Badwater (27 page)

I fired again. And again. The bear swung its head as if dodging bullets in slow motion. Then it turned and shambled over the hill at a sideways lope.

I ran for where Mungo lay still.

“Good girl,” I said, scooping her up in my arms. She didn’t seem to weigh much at all. Or maybe it was just that the adrenaline throbbing through my veins was giving me superhuman strength.

With Brandy following, trying to help by holding Mungo’s haunches, we hustled out of the valley.

The hands clamped around Roberto’s mouth and throat were strong. They held his head pinned to the cot. He gripped his canes and brought them up to sweep the air behind him, but other hands grabbed hold of them. Grinning faces appeared over his torso. He fought for control of the canes for just a second before deciding he’d be better off without them. Releasing them, he heard one go skittering all the way across the rec room floor. The other began to beat at him. He ignored the blows, though, which were mostly on his numb thighs. He focused instead on punching behind his head with all his considerable strength.

One fist connected solidly with a smacking sound. It felt like he’d hit solid bone, probably a forehead. The other fist just struck air. A bellow of pain sounded just behind his ears. For an instant the hands gripping his mouth and throat released. But just as Roberto started to lift his head to begin a roll off the cot, they clamped down securely once more. My brother was startled that the man behind him—it had to be Smit—had recovered so quickly. But then without his feet on the ground, and without any strength in his legs, he knew the force of his punch had been greatly diminished.

Being crippled sucked.

The other hands were flailing all over his chest and stomach and groin, punching and trying to grab hold of his arms now. Roberto punched around him indiscriminately, but with much better effect. He had the leverage of the cot beneath him when he punched at the men above. He’d get in a good shot and a face would go reeling back into the darkness. But he was taking three punches to every one he fired off, and the faces kept returning. Sometimes bloodied, but they kept on returning to join the others.

If his fucking legs worked, he’d take them all out. But his legs didn’t work.

Smit’s face wouldn’t come into view. The man had to be crouching behind his head, forcing it down, and ducking the punches my brother threw that way. Roberto was sliding up the cot, the back of his head against the metal rail, then over it, so that the cold steel bar was pressing into the back of his neck. With his head arched all the way back, and his throat cruelly exposed, he could finally see Smit. The big man’s upside-down face was covered with blood, but he was grinning. His eyes—still swollen from the broken nose he’d received in the car crash—were slitted with brutal ecstasy.

“Gonna take care of you first,” he grunted as he arched my brother’s head even farther back.

In this position Roberto couldn’t see the other men on top of him to punch at them, and his arms and shoulders were losing their strength. One arm got pinned to his side, and then the other. He tried to roar in frustration, but Smit’s huge hand over his mouth choked down the sound. His fucking legs just wouldn’t work.

A bandanna was looped over his throat and the rail at the head of the cot. It was cinched down over the scar where his throat had been slashed just a year ago. Someone yanked it tight, then tighter still. My brother’s breath was getting cut off. He could feel his eyes starting to bulge, his lungs starting to strain. When Smit finally took his hand off Roberto’s mouth, my brother didn’t have the wind to shout. Strips of cloth torn from sheets and pillowcases were used to secure his wrists and ankles.

“I told you, spic. Told you I was gonna stick the cane up your skinny ass.”

Behind Smit, Roberto could see the three illegals he’d gotten to know. They were huddled together against the bars closest to the guard station. One of the gringos was standing in front of them. He had one of Roberto’s canes. He was swinging it like a baseball bat each time one of the illegals so much as flinched. The door to the guards’ station was closed for the first time in the three days Roberto had been in the jail. The bastards had to be in on it.

The illegals were keeping quiet. The gringos were whispering gleefully. Roberto couldn’t make a sound.

Smit stood up and walked to his side. “Where’s the other goddamn cane?” he hissed.

Everyone stopped talking and giggling and looked around.

“What did you do with it, you shitheads?”

