The chimneys of the power plant stood like monuments on the horizon. When McGuire reached them, he turned west into the sun, a hazy orange balloon floating above a barren brown landscape.
Within a mile, the small houses, general stores, garden nurseries and gas stations lining the road gave way to pastures delineated by rusty barbed-wire fences.
McGuire checked his rearview mirror repeatedly; no one appeared to be following him.
Soon the road surface began to deteriorate. The asphalt grew pock-marked; loose stones clattered against the car’s fenders. There were no buildings to be seen and the patchy grazing land had been replaced with raw, red clay.
The sun sank lower, approaching the earth, and McGuire accelerated to race against the oncoming darkness. Half an hour after leaving Laredo, a tall metal structure loomed up from a field to his left. He slowed at a laneway where a faded sign announced “Bledsoe Mining. Unauthorized Persons KEEP OUT!”
McGuire withdrew the revolver from his jacket, placed it on the seat beside him and turned into the gravel lane.
Coming over a rise just beyond the entrance he passed a rusting dump truck, the hood and doors removed, the tires rotting on the wheels. At the top of the next rise he could see the full height of the ore-loading machinery, that had marked the mine’s location from the road. Like the rest of the operation, it appeared to have been abandoned years ago; one end of a rubber conveyor belt dangled from the top of the structure like a dead serpent.
He drove cautiously through the mine site, feeling every nerve-end tingle as he passed a corrugated metal shed with “OFFICE” in faded white lettering over the open doorway and a long line of wooden buildings stretching down a weedy lane, their open windows staring blankly at the dying sun.
McGuire saw no sign of life: no vehicle tracks, no footprints.
He circled the grounds cautiously once, twice, one hand on the steering wheel, the other gripping his service revolver.
The gravel road continued beyond the office area and over another low rise. McGuire edged the car towards it, driving into the sun again, keeping his eyes moving and his senses alert.
Topping the rise was the mine head, marked by square timbers erected like some primitive wooden icon across an open pit. Rusting machine parts were scattered on the ground surrounding the pit, an open and bleeding wound in the red glow of the sunset. Gear-toothed wheels, levers, tools and other equipment lay where they had been discarded long ago.
McGuire stopped the car, switched off the engine and looked around. The silence covered him like a heavy blanket.
In the city, McGuire would frequently curse the unmuffled trucks, the piercing sirens, the incessant babble of humanity. Now, in a Texas desert glowing like molten metal in the light of a setting sun, he grew aware of the silent terror created by the total absence of sound—silence, without even a whisper of wind.
He scanned the horizon again. Deserted.
Except . . .
White, crisp and brilliant among the weathered wood and iron—a piece of paper, freshly nailed to the crossbeam timber over the mine shaft. And a word printed on it in bold black letters.
McGuire stepped out of the car, his revolver in his hand. Moving in slow circles, he approached the mine head, seeing nothing but desolation, hearing nothing but his own heartbeat.
He reached the edge of the open pit and looked up to read the word on a large white envelope fastened to the crossbeam midway over the pit.
Snyder.
“Bullshit,” McGuire muttered, then louder, shouting against the silence, “Bullshit!”
He wasn’t going to crawl across a beam in the middle of the desert, hanging over an open hole in the ground. He looked around again, then walked towards the car.
He stopped. It could mean something. Anything.
He scanned the horizon again and circled cautiously back to the open pit marking the mine head.
The sandy walls at his feet sloped down to the dark, forbidding opening of the vertical mine shaft in the centre of the pit. Heavy machinery had once been installed in the pit to hoist ore from beneath the ground and convey miners up and down the shaft. Now only their concrete footings remained, set just beyond the rim of the crater; exposed iron reinforcing rods reached out of the concrete and into the air like spiny, rusting fingers.
McGuire studied the crossbeam above him again. The sturdy timber was more than a foot square. He pushed against the nearest upright supporting the crossbeam, testing its stability, confirming it was solidly fixed in the ground.
He shook his head.
Jesus.
Iron bolts on the upright beam would provide a grip for his feet. Crawling on his stomach along the crossbeam would bring him to the envelope. Which was probably empty. Which would make it all a trap.
