At The Edge

29

As the likelihood of rescue dimmed, it became easier to give in to the seduction of the cold. But Maria was stubborn. She had forests to save. She had Dan to contend with. Nate to apologize to. She looked down at herself. Clearly, she had stopped sinking. No quicksand, just deep mud. She decided to move.

Using her arms like stiff oars, she pulled herself ahead. She seemed stuck. She threw herself forward, then rocked back, loosening the mud. Throwing herself again as hard as she could, she began to come loose. At first, she could barely move but soon she discovered that she could crawl on her belly. Downstream twenty yards, the mud was knee-deep in thigh-deep water and she could walk. Within a hundred paces the ground became firmer. Then she rounded a bend and saw a man, standing. Although she could climb the canyon wall on either side, she would be exposed, and it would be very slow and noisy. Despair flooded her. She stopped, hiding in the rocks. Soon the gray light of evening would give way to bone-deep cold and the pitch dark of night in a wilderness canyon. Then she turned, and not fifty yards back and fifty feet up, she saw someone with a rifle.

Dan and Frank were getting frustrated. They could see little in the trees, and the pilot was running out of fuel. Only twenty minutes' worth remained. They were way beyond safe reserves. They would have to return to the airport, and then it would be dark.

"Let's run down the river drainage one more time before we land," Dan said.

"We gotta go," the pilot said.

"I still think she followed the creek," Dan replied. "Fly down it on the way back. Get down low and let me out."

"It's getting dark," Frank said.

"I know, but she's out there. I can feel it."

"Can't let you do it. After we try the creek again, we're outta here," Frank added.

The pilot banked the copter and aimed at the drainage. Looking back up the mountain, they could see foresters' trucks and sheriffs' vehicles pouring onto Jack Morgan's property. Dan prayed.

Frustrated that they were finding nothing, Corey went to the leader's position down in the creek. "Did you search the entire creek bottom?"

"Dutch looked down here," he replied.

"How exactly did he do that?"

"He went down next to the rock face and tried looking around the corner. There were no tracks. No sign of her."

Corey was not convinced. Making her way back up and over to the bluff, she looked for the best spot to approach the precipice. After traversing a steep rock shelf fifty yards long, she located a portion of the slope that appeared to have good handholds. She began the climb down, clinging to the rock surface as she approached the edge of the sheer drop. Lodging her fingers and toes in cracks as she went, she barely managed to avoid a precipitous slide. Reaching the drop-off, she could tell there was a considerable overhang. And no easy way to look down over the lip and maintain a good handhold. She dug her fingers into the only two available cracks and peered over the edge, half-expecting to slide out of control and over the cliff.

"Morons," she said as she saw the obvious trail in the mud along the rock wall.

Dan looked so hard his eyes hurt, but they saw nothing save Shane, who walked head down as if following a track.

"Put me down," Dan said, sounding more determined than he'd ever been.

"All right," Frank said, shaking his head.

Within seconds the copter was diving for the creek at a point where the brush patch and meadows began. Going down into the bowels of the ravine, they flew heart-stoppingly close to the steep hillsides, just 200 feet off the water. Slowing the copter to forty miles per hour, the pilot soon located a small clearing.

The landing point was a brushy spot just ahead of Shane, right by the creek. In seconds they had plummeted to six feet off the ground, and the pilot, in an obvious hurry, signaled a jump.

Dan hit the ground and they were gone. It was eerily quiet. Then he saw someone running toward him with a gun.

As Corey ran downstream, the wilderness calm was broken by a cop's ringing shout.

"Everybody freeze, put your hands up." The copter had come down ahead of her. Must have dropped a cop.

Knowing she might have just one last chance to kill Maria Fischer before they closed in, she sprinted the one hundred yards to the point where the rock wall became a steep incline and the muddy bench ended. She was still one hundred yards above the leader. At the creek's edge, she turned and looked back upstream. There were no tracks in the brown sand. She climbed back up on the rock bluff and moved upstream, perhaps another fifty yards. Not even thinking about protecting herself from a fall, she slid headfirst to the cliff's edge, barely managing to stop. The copter was now a quarter mile away and moving rapidly up the hill and away.

"Yes!" she shouted in a hoarse whisper after her first glance over the edge. There she was-seventy yards downstream, standing next to the rock wall. She swung the AR-15 around; the safety came off with a flick of her thumb. Maria was moving around a rocky outcropping. Shifting position, Corey steadied the rifle.