Everyone kept looking around in the darkness.

“Well, give me that one,” he demanded to the gringo who was holding off the illegals.

The man turned to hand it over when another gringo voice from near the cells said, “No, I’ve got it.”

Out of the corner of his rapidly fading vision, Roberto could see a man taking two quick steps toward Smit, one of his glittering metal canes held high in triumph. As Smit turned to face him, the cane was raised even higher. Then it came swinging around so fast my brother could hear it slicing the air.

The cane connected solidly with Smit’s already broken nose. Without a sound, the big man reeled back and collapsed on the concrete floor.

“Who’s next, you motherfuckers!” Jonah Strasburg screamed.

One of the illegals floated forward in a perfect boxer’s crouch and nailed the man who’d been herding them with a three-punch combination.

forty-three

G
etting down the talus that spilled from the mouth of the hanging valley wasn’t easy in the dark. Especially not while carrying 120 pounds of limp canine, and while expecting a thousand-pound bear to come charging down the slope after you, as it followed the trail of blood.

I remembered hearing during a campfire conversation on a climbing trip that if you run from a bear, you should run downhill. Their foreshortened legs made a steep slope awkward for them. But then, unfortunately, I could also remember hearing someone laugh and say that it was an old wives’ tale. The laughing friend was majoring in wildlife biology. He pulled on the jug of wine and mentioned that grizzlies can run thirty-five miles per hour—almost as fast as a racehorse over a short distance—and that instead of running, you should just bend over and kiss your ass good-bye.

Trying to push away these thoughts, I focused on not falling as we scrambled from boulder to boulder. Brandy helped me as best she could. She was gaining strength. But we were moving painfully slow.

Only at the bottom of the slope did I allow myself to rest. Surely a bear that big would make a hell of a racket pursuing us.

Still holding Mungo cradled in my arms, I collapsed on a low stone and was able to take her weight off my burning shoulders and biceps.

“Are . . . you . . . okay?” I asked Brandy.

She was bent over, gasping, her hands on her knees. I saw that she was wearing dirty biking clothes, and the hair that spilled over her face was knotted and tangled.

“Hungry. Cold . . . until we started running. Freaked out.” She raised her head and looked at me. “And really, really pissed.”

I nodded and went back to just trying to get enough air into my lungs. I’d been operating beyond red-line for far too long. My body was starting to lock up. The oxygen I was gulping just wasn’t getting to my muscles. I anxiously looked back up the dark slope behind us. But I could see no sign of the bear.

After another minute, Brandy stood and gently patted the matted fur on Mungo’s shoulder. Her palm was dark when she held it up to the moonlight. I probed it too while Mungo whimpered. There were four deep punctures, but they seemed to be clotting.

“You’re a good dog. I mean wolf,” Brandy told her.

Mungo was still conscious—she licked her clenched teeth as I probed deeper. There wasn’t any swell that might indicate internal injuries, and there didn’t seem to be any obviously broken bones, so I thought she’d be okay. Wolves are tough.

“I’m going to buy her the biggest steak I can find,” I said. “And keep buying them until she’s better.”

Brandy cupped Mungo’s face in her hands and kissed her muzzle.

“You saved my life,” she said.

What about me?
I thought. Then,
No steak for you, wolf.

I looked behind us again. Still no sign of the bear. If it wasn’t chasing us by now, it would probably sulk for a while then go back to what it was eating.

“What was that, in the cabin?” I asked.

“A headless deer. Bogey dragged it in. He said it would attract bears. I think he meant to come back after I’d been eaten and remove the duct tape. Everyone would think I’d just been hiding out, pretending to have been kidnapped, when I got attacked by a bear.” She shivered and hugged her arms around herself.

“Jesus. He planned this all along?”

She shook her head.

“No, he seemed to feel bad about it. At first, anyway. He said things just kind of snowballed. You know about the kids?”

“That’s how I found you.”

