Rage Against the Dying

Twenty-six





It was way too early to go to the ME’s office and find out what Max had discovered to link me to Peasil’s death, and that had distracted me momentarily from tracking down Coleman. I was developing, practicing the story I would tell Max when I saw him and looking at it from every angle to see if it stood up. “Hey Max, remember that perp I once killed by accident? Funny thing, it happened again.” No, that wouldn’t do.

I was headed back home, tucked way inside my mind, hardly aware of getting from here to there. But about five miles away from the road that led home I spotted Catalina State Park and turned in on impulse, to exercise the Pugs and relax my brain a little by looking at some big sky. The man at the entrance station gave me a ticket for my dashboard to show I’d paid my entrance fee. He admired the Pugs and added, “Careful. Monsoon’s predicted,” but didn’t try to stop me from going in.

I drove down the short road to the parking lot, saddled up the Pugs with the extra leads I kept in the trunk, stowed a bottle of water into my cargo pants pocket, wished I still had my hiking stick, tucked my hair up under a baseball cap for shade, and, seeing only a few cars parked with mine, also got my Smith out of the glove compartment. It was good to stay safe, but no one had been behind me coming into the park and I wasn’t the sort of person to hide.

I walked across the street from the parking lot to what appeared to be the start of the main trailhead. The map of the park was simple: Romero Canyon straight ahead, Canyon Loop Trail up and to the left, and the Birding Loop to the right. The last would be the easiest on the Pugs.

To get to that trailhead I had to take off my shoes and carry them over the Cañada del Oro Wash, the same wash where, just a half mile or so to the north, I had killed Peasil on a drier day. With rain the night before, the wash was now running, but only up to my ankles in places. I imagined I saw one of Peasil’s flip-flops near the edge of the wash but it was just some flattened coyote scat, filled with mesquite seeds.

A sign pointed me to a narrower trail that led through what passes for a grove in the high desert, scrubby trees not much taller than Carlo. They provided some shade, though, and we only stopped a couple of times for me to drink from the bottle and to hand down a palmful of water to the Pugs. Then rocks served as stairs leading up to a small mesa. The stairs were a little steep for the Pugs, so about halfway I hoisted one up in each arm and finished the climb that way, thankful that my back wasn’t giving me any trouble.

When I reached the top, where someone had put a park bench so you could rest and enjoy the view, I looked at the mountain ridge ahead of me to the east. As so often happened at this time of year, clouds were building up rapidly over Mount Lemmon, crawling in our direction like black paws.

I sat down on the wood and metal bench set up as a memorial to some unknown nature lover, gave the dogs more water, and figured I had just a few minutes before I should start back to avoid the rain. You didn’t want to be out in that kind of weather, when the lightning bolts came back-to-back and the water fell in sheets.

Though the network of trails on the map led all the way up and over the Samaniego Ridge, at this point the slope of the mountains was still a good distance off. The sun was losing a battle outracing the clouds but reflected off water slicing down the gullies and collecting in small pools. The reflection of the sun on the spots of water made me think of a giant smashing a mirror over the top of the mountain and scattering the glass shards. I wondered what Carlo would see if he was here, maybe dancing butterflies, and wished I could see it like that, too. Then I thought of my afternoon appointment with a badly decomposed corpse and figured the chances were against it.

While I was still gazing at the mountains, musing thus, one of the bits of sparkling mirror moved suddenly to the left. If I hadn’t been looking at it I wouldn’t have seen it, but as I watched it hopped again. The way it would hop if it were attached to a person who was jumping from one rock to the next, off any designated trail. The way it would hop if the sun was glinting off a piece of metal or binoculars. Or a rifle scope.

Silly me, right? Yet I squinted, and either saw or imagined the person connected to it, a long ways off. It moved twice more as if looking for the right spot. Then it stopped. Getting into position.

Outlandish as they may seem, like I had told Coleman, at a time like this you can ignore your instincts or go with them. Suspecting that Peasil had been sent by someone else to kill me gave me a little more confidence in those instincts. If I was right, I had several seconds to act. The angle of the shooter, if shooter it was, meant that we were exposed here on the small mesa. If we stayed low, we had enough cover to buy some time until I could figure out how to get the three of us out alive. On the other hand, dropping down would alert the shooter that I was aware of his presence. But if I was correct in my assumption it was either that or death. All that I thought in a flash with maybe a second and a half to go.

