No Going Back (9 page)

Carson must be the name of the older cowboy. ‘What is he doing to her?’

‘Why, giving her a lift, of course. What do you expect? Now don’t you worry, he’s treating her like a princess.’ The man smiled, reminding Jay of a toad. ‘And don’t you worry about yourself, miss. A princess needs her handmaiden to be treated with the same amount of respect.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Jay croaked. ‘Where are you taking us?’

‘We have to take you back to where the princesses belong.’

Princesses? Jay looked through the gap between the front seats and could see a leg, too thin and dainty even to be Nicole’s. The man leaning over her made it difficult to see further, but for a second he jiggled to one side and Jay craned forward. In the passenger seat a small figure turned its face towards hers. A teenage girl blinked back at her in a mix of shock and dismay. The girl couldn’t speak. She’d been gagged by gaffer tape wound round her head, but she conveyed the bleakness of their situation through her horrified stare.

Now, lying bound in this sheet metal and timber coffin, Jay recalled the young girl’s look. She had been seeking help from Jay, and Jay had returned a look of her own that spoke a silent promise. The only thing was, until now, there had not been a damn thing she could do to help. Plus, the prospects of anything changing in the future were scant.

Yet she must try.

Nicole and the girl were relying on her.

Jay screamed . . . but that was about all she could do.

10

In hindsight, I should have gone to the police, perhaps asked them to check things out, but I’m not the most patient of types. Not when the buzz of adrenalin kicks in and I have the scent of a trail. My impulsive nature took hold of me and I drove out into the desert, taking with me a four-litre jug of water, my newly purchased gun and lock-knife and very little else that would keep me alive in the wilderness. I had brought my belongings from the hotel: a change of clothes, as well as the paperwork I’d come armed with, but that was it. In my defence, I was only following a lead that might turn out to be nothing, and thought that within a few hours I’d be back at Scott Blackstock’s trailer reporting a dead end. I didn’t know how woefully misinformed that assumption would turn out to be.

Prompted by his buddy, Rob, Scott had told me about the run-in he’d had with the family who owned a homestead out in the desert, and how one of the Logan men had shown an unhealthy fascination with Helena, and had gone as far as pawing his wife’s hair before Scott had intervened. They’d been drinking in a bar that was frequented primarily by a local Native American contingent, but Scott and Helena were regulars and had been accepted into the community. The Logans were a different story: when they entered the dimly lit bar room, the promise of unrestrained violence in the air became palpable. The Logans made no secret of their dislike for their Navajo and Hopi neighbours, and made it plain with their unchecked insults and racial slurs. Some of the local men might have stood up to them, but they knew it was a pointless exercise, and one that would bring them further trouble. They took the Logans’ belligerence, kept their heads down and hoped they’d pick on someone else.

That was when, uninvited, they had joined Scott and Helena at their table.

‘Guys,’ Scott had tried, ‘you mind? Me and my wife are trying to have a little privacy here.’

‘We don’t mind,’ their elected spokesman said. All three Logans sat down, the spokesman, Carson, slapping a bottle of bourbon on the table top. ‘You go ahead with what you were doing and pretend we aren’t here.’

Scott and Helena shared a grimace. ‘C’mon, guys. Give us a break will ya?’

‘We ain’t sitting with any of those savages.’ Carson tipped his head at the other customers with a sneer. ‘Besides, these are the best seats in the house.’

‘They sure are.’ Brent Logan leered at Helena, admiring the swell of her breasts beneath her white blouse in open disregard of Scott.

Scott glanced at Helena and could see the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. He couldn’t allow Brent to be so brazen without appearing a coward, but he’d heard rumours about these bad asses and didn’t want the kind of trouble they could bring. ‘C’mon, guys? We’re only having a quiet drink, winding down. There’s plenty other places to sit.’

‘Relax.’ Carson splashed bourbon into glasses, shoved one across the table to Scott, and took up one of his own. ‘Have a drink with us, man.’

Helena bumped Scott’s thigh under the table. Scott got the message: she wanted to leave before things got out of hand. Scott was in agreement but couldn’t see how he could do that without drawing the ire of the Logan boys.

