by RJ Johnson
“No, sir,” the nervous curly-haired man said. “We were walking back after we reported our truck stolen, and found this Jeep right here in the middle of the desert, and…” he trailed off as he watched Geoffrey look closer at the vehicle, uncertain if he was even listening.
“Did you find any keys, on the tires, or underneath a rock nearby perhaps?” Geoffrey asked impatiently.
“Ah, no, sir.” The curly-haired man took off his ball cap and wiped his brow. Despite being it being quite cold in the desert during the night, the bald man still had a way of making him sweat. “Like I said, we were just walking back to camp, found this, and figured we should call it in.”
“We heard over the radio we should be looking for abandoned vehicles,” the second man added in an attempt to be helpful.
Geoffrey nodded absently, ignoring the two men, as he began to examine the interior of the Jeep. He was determined to find something, anything he could use to give him something on the man who had given them so much trouble. Failure was not something Geoffrey was comfortable with.
On his thirteenth birthday, Geoffrey’s father had rewarded him with the first weapon he had ever clutched – an incredibly fine hunting rifle. The next weekend, Geoffrey found himself on a trip with his father, deep in the woods, stalking a four-point buck in the wilds of Wyoming.
Unfortunately, with the inexperience of youth and unfamiliarity with his new weapon, the first shot he ever took at another living creature missed any vital organs, tearing instead through the buck’s shoulder. Wounded, the deer escaped, and Geoffrey was unable to get a second shot off in time. Disappointed in his son, Geoffrey’s father told him that, while hunting, such things were bound to happen. Perhaps next year, the boy would be more accurate.
Filled with anger and disgust at the failure to kill his prey, Geoffrey slipped away from the camp long after his father had fallen asleep, intent on tracking and killing the wounded animal.
The teenage Geoffrey Tate spent nearly two days living in the woods alone and stalking his wounded prey. Late in the second evening, he found the wounded buck watering itself on a small mountain stream. The buck looked up at Geoffrey before the boy shot the animal in the neck, the first of many kills to come in Geoffrey’s young and violent life.
Geoffrey returned to the present as he looked around the truck for anything that might indicate a trap of some sort. He had underestimated the young man once before. There would not be a second occasion.
He began to realize he needed to shift his thinking and hunt the man from the desert in the same way he had hunted that wounded buck from long ago. He was sure the young man was unlikely to return to his Jeep; it was too exposed, and too likely to have been found by now. The first lesson his father had taught him was never to underestimate his opponents.
The corollary to that, and second lesson his father had taught him, was that indeed, sometimes, your prey was indeed just that dumb.
Finding no obvious traps around the abandoned vehicle, Geoffrey approached the passenger-side window, peering carefully into the cabin.
Shining his flashlight into the Jeep, Geoffrey spotted several odds and ends that usually accompanied long road trips. Empty water and soda bottles, discarded food containers, and camping supplies were conspicuously present in the rear.
Geoffrey backed his face away from the window and raised the butt of his nine millimeter. He swung his fist swiftly, bringing the butt of his pistol down on the tinted glass window. The glass shattered, falling all across the seat and floor.
Geoffrey used his pistol’s barrel to brush the glass that did not immediately break away from the window into the cabin. He reached in and opened the glove box, searching for the car’s registration papers.
Riffling through the glove box, Geoffrey didn’t find much of interest at first. There were a few receipts from gas stations in Los Angeles, and one dated last night from a gas station only a few miles away.
Geoffrey grunted in satisfaction at this revelation. The search area for this man just shrunk down quite a bit. It was likely that the man and his father lived fairly close. Geoffrey dug deeper through the glove box, hoping to find the registration card which would reveal the man’s address. After a few minutes of searching, he scored.
“Mr. Ted McCray of 473 Oak Avenue, Onyx, CA...” he said in an even tone. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Geoffrey walked away from the car and opened his satellite phone, dialing Kline. After only one ring, the voice on the other side picked up. He sounded annoyed, if not expectant.
“Yes?”
