The Scorpion's Tail (Nora Kelly Book 2)

by Douglas Preston

  She squeezed the trigger.

  The gun bucked, and the round, missing the head shot she was aiming for, smacked into his right shoulder instead. The hit spun him to the side; he swung his weapon around to return fire but was off-balance and aiming wildly. Corrie saw the flash and kick of the weapon just as the girl scrambled up, grabbing at the flimsy door of the camper. She tumbled down the steps to the ground, pigtails whirling, Princess Leia hair clips flying.

  “You bastard!” Before she could think of what she was doing, Corrie charged the camper. Simultaneously, a fusillade of shots rang out from Morwood and the other agents. The rounds connected, and the man jerked back, his body a macabre imitation of a Raggedy Ann doll as he was thrown through the rear netting of the camper.

  In a second Corrie had reached the girl and scooped her up, turning her own back to the shooter. The child was motionless, covered in blood. And then the SWAT team was suddenly swarming everywhere. Corrie looked up to see an ambulance screeching to a halt in a cloud of dust, the paramedics leaping out. She ran toward them, and they surrounded her, gently removing the girl from her arms and putting her on a stretcher.

  One paramedic held Corrie’s arm as she staggered. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  Corrie, paralyzed and heavily blood-splattered, merely stared at him.

  “Are you injured?” He spoke loudly and distinctly. “Do you need help?”

  “No, no, not my blood,” she said angrily, shaking his arm off. “Save the girl.”

  Morwood was suddenly at her side, arm around her, supporting her. “I’ll take over,” he told the paramedic. Then he turned to her. “Corrie, I’m going to walk you back to the truck.”

  She tried to move her legs and stumbled, but he held her up. “Just one foot after the other.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see the paramedics madly working on the girl.

  She followed Morwood’s murmured instructions as best she could, and he eased her into the front seat. She realized she was hyperventilating and sobbing at the same time.

  “Okay, take it easy, easy now, Corrie. He’s gone. Take a deep breath. That’s it, a deep breath.”

  “I fucked up,” Corrie said, choking. “I missed. He killed the girl.”

  “You just take a deep breath now...Good...Good...You did nothing wrong; you took your opportunity, you fired, and you hit him. We don’t know the girl’s condition.”

  “I missed the head shot. I missed—”

  “Corrie, just take a moment to stop thinking and breathe. Just breathe.”

  “He shot the girl. She’s—”

  “Listen to what I say. Stop talking, stop thinking, and just breathe.”

  She tried to follow his directions, tried to breathe, tried to stop thinking, but all she could see was the man’s shoulder turning, turning, while he swung the muzzle of his gun to fire at her, the premature shot going straight into the girl instead … and then the little body sprawled on the ground, bloody Princess Leia hair clips lying in the dirt.

  2

  Two Weeks Later

  AS SHERIFF HOMER Watts reached the pass at Oso Peak, he paused to slip his canteen off the saddle horn and take a swig of water. The view from the pass was spectacular: the land fell away through piñon-clad foothills to the desert many miles away and thousands of feet below. September had brought a pleasant freshness to the mountain air, redolent with the scent of pine needles. It was Watts’s first day off in a while, and it was a gorgeous one, a gift from the gods.

  He gave his horse, Chaco, an affectionate pat on the neck, hung back the canteen, and touched the horse’s flanks with his heels. Chaco moved forward easily, starting down the trail to the upper reaches of Nick’s Creek. Watts had packed all he needed for a quiet day of fishing: his bamboo fly rod in an aluminum tube, a box of flies and nymphs, creel, knife, compass, lunch, flask of whiskey, and his grandfather’s old pair of Colt Peacemakers, snugged into holsters almost as ancient.

  He rode lazily down the trail, through shade and sun, past stands of ponderosas and glades of wildflowers, lulled by the gentle rocking of the saddle. On the shoulder of Oso Peak, the trees gave way to a broad meadow. Three mule deer grazed at the meadow’s far side: a buck and two does. They were startled by his sudden appearance and bolted. He paused to watch them bound away.

