Shadows of Death Read online

  “Oh you have the wrong person entirely.” Parker extended an arm holding a prewar Colt Woodsman .22 automatic—a classic.

  Ortman lifted the Ruger and yanked the trigger.

  “You have to cock it first,” Parker said. The Woodsman made a cracking sound, and the small-caliber bullet hit the frontal bone at the thickest part of the skull, traveled along the bone under the skin, and exited behind Ortman’s left ear. He sat down heavily.

  Gilman brought a Glock out from under his windbreaker and pointed it at the other man. “Do I take him?”

  “Wait,” Parker said.

  Blood began pouring from the exit wound down the back of Walter Ortman’s L.L.Bean flannel shirt. He looked up at Parker with disbelief.

  “You shot me.” Ortman touched the back of his neck and looked at his bloody hand. “You shot me,” he said again, trying to get a grip on it.

  “Yes, yes I did,” Seth Parker replied, “and not very effectively, it seems. Now I’m going to have to do it again.” He raised the pistol and shot Ortman in the corner of his left eye. The small, low-speed round never left the brain case. The round’s impact forced the eyeball to one side, giving Ortman’s face a final expression of extreme derangement. The right eye looked incredulous, and then it dimmed.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ortman’s companion raised his hands as if to ward off the coming shot. “Please don’t. I have a wife and and kids.”

  “That’s too bad, screwing up the gene pool like that.” Parker paused. “But you get to live.”

  Gilman’s head snapped around. “Why’s that?”

  Parker smiled. “Because he is a witness to our response. He gets to tell his brethren in the Brotherhood of American Sportsmen what comes of pulling the tiger’s whiskers.” Parker turned to the subject of their discussion. “You’ll do that, won’t you, tell your mighty comrades of your friend’s derring-do?”

  “Absolutely. Whatever you say.” His eyes flickered back and forth between Parker and Gilman.

  “The truth will be adequate. Tell them that your friend shot a Cathartes aura for no reason. Cathartes means purifier. That’s what turkey vultures do. They clean up, purify the land. That’s what we do. We remove human waste, such as yourself, from the land. Your friend here”—he gestured at Walter Ortman’s body—“killed the vulture simply for the sake of killing, so we shot him for wantonly taking the bird’s life. He can’t undo it, bring the bird back to life, so we put a stop to his destructive activities. Makes sense, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, absolutely makes sense,” he croaked.

  “Loyalty is a wonderful virtue, isn’t it,” Parker said, looking at Gilman. “One so rarely encounters it.” Parker looked up at the darkening sky. “Well, we have to be going. You have a cell phone?”

  The man nodded.

  “Toss it here.”

  Parker made a left-handed catch and slipped the phone into his jacket pocket. “I’ll be taking your calls. Oh”—he turned back—“you have had a unique experience. You’ve met the Sandman face-to-face, and he didn’t put you to sleep. Once in a lifetime.” He held up his index finger, the boyish grin spread across his face. Then he turned to Gilman. “Get the late Sir Galahad’s phone and put one in our friend’s right kneecap. Can’t have him wandering away and chatting with people before we have moved on.”

  As Parker turned to walk away, he heard the man pleading not to be shot. The conversation was cut short by the report of Gilman’s 9 mm and a cry of pain. The up-close encounters were so different. He had never heard a target pleading before killing the pelican man. Targets in the scope were soundless, the whole thing playing out like a silent movie. He thought about it and decided it didn’t make much difference—dead was dead.

  Parker glanced back at the corpse of Walter Ortman. The cardboard tubes in Ortman’s ears gave him the grotesque appearance of a diminished monster. Which was what he was, Parker thought. He turned his gaze to the distant vultures, wheeling south away from the approaching storm. He wondered which of them would be without a mate. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it. You just had to change what you could and live with the rest.

  “Pick up the brass,” he said to Gilman over his shoulder.

  He took a small spiral notebook and pencil from his pocket and printed a note across the bottom edge, then carefully folded it up. He cut the folded piece away with his pocketknife, rolled it into a small scroll, and inserted it into an empty shell casing from the dead man’s .44 Magnum. And the eye of the sleeper waxed deadly and chill. He leaned down and stuck the casing with the paper into the man’s shirt pocket.

