The Searcher (15 page)

“M
RS.
C
ORONADO
,” M
ORGAN SAID
,
SLOWLY RAISING BOTH HANDS IN A GES
ture that was part instinct and part surrender. “You need to put the gun down.” He took a careful step toward her, his eyes fixed on hers and ignoring the gun.

“No,” she said, her voice low and hard. “You need to leave. Take one more step and I'll shoot you for trespassing.”

Morgan stopped.

Solomon could feel the anger radiating out of her, could see it shining in her like a dark light. She was all blackness and dark focus, the gun like an extension of her fury. She was beautiful. Magnificent.

“Is this why you wanted the funeral up in the old cemetery?” she said, her words like rocks. “Invite the whole town, make a big show, get everyone out of the way, get
me
out of the way so you could break in . . .”

“You're upset,” Morgan said, raising his hands higher. “But this is not going to solve anything. This is only going to make things worse.”

“Worse! Nothing could possibly make this worse.”

“Mrs. Coronado. Holly.” Morgan took another step. “Let's all calm
down here. You're not going to shoot me. That's not going to happen, so why don't you just—”

The explosion punched a hole in the rain and knocked Morgan clean off his feet.

He fell backward and hit the ground hard, yelping in shock and pain. He kicked at the wet earth, instinctively trying to flee, his bloodied hands reaching for his sidearm.

“That was rock salt,” Holly said, racking another shell into the chamber and taking a step forward. “The next one is double-ought buckshot. If you touch that gun, I will shoot you. If you do not leave right now, I will shoot you.”

Morgan scrambled to his feet and stumbled across the wet grass toward the cruiser. Solomon watched, his brain singing with it all. She had shot him without hesitation and there had to be a reason for that, a powerful reason. Morgan crawled into the car, keeping low, and Solomon felt the dark light shine on him now. “You're trespassing too,” Holly said, and he turned to face the black hole of the shotgun barrel.

Behind him the cruiser roared to life and the passenger door popped open. “Get in,” Morgan hollered.

Solomon glanced at him through the open door, bloodied and smeared with mud, the front of his shirt peppered with white powder and small holes where the salt crystals had penetrated. He stepped forward, pushed the door shut, and turned back to Holly. “I'm not with him,” he said.

Holly took another step forward. “You came with him, you can leave with him. And you're still trespassing.”

Solomon looked down at the ground, his bare feet white against the wet grass, then started walking backward, down the drive to the road.

“What are you doing?” Morgan shouted, putting the cruiser in gear and rolling back, keeping pace with Solomon's retreat.

“I only want to talk,” Solomon answered, loud enough that Holly could hear. “I have something your husband may have given me but I can't remember why. I was hoping you might be able to help.” He stopped walking when he reached the road, no longer trespassing. Behind him the cruiser jerked to a halt and the passenger door popped open again.

“Get in the car,” Morgan hissed. “She's not going to talk to you. She's not rational. She just shot me, for Chrissakes.”

Solomon studied Holly through the curtain of rain. Despite her steel he could sense a brittleness in her. She was shaking slightly, maybe because of the wet and the cold, or because the gun was heavy, or because her anger was so fierce it was difficult for her to contain it. He knew that feeling. Maybe that was why he felt drawn to her.

“Go,” he said to Morgan. “She's not going to talk until you've gone.”

Morgan hesitated for a moment, then put the car in drive. “Well, don't come running to me if she winds up blowing your head off.”

The engine growled and the car squealed away, tires slipping on the wet road, leaving Solomon standing in the rain.

The shotgun barrel followed the car until it was out of sight then drooped suddenly, as if it had become too heavy to hold, and Holly staggered forward and grabbed the handrail. Solomon was already running. He could see she was going to fall. If she tipped down the steps, she could smash her head or break her neck. He reached the porch and leaped up the steps, catching her as she started to crumple.

“You're okay,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “I've got you.” He could smell the graveyard on her, the wet dust trapped in her clothes, the metallic tang of blood on her hands and feet. He carried her over to the door, pulled the screen door open with his foot, and took her inside. Then he saw what had put the fury in her.

M
ORGAN TURNED THE CORNER BACK ONTO
M
AIN A LITTLE TOO FAST AND
THE
steering wheel slipped in his hands. He was trying to dial and steer and not get blood over everything all at the same time and doing a lousy job of it. The phone started ringing and he switched to hands free and dropped the phone in his lap. It rang three times before Mayor Cassidy answered.

“She shot me.”

“What?”

“Holly Coronado, she shot me.”

There was a pause and the background sounds of the control line filled the car—laughter, celebration. “Are you okay?”

“Well, I've been better. It was rock salt—stings like hell, but I'll live. Listen, Solomon Creed is still there.”

