by Julie Smith
“Who’s your friend?” said Rachel.
Sardis blushed. “He’s not too bad when you get to know him. I mean, he doesn’t spit or fart or anything. Once he even opened a door for me.”
I felt like an ass. “Sorry, Rachel. I’m just feeling kind of frustrated. My name’s Paul Mcdonald.”
“You’re kidding. Paul Mcdonald, the writer?”
Good lord! A fan. Susanna was the first one I’d ever met and now here was another. It was too good to be real.
And it wasn’t. I was busy pinching myself while Rachel had the bad manners to explain: She’d seen my story about Jacob.
I liked her anyhow. She fed Sardis and me a ranch-style breakfast of pancakes and sausage while she told us about Lindsay. It seems we’d guessed exactly right. Lindsay was using the Lazy C as a home base, but she was traveling around a lot with Terry. Terry seemed quite well and Lindsay wanted her to have a good time while she still could. So they were gone most of the time. So far they’d been to Disneyland and Yellowstone and now they were at the Grand Canyon.
Or more specifically, they were aboard a raft on the Colorado River. They’d left two weeks ago, and there was no way to get in touch with them for another week. “No way in hell,” as Rachel put it.
“You’re sure?”
“No question, honey. I know because of Terry. Lindsay was real worried she’d get sick on the river, but she decided to go ahead and take the chance.”
“How about helicopters? Maybe we could hire one to lower us down.”
“Honey, I don’t see how. I mean, if the raft’s movin’ along with the river, how’s it gon’ hold still long enough for that?”
There had to be a way. I was trying to think of it while Sardis asked Rachel if she could make a phone call and then went off to do it.
She came back looking all tense, as if a lot depended on something or other. “Rachel. What day did Lindsay and Terry actually get on the raft?”
“About a week ago, I think. They were gonna drive around and do a lot of sightseein’ the first week.”
“The raft must have left from Lee’s Ferry.”
“It was Lee’s Ferry. I remember specially because Lindsay had to look real hard to find a raftin’ company that would take a kid that young. Finally found one there.”
Sardis spoke with infinite patience. “Do you remember the day the raft trip started?”
“Well, let’s see. They left… well, it was about a week and a half ago, actually on a Monday. They had a week before the raft trip. Today’s Thursday, so that means…”
“Last Monday. Did they leave Monday?”
“I do b’lieve they did.” Rachel looked puzzled. “What difference does it make?”
Sardis’s tense face relaxed. She went positively radiant with relief. “I think we can catch them.”
She was too much, that Sardis.
“I just called the Grand Canyon Visitors’ Center. They said we can flag them down when they pass Phantom Ranch.”
“No!”
“It takes six days to get there from Lee’s Ferry, so that gives us till day after tomorrow.”
“That should be plenty of time.”
“It’s barely enough. It means we have to get there today. Because it takes a whole day to get down to the ranch.” Rachel sighed deeply. “Y’all can’t make it.”
“Why not?”
“You got to get from here to someplace with an airport— nearest place is probably San Francisco. Then you gotta fly to Flagstaff and then get from there to the place to start hikin’ in. And it’ll take you all day just to get back to San Francisco.”
Sardis smiled. “Uh-uh. I just called Crusher at Fall River Mills. He’s gassing up now.”
“What about your job?”
“I called in sick.”
“Let’s get going.”
“I’ve still got another phone call to make.” And she went off to call a neighbor to feed Spot for a few days.
Rachel took us to Fall River Mills, said, “Y’all come back,” and bumped back down the road in her pickup.
“Sardis, sugar,” I said, “why don’t y’all talk like that?”
She said, “Never use y’all in the singular.”
“Let’s go!” Crusher wasn’t only gassed up, he was revved up as well. I never saw a man so eager to leave the planet.
He looked at his watch. “Even with a gas stop we’ll make it by early afternoon.”
“To Flagstaff?”
“Hell, no. Right to the South Rim. That’s where you want to go, isn’t it?”