Dan had been traveling downstream fast and was below the man with the gun. Judging from Shane's far-off shout and the gunman's clothing, it couldn't be Shane. From his vantage point he was able to discern that the shooter was looking at the creek bottom somewhere below him. Refusing to think about the risks, he scrambled down the slope and peered over the edge, desperate at the thought of Maria pinned down in the rocks.

Seeing that the shooter was drawing down on her, Maria dived behind a rock no larger than a living-room chair. There was so little cover. She had to think. She couldn't even hear the chopper anymore. Risking a look, she saw the gunman moving toward her once again. She had to run before he got any closer. Sprinting down the rock wall of the creek as fast as the water and muck would allow, she found a small crevice and slid in. A shot smacked the rocks inches behind her, sending the grit flying. If she hadn't been moving, she'd be dead.

Dan flinched at the gunshot and kept running at the barely visible black-clad figure.

The radio rasped to life.

"Helo. 10–49 to my 10–20. 10–49 to my 10–20. I'm down the creek in the brush fields."

"This is Helo. We copy. We had to leave."

Having measured the distance to the muddy creek bottom at twenty feet, Dan figured he could jump and not kill himself. Before he hit the mud, he saw Maria, and when he splashed into the shallow water, he estimated the shooter at fifty yards. Too far away for him to hit even if he'd been armed. Maria, however, was close enough to reach in time. He hoped.

Shane's voice crackled over Dan's radio as he ran. "I hear shots from the gorge in the area straight ahead of me."

As he neared Maria, Dan took a quick glance back, saw the gunman on the cliff's edge, aiming at her. He dived in front of Maria, waiting for the shot.

Corey cursed. Only Maria's hip was visible under the cowboy-looking cop on top of her. She wanted a clean kill, not a martyr with a wounded leg and a dead cop. Then the cop shifted and she saw the middle of Maria's back. A heart shot.

"Oh yeah," Corey said breathily, bearing down on the trigger.

Her rifle bucked skyward. Her hands stung with the impact. But there had been no shot.

The little Japanese stood next to her, awaiting her reaction. She swung the barrel, but with blinding speed, his hand caught it. His other hand took her shoulder and severe pain shot down her left arm.

With her right she reached for her hand gun. A hard kick to the inside of her upper right arm brought a scream to her lips and immobilized the arm.

"Go," he said. "Or I will kill you."

Spooked out of her mind, she let him take the rifle as if she were a child. She scrambled up the cliff and never looked back.

The shooter, unaccountably, had disappeared. Shane was combing the area and finding nothing.

"You're an idiot," Maria said with a bone-tired smile.

"I know."

Crying, she kissed him full on the lips.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

Kenji Yamada was more than worried. Groiter wasn't answering his cell phone. Groiter had called him when they brought in Maria Fischer, just to reassure him. They should have finished with her by now. Something had to have gone wrong. But Groiter was experienced, and he had the Spaniard, who was equally deadly.

Kenji was certain that Groiter had proof concerning Catherine Swanson. He also had the photographer's remains. If something happened to Groiter, Kenji could be the victim of leaked evidence to the police. He had two men in San Francisco he could trust. There were two more at the forest compound that he would need to trust. He would dispatch all four men to learn what happened at Jack Morgan's.

At the emergency room there was no wait because the sheriff was personally involved. There was an awkward moment when Maria was ushered into the treatment room.

"Dan, you and Dad stay in the waiting room while Mom comes with me," Maria said. "I'm really all right and I'm sure I'll be right back out."

Dan wondered why he hadn't remained in the waiting room in the first place. He was with Maria, but he had no status. Any minute Ross could show up-he was supposedly just a friend now, but he didn't seem quite content with his new status.

''Dan, go in and sit with Maria for a while," Laura Fischer said. "She'd like that."

Amiel winked at him.

"Sure," Dan said. "I'd love to." They buzzed him into the treatment area.

"Maria Fischer, please," he said to the nurse. She pointed the way, and when he entered the room, he was greeted by a bruised face and a big smile. She was lying on a gurney in a curtained-off area with a hospital gown, a blanket, bandaged wrists, and an IV.

"Quite a shiner," he said.

"Yes. It hurts but nothing is broken, I'm sure. How's Nate?"

"Great. Worried about you. Wants to see you."

"I'm sure we can arrange that."

"I want to know who's behind all this, once and for all," he said.