  Crossing the meadow, he glimpsed, far away to his left, a puff of smoke in the foothills, on a mesa extending from the base of the mountains. He stopped his horse again, took out his binoculars, and gave it a closer look. A fire at this time of year, when everything was bone dry, would be disastrous. But the glasses revealed it wasn’t smoke at all, but irregular clouds of sand-colored dust raised by some sort of activity on the mesa. It was coming from a location he knew well, an abandoned mining camp named High Lonesome, one of the most isolated and unspoiled ghost towns in the Southwest.

  Clouds of dust. What did they mean? Someone was up to something. And given the size of the clouds, it probably wasn’t good.

  Watts paused, thinking. To his right the trail would lead him to Nick’s Creek and a peaceful day of fishing in a burbling stream, its deep pools and hollows flashing with cutthroat trout. To his left was a trail that would take him to High Lonesome and a day, perhaps, of aggravation and trouble.

  Son of a bitch. Watts gently reined his horse to the left.

  The land dropped away steeply, the trail switchbacking down the flanks of Gold Ridge. As the elevation decreased, the ponderosas gave way to juniper. As he rounded the side of the ridge, the ghost town came into view, a scattering of old adobe and stone buildings on the tongue of a mesa. He paused to once again glass the scene. And sure enough, it was as he suspected: a relic hunter. He could see the man shoveling sand from the basement of one of the ruined houses, a pickup truck parked nearby.

  Watts felt his blood quicken. He knew High Lonesome well, from the time his dad first took him there camping as a kid. The ghost town, remote and little known, had largely escaped the casual looting and destruction that had stripped most of the deserted mining towns in the state. There had been the occasional vandalism, for sure, mostly drunk teenagers from Socorro out for a weekend of fun in the mountains, but nothing on a large scale. The place wasn’t even listed in any of the guidebooks to the ghost towns of New Mexico. It was just too hard to get to.

  But here was some son of a bitch vandalizing the place.

  He reined his horse off the trail and rode down through the piñon trees. He didn’t want the relic hunter spotting him and taking off before he had a chance to collar the guy. While this was all Bureau of Land Management land and thus not his jurisdiction, he was the elected sheriff of Socorro County and he still had the right to arrest the bastard and turn him over to the BLM police.

  After a while the slope leveled out. Moving his horse at an easy walk, he emerged into the open behind the town. The looter was at the far end, now out of sight because of the intervening buildings. Watts rode on through, keeping cover between him and the digger. A steady wind muttered through the ruins, and a tumbleweed came rolling by, just like in all the Westerns ever made.

  As he approached, he got a good view of the pickup truck. He recognized the old Ford as belonging to Pick Rivers.

  Pick Rivers. This was a head-scratcher, and no mistake. Rivers had once been a cocky little shit, fond of meth and known to sell relics to get it. But he’d cleaned up his act about two years ago—after a brief stint in the pen had scared him straight—and he hadn’t been in any kind of trouble since.

  As he reached the far end of town, Watts brought Chaco to a halt behind a building, dismounted, unlooped his lead rope, and tied the horse to a wooden post. He gave him another pat on the neck and a murmur of affection. He hesitated, then lifted the holsters from the saddle horn, removed the guns and checked them, reholstered, and buckled them around his waist. Just in case. Rivers was one of those dudes who was into open carry, and Watts knew he liked to go around with an S&W .357 L-frame strapped to his hip
.

  As Watts walked around the corner, he could see the building Rivers was digging in. It stood off by itself, a two-story adobe structure, the top floor mostly collapsed. The man was in the basement, heaving shovelfuls of sand out a broken window frame. And he was working hard, too. Watts wondered what he had found.

  He approached cautiously, his hand resting on the butt of the revolver on his left hip. Rivers had obviously uncovered something, because he was now bending down and digging more cautiously. And as Watts watched, the man dropped to his knees and started using his hands to sweep away dirt and sand. He was so engrossed in what he was doing, and the basement so full of dust, he had no idea Watts was approaching from behind.

  The sheriff moved to where he had a good view of Rivers through the cellar entrance, laboring away. Then he called out: “Rivers!”

  The figure froze, his back to Watts.

  “It’s Sheriff Watts. Come out, hands in view. Now.”

  The man remained motionless.

  “You gone deaf ? Show your hands.”