“Not if you have to make another unconventional landing.”
“You didn’t like that landing? Most fun I ever had.”
“It was great. I just don’t want to get in trouble with the law and end up in some Arizona jail.”
“Relax. There’s an airstrip.”
We may not have relaxed, but at least we didn’t throw up anymore. The weather was wonderful— no challenge at all for Crusher— so it was a pretty flight. And if I thought landing at dawn in a redwood forest was impressive, I was a callow pup. Redwood forests are tall and attractive, but so am I. You want to be impressed, go to the Grand Canyon. I was in the front of the plane and Sardis was sitting in the back, but that didn’t stop us from holding hands on the way down. We weren’t scared; it was just lonesome with that much beauty around.
Crusher seemed kind of depressed there was no place else to fly us to, but then he got the idea he could just take a joyride around the canyon and the state and maybe the whole Southwest, and that cheered him up. He called his office and said he’d be back next week. Then he had a hot dog and a Coke and flew off again, leaving me wishing there was something in life I loved as much as he loved flying. A woman, maybe. Maybe Sardis. But the thing was, I had lover’s block.
So it looked like I wasn’t going to be soaring off into the wild blue. I was going to have to live with a cat and pound out mysteries that didn’t sell and occasionally do a job of work to support both cat and habit.
It was a grim thought, and here I was at the Grand Canyon with a beautiful, wonderful woman. Who in the world wouldn’t envy me? So of course cooler heads prevailed and I quit thinking grim thoughts. It was just for a moment, watching Crusher fly off, that I had that funny twinge.
Then I got busy and started having a good time. But first I called Joey Bernstein. As usual, he was thrilled to hear from me:
“Mcdonald, goddammit, who authorized expenses to Lassen County?”
“Lassen County? I’m not in Lassen County.”
“Some forest ranger woke me up at six A.M. to say you were.”
Oho. So young Bill Carver wasn’t as gullible as he seemed. He’d called Joey when he stopped at the ranger station, which wasn’t a bad move at all— if we’d been the mysterious “them,” he’d have had us cold.
“Mcdonald? You there?”
“I was just trying to figure out the best way to break the news. Listen, forget about Lassen County. I don’t need expenses for that, okay? I mean, my overtime’ll probably cover it. Don’t you worry your pretty head.”
“Overtime! What the hell are you getting at, Mcdonald?”
“How do you feel about the Grand Canyon?”
“I’m gonna tell you something, Paul. This better be good. That’s all I’m gonna tell you. Now start talking.” I started talking. Joey was a convert by the time I got to the unauthorized highway landing. He was beside himself when I mentioned flagging Lindsay down on her raft. I told him Sardis had come along because no way was Lindsay going to talk to a perfect stranger, but he didn’t buy it. He just couldn’t understand why anyone in the world wouldn’t want to talk to a reporter any time of the day or night. Newspaper folks are funny that way.
Anyway, we haggled for a while and I said if he felt that way about it, I’d have to tackle Lindsay by myself. I think he was ninety percent sure I was bluffing (which I was), but he wanted the story so bad he lost his judgment and agreed to pay ex
penses for both of us.
Sardis hadn’t expected that.
“Well, as long as you came all this way, it’s the least we can do,” I said. “I mean, I want you to know I really appreciate what you’re doing.”
“But, Paul—” she looked bewildered. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Lindsay.”
Of course she was. I’d forgotten that, and that’s yet another example of how self-important a reporter on a story gets.
Next we went to work on the Lindsay-catching logistics. Here’s how it all shook down: We’d stay that night at the Grand Canyon Auto Cabins, auto or not, and the next day we’d take the mule train to Phantom Ranch.
The Bright Angel Trail is eleven miles and the Kaibab Trail is eight miles, so you can hike down— the only problem is that you have to hike up again and who needed that?
The next twenty-four hours were among the finest of my misspent life. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and feeling very close to Sardis.
