherwise there’ll be more of the same. Only next time he’ll do it himself and it won’t just be rape and a beating, he’ll kill you. End of message.”

  “You call the police?”

  “What for? Banning isn’t his real name. What could the police have done? No. No. I stayed in the motel room where it happened until I felt well enough to leave, and then I started driving. By the time the car quit on me, I was out here in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t want to go on living.”

  “You still feel that way?”

  “What do you think?”

  Fallon said, “It’s a hundred and twenty miles from Vegas to this part of Death Valley. How’d you end up where I found you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you did come here intentionally. Death Valley—dead place, place to go and die.”

  “No. I’ve never been here before. I told you, I just kept driving until the car stopped. What difference does it make, anyhow?”

  “It makes a difference. I think it does.”

  “Well, I don’t. The only thing that matters is that you found me too soon.”

  They rode in silence again until they reached the intersection with the Shoshone highway. Six miles from there to Furnace Creek Ranch.

  He said as much to Casey. “When we get there, I’ll tell the infirmary people you made the mistake of driving out into a wilderness area in the wrong kind of vehicle, and when it broke down you tried to walk out and lost your bearings. That sort of thing happens a dozen times a year in the Valley. Nobody will think anything of it.”

  She was silent.

  “After that I’ll get a cabin for you so you can rest up.”

  “Don’t you listen? I don’t have any money.”

  “I’ll pay for it. You can pay me back later.”

  “Pay you back how?”

  “Cash or check. I don’t want anything else from you, Casey.”

  “Oh, sure. That’s what you all say.”

  “I’m not other men. I’m Rick Fallon.”

  “Why should Rick Fallon care about me?”

  Good question. He kept thinking about the way he’d found her, how she’d looked lying there in the wash. And the suicide note. And everything that she’d told him. And above all the face of the boy, Kevin, smiling at him from the photograph she carried—the boy who looked like Timmy.

  But all he said was, “We can talk about that later.”

  “We’ve talked enough. I have, anyway. You know my story, so now I’m supposed to listen to yours?”

  “No.”

  “Then we don’t have anything left to talk about.”

  “I think maybe we do,” he said, and let it go at that.

  FOUR

  FURNACE CREEK RANCH WAS a sprawling tourist oasis that Fallon avoided except when he needed to buy gas and supplies. Eighteen-hole golf course, the world’s lowest at 214 feet below sea level. Two hundred and twenty-four moderately priced rooms and cabins. Restaurants, saloon and cocktail lounge, shops, a Borax museum, swimming pools fed by underground springs, tennis courts, stables, airstrip, RV and trailer parking, service station. Too crowded, too much engine hum.

  It was midafternoon when they drove past the lushly landscaped grounds of the Furnace Creek Inn, just down the road from the Ranch. The Inn catered to those who preferred luxury accommodations and meals at a four-star restaurant. He’d stayed there once with Geena, at her insistence. It had everything you could want—everything she could want, anyway. The engine sounds were more muted there, but he could still hear them, and he missed the silences and wide open freedom of the remote sections of the Valley. He’d never been back to the Inn.

  Before he delivered Casey to the infirmary on the palm-shaded Ranch grounds, he repeated the lost-by-accident story he was going to tell and warned her not to say anything to contradict him. Her response was a head bob. She seemed to have lapsed back into a brooding lassitude.

  “I’ll have to tell it to the park rangers, too,” he said. “They may or may not want to talk to you, now or later. If so, just stick to the story.”

  Another head bob.

  There were no problems at the infirmary. The woman on the desk asked for Casey’s address and medical insurance card. Casey said she didn’t know where her purse was, and Fallon said it was in the Jeep. He went out, checked her wallet and found a Kaiser card. Her driver’s license had been issued within the past year, so the address on it—716 Avila Court, San Diego—was probably current. He slipped the license out and took it and the insurance card inside, leaving the purse where it was.

  From the infirmary he made his report to the ranger on duty and went from there to the Ranch office. Even though the resort throbbed with people, there was usually space available at this time of year. Today was no exception. He used one of his credit cards to secure a cabin for two nights in the name of C. Dunbar.

