Cait couldn’t unwind after the afternoon’s commotion at Saguaro National Park East. She sat at Chris’ kitchen table while Jack relaxed on the couch with a laptop.
“I should be face down after our hike, but instead I’m wired,” she said. “I think I’ll go for a walk while there’s still daylight. Want to join me?”
“My arm’s aching. I think I’ll veg out here,” Jack looked up from his laptop screen. “Did you know there used to be jaguars around the Grand Canyon and the Mogollon Rim in Arizona? That was before settlers came to the Southwest. Here’s a photo of a little girl sitting on the body of a jaguar killed in the Rincons in 1902. Just outside of Tucson. Their range used to include Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.”
“Humans seem determined to wipe out wild animals.” She took a water bottle and a protein bar before heading out the door. “See you in an hour or so.”
“Hasta la vista,” Jack said. “Watch yourself.”
Cait walked to the park entrance at Old Spanish Trail and headed a short distance to the intersection with Freeman Road. She stayed on a wide shoulder along Freeman and headed down a long hill, the Santa Catalina Mountains filling the horizon.
An occasional car or SUV whizzed by. The desert enveloped her with its subtle sounds. Brushy mesquite trees sheltered coveys of Gambel quail, chitchatting and gossiping. Mourning doves cooed their plaintive calls, and cactus wrens barked out harsh ululations.
Cait continued on, feet scuffing through wavy piles of sand that flowed onto the road from desert rain runoffs.
On the east side of the two-lane road, a fence marked a boundary of Saguaro National Park. On the other side of the roadway, homes on generous acreages were set back from the road behind fences and gated entrances.
Calmness settled around her like a soft blanket. The crazy events of the past week seemed distant, almost unreal in the presence of the peaceful desert around her. At the bottom of the hill, a phainopepla, a crested black bird with a lilting call, announced itself from the top of a palo verde tree. The remote ridges of the Catalinas, slicing into the sky like massive dorsal fins, dominated the northern vista.
A slight breeze tickled her skin and the sun warmed her back. The temperature had risen to a pleasant sixty degrees. It would be months before Tucson simmered under blast furnace heat.
A walker headed toward her on the shoulder, someone else enjoying the pleasant afternoon. The person drew nearer, a dark-skinned older woman in jeans and gauzy blouse, long silver hair spilling over her shoulders. Her gait was slow and steady as she leaned on a walking stick, softly humming herself.
Cait moved over to let the woman pass. “Hi.”
“Hello.” The walker paused, eyes crinkling as she smiled.
Cait halted also. “Such a beautiful place. Mountains everywhere you look.”
The stranger gave her a knowing look. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“How did you know?” Cait thought the comment odd.
“You seem like a traveler, someone out of their element.”
There was something about the woman that made Cait let her guard down. She introduced herself and explained that she was visiting her brother, a park ranger at Saguaro East.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Estrella.” Silver bangles jingled on the woman’s wrists as she swept a tendril of hair from her face and touched a chunky turquoise pendant by her neck.
Estrella’s voice was scratchy, roughened by age and life in an arid land. “Your brother must be careful. There are dangers out there.”
“Like what?” Cait was starting to think the woman was a melodramatic eccentric. The park drew tourists from around the country and world, including snowbirds in the winter months, and figuring she was a visitor was an easy guess. Besides, it wasn’t unusual for hikers to get injured or lost, so Estrella’s claim about the desert being dangerous wasn’t inaccurate.
“There are evil ones who steal our treasures,” Estrella touched Cait’s arm and fixed her with a firm gaze. “Pay attention to the land. It has much to teach you.”
Cait stepped back. “You live around here?”
Estrella waved down the road. “Over there. My husband and I and our four-legged friends.”
Cait looked where the woman pointed. A gravel driveway strayed past a cluster of mesquite and green-trunked palo verde trees.
“It was nice to meet you, Estrella. I’ve got to get going.”
She handed the woman a business card. “Call me if you know anything specific about problems in the park, like Gila monster poaching.”
Estrella squinted at the card. “So you’re a reporter from New Mexico. Enjoy our saguaro friends.” She gestured toward a tall, stately cactus with arms poised in a static wave.
Cait thanked her and turned back. She crossed the road to get a closer look at three horses gathered by a fence--a bay with white socks, a small black and white paint, and a large palomino. She tore off a handful of grass and walked up to the railing. The tan horse moved closer, reaching its head over the top rail. She held out her hand and the equine plucked at the grass with prehensile lips.
The horsey smell made her nostalgic for Zuni. As much as she liked visiting with Chris, she wished she and Jack had stayed at her parents’ place, which felt like a better hideaway from the trouble after them. Neither she nor Jack had slept well since the bomb in his condo and the murder of his partner, Russell Connor. Then there was the white SUV that ran them off the road at the top of the Salt River Canyon.
On her way back to Saguaro East, Cait heard a speeding vehicle behind her. She turned at the screech of brakes and the reverberation of a big diesel engine.
A jacked-up black double-cab truck veered in front of her onto a driveway, so close she had to jump aside to keep from smashing into a huge spinning tire. A face leered down at her through a tinted passenger’s window. She heard loud guffaws.
“Hey!” Cait’s yell was drowned out by the rumbling engine. Tires spat gravel at her and churned up a cloud of dust as the truck sped toward a one-story stucco home and stopped.
She started to run after the truck to give the driver a piece of her mind, when a grating sound alerted her to an automatic gate closing. She narrowly avoided being trapped inside the perimeter of a tall fence.
The gate clanged shut. Cait stood outside it muttering as two men got out of the truck. They laughed at her and headed for a front door.
