May There Be a Road (Ss) (2001) (30 page)

Why do people who know nothing about a subject seem to want to discuss it as an expert with someone who is well educated?

Shannon closed the diary with a snap and locked away, and then ran for his car. He took the road Kingman and drove steadily, holding his speed within reason until he was in the desert and then opening the convertible up.

He glanced at his watch. It was not so late as he had believed. He had got the address from the letter Sam Wachler had mailed at some time around eight in the morning. Potifer had been in his office when he arrived there, which was nearly an hour later. Potifer had been with him awhile, and then he had gone to his own apartment. Having been up much of the night, and at his post so early in the morning, the day had seemed much advanced to him when actually it was quite early. And that meant that Braith had been leaving his office early, too. Or for a late lunch.

The check of the diary had taken a little time, but now he was rolling. He drove fast, turning the problem around in his mind. It was lucky that he knew something of Kingman, and knew a few people there. It would make his search much easier.

As the pavement unwound beneath the wheels, he studied the problem again and was sure that he had arrived at the correct conclusion. Yet, knowing what he did, he realized that every second counted, for Darcy Lane... if alive as he believed, was again in danger.

He was alone on the road now, and the setting sun was turning the mountains into ridges of pink and gold, shading to deeper red and then to purple. A plane moaned overhead, and suddenly realizing that one of those involved might travel by air, he felt sick to the stomach and speeded up, pushing the convertible faster.

Hugh Potifer was a mystery. How much did the man know? He seemed to know that Darcy was alive, and even to have some hint as to her whereabouts, yet how could he have found her? It could, of course, have been an accident.

Potifer was an assayer and, though based in Las Vegas, was in touch with many miners and prospectors in the Kingman area.

Old Jim Buckle had been a lonely man, without relatives, and interested solely in the finding of gold. Potifer had accommodated him a number of times. Amy Bernard had done some typing for him and had forwarded things to him at various places in Arizona and Nevada. Stukie Tomlin had been a mechanic who kept his jeep in repair, and Darcy Lane had merely been a girl who talked to him over coffee, then took him out to show him the Los Angeles nightlife and had secretly hoped that he might meet a woman and settle down.

Shannon recalled that part of the diary very well.

How Darcy had found herself seated beside the old man.

He had seemed very lonely, and they had talked. He had shamefacedly confessed it had always been his wish to go to the Mocambo or Ciro's--places he had read about in the papers. Touched, Darcy had agreed to go with him, so the kindly old man and the girl who had just become a model had made the rounds. From the diary and from Watt Braith, Shannon had a very clear picture of Buckle. He had been a little man, shy and white-haired, happy in the desert, but lost away from it. Darcy's thoughtfulness had touched him, and none of the four had known of the will--except maybe Potifer. He might have.

Kingrnan's lights were coming on when he swung the car into a U-turn and parked against the curb in front of the Beale Hotel. For a moment he sat there thinking. It was well into the evening. The chances were that Darcy would be at home, wherever that might be. He got out of his car and went in, trying the phone book first.

No luck. He called the operator, asking for Alice, whom he had known years before. She was no longer with the phone company, moved east with her husband, and he could get no information about Julie McLean.

And then he remembered someone else. Johnny had been a deputy sheriff here in Mojave County.

His father had been one of the last stage drivers in the West. Time and again he had regaled Shannon with stories of his father's days on the Prescott and Ash Fork run. He was the kind of man who knew what was going on around town, even in retirement.

Hualapi Johnny Anson sat on his porch watching the last blue fade from the western sky. He greeted Shannon with a wave and offered him a White Rock soda from a dented cooler sitting on a chair beside him.

"Haven't seen you in a while," he said.

"Haven't been here in a while." Shannon went on to tell Anson what he was up to. In ten minutes he was back in his car and headed back up the road and Hualapi Johnny was dialing the sheriff's office in Kingman.

Johnny had reminded him of a box canyon they had once visited many years ago. There was a gravel road that led to it and a bottleneck entrance.

It was a cozy corner where people went for picnics when he had last seen it. There was a house there now, and it was rented to a young lady.

Strangely, his mouth felt dry and there were butterflies in his stomach. He knew it was not all due to the fact that he was in a race with a murderer.

It was because, finally, he was about to find Darcy Lane.

He slowed down and dimmed his lights, having no idea what he was heading into. And then, almost at the entrance to the small canyon, he glimpsed a car parked off the road in the darkness. It had a California license, and was empty. He was late--comperh too late!

He drove the car into the canyon, saw the lights of house, then swung from the car and ran up the steps. door stood open and on the floor lay a dark, still figure.

Lunging through, he dropped to his knees, grunted his surprise. It was a man who lay there, and lay in a pool of blood.

Shannon turned him over, and the man's eyes flickered, It was Stukie Tomlin.

"Shannon!" The wounded man's voice was a hoarse whisper. "He's--he's after her. Up--up on the cliffs. I tried to--help. Hurry!"

"Listen," Shannon said sharply, bringing the wounded man back to consciousness. "Help is on the way.

Where is she? Did she go up on the cliffs tonight?"

"No"--the head shook feebly--"this--afternoon.

To paint. I warned her. I came myself, tried to stop him. He shot me, went up cliffs-- sundown."

Sundown! Hours ago! Feebly, Tomlin gasped out directions and, vaguel Shannon recalled the path up the cliffs To go up there at night? With someone waiting with gun? Shannon felt coldness go all over him, and his ach was sick and empty.

He left the house, moving fast, stumbled on the of the path more through luck than design, and started up.

When he was halfway up, the path narrowed into an brow that hung over the box canyon, with a sheer drop seventy feet or so even here, and increasing as the mounted. Probabl he reflected, there was some point from the cliff top where she could paint. Yet by time, whatever the killer had come to do was probably done, and the man gone, long since.

