Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money (31 page)

Although you approached the ranger station —
outlook, outpost or whatever it was — via a very lockable looking
metal stairway, the gates were open and unlocked. A steel platform
at the top of the stairs formed an outlook verandah on all sides of
the station itself. I looked out at the darkening landscape,
towards what I thought was Camp Arrowheart. If anyone was following
me, I couldn’t see them: the world out there looked peaceful. And
empty.

The door to the station itself was closed. I
knocked and, when no one answered, tried the door. “Please don’t be
locked. Please don’t be locked.” I said it out loud, a sort of
prayer that I had no real hope of having answered. When I tried it,
though, the doorknob turned in my hand and the door swung open.
Tycho followed me inside. Things were definitely looking up.

The station was all one room and no one was
there. The smell of coffee permeated the place and I could catch
the odor of good electronics and slightly musty wood. The water
cooler was there, just about where I’d hoped it would be. And more.
A porta potty sheltered behind a makeshift screen. A coffee mug
stood on a windowsill and, when I checked, I could see the dregs of
a recent cup in the bottom. Someone had been here quite recently,
looking out at the forest. Though they apparently hadn’t seen
me.

I stood at the window and looked back in the
direction of Camp Arrowheart: nothing but trees and rocks and no
gun-toting madmen in sight at all. I resumed my examination of what
I was now sure was a forest lookout.

There was a lot of stuff — mostly machines
whose uses were alien to me, but I didn’t care. Everything I needed
was here, including a rotary dial phone that looked like it had
been sitting there since the 1950s. I put a coffee mug of water
down for Tycho and then poured one for myself. By the time I’d
half-finished mine, Tycho was looking at me for more, so I refilled
him.

I’d just put Tycho’s cup down for a third
time and was trying to remember how to use a rotary dial phone when
I heard a vehicle approaching fast. I thought about hiding, but a
second glance around showed me what I had already seen: a single
room. No place to hide. Even the screen around the porta potty
wouldn’t provide much protection: especially with all of Tycho’s
breathing. Then the sound of rubber on metal and I knew someone was
coming up the stairs, and fast. I suddenly wished I’d used the
phone
before
gorging myself on water.

What would it be to die out here? Who would
ever know? These were the thoughts I was having as the door flung
open on a casually dressed man about my own age with a box in his
hand. Miraculously: pizza. I could smell it.

He was clearly startled to see me standing
there. And me? I felt like Goldilocks being discovered by a fairly
gentle looking bear.

“The... the door was open,” I said
awkwardly.

“I usually don’t lock it if I’m not going to
be away long. No one comes here this time of day,” he indicated the
box, looking slightly embarrassed. “But I got hungry.”

“Pizza in the wilderness,” I must have said
it with some wonderment because he chuckled.

“Naw, we’re only five maybe ten miles from
Running Springs.” A light seemed to dawn as he said this, and he
took in my appearance: which couldn’t, by that point, have been
pretty. I’d pulled my hair up during the heat of the day, and limp
portions of it had escaped its confines. My face was streaked with
sweat, my knees and arms were scuffed and scabbed from close
encounters with rocks, and I’d snagged my T-shirt on an especially
uncooperative and prickly bush. Nothing revealing, but it would
have contributed to what had become a fairly scary ensemble.

“I got lost,” I offered by way of
explanation. “I walked here — well ran here — from over there,” I
pointed out the window, back towards the way I’d come. “From Camp
Arrowheart.”

He looked as though he didn’t fully believe
me. “Do you know how far that is?”

I nodded. “Far. Very far.”

He drew me towards a desk, pulled out a map.
“Look,” he pointed at a green blip. “That’s Arrowheart.” Then he
drew his finger across an ever lightening shade of pale green
nothingness, finally resting on a blip so pale green it was almost
gray. “And here’s us: Command Peak Tower. That’s... let’s see...
six miles, I guess. Give or take. Not
so
far, from the sound
of it, but not the most hospitable country. Not that way. Why’d you
do that?”

