Short Cut to Santa Fe

by Medora Sale

  She opened her eyes and focused on a man in uniform, sitting beside the bed. What in hell have I done? she wondered. And then memory flooded back in. “Sergeant Rodriguez.”

  “Got it.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re waiting for a telephone call from your friend. If she calls anyone, it’s likely to be you, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kate, aware of little beyond her throbbing head, thick tongue, and terrible thirst. She closed her eyes again, and felt hands setting an icy cold cloth on her forehead. The cold burned into her flesh, but it slowed the beat and intensity of her headache. She heard footsteps move back and forth around the room.

  “Okay, princess, sit up.” She blinked and pulled away the cloth, before struggling to a sitting position. “Eat this.”

  Sergeant Rodriguez was holding a large bowl of something hot and savoury-smelling almost under her nose. “What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Chili,” he said. “Real chili, like the kind my mother makes. Not the crap you get in the tourist restaurants. It’s soup, almost, and very hot.”

  “I can’t eat that,” she said, looking at the enormous bowl in front of her. “It would finish my stomach forever.”

  “No, it won’t. It’ll make you feel better. A lot better. Scientifically proven in cases like yours. And if you don’t take this spoon and start eating right now, I’ll feed you. Forcibly.”

  The first mouthful set her eyes watering and her nose dripping. Sergeant Rodriguez handed her a clean handkerchief. “Come on,” he said, “keep going.”

  The screech of the warning blended into the sound of the engine, distracting and infuriating Harriet. The steering wheel jumped crazily in her hands for a second, but rage steadied her nerves and nothing affected the gentle increase in speed of the wheels turning in their flapping cases of rubber. The rear wheels caught, somehow, on something and pulled back, more or less steadily; the front end bounced up out of the hole, and the edge of the precipice they were sitting on broke off and fell into the canyon. Harriet moved the van back about three feet more, and straightened it until it sat parallel to the inside edge of the road. She stopped.

  John was beside her in an instant. “Fabulous,” he said. “I knew you could do it.”

  “The hell you did,” she said, breathless with tension, and trying to smile. “Who was the bastard who yelled at me? I could have done without that.”

  “I don’t know,” said John, “except that it wasn’t me. It wasn’t the kids—they were not looking by staring into my belt buckle. I would have known if it had been one of them.”

  “Someone was trying to get rid of me,” said Harriet.

  “Or the van. Or both.”

  “Let’s get a move on,” she said. “Who are we taking?”

  “Diana Morris and Jennifer, of course. The two of us, and when I pointed out to the twins that they would be more comfortable waiting at the bus for rescue they went a bit crazy. They’re terrified of being left here—and I’m not sure why.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to be separated from the only people they know in the group,” said Harriet. “Well—they can’t weigh that much.”

  “As a percentage of the total weight of that thing, they’re a negligible factor. Shall we take them?”

  “Sure.”

  And once more John and Rick Kelleher were carrying the almost inert body of Diana Morris through the bus. It was a matter of less than a minute to stretch her out in the back of the van with a pillow behind her head and a blanket around her. Jennifer settled herself in back beside her, the twins buckled themselves into the backseat, and with an imperious gesture, Harriet waved John in and began the slow and painful business of backing her way down the hill.

  Comfort was not one of the van’s major design features, and on this track, riding on metal wheels, it was a horror. Harriet drove with her body twisted like a vine, staring through the windows in the rear doors. She concentrated on keeping the vehicle as steady as possible, trying to ignore her helpless passengers as much as she could. John craned his neck out his window, looking for a turning point. There weren’t any. It seemed incredible that they—and the bus—had driven up this narrow, treacherous road in the pitch blackness of the night before. At last he brought his head in sharply. “There’s a place. Start—turning—now.”

  And gently, very gently, she turned the vehicle in, stopped, and pulled it out onto the road facing down the hill at last. “Why don’t we stop and get out for a minute,” said Harriet. Her hands and feet were trembling with relief. “And I wouldn’t mind changing drivers for a while, if you don’t object,” she added. “This is not my idea of fun.”

