by Simon Toyne
And they came to the place which
God had told him of; and Abraham
built an altar there . . .
and bound Isaac his son, and
laid him on the altar upon the wood.
And Abraham stretched forth his
Hand, and took the knife to slay his
Son.
I stared at Eldridge, so close to death already that I knew I would kill him by not sharing my few remaining mouthfuls of water. What difference would it make if I used a swifter weapon?
Without a second thought I rose and walked back to the jumbled pile of my possessions and retrieved my large gold pan. Then I went over to where Eldridge lay in the shade, took him under the arms, and dragged him to where the pale Christ on the cross was propped against a tree. I took my knife from my belt and, before I could dwell on it more, I cut his throat in front of that makeshift altar.
He was too weak to fight, or perhaps just ready and willing to die. He lay perfectly still as the life pumped out of him and into the gold pan I had laid beneath his neck. And when he was dead, and the pan near full of his blood, I led my mule over and let him drink of it. So thirsty was the poor animal and so starved of nutrition that it drank the blood without hesitation, as if it was the purest spring water fresh from the ground.
And so did I, God help me, so did I.
There is no describing a true thirst to someone who has never known one. It is a demon that grips your body and soul until you can think of nothing else and would drink anything, anything at all, to be rid of it. I have heard stories of castaways, sailors driven mad by drinking seawater because there was nothing else to drink and, though they knew it would drive them to madness, they drank anyway. Thus I gorged on the warm blood, praying to God and offering Him this blood sacrifice like the prophets of old, one man’s life to save another, one man’s life to save many, and I asked Him to grant strength to my animal so it might carry me safe and spare my miserable life. I thought of the Catholic sacrament and how worshippers of that Church drank the blood of Christ and I closed my eyes and imagined that I was drinking the blood of the Savior as they did. And indeed it did prove to be my savior, for I would surely have perished there had I not been quenched by the warm spring of that man’s life.
Afterward I sat across from Eldridge in the shade of my strange chapel, the pale Christ at one end, the open Bible beside me. And when I set out at dusk, it is true I saw a light burning in the desert to the south and followed it to the spot where water and riches bubbled from the ground, but there is more to it than I recorded in my published memoir. Much more.
I followed the shining light as darkness fell around me, the beam from it casting stark shadows across the undulating landscape like a fixed lighthouse on a frozen sea. It was shining straight at me and no matter where I moved it always seemed to follow.
It was full night now and the light so bright within it that it outshone the stars. I could hardly look at it direct and had to tilt my head down so the brim of my hat shaded my eyes and follow instead the pathway of light laid out upon the ground. I glanced up from time to time to see if I was getting closer, but it was impossible to tell. Then, three hours or so into my trek, when I was beginning to doubt my own sanity, my mule suddenly stopped and I looked up and finally saw where the light was coming from, or more precisely—what.
At first I thought it was a doorway cut into the fabric of night leading to some dazzling, sunlit world beyond. But as my eyes adjusted a little I saw it was not a door at all but a mirror, long and narrow and set on a floor stand. There was something so out of place about finding such an object way out in the middle of this wild and savage country that for a moment this seemed more remarkable to me than the sunlight shining out of it. There was a small dark patch in the center where my own reflection stood. I dropped the reins and took a step toward the mirror, moving to the side a little and watching the dark shape of my reflection move too and the bright, reflected land shift behind it. It appeared to be the same desert I was standing in, same rolling landscape and distant mountains, though the season seemed different there. There was more green and flashes of bright color—reds, purples, and yellow—where green shrub and grass and cactus flowers bloomed. Nothing thrived in the desert where I stood, only death. The sky in the mirror was different too: storm clouds boiled gray and heavy with rain at the distant mountain peaks, explaining the strong smell of creosote bush that flowed from the mirror, mingling with the fresh smell of the flowers. Creosote was the smell of the wet desert. Somewhere in the mirror land it was raining.
I continued walking in a slow circle all around the mirror, like an amazed spectator at a conjurer’s show, invited onstage to prove there was nothing behind the magic cabinet. The mirror itself was plain, a simple wooden frame with no carving or other ornamentation.
I moved around to the front again and saw that the reflected view now showed a new part of the desert. The mountains were gone and in their place I could see the prairie running all the way to the horizon. The mirror land was so hot there were whole lakes of rippling heat haze upon it and in the near foreground sat a large boulder. I had seen its twin as I had approached with my mule, but the boulder in the mirror was different. It had been split clean in two and where the two halves fell away from each other, spring water bubbled from the ground, sparkling in the sunlight and forming a crystal pool around the broken rocks.
The sight of it made me gasp and I took a step forward, forgetting that what I was seeing was only a reflection. I hit the mirror hard, banging my forehead against the cold glass and stumbling backward and onto the ground. I looked back up and gasped again. For though I was sprawled on the floor, my reflection was still standing and I realized with dread and amazement that the person in the mirror was not me.
