Where Echoes Live (29 page)

The green numerals of the digital clock on the dash showed it was after eleven. I settled back and waited—five, ten, fifteen minutes. Then I restarted the engine and drove swiftly toward Stone Valley. As I passed Ripinsky's ranch house, I noted that its windows were dark, the Morgan where he'd parked it. Still, I kept a weather eye on the rearview mirror until I was certain he hadn't spotted the Land Rover and followed me.

As I topped the rise above the ruins of Promiseville I slowed, scanning the valley. No lights on the mesa or in the town. In the icy moonglow the fractured and shattered hills were reminders of the earth's violent self-destructive forces. The twisted skeleton of the old stamp mill sprawling down the side of the mesa and the sagging husks on the valley floor spoke of what those forces had done to the people who attempted to tame them.

The vast emptiness and silence threatened to overwhelm me. I gripped the steering wheel, pressed down on the accelerator. Drove into the valley, pushing aside intimations of futility and mortality. And kept my eyes on the road ahead as I passed the graveyard.

The Land Rover handled the rough trail next to the streambed effortlessly. I kept its speed down and switched to the parking lights as I neared the little box canyon. A short distance away I stopped and proceeded on foot.

Before I could see Hopwood's cabin, I heard the rush of the falls. Moonbeams played on the stream's eddying waters and lighted my way. The rocky walls narrowed on either side of me, and then I spotted the crude pine structure tucked under the cliff's overhang. No van or Miata stood in front of it, no light showed in its windows.

So where was Margot Erickson?

I stopped some twenty feet away, searching the shadows. The same sense of wrongness that I'd felt Saturday afternoon came to me—more strongly now. I went up to the cabin's door and pounded. As I expected, there was no response. Then I circled it, looking for something I might have missed the other day. Hesitated behind it, rationalizing what I was about to do.

The situation had changed since I'd come here the first time. Mick Erickson had been murdered, and there was a possibility the killer had gone after Hopwood, too. Margot had left San Francisco early this morning, should have arrived here by now; she had already been roughed up, might also be in danger. Technically I should have reported my suspicions to the sheriff's department, but it was a long way to a phone. Besides, I was working with them…

I located a metal drum in the assortment of junk below the rocky overhang and dragged it beneath one of the windows. Upended it and climbed on top, attempting to look inside. Dirty white curtains blocked my view. I shoved upward on the sash, but the lock held.

I climbed down and scouted the junk pile until I found a pick with a broken handle. Carried it over, raised it in both hands, and shattered the glass. After pulling the more jagged shards from the frame, I pushed the curtain aside. The window let into a kitchen. I undid the lock, thrust the frame up, hoisted myself onto the sill, then dropped to the plank floor.

I'd locked my purse in the Land Rover, but had thought to bring along my small flashlight. Now I pulled it from my pocket and shone its thin beam around the room. The kitchen was even more primitive than the one at Lily Nickles's house and gave evidence of Hopwood's indifferent housekeeping: dirty plates and a pot full of a long-encrusted substance stood on a table near the propane burner; a loaf of bread had turned dark and fuzzy, its plastic wrapper nibbled by rodents.

A doorway led into a second room. Through it I could see an old-fashioned overstuffed sofa like the one at All Souls. I went in there, found a wood stove and a platform rocker. And saw that one of the end tables had been overturned, an oil lamp shattered on the floor. Beside it lay a crumpled rag rug covered with dark stains.

I squatted next to the rug, trained the flashlight beam on it. The stains were brown and dried; it looked as if the rug had been used to wipe the floor. I examined the planks more closely, saw smears on them and crusted brown matter down in the cracks. Part of the beige sofa was covered in a fine spatter pattern.

Blood, I thought, old blood. But how old?

I swiveled and trained the flashlight on the spatters on the sofa. The small size of the drops indicated they'd been produced by a high- to medium-velocity impact; that meant anything from a blow with a hammer or ax to a gunshot. Although their shape had been distorted by absorption into the fabric, they appeared to have hit the sofa at a slightly downward angle.

