POWELL SHOWED HIM THE HANDPRINT pressed into the trunk of one of the oak trees. Then they all were up in the saddle, single-filing it down the old cattle trail. It was hot as hell now, even in the mottled shade of trees, and the dust kicked up by hooves tasted like singed chalk. In the bright midday light, the vision in Ben’s dilated eye was overexposed and washed out. Still his good eye kept the world in focus, and he found himself closing his injured eye to ease the ache in his head. A second handprint smeared against a boulder was fifty yards down the trail. From there, they followed a smattering of blood, like paint dripped from a brush, until they came to a small puddle, still wet in the dirt. Ben hopped off the horse and knelt on the trail, squinting through the manzanita. There were no other signs, nothing—no blood on the leaves, no broken branches, no footprints in the underbrush to indicate where he’d gone.
“Nothing for another five to six hundred yards,” Powell said. “And then it starts up again. Like he lifted off the ground and flew there.”
Ben glanced up at the cliffs, rising white in the sun. He hadn’t been in this canyon for years, but he didn’t think they were near the first cave yet. That’s what had startled him awake this morning: the caves. His senior year when everything in his life was blowing up and he didn’t want to be found—by Wakeland, by his mother, even by Rachel—he hiked up here alone. They’d find him at the beach, if they bothered to look, but not up here. A couple days after blowing states, when he thought he was going to lose his mind if he set foot on school property again, he hiked up here and climbed a coyote path up the steep cliffs. It was dangerous and he might have fallen, but that just made it better. He found one of the caves that afternoon and sat in the shade of it, trying to figure out what he was going to do next.
“Think he’s got some kind of tourniquet working,” Ben said now. “Probably had to retie it here.”
“You must’ve tore a pretty big hole into him.”
“Not big enough,” Ben said. “You say six hundred yards up?”
“About,” Powell said. “Same thing. Trickle of blood, but more up there. Like the spigot opened up and then closed. Tourniquet makes sense.”
They passed the dead deer on the edge of the trail, a few jokes thrown around. In ten minutes they came upon another puddle of the serial’s blood, congealed now, with flies swarming the edges. Ben scanned the cliffs. Two of the MEU guys did, too, using their rifle scopes. This was it, Ben was sure of it. He remembered the steep cliffs, the way the limestone breaks folded together like pleats.
“You can’t see it from here,” Ben said, “but there’s a cave up there.”
“Up there?” Powell said.
“Nothing real big,” Ben said. “Bobcat den, shade for coyote in the afternoon.”
“You think he climbed up there, with one good arm?”
“I think he’d use his teeth if he had to, with us on his heels.”
—
BLOOD SMEARED AGAINST an ironwood tree. Snapped manzanita branch. A couple of faint footprints: Vans, eight and a half. They had him.
They were on foot now, four of them—Powell and two MEUs, one named Davis and the other Rutter—hacking through brush and cactus clumps, ironwood branches and tangles of sagebrush. Their guns drawn, safeties off. The trail was faint, but it was there—a deer trail leading to the base of the cliffs.
When they reached the cliff, a thin white line threaded up the wall of the canyon. A bobcat trail, coyote maybe. There they found a third handprint, like a petroglyph against the rock.
“Jesus,” Rutter said. “Who is this guy?”
The limestone was soft. You could dig your fingers into it, carve the edge of your boot into the rock. But it could crumble underfoot, give way with the grip of your hand. Ben remembered this climb as he wedged his toe into a foothold, fifty feet above the canyon floor now, the way little landslides gave way underfoot, the way dust and rock fell from handholds and scoured your eyes. Davis was fifteen feet below him and Rutter ten below Davis, both of them staggered along the cliffside to keep out of the slush of sand and rock falling with each push up the wall.
The trail was steep, rock climbing the first seventy-five feet, but after that it leveled until it was like hiking a steep staircase. Still, when he looked back to see where Davis and Rutter were, the effect was dizzying—the land below felt tilted off-balance, the horizon out on the edge of the blue sky seemed to slide toward the ocean. Ben’s head pounded now, his heart thumped his injured eye. But his body felt strong. His lungs were conditioned from holding his breath. His arms and shoulders, muscled from body surfing, lifted him upward, even as Davis and Rutter fell behind.
The sheriff’s Bell came shuddering up the canyon, hovering below the lip of the ridge. An officer leaned out the open side door, one booted foot on the landing skid, his sniper rifle strapped across his chest. They were following them up the cliffside, ready to shoot the killer if Ben flushed him out.
Two hundred feet up, it walled out again, and Ben had to carve out toeholds, scratch away little crescents for finger pulls. If he lost a foothold here, it was a long, body-beating slide to the bottom. He was close, though; he could see the dark smudge in the limestone where the cave was carved into the rock. He found a lip to rest on, and watched the cave entrance, hoping light penetrated deeply enough to see inside. But the sun was already pushing west, and shadows fell across the opening. Blind. He’d have to go in blind.
The helicopter spun a circle above the canyon, its rotor wash spraying dust across the cliff wall.
“Get the chopper out of here,” Ben called into his walkie-talkie.
In the noise of the rotors, Ben could just make out Powell’s voice. Then the copter tilted its nose and spun high above the canyon, ready to dive down if necessary.
Ben edged along the wall toward the cave entrance.
“Wait for backup.” Powell’s voice scratched through the walkie-talkie.
He snapped the walkie-talkie off, not wanting the killer to hear it, and glanced down to see Davis and Rutter pulling themselves up the cliffside, still sixty feet or more below. Then he was on the threshold of the opening just to the left. His revolver drawn, he watched for movement. Nothing, an unnerving stillness—no birds, no buzzing insects. Nausea roiled his stomach, but he swallowed it down. He slid his back up against the wall and hoisted himself into the darkness of the cave.