Valley of Lights

TWENTY-FIVE

This suited me fine, as Winter would probably know my car by now. She also wanted me to drive, which suited me as well because I tend to get carsick as a passenger, although I didn't realise the reason behind this request until we'd been on the road for about half an hour. She had me heading south, but wouldn't say exactly where we were going. This was good policy from her point of view, whether she knew it or not, because my intention was to dump her as soon as I had the information I needed. I'd already reported in sick with a phonecall, so from then on my way would be clear.

Ahead of us lay more than a hundred miles of dry cotton-country leading on to Tucson, and beyond that the Mexican border; in between were maybe a dozen small farming towns strung out along the main road, to which I could add homesteads and ranches and a big air base somewhere close to Marana. I'd tried fishing for specifics already, and she hadn't risen to the bait; for my part I was playing it cagy about my own background in the affair, and when she asked me how I'd come to be suspicious of Winter, I said, 'I never was. He's the one who picked me out with some crazy idea about having met up with me in his other lives. He's about as loopy as they come.'

'And you didn't report the kidnap to your superiors?'

'No.'

'Do you know what effect this may have on your police career?'

'I'm more concerned with the effect on the little girl,' I said, and then something about the style of the questions made me curious and I glanced down, and then glanced down again when I realised that I'd just seen that she was holding a microphone and that there was a compact reel-to-reel machine turning on her lap. I said, 'How long have you been recording me?'

And she said, 'It's what I'm here for. Give me a break, Sergeant. We're en route to foil a kidnap, it's actuality.'

'Call me Alex.'

'Give me a break, Alex.'

'Only if you'll tell me where we're going.'

She half-smiled then, and looked out of the window. At that moment we were on a long bridge over a dry creek that had tyre tracks in it. She must have decided that we'd come far enough for me not to turn back and set out again alone, because she said, 'He was seen in Florence. The University's got a cotton research station or something like that around there, so sometimes the kids out on field studies drop into town to buy stuff. One of them recognised Winter coming out of the general store and saw him climb into a red pickup and drive away, end of story.'

'And that's all?'

'It's a start, isn't it?'

'Yeah,' I said, although it wasn't as much of a start as I'd been hoping for. Florence was the main town out in Pinal County, not exactly big but certainly big enough for somebody to hide out unseen, especially if they were to base themselves on the outskirts and only come in for essential supplies.

Angela had stopped the tape now, and she took off the full reel and slipped it into a box which, after she'd marked it, went into the glove compartment. I made sure that I noted where it went. There were some other boxes just like it in there, but most of the space seemed to be taken up by a disorganised private pharmacy.

I found out the reasons for it five minutes later, when she started to sneeze.

I'd been driving along with my window open, as was my habit; but now we were running through wide open fields with ploughed land to the right and cotton to the left, and there was some kind of fine white dust that was lifting and drifting across our path from the planted areas. It was like a dry desert snow, and it seemed to be getting to her. I closed my window, but by then it was too late.

'I moved to the desert because of my asthma,' she said apologetically, 'so now I have allergies instead. I'm going to have to take something. Just long enough for me to get a glass of water, okay?'

'Sure,' I said.

We pulled off the road at a small wooden-hut diner that stood in the middle of a stony clearing on its own. We went in and sat at the counter, and along with the iced water for Angela I ordered a cup of coffee that I didn't want, by way of rent. There was nobody else in the place apart from an older man in a straw Stetson at the far end of the counter, who only seemed to be here to talk to the waitress.

When I looked back to see what Angela was doing, she'd taken four or five different bottles out of her bag and was checking the labels on each to see which one she wanted.

I said, 'The doctor says you have to take all these?'

'They're not prescription drugs,' she said. 'They're homeopathic medicines. And before you ask, no, it doesn't mean anything kinky.'

'I know what homeopathic means. It means you take a little dose of the same thing that's causing you the problem.'

'A renaissance cop,' she said cynically. 'That's made my day.'

'I only said I knew what it meant. That doesn't mean I don't think it's cranky.'

'Well,' she said, and she unscrewed the cap on the first bottle. It was one of those child-proof ones that only little kids seem to be able to open. 'I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to try anything.'

'Do they work?'

'Don't ask. Confidence is half the battle.'

She took the first couple of pills and chased them down with water, and re-read the label as she waited for them to hit bottom. Swallowing hard like that made her look faintly surprised, as if someone had sneakily peeled the label off and replaced it with a dirty joke.

I said, 'I've seen you on crime scenes. I think you're wasted on radio.'

'Don't tell me,' she said, 'tell the people who do the hiring. I've tried to break into TV in three different states, and I still haven't made it. And it's not because I'm no good – it's because of those news consultancies who turn the whole thing into a glamor parade.'

'So, where's your problem?'

'I don't want to do the fucking happy-stories, that's my problem.'

She picked up the next bottle, and I started to stand.

'Excuse me for one minute,' I said. 'I just have to go to the washroom.'

