The Searcher

by Simon Toyne

  She pushed it open, stepped into the sanctuary of her home—and stopped dead when she saw what was inside.

  28

  THE RAIN DRUMMED ON THE ROOF OF THE CRUISER AS THEY PULLED AWAY from the billboard and headed back into town and Holly Coronado’s house. Morgan was driving—he had insisted, though Solomon would have been happier to walk, even with the rain. He kept the window wide open as a compromise, the rain blowing in through it as they drove along. They headed up Main Street, past the rain-glossed storefronts and all the closed stores.

  “I guess it’s going to put a big dent in your tourist income, this fire,” Solomon said.

  Morgan nodded. “Guess so.”

  “Must be a worry, town this size.”

  “Money’s always a worry, but we do okay.”

  “How?”

  Morgan sighed, as though talking was a burden. “Are you genuinely interested or just passing the time?”

  “I’m interested.”

  “Okay, so we got the airfield, that brings in more than tourist dollars, what with the storage fees we get from the military and salvage money too. We also got a number of long-standing civic trusts in place that keep things running and the bills paid. We’re all right, don’t you worry about that.”

  “I’m not worried. I don’t live here.”

  They turned off Main Street and started heading toward the piles of discarded rubble from mining. Beyond them Solomon could see the airfield, lines and lines of parked aircraft sitting wing to wing, their engines and windows wrapped in some kind of white protective covering to keep out the dust. There were hundreds of them, thousands: military, commercial, old, new, their various shapes prompting names and information to riffle through his mind as well as a question. “The plane that crashed, what kind was it?”

  “It was a Beechcraft, AT-7. You know planes, Mr. Creed?”

  He pictured a compact, single-winged plane with two big engine cowls and a wide twin-finned tail. “Advanced training version of the Model 18,” Solomon said. “Used to train navigators in World War Two.”

  Morgan smiled and shook his head. “For a man with no memory, you sure seem to know a lot of stuff.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “This model was a real beaut. Reconditioned Pratt and Whitney, brand-new hydraulic systems and electrics, the whole nine yards. Here”—he showed him a picture—“ain’t she something?”

  Solomon studied the screen. It matched the image his mind had already conjured up, but there was one crucial difference. The plane that crashed had shone. Apart from its serial number, the fuselage had been stripped of all paint or markings and polished until the aluminum shone like chrome, or . . .

  “. . . Mirrors.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It looks like it’s made of mirrors.”

  “They call it brightwork, no paint, just a real high polish on the aluminum then a clear lacquer to seal it. Cuts down on drag. Damn shame we lost it. Was looking forward to flying it myself.”

  Solomon thought back to the mirror in the church and the momentary illusion he had experienced that his reflection was not his own and the mirror was in fact a doorway with someone else standing on the other side of it. He looked at the picture of the plane, taken on a desert runway, so highly polished it reflected the land and sky.

  “Maybe that’s how I got here.”

  “You think you were on that plane now?”

  “No, I meant . . .” He shook his head, his thoughts incomplete and tricky to explain. He changed the subject. “You a pilot, Chief Morgan?”

  “Me? Oh yeah. I guess if you live by the sea, everyone’s a sailor, right? Here everyone’s a pilot. I was in the Air Reserve, 944th Fighter Wing. Ground crew. Some of the F-16s I maintained are now parked out there in the Boneyard—that’s what we call the storage part of the airfield. We get a lot of old planes coming through here. Some for repair, some for storage. Climate here is dry as it gets, means metal don’t corrode much, and the desert is caliche—you know what that is?”

  “Calcium carbonate. Like a naturally occurring cement.”

  “Exactly. Means the planes can sit right out there on the ground without the need to build concrete parking areas. We got whole squadrons of B-52s been standing out there twenty years with not so much as a crack in the ground. Damn shame. Birds like that should be in the air, not sitting on the ground gathering dust.”

  “How come they’re here?”