''We will. There was a woman. The same woman, I think. She's nuts, and I think she's associated with the environmental movement."

"How could someone like that be connected with Amada?"

"That's what we've got to figure out. And we will. But I need a little time out from that subject."

"Oh?" He wondered what could possibly be more important or interesting.

"Before I left with Nate, I really and finally broke up with Ross. I thought you should know. I don't want you to feel like you need to say anything. It's a little embarrassing telling you this way."

"Maybe it was just comfortable, having that… I don't know what."

"I know exactly what you mean. And we still have that something in a way. But you're the industry and I'm the environment, so don't go getting all weird on me."

Once again they found themselves seated in the well-designed conference-room chairs as a guest of Sheriff Robert McNiel. This time they waited no time at all. He entered the room still talking to someone through the doorway. For some reason he had shaved his droopy mustache. Dan's was back, somewhere between stubble and full growth.

"Somebody does not get along with you," he said to Maria.

"The timber industry?"

"You think this was somebody from the industry?"

"Actually, I'm not sure, but maybe it was some really wacko fringe element of the environmental movement. I mean really wacko. Or maybe it was industry, I don't know."

"It wasn't any industry I know," Dan said.

"Well, we've got forensics people all over up there. They've got a lot of hair samples, fingerprints, all that stuff. But none of it has been run yet. Oddly, we did find a business card of one Hans Groiter. Have to be as dumb as a post to leave that around."

"Isn't he with Amada?"

"Yup. Sure is. And he doesn't seem to be around. Plumb disappeared."

"So are we making progress?" Maria asked.

"Maybe. But you know something as obvious as a business card looks like a plant. You've got to at least consider a frame-up."

"Uh-huh. But those are the same guys who shot at me in the mine."

"Oh, I know, I know. We're all over it. Now where will you be?" he asked, nodding at Maria.

"For the time being at the Palmer Inn with my parents. After that, back to Sacramento."

"Well, as long as you're here, I'm putting two plain-clothes deputies on your tail. And I might recommend that unless the police in Sacramento are going to do that, you might want to stay here until we get this figured out or at least until we get some time under our belt."

"I will take that under advisement."

"And no playing cop, OK?"

David Dun

At The Edge

"Absolutely," Dan said.

By midnight Corey was home and in her basement with Janet. The entire basement area was open except for a load-bearing wall down the middle with a passage at either end, and a single room. Everywhere it was gray concrete. They went to the room and removed a large padlock. It was a furnace room converted by the prior owner to a small workshop and had a number of heavy pipes in the overhead. Here the concrete walls were covered with tool racks and a built-in worktable and a freestanding bench.

Groiter was sitting on a bench, looking like a caged beast. Chain had been looped through his handcuffs and then looped around two of the heaviest pipes with a bicycle lock. His feet were spread-eagled, each fitted with a handcuff that was chained to the built-in worktable. As a final touch, Janet had stuffed his mouth full of handkerchiefs and fastened a gag.

Corey walked up to Groiter, took out his gag, and put a bottle of water beside him. Then she put her lips to his ear. "It would be pointless to beat the shit out of you, but I'm going to anyway."

Corey placed a rubber strap around the bare torso of Hans Groiter, taping other wires to his chest, and putting finger clips on his fingers. Janet's eyes followed Corey's every move.

"You will of course recognize the leads for a simple lie detector," she said to Groiter. "While I have a fairly cheap model, it seems to work quite well. I perfected the technique, as you know, on Kim Lee."

It was 7:30 a.m. and they were waiting for the coffee to brew in Corey's spacious kitchen.

''We're going to have a cup of coffee, then we'll be down to begin the morning's work."

Corey and Janet adjourned to the kitchen.

"Do you think you'll actually have to do anything?"

"Groiter's a professional. He knows what I can do. Some people need some pain before they talk while others are more pragmatic. But last night I got even with the bastard."

"Why did you bother?"

"It's personal."

Corey picked up her cup and returned to the basement. With Janet's assistance she took a carpet that rolled into a twelve-foot length and carried the giant sausage of fabric over in front of Groiter.

"You see that roll of carpet," she said. "Imagine being rolled in it. Tied tight and then lashed to a pole. We put you over an open-pit barbecue and heat the carpet to one hundred fifty degrees and constantly pour water over it, onto the coals. Slow-cook you in the steam. When we do this, your head is a good three feet down inside the end of the roll, but we pump air to you to make sure you stay alive. We do that until you answer all our questions."