I’m not sure of the precise sequence of the next few events:

I slipped off the bench so I was on a level with the Pugs.

A gunshot cracked across the mountains.

I heard it punch into something with a splurting sound.

One of the Pugs screamed.

My head hit the other Pug, who yelped without as much anguish as the first.

The Pug that had screamed was now writhing in the dirt.

I drew my weapon from the back of my pants with my free hand and tried to find that reflection that I had seen before I hit the dirt.

All the while I was yelling, “Is he hit? Is he hit?” without knowing who would answer.

I had no cover unless you counted the flimsy bench. I was holding a revolver against what was certainly a rifle with a scope. Hardly an even hand, but all I had to work with.

First assess the damages. I risked exposing myself further by crawling the few feet to where the Pug was gnawing desperately at his leg, whimpering. “Hello puppy, hello you sweet puppy,” I whispered, glad that he was still conscious but looking for the blood.

“Ouch, f*ckin’ goddamit,” I said. Instead of the ricochet wound I was expecting I got stuck by a lump of cholla cactus embedded in the Pug’s front haunch. The bullet must have hit a nearby cactus and turned it into a projectile. The spines had little barbs on the ends that wouldn’t let go, and it was too deep to pluck out without getting it stuck further into my own hand.

Trying to keep an eye out for the shooter at the same time, I managed to double up a shirttail and get the hunk of cactus out of the dog’s flesh despite his squirming with the pain. I knew it would take too long to get the cholla dislodged from my shirt so I didn’t bother for now. I crawled back to the illusory cover the bench offered, tugging the stubborn Pug after me, and tied both their leashes to a leg of the bench.

Damn cactus removed from the damn dog, I could now turn my attention back to saving our lives. Novel situation, this. Mostly in the past I’d had to worry about myself, not two pathetic excuses for animals, both of whom I could outrun on a bad back day. I was, shall we say, concerned. One of them whimpered. “Shut up, I won’t leave you,” I said, while murmuring “Goddam f*ckin’ piece-a-shit,” as I used a stone to get a bit of stubborn cholla out of my shirt so it wouldn’t distract me from business.

That done, I rolled onto my stomach under the bench so I could look across the valley to the mountain from where the shot had come. I held my weapon with the muzzle pointing up alongside my head and waited.

I heard another shot, from a different direction, and was further alarmed to think I was being caught in a squeeze play. Then I realized, or at least told myself because it was what I could handle, that the second shot had come from the Pima Pistol Club adjacent to the park just south of where I was. As if to confirm, I heard another bark of what was unmistakably a pistol rather than a rifle.

My position didn’t allow me to see anything useful, so I rolled back out on the far side of the bench, rose to my knees, and peered between the slats of the bench. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I had only to scan the area where I had seen the shooter. What I was looking for, among all the sparkles of light where the sun hit the water, was that one sparkle that moved sideways, like a slow-moving meteor among fixed stars. There was no glimpse of the reflection of the sun in his scope immediately, but then I saw it. He had moved a little down the mountain, to come closer, his scope blinking in and out of sight as the weapon moved up and down with each step.

The light stopped moving, and he fired again, this time with no hope of hitting me. The second round hit, if anything, a little farther away than the first.

If this was the same guy who sent Peasil after me, and now was taking care of the job himself, he might be a killer but he wasn’t a professional sniper, wasting a shot that way. If he’d made the mistake of allowing me to see his scope, maybe he would make others. Maybe he would miscalculate the trajectory given distance, rising heat, and the drop of what was possibly a Steyr, a decent gun even in the hands of an amateur.

I checked the terrain again and the distance from where I estimated the shots to have come from. He had missed the element of surprise but he wasn’t just going away, a testimony to his stupidity or determination; either quality made him dangerous. I could lie here and let him come closer, find out who he was and end this. But I was badly outclassed in terms of firepower and the closer he got the greater risk for me and the dogs.

“Stay,” I whispered to the Pugs, and, keeping low behind the scrub at the near edge of the mesa, crawled a way until I could see where the edge dropped off onto a stone staircase like the one I’d come up on the other side. If he was coming after me he might come up those stairs. Better to grab the dogs and make a run for it back the way I came, though it was longer. Once I was a few steps down the hill, the mesa itself would provide cover. Then it was just a matter of hightailing it back to the parking lot before he could cut across the valley and intercept me, but I’d worry about that later.

