“Nothing,” I said.
The sun was touching the tops of the next range of mountains to the west when Jocko held up a finger.
“One more time around, Cork,” he said. “That’s all I can give you.”
The constraints of fuel and time, I figured. He banked, and we made a wide loop.
Then I saw it. The flashing of sun off a mirror. Three flashes, separated by three short spaces. Then a flash, and a long lapse before the next. Then it was gone. Not random. An attempt at an SOS, I was certain.
“There, Jocko,” I said.
He turned and saw where I pointed, and he banked and circled back.
Again the flashing, and this time Jocko spotted it, too. It came from a tight fold between two steep ridges, a place Jocko couldn’t possibly fly into. If this was, indeed, the Lulabelle, I could understand why Sylvester, at his age, wouldn’t want to try mining it. Getting in and out looked rough. But it might be a reasonable sanctuary, a good place to hide if that’s what you were after. I scanned the spot with the field glasses, but couldn’t see anything definite.
We made another high pass. This time there was no flashing of light.
“Where’d it go?” Jocko asked.
“I don’t know. But it was there and it was definitely a signal.”
“Peter?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Why did he stop?”
Jocko made a wide loop for another pass. Against the sun, low in the west, I saw a hovering vulture. But there was something not right about it. I used the field glasses and could see that it wasn’t a vulture or any other bird.
“Chopper, Jocko. At three o’clock.”
He turned his head and nodded.
“Border Patrol?” I said.
“Got me. But I’m guessing that’s why whoever’s down there below us stopped signaling. I think we’ve seen all we’re going to see here today.”
We cleared the southern end of the Santa Margaritas and headed east. I tried to spot the chopper again, but either it didn’t follow us or it was so far back that even with the field glasses I couldn’t get a visual.
When we touched down on Jocko’s landing strip, Frank and Jayne Harris were there to meet us.
“Jayne figured you’d be back before sunset,” Frank explained. “She insisted on having supper ready for you. It’s warming in your oven, Jocko.”
“Well?” Jayne said as we walked to the ranch house. “Anything?”
“Something,” Jocko said. “But what exactly we can’t say. Border Patrol helicopter chased us away before we could confirm anything.”
I told them about the mirror signal.
“Who else could it be but Peter?” Jayne said.
“That’s pretty much my thinking, too,” I said. “I need to get over there and check it out.”
“If it’s in the Santa Margaritas,” Frank said, “you’ll never make it before dark. And you don’t want to get lost in that desert at night.”
“When was the last time you ate a decent meal?” Jayne said. “Have some supper. It’s lasagna. One of my specialties. And some of our best wine.”
We stood at the door to the ranch house. I could smell the lasagna, and my stomach was making a pretty good argument for staying. But I had to get back to Cadiz and tie a ribbon on the angel’s uplifted finger. Rainy needed to know.
CHAPTER 20
* * *
It was dusk when I hit Cadiz and drove past the church. The angel’s finger was bare. I stopped at Cadiz Corners to fill the tank of the pickup truck. Inside the convenience store, I bought a pen, a notepad, and a little spool of red ribbon. I parked on the main street across from the Wagon Wheel Café, cut a small section of ribbon, tore a page from the notepad, and wrote on it: I found him.
To be sure I wasn’t being followed, I walked a winding route back to the church. Inside, I put the paper slip beneath the cross on the altar. I left the church, spent a few seconds tying the little red ribbon around the angel’s finger, returned to the pickup, and drove to Burger Billy’s. I took the leathery cheeseburger I bought, and the greasy onion rings and the grainy milk shake, back to the parsonage and settled in to wait.
Which is always the hardest part.
The demons that plague you are patient horrors. You may think that you’ve dealt with them, driven them out with logic, put them to rest with prayer, but they’re never really gone. They’re always with you. And why? Because they’re not things separate from you. They are you.
I chewed on the idea of Rainy with Gilberto Mondragón. There was history between them, significant history, a life they’d created together. And children. There’d been love, fire, passion, dreams, everything that melds two souls, makes two people marry, compels them to commit to walking one road together for the rest of their lives. When Rainy fled Arizona, it hadn’t been because she wasn’t in love with Mondragón. She’d run for the safety of her children and herself. The separation afterward and the divorce hadn’t come because they’d fallen out of love. Over the years, they’d remained in touch. Rainy had shared photos of the children as they grew. Probably she’d shared stories. When she’d come to Cadiz to help in Peter’s rehab, she’d asked Mondragón to be a part of that, to share the burden of its great cost and perhaps the emotional burden as well.
And now, in the long wait, the demon deep inside me, which was the voice of the worst part of me, kept whispering: Did she share more with him?
Who was this man with all his queridas and mi amors and preciosas? Wealthy. Way too good looking. With an easy bearing that suggested he was used to wielding power and accustomed to the deferential treatment that came with great authority.
And the demon whispered, but not for the first time: Who is Rainy? Do you really know this woman you married?
She’d kept secrets from me. For important reasons, she believed. Or said she believed.
And then the demon whispered: If she kept these things from you, things you had a right to know, what else has she kept from you?
The food sat heavy on my stomach. I was tired, weary right down to my bones. I laid myself out on the couch with the Winchester on the floor beside me and the map Jocko had given me on the coffee table, and I stared up at the ceiling. I could tell from the cobwebs in the corners that the parsonage wasn’t often used. I rolled my head and saw that there was dust on the coffee table, disturbed by the map I’d put there. Michelle Abbott had offered the little house to us with no time to prepare, and there was dust everywhere. Except, I noticed, in the center of the shelf of the bookcase next to the couch. I got up and looked more closely. As on the coffee table where I’d put the map, the thin layer of dust had been disturbed. Books had recently been moved. I carefully slid them out one by one until I found the bug.
The Rodriguezes? Border Patrol? The Coronado County Sheriff’s Department? DEA? Who could say?