She watched the needles, then tore off a strip of paper from the machine and wrote "Carpet Trick" on the bottom.

"OK, Hans, that was very good. Now for the next option. We take these fire ants…"

When she was through, she came and sat a foot away from Hans. "I'm pleased to say there's one thing that sends you off the chart, Hans. So tell me, when did you become terrified of tight places, like a rolled-up carpet?"

"Little kid."

"Tell me about it."

"We gonna make a deal?"

"You need that reassurance, don't you?"

Hans was silent.

"You tell me everything I want to know and I won't roll you up in the carpet and cook you."

"How do I know?"

"Because you didn't let that Spaniard tie me down and fuck me like he wanted to. Now, who called me on the phone?''

"I did."

"That's a good start. I know you'll keep in mind that I'm going to pentathol you when we're through. You know what will happen if you don't pass with flying colors?" She paused. "I don't hear you."

"I know what will happen."

"All right. So what's with the bats? And what are your boys doing around the mine?''

Kenji was in a panic. According to his men who had listened to the police bands and scouted Morgan's farm, Groiter had disappeared off the face of the earth. Cops were still crawling all over Morgan's, and Corey Schneider wasn't answering her phone. He would need to flee to Japan or get personally involved. There were too many loose ends and too much potential evidence against him to leave the country. Extradition back from Japan would be a distinct possibility. Instead, he would go to Palmer and work with the two San Francisco men. The men would meet him at the Palmer airport and together they would find Groiter and Corey Schneider.

Ninety minutes later, Kenji was in the company Hawker Sidley 700 business jet, staring down at the Golden Gate Bridge. As he sat with his feet up on the opposite seat and contemplated his predicament, his finger traced the swirls in the maple fold-out table, and he kept seeing Groiter's face in the pattern.

Maria had a date with Nate, who was traumatized by what he had seen when she was taken. She'd convinced Dan it would be better if she and Nate went alone. Although Dan was initially reluctant, he realized that with the police following her around Palmer, nothing was likely to happen.

When she pulled up to the curb for Nate, he bounded up to the car, looking eager. Inside, he sat with his hands squeezed tightly together in his lap and glanced sideways at her, not making eye contact.

"I'm so proud of you. You saved my life. How about a hug." He squeezed tight enough that her bruised ribs hurt. She said nothing, enjoying the intensity of the moment. "One of these days we'll have to go get some more fish. But maybe we'll wait until they catch the bad guys first."

Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw the two plain-clothes officers in their white Crown Victoria.

"Those are the cops, huh?"

"That's right. We're going to have a little company, but they won't bother us."

The light fog coursed over the kelp-strewn water's edge, pushing past the beach and inland some quarter of a mile. There, the sun shone to the earth unhindered, turning the coastal mountains an Oz-like golden green. Maria and Nate hiked over the rocky beach, their nostrils flared with the smells of salt and seaweed; their leg muscles burned as they walked barefoot on the cool, damp sand. Ahead of them the beach stretched in a crescent to a finger of land pushed prominently out to sea, its tip spewing out several rocky little islands. Behind them were the massive jetties: two gray-white arms reaching out into the ocean, forming a safe passage to Palmer Bay.

Maria and Nate had said little since leaving the car, communicating instead through gently squeezed fingers and lazily swinging arms.

"Hey," Nate said finally, breaking the silence. "What's that?"

Together they spied a form on the beach.

"I'm not sure," Maria responded. "But it looks like a sea lion."

"Wow. It's big. What's it doing? Is it hurt? Will it run away when we get close?"

Maria laughed. "I don't know. Let's find out."

Soon they were close enough to look the creature in the eye. Just then it rose up, gave a roaring bark, and fell lamely back to the sand. The tide was going down, and the sea lion lay on its side, its body moving in little tremors, struggling to rouse itself and head back out to sea. But it was so sick or so exhausted that it could not. The animal had no outward wounds, but Maria suspected it was struggling with age and the infirmities of an old body. She put a hand on Nate's shoulder.

"I'm afraid this poor old guy is getting ready to die."

"Like Mom," Nate said softly.

"Yes," Maria said, squeezing his shoulder.

"But she was just gone all of a sudden."

"I know."

"I don't want that to happen anymore," Nate said, his voice breaking.

Then she held him and he cried for what seemed like a half hour. On the way back to the car, Maria could see a change in his eyes. She wasn't sure what or how, but something had been resolved.