“I got lost.” I repeated. “And I think
someone was chasing me.” My voice grew quiet with the weight of
what I’d seen. “I think I saw someone killed. At Arrowheart. And I
think someone saw me. And I wanted to run and get help — I thought
I was going back to my car, but... after a while I knew I was lost.
And I just kept going.”

“At Arrowheart? There’s nothing there. It’s
been closed for years.”

“Yes, I know. But please, call someone. I
saw a shooting. Hours ago now,” I said regretfully. It was probably
too late to do anything about it, even if there had been time when
it first happened. “Five hours ago, maybe a little more.”

I was relieved when he put down his pizza
and crossed to the phone. “I think Arrowheart is in Yucaipa’s
jurisdiction. I’ll see what they say.” Then to whoever answered his
call, “Yeah, this is Morgan Dunsford at Command Peak Tower. No sir,
I’m a volunteer fire lookout.” Not a very good one, I thought, the
forest could have gone up in flames while he went for his pizza. “I
have a woman here claims she walked across from Arrowheart.”
Claims? “Claims someone was chasing her and that she saw someone
shot. No sir, I don’t know that, let me ask her.”

He turned to me and said: “They want to
know, was the person chasing you the same one as got shot?”

I looked at him stupidly for a moment. “No.
Different people. One shot. One chasing. He shot at me too.”

He turned back to the phone and the exchange
went on for a while in this vein. Judging from Morgan’s side of the
conversation, I could tell that this particular wilderness wasn’t
exactly a hotbed of violent crime.

“Well,” he said to me as he hung up,
“they’re sending someone out there to have a looksee.”

I looked at him expectantly and I guess he
could see I was waiting for something more, because he went on.
“Well, they’ll call us when they know something, I guess. Likely
they’ll want to get a statement or something from you, but Deputy
Ganner didn’t say.”

“You have a car, right Morgan?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Sure,” he
admitted.

“Please, can you take me there?”

“I’m not so sure that would be a good idea,
miss,” I saw his eyes slide over the pizza box longingly.

“Listen, I have to get back to my car
anyway. If the cops don’t want us around, I’ll just get out of the
way. My car is there. You can bring the pizza and eat it on the
way.”

He finally, if somewhat reluctantly, agreed
to take me back to Camp Arrowheart, though not before he’d checked
back in with the sheriff's station and made sure it was OK. As he
was getting off the phone for the second time, I saw his eyes scan
the horizon and stop. He gave a low whistle and pointed.

“Looks like there might be something to what
you said.”

I followed the motion of his hand and his
eyes and I saw it, as well. Smoke. Blacker near the base, near the
earth. A gray wisp farther up.

“Arrowheart?” I asked.

He just nodded as he applied himself, once
again, to the phone. Clearly there were things expected of a fire
lookout when fire was actually spotted. With the phone calls made,
he grabbed his long-neglected pizza and we headed for the door. I
noticed as he left that, this time, he locked up behind
himself.

Morgan had a pickup truck and Tycho was
forced to ride in the back (“My wife’s allergic.”) which the dog
actually seemed to think was pretty fun once I’d shown him where to
sit. He noticed right away that he could stick his head over the
side and smell all the good fast moving forest smells while barely
moving his head.

It turned out that Camp Arrowheart was a lot
further via road than it had been the way I’d come: cross country.
Five or six excruciating miles on foot, 20 comfortable miles in a
car or truck. Though I wasn’t complaining.

Morgan ate his pizza happily while we drove
and I helped him with a bit of it. There’s nothing like an
unexpected hike and a brush with death, I’d found, to help you work
up an appetite. As we drove, Morgan explained that the outlooks in
San Bernardino National Forest were no longer staffed by the
forestry service. In fact, they functioned mainly as educational
tourist attractions, keeping seasonal hours and maintained by
volunteers who, like him, committed a certain number of hours each
month to help forest visitors look for fires.

“That’s why I wasn’t there when you got
there. We close at five. But my wife’s visiting her sister up at
Barstow and I thought I’d just have me a little pizza and watch the
forest,” he looked embarrassed. “Please, miss, do me a favor?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Don’t tell anyone I wasn’t there when you
got there? Or that it was unlocked? I wasn’t gone so long and I
really didn’t think anyone would come...”

