The Star Group (15 page)

“Maybe,” I admitted. Yet that did not make sense to me. All I had ever brought away from the sessions with Mentor was peace and love. How could such qualities lead to our current situation? The more I pondered our dilemma, the more it occurred to me that there must be an unseen element at work in our group.

I remembered the reptilian alien. So powerful.

Was it me? Or was it Shena?

The scars on her face looked scaly.

“Shena was furious, but she's not a cruel person,” Teri said.

“But she almost killed herself at Disneyland. If she could do that, we have to assume that she could kill someone else. Also, Sal asked the question of the night. If she is innocent, why hasn't she returned to the cabin?”

“She might have got lost out here,” Teri said.

“It's possible. Tonight, anything is possible.”

We reached the deepest cave, the one we had been afraid to explore fully earlier in the day. Twenty minutes had elapsed since we had passed Jimmy's body. The tunnel went way back, but we noticed a faint orange slow in its depths. Somebody had made a fire in there. Somebody was planning on spending the night.

We huddled near the opening.

“She's probably in there,” I whispered.

“Of course she's in there,” Sal grumbled.

“If we sneak up on her, she might react badly,” Teri warned.

“I don't want to announce our presence,” Gale said. “If she's the murderer, surprise is our best weapon.”

“She's going to hear us coming,” I said.

“Not if I go in there alone,” Sal said. “I'm quiet on my feet and you know I'm not easy to see in the dark.”

“You're the last person who should go in there,” I said.

Sal was intense. “I think
you're
the last person.”

“I thought we all agreed to stay together,” I protested.

“I'm having second thoughts about that,” Gale said “We assume we have the only gun, but I've been wondering how Shena could have taken Jimmy by surprise. Maybe she had him at gunpoint when she killed him.”

“He had been beaten, not shot,” I said.

“It makes no difference,” Gale said. “She must have had him immobilized. She could have had a gun to his back and ordered him to stand still and then beaten him over the head with a heavy stone. My point is that for all of us to just barge into this cave and hope we get a friendly welcome is silly.”

“You're scared,” I snapped.

“I am scared,” she said. “I'm the first to admit it. I would rather send in a strong man who is well armed to deal with a potential murderer than go myself. Let Sal go. He won't hurt her unless she tries to hurt him.”

I was frustrated with her. “You change your tune quick. You have a little chat alone with Sal and suddenly you trust him to be a hero. Why, not two hours ago you were trying to convince me that he was the murderer.”

Gale was angry. “That’s a lie. I pointed out why Sal might be a suspect, nothing more. But now that I've talked to him his ideas seem the most logical.”

Sal nodded. “There's no doubt in my mind that she killed him. We can't handle her with white gloves.”

Teri was in a panic. “Last week you risked your life to save her, Sal. Now you want to track her down like a wild animal? What has gotten into you?”

Sal hissed, “My friend was alive last week! Now you guys stay here and let me do my job.” He pulled out his revolver and took a step into the cave. “I’II not harm her unless she forces me.”

I grabbed his shoulder. “I'm going with you.”

He shoved me back. “You're all talk, Daniel. You're no good at a time like this.”

I should have gone after him but I didn't. If a sequence of mistakes can be rated, that was the biggest one right there. But there was something in Sal's eyes – I thought if I pushed him too hard he might turn the gun on me.

The three of us waited by the cave entrance. We prayed – I did at least. But I did not know which God was listening tonight.

The fiery orange glow seemed to flare.

We heard a single shot.

“Sal!” I screamed. Not waiting for the others, I raced into the cave. The orange glow seemed to fade with each step I took. Yet it did not go entirely out and I was able to reach the end of the cave without stumbling. There I found a medium-size space, as large as my parents’ living room. It was roughly circular, with a ceiling barely above our heads. In the center on the floor was a small campfire, and I briefly wondered how such a small fire could have generated such a spasm of flame.

The walls of the space were scorched black.

Shena lay on her back by the campfire with her eyes shut.

Blood poured from her lower right side.