63
SOLOMON PICKED HIS WAY CAREFULLY ACROSS LAND THAT SHIFTED AND crept and fell away beneath him. The lower slopes were made from centuries of gravel and earth that had been chipped off by the weather and washed down from the higher mountains. Plants and grasses had taken dominion here, their prodigious, drought-hardy roots spreading wide and binding the earth together, though a horse and a man riding over it still showed how fragile it was. There were no other hoofprints on the land he was crossing, and anyone following him would have to do so carefully and steadily or risk losing their footing and tumbling a long way down to the lower slopes. Even so, he checked behind him regularly. He had promised Holly he would meet her at the spot where her husband had died and he did not want carelessness to break it.
He made it to the road just as the sun dropped level with the top of the mountains and stayed parallel to the road, walking the horse through gullies and rain-swelled streams. The land continued to rise and the ground became rockier with towering shards of stone pushing through it in places to create forests of craggy boulders. After ten minutes’ walking he saw another slab of rock up on the road, a white monolith with an eagle carved on the surface above the words HISTORIC WAGON ROUTE.
He risked the road again, stopping by the stone marker and checking the way ahead. A hundred yards ahead of him the road curved away and disappeared behind a bluff of red rock. Beyond that was a stunning view of the valley below, with a jagged range of mountains in the distance that seemed familiar. He made his way toward it, listening out for cars, and spotted oil patches on the bend, smeared across the surface.
He reached the curve, dropped down from his horse, and led it off the road by the rope halter. He tied it to a mesquite shrub then turned and studied the road, dropping his head a little to put himself at roughly the same eye line as the driver of a car.
The surface was in a good state, no potholes, no dents showing evidence of fallen rocks that might have caused a driver at night to swerve instinctively after catching the flash of it in their headlights. There wasn’t even a crash barrier in place where the outer curve of the road met the verge, nothing to suggest any danger here, and yet this was where James Coronado had left t
he road and died.
He stood up and looked back down the road. A car was approaching, the rattle of its engine chugging steadily up the hill. It was still some way off, so he turned his attention back to the road. He stepped out into the center, reading the story of what had happened here—the arcing brushstrokes of rubber following the gentle curve of the road, the broken edge of rock standing out against the smoother edges on either side. Something heavy had gone over the edge here, breaking off the lip as it fell. Small drifts of sharp-edged rocks and rubble showed where the same object had been hauled back up again and more oil had soaked into the dirt beside pressure marks showing where the lifting gear had parked to pull the car up out of the gully.
Solomon moved over to the edge and peered down, letting his eyes adjust to the deepening shadows. There was lots of growth at the bottom of the gully, creosote, spiked crowns of agave, tufts of hop seed spreading in thick patches across the ground, their roots clinging to the nutrient-enriched dirt that had collected in the dip. Some had been flattened, crushed by the weight of the car. A couple of saguaro grew here too, tall enough so that the ribbed domes of their tops were visible from the road. A third one lay on its side, smashed and broken, struck by the car on its way down.
The sound of the approaching car was louder now, the engine note deep and laboring. He turned and saw the station wagon struggle around the distant corner with Holly at the wheel. He held his hand up in greeting and her face lightened when she saw him. She rattled closer then pulled over onto the verge short of where he was standing, turned off the engine, and got out.
The sounds of evening were creeping in now and the light was starting to soften. She joined him at the road’s edge and looked down into the gully. Solomon saw everything through her eyes now: the smashed cactus, the flattened bushes, the gouged earth and scarred rocks where the car had been dragged back onto the road. It spoke of the violence that had happened here.
“It’s strange,” she said. “I avoided coming here because I thought it would be too painful. But now that I’m here, I don’t feel anything at all.”
“Who first told you about the accident?”
“Mayor Cassidy.”
“Not Morgan?”
“No. I think the mayor heard about it and wanted to tell me himself. That’s when he told me they would bury Jim in the old cemetery, like that meant anything. Who cares where someone is buried when they should still be walking around?”
“Did he tell you what happened here, specifically?”
“Only that Jim apparently lost control, left the road, and died of a head injury.”
“He didn’t elaborate on the nature of those injuries?”
“No, but you can see for yourself.” She pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to him. “You asked me earlier about the coroner’s report, so I got a copy.”
Solomon smiled and took the envelope. “Very smart,” he said, removing the report from inside. He devoured the contents, his mind flashing with information as it processed the dense, technical detail. “Interesting,” he said, looking back down into the gully, matching what he had just read with what he was seeing. He frowned and tilted his head to one side, studying the damage and picturing what had caused it.
“What?”
“This report says your husband died of a cerebral edema caused by a major trauma to the right temporal bone. The temporal bone is here—” He pointed to a spot above and in front of his right ear. “That’s not where you generally get injured in a car crash. Usually the frontal bone hits the windshield or the steering wheel. He could have slid off the road sideways, of course, lost control then banged the side of his head as he hit the bottom of the gully, but then where are the tire marks? A slide like that would leave rubber on the road, and he would need to have been traveling at a fair speed in order for the impact to break his skull as comprehensively as this report suggests, but when his car left the road he was only traveling at around ten to fifteen miles an hour.”
“How do you know that?”