“He threatened to expose the fact that Cody had meth in his blood. Get them in trouble, too, because it would be obvious he hadn’t been the only one smoking it. They said they’d do anything to keep him from telling. So he had them try to scare me. When they couldn’t find me, they burned my car. And when I came up and caught them at it, then wiped out on my bike, they thought I was going to die. So they felt they didn’t have any choice but to kidnap me. Bogey fit it all into his publicity plan. Then, when I wouldn’t go along and told him I was going to expose him—that’s when he brought in the carcass.”

I looked up the slope again. Still nothing. I was pretty sure we were safe. But Bogey wasn’t. He was in a hell of a lot of trouble.

“What do you want to do to him?” I asked.

“Make him pay,” she said simply.

forty-four

A
t close to two in the morning we finally made it to my camp beneath the great overhanging cliff. Brandy had insisted we come here; I’d tried to make her go to the hospital, but she wouldn’t have it. She said she didn’t want to have to explain what had happened to her before she could prove it. She was scared of how Bogey would twist the situation, scared that she wouldn’t be able to prove his culpability, and scared of the potential ramifications to Jonah’s case.

First I took care of Mungo. I laid her down on a blanket and dumped a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on her shoulder. It bubbled and hissed while Mungo growled and kicked. She even snapped, but always carefully so as not to actually bite me. Brandy had to help me hold her down. The wounds looked more or less superficial—still no signs of internal swelling, although she was sore as hell. But I was pretty sure she was going to be all right.

I fed them both from a can of rice and refried beans that I cooked up on my camp stove. After that, I used the stove to heat my “winter shower,” which was a five-gallon black bag of water. I hung it on a tree branch once it was sufficiently hot. Brandy washed immodestly in the dark—she was too filthy and exhausted to care. She’d even let me wash her hair when her stomach cramped and suddenly she was too weak to raise her arms and her knees kept buckling. I wrapped a beach towel around her and held her while she shivered. I led her back to the tent, stuffing her naked into my sleeping bag.

“When did you last sleep?” I asked.

She tried to answer but stopped herself, shaking her head.

“Just give me the phone. Let’s do it,” she told me.

I lit a candle lantern that hung from the highest point of the little tent. Mungo raised her head and gave Brandy a concerned look.

“It can wait. Until tomorrow night, at least,” I told her.

But she’d shaken her head again.

“No, we’ve got to do it now. Get your phone.”

Brandy said, “Hi, asshole.”

There was no response from the other end of the line.

“Can you hear me? Maybe this transmission from the grave isn’t so good. Maybe we have a bad connection.”

She was sitting in the tent, Indian-style, with my sleeping bag pulled up over her chest. Only one arm was exposed to the cold in order to hold the cell phone to her ear. Above her head my candle lantern swung back and forth, casting weird shadows.

Bogey cleared his throat.

“Brandy?”

“That’s right. Your co-counsel who was kidnapped and left to die. Correction—that you kidnapped and attempted to murder. As you’ve probably noticed by now, I’m still alive, and you’re in some very deep shit, Professor.”

There was another pause.

Then, “Brandy! I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m so glad that you’re all right! Where have you been? What happened to you?”

She looked at me and shook her head. Her freckled nose wrinkled with disgust. I smiled and shrugged, as if to say
Well, what do you expect from a lawyer?
Still, I kept on holding the microcassette recorder to the earpiece. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good.

“Brandy! Can you hear me?” the fake-ebullient Bogey yelled.

“Meet at the river, asshole. Where that boy was killed and your slimy career was revived. Be there in two hours, at four
A
.
M
. I’ve got some instructions that you’d better follow if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in jail.”

I nodded at her, letting her know she was doing well. The river was an important part of the plan. It was symbolic, where it all began. I also believed the scene of Cody’s death might cause a psychological weakening of even an egotistical psychopath like Bogey. “You use any advantage you have,” I’d explained earlier. Another was speed. To confront him now, as soon as possible. If things went well, it might work. It might get him to say something incriminating. Neither of us mentioned the possibility that he would try again to kill her. But that, too, would certainly be incriminating.