I looked up at the sky. With any luck the storm would hit suddenly, as they often do, and the shooter would be flushed out of the mountain. But for now it worked against me; the clouds had started creeping across the sun and I couldn’t always see him by the reflection off his scope.

I calculated the distance and figured if I was wrong, if the shooter was an expert with the gun I thought he had, he’d get the trajectory right and the shot would hit me within two seconds of his firing. But even if he had reloaded in preparation, if I moved just a little he’d have to get me in his sights again. A target alerted is a difficult target.

I raised up on my knees and peered again through the wooden slats of the bench, wondering where he was. The positive thing was that if I didn’t know where he was, neither did he know my precise location. If only I could get him to react. I unwound the leashes from the leg of the bench. “Here we go,” I said to the Pugs and started to rise to my feet. Then I stopped and dropped down again, when I realized I might have made a terrible mistake myself. “Wait a minute, pups,” I said, my heart suddenly going bonkers in my chest.

Either I was correct in assuming that this wasn’t an expert sniper … or he didn’t care if he actually shot me.

I thought of the other shot coming from someone else at the pistol club. What if there were two people involved? The killer had sent Peasil to get me. Here was another one. Who knew how many people were in league? Maybe I was so preoccupied with what I would tell Max, I didn’t notice I was being followed from the airport. Maybe not wanting to take any chances this time, a second killer was coming up from behind, by the steps I’d come up, to shoot me in the back. From the top of my mesa I looked at the big sky I had come to see, the stretch of the Samaniego Ridge to the east and the broad valley to the west, and had never felt so closed in, so trapped.

If I ran forward to the east end of the mesa I risked getting nailed by the shooter. If I went back down the way I had come, I might be running straight toward a second a*shole.

“Small change of plan,” I said to the Pugs, my heart still thumping with the mistake I couldn’t afford to make.

I looked toward the mountain again and in a brief break of sunshine through the clouds caught the light again. The rifle was still, and we were in a standoff, with only the unknown of what was behind me. I stood. “Hit me, you p-ssy,” I muttered, and then aimed and fired.

In reply a third round hit a little closer than the first two. Wow. I felt the whisper of sand against my leg when it hit, close enough to take even my breath away. I dropped behind the safety of the bench and leaned against it, heaving with fear.

The purpose of my firing wasn’t to shoot the sniper; there was no way I could at this range. I only wanted him to know I had a gun, too, make him, or his suspected compatriot, less likely to follow without knowing where I might be hiding in ambush. I took the leashes off the Pugs, who whined, upset by the loud noise of my gun and uncertain about what they were supposed to do. “Stick with me, guys,” I said.

At that moment a microburst of wind, maybe forty knots, caught me by surprise, nearly knocking me over even though I was sitting down. My hat blew off and whisked out of sight. Then, as is the way with those winds, it was just as suddenly gone. I blinked the sand out of my eyes and studied the sky rapidly blackening from the east; I hoped it was a sign of things to come, a storm that I’d seen many times before from the safety of my back porch. A little weather could come in handy about now.

Like a sound effect for a B movie, a flash of lightning was followed too closely by a crack of thunder loud enough to rattle your fillings. Come on, come on, I thought, work with me here.

And then it happened. Over the mountain the cloud fell to earth in a sheet of rain that looked like a black magician’s scarf making the mountain disappear from view. That put the shooter effectively out of the picture; he would have to worry now about getting off that mountain alive. I could just worry about whoever might be coming up from the rear.

The curtain of rain hadn’t reached my mesa yet but it was coming this way. I had to move and I had to move fast. “Come,” I said to the Pugs in a sharp command that I hoped brooked no resistance and took off running without looking back to see if they did.

Taking the chance that if someone was there they’d assume I would take the trail down, I slipped off the trail to the right of the stairs and butt-slid down the steep side of the mesa, the Pugs bouncing along with me like a couple of basketballs. It was the kind of thing that, if I’d still been in the Bureau, and lived to tell the tale, would make the guys howl with laughter in a bar.

By the time we started down the rain was close upon us, cold drops of water the size of blueberries splattering on us through the hot air. Then all the drops connected and it was just one big downpour, making my slide down a little slicker, a little faster. I bumped my tailbone against large rocks a few times, but we managed to avoid the more wicked cacti. I knew I was taking a chance at the bottom tucking my gun back into my pants, but there was no other option. I leaned over and scooped up both the Pugs so we could run faster.