Sal stood over her with his gun in his hand. He was as pale as a black hole frosted by a galactic winter. All the blood in his face had drained into the hands that clenched the revolver. He could have been in shock. Carefully I stepped to his side and slowly undid his finger from the gun. He did not hand it to me, but he did not resist, either. He kept staring at Shena, at the blood as it formed in a puddle beside the crackling fire.

I knelt and checked her pulse.

Both respiration and heartbeat were faint.

“She's alive,” I said. “We need to get her to a hospital right away.” I tore at my shirt. I sure was going through them. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

Sal seemed to come alive. “I can carry her.”

I stopped him from touching her. “Why?” I asked.

His mouth hung half open. “She tried to burn me.”

“What?”

“I had no choice. She tried to burn me.”

The girls entered the room. Gale was all business. She knelt and pressed my torn shirt on to the bubbling wound. Teri went to Sal's side but neither spoke. Slipping the revolver in the back of my belt, beneath what was left of my shirt, I tried to ease Shena up.

“Ohh,” she moaned. But she did not regain consciousness.

Sal had to carry her, however. He was the only one who had the strength. He threw her over his shoulder like she was sack of potatoes and hiked furiously out of the cave. We had to scramble to keep up with him, and he had a hundred and fifteen pounds on his back. All the time, of course, I knew we were behaving like fools. Sal had shot Shena and now he was trying to save her. But there was no time to sit and explore his motives, Shena was bleeding. With Shena riding on Sal's shoulder, we could not keep pressure on the wound to slow the blood. Gale did the best she could, stuffing our makeshift bandage under Shena's shirt.

It looked like Sal had shot her through the liver.

The hike back went quicker than our outward hunt. Sal was possessed with the strength of five men, and he practically ran with Shena. I staggered by his side and was stunned to see how openly he was weeping.

“How did she try to burn you?” I demanded at one point.

“I don't know,” he gasped.

“Did she swipe at you with a burning stick?”

“I don't know!”

I had the gun. I figured we could find out the truth later. Our patient was all that mattered. Yet as we approached the cabin I had another dilemma to solve. Should we drive farther up the mountain, toward Big Bear, or head back down into the city? As the others hurried toward the cabin and the van, I took a detour toward the old man’s cabin. As far as I knew he the only other living soul around the lake.

“I need to ask where the nearest hospital is!” I shouted. “Swing around the lake and pick me up.”

“We don't have time!” Gale shouted back as we split up.

“We'll lose more time driving in the wrong direction!” I yelled. “Do what I say!”

The old man did not answer my frantic knocks.

“Hello!” I yelled.

No response. I stood undecided for two minutes. Then, checking the doorknob, I discovered the place unlocked. As I stepped inside the dark cabin, a faint foul odor touched my nostrils. I stumbled over a coffee table and bumped into a lamp. Turning it on, I got another jolt in a night consumed by them.

The old man lay sprawled on his face in the middle of the floor. He was dead, the color of fish. He must have had a heart attack. There wasn't a mark on him. His flesh was cold, he could have been dead since the previous night. Outside, Sal was blowing the van horn. I wanted to do something for the man, but I couldn't. Right then I felt as if nothing I did would make any difference.

In the van they wanted to know which way to drive.

“Down the mountain,” I said as I settled in the back beside Shena. Teri was up front with Sal, Gale was on top of Shena, trying to keep pressure on the hole. Sal shouted back to me.

“Isn't there a hospital in Big Bear?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said.

“What did the old man say?” Sal demanded.

“Nothing,” I said.

Gale looked up, her hands soaked in blood.

“This is not my fault,” she said.

“I didn't say it was.”

“It's not your fault,” she said.

Responsibility could be divided up later, I thought.

“Can she talk?” I asked as I gestured to Shena.

“She's unconscious,” Gale said.

“Can you tell how she's doing?”

“I'm not a doctor.” Gale checked her pulse. “Her heart's beating and she's breathing. That's all I know.”

“Are your hands getting tired? Can you keep pressure on the wound?”

“My hands are OK.” Gale paused. “She's not bleeding much anymore.”

“That's good.”

“I don't think so,” Gale said. “I think she's about bled to death.”

