Badwater

16

The hood was up on the Blazer and the doors were open. It looked like the car had come into the canyon for a tuneup. But the mechanic was a vandal.

Our things littered the ground. Field kit, packs, cell phones, maps, my purse. Stomped, smashed, dumped, ripped. Our gallon-jugs of water were knifed open. The soil was still wet.

Walter bent over the exposed engine. “Wires are cut.” Voice drier than sandpaper.

There came a sound, somewhere downcanyon, of an engine.

I hissed “she carries a shotgun” and we tumbled into the Blazer. I turned the ignition key. Nothing. We flattened ourselves onto the hot vinyl seats.

“She?” Walter whispered.

At last, it became too hot to breathe.

Seventeen minutes gone, by my watch. “Shall we?” I said.

Walter nodded.

We sat up. Nothing moved outside. We opened the doors, and that movement did not draw gunfire. We got out, wobbly. We stumbled to the wedge of shade cast by the canyon wall and collapsed on the baking ground.

I offered water.

Walter shook his head. The quart bottle was half-empty.

I said, “Does us no good in the bottle.” Don’t argue, old man. It’s water in the body that’ll keep us alive.

In the end, we drank.

Ten more minutes gone. I thought about moving.

Walter whispered, “Why do you think it was her?”

“Purse.” My voice, like his, was sandpaper.

We studied the purse, lying beside the front tire. Walter gave it to me last Christmas — a creamy leather backpack purse, feminine and practical. Now it was gutted from flap to bottom, contents dumped.

Walter said, “Could have been Jardine.”

“Look at my compact.”

Shattered, the pressed powder cratered. My face prickled, where she’d run her wet finger. Ever wear makeup? It hadn’t got that personal, with Jardine. Had it?

Walter said, “The compact could simply have broken.”

“Shit,” I said. “Shit.”

The back seat was empty. I went cold in the overheated air. The perp had taken the ice chest, which meant the perp knew what our business was. And the only people who knew what was in the ice chest were the people at the talc mine. Nearly everyone at the mine knew because we’d spouted off about fender soils and maps and following the trail of Jardine’s offroader.

“He has what he wants,” Walter said. “He’ll leave us alone now.”

“He?”

“Or she. Take your pick.”

“She,” I said. For now.

I made an inventory. We had less than a third of a quart of water. We had a granola bar that had dropped under the seat, the first-aid kit, stuff from the violated field kit — scalpels and tweezers seeming the most useful. I was thankful that we’d left the valuable equipment, the spectrometers and the scopes, in Scotty’s van.

Walter picked through the kit. “My knife’s gone.” He stared at the sliced water jugs, and then the exposed engine where the wires were cut. With his knife.

We returned to the shade and slumped against the wall.

Minutes passed, then Walter spoke. “We’re vulnerable here.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Take another side canyon,” he said. “Find a place to hide.”

“How long?”

“Until we can walk out under cover of darkness.” He wetted his cracked lips. “Until it’s not so damnably hot.”

“What about Soliano?”

He blinked.

“Walter? Shouldn’t we look for Soliano?”

He said, “I hadn’t thought that far.”

I sagged. How could he not think that far? Soliano had called while we were on the West Side Road. Walter had put his cell phone on speaker. We’d told Soliano our plans, that when we’d finished here we planned to catch the Greenwater Valley Road and check a couple of candidates over there, and then rendezvous when it got dark at Furnace Creek. Unless we phoned to say otherwise. How could Walter not think of Soliano?

He cleared his throat. “Of course. We must get down to the road. We must be visible.”

I relaxed an inch.

We sat five minutes more, gathering ourselves.

I wondered when Soliano would take note that he hadn’t heard from us, whether he’d check his watch and calculate that we must, by now, be over in Greenwater Valley, in which case the most direct route from the talc mines was not via the West Side Road. If he didn’t find us elsewhere, though, sooner or later he’d surely come this way. Two people on the West Side Road would stick out like sore thumbs.

That is, until it got dark.

I roused myself and got the flashlight from the tire-changing cubby.

Walter rose, gathering our meager belongings. He stuffed them into my emptied pack.

I took my field knife and Hap’s bandana from my pocket. I sawed the cloth in half, then dipped the halves in the radiator water. The red cloth darkened to hematite. I gave Walter one half and he understood. We squeezed the water over our heads and bodies, repeating the process until the radiator was dry, then draped the wet bandanas around our necks.

“You are a genius,” he said.

“Girl Scouts.”

We had to laugh.

He recovered his hat and shades.

I put on mine. I cleared my throat. “Well, pardner?”

“Let’s vamoose.”

I scooped a handful of dolomite-weathered soil and put it in my pocket. We’d come up here for samples and I was not leaving without a sample.