The Laura Cardinal Novels (67 page)

A whimper.

“Shana, he could come back. You need to tell
someone
. You know you called me for a reason.”

“I’ve got Troy.”

“Who’s Troy?”

“He’s a
friend
.” The old Shana, defiant.

“Tell you what,” Laura said quickly. “Just tell me where you are. I’ll come out and we’ll talk if you want to or we won’t. It’ll be up to you. Where are you staying?”

“If Bobby knew I talked to you— Would you shut up, Troy? Shut
up
!I can’t hear myself
think
!”

“Bobby can’t do anything to you while I’m there. Are you at home?”

Another pause. “I’m in Flagstaff.”

“That’s a coincidence. I’m over by the airport.” Laura tried to sound warm. She’d never met anybody so suspicious, so perverse. “Where are you?”

Laura heard the phone drop on a table or counter, and Shana’s voice. “
You
tell her.”

Someone snatched the phone up, and she heard a young man’s voice, angry. “Look, I don’t know who you—”

“Will you
just
tell her where we are?” shouted Shana.

Laura drove south on I-17 to the exit for Kachina Village and Mountainaire. As she came down the off-ramp she saw the convenience store to the left of the road she was supposed to take. She came to the first T-intersection and took Kachina Trail—one-lane asphalt. Kachina Trail meandered around a meadow—two fawn-colored horses grazing near a tiny pond. The road wound up onto the piney bluff above, past a grove of young aspens just turning yellow-green. Asphalt turned to red cinder, the dust rolling up under her tires and hazing the green backdrop of pines.

Streets on the left, pine forest on the right, dropping down to glimpses of meadow and horses, the freeway beyond. Up ahead, cars and trucks lined the road, parked around the house on the corner. A family walked across the road from their car, the woman and daughter each carrying a wedding present, wearing pastel dresses which went well with the flower arbor near a man-made pond and the radiant blonde girl in a wedding dress.

Laura turned at that corner, Moenkopi. The rest of the street, with a few exceptions, wasn’t as nice. She drove by dented mailboxes, mobile homes in various states of disrepair, cars on blocks, and the ubiquitous pines that still managed to look beautiful even in this setting. Up on the right a waist-high chain link fence wrapped around a yard mostly taken up by a decrepit school bus and two snake-headed pit bulls.

A faded turquoise mobile home sat far back on the lot, a slender young woman sitting on the warped wooden stoop, one arm resting on her knee, a long cigarette between her negligent fingers. Her wheat-colored hair a straggle, a man’s long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned over a Neapolitan-colored striped tube top, dirty jeans and boots.

It took Laura a minute to realize it was Shana, and that the chocolate in the Neapolitan on the tube top was dirt. Laura walked up to the gate.

The dogs raced to the fence, sticking their noses through the spaces in the links, their eyes golden and unknowable.

Shana looked in her direction, flicking an ash from her cigarette out to the side. A young man sat up from a weight bench, wiped his face with a pink dish towel, and sauntered up to the gate. Tank top, tats, earring. He had black hair and haunted eyes with dark smudges underneath, and a heavy chain looped from his belt to the front pocket of his jeans. He unceremoniously dragged the two dogs by their collars around the house to a shed, pulled the door closed with a metallic shriek.

Giving her the evil eye, he opened the gate.

Laura walked in, avoiding a rusted Weber grill lid lying on the path to the door.

Shana remained on the stoop, tangling her fingers into her hair and pulling it back and around her neck so that it fell over one shoulder. Laura noticed dark roots, maybe because the hair was dirty.

Laura said, “Mind if I sit down?”

Shana sighed, took another drag from her cigarette. She was trying to appear as if she didn’t care, but Laura could see her arm was shaking.

Troy had followed Laura up to the trailer and stood there, looking from one to the other. “You don’t have to tell her anything,” he said.

“Troy,” Shana mumbled.

“You called me,” Laura said, keeping her voice low and reasonable. “You must have a reason.”

Shana dug into her hair again. Laura noticed her nails, which were ragged and in some places cut down to the quick, rims of dirt underneath. Ridges of dirt in her knuckles, too.