  Thunder rumbled in a darkening sky. Plumes of gray feathered down from great billowing clouds tinged with coppery purple. A storm was coming fast. He would have to hurry back to his van before the rain made the dirt roads impassable.

  The vultures would find him; then the rest of them would come and rescue the dead man’s partner. They would probably bring Sergeant Flynn as well. The first fat drops of rain dropped soundlessly into the sandy soil. Hunter Mountain was closer than the highway. It would be a safe place to wait the storm out and let things settle down. Seth Parker signaled to John Gilman, and they hurried back to his van and headed north on the Saline Valley Road.

  •

  Frank pushed the Ford Expedition down the dirt road, hurrying back to Highway 190 before the storm washed across the gullies, making the road all but useless. He hoped most of the birders had the good sense to head for the pavement. He wondered where the treasure hunters were. He hoped they were already on pavement headed for the Joshua Tree Athletic Club. Eddie was savvy enough to avoid serious trouble. On the other hand, the vulture count drew people from all over the country, people unfamiliar with the ferocity of desert rains.

  A VW van crested the hill in front of him. Frank flashed his lights and leaned on the horn. It was headed north, away from the paved highway. He hoped the driver would take the warning. Hunting for Parker would have to wait. The main thing was making sure people were safe from the storm. For now, the weather would put the renegade sniper out of commission. The heavy vehicle lurched over a chuckhole and broached. Frank deftly corrected, steering into the skid and accelerating. It was times like this he especially loved his job. He punched the window button and let the damp air stream in over his smiling face.

  18

  •

  Linda brought the jeep to a halt at the top of a rise to get her bearings. She’d borrowed it from an admirer, Kevin McGuire, a geologist working at the research station atop White Mountain. Kevin had been hanging around Linda hoping for a chance to make a move—not that Frank ever noticed. Despite the geologist’s outdoorsy good looks, Linda had been careful not to flirt. She had hated borrowing his jeep and appearing to encourage him. It made her feel like she was trading on her feminine wiles. She frowned. She was trading on her feminine wiles—like Cece Flowers, Eddie’s blond tart.

  So who was she to be calling Cece a tart? What was the difference between toying with Kevin’s emotions and leading Eddie by the nose? Nothing. Cece needed Eddie’s help. She needed Kevin’s jeep so she could follow up on her article without Frank having had any part of it. Kevin was more sophisticated than Eddie, but that didn’t make Linda’s part in using his jeep any less manipulative. Right now, she was quite pleased with herself. She knew one thing for sure, that she didn’t want Frank restricting her comings and goings. He’d have argued with her about the dangers involved in being out on the desert when Parker could be on the loose. The same danger faced the vulture watch people. They just didn’t know about Parker. She did, so she was safer. Forewarned is forearmed. Sometimes Frank’s concern felt confining.

  She pushed away her misgivings about Cece’s calculated flirtatiousness and especially her eagerness to solicit investors. That signaled trouble, but she wasn’t going to convict Cecilia Flowers on qualms about her motivations. So far, all she’d done was charm Eddie—and every other male she met. If she admitted it, she was
jealous, and despite Cece’s overt flooziness—God, she sounded like a prig—there was something about Cece she was drawn to. Perhaps the toughness. No, the independence. She went after what she wanted, and she didn’t appear to be a quitter. Cece was a bounce-backer.

  Linda had yet to check out her story or even cast eyes on the famous documents, the letter and the map, but she would, especially before her dad and his pals got pulled into the venture. If Cece took some of the Sand Canyon membership for a ride, well, so be it. Someone once remarked that you can’t cheat an honest man.

  Linda’d been on the road for more than an hour. There were dirt tracks all over this part of the plateau, leading out onto flats and disappearing into canyons and behind hills. It was a good place to get lost. She switched off the ignition and climbed up to the crest of a low ridge that paralleled the road. She’d traveled this stretch of road several times, but Frank had been driving and she had been a passenger. It wasn’t the same. None of it looked familiar, or all of it looked familiar; red dirt, black rocks, Joshua trees, and clusters of scruffy cattle. What in the hell did they eat?

