The water in the puddle ran out the morning of the second day. In addition to thirst, hunger, shock, and pain, despair began to creep into Bill’s awareness. Flies swarmed his open wounds trying to feast on his blood, twice he’d chased off buzzards gawking impatiently that he wasn’t dead yet, and he’d lost count of how many times he’d used his polished handcuffs as signal mirrors thinking he’d attracted one of the search planes only to watch them pass by and turn in another direction.
No water. No sign of searchers. No choice now but to drag himself out into the open, risk that the cliff wouldn’t give way and tumble him farther down into the canyon. It would mean leaving the shelter that kept him relatively warm at night, but it was the only hope he had. Even though his khaki uniform blended in with the rocks, he could use his own blood to make a signal, anything to be seen and noticed.
Except…he still wasn’t sure who had pushed him off the cliff. At first all he’d remembered was taking pictures with his phone, getting too close to the edge, stepping back—and then a jolt like lightning. But then he could swear he’d felt someone push him. And lightning should have left more marks on his body, like exit wounds.
Someone had tried to kill him. Would they come back? No, after two days, they had to assume he was dead. Which meant no more dawdling; it was time to move.
He wrapped his belt around both legs to splint them. The pain knocked him out for, given the position of the sun, a good hour. Now came the hard part—rotating his body free of the crevice so that he could belly crawl and drag his useless legs behind him. All with one good hand. Except he was starting to worry about that left hand—his shoulder had begun to ache, and he couldn’t figure out why. But that was the least of his worries.
First he lay as flat as possible and did a weird butt scoot, bumping his legs over the rocks, just far enough to free his torso from the space between the boulder and the cliff wall. Then he pushed himself back up against the outside of the boulder, his entire body now in the sun for the first time in two days. His head pounded and he was so dizzy it was a good thing he had nothing to throw up, although that didn’t stop him from dry-heaving, which only added to his agony as his ribs protested.
Basking in the sunshine, that deserved a brief rest, he told himself, as he choked back the nausea. Just close his eyes for a moment or three.
The sound of a plane’s engine woke him, the sun now past its zenith. Hell, he’d lost two more hours. At this rate he’d make it around the boulder by next week. But he was more exposed now, with nothing between him and the plane. He fumbled his handcuffs from his chest pocket, polished them on his shirttail, folded them to maximize their surface area, and looked into the sun, trying to catch the light. The sun was so bright he had to slit his one good eye and still saw red, but there was a definite glint reflected from the metal handcuffs—was it enough? Did the pilot see?
At first he thought the plane was headed right for him. He kept signaling, frantically searching for the best angle, waving his hand overhead to catch the light. They’re coming! They saw it!
The plane kept coming, closer and closer. Bill let hope drown out his pain and stretched as far as he could, still signaling, waiting for a response. C’mon, give me a little wing-wag, let me know you see me. C’mon, c’mon, just a little closer…
And then the plane, just like all the others he’d spotted, veered away to the east. Always to the north and the east—as if they were intentionally searching in the exact opposite direction.
He slumped back, the glimmer of hope doused. Exhaustion overwhelmed him. This was as far as he could make it. He leaned back against the boulder and closed his eyes, the sun casting his vision in red. It wouldn’t take long to get a sunburn, so he added that to his list of things Deena would chide him for when he saw her again.
Why were they searching in the wrong direction? The best he could come up with was that they were basing the search radius off his last phone call—when he’d left a message for Lucy after he’d left the Holmsteads’ ranch. Damn, he’d sidetracked up to this meadow on his way back to the station, so he’d never had the chance to run a background check on the pair of so-called fishermen camping out by the river on Gus’s land. He hadn’t liked the look of those two—they’d said they were engineers from the oil fields in North Dakota, here on vacation. Which could well be true, but they sure as hell weren’t fishermen.
Had they followed him? All the way from Gus’s? If they’d wanted to, there were plenty of chances to jump him there—but they’d be the top of the suspect list. But why? He hadn’t seen anything suspicious; if he had, he would have arrested them then and there.
Besides, they’d only been around for a few days. Which meant they couldn’t have anything to do with his killer—if there actually was a serial killer. So far all the cases he’d dug up could be explained by natural causes or accidents; but wouldn’t that be perfect for a serial killer? Hiding in plain sight, targeting rural areas lacking the forensic resources of the big city?
And Dr. Carruthers, the coroner over in Idaho County—Judith Keenan had caught him making several mistakes. Mistakes that seemed obvious once she uncovered them. Who knew how many more there were? County coroner—the perfect job for a serial killer. How easy to get away with murder when you’re the one in charge of the death investigations and death certificates.
But if it was Carruthers, how had he gotten all the way from Grangeville and just happened to track Bill down when he’d gone to scout a new huckleberry site for Deena? No way could he have known Bill was coming here—Bill hadn’t even decided it until the last minute when he drove past the Forest Service road leading up to the meadow. Unless Carruthers somehow tracked his phone? There were all sorts of apps that could do that—some of them you didn’t even need to be near the phone, you just needed the access code. Lord knew, he’d stood near Carruthers enough times at death scenes and in his office. It would have been easy for the coroner to steal his code.
As the afternoon wore on, Bill stopped sweating despite the heat. His mouth was parched and he’d lost all his spit. Worse, the buzzards had returned—three of them now, cackling like Macbeth’s witches as they paced the boulder over his head.
Bill didn’t have his phone. He’d lost it when he fell—he remembered it flying from his hand as he spun over the cliff’s edge, his body twisting with the electrical shock. He had the vaguest impression it had flown toward solid ground rather than falling through the air with him. Maybe it was sitting up there, his pretty pictures still filling the screen, just waiting for someone to find it. There was no cell signal out here, but shouldn’t the GPS still have worked? He couldn’t remember if this was one of the dead zones for satellite reception or not.
Anyway, he had no phone to use to record a last message. He didn’t really want Deena to see him this way, and his voice was gone. So he pried his one good eye open and used his one good hand to fish his notepad with its tiny pencil from his pants pocket, and with a trembling wrong-handed scrawl, began to write a farewell letter to his wife.
It was short—not because he didn’t have a whole universe to say to her, but because any words that came to mind seemed so tiny and meaningless compared to the way he felt about her.
In the end, all he managed was:
Deena,
The bright star who guided me, kept me warm, saved my soul, and stole my heart. You are my life, my love, my everything.
I’m sorry, I tried, just ran out of time and luck.
Love forever, Bill