Silencer (7 page)

12

She drove with concentrated urgency. The city thinned until there were no more orange lamps, only the unforgiving dark of the desert on either side. She tried to arrange her thoughts, piling them up like building blocks, but they wouldn't balance. Isabel calls from a place called the Canyon Motel on 1-17. She's in trouble. Why is she there to begin with? And what had she been doing in Tuba City before that? Think
think
– but the bricks kept slipping and tumbling, and the letters of the alphabet made no sense. The night was cracked, and the pieces didn't fit, and Amanda couldn't make them.

Out into darkness, out into space. Freeway signs that read like gibberish, a cluster of orange lights, then more blackness for miles, and oncoming traffic rushing past her into a void. When she saw the blue light of the Canyon Motel she realized she'd lost all sense of time and distance. She swung off the freeway and raced up the ramp and braked hard inside the parking-lot, opening the door and stepping out in one unbroken movement.

There was a pay phone located outside the motel office. Nobody was using it, no sign of Isabel. She went inside the office. The clerk, a kid in a baseball cap, stood behind the desk. Willie Drumm was also there, beefy in his usual tight-fitting linen jacket.

‘She's not here,' Drumm said. ‘She's gone.'

‘Gone?'

‘I got here a minute ago –'

‘You look around?' Amanda asked.

‘I only just arrived, Amanda.'

Amanda looked at the clerk. ‘Did you see her?'

The kid said, ‘There was a woman out there making a phone call about ten minutes ago. Small woman, Mexican looking. She the one you mean?'

‘Where did she go?'

‘I wasn't paying close attention,' the kid said. He had a plump textbook open on the counter.
Gray's Anatomy
. Amanda glanced at an elongated sketch that might have been a cross-section of gland.

‘Pre-med next month,' the kid said. ‘I was studying actually.'

Amanda slammed the book shut. ‘What the fuck did you see
actually
?'

The kid, who had a sharp little face, looked at Amanda with annoyance. ‘Hey,' he said, ‘you lost my place.'

‘I'll ask again. What did you see?'

‘This woman came in and wanted to use the pay phone, so I made change for her, then she went out again. I saw her go to the phone. She seemed sort of wigged.'

‘Then what?'

‘I wasn't really watching. I told you.'

‘After she was finished using the phone, what did she do? Did she drive away? Did she just walk up and down? What did you see?'

‘I heard a car start up. I assume she drove away. Then this other vehicle came screaming through the lot.'

‘What kind of vehicle?'

‘Land Cruiser, something like that.'

‘You heard this vehicle immediately after the first car?'

‘Seconds, that was all.'

‘You happen to see what direction these vehicles took?'

The kid pondered a moment. ‘I don't think they headed to the freeway. I got the impression they were going in the other direction. Back there,' and he gestured with his thumb towards the desert.

Amanda looked at Drumm. ‘We'll take your car, Willie.'

‘Fine by me.' Drumm moved to the door and opened it. Amanda rushed past him. The cop, his right leg stiff from an old gunshot wound, stumped after her.

Amanda was buzzing, uneasy. She opened the door of the Bronco, sat in the passenger seat, watched Drumm lower himself behind the wheel.

‘She can't be far away,' Amanda said.

Drumm backed up the Bronco, turned out of the lot, slid the vehicle into the road that ran at a right angle to the freeway, an unlit ribbon of blacktop. The blue neon of the motel faded quickly behind. The city became a remote yellow-orange constellation in the sky. Cacti loomed up in the headlights, some pock-marked by the gunfire of vandals at target practice.

‘You want to tell me what's happening?' Drumm asked.

‘She called me. She's in a bad way. She said some men were after her.'

‘Did she say who these guys were?'

‘She wasn't coherent.'

‘You think this other car's chasing her?'

‘Sounds that way. All I can tell you for sure is she's frightened and I want to find her.'

The Bronco dipped in and out of potholes and Drumm said, ‘This road is the pits. You look your side, I'll look mine.'

‘I'm doing that.'

‘You can't see shit around here. What if she drove off the road? Headed out into the desert?'