I was stricken. “She can't die. I need to talk to her.”

Gale looked at me and shook her head.

“I don't think that's going to happen,” she said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WE DIDN'T FIND A HOSPITAL UNTIL WE were well out of the mountains and into the San Bernardino Valley. We saw it from the 10 Freeway, a huge modern facility with a helicopter pad on top, and Sal immediately yanked his van on to the next exit tamp. Sal had done a wild eighty miles an hour going down the mountains, and it was a wonder we were still alive. The amazing thing was that no one was screaming at him for shooting Shena. But the night was still young. I knew the cops would not be too happy to hear that a big powerful athlete had thought it necessary to put a bullet in an unarmed girl.

The hospital staff was efficient. We were twenty seconds at the emergency door when a swarm of medical people wheeled out a gurney and whisked Shena away. We followed them inside, but even though the nurses and doctors were shouting questions, they would not let us into the operating room. What could we say to their questions? She got shot. Who shot her? Gale and Teri held their breath.

I was the one who pointed Sal out.

We sat down to wait. Time crawled by as it had a habit of doing at times like this. Why didn't it know to slow down when times were good? God, I swore to myself, what a complete and total screw-up. The hands of the big white clock above passed through an hour. I was sure someone somewhere was calling the police. Sal sat across from me, his head hung toward the floor. He quivered like a hurt child, and it was pitiful to watch him wring his big black hands. He did not want to look at me, but my eyes insisted. Gale was on my right, Teri on my left. In a sense Sal was all alone.

“Why?” I asked again.

His nerves were like parasitic worms eating him alive.

“I ran into the cave,” he said. “There was a red glow up ahead. In the middle of it was Shena. I saw her, she saw me. Then a tongue of flame leaped out. She was trying to burn me. I didn't know what to do, I got scared.” He shook his head. “I just fired. I didn't want to kill her.”

Teri was worried. “Honey? What is this tongue of flame?”

Sal closed his eyes and shook. “That's what happened. Somehow the fire leaped at me. I thought she doing it. I don't know what to tell you.”

“You better know what to tell the cops,” I muttered.

Teri gave me a cross look. “We should have gone to them to begin with.”

“I think they'll be coming to us soon,” Gale mumbled. Her hands were still bloody. She had not bothered to wash them. But I took the occasion to go to the rest room. Inside I splashed water on my face and stared in the mirror for a minute.

“Mentor,” I whispered. “I don't believe you planned this.”

My reflection did not reply. Or did it? I took Sal's revolver and put it in the wastepaper basket.

I was not throwing it away. I was hiding it.

Yeah, the night was young and filled with promise.

The missing element was still alive and well.

When I returned to the others, a nurse approached. She was young and pretty – she did not look much older than us. But her badge said RN Cathy Tiel. She had bad news, I could tell by the way her lower lip tightened before she spoke.

“Your friend has lost a tremendous amount of blood,” the nurse said. “She's out of surgery and she’s alive, but she's on total life support. She's being ventilated and has no brain wave activity.”

Teri gasped. “Does that mean she's really dead?”

The nurse was blunt. “She will almost certainly not survive.”

Gale and Teri wept. Sal and I must have felt we could not afford the luxury. Especially when the nurse pointed at us and told us to remain where we were.

“The police are here,” she said. “Don't leave the hospital. They want to talk to you.”

We sat back down. The chairs were not sturdy.

“God,” Teri whispered. “We haven't even told them about Jimmy yet.”

“We're going to have to tell them everything,” Gale said.

I glared at her. “Now you like the idea.”

She stared. “What's your problem? Do you see me blaming you?”

“We have to come up with a story,” Sal mumbled. “They'll think I murdered Shena. They'll probably think I killed Jimmy as well.”

“Did you?” I asked.

Sal was disgusted. “You're not going to walk away from this mess.”

“Sal.” Gale said gently, catching his eye. “We all know that you're stronger than normal. We're your friends. None of us wants to hand you over to the police. Screw what everyone else says. Do what you have to do to protect yourself.”

“No,” Teri interrupted. “We're not going to do anything except sit here and wait and talk to the authorities.”