  At the cabin, he brought her luggage and purse inside and laid them on the bed.
Neither bag was locked. With the door shut, he went through them. Nothing but cosmetics and personal hygiene stuff in the overnight bag; no drugs other than a prescription vial of Ambien sleeping tablets. The suitcase contained a skirt, a pair of slacks, a couple of light-colored blouses, a thin poplin jacket, underwear. And wadded up inside one of the liner pockets, a pair of torn cotton panties and a third blouse, white, also torn, and spotted with streaks of dried blood.

  He closed both cases and checked the purse again. The name and address on the Toyota’s registration was the same as the one on her driver’s license. He put that aside and removed the other items one by one. Wallet. Coin purse. Leatherette business-card case. Cell phone. Lipstick, compact, nail clippers, tissues. The last item was a small, round chunk of plaster of paris with the words “For Mom, Love Kevin” etched into it—the kind of thing grade-school kids make and loving parents cherish. Timmy had made something like it for Geena. And for him, a crude wood-modeled keychain that he still carried in his pocket.

  He still had Casey’s license and insurance card; he returned them to the wallet, then opened the leatherette case. A dozen or so glossy business cards, all done in red and black embossed lettering, all the same: Vernon Young Realty, 14150 Las Palomas Avenue, San Diego. Casey Dunbar, Sales Representative.

  The cell phone was charged and working; you could almost always get a satellite signal in this part of the Valley. He opened the cell’s address book. Around a dozen entries, listed by first name or initial or type of business or institution such as “School”; most had telephone numbers only. The few addresses were all in San Diego and environs. The final entry was “S. Ulbrich,” with a phone number but no address. He wrote the number down on a sheet of paper from the writing desk.

  The wallet next. Other than the one credit card, probably maxed out, and the twelve dollars in cash, there was nothing but the driver’s license, medical card, and snapshots of her son. He looked at the snaps again—six of them, ranging from when Kevin was a baby to his present age. The physical resemblance to Timmy was not that strong, really, and yet the boy’s image brought memories flooding back. Fallon resisted an urge to take Timmy’s photo from his own wallet and compare the two side by side. He closed Casey’s wallet and returned it and the rest of the items to her purse.

  All right.

  Outside he retrieved his cell phone from his pack, took it back into the cabin. The digital clock on the nightstand gave the time as 4:30. Will Rodriguez should still be at Unidyne. He put in a call, waited through a five-minute hold before Will’s voice said, “Hey, amigo. I thought you were going packing in Death Valley.”

  “That’s where I am.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “More or less. Listen, Will, are you busy right now?”

  “No more than usual. Why?”

  “I stumbled into a situation here and I need a favor.”

  “You got it. What kind of situation?”

  “It involves a woman—”

  “Ah.”

  “No, nothing like that,” Fallon said. “She’s in trouble. I need some information on how bad it is.”

  “Felony kind?”

  “Yes. But I think it might be fixable.”

  “By you?”

  “Depends. Maybe.”

  “Careful, man. You’re pretty vulnerable right now.”

  “So is she.”

  “. . . Okay. What can I do?”

  “Make a couple of phone calls, do an Internet check. You still know people in law enforcement, right?”

  “Some. I’ve been off the job for years, you know that.”

  “This shouldn’t take much effort. The only serious crime involved seems to be parental abduction—not by the woman, by her ex-husband. She apparently had custody of the child.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Casey Dunbar. Seven-sixteen Avila Court, San Diego. Ex-husband is Court Spicer, the kid is Kevin Spicer, age eight and a half. Abduction happened four months ago. She hired a San Diego private detective named Sam Ulbrich and he traced Spicer and the boy to Las Vegas. I’m wondering how reputable he is.”

  “How do you spell Ulbrich?”

  Fallon said, “U-l-b-r-i-c-h,” and read off the phone number he’d found in Casey’s address book. “One more thing. She did something stupid when she ran out of money. Stole some cash from the real estate outfit where she works to pay off a guy in Vegas who claimed to know where Spicer and the boy were living.”

  “How much cash?”

  “She says two thousand dollars. The company is Vernon Young Realty, 14150 Las Palomas, San Diego.”

  “And you want to know if theft charges were filed. And if the amount is more than two thousand.”