‘We'll stick to the road for the time being,' Amanda said.

‘I don't see what choice we got. We go off the road, what direction do we take? People get lost in the desert all the time.'

Amanda beat a tattoo on the dash. She was trying to release tension, but it wasn't working. She thought of Isabel, tiny out there in the wilderness. Left, right, east, west. Drumm was correct. If they left the road, they'd be going nowhere.

‘I thought she was long gone,' Drumm said.

‘I thought the same thing,' Amanda leaned forward, scanning the night, the puny reaches of the lights. ‘Stop the car.'

Drumm braked. Amanda rolled down her window and listened to a silence as big as a galaxy.

‘You hear anything?' Drumm asked.

‘Nothing. Drive on a bit farther.'

Drumm slid the Bronco forward. The blacktop narrowed. The desert crowded in. After a mile or so, Amanda said, ‘Stop again.'

Drumm cut the engine. Amanda focused on the night, still and enormous. What she longed for were distress flares, great plumes of white light to illuminate the landscape. She listened as she'd never listened before. She heard only absences and silences and the quickened rhythms of her own pulse. The desert was a vast infuriating secret.

She told Drumm to drive again.

Half a mile down the road, Amanda heard dogs barking far off. Drumm slowed.

‘Coyotes,' Drumm said.

‘They're dogs,' Amanda said.

‘I'm a city boy,' Drumm remarked. ‘Dogs, coyotes. What do I know?'

Amanda opened the door and got out of the car. She stood on the edge of the blacktop and listened. The dogs yapped and snivelled. Hounds, hunting dogs, excited. She couldn't tell where the sounds originated, how far away they might be. You could drive out there for miles and think you were heading directly to the source and you'd be wrong. Soundwaves zigzagged. There were acoustic distortions.

Drumm stood alongside her and surveyed the dark with a gloomy look. ‘What do you think?'

‘We may have to drive out there, Willie.'

‘Like two blind people.'

‘I don't like the sound of those dogs.'

‘Maybe some good old boy's out chasing jackrabbits or something.'

‘In the dark?'

Drumm shrugged. ‘Anything's possible. You want me to drive off the road, I'll do it. Christ only knows where we'll end up.'

Amanda got back inside the Bronco. A mile away, five miles, ten – the dogs could be anywhere. Drumm turned the key in the ignition.

Amanda hung one arm out the window and Drumm swung the vehicle off the blacktop and steered between cacti that resembled stick-figures petrified into stillness by the white slash of the headlights.

13

She's twisted her ankle and a heel has broken off her shoe and she's running, stumbling, trying all this time to keep quiet, but she makes gasping sounds because her lungs are bursting and her ankle's beginning to swell.

The dogs have the scent of her. They whine and yelp and she wishes she hadn't abandoned the car, even with the flat tyre, because she could have sat tight with the doors and windows locked, but even then, even then what good would it do? The men are following the dogs in a jeep. Always the men, the men.

There's no moon and the stars have gone out, and she finds herself scrambling up a slope. Dust rises into her nose and mouth and stings her eyes, and she wants to cry, but she's been crying too much lately, and she thinks, there's a time when you don't have no more tears.

She climbs up the slope on all fours now. Loose stones slither out from under her, and what she wants is to lie very still and pretend she isn't here and if she makes herself small maybe the dogs won't smell her. She loses her hold and slips a few yards and thinks, the landscape's against her, like everything else.

What she remembers is hitching rides from truckers who took her places she didn't want to go: Gallup then Farmington, New Mexico, the wrong direction, but she wasn't thinking straight for a while, and then she stole the car and drove back to Arizona.

The weariness, the car overheating, the air stuffy and stifling, this is what she remembers. Also how Manda's telephone rings on and on and even when she decided to try the other number all she ever got was a man. Maybe Manda's father. Maybe. You don't know who to trust: cops, strangers, you don't know. It's the world, the way of it.

She should have kept her mouth shut, but she spoke up about Ángel, yeah,
really
bright of her, very smart, Ángel who she used to love. Ángel who screwed her over real bad and treated her like shit and one time, with his razor, cut her in a private place. She doesn't want to think about him because love rots.

