Beatty leaned over again and moved down to Tak’s open mouth, chin, and neck. That was as far down as the side mirror reflection gave him. He worked his way back up to the dilated pupils. A fly landed on Tak’s left eye. He watched it crawl around until it made his stomach turn.
He straightened and looked down over the desert valley at the airfield, trying to make sense of it. When he looked again, the fly was still there and another was at the edge of Tak’s mouth. He left the spotting scope and found an old gray blanket he kept behind the truck seats. He draped it over the front of his truck and checked the clip in his gun before laying it down nearby. Then he picked up his cell and called Grale.
46
Desert dust and smoke drifted away from the container house. Debris from the blast glinted in hot sunlight. My ears rang. All I heard was a humming. Behind me the SWAT commander gave orders in a hard, sharp voice that I couldn’t bring into focus as I stumbled then walked back to the destroyed house.
A weld that had joined the two cargo containers at the roof was peeled open by the blast. Sunlight streamed in. Smoke wafted out. I looked at blue sky, then at fragmented debris around me and out the windows where blast spray spewed into mesquite and scrub. Burn marks scored the metal wall behind where the laptop had exploded. The air smelled of C-4 and was acrid from scorched paint and burned bedding. In the tiny kitchen a severed water line bled into holes in the floor. I turned to the burned and shredded mattress and the smoking strips of rug. White porcelain fragments from a toilet or sink pocked a wall. The design of the primary bomb had spread a blast wave evenly across the space. A now-deformed steel box cut in and welded to the floor had held the bomb. No one in here, nothing in here would have survived.
Yesterday, if I hadn’t told Nogales to drive past, we might have come here and found Coffina then Garod Hurin. I faulted myself for that and was thinking about where to go next as I walked out. Nogales hurried toward me as I stripped off the SWAT suit.
“We got a call from a hiker about a gray Honda parked up a canyon out beyond the gypsum mine. Don’t know yet if it’s a Civic, but it sounds like it. I’m headed there. Do you want to come with me?”
“I do, but let’s get lined up with everyone here first, just in case we find something. Ask your bomb squad to keep their dog here. If it’s his car, we’ll need a bomb dog first.”
We drove rough desert roads out past the gypsum mine, me watching ahead, not talking much, Nogales filling the gap. I listened but was thinking about Hurin. Did he move because he was worried or because it was time? He could have left quietly rather than booby-trap the building. He didn’t do that to kill Coffina, so he knew we were close. That thought chilled me and I was silent as Nogales drove. The dirt road hugged bone-colored mountains. We were two miles along it when we rounded a bend, and I spotted a car up a narrow canyon ahead and to our right.
“There. Between the rocks,” I said. “That’s a Honda Civic.”
“Got it.”
I turned and looked back. Agents following had fallen back as they navigated rocks an old flash flood left in the road. But probably for the best, since we’d kicked up a rooster tail of dust with Nogales driving hard. We lost them but they couldn’t miss us. We parked short of the tire tracks turning into the narrow canyon. The car was well up there. With the rocks strewn along the canyon’s floor and its narrowness, it must have been hard to get the car in there.
“I’ll walk up and call the license plates down to you,” I said, and did that as the other agents arrived. I smelled decomp as I got close but didn’t see a body when looking through the windows. Seats were empty. The smell came from the trunk. Could it be Hurin? I circled the car and saw where it was dented and paint was scraped off getting it up here. The driver was motivated.
When the bomb dog arrived with her handler, she worked her way around the car and didn’t scent on anything in the engine compartment or underneath. The officer handling her dog was patient. She let the dog run, then worked her back over each area of the car at least three times before saying she thought it was safe to open a door.
Inside, the bomb dog scented explosive residue on the driver’s seat and floor mat but most likely that came from clothes. The dog didn’t scent on anything near the trunk and her handler was confident decomp odors wouldn’t fool the bomb dog. Nonetheless, everyone gave the car some room as I popped the trunk lid. It rose and a heavy wave of gases escaped. We let that drift away, then got a long look at a body, its back to us, knees drawn up, shoulders turned and the head facedown. Not a big man. Two entry wounds were clearly visible in dyed-blond hair at the back of the victim’s head.