  “If she’s been straight with me or not. Right.”

  Will said, “Pretty late in the day. I may not be able to get back to you until tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s soon enough. Call me on my cell. And thanks, Will.”

  “Por nada. Just remember what I said about being careful. Don’t get yourself mixed up in something you’ll live to regret.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  Fallon locked the cabin and drove to the service station, where he reported the location of the Camry and arranged for it to be towed to the Ranch. Then he returned to the infirmary.

  The nurse told him Casey was resting, that her burns were relatively minor and her condition not critical. “You did a very good job of hydrating her and tending to her injuries, Mr. Fallon.”

  “Has she said anything about what happened?”

  “No. She didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “About the other injuries? The older ones?”

  The nurse’s lips pursed. “She said she was in an accident, but it looks to me like she was abused. Do you know anything about that?”

  “No. The first time I ever laid eyes on her was in that wash. How long before she’s well enough to travel?”

  “A day or two, barring infection.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “If she’s awake. We gave her a mild sedative.”

  Casey was asleep. The nurse suggested he come back in two hours; Fallon said he would, and went from there to the saloon. He was tired enough and thirsty enough to crave a cold beer. He sat in a corner with the pint of draft ale, as far from the other customers as he could get, and tuned out bar voices and a TV news broadcast. The same thoughts he’d had on the way in still crowded his mind.

  Careful, Rick. You’re pretty vulnerable right now. Don’t get yourself mixed up in something you’ll live to regret.

  Good advice, but he had the feeling he was already mixed up in it, already committed. Careful, yes; that was why he’d gone through her things, called Will. But unless it turned out that she’d lied to him about the kidnapping and the stolen money, he couldn’t walk away as if he’d never found her. Kevin and the resemblance to Timmy, the abuse she’d suffered, the possibility that she might try to kill herself again . . . they were part of the reason. But there was more, too. He couldn’t quite explain it yet, needed to think about it. Not here, though. Someplace where the engines were still and there were no distractions.

  The beer made him realize he was hungry. There was a restaurant next to the saloon; he dawdled over a steak sandwich and another draft. Will still hadn’t called back by the time he was done. Probably wouldn’t until morning.

  The two hours were up; he returned to the infirmary. Casey was awake, the nurse told him. He found her groggy but lucid, small and vulnerable on the bed like a wounded child. When he was alone with her he said, “I’ve got a cabin ready for you. The nurse says I can take you there if you feel up to it. It’s just a short ride.”

  “All right.”

  “We can get you a wheelchair if you need it.”

  “No. If I can stand up, I can walk.”

  He waited five minutes in the anteroom. She came out under her own power, walking slow and stiff but steadily enough. She wouldn’t let him
help her outside or into the Jeep.

  On the way across the grounds he said, “A tow truck will pick up your car tomorrow morning and bring it back here. The mechanics ought to be able to get it running again.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  At the cottage she again refused his help, walked inside on her own. When she saw her luggage and purse on the single bed, she gave him a quick sidelong look.

  He said, “Don’t worry, I won’t be staying here. The cabin’s all yours.”

  “You paid for another cabin?”

  “No. I prefer sleeping outdoors.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed. “I can’t figure you out.”

  “Sometimes I can’t figure myself out,” he said. “I’ll come by in the morning, sometime after nine, and we’ll talk. You’ll still be here?”

  “Where am I going to go? I can’t pay for the car repairs, either.”

  FIVE

  FALLON SPENT THE NIGHT packed in near Skidoo, the remains of an old mining camp above Emigrant Canyon. Alone in the stillness, he felt the tensions of the long day evaporate, his thought processes sharpen until they were as clear as the crystalline night sky. He knew then the other part of the reason why he was letting himself become involved in Casey Dunbar’s troubles.

  The Valley, and his symbiotic relationship to it. As if it was somehow responsible for bringing the two of them together.

  He could have gone anywhere within three thousand square miles today, and yet he’d chosen, or been directed to, the exact spot where the Toyota had quit running two days ago. He could have easily missed finding her in the wash, but he hadn’t. She could have been dead by then, but she wasn’t. If you looked at it that way, the Valley was just as responsible for saving her life as he was.