Solomon pointed at the smashed cactus. “Look at the saguaro. You see where the impact was? It’s in the middle section; the top is relatively unscathed, only a few splits and dents from where it hit the ground. A car traveling at any speed would have taken the top off it and hit the bank over there somewhere.” He pointed to a clump of untouched sagebrush on the far side of the gully. “And look at the roots.” His arm swung down to a large hemisphere of knotted ropes that had been partially lifted from the ground. “It was growing only about six or seven feet away from the edge, so the fact that the car hit the midsection suggests it must have almost fallen off the road. I’m going down to take a closer look.”
He followed the faint tracks left by work boots along the verge, then dropped down the slope and slipped his way to the bottom. There were deep gouges in the gully wall where the car had been dragged back up to the road, and splintered branches and twigs showing where the car had come to rest at the bottom. Solomon dug the toe of his boot into the ground. It was soft and loose, not compacted and baked hard like most of the desert. The bushes were soft too, and the saguaro would have slowed the car further as it fell.
Slow speed. Soft landing.
He scanned the quiet gully, half in shade, half in evening sunlight. “Your husband did not die here,” he called up to Holly. “Not from the car crash, at least. Everything here’s so soft he might as well have landed on an airbag. I’m coming up.”
Holly was smoldering mad by the time he made it back to the road. She was staring down into the gully, her jaw set tight. “I should have shot Morgan with buckshot instead of salt,” she said.
Solomon smiled. “There are better ways to get even than with a blast from a shotgun.”
She shook her head. “Not many.”
He moved over to his horse, untied him, then led him back to the road. “Ever wonder what your husband was doing here on the night he died?”
Holly looked around at the lonely stretch of road, then out to the view of the darkening valley. “Not really. He used to take off sometimes to clear his head. Some guys fish, others hunt, some go bowling. Jim liked to drive. I guess that night he just ended up here.”
Solomon followed her gaze out to the distant mountain range. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think he was here for a reason. What’s farther up this road?”
“There’s a viewing platform a mile or so on where you can see down the whole valley, then more road and mountain passes until you hit Douglas.”
“What about a campsite?”
Holly frowned. “Actually there is one. It’s not permanent, there are no facilities or anything.”
“Is it easy to find?”
“Should be a sign on the road for it somewhere.”
Solomon hopped up onto the back of the horse and settled. “Then that’s what your husband was doing on this road.” He dug his heels into the stallion’s flanks to get it moving. “Come on,” he said. “Light’s fading. I’ll meet you there.”
64
MAYOR CASSIDY WAS SITTING IN HIS OFFICE, STARING OUT OF THE WINDOW at the evening light when the first armored personnel carrier rumbled into the square.
Since hearing of Pete Tucker’s murder he had been facing up to the very real chance that he might not make it through the coming night. As a result, the world shone now with a different light. Everything he did carried extra meaning as he considered that it might be for the last time: the last time he would drink a cup of coffee, the last time he would see a sunset, or watch the evening light darken on the slopes of the mountains, or catch the movement of it in the jacaranda leaves.
The truck pulled to a halt in front of the church and men emerged from the back wearing uniforms the same blue-black color as the vehicle. They were carrying guns and wearing helmets and dark visors. Some wore full-face combat masks that made them seem sinister and not altogether human. A tall man got out of the front passenger seat and looked over at the house.
&nb
sp; “Thank God,” Cassidy whispered, rising from his chair and checking his phone for messages. Where the hell was Morgan?
He hurried down the front steps and across the grass toward the church as a second vehicle pulled up and more men got out. In the quiet of his study, he had been imagining the night ahead like some old-style western, the town defended solely by a few lawmen and some plucky civilians with shotguns and rifles against hordes of professional killers. There had to be twenty or thirty men here, trained men with modern weapons. This was more like it.
“Ernie Cassidy,” he said, extending his hand over the top of the wall to the tall man who had the air of command about him. “I’m the mayor here, and boy, are you ever a welcome sight.”
“Andrews,” the man said, crushing his hand in a reassuringly solid handshake. “Any idea where I might find Chief Morgan?”
“I’m sure I can rustle him up for you. I presume he’s apprised you of the situation here?”
“He has. Don’t worry, sir. We got this.”
Cassidy glanced past his shoulder at one of the masked soldiers standing guard behind him. “How are you going to . . . I mean, what’s your plan here?”
“The fewer people know that, sir, the better our chance of success.”
“Of course, I understand. Only, there are people here. Shouldn’t we warn them? Get them to stay indoors at least? Evacuate?”
“We do that, we risk scaring off the target. If we don’t get him now, he’ll only hit you again later. We can’t guard the town forever. We took a risk coming in heavy-handed like this, but we understood the need to secure the town. We took the decals off the trucks and the uniforms, so if anyone asks, you can say we’re here because of the plane crash.”
“I understand,” Cassidy nodded. “Just make sure you get him.”
“Oh, we intend to, sir. Make no mistake about that.”
The county coroner’s car crunched to a halt beside them and Morgan got out.
“Captain Andrews?” he said, moving toward the commander and shaking his hand. “Chief Morgan. Thanks for getting here so fast. What do you need from me?”
