The Slab (12 page)

“You do understand that I just want to get your signature on a document, assuming you’re the head of the household, and then I’ll pay you two thousand dollars?”

“And then I’ll have to move off the Slab,” the Viking said. He spat into the dirt. “And how far is two grand going to get me out in the world? Pay first and last month’s rent and a security deposit on someplace and it’s gone. What good is that?”

“It’s better than nothing, which is what you’ll get if you don’t accept the offer. The land is legally mine, and everyone needs to get off it.”

The Viking looked around at his friends. They didn’t look like they’d be easy to move. “You can try,” he said.

“I know you may not like to admit it,” Carter reminded him. “But the law does apply out here, just like it does everywhere else.”

“That’s what they say. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“You’ll see it, soon enough,” Carter said. He raised his voice. “Do the rest of you men feel the same way?”

All four of the others nodded or grunted what must have been affirmatives.

“Show me where you live, then, and I won’t bother calling on you. And you’ll get no money. But those who will go along with the law will still get paid, so don’t try to stop me from delivering their payments.”

The Viking smiled broadly, revealing uneven yellow teeth flecked with gold. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.

***

Imperial County contained more miles of dirt road than paved road, probably by a factor of two to one. Off-roaders, hunters, farmers, drug and illegal alien smugglers up from Mexico, and the Border Patrol tracking them all kept the dirt roads busy year-round, though traffic fell of somewhat during the hottest parts of summer.

For this duty, Billy Cobb had borrowed Lieutenant Butler’s Bronco. Even so, he complained at every stretch of washboard, every jounce or drop that slammed his butt against the seat or his head into the roof. The Bronco was ancient and its suspension’s best days had been long ago. It beat the hell out of the Crown-Vic but still, Billy figured a more contemporary SUV would be a good use of Sheriff’s Office funds. What if it was Arab terrorists I was looking for out here, instead of possible kidnappers, he thought. They’d be driving around in a Humvee or a Cadillac Escalade or a Mercedes goddamn Unimog and here I’d be, shaking my spine out my asshole in this old burner.

But he was out anyway, and so were deputies from every substation in Imperial and Riverside Counties, checking every road, every barn, every empty canyon accessible by four-wheel drive. They’d been told to look for a black or dark blue Lincoln Navigator. But so far there was no clear determination if a kidnapping had in fact happened, or if the Navigator even existed. The FBI hadn’t even been called in, because the evidence that a crime had been committed was so flimsy.

All in all, Billy thought he’d be more help up on the Slab, helping the Sheriff investigate the very real murder they’d found evidence of there. Or down in El Centro, tracking down that hooker who’d run away on him. The more he thought about her, the more steamed he became.

The old jeep road he was on now snaked alongside the Chocolate Mountains, just outside the aerial gunnery range the Marines operated there, following the course of the Coachella Canal. The road was long and narrow in spots—once, when he met some four-wheelers out in an old Dodge Raider, he’d had to back up an eighth of a mile to find a pull-out wide enough to let them pass. It wound through a deep canyon, the rocky sides of which were so close that he was afraid he’d scrape the Lieutenant’s vehicle.

But at least there was shade inside the canyon—pulling out on the other end he was back in bright, direct sunlight, bearing down on the Bronco as if someone had covered it with a thick blanket. Billy swore and cranked the air conditioner another notch. The desert was still out here—if there were birds, they stayed in the shelter of bushes or cacti. Mammals hid underground, snakes and lizards probably sunned themselves on flat rocks away from the roads. No one moved around more than they had to.

But cutting across the road was another, even less-traveled dirt trail, with unmistakably new tire tracks on it. Billy had planned to skip that road—he wasn’t even sure where it ended up, but it cut across the canal and then up to the north, so maybe out of the county altogether, and almost no one ever used it.

Which just made it more intriguing now.

He made the turn and headed north, rear wheels sliding a bit in the dirt as he did. But they caught again, and he followed the narrower track. If he could find the girl and bring her home safe, he could move up his mental timeframe for becoming Sheriff, he knew. He might even get Butler’s job right away.

