The Night Crew

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.

The trunk was empty, but Harper ran his fingers the width of it once, twice, then stopped, pressed, and lifted his fingers toward Anna. They were black in the light. He pulled them back, sniffed, and he said, 'Blood. Not much. So she probably was alive when he took her out of here.'

'How do you know?'

'Why take her out if she's dead?'

Anna nodded, and crawled toward a window facing the house. 'So he's here. Now what?'

'I was afraid. What's that?'

Anna looked to the right, saw the splash of light off the brush beside the house.

'Car coming up the hill,' she said. Anna heard the slide of the rifle as Harper jacked a shell into the chamber. She fumbled the pistol from her pocket as the lights grew brighter on the trees.

Ten seconds later, a pickup pulled into the yard, and a woman hopped out and stormed toward the porch. They could see her face when she first opened the truck door, and her figure as she hurried under the yard light to the porch.

'That's Daly,' Harper said.

'Jeez, do you think she knows?' Anna asked.

'She looks mad about something.' The woman fumbled at the door, unlocking it, then pushed inside and flicked on a light. She slammed the door behind her, but before she did, they heard her shout, 'Steve?'

'Wonder what happened?' Harper asked.

'I don't know, but if he's still in the house, and we want to move up, this is the time. If he's in there, it sounds like he'll have his hands full,' Anna said.

They crawled back out through the garage door, circled back around the barn, into the darkness of the brush, and came up behind the house, near the corrals. An animal made a spitting sound as they passed: 'What the hell was that?' Harper whispered.

'I don't know; I hope it doesn't bite.'

They stopped at the side of the corral, and looked across the intervening fifty feet at the house.

'Gonna have to decide something,' Harper said.

'Whatever's in the corral. Probably the llama. I don't think they're dangerous,' Anna said. 'I'm gonna roll through there and work my way up to the gate. 'If I don't see anything, I'm gonna make a run across the yardyou get ready with the rifle.'

'Maybe I oughta make the ran.'

'No. You've got the rifle, I've just got this thing,' Anna said, holding up the pistol. 'At fifty feet I might not be able to hit the house.'

As she said it, she slipped under the lowest rail of the corral. Whatever was in the corral stayed at the back. She could here it stomping nervously, maybe the Llama, maybe a pony, as she moved to the gate.

Taking a breath, she glanced back at the spot where she'd left Jake, and stuck one leg through the gate.

BAAAAAZZZZZZZZ.

The buzzer sounded like the end of the world, as loud as a jet plane, fifteen feet overhead.

In a half-second, she knew exactly what had happened: the gate was alarmed, just like the gate at the bottom of the hill. A light beam or movement sensor was probably buried in the gatepost, out beyond the gate itself, so an animal inside the corral couldn't set it offbut she'd put her leg right through it.

She'd been so occupied with the thought of closing on the house that she hadn't thought to look. And she didn't stop to think when the buzzer went. Instead, she scrambled sideways, across the corral, to the far corner, holding tight to the pistol.

The buzzing went on for three or four seconds, and then, just as abruptly, stopped. For another twenty seconds, nothing moved inside the house, and Anna, watching the back door, began to relax.

'Anna?' Jake's stage whisper cut through the dead silence. She turned her head to answer when the back door banged open, and what looked like a drank staggered onto the back porch, twisting, turning in the dim light.

'Anna?' The voice. She knew it this time. 'Anna, I know you're out there.'

Anna, straining toward the turning figure, finally made it out; not one person, but two. A man with his arm around a woman's neck, the woman struggling against him; and when her struggles became too violent, he would lever her off the ground until she stopped.

'Anna.' Judge was screaming her name. Anna said nothing. Maybe he'd decide that an animal had set off the alarm. Maybe he'd come out where they could get at him: but at the moment, the woman's body blocked any possibility of a shot.

'Are you out there? I know you're out there.' The straggle on the porch started again, and Anna lifted the pistol and aimed it, took it down again: no way.

'Anna.' He was bawling into the night. Then: 'You think I'm fucking around? Think again, huh? Think again, Anna.'

He moved back toward the door, reached inside, and clicked on a yellow porch light.

'I know you're out there. You like to make movies? Make a movie of this.'

He suddenly kicked the straggling woman's legs from beneath her and she went down. At the same moment, he let go of his grip on her neck. She landed on one thigh and her hand, twisted, head down: the man pointed his hand at her head and there was a sudden crack, and an arrow of flame, and the woman flattened.

Shot in the head.

Anna, not thinking, only reacting, thrust her pistol at the door and fired, and a half-second later Jake opened up: but the man was already back through the door. Anna, though, was rolling under the bottom bar of the corral, on her feet, running at the porch, firing a second time at the dark rectangle of the open door. In the back of her head she could hear Jake screaming, 'Anna! Anna! No, Anna!'

But at the same instant, she was through the door. To her left, the back of the man, turning to look at her just as he went through an internal doorway.

Steve Judge, but strangely different than the animal rights raider she remembered: he seemed older, thinner, harsher, wilder, with a long black pistol in one hand. But he was reeling away from the gunfire, and in the half-second he was visible to Anna, she managed to get the gun down and fire another shot, wildly, but in his direction. He screamed, then a second later, fired back, the bullet burying itself in the wall to Anna's left.