  “Timing, I guess. The main copper seam ran out at about the same time the Second World War was ending. The military needed somewhere to store all the war surplus and the town needed to find new jobs. It was Bill Cassidy’s idea to expand the airfield, Ernie’s—the present mayor’s—grandfather.”

  “Jack Cassidy’s son?”

  “Grandson.”

  “Quite a dynasty.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “And it’s all coming to an end.”

  Morgan turned slightly in his seat. “How do you mean?”

  “Mayor Cassidy has no children.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Morgan got quiet and Solomon stared out at the town slipping by: souvenir stores, an empty parking lot, a livery yard with blood red barns and a sign promising DESERT TREKKING AND STAGECOACH RIDES UP TO THE HISTORIC CEMETERY. There was a corral spread out back from the road, horses huddled inside it against the weather. Then the mine slipped into view, the spill piles rising up in graveled mountains behind a high fence topped with razor wire. The rain ran in fresh rivulets down their sides, thrumming on the roofs of empty-looking buildings and forming puddles around a closed gate with a sign saying DANGER. KEEP OUT. WORKING MINE.

  “I thought the mine gave out at the end of the Second World War?”

  Morgan glanced over at the sign. “It did. We opened her up again ’bout five years back. New methods of extraction.”

  “But all the buildings look deserted.”

  “Most of them are. The new operation is much less labor intensive.”

  He turned off the road and accelerated away from the mine and into a maze of neat residential streets. The farther they rose up the hill and away from the mine, the nicer the houses became, their gardens wide and deep and opening out on to the desert beyond. American flags flew on poles in front of most of them, some Arizona state flags too—thirteen rays of red and yellow radiating from a copper star with a band of blue beneath. Solomon watched them flapping wetly in the rain, his mind automatically decoding the symbolism:

  Blue the color of liberty.

  Copper for the state’s main industry.

  Thirteen original colonies of the United States.

  Red and yellow for the Spanish flag carried here by conquistadors like Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, namesake of the woman he was on his way to see.

  “This is us,” Morgan said, turning into a drive and pulling to a stop behind a small car. “Now remember, this lady just lost her husband.”

  Solomon gazed up at the perfect-looking house—white picket fence, rocker on the porch, gray-painted weatherboards. “I only want to see if she knows me,” he said, then stepped out of the car and into the rain, glad to be outside and feel the ground beneath his feet again.

  Morgan turned off the engine and followed him out, fixing his hat to protect him from the rain. “Let me go first,” he said, hurrying over to the covered porch. “She might not be in, or she might not want to—” He turned at the sound of the screen door banging open and stopped when he saw the woman step through it, dress torn, eyes blazing, shotgun in her hands pointing straight at him.

  29

  “MRS. CORONADO,” MORGAN SAID, SLOWLY RAISING BOTH HANDS IN A GESture that was part instinct and part surrender. “You need to put the gun down.” He took a careful step toward her, his eyes fixed on hers and ignoring the gun.

  “No,” she said, her voice low and hard. “You need to leave. Take one more step and I’ll shoot you for trespassing.”

  Morgan stopped.

  Solom
on could feel the anger radiating out of her, could see it shining in her like a dark light. She was all blackness and dark focus, the gun like an extension of her fury. She was beautiful. Magnificent.

  “Is this why you wanted the funeral up in the old cemetery?” she said, her words like rocks. “Invite the whole town, make a big show, get everyone out of the way, get me out of the way so you could break in . . .”

  “You’re upset,” Morgan said, raising his hands higher. “But this is not going to solve anything. This is only going to make things worse.”

  “Worse! Nothing could possibly make this worse.”

  “Mrs. Coronado. Holly.” Morgan took another step. “Let’s all calm down here. You’re not going to shoot me. That’s not going to happen, so why don’t you just—”

  The explosion punched a hole in the rain and knocked Morgan clean off his feet.