Even then I stayed off the trail, instead making my way through the scrub bush and around the prickly pear and cholla that with the wrong move could have immobilized me. I didn’t see another person, the one I feared might be coming up from behind. It made sense. First of all, the rain made it nearly impossible to see anything at more than ten feet. Plus, that other person wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with me any more than I wanted to run into him, partly because he would know I was a force to be reckoned with, and partly because he might not want to risk recognition. Maybe this was a person I knew.

With some luck on my side, I finally made it back down to the wash where all the trailheads joined and managed to wade across before it became a torrent that would sweep me and the Pugs downstream.

When I got back to the car, I threw the Pugs into the front seat, where they panted, slightly traumatized, a light steam rising off their backs. I shut my door and caught my breath, but left my Smith on my lap. I drove slowly around the parking lot peering through the windshield wipers at the other cars. There were two, with people inside waiting out the storm. The killer had twice as far to walk back to the parking lot as I did. He wasn’t in either of these cars. He had hiked from a different trailhead.

I drove back to the house and reassured Carlo that we were all fine, just wet, got caught in the storm. He and I got busy with our own pursuits, my trying to get the more stubborn cholla spines unstuck from my shirt and finally throwing the thing away.

What was most on my mind was who had tried to have me killed, twice. I had put plenty of scumbags away for life without parole. A few convicted of lesser charges might get out, and a few of those had threatened me in the past. But I always received notification when that was going to happen, and it hadn’t happened lately, Sigmund had said. I was still convinced this had something to do with Floyd Lynch, and my thoughts turned to his family. Two of them, with weapons and knowledge of the local terrain. A stretch, and why? To keep me from proving Floyd’s innocence? If you could believe the elder Lynch, he’d be just as happy to see Floyd dead.

The most immediate concern: if someone wanted me dead bad enough to try twice it was likely they’d try again, or else go after people I loved. I thought again about the danger to my pack, this time imagining rattlesnakes in the mailbox and antifreeze cocktails tossed over the back fence for the Pugs. I thought about my dear Perfesser abducted. Tortured. Did I mention I have a sordid imagination?

I called Gordo Ferguson, an ex–Secret Service guy I knew who had opened up an executive protection firm here in Tucson. Gordo was the kind of man who could intimidate an entire rugby team, and if the rumors were right, once had. He owed me several favors, so I asked him if he’d watch over Carlo and the Pugs without their knowing.

Next. If life had been normal Carlo and I would have played a game of Scrabble before lunch. He would have beaten me. Then we might have settled down with our books in the afternoon, him to read the life of Wittgenstein and me to finish the Clive Cussler action/adventure where the bad guys are bad and the good guys always win. In the evening we would have tossed a coin on watching an intelligent film or an action movie, and I would have won either way. I couldn’t help but wonder if that life would ever come again and figured I was kidding myself that I could hold on to it. Even now I could feel myself slipping away from the Perfesser, preparing myself again to face the loneliness I hadn’t before realized I felt. Pushing people away was one thing I could say I was good at.

When there was no response to repeated calls to Coleman’s cell phone, I called her office a little before lunch, got the receptionist Maisie Dickens, a relentlessly cheerful person for someone who is the gatekeeper to so much murder and mayhem. You could be looking at photos of a mass grave when she asked you to sign a birthday card with baby ducks on it. It was a little creepy, actually.

“Brigid!” she shrieked, when she heard my voice. Maisie called everyone’s name that way, as if she had heard they were dead and was pleasantly surprised to find them alive.

“Sorry, Brigid,” she said when I asked for Coleman. “She’s not here. She didn’t come in this morning.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I sure do. The retirement center where her parents live called to say her mom was sick and asking for her.” Maisie made her compassionate burbling sound. She probably had a sympathy card already stamped.

“Did she leave a message for me?”

Checking, “No, Brigid. If she calls in do you want me to tell her anything?”

“Just tell her I called.”

“Okay, sweetie, I will.”

I hung up. It took me a second to process, but I wondered: what would be a big enough emergency that Coleman wouldn’t do something, leave a message or call me on the way? Even if Coleman was going a little rogue on me, she was still rigidly efficient. I called back.

“Maisie, do you know what retirement center her parents are in?”

“No, sweetie, I have no idea.”