  Rivers obliged, back still turned, holding his arms out to either side. “I hear you, Sheriff,” he said.

  “Good. Now get your ass out here.”

  “I’m coming.” The figure began to rise—and then, suddenly, the hands disappeared and he whirled around, .357 Magnum gripped in both hands, aiming dead-on.

  Watts yanked out a Colt just as Rivers’s .357 went off with the boom of a cannon.

  3

  WHEN SPECIAL AGENT Swanson exited the bathroom, the two junior agents in the hallway fell silent just a little too quickly. She passed by them, not making eye contact, and headed back to her cubicle in the Albuquerque Field Office on Luecking Park Avenue Northeast. She took her seat and pulled the file she’d been working on closer to her. She was in the dimmest corner of the room, farthest from the windows. It was where the rookies were traditionally parked, and as they rose in the ranks they also moved closer to the wall of glass that had a panoramic view of the mountains. But Corrie was glad not to have to look out the window at the eleven-thousand-foot-high Sandia Crest, dusted with the season’s first snowfall, because all it did was remind her of her failure. It was a bitter irony: up until two weeks ago, the sight of mountains had been a reminder of her biggest success as a young agent. Now she wondered if she would ever be able to look at that mountain again without feeling overwhelmed by shame and regret.

  After the shooting, there had been an inquiry—expected and routine. Corrie hadn’t received a reprimand or disciplinary action. She had even been verbally commended for saving the life of the hostage at the risk of her own. And thankfully—blessedly—the girl had only been grazed by the shot. A few stitches, and she’d been sent home to her grandparents the next morning, along with an armada of grief counselors. All the blood that had so terrified Corrie belonged to the poor girl’s mother, who’d been lying dead on the floor of the camper.

  Even so, Corrie couldn’t forgive herself. She should have nailed that head shot—even at ten yards. She had a bead on him, she was focused. Her gun wasn’t sighted wrong; she had established that at the range later. She had simply missed: missed at a critical moment. Even though she wasn’t the best shot in her peer group, she wasn’t the worst: forty-nine out of sixty on a QIT-99 was one point above the minimum score required, which wasn’t great, but a quarter of her peers hadn’t even passed. She should have made that shot—and then she would have saved the day, emerged with a commendation, elevated her profile further, cemented herself as an up-and-coming agent. Instead: ambiguity, sideways looks, and a single whispered Nice shootin’, Tex.

  She had fucked up, and everyone knew it. One senior female agent had taken her aside and told her it was wrong—Corrie had been unavoidably put in a spot where, basically, she shouldn’t normally have been. But her fellow rookies were looking pretty smug, and it reminded her of that brutal saying, It’s not enough to succeed; others must fail. Worst of all, Morwood was unexpectedly quiet on the subject, beyond making a passing suggestion that she put in more hours at the range. He didn’t bawl her out, but he didn’t praise her, either. Though it might be her imagination, he seemed to have become a little distant. And that stack of files from yet another cold case he had left on her desk sure felt like a punishment.

  In the two weeks since the shooting, she’d been putting in an hour a day at the range after work. On her last go-around she’d scored fifty-one out of sixty: about average, and she believed that with hard work, she could push that up to fifty-two or even fifty-three. But when she told Morwood, he hadn’t seemed impressed. “Anyone can score at the range,” he said. “Put them in an active-shooter situation—that’s where the rubber meets the road.” The comment felt like another slap in the face. She had almost blurted out, asking him point-blank if he was referring to her performance at Cedro Peak, but then swallowed the comment and merely said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Corrie?”

  It was Morwood, leaning in the doorway of her cubicle, his ID dangling. She noticed that the hair on his thinning crown was growing long. His smile looked a little forced. She was certain he was still disappointed in her.

  “A moment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She stood up and followed him out of the cubicle and down the hall to his small office, which also looked out over the Sandias.

  “Have a seat.”

  Corrie sat, trying not to glance out the window.

  “Well, well,” said Morwood, folding his hands on the desk. “I’ve got a case for you. Right up your alley, in fact.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Corrie. She was suspicious of his tone, which seemed a little too jaunty. If this were a good case, he sure as hell wouldn’t be giving it to her. What was more likely to happen was that he’d put her “on the beach,” in FBI lingo, starting the process with some meaningless case she couldn’t fuck up and, even if she did, no one would notice or care.