  He fell backward and hit the ground hard, yelping in shock and pain. He kicked at the wet earth, instinctively trying to flee, his bloodied hands reaching for his sidearm.

  “That was rock salt,” Holly said, racking another shell into the chamber and taking a step forward. “The next one is double-ought buckshot. If you touch that gun, I will shoot you. If you do not leave right now, I will shoot you.”

  Morgan scrambled to his feet and stumbled across the wet grass toward the cruiser. Solomon watched, his brain singing with it all. She had shot him without hesitation and there had to be a reason for that, a powerful reason. Morgan crawled into the car, keeping low, and Solomon felt the dark light shine on him now. “You’re trespassing too,” Holly said, and he turned to face the black hole of the shotgun barrel.

  Behind him the cruiser roared to life and the passenger door popped open. “Get in,” Morgan hollered.

  Solomon glanced at him through the open door, bloodied and smeared with mud, the front of his shirt peppered with white powder and small holes where the salt crystals had penetrated. He stepped forward, pushed the door shut, and turned back to Holly. “I’m not with him,” he said.

  Holly took another step forward. “You came with him, you can leave with him. And you’re still trespassing.”

  Solomon looked down at the ground, his bare feet white against the wet grass, then started walking backward, down the drive to the road.

  “What are you doing?” Morgan shouted, putting the cruiser in gear and rolling back, keeping pace with Solomon’s retreat.

  “I only want to talk,” Solomon answered, loud enough that Holly could hear. “I have something your husband may have given me but I can’t remember why. I was hoping you might be able to help.” He stopped walking when he reached the road, no longer trespassing. Behind him the cruiser jerked to a halt and the passenger door popped open again.

  “Get in the car,” Morgan hissed. “She’s not going to talk to you. She’s not rational. She just shot me, for Chrissakes.”

  Solomon studied Holly through the curtain of rain. Despite her steel he could sense a brittleness in her. She was shaking slightly, maybe because of the wet and the cold, or because the gun was heavy, or because her anger was so fierce it was difficult for her to contain it. He knew that feeling. Maybe that was why he felt drawn to her.

  “Go,” he said to Morgan. “She’s not going to talk until you’ve gone.”

  Morgan hesitated for a moment, then put the car in drive. “Well, don’t come running to me if she winds up blowing your head off.”

  The engine growled and the car squealed away, tires slipping on the wet road, leaving Solomon standing in the rain.

  The shotgun barrel followed the car until it was out of sight then drooped suddenly, as if it had become too heavy to hold, and Holly staggered forward and grabbed the handrail. Solomon was already running. He could see she was going to fall. If she tipped down the steps, she could smash her head or break her neck. He reached the porch and leaped up the steps, catching her as she started to crumple.

  “You’re okay,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “I’ve got you.” He could smell the graveyard on her, the wet dust trapped in her clothes, the metallic tang of blood on her hands and feet. He carried her over to the door, pulled the screen door open with his foot, and took her inside. Then he saw what had put the fury in her.

  30

  MORGAN TURNED THE CORNER BACK ONTO MAIN A LITTLE TOO FAST AND THE steering wheel slipped in his hands. He was trying to dial and steer and not get blood over everything all at the same time and doing a lousy job of it. The phone started ringing and he switched to hands free and dropped the phone in his lap. It rang three times before Mayor Cassidy answered.

  “She shot me.”

  “What?”

  “Holly Coronado, she shot me.”

  There was a pause and the background sounds of the control line filled the car—laughter, celebration. “Are you okay?”

  “Well, I’ve been better. It was rock salt—stings like hell, but I’ll live. Listen, Solomon Creed is still there.”

  “What? You said you were going to stay close so you could hear what he had to say.”

  “What was I supposed to do? I had a shotgun pointed at my head. He wanted to stay, I had to let him.”

  “But what if we get a call from Tío’s men? What if they want to know where he is?”