You could drive away, McGuire told himself. See Bledsoe tomorrow. Except that he’ll be ready for you. If it’s a trap, he set it up. And he could have the same kind of trap waiting back in Laredo.
Or you could crawl up there, check the envelope and hope something inside leads you to Andrew Snyder. And the killer of Jennifer Cornell.
He scanned the horizon again. There was no sign of life. Darkness was creeping over the desert, the sky in the east already more ebony than blue.
He didn’t really have a choice.
He said it aloud, wanting to hear the sound of his own voice again. “You don’t really have a choice.” Then he added: “You dumb son of a bitch.”
Slipping the revolver into his jacket pocket, he began to shinny up the nearest vertical beam. This, he promised himself, was the last mine shaft he would ever crawl across in Texas.
At the top, he was bathed in the fading light of the sun, suspended just above the horizon. He lay lengthwise on the beam and began dragging himself on his stomach, closer to the envelope, telling himself not to look down, telling himself he would seize the envelope, return to the ground and be back inside his car in a minute. One minute. Sixty seconds.
The envelope was within reach when the wood beneath him exploded and the crack of a rifle shot echoed across the desert.
He remembered butterflies he had seen as a child. Where? A museum, probably. Collections of tropical butterflies displayed in deep cabinets. Each insect, its wings dutifully spread to display their vibrant colours and distinctive patterns, impaled on a shiny pin which pierced first their bodies, then the layer of cork beneath them.
He was the butterfly. He was pinned. He could not move.
From the direction of the setting sun, he heard the snicksnick of a lever-action rifle being reloaded. A hunting rifle, he told himself, standard Winchester probably. Equipped with a scope. For shooting deer, not butterflies.
The next shot struck just below his armpit, sending splinters flying into his face. His body jolted in response and he almost slipped from the beam as his reflexes screamed at him to put the beam between himself and his hunter.
The sniper was adjusting. First shot low and too far right. Next shot higher and to the left. Coming closer to the chest. Or the head.
He looked down. The vertical mine shaft gaped black, open and waiting, twenty feet below.
The snick-snick echoed again from somewhere near the sun.
Survive another shot, he told himself. Then survive the fall to the ground and survive the arrival of the sniper to finish you off.
One step at a time. That’s all he could do. Survive one step at a time.
He shifted his body, trying to become a moving target while still hanging over the side of the beam. His arms were in near agony from the strain. His shoulders ached and his hands felt frozen. He had to hold on. If he dropped before another shot, the sniper would know he hadn’t been hit. And he would lose the element of surprise.
He needed the element of surprise. It was all he had.
McGuire moved again, sliding his hands across the rough wood, hefting his hips upward to rest on the beam as the third shot echoed across the open sky and the air whispered just above his head.
Crying out, he dropped from the beam into the darkness below him, throwing himself away from the open shaft and sinking to his ankles in the sand. He fell forward and scrambled up the sides of the crevice, dog-paddling in the loose soil, hands and feet churning against gravity. His efforts loosened a large rock that crashed against his ankle and slid down the slope, plunging into the vertical mine shaft.
Only when McGuire had scurried around the side of the pit, clutched the corner of a concrete anchor and tried to calm his breathing did he hear the faraway sound of the boulder striking the bottom of the shaft.
Huddling against the concrete anchor, he tried to vanish within its shadow.
He has to make sure, he told himself, trying to keep his hand from trembling as he withdrew the revolver from his pocket. He has to come over here and see.
McGuire counted seconds, crouching ten feet below the western edge of the pit. Above him, the crimson light of the sun bled into the deeper blue of the sky.
If the sniper walked directly to the pit, McGuire could remain in the shadows until the last second. But if he circled to approach from the east, he would see McGuire easily. Then it would be a matter of firepower and accuracy. A Police Special revolver against a lever-action rifle at thirty feet.
McGuire grimaced. Even the butterflies had better odds.
Time expanded. It seemed like hours since McGuire had plunged from the beam before he heard the sound of footsteps taking long, slow strides on the loose soil.
The footsteps stopped.
He’s looking around, McGuire told himself. Making sure I’m alone. Making sure there are no witnesses. Staying west of the mine head, keeping the sun behind him. If I hadn’t climbed the beam he would have shot me before I got back to the car.
