Tortoise Soup (33 page)

I paid Ruby and headed outside. The sun had set, leaving a tinge of vermilion painting the sky. The desert usually cooled down in the evening, but tonight was different. The air still hung heavy with the heat of the day. I shifted the Blazer into gear and took off, following the last of the light.

A bevy of cars raced by, manned by drivers eager to get to Vegas. The glare of their high beams was blinding, forcing me to slow down as my eyes searched for the wooden sign that marked the turnoff for Feather Lane Drive.

When I swerved onto the dirt road, a pervasive eeriness instantly enveloped the vehicle, and I shivered under the cloudy, starless sky. I fall asleep with the TV blaring, fire engines wailing, even turning on a fan just to break up the quiet of night. Noise helped to fend off the darkness that threatened to grab me up whole and eat me alive. But there was no release from the overwhelming silence of the Mojave.

I decided to shatter the stillness. Leaning my head out the window, I called Pilot’s name. It came echoing back, vibrating off mountains cloaked in a dark ether. I called out again, and this time, the echo was followed by the blast of a shotgun piercing the desert solitude. I jumped at the sound, and told myself it was varmint-hunters.

I knew that the desert was filled with nightstalkers: nocturnal people who preyed on coyotes and mountain lions, even wild horses, shooting at anything that moved. I grasped the steering wheel tighter, determined to ignore the shaking of my hands.

One of the Blazer’s tires bounced in and out of a rut, and I focused my mind back on the road. I told myself it wouldn’t be much longer before Dee’s abode came into view. I was so absorbed in my thoughts that it took a moment for me to notice the red glow that stained the night sky. The color quickly grew, intensifying as it ate up more and more of the darkness, until it seemed that night had turned into a molten version of day.

My foot pressed down hard on the gas pedal, the Blazer’s shock absorbers howling in protest as the vehicle flew over rocks and ruts. The scent of the air changed and I picked up a whiff of smoke. Pinpricks of cold sweat broke out on my body. I ordered my mind to be still, not wanting to conjure up the worst. But it was no use. Visions of sugarplum flames danced in my head, scorching the desert floor into burnt butterscotch ribbons. I drove as fast as I could, the Blazer creating its own gust of wind. And then I was outside the vehicle, staring at what should have been a feverish dream. Dee’s house was ablaze, with licks of fire curling inside and out like a den of snakes hissing a warning. Nearby, her red pickup had become a mass of charred metal contorted into odd shapes.

I called out to Dee in the hope that she had escaped and was hiding even now behind a nearby Joshua tree. A heart-wrenching cry tore through the air. I quickly scanned the area. The anguished shriek came once again, and I ran toward a nearby yucca, where the sound had come from. But Dee was nowhere in sight. Instead, I watched in stunned fascination as the yucca burst into flames, its screech more human than I could have ever imagined.

A sledgehammer pounded where my heart should have been, as smoke rushed deep into my lungs. My body tingled and my face was as hot as a piece of burnt beef, while the taste of ash coated my tongue. By now the house was a roaring inferno. I knew there was no hope left for Dee, if she was still inside. The only thing to ever be found would be her scorched bones.

The sledgehammer moved from my heart to my head as I made my way back to the Blazer and pulled out the cell phone. I placed a call to the local police. Then I dialed a second number.

“Ursula Unger’s residence.”

“Lizzie, it’s Rachel.”

My throat felt as though a bough of thorns had been raked across it, scraping it raw.

“What do you think, Rach? Tamara Twayne just wasn’t working, so I moved on to names beginning with U. Should it be Uma or Ursula? What’s your gut reaction?”

“Listen to me, Lizzie. I’m out at Dee’s. There’s been a fire.”

An explosion of throbs produced an extravaganza of fireworks in my head.

“Oh, my God!” Lizzie gasped. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. But Dee may not be. There’s some information I need to check, and I’m hoping you might remember.” I spoke slowly, believing it might help the pain go away.

“Shoot. What do you need?” Lizzie asked.

I heard a crash in her bungalow, and for a moment my heart stopped.

“Get out of there, Tabby!” Lizzie firmly commanded. “Sorry about that, Rachel. Go ahead.”