“Sure,” I repeated. “Anyway, who would I
tell?” And I thought about the few minutes I’d been there alone at
the lookout before he came back. The feeling of finding sanctuary
and the exquisite taste of the water. It had been the most
wonderful feeling of rescue, despite the fact that no one was
there.

The only way I recognized Camp Arrowheart in
the dark was the sight of my car still parked at the side of the
road where I’d left it, reflecting Morgan’s headlights, benignly
awaiting my return.

I pointed out the camp entrance to Morgan
and we bumped along up it. I was glad he had a four-wheel drive: I
wouldn’t have wanted to attempt the walk in the dark, even
accompanied.

We could smell something amiss before we saw
it. The unmistakable odor of roasting wood. The place itself was
transformed from the quiet ghost camp I’d visited in the afternoon
and was alive with emergency vehicles and the men and women who
service them: firefighters, sheriff cars, even an ambulance stood
by, unneeded for the moment, but — I imagined — on the scene just
in case.

The big lodge I’d walked through with Tycho
earlier — the one with the kitchen and the big fireplace — was in
flames. As Morgan and I pulled up, we could see that the fire was
blazing madly, the firefighters just settling in. And it looked as
though the fire had been burning for a while: there was little left
to distinguish the building aside from its placement. By the light
of the vapor lamps in the back of two of the sheriffs trucks, you
could see that a chimney still stood, at least — as well as some of
the outer walls — but most of the place was just gone.

I imagined that the wood that had been used
to build this place some 80-odd years before wouldn’t have taken
much encouragement to go up in flames. And it was clear to me
without asking or even looking very far that this fire
had
been encouraged. After what I’d seen happen here this afternoon, it
seemed like too much of a coincidence that the place would have
self-ignited.

While the firefighters were dealing with the
blaze, the sheriffs were busy with other things. We could see four
or six people in the uniforms of the sherif's department with
able-looking flashlights scouting the perimeters of the area and
checking through the smaller buildings. Securing the scene. As
Morgan and I approached, a couple of them broke off their search
and came towards us.

“You Dunsford?” One of the sheriffs asked.
They were Mutt and Jeff: one tall and lanky, the other short and
with a look about him that said he loved donuts.

“Yeah,” Morgan said. “This is Madeline
Carter. She’s the one says she saw what she saw.”

“Have you found anything?” I asked.

The donut guy seemed to look at me for the
first time, “Naw. But it’s dark, don’t think we’ll find anything
tonight.” He addressed his partner, “Riley, get her statement, all
right? And keep the dog in the truck,” Tycho had just jumped down.
“We don’t want him messin’ up a crime scene.”

“Do you want me to show you where it was I
saw the shooting?”

“Like I said, I don’t think we’ll find
anything tonight. But I guess, since you’re here, it couldn’t hurt
to know. Just, we can’t get too close,” he indicated the
firefighters hard at work. “But you can show us the vicinity.
Point, you know.”

I couldn’t, of course, be precise in showing
them. It was, as donut man had pointed out repeatedly, quite dark,
even with the vapor lights and by now dying flames. In any case,
what I’d seen had been from a distance. They assured me that, if
there was anything to see, they’d be able to spot it in the
morning.

The statement-taking was about as precise as
the search seemed to be. It struck me that Riley kept forgetting to
ask for pertinent details, so I filled him in as well as I could,
but better than he would have been if left to his own devices.

“Do you guys believe me at all?” I asked at
one point.

Riley looked surprised. “Sure. Why not? I
mean, there’s no body, there’s no blood, the place is on fire and,
from what Morgan says, you
walked
clean across to Command
Peak when there was a perfectly good road to follow, but — hey —
what’s not to believe?” Riley said all of this without a trace of
irony. It was the only thing that kept me from wanting to hit
him.

I told him everything, or as much of
everything as I knew. I gave him names, drew what relationships for
them that I could. And, apparently, Emily had been right: News of
the Langton-related kidnapping hadn’t been broadcast very far out
of LA because Riley looked blank when I mentioned the connection,
though he jotted what I said down in his notebook.