“I found the pair’s Jeep. The registration says the owner lives up in the Onyx. I’ll need one of the choppers if I have any hope of catching him before he gets to someone who will believe him.” Geoffrey paused as he weighed his next request. These were serious times, and it required some serious firepower, more than any poorly trained local might provide.
“I’d like to meet our pro team in San Bernardino and go up together.”
Kline didn’t hesitate. “Whatever resources you require will be made available to you.”
“Thank you, sir. I believe it’s likely that he’ll retreat to familiar ground before he’ll attempt to go to the police again.”
On the other end of the line, Kline rubbed his hands together as Geoffrey reported to him. The night was beginning to look up.
“Mr. Tate, I cannot stress the importance of you tying up this loose end.”
“Understood, sir.” Geoffrey closed his cell phone as his coat began whipping around in the wind created by the approaching helicopter.
“That was fast…” Geoffrey muttered to himself. He was used to Kline anticipating his every need. Still didn’t make the timing any less weird.
He turned to one of the men standing next to him, who were gawking at the helicopter coming in for a landing. Handing him the tiny memory card from his PDA with the Sheriff’s station video on it, he shouted over the din of the helicopter’s approach. “Take this to Kline. Show him the video on the card. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded. Geoffrey turned and climbed into the helicopter, twirling his fingers to let the pilot know to get going. The pilot nodded and yanked the collective up, causing the helicopter’s engines to strain as the bird began to rise rapidly off the desert floor. Geoffrey glanced at the activity underway at the bottom of the mesa where all the drilling equipment had been set up.
The mesa wall was brightly lit, with high powered lamps illuminating the workers’ tasks. The heavy earth-moving equipment, now in place, had begun drilling into the ancient rock wall that thousands of climbers from around the world had once enjoyed.
Mighty dump trucks, some nearly two stories high, began marching their way back and forth, moving tons of rock and rubble. The enormous drilling machine now moving into the mountain spat out more and more rubble for the trucks to move. Under the glare of the spotlights, bright enough to turn the night into noontime, Kline’s operation began carving its way into the heart of the mountain.
The amount of money Rupert Kline was throwing at this operation might have operated a small country for a year. In the time he’d worked for Kline, Geoffrey had learned that if his boss wanted something badly enough, he got it. Geoffrey was only there to make sure his operation went as smoothly as possible. If it did not, Geoffrey Tate would likely be the first to taste Kline’s rage, and that he knew to avoid at all costs.
Chapter Fourteen
Scott led Alex into his apartment. It was strange; for a man thirty-two years of age, he still lived like a nineteen year old college freshman. Several neon signs lit a pool table with their blue, red and green glow in a room obviously designed for dining. A Kegerator in the living room sat next to an enormous overstuffed chair ottoman, which faced an obscenely large 52” LED TV.
“Going for the understated look, are we?” Alex asked, bemused at his friend’s decorating taste.
“I’ll admit that the place lacks a certain…” Scott paused,
struggling for the right word, “woman’s touch…but it’s totally worth it, ‘cause I can watch the Criterion edition of Terminator V in 12.1 surround sound anytime I want, and no one’s around to tell me to turn it down. Plus, I can have all the quality time I want with my Playstation. Chicks love the place, ‘cause they all think they can change me.” Scott smiled, showing off for his friend. “It’s a catch-and-release sorta operation around here, you know?” Scott jabbed his elbow into his friend’s ribs, grinning broadly.
“Truth game! Last time you got laid.” Alex challenged Scott, looking him in the eye. The truth game was a series of challenges raised between the two. The penalty for answering with anything other than the God's honest truth was a Charlie horse, Indian burn or any other normal childhood torture device available to older brothers.
Scott swallowed, “That’s not really the point I was trying to make…”
“No, no, I totally get it; you’d rather eat cereal for dinner than have a decent, loving relationship. Good call on that.” Alex smiled, jabbing his friend back with his elbow.
While the banter between them had done some good in easing Alex’s nerves, Scott looked at his friend’s shirt and cried out in horror, making Alex jump.