Cool wind touched his face, and then he heard a voice speaking. He stopped, holding his breath, listening intently. He could make out no word, only that somewhere ahead, someone was talking.

On careful feet, he moved to the top of the cliff, holding himself low to present no silhouette. Before him were many ledges of rock, broken off to present a rugged shoulder some fifteen feet high, all of ten feet back from the promontory. He crouched, for the voices were clearer now.

"You'd better come out, Julie. Just come out and talk to me. It will be all right."

That voice!

Choking anger mounted within Nell Shannon, and he shifted his feet, listening.

"Go away." Her voice was low and strained.

"I'm not : coming out, and when morning comes, people will see US."

The man laughed. "No, they won't, Julie.

It's hours until morning, and you can't hang there that long. Besides, if you don't come out, I'm going up higher where I can throw rocks down. People will just think you got too near the edge, and fell."

There was no reply at all. Trying to reconstruct the situation, Shannon decided that Darcy had seen the man before he got to her. She must have got around the cliff on some tiny ledge where he could not follow or reach her.

There had to be an end now. He rose to his feet and took two quick steps, then stopped.

"All right!" His voice rang sharply. "This is the end of the line! Come away from there, your hands up!"

The dark figure whirled, and Shannon saw the stab of flame and heard the gun bellow. But the man fired too fast, missing his shot. Involuntarily, Shannon stepped back. A rock rolled under his foot and he lost balance. Instantly the gun roared again, and then the man charged toward him. Shannon lunged up, swinging his own gun, but the man leaped at him feet first.

Rolling dangerously near the cliff edge, Shannon scrambled as the man dove for him.

Shannon slashed out with the pistol barrel, but caught a staggering blow and lost his grip on his gun. He swung a left and it sank into the man's stomach.

He heard the breath go out of him, and then Shannon lunged forward, knocking the other man back into an up-thrust ledge of rock.

They struggled there, fighting desperately, for the other man was powerful, and had the added urgency of fear to drive him. All he had gambled for was lost if he could not win now, and he was fighting not only for money, but for life.

A blow staggered Shannon, but he felt his right crash home, took a wicked left without backing, and threw two hard hooks to the head. He could taste blood now, andwitha grunt of eagerness, he shifted his feet and went in closer, his shoulders weaving. His punches were landing now, and the fellow didn't like them, not even a little. This was a rougher game than the other man was used to, but Shannon, who had always loved a rough-and-tumble I fight, went into him, smashing punches--until the man collapsed.

It was pitch dark even atop the mountain, was taking no chances that the man was playing possum. When he felt the man go slack under his punches, he thrust out his left hand making a crotch of his thumb and fingers and jammed it under the fellow's chin, jerking erect. Then he hooked his right into his midsection again and again. This time when he let go, he wasn't worried.

Swiftly, in a move natural to every policeman, he rolled the fellow on his face and handcuffed his hands behind his back. Then, at last, his breath coming in painful gasps, sweat streaming from him, he straightened.

"It's all right, ma'am," he said quietly.

"You can come back out."

Her voice was strained. "I--I can't. I'm afraid to let go. I--Quickly, he went to the cliff edge, then worked his way around. Only the balls of her feet were on a narrow ledge, and her fingers clutched precariously at another.

Obviously, she had clung so long that her fingers were stiffened. He moved closer, put his left arm around her waist, and drew her to him.

Carefully, then, he eased himself back until they stood on the flat rocks, and suddenly she seemed to let go and he felt her body loosen against him, all the tension going out of her. He held her until she stopped crying.

"Better sit down right here," he said quietly then. "We won't try the path for a little while, not until you feel better. I've got to take him down, too."

"But who--who are you?" she protested. "I don't know you, do I?"

"No, Miss Lane." He heard her gasp at the name. "You don't. But I know all about you.

I'm a private detective."

He told her, slowly and carefully, about Jim Buckle and his will, about the search for her, about Hugh Potifer, Stukie Tomlin, and Amy Bernard.

From a long way off a siren approached, red lights flashed against the rocks. He'd worry about the sheriffs in good time .... "Now," he said, "you tell me, and then we'll get this straight, once and for all." "I can't!" There was panic in her voice. "I--I don't know..."

"Take it easy," he said sympathetically, "and let's go back to the day you met that chap Brule.

It was him, wasn't it?"

He saw her nod. The moon was coming up now, and the valley off to the right and the canyon below them would soon be bathed in the pale gold beauty of a desert night. The great shoulders of rock became blacker, and the face of the man, who lay on the rocks, whiter.

"After I met him, only a few days after, I was painting. I was on an old oil dock--where there was one of those offshore wells, you know? He came along in a motorboat and wanted me to come for a ride, offered to drop me back at Santa Monica. I had come up on the bus, so I agreed.

"We started back, but he kept going farther and farther out. I--I was a little worried, but he said there were some sandbars closer. Then he stopped the boat and said something about a lunch. He told me it was under a seat. I stooped to get it, and something struck me.

That was the last I remembered. The last, except-- well, I felt the water around me. I remember then that when he struck me I fell over the side and went down."

"Nothing more--comuntil when?"

"It was"--she hesitated--"days later. I was on a bus, and--"

"Wait a minute," he said quietly. "Before that. You remember Sam Wachler?"

Her gasp was sheer agony, and he took her hand. She tried to draw it away, but he held it firmly. "Let's straighten this all out at once, shall we?" he insisted. "There's a bunch of people down below who are going to want to know what's been going on. So, no secrets anymore. And let me promise you. You have nothing to be worried about, frightened of, or ashamed of."