After a quarter mile or so, the tire tracks made another turn, this time into a dry, dusty wash. Billy followed suit. The Bronco’s wheels spun a little as they hit the sand, then bit in and the vehicle moved forward. But something bothered Billy as he straddled the tire marks in the sand. After a moment, he determined what it was, and he braked to a full, sudden stop, kicking up a cloud of dust that enveloped the SUV.

There was no way that a Navigator had a narrower wheelbase than Ken’s old Bronco, he decided. So the very fact that he was straddling these tire tracks meant that they hadn’t come from a Navigator or probably any other luxury SUV. This was more likely something little, a Rav-4 or a Chevy Tracker or something. Maybe even an old Suzuki Samurai.

But it was not the vehicle he was looking for. Not even close.

Shit, he thought, pushing the door open and getting out. He kicked at the sand. This is a dead end. They’re not out here, if they even exist. He couldn’t believe how angry he was, and once again, his service piece was in his hand before he even realized it. He took aim at a ball of teddy bear cholla cactus clinging to the end of a branch twenty yards away and let fly.

His first two shots missed, zinging off into empty desert somewhere behind the cactus. But his next one connected and the cholla ball disintegrated. He moved his aim down the branch, shooting off chunks of it with each squeeze of his trigger. Finally, he emptied the clip into the tiny plant’s trunk, chopping it down completely.

And the whole time he shot at it, instead of seeing the cactus, in his mind’s eye he was looking at that streetwalker down in El Centro.

***

At Kelly’s signal, each man grabbed his own gun or guns and headed out the door. Vic carried an Ithaca 12 gauge shotgun that had been Cam Hensley’s—hunting had never been a hobby or even a real interest of his, except for these once-a-year excursions, so he’d never bothered to get one of his own.

Besides, what they were really doing out here had very little to do with guns.

Their Dove had been given a twenty minute head start, as Kelly had promised her. It took less than a minute for Rock to find one of her footprints in the sand—she’d already taken her sandals off—so they knew which direction she’d gone. East, into the rising sun. And into the deepest part of the Mojave desert. It’d be a long time before she found human population in that direction. Maybe in a few days she’d find herself at the Grand Canyon, if she survived that long. Vic didn’t think she would.

“Fucking hot,” Ray Dixon said. He had sidled up next to Vic, his gun held like a baby in the cradle of his powerful arms.

“Yeah it is,” Vic agreed. “Must be that global warming shit.”

“I heard global warming makes the winters colder,” Ray said. “How’s that supposed to work?”

“It’s all bullshit anyway,” Vic said, brushing at his mustache. Sometimes on hot days he regretted letting it grow so long, as his upper lip sweated like a bitch.

The world is a big freaking place, he thought. Just look around at the miles of unbroken desert, dotted with Joshua trees, populated only by lizards and snakes and a few hardy beetles. How could people make it hotter, and what was the problem if they did?

They followed Rock and Kelly in a kind of loose column, Cam walking alone a dozen paces or so behind the leaders, himself and Ray about the same distance behind him.

“Where’s Terrance?” Vic asked.

“Kelly told him to hang back here, make a few loops around the property and then wait inside,” Ray explained. “He doesn’t trust this one, thinks she just might be hiding out to double back and steal the truck or something.”

“Wouldn’t put it past her,” Vic agreed. “Got a mouth on her, that’s for sure.”

“That ain’t all she got,” Ray observed.

“So is he just waiting there till we get back? He misses out on the whole hunt?”

“She does double back, then he’ll be the only one who gets to hunt,” Ray said.

Vic thought about that for a moment. It was true. Anyway, it wasn’t the hunting that he found most entertaining, though he thought it was Kelly’s favorite part. For him, it was what came after—having the girl available to him and his friends, whenever they wanted, any way they wanted. The hunting just seemed like a necessary step to break her down, get her to the point where she’d submit to that without putting up a fight.

Or at least that’s what Kelly claimed was the purpose. Vic wasn’t so sure…secretly, he thought Kelly just enjoyed this part of it.

“You ever think about the morality of this?” he asked Ray. “What we’re doing?”

Ray shrugged. They humped a small hill and started down the other side. Rock and Kelly were farther out in front now, Cam still in the middle but dropping back. The girl’s trail cut cross-country rather than sticking to any established path, so they walked through brush, past Joshua trees and low, furry cholla. “Fuck morality,” he said. “Six thousand Americans died last week in New York. Was that moral?”