Running, driving long hours, panicky, drained, freeway lines painted inside her skull, one night in a small stuffy motel room and not knowing how long she can sleep because the men are always just behind her. She can't stay ahead of them no more and she knows it, and she's gonna die here and nobody gonna find her.

She wishes for moonlight, but then she thinks, maybe she don't want to see what's out there. Let it be this way, this dark. Better like this. She climbs again. Her fingernails are broken. One time she was proud of her nails and how long they were, she'd paint and buff and file them, when she wanted to look good for Ángel, when she loved him. When they had the big house and the
conservatory
, whatever it's called. The plants, she smells the plants, it's a dream of back then, that's all. A dream rotting inside her skull.

Her ankle feels like a crab is pinching. She's dragging the foot and it gets in the way of her movement, and the dogs are coming. She imagines them bounding through the dark towards her. She thinks of their hot breath, paws, sharp teeth. She thinks, the dogs gonna get me, no matter how hard I try to get away, the dogs are coming, and then the men behind them. They're coming at her in the night, and all she did was say what was in her mind, because all Ángel did was cause pain – he deserves what he got. But he don't roll over just because he's been put away, no, he don't do that: he sends out men and dogs to hunt her. Nobody else would send men and dogs after her. She can't think. She never hurt a soul. She was always kind, right from the time when she was a little girl and her grandmother dragged her from town to town selling those crazy herb potions for warts and insomnia and flatulence – dry towns and villages, Camargo and La Esmeralda and Ceballos. She remembers the cracked roads and her grandmother carving strips of yucca and muttering the secret holy words. She remembers the withered old bronze woman saying,
You're a good girl, Isabella. Always say your prayers and tell the truth and brush your teeth. And when a handsome young man talks to you, smile at him like you mean it
.

Manda you promised me. Manda you said everything gonna be OK. Just tell me this one thing, what good are your words now?

She slips again, clutching at nothing. She rolls over and over down the slope and dust chokes her and she's dizzy and the sky's off-centre and the dogs are louder all the time, and she feels the way a hunted rabbit would feel: all fear and wild impulses and thinking how to survive, how to get out of this place and just live.

Then suddenly the dogs are on her, out of the dark they come snarling, and she smells the meaty breath of the animals, and they whine and bark, snapping at skin and clothing, quick and savage. She sees their eyes gleam. She tries to cover her face and kicks at the beasts. The stench of their fur is strong and sickly, their bodies feel moist and hot against her skin. ‘Mother of God,' she says. ‘Mother of Christ.' Fangs, jaws, saliva, claws. She curls herself up into a ball. The dogs snap and bite and whine, how many: three, four, who can tell? Her leg is slashed, her hands are bleeding, the dogs are crazy for her blood. She tries to crawl out from under the pressure of their bodies, but they cling to her, they dig into her.

The sound of a vehicle. Slamming doors. A man's voice. ‘Back, back. Get back.'

The animals retreat, sniffling, whimpering sullenly.

She looks up into the bright disc of a flashlight.

‘Bitch,' the man says.

She knows this voice. Knows it.

Another man says, ‘End of the road, sweetie.'

The first man says, ‘I'll do it myself.'

The other man reaches down, grabs her hair and twists her face to the side. ‘You don't look so good any more. You look tired and weary.'

He thrusts her face away. She's on fire where the dogs have lanced her skin. She says, ‘You gonna do it, do it quick.'

‘Think you're a brave little number,' the first man says. He kicks her straight in the heart and she moans. ‘Huh? Huh? I'll show you brave,
conchita.
' He bends, pulls her skirt up, inserts his finger under her panties and thrusts it deep inside her and moves it up and down. Then he laughs and draws his hand away and she hears him sniff his own fingers. He laughs like the dogs bark.

‘Get it the fuck over with,' the other man says.

She sees a gun, silver in flashlight. Jesus save me. She crosses herself with one bleeding hand.

‘
Adiós
,' the first man says, and presses the barrel of the silver gun to the side of her head. And there's a click, a friction between her skin and metal, and then the flash.