Chapter 29

The night was so deep that it seemed like a piece of black velvet had been folded over the car; the only relief came from the dark-walled tunnel carved out by the BMW's high beams.

Anna punched Louis' number into the phone, at the same time saying, 'I'd like to talk to Daly. I wonder if she knows where Judge is?'

'She would have told Wyatt,' Harper said.

Louis' number got no response at all: now they wereout of range.

'I thought those fuckin' towers were everywhere. They're building one on the hill over my house,' Harper said.

'Not everywhere,' Anna said. Harper slowed at a gravel intersection, and they peered up at a road sign. 'Right,' Anna said. Two miles.'

Harper didn't hesitate at the ranch gate. He passed it by, still climbing the gravel road, over a rise, down the side of a canyon, up the rise on the other side, around a turn.

He pulled over against the mountainside, killed the engine. 'Five tenths of a mile,' he said. 'Five- or six-minute jog.'

'Let's go,' Anna said, popping her door.

'There's a flash in the glove box,' he said. His voice was tight, edgy. 'Better get it. Give me the rifle.'

Anna handed him the Ruger and found the flash, a black aluminium cylinder about the length and diameter of a fat man's cigar.

On the road, Anna found she could cup her fist around the flash, and project a needle-thin beam of light, enough to keep them on the gravel. As their eyes adjusted, moonlight began to show. Anna turned, looking for the moon, and finally, below a break in the hillside, found it lurking in the trees above them, a quarter-crescent.

'There'll be more light up on top,' she whispered, as they jogged.

Harper grunted, then put up a hand, touching her chest. 'Coming up,' he said. Anna slowed, felt the slope of the road easing beneath her feet. The drive had started up from a short flat stretch; they should be close.

'There,' she said. The galvanized gate was a gray shadow in the darker brush around it. 'Let me check it.'

She shined the needle of light on the post side of the gate, sliding down the metal joint between the hinges. Nothing.

'All right?' Harper asked.

'Just a minute.' She checked the opening side, and found the contact: 'No, it's alarmed,' she said. Harper came up, squatted, looked at the light. Anna aimed it at the patch of ceramic insulator set in the post. 'We've got one like it on the farm,' she whispered. 'There's a magnet in the gate and a needle in the post. When you move the gate, the needle goes with the magnet and hits a contact, and that sets off the buzzer inside.'

'Can't even climb over?'

'Nope. That'll push the gate down. Let's look at the fence.'

The barbed-wire fence showed a single strand of electric wire running along the top. 'Bottom should be okay,' Anna said. 'Let's find a low spot, where we can squeeze under.'

They found a spot fifty feet down the road, the desert brush ripping at their jackets as they slid under the wire. Anna stood, pulling pieces of dead brush from her hair.

'You okay?' Harper whispered.

'Yeah. Let's go.'

They jogged the first couple of hundred feet up the hill, but Harper was enough out of shape that he caught her arm and told her to slow down. Impatiently, she walked ahead of him, urging him along.

The hill seemed to go on forever, gently sinuous, always climbing. After ten minutes, they topped the first rise and saw the orange glow of a yard light. Harper caught her arm and said, 'Stop for a minute. We've got to talk.'

They squatted beside the road, looking slightly down at the ranch yard. The house was ahead and to the right, with an open yard further to the right. A light showed in what they knew was the office window, along with the blue glow of a computer monitor or television. Another light showed behind that, but from the same window, adding a slightly warmer glow. There was no movement in the window with the light: and the light had the stillness of an empty room.

To the far left of the house, they could just see the hulk of the barn; between the barn and the house, two buildingsa garage, Anna thought, and what must once have been a machine shed.

A hundred yards behind the house were two long gray-white structures, almost too far out to recognize; but Anna thought that they must once have been chicken coops. Directly behind the house, a hundred feet back, the beginning of the corral complex.

As Anna squatted by the road, picking out the main features of the ranch, she could smell the broken brush beside the road, and the dirt beneath their feet: like Wisconsin on a dry summer's night, but with the special peppery pungency of the desert.

'Don't see your car,' Harper said. 'Maybe he ditched it in town. Wherever he unloaded the kayak.'

'But then he'd have to transfer Pam.'

'Yeah. unless he killed her at your place, and left her in the car.'

Harper said it thoughtlessly, but the image of Pam curled in the trunk of the Toyota struck Anna with a vivid force, and she groaned, a soft exhalation.

'What?'

'God, if she's dead.'

'Let's cross behind the barn, check the out-buildings,' Harper whispered. 'That'll give us cover coming up to the house.'

'All right.'

They slid to the left, staying close to the underbrush as they moved into the opening around the house. Once away from the driveway, the land opened up into sparse pasture, dotted with clumps of brush. Anna used little squirts of light to guide them past the house to the barn, around the barn to the back, and then, crouching, with Harper's rifle hovering over her head, into the barn itself.

The barn was empty, but redolent with the odor of horse manure and hay. They checked the ground floor, found a range of horse-keeping equipment and stacks of feed supplement on a line of pallets.

'All right,' Harper said. 'Machine shed.'

They went out the back of the barn again, around the side, crept across a short open space to the machine shed, knelt by a window, listening. After a minute, Anna put her head up, peeked through the window. Could see nothing at all. Squeezed the flash, caught a quick glimpse of red.

'I think it's there, the car,' she breathed in Harper's ear. 'Something red in there.'

'Jesus.'

They slid to the front corner of the shed. Like the garage, the shed was old, probably pre-World War II, and the sliding doors hung from rusty overhead tracks. Harper reached around the corner and gave one of the doors a shove, and it moved a few inches. He pushed again, and got another foot.

'We can get in. Move slow, stay low,' he said. He went around the corner, and Anna followed, watching the window in the house. When she was inside the garage, Harper slowly pushed the garage door back in place.

Anna turned, wrapped her fist around the head of the flashlight, and turned it on: the beam caught the fender of her Toyota, played down the side. 'That's it,' she said. 'That's mine.' She played the beam across the back, onto the plates: 'Yeah, that's mine,' she said.

'Kill the light.'

Anna killed the light and they both moved toward the car. Harper touched a window, opened the passenger door, slowly, carefully, felt in front and in the back. Nothing.

'Can you pop the trunk?'

'Yeah. We'll have to go around.'

Anna scuttled around the car, felt up the door to the window. The window was down three or four inches, enough to get her arm through the gap. She stretched into the car, trying to reach the dome light.

'What're you doing?' Harper whispered.

'If you open this door an inch, the light comes on,' Anna said. 'I'm trying to shut it off.'

She fumbled with the switch, said, 'I think that's it,' and tried the door. No light. The trunk-opener lever was just in front of the seat, and she pulled it, heard the trunk pop, and crawled behind the car. Harper was pushing the trunk lid up, and Anna shone the flash into it.