Vic didn’t know exactly what that had to do with their present activity, but he answered anyway. “No, of course not.”

“So what’s one Mex girl up against that many Americans? No more important than a drop of piss in the ocean.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You better just never let Kelly hear you talking that shit. He’s got stories about stuff he saw down in Colombia and Nicaragua’ll curl your fucking hair. He don’t think those people are even human.”

“But this girl’s not Nicaraguan or Colombian, is she?”

“Who knows? Who cares? Far as Kelly’s concerned, man, they’re all the same. Me, I think he’s killing the same girl over and over again, in his mind anyway.”

Ahead, Rock and Kelly had stopped and waited for the others to catch up. When they did, Kelly pointed to a flat slab of gray rock half-buried in drifting sand. On the rock was a reddish-brown stain shaped like the ball of a foot.

“Why does a woman have legs?” Kelly asked them.

So she doesn’t leave a snail trail, Vic thought, having heard the same gag every year he’d been going out on the Hunt. But he didn’t bother to say it. Kelly’s jokes weren’t meant to be funny, he’d determined, but somehow instructive. Although what lesson Kelly wanted to teach wasn’t always clear.

“So she doesn’t leave snail trails,” Kelly said after a moment. “Look, she took her sandals off right out of the gate,” Kelly pointed out. “So she’s already bleeding. I thought this one was going to challenge us, but she’ll be crippled by mid-afternoon. We’ll probably find her parked on her ass begging us to take her back to the cabin.”

“That’s okay with me,” Cam said, clutching his own groin. “I like it when they beg.”

***

Mindy Sesno cashiered in the Shop-R Mart, two miles up the 111 from Ken Butler’s office. He stopped in to pick up a pre-made turkey and cheese sandwich on French bread and a bottle of Lipton, sweet, no lemon, the way God intended it, a bag of Ruffles and a Hershey bar.

“Lunch of champions,” Mindy said when he put it and a twenty down on her little conveyor belt and she had conveyed it up to the register. Mindy was thin and remarkably pale for someone who lived in the middle of the desert, and Ken had never seen her when her light brown eyes weren’t sparkling as if she’s just heard, or told, a joke that was both funny and just the littlest bit dirty. Her dark brown hair was almost the same shade that Shannon’s had been, and Ken wasn’t sure how he felt about that because Mindy was the first woman with whom Ken had wanted to sleep, and who he thought might be willing to sleep with him, since Shannon had died, and he didn’t want to see her hair spread on a pillowcase beneath him and forget who he was with.

“Brain food,” he replied with a smile. “Keeps me thinking.”

“You looking for that girl that’s disappeared?” Mindy asked. Her tone was one of concern, not idle curiosity, Ken thought.

“This minute, I’m looking for some change from my twenty,” he said. “But yeah, Billy’s out beating the bushes for her now. I’ve had some other things on my plate, but I’ve been out when I could be.”

“Hope you find her.”

“I hope she’s not really out there to be found.”

Mindy put a hand over her mouth—a schoolgirl’s gesture that somehow looked perfectly natural on her. “Do you think that’s possible?” she asked with surprise.

Ken shrugged once. “Lots of young ladies disappear every year,” he said. “Most of them are runaways, leaving an abusive relationship, or following the stars, seeking their fortunes. Lucia Alvarez might be one of those. Maybe she just plain got tired of living in Mecca.”

“Hey, I live in Salton Estates, and do you hear me complaining?” Mindy asked with a laugh like a bell’s chime. “But I heard there was a witness.”

“There was a man inside his house with the shutters closed working on a forty-eight hour drinking binge,” Ken corrected her. “He thinks he looked out the window once and maybe saw something. Then again, when drunks used to see pink elephants they didn’t bother calling the cops about it. I think I liked those days better.”

Mindy blushed a little as she put his purchases into a paper bag.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “If she’s out there, in trouble, I want her found and we will find her. But if she doesn’t want to be found, chances are she won’t be.”

“Well, if she knew you I’m sure she’d feel comforted by the fact that you’re on the case, Ken.” Mindy handed him the sack. “I would, anyway.”