All right, I thought, standing up. Someone was about here in front of the sofa when he or she was hit or shot. Fell this way, knocking over the lamp and table. But who? And when? By whom? And why? Those were questions that no amount of examination of spatter patterns would answer. I needed to call the sheriff's department so a lab crew could go over the place, but while I was here …

Quickly I began to search the rest of the cabin, being careful not to disarrange anything or destroy possible fingerprints. It was a simple job—there was only one other room—and as I went I gathered shreds of the lonely life that had gone on, and perhaps ended, there.

On the bureau in the small bedroom was a single framed photograph showing a young Margot Erickson, dark blond hair styled in a bouffant, shoulders covered in the sort of black velvet drape popular for high school graduation pictures of that era. Pretty Peggy, as Ripinsky had said they called her, smiled for the camera, but there was a tension in the curve of her lips that suggested—at least from the advantageous perspective of hindsight—a near-desperate urge to break loose from her clinging father and the small town that confined her. I wondered if today Margot felt the ensuing years had been worth their cost.

The bureau drawers contained nothing but clothing, a great deal of it unworn and some of it still in boxes from such pricey San Francisco stores as Bullock & Jones—unneeded and unwanted gifts from a daughter attempting to assuage her guilt at having abandoned her father. Hanging in the closet were the things that Hopwood actually wore—denims and khakis and a small selection of inexpensive polyester sports clothes suitable for the casinos in Nevada. The only reading material was a Bible, which lay open and face down on the single nightstand next to the metal bedstead.

I picked it up, saw that Hopwood had been reading Revelation. A phrase at the top of the right-hand page caught my attention: “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

Soothing bedtime reading, I thought as I set down the worn volume. I've never understood the appeal of the fire-and-brimstone varieties of religion; life is difficult enough without the constant specter of damnation looming over us each time we stray from some stringent and preordained creed. Perhaps it was the fact that I've never considered myself one of the righteous who would find the welcome mat spread before the gates of Saint John the Divine's envisioned holy city, but I was certain that had I lived in the vast isolation of Stone Valley, I would have sought more cheerful reading matter than his apocalyptic ravings.

I made one more brief pass through the living room and kitchen, then secured the cabin and got out of there. I'd drive to Vernon and report the bloodstains to the sheriff's department—and hope they accepted my rationalization for breaking in there.

There was a lighted phone booth outside the filling station that Hopwood used to run, so I pulled in to make my call from there rather than driving all the way to the lodge. Kristen Lark wasn't on duty; when I asked for her partner, Dwight Gilford, I was told he was on vacation. The deputy on duty wouldn't give me Lark's home number, but after some wheedling on my part, he took my number and said he'd phone her; if she wanted to talk to me, she'd call back. I propped the booth's door open so the light would go off and waited in the darkness. Vernon was pretty much shut down by now, although Zelda's sign still glowed red against the post-midnight sky. I remembered how from the air the neon had made it look as if the lake were stained with blood, and my thoughts returned to the all too real bloodstains out in Stone Valley. When the phone rang, I started.

Lark said, “McCone, where are you? This is a Vernon number, right?”

“Right.” I explained about my quick trip back here and what I'd found at the cabin.

Lark was silent for a moment. “Why'd you go out there?” she finally asked.

“It's a complicated story. I'd rather tell you in person.”

“Uh-huh. And these alleged bloodstains—you say they're in the living room?”

“Yes. And yes, I broke in there. The situation seemed serious enough to justify it.”

“Huh.”

I waited. When Lark didn't say anything else, I asked, “Well?”

“I'm thinking. The call from the station woke me up; I've been on a back-to-back rotation, working without Dwight— bastard's off in Idaho—and I was sleeping pretty good.”

“Sorry.”

“Part of the job. What I'm thinking is that I want a lab crew to go over the place when it's light. I ought to get a warrant, but that's no problem because we've got plenty of probable cause and Judge Sims is always in chambers over at the courthouse by nine. Can you meet me at the cabin at, say, noon?”