“Do you remember how many acres were in Annie McCarthy’s quit claim deed that was signed over to Golden Shaft?” I asked.

I closed my eyes, but the fire still twirled in front of my sight, performing perfect pirouettes.

“Oh, sure. That’s easy. There were fifteen thousand. I remember that because fifteen is my lucky number.”

I heard her voice chatter on, but I stopped listening as one more piece of the puzzle clicked in my brain. Fifteen thousand acres was exactly the amount of land that Golden Shaft had sold to Alpha Development for one crisp dollar bill.

I got off the phone as quickly as I could. More than likely, Dee had discovered the reason behind the sale. I didn’t have to wait for a team to sift through the smoking debris to confirm that she had been murdered. I knew it as surely as if I had been witness to the act myself.

Except for the burning funeral pyre, night loomed stealthy as a panther around me. I turned on the Blazer’s engine and pulled away, the blackness swallowing me, until the fire was no larger than the dot at the end of a sentence. And I could very well have been the one who lit the match that began the flame.

It’s too dangerous
. Dee had said.
Not over the phone
.

Whatever she had decided to reveal must have been important. It had cost her her life.

Lanahan’s clock was still ticking. I knew that by this time tomorrow, the FBI would have moved in. I was also aware that a female wildlife agent carried about as much weight as a thimbleful of soot. I would be thrown off the case. Not knowing what else to do, I headed for the only place I had left to go.

I threaded my way between rocks and cactus, hugging close to the base of the mountains. I knew it would have been smarter to get back on the main road. This way, it was too easy to get lost. One wrong turn, and I would wind up driving all night. If I drove all night, I could run out of gas. And if I ran out of gas, I was good as dead.

I didn’t let any of that sway me from my course. It was a streak of stubbornness that had nearly gotten me killed once before, but it was important to me to prove that I could do whatever a male agent could. It was the reason I would never admit to being tired or cold or hungry. I would never give up, never give in.

I heard a coyote yip in the distance. The call was picked up and answered by a second critter, and then a third and a fourth, until a chorus of yips merged into one long, mournful coyote song. The melody slowly melted back into the desert, where it was replaced by the dim echo of a scream in my head. I knew it was Dee’s scream, and that it would always be there.

My headlights sliced through
the dark, searching for the trail that led to Noah’s. Pairs of eyes floated in and out of the night like fluorescent marbles, startled by the huge metal creature invading their turf. I heard a low, throaty cough—a sure sign that a mountain lion was lurking nearby, probably licking his chops at the sight of the potential meal on wheels.

The vehicle’s brights picked up a dirt road that headed into the mountains. I quickly swerved onto it, hoping I’d made the right choice. The Blazer began its slow ascent toward the sky. I stayed as far away from the path’s uneven edge as I could, following the precarious trail higher and higher. One wrong move, and I’d find myself plunging down the steep mountainside and crashing to earth, just one more casualty of the Mojave to be tripped across some day.

I kept going, my eyes focused on the road, while I strained to catch a glimpse of a light. The likelihood of becoming lion chow was beginning to haunt me when I finally caught sight of a flicker in the distance. The mountain leveled off, and I followed the tiny beam, latching onto it as my guiding star.

There was no moonlight to reflect off the life-size ark, but the faint yapping of Georgia Peach’s matted menagerie was all the hard-core proof I needed that I had managed to find my way. I drove the remaining distance almost giddy with relief. The ark had never looked so good, its weathered wooden boards a welcome sight as I pulled up beside Noah’s battered Suburban. Georgia met me at the door with a drink in her hand.

“What are you, out for a stroll, Porter? Or did they fire you already?” She stepped aside to let me in. “Either way, you’re just in time. I’m whipping up a batch of Fuzzy Navels.”

Georgia’s rear end hung out of the bottom of her short shorts, the dimpled skin more in need of exercise than of alcohol. I pushed my way past the motley mob nipping at my feet as Georgia turned around and caught sight of my face.

“What the hell happened to you? Have a bad experience at a tanning salon?” she asked, unable to take her eyes off me.

I knew what she was talking about. My face felt as though a blowtorch had been held up against it. I took a deep breath in an effort to hold myself together before I could speak.