I ambled down the counter, past the man in the straw Stetson who was saying You can keep all them French painters 'cept Rembrandt, there's a Frenchman could paint, and pushed through a flimsy wooden door marked Rest Rooms. As soon as the door had flapped shut behind me I was down to the window at the end of the passageway and climbing out. There was no fenced area or anything, just open land to the back of the diner, and I'd deliberately parked the car around the side so that nobody would be able to see it from the main windows, nobody in this case meaning Angela Price. I was guessing that she'd be up to her third bottle of quack remedies now as I ducked under a back window and skittered around the corner almost on my fingertips, and three long strides covered the rest of the distance to the car.

She was sitting there, ready to go.

'I had the keys with me,' she said. 'What were you planning to do, hotwire it?'

We rolled into Florence less than half an hour later. It's one of those little towns with a long and lively pioneer history, although at first glance you could be forgiven for thinking that everybody was in the process of moving out so that the buildings could fall down in peace. We slowly cruised down the main street with its covered sidewalks, and Angela spied out the general store with its ten-cents-a-ride rocking horse standing out in the shade. Further along were a Rexell's and a hardware store running a paint sale, but the barbershop and the cinema had closed down and an apartment hotel stood empty. A white Impala was turning ahead of us, and from the Pinal County crest on its door I guessed that the garage and yard set back from the street were for housing the sheriff's vehicles.

'What do we do now?' Angela said. She hadn't mentioned my little breakout bid back at the diner, almost as if she took it all in part as the ground rules of the game.

I said, 'I wish I knew. I don't suppose the kids had the number of the pickup.'

'No.'

'Or the direction it took.'

'Out of town, was all they knew.'

We circled around the block, and I pulled into a vast and mostly unoccupied parking lot in front of the new county administration building. We'd passed few people on the streets, just a small group of men in checkered shirts and two women in slacks and big-sized print blouses. The town had a real mid-afternoon feel, like there was life around but it was all going on somewhere else.

When I'd stopped the car and turned off the engine, I said to Angela, 'Okay, I want you to do something for me,' and I brought out the picture of Winter that I'd been keeping by the phone. 'Take this over to the store and see if anybody recognises it.'

'While you stay here with the car?' she said, with a subtext of I wasn't born yesterday, buster.

'If Winter's around,' I said, 'I don't want him to see me. He could do anything.'

She studied the photograph for a while. I realised that this was the first time she'd seen a face to put with the name. She seemed unfazed by Winter's look of innocence, real when the shot was taken but replaced by something more sinister since.

She said, 'I'm taking the keys.'

'Take one of the wheels, if it makes you feel better.'

I watched her as she walked away. I suppose that I was comparing her to Loretta, in the inevitable way that you do. Superficially they were similar in a lot of ways – self-possessed, confident, determined, ready to take knocks without running for cover – but when it really came down to it, Angela Price was of another breed altogether. Newspeople like to put themselves forward as crusaders for the individual, but the fact is that they're really in just another branch of showbusiness. If they can reconcile the two points of view early on, then they've got a reasonable chance of growing old gracefully; but a lot of them don't even think about it, and go striding out with their wooden swords.

I missed Loretta. Missed her sharply, now, and if I couldn't have her back whole I'd have her any way she came. I'd been about to start a new life and Winter had smashed it and scattered the pieces; but I'd put it together again somehow, and when I thought of his true face and his true name I knew that I wouldn't go soft when the time arrived.

I checked the Colt Special in its holster under my jacket, and the spare rounds that I was carrying. And then, remembering that there was something else I had to do, I reached over for the glove compartment; but it was too late, because Angela was walking back across the lot towards me. She was carrying the last two cans from a six-pack of something, using the plastic template as a handle.

She got in beside me, tossing the car keys so I could catch them. 'The storekeeper identified the picture,' she said, 'but you're not going to believe this.'

'Try me.'

'He bought out their entire stock of baby food. Two boxloads.' She studied the effect of her announcement for a moment. 'You don't look surprised.'

'It's the way my face is made,' I said. And then, for appearances, 'Why did he want it?'

'He didn't say.'

'Did they have an address for him?'

'No, but he placed another order to pick up next week, so he must be staying in the area. So, what now?'

'Give me a minute to think,' I said.

'Sure.' She popped open one of the soda cans. 'You want this? One of them's for you.'

'Thanks,' I said, 'but later.'

She shrugged, and started to look through her various bottles of pills again as I wondered about the best way to proceed. Big orders of baby food meant that he had to be maintaining a new group of his zombies, which meant that he had to be somewhere that he could feel safe and unobserved. Hotels and motels would be out, because I'd found him in such places too easily before.

Angela choked on another handful of pills, washing them down with the soda. Watching the face that she made, I said, 'Have you ever considered the possibility that you may be a hypochondriac?'

'Wow, doctor,' she said, 'that sounds really serious.'

And then I said, 'I've got another idea.'

She looked at me suspiciously. 'This sounds like you're going to send me out there again.'

'Yeah, I know, you're a sick woman. I want you to go over to the county offices and check with the land registry. See if there's any property in the area that's been registered in the name of Michaels.'

'Who's Michaels?'

'A businessman whose place he turned over. There were ranch prospectuses and all kinds of things in his office, one of them might have given Winter a line on somewhere local. It's worth a try, anyway. You know who to ask?'