***
“I’m leaving. Now,” Jason said. “With the body. It was selfish of me to drag you and Mirabel into my mess.”
Alfredo looked back with rheumy eyes, his bravado gone. “Where will you go?”
“Back to Albuquerque. I’m going to find that detective who was investigating Sonny Para. I want to see my girlfriend again and live like a man, not a frightened mouse.”
“I’ll go with you. You can’t do this by yourself.”
“I got myself into a gang, and now I have to deal with it. They’ll be looking for me in LA, not Albuquerque,” Jason said. “Mirabel may not be safe, if there’s another guy lurking out there. You need to stay and watch out for her.”
Jason slipped out the back door. He ran down the alley, retrieved his car from where it was parked by a strip mall, and moved it to the back gate.
He and Alfredo carried the body and fit it into the trunk .
“Take care of yourself.” Jason gripped Alfredo’s shoulder before getting into the car.
“Call if there’s anything we can do. Let us know when you get to Albuquerque. Vaya con Dios.” Alfredo whispered at him.
Jason rolled away into the darkness with headlights off, turning them on when he reached Whittier Boulevard. His hands were slick on the steering wheel as he got on a freeway and headed east through the thick of the LA metropolis. Had he planned out a route, he would have taken Interstate 15 past Riverside, then gotten on the I-40 through Flagstaff and on to Albuquerque.
Instead, he found himself on the I-10 toward Phoenix, his thoughts jittering between the body in the trunk and how Para had been able to trace him.
Darkness soothed his nerves as traffic thinned. A sign flashed by announcing an exit for Joshua Tree National Park ahead. Jason almost missed the exit. At the last minute, he cut across to the far right lane, the rear of his vehicle swinging back and forth, tires squealing.
A dark-colored SUV behind him changed lanes too but not quickly enough to make the exit. It continued on the I-10, brake lights coming on. The vehicle’s wild lane change caught Jason’s radar, and he glimpsed the sport utility screech to a halt on the shoulder.
Leaving L.A. after dark, he hadn’t noticed any suspicious vehicles following him when he’d stopped for gas and food. He didn’t think anyone would be able to stay on his tail in heavy traffic through a bewildering maze of freeway exchanges. It’s nothing. Don’t be paranoid.
Jason drove into the national park and maneuvered around a closed gate by a deserted entrance booth. A quarter mile later, he turned onto a dirt track and slowed, taking it easy around dips and rocks that could cause a flat.
He coasted to a stop. Cut the headlights near a grouping of Joshua trees poised by a clump of boulders. Once he stepped outside the car, he closed his eyes. His pulse dropped as he listened. An owl hooted nearby. A coyote yipped in the distance.
He looked up at black infinity dusted with stars as countless as grains of sand on a galactic beach. The darkness felt like an ally, shielding him from men who had hunted him in Albuquerque and found him again in LA.
Before he continued on, there was an ugly task to take care of.
He opened the trunk and wrestled out the body. He rolled it over and let it settle behind the boulders, where he untied the rope and yanked the tarp free.
Jason wadded up tarp and rope and stuffed them into the trunk. He wiped at sweat running down his forehead and neck. Rubbed his aching back. It was done.
He took in a cleansing lungful of cold, dry air. A faint glow smoldered on the western horizon, a reminder that southern California’s metropolis never slept.
Exhilaration swept over him. He’d outrun Los Brutos, though he wasn’t sure what his next move would be.
Jason felt a sense of newness, like he had as a child. He imagined the voice of his maternal grandmother, Celia. “God is everywhere. Purify your thoughts and open your heart to the mysteries of the earth and sky.” It was as if she was right there, a bird-like figure smelling of coffee and herbs.
She had died when he was eight. Since then, he’d done lots of things he shouldn’t have. The only physical thing left of her was a loop of carved ironwood rosary beads draped from his rear view mirror.
Still, the stars above and the quiet of the desert filled him with relief and hope. The distant freeway sounds were faint. He’d left all his torments back in the noise and confusion of LA.
Back in the car, he returned to the main road and exited the park. On the freeway again, he drove carefully, focusing on the lane lines, watching his speed.
Soon he started to relax. He’d been operating on minimal sleep for weeks, and fatigue pulled at his eyelids. In an effort to stay awake, he pinched himself and yelled. Kept the driver’s window down all the way so the rush of cool air would keep him alert.
A green freeway sign announced the town of Blythe fifteen miles ahead. Might be a good place to gas up and suck down coffee. He stuck his arm out the window, yawned, and moved around in the seat.
Something caused him to check the rear view mirror. A dark vehicle was moving up fast behind him, the driver pushing at least eighty or ninety.
He expected it to shoot past. Instead, the SUV slowed and drew even with Jason’s car. The passenger window was open, a gun barrel aimed at him.
Jason stomped the accelerator and clamped the steering wheel in a death grip.
Closing in on a semi ahead, he had to change lanes. He couldn’t afford to be boxed in, an easy target for the shooter. His Acura jumped ahead of the SUV and he switched to the fast lane.
Jason thought he heard shots, but he couldn’t be sure. He swerved a little, hoping to throw off the gunman’s aim, worried he would lose control.
Ahead was another vehicle in the fast lane, a large pickup. Jason pushed the speed up to ninety and changed lanes. The sport utility stuck behind him, mere feet off his bumper, brights glaring like dragon eyes.
The lights of Blythe flared before him as he pushed the Acura over a hundred and shot past the first exit. Wind rushed through his lowered window. He didn’t hear the boom of shots drilling his rear window and spidering the windshield.
The rear of his car lifted up slightly as the right tire blew. The chassis tilted sideways as the sedan dived off the highway and pitched down the embankment.