  She turned the key and pushed the accelerator pedal halfway down. Lots of grinding, but the engine didn’t start. She waited and tried again. The starter was working, but the engine didn’t even sputter. Damn, she was supposed to meet Eddie and Cece in less than an hour. This was no time for car trouble. She looked up at the swelling clouds tinged with hints of bronze. Damn. She wiped her forehead on the back of her shirtsleeve. It was hot, maybe ninety, not midsummer hot, but hot enough and humid.

  She remembered that Frank’s truck had acted up not too long ago, and he had cursed himself for cutting the ignition in the heat. He’d called it vapor lock. He’d explained that the truck wouldn’t start because the gasoline had turned to fumes in the fuel line. The truck refused to start until Frank had built up pressure in the gas tank by blowing into it, his cheeks bulging comically around the rim of the gas spout. She had started the truck when Frank had signaled her to hit the starter.

  She tried to remember what Frank had said about vapor lock. “The fuel pump won’t work. You can’t pump fumes. They just blow away like farts in church.” Men thought farts were a lot funnier than women did. She kept pointing that out, but it didn’t seem to faze him.

  She hit the starter again. Nothing from the engine, just the starter grinding away, and it was starting to sound labored. She jumped out and paced back and forth, kicking at rocks. “Damn.” She reached down and picked up a rock and flung it across the empty desert. She picked up another, but something about it caught her eye before she could fling it into the void. “Damn it. What in hell were you thinking, Kevin, lending me a piece of junk that won’t run. This is not the way to a girl’s heart.”

  She absently tossed the rock onto the floor of the jeep and climbed back into the driver’s seat as the first fat drops of rain splattered noisily against the canvas top.

  •

  Lightning struck Cerro Gordo, etching the slopes in electric blue. Thunder rolled across the sky and culminated with a concussive clap that Eddie felt in the pit of his stomach as he steered Jack’s truck through the torrential rain. He peered out the window into the gathering darkness. Lightning flashes whitened a lunar landscape. He gave an involuntary shudder. Out on the flats, the Joshua trees looked like spirit people moving across the desert.

  Great fat drops of rain splattered against the windshield and drummed on the truck’s metal roof. He thought about the tent in the mouth of the tunnel and wondered how Cece was doing. As long as she stayed in the tent and didn’t go wandering around, she’d be okay.

  The windshield wipers were badly worn, making it difficult to see as the rain roared against the glass. He had to keep leaning out the window, giving him the shivers in the wet wind. He flipped on the headlights and squinted into the cones of dim light. He wanted to stop, but he had to find Ms. Reyes and get back and make sure Cece was all right.

  All he had to do was follow the dirt road back to the junction, but the dirt road kept on going—too far, Eddie thought. Then it narrowed as he followed it into a narrow canyon, a narrow canyon carrying a good stream of runoff from the increasing rain. He backed the truck carefully down the narrow ravine until he found a place to turn around. If he followed the road back to where he had turned off, he’d be okay. He’d eliminated the right turn, so it had to be the road on the left. Somehow, he’d missed the main road. Some Indian guide, he thought. For sure, he wasn’t going to tell Frank about it, rainstorm or no rainstorm.

  He came down a small rise where the track crossed the canyon bottom and stopped the truck where a wide stream of water rushed along the bottom of the wash. He stepped into the driving rain to take a closer look. There was no way he was going to get back across. Rocks and boulders rumbled and thudded in the dark torrent.

  The water had risen perceptibly by the time Eddie stepped back into the cab. He put the transmission into reverse, counting on the four-wheel drive to get him back up the rise. The truck slipped to the right, but he corrected in time to keep it from sliding into deeper mud. Then the wheels caught on firmer ground, and he regained the high spot. He squinted into the night where the beams from the headlights disappeared into the darkness. He made out a faint outline of a dirt track angling up the side of a low hill. At least it would take him to higher ground.