'Please,' she said in a pained voice. 'I'm a professional.'

This time, she didn't even take the keys. I think she was beginning to trust me. I waited as she walked across the plaza to one of the newer county buildings which looked like a big glass-and-sandstone harmonica on its side, and as soon as she'd gone through the main doors I was in the glove compartment and checking through the tape boxes. As soon as I'd found the one with my 'actuality' interview on it, I turned the car radio on loud and held the box up close to the speaker for a couple of minutes so that the working magnets could do their stuff.

When Angela returned, I had everything stowed again.

'I think we're on a winning streak,' she said as she climbed into the car, and I could see that she was flushed and eager.

'You found something?'

'An old place out on Highway 89, recently re-registered for development as a turkey farm. They ran me off a copy of the map and everything.'

'That's where green eyes get you,' I said.

'Don't I know it. They're worth every penny.'

'What do you mean?'

'My eyes are brown. These are contact lenses. Listen, Alex, don't you think it's time we went to the authorities?'

I took the xeroxed map that she was offering to me, and said, 'Don't take offence at this, Angela, but keep your nose out, okay?'

We were up and running. It could still turn into nothing, but somehow I didn't think that it would.

Highway 89 was a two-lane road running south-east out of Florence, running parallel but some miles east of the main interstate towards Tucson. It didn't take more than two minutes to reach the outskirts of town through the rundown suburbs that spread in all directions from the main street, new or restored buildings standing out here and there like the odd capped tooth. Angela took me at my word, and said nothing for a while.

Out on the highway, I said, 'I think I recognise this. We're on the same road where Tom Mix was killed.'

'Tom Mix?' she said. 'Was he somebody famous?' But she was only doing this to get revenge.

I think she was, anyway.

I slowed down when I thought we were getting close to the place that had been marked on the map, and there it was; an ungated dirt drive with a battered-looking mailbox on a post at its end, the name Arballo stencilled on it in faded black letters. A couple of deeper dents in the side suggested that somebody had been using the box for casual target practice. I didn't stop. There wasn't enough cover between the road and the house, a two-story clapboard building which stood about a quarter of a mile back with a new-looking hurricane fence all around it. When I finally did pull in, it was onto a roadside picnic area.

I didn't even have the slightest doubt any more. There had been a red pickup outside the house, within the chain-link compound. I know that red pickups in Arizona are about as rare as flies around a dead horse, but the accumulated evidence was too persuasive.

I said to Angela, 'We have to get him out of the house and away from the child. That's where you come in.' And she looked at me with wary suspicion.

'Oh, yeah?' she said.

'All you have to do is go back into town and make a phone call. Make out that you're calling from the post office and that there's some cash for the farm that's to be collected in person. He'll swallow it, because he needs the money.'

'For more baby food?'

'Whatever. As soon as he's hung up, drive back out here with your eyes open for a red truck going in the opposite direction. When you've passed him, put your foot down and get to the farm as fast as you can. I plan to be waiting there with the child.'

'Then do we go to the authorities?'

'One step at a time, all right?'

She wasn't happy, but the story came first; I was the participant and she was the observer, and all of the moral weight was firmly on my shoulders. I got out of the car so that she could slide over. She could see that I knew more than I was telling, especially about the little details like the baby food, but I could always invent something later if she didn't come up with her own explanation first. That's the thing with a psycho killer, anything goes. It's only the psychiatrists who bust a gut trying to make it all fit together, and they always come along after the event.

I walked back to the driveway's end along the opposite side of the road, off the shoulder so that I wouldn't easily be seen from the house. Angela was long gone by the time that I got there, and I crouched down in the scrub to wait. I was sweating already, but I couldn't take off my jacket because then my holster and its hardware would be on show. I didn't know how long this was going to take.

Hunkered down in the dust, I found myself thinking about a frogs' wedding.

It wasn't quite as unlikely as it sounds. The Frogs' Wedding was the first display that Loretta had worked on, and I'd gone along to the mall to look at it one day without telling her. I suppose it was pretty good of its kind. There was this big fifteen hundred-dollar wedding dress as the centrepiece, and peeping out from under the veil was this frog's face. The groom was a frog, too, in a gray morning-suit and spats. They were surrounded by a half-circle of little frogs, probably because it was too difficult to get a bridesmaid's dress to look convincing on a tadpole. All the frogs were facing outward, champagne glasses raised. To this day I have absolutely no idea what they were supposed to be selling, but I'll bet that they sure as hell didn't move many of the dresses. How many girls dream of looking like Kermit in silk on their wedding day?

But the most important thing had been Loretta's obvious pride in her first piece of work, and that was the reason for it coming back to me now. It hurt like a knife going in. I'd even managed to lose her the display job, along with all of the other chaos that I'd brought into her life. I didn't dare mess up again.

The red truck came out after about ten minutes, and I flinched down as it turned within a dozen yards of me, I glimpsed a hard, weatherbeaten face behind the wheel, and felt my first serious twinge of doubt. But it didn't mean anything.

The dust from the truck was still in the air as I put all other thoughts out of my mind and started the quarter-mile run to the house.