“You said you had to dig. I guess you weren’t kidding. What’s that all about?”

Troy stood over them, arms crossed, glowering. “Look, you want her out of here—”

“Nuh-uh,” Shana said wearily. And then she started talking.

At the house on the corner the wedding was in full swing. The handsome young couple stood under the white lattice arbor reciting their vows. As Laura slowed for the turn, Shana said, “Wait a minute.”

Laura let the car idle. Shana stared out the window, her expression wistful. Laura thought that if Shana cleaned up she would look a lot like the bride.

Over the rushing water in the pond and the rattle of quaking aspens at the edge of the bright green lawn, Laura could hear the murmur of the reverend’s voice. She glanced at Shana, who was twisting the cheap engagement ring Bobby Burdette had given her back and forth on her finger.

After a few minutes, Shana sat back, all animation gone from her expression.

Laura said, “Shall we go?”

Shana looked straight ahead. “I don’t see why I have to go to the hospital. I’m fine.”

“We have to get you checked out, Shana. You could be dehydrated. You’re sunburned and you said yourself you were pretty sick when you got to Troy’s.”

“So I threw up. Wouldn’t you, if someone did what Bobby did to me?”

“The sooner we go, the sooner we get this over with.”

As Laura put the car in gear, Shana muttered something.

Laura asked her what she’d said.

“
I
never had a wedding that nice.”

The hospital in Flagstaff kept Shana overnight for observation. As Laura suspected, the girl was dehydrated and needed to have her fluids replenished. The abrasions she had received in digging herself out of the makeshift grave Bobby Burdette had made for her also needed tending.

Shana protested, but weakly. Laura got the impression the girl liked the attention. She’d already called Shana’s parents, and they had broken land speed records to get here. Laura talked to them in the waiting room. Mostly to alleviate their fears, but she didn’t touch on what Shana had told her about her harrowing experience of the last few days.

Laura did not tell them that she feared Shana was involved in something dangerous. She still had to figure out if this was a crime of domestic violence or if there was more to it than that.

She found a motel just up the street from the hospital on Business Loop 40—old Route 66—and had a dinner salad at the motel coffee shop.

She’d been debating most of the day whether to call Richie, who would be back in Tucson by now. Shana had called her specifically, which indicated trust to some degree, but she’d been vague about exactly what happened to her in the desert north of Phoenix. Richie’s presence would introduce another element into the equation, and it might not be a good one. Still, Laura knew she had to let him know what was going on. She needed to let Jerry Grimes know, too.

Sitting out by the pool, steam rising from the heated water. Staring at the tall mountain overlooking Flagstaff and listening to the sigh of car tires of the traffic plying Business Loop 40, Laura called Richie at the office and left a message, repeated the same with Jerry Grimes. The coward’s way out.

The hospital released Shana at ten thirty the next morning. She was ready for show-and-tell. She had enjoyed the sympathy and attention at the hospital, and when Laura suggested they go looking for the hole where she’d been buried, she jumped at the idea.

For the moment, the horrors of being left for the better part of three days in a boarded-up hole in the ground had receded, replaced by the idea of an adventure. This didn’t mean she wasn’t rude to Laura. Her first instinct, as always, was to withhold certain key pieces of information and force Laura to drag it out of her.

Laura had not cared much for Shana from the beginning. She thought she was spoiled and self-centered, and dealing with her had been maddening. She was at turns sullen or defiant and had never once broken out of that mold. But Shana had lost her twin brother. And now the man who supposedly loved her had buried her out in the middle of the desert and left her to die.

Shana’s self-esteem had always seemed fragile to Laura, but what must it be now?

The drive down I-17 had taken them down from ponderosa pine to juniper and grassland, and finally back to the Sonoran Desert. The desert baked under midday sun, but it was beautiful to Laura’s eyes. Her country. She felt a pang, missed her
nidito
in Vail.

Missed Tom.

As they approached the exit for Rock Springs, Shana broke her silence. “I have to pee.”

Laura turned into the parking lot of the Rock Springs Café.