We wandered around hand in hand for a little while, but we’d been up all night the night before, so pretty soon we went back to the Auto Cabins for a nap. We made love before we went to sleep and again when we woke up and yet again when we came back from dinner. There was something very relaxing about being on the rim of the deepest chasm in the world.
As I was drifting off to sleep, I thought happily that this night had certainly been different from the one before. My relationship with Sardis didn’t make me feel so pressured here; despite the seriousness of our mission, it felt rather like we were on vacation and I wished it could go on awhile. Recalling the ignominious night before, I remembered that the mind had worked about as well as the body— there had been something, something about the murders that I couldn’t get the hang of. I went back over it.
It was something trivial; something someone had said. I could hear the words, but couldn’t see that they meant anything. It was like one of those puzzles in which you have to guess what’s wrong with this picture. You stare and stare at it and it looks fine. Then, in a split second, the thing that’s wrong sticks out like it’s three-dimensional, and you can never look at the picture again without seeing it. That’s what happened that night at the Auto Cabins. I remembered the incident and it looked fine. Until suddenly I saw what was wrong with it. I went to sleep knowing who the murderer was.
If you haven’t ridden a mule to Phantom Ranch, do it. You start off very straight down a long plateau, where the rock is red and gold and very beautiful. Then you enter the eerie inner gorge and the weather changes. It’s sunless there, and surprisingly cool, with only a narrow slice of sky. For the first time, you can hear the sound of the river.
Near Phantom Ranch, though, the river is quiet, and the ranch is tucked into a valley full of cottonwoods. I think that ride might be a great opportunity for a spiritual experience if it weren’t for the pain. It’s pretty hard to leave the physical plane with your ass throbbing.
But a sore bottom is a small price to pay for the pleasure of the trip. It was easy to forget Jack and Brissette and Tillman and all the rest of the whole Koehler mess, and we did. We were happy together.
That day and the next one, when we did nothing but sit on the bank of the river, are a rosy-gold blur to me. We sat there on our damaged fannies and watched raft after raft float by, and there seemed no higher purpose mankind could serve. And then, all of a sudden, Sardis was on her feet and yelling. She was wearing shorts and I was momentarily distracted by the sight of her legs.
Then I saw Lindsay Hearne in a raft coming towards us. I got up and started yelling too. Lindsay looked panicked.
Sardis was hollering something about an emergency, and I chimed in. I felt very sorry for Lindsay. The day she’d left the Lazy C Ranch, Jack Birnbaum was dying in my living room. Even if she were still in the Chronicle circulation area the next day, his obit would have meant nothing to her. She had no way to know his death was connected with her or that he was even looking for her. By the time her lover and her former lover died, she would have been too far away for the news to reach her. One death was supposed to be an accident and one a suicide, so they wouldn’t have been news outside of San Francisco.
While Brissette and Tillman were dying, she was sightseeing with her daughter, maybe looking at oversized cacti and Indian artifacts, having a few last days of happiness before a terrible sadness would come. And now we were bringing her another sadness. Or perhaps two. If you got news of two deaths at once, was that two sadnesses or just one bad one? I mused on it a bit and forgot to yell “emergency,” but the fellow steering the raft was headed toward shore. They were going to stop.
Lindsay was newly tanned and incredibly beautiful, in that way that women are after a week in the sun. But she looked very scared.
She jumped out of the raft and embraced Sardis, holding her tight for a minute or two. Then Terry got out and kissed her auntie as well. She looked fine— like any healthy seven-year-old.
I realized I was relieved. I’d expected her, I guess, to be pinched and scrawny-looking, maybe have some hair missing.
“What’s wrong?” said Lindsay. “Is it Jacob?”
Sardis shook her head, her eyes filling with tears as she realized what she had to tell Lindsay. “No,” she said. “But it’s real bad. Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Sure.” Lindsay turned around and spoke briefly with the captain, or whatever they call raft executives. Then she spoke with one of the women on the raft. She told Terry to stay with the woman. “I have an hour,” she said to us. “Who’s this man?”
