“His sister said she could watch the kids, so he decided to head over tonight.”
“Except he couldn’t find a room.” I set the book I’d been reading aside. “How is he?”
“It’s tough,” Colm said. “They haven’t had a service for her. Just a couple of prayer vigils. He took a soldering iron and melted his wedding band after we’d brought him in for questioning. But I got to tell you, Pru, he still loves her. Carries that bead of silver around in his pocket.”
I was stretched out on the sofa with Kona at the other end by my feet. “So, tell me, Colm, what did you do with your ring?” I asked.
“It’s lying in an ashtray at my house. I haven’t decided what to do with it.”
“I didn’t think you smoked.”
“I don’t. She did.”
Colm told me to hold on. Someone had come into his office. “Who do we have responding?” I heard Colm say. And then, “Who called it in?”
Colm got back on the phone. “A call just came in of multiple gunshots being fired near the Rangely Loop Trail.”
The Rangely Loop Trail was in East Douglas Creek Canyon, near the Coos site. “Dean was the first one to respond,” Colm told me. “He’s got about a twenty-minute travel time. I think I’ll see if Farrell’s up for a ride. I’d like to have a look and make sure Dean has some backup.”
—
Amy Raye lay beneath the stars and wept. She’d reached for her ring, as she did each night before falling asleep, and when it wasn’t there, and she did not know when she had lost it, she feared she had lost Farrell, as well. When she had finished crying, she rekindled the fire and warmed her spent body. “Enough,” she said. And though she did not sleep well, she slept some, and upon first light, she ate enough venison until she was full. She thanked God and the cougar and the deer for the food. She packed up her things, and with the aid of her crutch and the dry air and clear sky, she walked. And for the next four days she continued to do the same, until the fifth day about midafternoon, when the land seemed to drop off as if the earth were flat and she had reached its end. Beneath her was a rocky expanse of canyon floor, appearing to exist in another dimension, because she had no idea how she would reach it. And so she made a camp on the edge of that cliff and looked out over the land and rested her feet and thought upon what she should do. To her right and left was more of the same. She was on a table, and she needed to get down to the floor. And as she thought about her situation, and the hours passed, and the sky turned orange, her eyes recognized far below her what she was sure was one of the oil waste disposal pits she’d seen at different locations on the map. From where she sat, the pit looked like a small, dark, rectangular pond with some kind of fencing. Then she heard the scurrying of an animal behind her, and a squirrel perched itself on a rock to her left. She smiled because she had plenty to eat and she did not need to take anything from him. He squeaked and whistled and a bird squawked overhead, and she thought it was a raven. The patches of snow across the canyon floor looked like the spots on a row of dominoes, and the smattering of pinyon and juniper looked like green bristle pads.
She lay back against the rock where enough sand had deposited into a shallow crater, offering her an even layer of cushion that could fit all of her. She closed her eyes to rest for a short while. And if the answers did not come after she rested that short while, she would decide what to do in the morning. Surely the answers would come to her then. She slept longer than she thought she would. When she awoke, a breeze had blown in and extinguished her fire. The sky had turned navy blue and was full of stars and some thin clouds and a crescent moon. And though the air was cold, she still felt warm, and she thought it had something to do with her having experienced a metabolic adjustment to the climate. Hadn’t she read that somewhere? Instead of rekindling the fire, she fell back to sleep, and when she was partially awake, with her face pressed against the surface of the smoothed-out rock, and her eyes staring over the southeastern edge of the ledge where an outcropping of boulders climbed upward, she saw a larger shadow and two smaller ones perched upon the highest point. And in a moment just as brief, the cougar and her kittens moved on, and the shadows disappeared. Amy Raye closed her eyes. My mountain sister.
—
I’d fallen asleep on the sofa when my cell phone rang again. “Pru, it’s Colm. I hate to call you like this, but I think Joseph might be involved in something.”
“Colm, what’s going on?” I had already sat up and was reaching for my boots.
“Can you meet me out at Bowman Canyon? Joseph and his friend Corey may have gotten themselves into a situation.”