“Sure.”

“I'll see you then. And, McCone?”

“Yes?”

“Get some sleep yourself.”

The moon was down by the time I reached the lodge. The grove lay in total darkness, the willow trees like huge black umbrellas over the cabins nestled on the slope. I left Ripinsky's Land Rover next to Anne-Marie's car and trained my flashlight beam on the ground as I descended.

Not a light showed in the cabin. I felt in my jeans pocket for the key Anne-Marie had asked Hy to give me, then got the door open and stepped inside. When I switched on the ugly overhead fixture I saw a yellow sheet on the center cushion of the sofa, weighted down by the brandy bottle. The note said, “Wake me.”

That'll take some doing, I thought. Anne-Marie was a serious sleeper; she'd once told me that even as a small child she hadn't bounced cheerfully from bed. In law school she'd trained herself to catch a few winks whenever and wherever convenient—sitting in the classroom before a lecture began, on buses, even while waiting in lines. In preparation for my chore, I went to the kitchen and fixed coffee in the small electric percolator. Then I went into her room and commenced shaking her.

It was a full five minutes before I got her propped in a chair in the living room, mug of coffee in hand. Another two passed before she noticed the damage to my face. She made alarmed noises, but they were comically sleep-clogged. I related the story of my past few days as the caffeine did its work on her.

By the time I finished, she'd come totally awake. She asked me some questions about the mineral survey that Alvin Knight had falsified, then hurried over to the dinette table and pawed through the papers that were spread there. “I do believe you've got what we need to stop that development,” she said. “I'll go over these patenting applications, then contact the BLM and ask what steps we should take. We may have to file suit—” Then her face fell. “Oh, shit!”

“What?”

“I forgot.” She set down the file and returned to the sofa, the belt of her wool robe dragging on the floor behind her. I'm supposed to leave here tomorrow.”

“Well, won't you have to go to Sacramento to deal with the BLM anyway?”

“Yes, but I'm only stopping there to pick up some clean clothing. The Coalition needs me in Humboldt County—anti-logging protest, and some of the groups are going too far with it. We need to point out the legal ramifications to them.”

“When did you find this out?”

“Around three this afternoon, when Ned finally got back from Sacramento. It was his decision to pull me off of this and send me to Humboldt; he seems to think he can wrap up the Stone Valley situation himself.”

“Can he?”

She shrugged.

“Is he here now? Can we talk him out of sending you to Humboldt given this new information?”

“Doubtful. Besides, if we want something from him, we don't dare disturb his beauty sleep.”

“You sound angry with him.”

“Why shouldn't I be? He was in Sacramento most of the week; half the time I couldn't even reach him by phone. And then he came back here and started giving me orders like we were in the military.”

“Did Ripinsky lay into him about telling Mick Erickson about the gold-mining potential here?”

“No. I think he decided that we didn't need any more dissension.”

“Or maybe he had other problems on his mind.” Quickly I explained about what I'd overheard on the phone extension at Alvin Knight's house.

Anne-Marie's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. After a moment she shook her head. “I can't see Hy being involved with Transpacific.”

“How do you explain Knight calling him to ask where Ong was, then?”

“I can't.”

“But you still don't want to believe Hy's mixed up with them.”

“No. I know what kind of man he is.”

“I thought I did, too. But what
do
we really know about him? There's that long blank period when he was away from Vernon—and the fact that he returned with a lot of money. Folks here may claim he was CIA, but I think that's just a romantic notion. Agency people don't make all that much. So where did he get it?”

“Don't know.”

“Well, I called a contact on the SFPD homicide detail this afternoon and asked him to run a check on Ripinsky, among others. He said he'd expedite it, so I might hear tomorrow. Then maybe we'll know more. In the meantime, we have to avoid telling him what I've found out.”

“You mean you do. I'm to turn over those files”—she motioned at the table—“to Ned in the morning, and then I'm out of here.”