Shana shoved the door open and stalked across the parking lot to the old pueblo-style trading post. Laura noticed a pay phone out front, probably where Shana had called her ex-boyfriend to come pick her up. Burdette had taken Shana’s cell phone when he buried her in the desert.

Laura gained the shade of the building and decided to check out the general store while she waited for Shana. She wandered between the half-empty shelves in the old store, past stacks of Rock Springs T-shirts and a few curios. She heard a familiar sound, though, and followed it to a dark room that looked like somebody’s basement except for the beer banners strung under the ceiling, neon beer signs, and the old-fashioned mahogany bar against the back wall.

Up above the bar was a TV simulcast of a horse race at Turf Paradise. The familiar sound was the race caller, his voice getting more urgent as the horses swept around the turn and flashed under the wire.

“What can I getcha?” a gray-haired woman behind the bar asked, setting down a napkin.

Laura’s gaze didn’t move from the horses, now galloping back after the race. “I’m just waiting for someone.”

“Okay.”

Laura watched the Thoroughbreds coming back, and was surprised at the longing she felt. Nothing was more beautiful to her eye than a Thoroughbred at the top of its game.

She still missed her mare Calliope, even after all these years. Jay Ramsey’s brother had given her the phone number of a woman who owned one of Calliope’s colts, but so far Laura hadn’t done anything about it.

Inertia. She had done nothing for her own life, only for her job, and even in that she had been screwing up.

“What are you doing?”

Laura looked around, feeling unaccountably guilty. Shana stood in the doorway, arms crossed, looking pissed off.

“Waiting for you.”

“I don’t want to be here all day. Troy and I are going to dinner tonight.”

The sun’s glare after the darkness of the bar made Laura squint. “Where to?” she asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“That way,” she said, pointing to the right. South on the access road, in the direction of Phoenix.

Shana leaned against the passenger door, as far away as she could get from Laura, her face pensive.

“Stop! You went too far.”

Laura braked, backed up along the dirt verge.

“I think that’s it,” Shana said. On the right was a dirt road, a post-and-wire fence pulled taut across it, a metal sign attached saying NO TRESPASSING.

“This was where he took you?”

“Un-huh.”

“Laura got out, pulled up the wire loop connecting the weathered gate post to the fence, and dragged the gate across the road. She drove through and glanced at Shana. Shana ignored her, so Laura had to get out and close the gate behind them.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know. I’ll know it when I see it, though.”

They started up the road, two tire-track paths worn around a hump of dirt, rocks and low bushes in the middle. It was slow going in the low-slung car, which almost bottomed out when the road became part dry creek bed. “This is somebody’s ranch. Did you see anyone?”

“Some guy picked me up and drove me to the trading post.” She added, “He asked me if I wanted to have a ball.”

“What?”

“He was joking. Some old cowboy, had to be at least eighty. He said Rock Springs Café was famous for its mountain oysters. Have a ball. Get it?”

Laura wondered how many hitchhikers the old cowboy had regaled with that one. “You’re lucky he came along.”

Shana didn’t say anything, but kept twisting her engagement ring. Laura didn’t know anything about carats, but she thought the diamond on this ring had to be one of the smallest ever made. The last size down before you got to a chip. Bobby Burdette hadn’t gone to much expense to get Shana to go with him. Even for window-dressing, the ring was unbelievably cheap. But she also knew that in Shana’s mind it was still an engagement ring.

Laura thought that Shana had a habit of expecting both too much and too little at the same time.

They drove for what seemed like a long time, up a long hill encrusted with rocks and cactus.

“I think that’s it,” Shana said, pointing at a ghost of a road heading off into the brush. Laura glanced at her odometer. They’d come two-and-a-half miles.

They followed this road over another couple of hills and then down into a wash.

“It was near the wash.” Excited now.

They got out of the car and followed the wash east. Hot, probably ninety degrees out here, and Laura could feel the sweat beading in her hair. Glad they each had a bottle of water. Shana looked at several spots, but there was no disturbed ground, no indication of the makeshift grave where she had been trapped for so long.

At last Shana stopped. “Maybe it’s the other way.”

An hour and a half later, it became clear to Laura that Shana had no idea where they were or where she had been buried.

“You sure it’s around here?”