  As the track neared the crest of the hill, the path widened. The headlights picked up some timber framing disappearing upward into the night. Eddie had just enough time to realize that it was a head frame supporting the main winch of a mine before the truck plunged downward into darkness, causing him to strike his head against the windshield and knocking him unconscious.

  A shuddering thump jolted Eddie into consciousness. His head banged against the windshield again, causing a sharp pain. He was oddly disoriented. Everything seemed upside down. The right side of his body lay pressed against the front of the cab, his head against the glass. For a moment he couldn’t figure it out. He wiggled around and peered through the windshield. The truck lights illuminated the rocky sides of a square-cut shaft that disappeared into darkness. The sound of his breathing quickened as the truck slipped again, jerking him into the maw of the abyss. He couldn’t figure out what bothered him the most, that he had done something so dumb or that he’d screwed up Jack’s truck.

  19

  •

  When Special Agent Drew Ellis discovered Zeke Tucker in his binoculars watching him watch Tucker, Ellis had taken umbrage. As Jesse Sierra later explained to his chief, Dave Meecham, “The plan worked, Chief. We got the shooter.”

  “Why’d you and Ellis decide to stop Tucker? What made you think he might be the shooter?” Meecham probed.

  “He was out lurking around the head frame of an old talc mine.”

  “Lurking?”

  “That’s what Ellis said.” Sierra looked uncomfortable.

  “I see. What else aroused your suspicions?” Meecham queried.

  “Well, he was in a panel van, sort of dirty brown. It would’ve been hard to spot from the air.” He looked to Frank for confirmation. He didn’t get any.

  “See any other suspicious vans lurking about?” Meecham’s tone was sarcastic.

  “I get your point, Chief.” He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the silent FBI agents. “We thought the shooter might be operating out of a van, so we gave vans an extra look.”

  “Besides the brown paint and the lurking, what especially suspicious behavior did you observe?”

  “Why would someone prowl around an old talc mine?” Sierra sounded plaintive.

  “Maybe he needed to take a leak,” Wilson sniped.

  Sierra looked uncomfortable. “Well, as a matter of fact, he did take a leak, but the thing that put us on to him was when we saw him watching us through his binoculars. There we were, staring at each other through binoculars.”

  “Lookin’ back to see if he was lookin’ back to see if he was lookin’ back at me,”
Meecham muttered.

  “What’s that, Chief?”

  “Never mind. You’re too young. Then what?”

  “Then he waves at us and gets back in his van.” Sierra looked around the room. “Well, that got to Agent Ellis.” Sierra looked to Ellis for confirmation. “So he says, ‘Let’s follow this one.’ ” Ellis gave a microscopic nod. “So we pull back onto the Talc Mine Road and start following the van.”

  “What did he do then?”

  “As soon as he spots us following him, he pulls over and gets out of his vehicle. Have you seen this guy yet, Dave?”

  Meecham shook his head. “Nope, but I hear he’s big.”

  “Big is right. Huge hairy head. Really weird looking, like eyes staring out of a bush.”

  “What did he do after he stopped?”

  “Well, nothing, but now we were suspicious. He was a very tall guy in a van. So Agent Ellis asks him if he’s there for the vulture watch. He just shakes his head. Then Ellis asks him if he can take a look in the van. He says okay, but that Jack might not like it. Drew steps to one side, being careful. He tells Tucker to ask Jack to step out from the van with his hands in plain sight. Then Tucker goes ‘Haw! Haw! Haw!’ real loud, and I thought Drew was going to go for his piece.” He turned to Ellis. “Right?” Another microscopic nod. “Then Tucker stares at Agent Ellis and says, ‘You better be damn careful not to shoot my dog.’ Then he gives a whistle and this dog comes flying out the window.”

  Wilson exploded with laughter. Dave Meecham smiled in spite of himself.

  “Where’s the dog now?” Frank wanted to know.

  “We took him over to the animal shelter to be looked after. Tucker was more worried about the dog than anything else, even after we found the rifle, a .270. That’s why we brought him in. Because of the rifle, not the dog.” Sierra grinned.

  Meecham frowned in thought. “You know Tucker, Frank. What do you think?”