“Something’s going on. I need to talk to Noah.” My voice quivered as my knees began to shake. Now that I was here and safe, the fire at Dee’s was beginning to hit me with the force of a clenched fist driven into my chest.

The sound of a snore barreled through the ark. Noah lay spread-eagled across a mound of foam pillows on the floor behind me, his bare belly rising and falling to the rhythm of his snores. Clutched in one hand was an empty can of Bud. The other held a small bottle of nail polish, the cap barely hanging on. I looked down at Georgia’s feet, where balls of cotton carefully separated each toe, half of which were painted flaming-red.

Georgia padded over to Noah and nudged him gently with her unpainted foot. It produced no response. She tried again, this time lifting her foot and giving him a swift kick in the ribs.

“What? What’s the matter? What’s going on?” Noah sputtered, struggling to sit up. Then he spotted me through half-closed eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Georgia wended her way into the shambles of their kitchen. “I’m gonna make coffee,” she called out over her shoulder.

The next thing I knew, she shoved a shot of whisky into my hands. “Here, drink this.”

I stared numbly at the glass, seeing flames dancing within the amber liquid. “I thought you were making coffee.”

“Not for you. For him,” Georgia replied, heading back to the kitchen. “You need some booze.”

I gulped the liquid down. Its fire spread through me almost as quickly as the blaze that had engulfed Dee’s house.

Georgia returned with a cup in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other. The coffee inside the cup splashed back and forth with each step, spreading a trail of liquid onto the floor. It was quickly lapped up by the band of hair balls behind her. Noah gratefully accepted the cup and slowly sipped what was left as Georgia refilled my glass.

“Now what happened?” he asked, finally fully awake.

“Remember yesterday, when I told you that I might have blown the cover on a source?” I heard Dee’s scream ring again in my ears.

“I remember,” Noah said quietly.

“Well, I think I really did it this morning.” Taking a deep breath, I tasted the fumes of the fire. “I called Dee Salvano, my source at the mine, earlier today. She told me that Golden Shaft just handed fifteen thousand acres of their newly patented land over to Alpha Development for the sum of one dollar.”

“I knew it!” Noah exulted.

“It gets better,” I told him. “Remember the claims that Golden Shaft obtained from Annie McCarthy right before she died?”

“Let me guess. The claims totaled fifteen thousand acres,” Georgia said softly, sinking down onto one of the pillows.

“Yeah, okay. Still, what’s the big deal?” Noah reasoned. “That information is public knowledge; it’s not going to compromise your source. Besides, I’d bet my life you won’t find anything tying those fifteen thousand acres into what happened to old Annie.”

“You don’t understand.” I paused and took a large drink of whisky, hoping to dull the throb in my head. “Last week I stole five dead tortoises from the storage freezer at the mine.”

“You
stole
them?” Georgia gave a deep chuckle.

“Let’s just say I didn’t bother to tell anyone that they happened to fall inside my bag,” I said. “Anyway, I had them autopsied. I felt pretty certain they had died as a result of being crushed by haul paks.”

“And what did you find out?” Noah asked.

“Lanahan at Forensics thinks it might be radiation poisoning. His Geiger counter went wild when he put it next to the tortoises,” I revealed.

Noah suddenly straightened up, leaning forward so intensely I was afraid he might topple over, his eyes burning as bright as two laser beams.

“When I told Dee about it this morning, she said she had something important to tell me but refused to talk over the phone. That’s where I was, just before coming here. I went to Dee’s house.”

“Get to the point, Porter. What did she say?” Noah demanded.

A chill ran through me. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.” I began to choke up. “Her house had been set on fire. I have every reason to believe that Dee was inside.”

There was a long moment of silence as Noah absorbed what he’d just been told.

“That’s it!” Noah whispered. “Goddammit! That’s where I know the guy from.”

I looked at Noah questioningly—and I realized that the man had come alive.

“Your friend Anderson? That bastard’s with the Department of Energy!” Noah slapped a hand down hard on the pillows, startling Georgia’s sleeping dogs. Leaping up en masse, they yapped at an imagined intruder.

“I saw him at Los Alamos a couple of times. He was attending high-level meetings that even I wasn’t privy to.”