He set it up neatly. One good hit and I drop into the mine shaft. No blood on the ground. Neat.
The footsteps began again.
Don’t circle, McGuire prayed.
He tensed at the first sight of the man’s shadow cast into the pit by the setting sun. It crept over the rim above his head, grew down the walls of the pit to the open mouth of the shaft and began moving up the other side. A long, lean shadow elongated by the low angle of the light.
Son of a bitch is wearing a cowboy hat, McGuire frowned. John Wayne stalking Indians in the desert. God, he hated Texans.
A second shadow traversed the first and McGuire knew the man was carrying the rifle low across his body. He was relaxed, not expecting to fire again.
He heard the boulder fall, McGuire realized. He thinks I’m down there. Bledsoe called, told whoever is out there to bury me in the mine shaft. Probably suggested the envelope with Snyder’s name on it as bait. Something to get me occupied, keep me from blowing the bastard’s head off. McGuire extended his arms slowly, the revolver steady in his right hand, his left gripping his right wrist, and waited for the man to arrive at the brink of the pit. To hell, he said silently, with the Marquis of Queensberry.
Suddenly the other man was there above him, his eyes on the opening of the mine shaft beyond the place where McGuire lay. McGuire sighted on the arm holding the rifle, squeezed the trigger gently and felt the gun jump in his hand.
Like catching a sidearm fastball, he thought: the recoil of the gun slapping his hand, stiffening his wrist, driving his arm up and his shoulder back. Like catching a hard-thrown baseball.
The rifleman screamed in pain and surprise as he flung the rifle in front of him, the bones of his forearm shattered by the bullet from McGuire’s gun. He stumbled forward, off balance and intent on his agony, as the rifle sailed into the pit. McGuire slid quickly aside to avoid the man, who was falling towards him and screaming a second scream which masked the echo of the first.
With his back to the plunging man, McGuire heard the sickening liquid impact and a third scream, a long, shrill cry of agony and terror, and knew the man could fall no further than the top of the concrete anchor.
He gripped the side of the pit and pulled himself to the top. You have to look, he told himself. You have to look at him. He glanced quickly down at the man, groaned and turned away, then looked back again.
A butterfly.
Dressed in a tan shirt, matching chinos and lizard-skin boots, the man atop the concrete anchor had lost his hat in the plunge, spilling thick blond hair that hung back from a long angular face. He had twisted onto his back while falling, landing on the rusting iron rods which jutted from the concrete anchors up to the blood-red sky. Now he lay pinned there, his body jerking in spasms, his eyes wide and fearful.
McGuire returned his gun to his pocket and dropped down to the injured man. He counted six rods piercing the body, heard the man’s laboured breathing and some strange liquid sounds he didn’t want to think about.
“I’ll get help,” McGuire said, touching the man gently.
The man’s eyes, swerving wildly in their sockets, found McGuire, rolled upwards, found him again.
“Snyder,” he whispered. “Is that you? Are you Andy Snyder?”
The eyelids lowered. One leg moved in spasms.
In the rear pocket of the man’s chinos, fastened to a belt loop by a long and elegant silver chain, was a worn leather wallet. McGuire removed it carefully, took out the driver’s licence and read the name.
William Raymond Edwards.
McGuire seized the man by the shirt and began to lift him away from the rods, anger exploding within him. “Goddamn it, you know! Tell me where Snyder is!”
His eyes snapping open again, the other man made an animal noise, long and loud and filled with agony and terror. Stunned by the sound, McGuire sat back on his haunches for a moment before swallowing once, hard, and bringing his mouth close to the dying man’s ear. “Tell me where Snyder is,” he said quietly. “Or I’ll do it again.”
“Cat . . .” the man began. Then: “Cat . . . alina . . .”
Blood began to spout like a geyser from around a rod which had penetrated the man’s neck. It pulsed at a heartbeat rhythm, and as McGuire stepped aside, the man’s spine curved upwards like an archer’s taut bow and a final scream rent the air, echoing again and again from dark distant hills.
McGuire lay back against the side of the pit and watched the body relax, bathed in red beneath an angry crimson sky, before stumbling to his car and speeding away from the mine, seeing demons in every shadow cast by his headlights.