Belatedly, she went down, now holding the pistol out in front of her. And from behind, Harper was suddenly there with the rifle. He knelt beside her, and she saw that he was feeding fresh shells into the magazine.

'He's through there,' Anna said, in a harsh whisper. 'He's running. Let's take him.'

'For Christ's sake, rush him in a dark house? He'd take both of us.'

'We gotta.'

'No. What we gotta do, is look at the woman on the porch.'

Anna turned her head: 'JeezI thought she was dead. He shot her in the head.'

'I didn't have time to look, but lots of times, people don't die.'

'Keep the gun on the door,' Anna said. 'I'll go look.'

'Is he still inside?'

'I didn't hear the front door go. I think so.'

Harper braced the rifle against the wall as Anna slithered toward the door. Just before she got to the doorstep, Judge screamed from the front: 'Anna. I'm gonna cut your friend's belly open. You wanna hear it?'

Anna stopped, glanced at Harper.

Harper shrugged, got halfway to his feet and whispered, 'Yell something at him. A threat, anything.'

Anna screamed, 'You motherfucker, if you hurt Pam, I'll cut your balls off. I promise, I'll cut your balls.'

As she screamed, Harper pushed to his feet, did a quick tiptoe across the door, hesitated just an instant at the far door where Anna had last seen Judge. He looked back, then burst through the door, out of sight: Anna was four steps behind him, but the dark room ahead was suddenly lit by a half dozen muzzle blasts, the crashing of furniture, Harper screaming, another shot, and the banging of the front door.

Then Anna was through into the dark chaos of the office, pushing the gun in front of her, moving. and stumbling over a body.

'Christ.' Harper.

'You hurt?'

'Yeah, I'm shot in the hip,' he groaned. 'Not bad, but it hurts like a sonofabitch.'

'Where is he? Outside?'

'Yeah, I heard the door. He's gone.'

'How about Pam?'

'I don't know. I don't know if he had her.'

'I believed him.'

'Well, if he had her, he didn't take her with him, because he went out of here in a hurry. Christ, we were six feet apart, I just couldn't get the gun around.'

There was light coming into the room from the back, from the room they'd just rushed through. Anna said, 'Move around into the light, stay behind the desk, I gotta look and see how bad it is.'

And at that moment, someone groaned from the other side of the room. The groan was hurt enough, harsh enough, that the hair stood up on Anna's.

Harper whispered, 'Pam.'

Anna groped in her pocket, and found the flashlight had stayed with her through the wild scramble across the yard and into the house. She wrapped her fist around it, and shot the needle of light across the room. She passed over Glass's body the first time, then wondered about the shadow in the corner, and came back to it.

Yes. A body, not a shadow. Anna left Harper, creeping across the office carpet, got to Glass, rolled her. Couldn't see; put her head close to the other woman's ear and said, 'Pamthis is Anna. How bad are you?'

Glass muttered something unintelligible. Anna looked around, trying to think what to do. Had to get her to some light. Finally, afraid that she might be hurting her worse, she tugged and pulled Glass across the carpet. Glass remained inert, sometimes mumbling to herself.

'How bad?' Harper whispered.

'I don't know. We need light.'

'Pull that desk around.'

Anna managed to move one of the desks enough to provide cover from the only window that Judge could see through: and turned on a light.

Pam Glass had been terribly beaten: her nose was broken, her teeth were broken, one cheekbone was wrong, her lips were twice as big as they should be, and the color of fresh liver.

'Aw, Jesus,' Anna said. But she could do nothing about it. 'Let me look at your hip,' she said to Harper. Harper rolled, showed her a bullet hole passing through his jeans in his thigh just below his butt. There was no exit wound.

'Not much blood,' she whispered.

'Yeah, I don't think it's too bad, but Jesus, my leg just doesn't want to work,' he said.

'I'm gonna go look at Daly. Can you cover me?' And for just a tiny sliver of a second she thought how odd it was to be using the language of television cop shows: cover me. What did she know about cover? 'I'll go out on the porch.'

'Yeah. Turn off the light, first. And we gotta try the phones.'

'Daly first.'

Anna hit the light, waited for a second, then went through the door on her stomach while Harper sat in the door, scanning the dark, ready to fire at any sign of a muzzle blast.

But the woman was dead: Anna knew it the moment that she touched her. She was already going cold, and had the peculiar stillness of those who'd gone on. But she grabbed the woman's shirt, and pulled her back through the door.

'Alive?' Harper whispered, as they pulled back.

'No. I don't think so.'

Anna slumped against a wall, and Harper touched the woman. 'No, she's gone.'

'Let's get back to Pam.'

'Let's get the phone.'

Glass's breath was short, harsh, irregular. As Anna knelt over her, she blew a blood bubble, which burst on her blood-crusted lips. Anna said, 'She's in trouble, Jake. We've got to get her to a hospital.'

Harper was already crawling across the office. He groped on top of the desk, found a phone, pulled it down, listened, said 'Shit.'

'What?'

'Dead. He must've pulled wires somewhere. Probably outside the house.'

'We've got to get her out of here,' Anna said urgently. 'We can't wait. JakeI think she's dying.'