  The children were out of the van before she had finished speaking, taking great gulps of air. Harriet walked around to the rear and opened the door. “How are you two doing back here?”

  Jennifer looked up at her with tears running down her cheeks. “She’s dead,” she said flatly. “There was nothing I could do.” She had pulled the blanket up over the woman’s face, and wrapped it tightly around her.

  “What? She can’t be,” said Harriet. “I can’t believe it. Are you sure? Goddammit. It really isn’t fair. You’d think someone was out to get us.” She turned to beckon urgently to John. “She’s dead,” she whispered. “After all this.”

  “On a purely practical side,” said Jennifer, much more composedly, “I think we should put her body out here by the side of the road. We can mark the place, and it can be picked up later. It will lighten the strain on the van and maybe it will get us all the way down to a major road. We don’t want to have to walk any farther than necessary, do we? We need to get the others out, too.”

  “It seems heartless—but I suppose you’re right. It won’t matter to her now, will it?” said Harriet.

  “Inspector,” said Jennifer, “if you could just take her feet, I’ll carry her head. Maybe you could go ahead and find us a flat place to lay her down on.” As she spoke, she half-stood, grasping the upper part of Diana Morris’s inert form in her thin but strong arms. John had no choice but to pick up the feet and begin to back away.

  They laid her between two pine trees, a spot distinctive enough to mark and describe. “Should we cover her with stones?” asked Harriet, who suddenly had a vision of rapacious animals coming across the body.

  Jennifer shuddered and went white. “That would take forever,” she said. “And I’m not happy about Mrs. Green’s condition. She’s not up to stresses of this kind. Maybe you could make a little cairn here at the beginning of the trees, could you? I have to duck into the bushes—I’ve been so caught up in looking after her—”

  “Go on. Duck,” said Harriet, amused at this blunt woman’s sudden embarrassment. “We’ll find some rocks.”

  As soon as she was out of sight, Harriet clamped her hand over John’s wrist. “What’s that?” she said. And clearly, from the direction of the corpse, came a scrabbling sound. “My God,” said Harriet, “it’s something after her already.”

  But when they reached the place between the two pine trees, instead of an animal, they saw a very white hand reach up from the blanket and try to pull it away from her face. “Jesus,” said John. “She’s alive. Get that thing off her face.”

  As he was speaking, the familiar initial roar of an engine surged through the silence. He ran through the trees just in time to see the van wobbling off down the road.

  Chapter 9

  Whether it was because the chili itself had magical properties, or Rodriguez’s glare had been sufficient to quell her rebellious stomach, Kate consumed it.

  “How do you feel? Better?”

  “That’s overstating it a bit,” she said. “Less awful, maybe. It would help if I had something for my headache,” she said, trying very hard to sound dignified.

  Rodriguez pulled a chair up to the bed, fl
ipped it around, and straddled it, looking intensely at her as he leaned on the back rungs. “Do you know why you get those headaches?”

  “Yes, dammit,” said Kate. She set the bowl on the bedside table to lessen the temptation to smash it over his head. “I drink too much Scotch. Does that make you happy, you puritanical prig?”

  “I’d be willing to bet it’s from these things,” he said, patting his breast pocket. “You get a hangover from the pills—or from the pills and the Scotch together—and then you take more pills to get rid of it, and on and on and on.”

  “You a doctor or something? Or just psychic?”

  “No. It happened to my cousin. She damn near died from too many painkillers and booze and went through minor hell getting off them.”

  “Define minor hell,” said Kate.

  He shrugged. “You’d have to ask her. As I remember, it amounted to two-three weeks of misery.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “For chrissake, anyone who can work in a war zone is capable of getting herself off these things. Do what my cousin did. Go for walks, do puzzles, take naps.” Rodriguez’s little pep talk was interrupted by the arrival of another car outside the motel unit. He pulled aside the curtains he had drawn while Kate was sleeping. The clear, bright light poured into the room. “Damn,” he muttered. “It looks like someone for me. Excuse me a minute.”