“Dude! You’re bleeding!” Scott cried out.
Alex looked down. He wasn’t really injured. The stone had taken care of that. The bullets from the station gunfight had torn several holes into his shirt, and the blood had leaked all over his shirt before the wounds had healed “I’m fine. I’m not bleeding, but I could use a new shirt, if you’ve got one handy.”
Scott nodded, and quickly retreated to his bedroom, grabbing a shirt. Alex clutched the clothing, not putting it on just yet; he needed to tell Scott what happened.
“How about that drink?” Scott asked, brandishing a bottle of amber liquid. “You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell,” Alex admitted as he set the Pearl Jam t-shirt next to him on the couch.
Scott came back over to Alex, handing him his drink. Taking a sip of his own, Scott paused before looking Alex in the eye and asking the question that had been on his mind for the last five minutes of his friend’s miraculous reappearance.
“Where ya been, Alex?” Scott asked lightly. “We’ve missed you around here.”
That seemed to shake Alex out of his reverie. “That’s a long and boring story compared to what happened to me tonight in the desert.” Alex leaned forward, suddenly charged with new energy. “We need to find out everything we can about a man who purchased some National Forest land today. He murdered my father last night, er, I mean tonight, I mean, shoot, man…” Alex put his face into his hands. It was too much all at once, even for him.
“Whoa, whoa whoa,” Scott said, “Take a drink and try again.”
Alex paused, and took a breath. Scott was right. He needed to concentrate and tell the story right.
“Someone with a lot of money and resources landed at the mesa in Joshua Tree – you remember, the one my father and I used to go to.”
Scott nodded, “Sure, 'Perry Mesa' is what we called it. I remember.”
Alex snickered at the age old joke between the two friends. He shook it off. No time for that.
“Some English guy landed and started ranting about purchasing the land we were on. Pops tried to talk some sense into him, but…” Alex trailed off, staring off into nowhere as he relived the memory, “he didn’t listen, didn’t say a word of warning… He just shot him. Dad didn’t even try anything. Didn’t seem to matter, though. Killed him right there.” Alex took another slug of Scott’s whiskey, trying to numb the pain of his father’s death. It burned all the way down.
“I’m assuming we’re not going to the police because of your…” Scott hesitated, “former status?”
“I tried the police and got a cop killed,” Alex replied, his voice curt. “If we call the police right now, they’ll ask me questions that I don’t have the answers to.”
“Questions like what?” Scott asked, his patience beginning to wane from the lack of information flowing from his friend right now. “You come to see me for the first time in six years in the middle of the night with some story about your father being killed and I’m supposed to listen to you and not call the cops?”
“Scott, I need you to calm down,” Alex said, “I came to you because I knew you would understand and remember.”
“Remember what?” Scott asked, frustrated at his friend’s ambiguity.
“This.”
Alex held out the stone his father had given him only a few short hours ago. It looked black as night, the smooth stone shining in the white fluorescent light from Scott’s kitchen.
“I remember this,” Scott began slowly, the anger draining from his face as the memory slowly returned. “This is the stone you found the day I fell out of the tree.”
Alex nodded. He left it up to Scott to put the rest of the pieces together.
“You came over,” Scott paused as the thin strands of memory began to come together, “you touched me, and I got better.” Scott shook his head, rubbing his eyes. “No, that can’t be right, I was lucky. I was a rubbery kid.”
“No you weren’t,” Alex replied, “my dad must have known this stone is what cured you. It was this stone. He knew that, and he tried to tell me what it was before the man…killed him.” Alex’s throat caught. It was a punch to the gut every time he mentioned the story.
“Alex,” Scott said, “I’m sorry about your father, but we need to call the police. Cops are there for a reason, you know?”
Alex looked up sharply at his best friend; apparently, it would take a more dramatic presentation for his friend to swallow the particular brand of Kool-Aid he was hawking. Taking the stone back from Scott, he walked over to the kitchen and withdrew a dangerous looking butcher’s knife from the drawer.