“What? You said you were going to stay close so you could hear what he had to say.”

“What was I supposed to do? I had a shotgun pointed at my head. He wanted to stay, I had to let him.”

“But what if we get a call from Tío's men? What if they want to know where he is?”

“We know where he is. You heard anything yet?”

“No.”

“Me neither. I'm going to call them when I get to the office, but first I'm going to call dispatch, get them to send a unit around to bring Holly into the station.”

“You think? Shouldn't we let it go?”

“She shot me in front of a witness; if I don't do anything about it, how's that going to look? She needs to be cautioned at least. You can't go around unloading shotgun shells into police officers with no consequences. Besides, this might work out for us. If we remove her from the house, it leaves Solomon there on his own.”

There was a pause and Morgan could almost hear the sound of the other shoe dropping. “You think we should tell them where he is?”

“We need to give them something, show them that we're cooperating. The fact that we haven't heard anything is bad. So I'm going to call them up, tell them where he is, and get my guys to clear the way for them. Then we'll see what happens.”

He hung up to avoid further conversation and examined his hands. When he was a kid he'd come off his bike riding down the spill piles and the sharp stones and gravel had taken the skin off his palms. That's what they looked like now. He twisted the rearview mirror around and checked his face. A few cuts, nothing major, though he could easily have been blinded if she'd aimed higher. Goddamn that woman. He fumed all the way to the King Community Hospital, thinking about Holly and Solomon and all the things that were making this about the worst day he could ever remember.

Not long
, he told himself.
Hold your nerve and stick to the plan and it will all fall into place and this will all become a memory.

He pulled to a halt in the ambulance bay and reached over to the passenger seat for his phone. There was something lying in the foot
well. He bent down to pick it up and discovered it was the cap Solomon had been wearing. He held it by the peak and turned it slowly, smiling when he spotted the single white hair trapped in the mesh at the back of the cap, almost glowing against the deep red material of the band.

“Hello, Mr. Creed,” he said. Then he turned the cap over and folded it in on itself to seal the hair inside. “Let's see if we can't find out who you really are.”

M
AYOR
C
ASSIDY STOOD BENEATH THE BLACK DOME OF AN UMBRELLA AND
surveyed the carnival the control line had become, everyone laughing, staring out at the scorched desert and shaking their heads in disbelief that they had, somehow, managed to face down the fire. The rain thundered down but hardly anyone took shelter from it. It was the rain that had saved them. Cassidy smiled too, but he knew this wasn't the end of it. New danger was coming to their town and it would take more than rain to send it away. He checked his phone. Still nothing.

“Mayor Cassidy?”

The voice made him turn and something clenched inside him when he saw the athletic-looking stranger in the dark suit walking toward him under a plain black umbrella. “I'm with the National Transportation Safety Board,” he said, and produced a wallet with a federal ID inside. “I was on the road to Tucson when I heard about the crash so I thought I'd head straight here. The main unit is on its way, but they asked me to secure the site. Mind if I head out and take a peek?”

Cassidy peered out at the steaming road. “You think it's safe?”

“Safe enough. The thing of it is, this rain is both an asset and a liability. It put the fire out but now it's washing away evidence. By the time the forensics teams get here, some of it might be gone. So it would sure be a help if I could get started. Sooner we find out what happened here, the sooner we can get this road opened up for you again.”

Cassidy looked out at the desert, the misting rain and steam drifting across the road like ghosts. “All right,” he said, “I'll go with you, Mr. . . . ?”

“Davidson,” Mulcahy said, and held out his hand.

“Davidson,” Mayor Cassidy repeated, shaking his hand and looking him square in the eye like his daddy had taught him. “Welcome to Redemption, Agent Davidson.”

T
HE INTERIOR OF
H
OLLY
C
ORONADO
'
S HOUSE WAS OPEN PLAN AND TASTE
ful and looked like the home of a young professional couple. Except someone had totally trashed it. Every drawer had been opened and the contents dumped on the floor. The couch was lying on its back, its lining slashed open and its springs exposed. Solomon levered it upright with his foot and set Holly down on it. She was blinking, her eyes struggling to focus. “I'm fine,” she said. “I just came over a little—”

“Where's the kitchen?”

She studied him curiously, as if she had only now noticed him. “You look so pale.”

“So do you. The kitchen?”

She gestured at a doorway and Solomon headed over to it, passing a TV unit that had been pulled away from the wall and emptied, its contents strewn across the pale oak floorboards.

The kitchen was a similar story: drawers pulled out, cupboard doors hanging open, but not all of them. There was a line beyond which the neat order remained undisturbed, which suggested to Solo
mon that the intruder had either found what he was searching for or he had been disturbed, warned maybe that the funeral had ended and Holly was heading back.