Helena offered a plausible get-out. ‘You’re driving, Scott. You’ve had enough to drink already. We can’t afford for you to lose your licence.’

Scott pushed the glass of bourbon back towards Carson. ‘She’s right. The cops have been after me long enough . . . don’t want to give them a reason to run me in.’

Carson shoved the glass back again. ‘One more won’t hurt.’

Brent’s eyes had fixed on Helena’s face since straying up from her chest. His pupils dilated as he watched the play of light on her dark hair. He reached up with trembling fingers and pinched a bunch of his coarse blond mane. Scott’s gaze flicked from him to Carson, then across at the third Logan. The stocky, dark-complexioned man merely returned the look, a faint smile playing about his thick lips.

‘OK,’ Scott relented, as he picked up the glass of bourbon. ‘But just this one, OK?’

He downed the bourbon in one long gulp then stood up and reached a hand for Helena’s. ‘C’mon, babe, we’d best git going.’

‘Sit down.’

Scott looked at Carson, but it wasn’t he who had spoken. It was the dark one.

‘I gotta go, buddy,’ Scott said.

Carson slammed his empty glass on the table top. ‘Samuel told you to sit down.’

Scott shook his head. ‘Look, guys, I don’t want no trouble, but me and Helena are leaving.’ He pulled his wife up beside him, but Brent mirrored the action and stood directly in front of her. He was still teasing the strands of his thick hair. Brent mouthed her name, mimicking Scott: ‘He-lena.’

‘We just bought you a drink,’ Carson said. ‘It’s only fair you do the same for us.’

‘Fine.’ Scott dug in his jeans pocket and pulled out a wad of dollars. He dropped them in front of the man. ‘Get yourselves a drink on me.’

Samuel Logan reached for the small stack of bills, and scrunched them in his fist. He tossed them at Scott and they bounced off his chest and on to the floor. Scott stiffened. Helena’s hand in his had also tightened up. ‘C’mon, Helena, we’re leaving.’

Brent stepped in front of Helena, while Samuel also came to his feet, blocking the other route around the table. Up close Samuel’s face was a criss-cross of old scars like white threads in his sun-parched skin. His hands were lumpy, as though his fingers and knuckles had been broken many times and had failed to set properly.

‘Oh, c’mon,’ Scott said. In the bar room the buzz of conversation had dropped to a hush. All around them was a static charge, like ozone building in the atmosphere before a lightning storm. Some customers left hurriedly.

‘You think you’re too good to drink with us?’ Carson asked as he refilled glasses.

‘No, I don’t. But like Helena said, I’ve already had too much and have to drive back to Indian Wells.’ He looked at Brent, just as the young man let go of his hair and reached for Helena’s. He pushed his fingers deep under her bobbed cut and cupped the back of her head. He pulled her towards him. Helena let out a gasp, at the same time as Scott grabbed Brent’s wrist. ‘Hey! Git your hands off my wife!’

Without warning Samuel lunged forward and slammed his curled fist into Scott’s solar plexus.

The air whooshed out of Scott and he folded, his grip falling from Brent’s wrist to the pain in his gut. Carson reached up and snagged a handful of his hair and pulled him across the table. With his other hand he splashed the glass of bourbon in Scott’s eyes. Scott yowled wordlessly and tried to wipe the stinging liquor from his face. Distantly he could hear Helena shouting, and he knew that Brent was still holding her hair in his fist.

Carson forced Scott’s right cheek against the table, using the leverage on his hair to hold him there. Scott struggled, but he’d no purchase with his feet to force himself backwards, and he felt Samuel’s hammer-like fist jab him in his right kidney. Something silver flashed in his vision, and when he blinked some of the liquor from his eyes he saw that Carson had laid a revolver on the table alongside his face. There was a hubbub in the bar now as people fled for the exits. ‘You really want to mess with us, boy?’ Carson asked.

Before he could answer, Samuel pressed a cheek to the table so he could meet Scott’s gaze. ‘Do it. Say yes. I will make you hurt
everywhere
.’