  “You can tell him what he can do with his new assignment,” said Rodriguez. “I’ve been off duty for hours now, if you want to get technical. If I feel like sitting in there and talking to someone—”

  “Come on, Rodriguez. Word from on high. You’re to get down to the drop-off point and coordinate the search for the two children.”

  “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You know damned well those kids never got anywhere near that road. What are they talking about?”

  “They’re talking about grieving parents who are also taxpayers, and who expect a show of doing something to find their kids, that’s what.”

  “And I’m supposed to work a double shift as a PR gesture? Who’s going to keep an eye on her?”

  “The locals are pitching in,” he replied vaguely. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m off to hunt for the kids,” said Rodriguez, looking down at Kate. He had an odd expression on his face. “Take care of yourself. Go out for dinner, and—”

  “Yeah. Eat chili and stay off the sauce. I’ll think about it.”

  It was a relief to have the motel room to herself at last, she thought, without her enormous watchdog in it, censoring every word and action. Except that it also felt very empty. Rodriguez had certainly irritated her; at the same time, he enlivened her tremendously. And made her think of something besides how sorry for herself she was. It was those eyes, she decided. Those brown and gold eyes. It was satisfactory to know that someone’s brown and gold eyes could make her feel twitches and warm burning sensations somewhere below her arm and shoulder. Oh, Kate, you are too vulnerable to be left alone in a room with a man with soulful eyes.

  Her relatively cheerful reflections were broken into by a heavy knock on the door. “Back already?” she called out, and forgetting all Rodriguez’s injunctions to be careful, yanked the door wide open.

  But no tall man in a trooper’s uniform with brown and gold eyes lounged in the doorway. It was a large, unsmiling gorilla in a chauffeur’s uniform who stood on the other side. “Ms. Kate Grosvenor?”

  Kate’s first impulse was to deny the charge, but that seemed foolish. He had obviously been told she was staying in this motel room. “I’m Ms. Grosvenor,” she said, eyeing the man suspiciously, and wondering if her temporary landlord would hear her if she screamed.

  “Mr. Carl Deever wants to see you, Miss Grosvenor,” he said abruptly. “It’s important. He said for me to tell you it was about your friend, Miss Jeffries.”

  “What about her?” asked Kate, narrowing the door opening as much as possible and backing away slightly.

  “Mr. Deever said that he has some information that you might find helpful,” he answered in a flat voice. “He didn’t say what it was, only that he wanted me to drive you to the ranch. So if you’ll just get in the car. It won’t take long.”

  Just beyond him, she could see an enormous black limousine, purring quietly in the circular drive. “Right now?” asked Kate.

  “As soon as possible. Mr. Deever’s got to get back to the city soon. He told me I was supposed to bring you back here after.” A slight smile creased his impassive countenance.

  “Just a minute,” said Kate. “I’ll get my purse.” She slammed the door shut in the chauffeur’s face and looked around her. By the time she had walked the few feet into the room, he was staring in the window that Rodriguez had left open, watching her. She grabbed the four dirty glasses from the table, holding them from the top in one hand—a hangover from waitressing in cheap and noisy restaurants when she was a student—and with the other hand swept up the stub of a pencil sitting beside the phone. She whisked them all into the bathroom, locked the door, pulled out a paper tissue, and scribbled, “4:20. A large chauffeur belonging to Carl Deever has just arrived to take me to his (Deever’s) ranch. He has news of Harriet, he says. I’m going. Kate.”

  “I may be rash,” she muttered, “but I do like to leave myself covered.” She knew about Carl Deever.

  “She’s gone,” said Harriet, rather needlessly. She had followed John back to the edge of the wooded area in time to see the van lurch and wobble its way down the mountain road. “Jennifer. Of all people.”