  “The sheriff of Socorro surprised a relic hunter yesterday, digging up some bones in the middle of nowhere. Human remains. BLM jurisdiction. There was a gunfight from which the relic hunter, a guy named Rivers, emerged the loser. He winged the sheriff and got his own kneecap shattered for his trouble. He’s in the hospital, guarded around the clock and charged with the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. The locals aren’t too happy about it, and he’s probably under guard as much for his own safety as to prevent an escape.”

  Corrie nodded without speaking.

  “The remains Rivers discovered look twentieth century, based on the little bit of clothing visible. But the body doesn’t look recent: maybe forty or fifty years old, at least, or so I was told. Could be anything—murder, suicide, accident. That’s where your degree in forensic anthropology comes in, especially since it was found on federal land. The sheriff—who seems like a good guy, if a little dinged up—” He paused. “Socorro’s a damn big county and he’s the only sheriff, so he’s happy to have our help.”

  It wasn’t quite the shitty case she’d feared—after all, it involved the shooting of a law enforcement officer. Even so, it might turn out to be not a case at all, but just the bones of some old cowpoke who’d been kicked by a mule back in the days of

  J. Edgar Hoover. But she was in no position to complain. One thing she knew for sure was that she had to hide any feelings of doubt, work hard, and always project the façade of an obliging, cheerful, and promising rookie.

  “Great. Thank you, sir. I’d be happy to look into it. It is right up my alley.” She plastered on a smile. Socorro was an hour away. She had never been there but sensed it might be one of those hot, sad desert towns that dotted the state. “So, I’ll be on my own?”

  “Yes, until it becomes an actual case. First, you’ll probably want to head over to Presbyterian this afternoon and question the shooter. Tomorrow, you’re scheduled to liaise with Sheriff—” he rustled through his papers—“ah, Homer Watts. He’ll drive you out to where the bones are. Apparently, it’s way the hell out
there and impossible to get to unless you know the route.”

  Homer Watts. Was this perhaps Morwood’s idea of a practical joke? “And what time do I liaise with Sheriff Watts?”

  “Eight o’clock, at the sheriff’s office in Socorro.”

  That means a six o’clock wake-up. No, make that five thirty. “I’ll be there. And thank you, sir. Thank you for giving me the opportunity!”

  She noticed Morwood casting her a long, appraising look. “Corrie? I know what’s going through your mind. And I just want to tell you one thing: you never know where a case might lead.” He leaned back in his chair. “Remember Frank Wills?”

  “Was he an FBI agent?”

  “No. He was a hotel security guard. One night, he noticed that a couple of door latches had been taped open.”

  Corrie waited to hear more, wondering where Morwood was going with this.

  “Seemed like a pretty small thing,” he continued. “Doors get taped for convenience all the time in hotels. But Frank mulled it over and decided to notify the police—even if they laughed at him for calling them about something as stupid as a couple of taped locks.”

  He waited for Corrie’s reaction, a small smile on his face.

  “So what happened then?”

  “Watergate,” said Morwood.

  4

  CORRIE WALKED DOWN a drab third-floor hallway of Albuquerque’s Presbyterian Hospital. In her experience, hospitals were unpleasant places at best, and the corridor she found herself in was a model of neither efficiency nor cheer. Gurneys lined the walls like double-parked cars, most of them occupied by patients in various degrees of consciousness. IV racks and linen carts left here and there made her passage all the more difficult. The nurses’ station was a mob scene, everyone either on the phone or in heated conversation. Corrie was about to stop for directions when she spotted what had to be her destination: a closed door at the far end of the hall with chairs placed on either side. One of the chairs was occupied by a law enforcement officer, and a folded newspaper and cup of coffee sat on the floor beside the chair. Smoothing down her blazer with the palm of one hand, Corrie made her way through the chaos, which thinned out as she approached the closed door. The man in the chair glanced her way, and she saw from his uniform he was a ranger with the Bureau of Land Management. That made sense: the shooting had taken place on federal land, so the BLM would be in charge