Before Scott could protest, Alex jammed the knife into his own right forearm, cutting into it deep. Blood rushed out of his wound, and Scott gasped in horror at what Alex had done. Scrambling for a kitchen towel, he moved to help Alex stop the blood from flowing freely out of his arm.
“What the hell are you doing? Are you nuts?” Scott screamed as he rushed over to help.
Alex held up his hand, with the chain of the necklace dangling out between his knuckles. As he withdrew the knife, the blood rushed out and onto the floor – but, to Scott’s incredulous eyes, only a few drips of the red blood escaped into the free fall of gravity. The soft blue glow surrounded Alex’s arm, healing the wound instantly without a trace of trauma. Scott’s queasiness subsided as he watched the glow heal his friend’s self-inflicted wound. The muscle and skin knit together, as if nothing had torn it asunder only moments before, and soon there was nothing but smooth skin once again.
“Tada!” Alex said sarcastically.
For a moment, Scott didn’t, couldn’t reply. Alex placed the knife back down on the kitchen counter and decided to wait for his friend to reboot. Once he did, they could move on.
“Well,” Scott cleared his throat, “that’s a new trick.”
Alex turned, rubbing his temples, and collapsed back on Scott’s overstuffed chair.
“Tell me about it.” Alex leaned back, exhausted.
“Have you learned the water-into-wine trick yet?” Scott attempted to joke. “’Cause I’m thinking we’re gonna need some more alcohol.”
Alex shook his head and opened his palm. The glow surrounding his arm retreated back into the stone, leaving it with a duller sheen than before. Alex looked up at his friend as if to say, “Your move.”
“All right, so, umm...” Scott struggled to come up with something. “As difficult as it would be to let my mind swallow what I just saw, tell me more about what happened to you. Start again from the beginning.”
Alex recounted the events of the last twenty-four hours as the facts burst out of him, the story sometimes flying too fast for Scott to follow. For the most part, he sat there stoic, silent, and interjecting only a quest
ion or two for clarity. Alex narrated everything from his arrival at his father’s house, and the impromptu trip to the desert, to his father’s murder and the incredible shootout at the Sheriff’s station. When he was finished, Alex felt as if a great load had been lifted from his shoulders.
“…And that’s pretty much it up until I decided to find you.”
Alex watched his friend, who had turned progressively greener as the story went on. Scott stood, walked over to his well-stocked wet bar, poured himself a shot, and drank it quickly.
“Scott?”
Scott held up a finger as he finished swallowing his first shot. Pouring another, he drank the second quicker than the first. Exhaling softly, Scott turned to his friend and nodded his head.
“OK, so…where do we go from here?”
Alex felt a great relief wash over him. He wasn’t sure what he would’ve done without Scott’s help. Energized by his reunion with his best friend, he got up from the chair and began to map out a plan of action.
“Find out for me who that man is that bought that land in Joshua Tree. It had to be approved by all sorts of committees and Congressmen, so there’s got to be a public record of it somewhere.”
Scott nodded and opened up his laptop.
“What are you gonna do?” Scott asked, waiting for his system to come online.
“I’m gonna take a shower and change into something that isn’t covered in blood and desert sweat.” Alex removed his tattered shirt, revealing several scars that resembled bullet wounds.
Scott glanced up at his friend with a slight double take in concern. “I thought that stone of yours healed your wounds completely?”
Alex glanced at the scars on his body. They were old wounds, some he wasn’t ready to talk about just yet.
“The stone heals new wounds, not old ones. Where’s the shower?” Alex asked, ignoring the unasked and implied questions.
Scott knew when not to pester his friend, so he took the hint and pointed him in the direction of the bathroom, and fresh towels.
Alex closed the door behind him, reaching into the tub to start the water in the shower. He was hoping that the hot water and thudding sound of it hitting his head could help him relax, even if only for a moment. The memory of his father falling over the side of the cliff had embedded itself deeply in his mind, playing itself over and over again every time he closed his eyes like some horrifying movie projected on his eyelids.
