Canyon Sacrifice (24 page)

Chuck gulped. Precisely what Dolores and Amelia
didn't
have was time.

Before Rachel had caught up to them, Janelle's friends had been headed out of the village on Center Road, presumably on their way back to Mather Campground. When Rachel had come up behind them with her lights flashing and siren howling, Amelia must have gunned the compact past the turnoff
to Mather and stuck with Center Road as it curved north to the visitor center. There she'd ended up at the shuttle-bus turnaround in front of the center.

Amelia had spun a tight circle in the paved cul-de-sac and nearly struck Rachel's oncoming patrol car on her way out. The trailing patrol cars would have been approaching the visitor center along Center Road at about that time, prompting Dolores' cries for Amelia to turn “left, left,
left
” onto Desert View Drive from Center Road.

Desert View Drive followed the canyon rim east for thirty miles past a series of overlooks and trailheads to the park's East Entrance. Unlike dead end Rim Drive on the opposite side of the village, Desert View Drive was open to the public. For most of its length, Desert View Drive stayed well back from the canyon's edge. Half a mile from the visitor center, however, a shallow wash forced the road close to the edge of the canyon, then south at a hard ninety degrees to drop into the wash before climbing up and out the other side.

The low-walled drainage that forced the sharp turn in the road had been formed over millions of years by the intermittent waters of Pipe Creek, a seasonal stream that flowed north to the South Rim and plunged into the canyon and on down to the Colorado River whenever drenching thunderstorms swept across the Colorado Plateau. A thousand years ago, the Anasazi had dammed the wash at intervals to capture the infrequent rains of the high desert, creating a number of small reservoirs a mile or two upstream from where Pipe Creek poured off the canyon rim. The stored water had supported a handful of Anasazi families, whose abandoned, rock-walled homes still stood beneath the low overhanging cliffs that lined the wash. The Anasazi families were long gone from Pipe Creek, but tonight, this instant, Amelia was racing her compact through the darkness straight toward the ninety degree turn in the road where
the wash fell away into the canyon.

“There's a curve!” Chuck yelled. “Dolores! It's just ahead of you. You've got to get Amelia to slow down!”

Dolores screamed in his ear. He clutched the phone as the screech of rending metal and the crackle of breaking glass choked out Dolores' shriek.

“Dolores! Amelia!” he shouted into the phone. But there was no response.

T
WENTY
-F
OUR

3 a.m.

Chuck crammed Janelle's phone into his pocket and slammed the motel-room door closed behind him.

First Donald. Now Amelia and Dolores.

He crossed the room to where Francesca was face down on the bed. He shoved Conrad aside and flipped Francesca over so she lay on her back looking up at him. Before he could say anything to her, Francesca kicked upward with both feet, trying to catch him in the groin. He jumped out of the way, then returned to her side and brought his boot down on one of her bare feet, pressing it into the room's beige carpeting.

Francesca sat up and scowled at Chuck. She cradled the arm Conrad had twisted behind her back. Her toenails were painted blood red to match her fingernails. Her hair was pulled back with a Harley-Davidson-orange bandana. The rouge on her jowly cheeks was uneven. Eyeliner trailed like tiny snakes from the corners of her eyes.

A single corner lamp lit the room. A pair of framed photographs of the Grand Canyon beneath a mantle of snow hung on the wall above the double beds. A bag of chips lay open on the side table between the two beds. A television droned on the bureau along the near wall. At the far end of the bureau, a liter bottle of soda rested on the edge of a detailed map of the inner canyon. The room smelled of stale food and unwashed clothes. No sign of Carmelita.

“Where's Carm? Where's the girl?” Chuck demanded, keeping his boot on top of Francesca's foot.

“I don't gotta tell you nothin'.” She spat defiantly on the front of Chuck's shirt.

Chuck pressed harder on Francesca's foot. She'd been here at
the canyon with her boyfriend at the start of all this. She was a party, somehow, to everything that had happened since.

Chuck lifted his boot and spun Francesca around so she again lay face down on the bed. Pressing her head into the mattress with a pinscher-like grip at the back of her neck, he removed his pack with his free hand and fished out the length of rope he'd taken from the alcove the afternoon before. He brought Francesca's hands together behind her back and wrapped the rope around her wrists. Moving fast, he trailed the rope to her ankles and tied them together as well. He pulled her knotted ankles toward her wrists and secured the rope, then swung his pack back over his shoulder and stepped away, allowing the trussed Francesca to slide slowly off the bed and land on the carpet with a resounding
whoomp
. She lay on her side, her belly spilled out before her, glaring sideways up at him.

“My daughter is missing,” Chuck told her. “My
daughter
. And you know where she is.”

“Your
daughter
,” Francesca imitated him. “For all of, what, a week?” She raised her head from the floor. “I don't know where she is.”

“But you know where she's been. Which is right here in this room, with you.”

Francesca looked away. “I don't know nothin'.”

Chuck swung back a booted foot, feigning a blow to Francesca's midsection. Before he could find out if threatening a kick would elicit any information from her, Conrad took hold of his shoulders from behind and pulled him backward, then stepped around him and knelt beside Francesca. The auditor helped her to a slumped sitting position on the floor, her back to the bed and her roped legs off to one side.

“You'll only make matters worse for yourself if you keep lying,” Conrad told her as he straightened and stepped back.

“Don't I get a lawyer or somethin'?” Francesca snarled, eyeing
Conrad from where she sat propped against the side of the bed.

“Your Miranda rights are waived during an active kidnapping,” Conrad replied, his unruffled tone that of a television-show police detective. “You've heard of Megan's Law, haven't you? Your sentence will be doubled if it's found you didn't cooperate during the ongoing abduction of a child.”