  “We know where he is. You heard anything yet?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. I’m going to call them when I get to the office, but first I’m going to call dispatch, get them to send a unit around to bring Holly into the station.”

  “You think? Shouldn’t we let it go?”

  “She shot me in front of a witness; if I don’t do anything about it, how’s that going to look? She needs to be cautioned at least. You can’t go around unloading shotgun shells into police officers with no consequences. Besides, this might work out for us. If we remove her from the house, it leaves Solomon there on his own.”

  There was a pause and Morgan could almost hear the sound of the other shoe dropping. “You think we should tell them where he is?”

  “We need to give them something, show them that we’re cooperating. The fact that we haven’t heard anything is bad. So I’m going to call them up, tell them where he is, and get my guys to clear the way for them. Then we’ll see what happens.”

  He hung up to avoid further conversation and examined his hands. When he was a kid he’d come off his bike riding down the spill piles and the sharp stones and gravel had taken the skin off his palms. That’s what they looked like now. He twisted the rearview mirror around and checked his face. A few cuts, nothing major, though he could easily have been blinded if she’d aimed higher. Goddamn that woman. He fumed all the way to the King Community Hospital, thinking about Holly and Solomon and all the things that were making this about the worst day he could ever remember.

  Not long, he told himself. Hold your nerve and stick to the plan and it will all fall into place and this will all become a memory.

  He pulled to a halt in the ambulance bay and reached over to the passenger seat for his phone. There was something lying in the foot well. He bent down to pick it up and discovered it was the cap Solomon had been wearing. He held it by the peak and turned it slowly, smiling when he spotted the single white hair trapped in the mesh at the back of the cap, almost glowing against the deep red material of the band.

  “Hello, Mr. Creed,” he said. Then he turned the cap over and folded it in on itself to seal the hair inside. “Let’s see if we can’t find out who you really are.”

  31

  MAYOR CASSIDY STOOD BENEATH THE BLACK DOME OF AN UMBRELLA AND surveyed the carnival the control line had become, everyone laughing, staring out at the scorched desert and shaking their heads in disbelief that they had, somehow, managed to face down the fire. The rain thundered down but hardly anyone took shelter from it. It was the rain that had saved them. Cassidy smiled too, but he knew this wasn’t the end of it. New danger was coming to their town and it would take more than rain to send it away. H
e checked his phone. Still nothing.

  “Mayor Cassidy?”

  The voice made him turn and something clenched inside him when he saw the athletic-looking stranger in the dark suit walking toward him under a plain black umbrella. “I’m with the National Transportation Safety Board,” he said, and produced a wallet with a federal ID inside. “I was on the road to Tucson when I heard about the crash so I thought I’d head straight here. The main unit is on its way, but they asked me to secure the site. Mind if I head out and take a peek?”

  Cassidy peered out at the steaming road. “You think it’s safe?”

  “Safe enough. The thing of it is, this rain is both an asset and a liability. It put the fire out but now it’s washing away evidence. By the time the forensics teams get here, some of it might be gone. So it would sure be a help if I could get started. Sooner we find out what happened here, the sooner we can get this road opened up for you again.”

  Cassidy looked out at the desert, the misting rain and steam drifting across the road like ghosts. “All right,” he said, “I’ll go with you, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Davidson,” Mulcahy said, and held out his hand.

  “Davidson,” Mayor Cassidy repeated, shaking his hand and looking him square in the eye like his daddy had taught him. “Welcome to Redemption, Agent Davidson.”

  32

  THE INTERIOR OF HOLLY CORONADO’S HOUSE WAS OPEN PLAN AND TASTEful and looked like the home of a young professional couple. Except someone had totally trashed it. Every drawer had been opened and the contents dumped on the floor. The couch was lying on its back, its lining slashed open and its springs exposed. Solomon levered it upright with his foot and set Holly down on it. She was blinking, her eyes struggling to focus. “I’m fine,” she said. “I just came over a little—”