  “We’d better get back to Ms. Morris,” said John.

  Diana Morris lay shivering, still wrapped in her cocoon of blanket, but now with her face uncovered. Her eyelids fluttered open, she made an enormous effort to focus and then they fluttered shut again.

  “She doesn’t look very comfortable there,” said Harriet.

  “I don’t suppose she is,” said John. “I hadn’t realized before that it mattered. I just put her down where that bitch said she should go. Just a minute.” He raised up her shoulders and freed her from between the two trees. Then he picked her up gently, carried her to the edge of the woods, and laid her on a fairly level and rock-free surface. He reached down and pushed up her eyelids. “Look at that, Harriet.”

  “Look at what?” said Harriet, who was scanning the area for the children.

  “Her eyes.”

  “What about them?” Harriet yanked herself back to the scene and leaned over the unconscious woman. “I see what you mean,” she said, looking at those fixed, unchanging tiny pupils. “Drugged?” Another thought bounced into her head. “But that’s impossible. There wasn’t anything on that bus to drug someone with,” Harriet added. “That was one of the problems—she was in terrible pain. Remember?”

  “Only at the very beginning,” said John. “When did we last hear a sound out of her?”

  “Where did the drugs come from?”

  “How about our handy, well-equipped nurse, who has left us all to die of thirst and exposure in order to save her own little hide?”

  “What do we do? Is it safe to let her just sleep it off?”

  Harriet suddenly remembered old movies, where drugged heroines were walked up and down, mumbling and protesting, being fed gallons of hot coffee, until they smiled and came back to life. “Or does that mean she’s going into a coma?”

  “For chrissake, Harriet, I have no idea,” said John. “She looks pretty far under to me, but I’d hate to make a guess, even. I’m not an expert on overdoses. All they taught me was when to yell for help. What we really need is—”

  “Hot coffee,” said Harriet. “You saw the same movies I did.”

  “We don’t have any hot coffee,” said John irritably. “But weren’t the kids drinking Coke?”

  “Of course,” said Harriet. “I had some in the cooler and there was some on the b
us. I think they grabbed all they could carry.”

  “Where are they?” asked John, looking around. “Stuart? Caroline?” he called. Their names echoed across the valley and bounced back and back and back.

  “Hey,” cried a high-pitched voice from above their heads. “Up here.”

  Two heads and waving arms appeared from behind a rock far above them. “Come down,” called Harriet.

  The heads and arms disappeared. There was a considerable pause, marked by occasional thumps as bits of the landscape disintegrated, and then the children appeared around another outcrop of rock.

  “Do you have any Coke left?” asked Harriet. “Ms. Morris was given more painkillers than she was supposed to take and it’s really important to give her something to wake her up.”

  “Just a sec.” And from places on their persons, the children produced four cans. “You can have them all,” said Caroline. “There’s other stuff to drink.”

  “Where have you kids been?” asked Harriet.

  “Following the road from the rocks up there. It’s a lot harder, but not nearly as far to go. We were watching up there,” said the girl, pointing to an outcrop of rock to their left, “when Jennifer got in the van and drove away.”

  “By the time we realized what she was doing, it was too late to say anything,” said Stuart. “We would have stopped her if we could.” He slid away behind the rock again before anyone could stop him.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be all right, even without the van,” said John, as much to himself as to the others. “Once we get Ms. Morris on her feet, so to speak, we’ll be fine. Sugar and caffeine are what we need, and that’s what we’ve got.”

  “But we can’t walk her up and down the road. Not in her state,” objected Harriet.

  “No—but we can try to wake her up.”

  “Did you know,” said Stuart, who appeared again, silent and ghostlike from between two trees, “that a man has been following us?”

  “Following us? Don’t be silly. How could there be?” said Harriet. “We’re miles from anywhere. And if there were someone trying to follow us he’d have to have a car or a motorcycle—something with an engine—and we would have heard it. Have you heard anything?”