Francesca worked her thick brows. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“This is your one chance, Francesca.” Conrad tapped the chest pocket of his sport shirt. “I'm recording every word of this interview. You know the sentencing guidelines for kidnapping? Ten years, minimum. Double that if you don't come clean right now.”

Francesca's lips drew back. “I didn't do no kidnapping.”

“That's good. Accessory to kidnapping is only probationary—” again Conrad tapped the chest pocket of his shirt, “
if
you're found to have been helpful from the start.”

The auditor's shirt pocket appeared empty to Chuck. Even so, Francesca puffed her cheeks and said, “He came back and took her. Took my phone, too, the one we been using. Didn't say nothin' to me. He was in a big-ass hurry.”

“Who was?” the auditor asked.

Francesca looked at Chuck, then back at Conrad. “He knows who,” she said.

Chuck inclined his head, a short sharp movement.
Clarence
. Francesca had opened the door when Chuck had used his name.

“When did they leave?” Conrad asked, a note of urgency in his voice.

“Like half an hour ago.”

“Where'd they go?”

“I told you. He didn't say.”

Chuck broke in. “Did they go in the SUV? The one you had at the campground?”

Francesca's eyes flashed. “He made me drive it out of the park and leave it. Said it was too showy. Asshole.”

“The girl, how is she?” Conrad asked.

“I kept her sleepy, like they wanted. She hardly knew what was going on.”

Chuck glared at her. “Was she ‘sleepy' when he took her? Did you drug her earlier tonight?”

Francesca glowered right back at him. “You're the reason my Ronnie's dead.”

Chuck didn't hesitate. “It was you who pushed him. You were mad because he went down so easy to me. One lousy punch. But he was a jerk to you anyway, right? He beat you all the time, didn't he?”

Francesca's glower disappeared. Her breaths came fast and shallow.

“You were ready to be done with him, had been for a long time,” Chuck continued. “You posed him for a picture out on the end of the point, got him up on the railing. It was so tempting, so easy. You gave him a little shove. Who would ever suspect?”

Francesca's eyes, darting from side to side, told Chuck all he needed to know.

“Francesca,” Conrad said. He waited until she gave him her attention. “We have to know everything you know, and we have to know it now. Where do you think he took the girl?”

“He's crazy. He keeps getting crazier.”

Chuck glanced at the map lying open on the bureau. “You were here when he directed me in the canyon?”

“We couldn't go out. None of us.”

“He took the phone?”

“My phone,” she complained.

“And the gun?”

“I could smell it. It'd just been fired. I knew to keep my mouth shut.”

“But you let him take Carmelita.” Chuck made no attempt to hide his disgust. “You let him take the girl.”

“I told you. I didn't want to be next. He was, like, talking to himself. Don, he said. He kept talking about Don.”

Donald
. Chuck gritted his teeth. He'd heard enough. He backed to the door and pulled it open. “I'm out of here,” he told Conrad. He pointed at Francesca. “Call 911. They'll take her off your hands.”

He sprinted the length of the balcony to the back of the building, pounded down the rear stairs, and ran south through the Maswik complex and into the forest. He settled Rachel's infrared goggles over his eyes as he entered the trees. He slowed, weighed down by all that had happened—the car chase, the wreck, what he'd learned from Francesca Calderon.

Where should he go next? What should he do?

Francesca had opened the door to the motel room when Chuck announced “Clarence.” Chuck drove his palm into his fist as he remembered what Francesca had said when Conrad had asked her about Carmelita. “
They
,” Francesca said. “
I kept her sleepy, like they wanted
.”

And now “they” were set to use Carmelita as bait to direct Chuck to yet another out-of-the-way location at daybreak—in order to kill him.

He came to a stop deep enough in the forest to be surrounded by full darkness. It was time he checked in with the only “they” he'd come up with so far. He pushed the goggles up on his forehead and punched in Clarence's number on Janelle's phone.

“Where are you?” Clarence asked upon answering. “You didn't show,” he sped on, his words tripping over one another. “And now all these sirens. Jesus, Chuck. Are you all right?”

“Do you still have Carm with you?” Chuck demanded.

“Carm? What are you talking about? Do you have her?”

“I was just at the room, Clarence.”

“Room? What room?”

Clarence sounded baffled—and innocent.

“Let me talk to Jan,” Chuck said, reconsidering.

“My God, Chuck. Where are you?” Janelle said as soon as she came on the line. She sounded truly worried, her voice high and tight.

Chuck bit his lip. Neither Clarence nor Janelle was putting up a front. The two of them weren't acting. They
sounded
genuinely concerned because they
were
genuinely concerned. They weren't kidnappers. They were the mother and uncle of a kidnapped little girl, afraid for her safety, and for Chuck's safety as well.

“We're back at camp,” Janelle said when Chuck failed to speak. “We waited, but . . .where were you? The sirens. Do you think they've found Carm?”

“They're . . .they're . . .” Chuck ached to tell Janelle about Dolores and Amelia. But he couldn't. Not over the phone. And not now, not while he continued to wrestle with all the uncertainties ricocheting inside his head. “They still think it's me,” he said. “They think I've got her.”

“No.” Janelle sobbed. “Chuck. No.”

The phone beeped in Chuck's ear, signaling an incoming call. He glanced at the screen. The call was from the 505 number. This was it, his chance to prove Janelle and Clarence innocent beyond any doubt whatsoever. He put the phone back to his ear. “Is Clarence still there with you?”

“What?” Janelle sniffled. “Of course he is.”

“Let me talk to him again. Quick. Please, Jan.”

The phone beeped in his ear a second time; he only had a few more seconds.