It would be odd to hide something that was so clearly valuable in the kitchen, so his money was on them being disturbed. Which meant they had not found whatever it was they were looking for.

He grabbed a glass from the drain and filled it from a filter jug while he breathed in the smell of the room—detergent, polish, and an outdoor smell, engine grease and dry hay, that seemed to float above the other household scents like an oily film. He breathed deeper and caught something else too, the chalky trace of something that hinted at the true depth of the widow's despair. He looked down at the granite worktops and saw the source of it: traces of white powder. He dabbed it with the tip of his finger, tasted it, and his mind identified it for him.

Zolpidem—muscle relaxant—anticonvulsant—most commonly used as a sleeping pill.

He shut off the water and headed back into the living room.

“Sip this,” he said, handing Holly the glass. He placed his hand on her forehead. She was warm but not dangerously so. “Have you taken anything?”

She stiffened. “No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I'm . . . who are you?”

“I was hoping you might tell me.” He pulled the copy of Jack Cassidy's memoir from his pocket and held it out. “I think your husband may have given me this.” He opened the book to the dedication and handed it to her.

“Solomon Creed,” she said, and shook her head. “I never heard Jim mention your name. Why do you only
think
he gave it to you?”

“Because I can't remember anything—not my name, not where I'm from, nothing. All I have is this book and a strong feeling that I'm here because of your husband. I think that I'm here to . . .”

“To what?”

“To save him.”

Pain clouded her face and she handed the book back. “Then you're too late. My husband is dead. He can't help you, and neither can I.”

Solomon took the book and thought about the white powder he had found in the kitchen. “Maybe I'm here to help you too?”

“I don't need your help. I need to be left alone. Thank you for your concern, but I think you need to leave now.”

Solomon didn't move. “I can't do that.”

“You're in my house. If I ask you to go, then you should go.”

He continued to look at her, taking her in, her fragile beauty, her pain, her wide pupils, dilated with shock or perhaps something else.

“If you don't go right now, I'll call the police.”

Solomon shook his head. “No you won't. The police were just here. You shot the police with a shotgun. Why did you do that, I wonder?”

“What do you want?”

“I told you. I want to find out who I am.”

“But I don't know who you are.”

“Maybe your husband did. Why would he send me this book if I wasn't connected to him in some way? And why would I feel so strongly that I'm here because of him? I think something is wrong here. I think your husband was in trouble and you know what it is, and that I am tied up in it somehow.”

Holly stared up at him, her black eyes solid with mistrust. “Why do you think Jim was in trouble?”

Solomon nodded at the trashed room. “Because of this. Because
you shot a police officer in the face. Because I get the feeling that no one wants to talk about what happened to your husband.”

A flicker of interest. “Who doesn't?”

“The mayor, Morgan. I think the only reason he agreed to bring me here was because he wanted to stick around while we talked and see what you had to say, or make sure you said nothing because he was here. But he's not here now. So what is it he didn't want you to tell me?”

Holly opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, then stopped herself. “I just buried my husband,” she said. “I can't help you right now. I'm sorry, I need to take care of myself. So, please, leave me alone.”

Solomon nodded. Took in the mess. Breathed in the smells of the house, the engine grease and hay, and the chalky note floating beneath it all. “All right,” he said. “If you want me to go, I'll go. But you should know that sleeping pills are a notoriously unreliable method of self-destruction.”

She blinked and her hand rose up and across her chest, the gesture of someone who felt exposed, which told him he had guessed correctly.

“I can only imagine the pain you're feeling now, losing someone so close and so young, so if you want to end that pain, who am I to stop you? But if you're really serious, you should run in place before swallowing the pills, get your heart pumping a little—it'll make the drugs work faster. And don't dilute them too much. It weakens the effect.”

Holly studied him for a long time, her face unreadable, her mind trying to work out what Solomon was up to. “Who are you?” she said at last.

“I genuinely have no idea. And trust me, I don't want to be here,
bothering you like this, but I don't know what else to do. I have and am nothing more than what you see in front of you. This is the sum total of me. I'm lost and trying to find myself. And I'm asking you, will you help me?”

“You came here with Morgan,” she said. “Why should I trust you?”

“I didn't leave with him though, did I?”

“Doesn't prove anything. You could still be with them, brought here to show me sympathy and talk about wanting to help Jim to get me to trust you and find out what I know.”

“You think if they wanted to do that they'd bring someone who looked like me?”

She studied him, her eyes lingering on his bare feet for a moment before fixing back on his face. The rain thrummed above them, filling the silence like a drumroll anticipating her answer. She held out her hand. “Show me the book.”

Solomon handed her the memoir and watched her read the dedication page again then frown and nod her head as if she had made up her mind. Then she stood and smoothed her dress down.

“Come with me,” she said. “There's something you should probably see.”