‘Jesus, God!’ Scott’s cry was because of the knuckle Samuel rotated into a nerve cluster on the side of his jaw. Scott had never experienced localised pain like it before. Words failed him, the noise coming from his mouth became an animal-like howl of agony.

Suddenly Samuel stopped pressing, and the grip on his hair was loosened: Scott reared back, his face flushed with anger and shame, and not a little fear. Carson slid the gun into his shirt front. When Scott searched for Helena he saw her a few feet away, and Brent taking a step back. Samuel had sat down again.

Two state troopers had entered the bar.

They stood silhouetted in the doorway. One of them had his hand on the butt of his sidearm.

‘There a problem in here?’ the trooper called.

Scott glanced at Helena again, giving a subtle shake of his head. Her face was pinched with fear, and a clump of hair stood out from the side of her skull from where Brent had held her. She smoothed it back quickly.

‘No problem, Officer,’ said the bar manager coming out from wherever he’d been hiding since the Logans entered. ‘None at all.’

The state troopers strode further inside. They were no fools, and they surveyed the small group arranged around the table, eyes slipping from one to the next. But they also knew that they were on to a loser if they expected anyone here to come clean about what had just happened. These kinds of bars, these kinds of people, they knew to keep their mouths shut and their problems to themselves.

‘See that things stay that way,’ said the trooper with his hand on his gun.

The other, reading the probable cause of the situation, pointed at Scott and Helena. ‘You two . . . I think it’s best that you get yourselves home.’

Scott saw the opportunity and snatched it. He took Helena by her elbow, whispering a warning to stay quiet, and led her towards the exit. Brent stood aside for them, allowing them to move past him, but he held Scott’s gaze. ‘You’re a pussy, Scott,’ he whispered. ‘And you don’t deserve such a fine-looking woman as Helena. She’d be far better off with me.’

Those were the words that told me the Logans were likely suspects in Helena’s subsequent disappearing act, little more than a fortnight after the incident in the bar. Scott had related the details to the police who were tasked with investigating her disappearance. However, the cops hadn’t placed much credence in Scott’s abduction theory. In fairness, they’d visited the Logans and made a cursory inspection of their property but had found nothing untoward. The family had all offered alibis that they backed up for one another. On their own, those alibis didn’t hold water, but they’d also got corroboration from a third party. Their friend, Doug Stodghill, a mechanic from Holbrook, swore that the Logans had all been at his auto shop working on their pick-up truck at the time Helena had walked into Indian Wells. The police suspected that Stodghill was lying, either on the Logans’ behalf or under threat, but with little else to go on, and no proof of a crime, their line of inquiry fell flat.

I wondered if, since the robbery and shooting at Peachy’s gas station, the Logans had entered the frame of inquiry and if I was perhaps stepping on the toes of the local law enforcement community by driving out to their homestead. If that was the case, then tough; because I wasn’t going to give up on Jay, Nicole and now Ellie Mansfield so easily, the way that the cops had on Helena Blackstock.

11

The heat had grown stifling, so much so that Jay’s clothing was soaked through and chafing her skin. She was very thirsty, her mouth sticky with foamy saliva that worked to seal her lips shut. The ropes that bound her wrists were shrinking, or her hands were swelling, and causing intense pain. Jay imagined that the circulation had been cut off completely and soon her flesh would necrotise and drop off her bones. She had not realised it earlier but her ankles were also bound together, though only loosely so that she could walk if needs be, but would be unable to run. Not that there was much chance of either in this box.

She kicked up with her feet. At the far end of her tomb-like prison the tin sheets buckled slightly, but that was all. A chain had been fastened over the roof and held it in place. Testing the tin sheets with a shoulder, she’d found that they were chained down in two further places: no way could she force her way out without leverage. The sturdy wooden sides had resisted her attempts to kick the planks loose, and now that she thought about it, she believed they had been buried below the surface of the desert to strengthen them. The roof was level with the ground outside, but at least it hadn’t been covered by sand. Light spilled inside through the old nail holes, like thin lasers that she feared might burn her exposed flesh.