Sardis told her and we went to a quiet place on the river to talk. We started with the worst first, telling her that Brissette and Tillman were dead and letting her cry and try to absorb the shock before we went on to anything else.
Then I took over and filled in, telling her about working for Birnbaum and getting the files stolen and surviving attempts on my life and believing Brissette was killed because she called him, and Tillman for some other reason that had to do with the case.
Lindsay’s grief was at the point where misery gives way to anger. She turned red and hollered, “Jacob!” very loud, and then she hollered it some more, and I think she would have gone on, except that Sardis touched her face, very gently, with one finger. Whoever said you have to slap a hysterical person should consult Dr. Kincannon.
Anyway, Lindsay cried some more, and then she calmed down and began to tell us her story, beginning, like the good reporter she was, with first things first: “Jacob is criminally insane.”
“But is he capable of killing three men?” Sardis spoke gently. She didn’t want to believe it, I could tell.
Lindsay’s eyes filled again. She spoke with the bitterness of a woman betrayed and disillusioned and a bit at her wit’s end about the blows life was dealing her: “You know what he was doing with Terry, don’t you? If he could do that, he’s capable of anything. I found out from her that it was going on— that he was giving her these phony ‘treatments’, I mean. And then I noticed how yellow she looked. And I fell apart.
“I knew he was crazy. I guess I’d known it for a long time— probably ever since we were first married. But I couldn’t quite admit it to myself. I mean, lots of people are eccentric, aren’t they?”
“Especially scientists,” I said. “People expect them to be.”
“Exactly. So this funny quirk or that little oddity gets overlooked because the rest of us expect him to be different. And then when you get into bigger quirks and oddities, you think nothing of it. You’re used to expecting their minds to work differently from everyone else’s. You say, ‘Oh, that’s just Jacob; he’s a mad scientist.’ Only Jacob really is mad. He married me because I had the right genes.
“He used to say that, as some sort of endearment, and I thought it was cute. I thought it was his little joke. And then it turned out he wanted a perfect child and I still never quite realized he was off his rocker. He started pushing Terry, teaching her math when
she was three, and things like that, and I just let him. I thought: The man’s a genius; Terry probably is too. I liked having a precocious little daughter. But I guess it was too much for her, because we started having behavior problems with her. And I found I didn’t like being a mother and didn’t want to be one.”
She looked straight at me, not at Sardis. Sardis had long since accepted her for what she was, and now she was looking to see if I would. “It’s not that I don’t love Terry. I love her more than anything and the thought of losing her— I mean, of her dying— is more terrible than the thought of myself dying. But I had her because Jacob wanted her and I’ve since accepted the fact that I wasn’t meant to be a parent. So I got a divorce and relinquished custody.
“That means I haven’t been around Jacob very much anymore, but my guess is, it was her illness that pushed him over the edge. I mean, like they used to say, his mind snapped. Or to be more accurate, he lost his already tenuous grasp on reality. He actually thought he was curing her. Do you understand that? The Nobel Prize-winning scientist believes that he has developed a cure for Leukemia. He thinks the FDA is the only thing keeping him from marketing the thing. But the truth is, there is no thing. At least I don’t think so.”
“You mean you’re not sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. Once, when he was still pretty lucid, he told me how it was going to work. He figured it was going to take another two years to get the bugs out— before they could test it on humans. That was less than a year ago.”
“Anyway, when Terry told me about the ‘treatments,’ I confronted him. He acted as if I were out of my mind to doubt him. You know how arrogant doctors are? I mean, you know how they believe they’re God? Well, scientists, especially if they’ve had the kind of recognition Jacob has, are like doctors multiplied by twenty. So suppose a guy like that crosses just a little bit over the line— the line between reality and fantasy, I mean. Can you imagine trying to tell him what’s best for his kid?”
“Gives me goose bumps to think about it.”
Lindsay nodded. “A real blood-chiller. But, of course, there was always the chance he really was right— wasn’t crazy, I mean. That he really had discovered a cure.”