“Brandy?” Bogey said. “Where are you? I’ll go anywhere you want me to, but I don’t understand—”

“You bring any of your new friends and you’re finished,” Brandy added. “Four
A
.
M
. The rock above the river, you unbelievable prick.”

I took the phone away from her and clicked the
END
button.

“How did I do?”

“Great.”

“Sorry about the bad language. I know that wasn’t part of the script. It just kind of came out.”

I smiled. “It was authentic. The most important rule of working undercover is to be yourself, even when you’re not. Understand?”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“I did mostly undercover work for eight years. That’s how long I’ve had to think about it.” I added lightly, as a joke, “Now I don’t know who the hell I am.”

“Is that what you’re going to go back to doing? After you arrest Bogey?”

I smiled one more time and shrugged, but I could tell my eyes didn’t transmit the smile very convincingly.

From my crate of clothes, Brandy chose a gray long-sleeved polypro shirt that fit her well enough—it had been Rebecca’s—and a pair of baggy shorts I secured around her waist with a piece of webbing. I didn’t have a bra so she couldn’t place the tape recorder there, and her old clothes were far too filthy to use. I improvised with more webbing, making a kind of chest harness that placed the recorder between her breasts. Then I gave her a threadbare aloha shirt to wear on top in order to conceal the lines.

“An original Reyn Spooner,” she said with a wan smile, reading the label on the old shirt. “I’m impressed. It reminds me of home.”

We were going over what I wanted her to do and say at the river when my phone started chiming. It was a local number, but not Luke’s, or the jail’s, or anyone I knew. After hesitating, I pushed the button.

“Burns?” a voice said.

Who the hell would be calling me at this hour? Even though I was wide awake, I answered sleepily, worried that it might be Bogey checking to see if I was a part of Brandy’s plan.

“Wha?” I groaned.

“Burns? Is that you?”

“Yeah. What? Who’s this?”

“Jo. Jo Richards. Danger Girl, you bastard. I’m the paramedic you never called after I flirted with you shamelessly and gave you my number.”

This wasn’t a good time to try talking to an angry woman. There was way too much going on. But she sounded more concerned than truly angry—there was a note of amusement in her voice, so I didn’t hang up. Brandy was watching me with a puzzled expression. In the confined space of the tent, she could hear both ends of the conversation.

“Look, Jo, I’m sorry. I told you I was really busy.”

“Yeah, I remember that. And it seems that you weren’t just busy riling up the town by arresting Jonah Strasburg, either. You’re apparently somehow mixed up in a riot we had at the jail tonight.”

Oh shit.

“What happened?”

I was starting to feel the weakness and nausea that always overwhelmed me when I thought of what I’d done to my brother. A year ago, and again just three nights ago. I couldn’t seem to stop hurting him, couldn’t stop putting him at grave risk. I turned away from Brandy so she couldn’t see my face.

“Like I said, there was a riot. A bunch of people were hurt—”

“Who?”

“Hang on, I’m telling you, you son of a bitch. A bunch of people. A couple of them pretty bad. One guy, Smit, our town bully, has got a cracked skull. He’s in a coma, being Life Flighted to Salt Lake. Two other local guys got broken jaws and some other small bones in their faces. There’s an epidemic of broken ribs, too. And then there’s one guy sitting here on the bed in front of me who says he’s both a super-secret undercover agent and, believe it or not, your flesh-and-blood brother.”

“How bad is he hurt?” I demanded. “What happened to him?”

“Jesus, Burns, you are a real pain in the ass. He’s fine, except for some contusions and some old, uh, injuries. He wants to talk to you. But before I put him on, I want you to know something. He’s a hell of a lot cuter than you. A lot friendlier, and a lot more fun, too. Your loss, Burns. His gain.”