Tyrannosaur Canyon

She was a creature of habit. During the rainy season, when the rivers and swamps pushed out of their banks, she moved westward to the higher ground of the foothills. During the dry season, after mating, she sometimes traveled to a chain of sandy hills in the lee of an extinct volcano, to build a nest and lay eggs. When the dry season began, she moved back to her haunts in the great forests along the shores of the Niobrara seaway.

The climate was hot, wet, and humid. There were no polar ice caps, no glaciers-^ the earth was in the grips of one of its hottest climate cycles in its history. The ocean levels had never been higher. Large parts of the continents lay under inland seas. Great reptiles ruled the air, the land, and the water, and had done so for two hundred million years. Dinosaurs were the most successful class of animal life that had ever evolved on planet Earth. Mammals had coexisted with the dinosaurs for almost one hundred million years, but they had never amounted to much. The largest mammal to live during the Age of Dinosaurs was about the size of a bread box. Reptiles had a hammerlock on all the higher niches.

She occupied the highest niche of all. She ruled the top of the food chain. She was the greatest biological killing machine the earth had ever seen.

1

THE MORNING SUN burned over the high mesas, cauterizing the land. Jimmie Wilier halted in the shade of a juniper, easing himself down on a rock. Hernandez took a seat beside him, his plump face beaded with sweat. Wilier slipped a thermos of coffee out of his rucksack, poured a cup for Hernandez and one for himself, shook out a Marlboro. Wheatley had gone on ahead with the dogs, and he watched them moving slowly across the barren mesa. "What a scorcher." "Yeah," said Hernandez.

Wilier took a deep drag, looked out over the endless landscape of red and orange canyons, domed rocks, spires, ridges, buttes, and mesas-three hundred thousand acres, frigging hopeless when you stopped to think about it. He squinted into the brilliant light. The body could be buried at the bottom in any one of a hundred canyons or in God knows how many caves and alcoves, walled up in some rock shelter, deep-sixed down some crevasse.

"Too bad Wheatley didn't get on the trail when it was fresh," said Hernandez. "You can say that again."

A small plane droned in the sky overhead-DEA, looking for marijuana. Wheatley appeared beyond the rise in front of them, struggling up a long incline of slickrock shimmering in the heat, four heavy canteens slung over his shoulders. His two unleashed bloodhounds tumbled along ahead of him, tongues lolling, noses to the ground.

Bet Wheatley's sorry now," said Wilier. "He has to carry water for himself and his dogs."

Hernandez chuckled. "So what do you think? Got any theories?"

"At first I figured it was drugs. But now I think it's something bigger. There's something going on out here, and both Broadbent and the monk are in on it."

Wilier inhaled again, snapped the butt, and watched it bounce along the naked rock.

"Like what?"

"I dunno. They're looking for something. Think about it. Broadbent claims he spends a lot of time riding around here, for 'pleasure.' Well look out there at that son of a bitch. Would you ride around here for pleasure?"

"No way."

"Then he just happens to come across this prospector, right after he's shot. It's sunset, eight miles from the road, middle of nowhere . . . Coincidence? Give me a break."

"You think he shot him himself?"

"No. But he's involved. He's holding out on us. Anyway, two days after the shooting, he goes up to visit this monk, Wyman Ford. I've checked up on this guy and it seems he too goes hiking all over the desert, stays out for days at a time."

"Yeah, and what are they looking for?"

"Exactly. And here's something you don't know, Hernandez. I asked Sylvia to see if there was anything in the system about that monk. Guess what? He was CIA."

"You're shitting me."

"I don't know the whole story, but it seems he quit suddenly, showed up at the monastery, they took him in. Three and a half years ago."

"What'd he do for the CIA?"

"Can't find out, you know how it is with the CIA. His wife was in it too and she was killed in the line of duty. He's a hero." Wilier took one more drag, tasted the bitter filter, threw the butt down. It gave him a curious feeling of satisfaction to litter this pristine landscape, this place that had been shouting, "You 're nobody, you 're nothing, "into his ear all day long. Suddenly he sat up. He had spied a black dot moving on a low ridge in the middle distance, framed against some high bluffs. He brought his binoculars to his eyes, stared.

"Well, well. Speak of the devil."

"Broadbent?"

"No. That so-called monk. And he's got a pair of binoculars dangling from his neck. It's just what I said: he's looking for something. Hell yeah-and I'd give my left testicle to know what it is."

2

WEED MADDOX CAME out onto the porch of his rented cabin, hitched a thumb

in a belt loop, and inhaled the scent of pine needles warmed by the morning sun. He raised the mug of coffee to his lips and took a noisy sip. He'd slept late; it was almost ten o'clock. Beyond the tops of the ponderosa pines he could see the distant peaks of the CanjilonMountains gilded with silver light. He strolled across the porch, his cowboy boots thunking hollowly on the wood, and stopped beneath a fancy sign that read SALOON. He gave it a little push with his finger, sending it squeaking back and forth on rusty hinges.

He looked down main street. There wasn't much left of the old CCC Camp; most of the buildings had collapsed into pancaked slabs of rotting wood, overgrown with bushes and small trees. He drained his coffee, set the mug on the rail, strolled down the wooden steps and onto the old main street of town. Maddox had to admit, he was really a country boy at heart. He liked being alone, away from roads, traffic, buildings, and crowds. When it was over, he might even buy a place like this. From here, he could continue to run Hard Time, living a life of peace and quiet for a change, with a couple of ladies for company and nothing else.

He began walking down the dusty old main street, hands shoved in his pockets, whistling tunelessly. At the far end of town the road petered out into a weedy trail going up the ravine. He continued on, swishing his boots through the tall grass. He picked up a stick, beheading tall weeds as he went.

Two minutes brought him to a sign planted in the trail that read:

DANGER: UNMARKED MINE SHAFTS

NO TRESPASSING

OWNER NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS

It was quiet in the forest, the wind sighing ever so lightly through the trees. Maddox slipped past the sign. The trail mounted slightly, following the dry bed of a wash. Ten minutes of walking brought him to an old clearing. An open hillside rose on the right, with a trail angling up. He mounted the trail, which ran parallel but below the summit for a quarter of a mile before coming to a decrepit shaft house enclosing the entrance to an old mining tunnel. The shaft-house door sported a fresh padlock and chain, along with another no trespassing sign, both of which Maddox had affixed the day before.

He slipped a key out of his pocket, unlocked the padlock, and stepped into the cool, fragrant interior. A pair of old railroad tracks led into a dark hole in the rock, covered by a heavy iron grate, also padlocked. He unlocked the grate and swung it open on freshly oiled hinges, inhaling the scent of damp stone and mold, then flashed his light around. As he proceeded he was careful to step over rows of old railroad ties and puddles of water. The tunnel had been cut into the living rock, and here and there where the rock was rotten and fractured the ceiling had been shored and cribbed with massive beams.

After a hundred feet the tunnel veered to the left. Maddox turned the corner and his light illuminated a fork in the tunnel. He took the left branch. It soon came to a dead end, across which Maddox had built a wall of timbers bolted into the mine cribbing to create a small prison cell. He walked up to the timber wall and gave it a proud smack. Solid as a rock. He had begun at noon the day before and had worked straight to midnight, twelve hours of nonstop, backbreaking labor.

He slipped through the unfinished opening into a small room built into the dead end of the tunnel. He plucked a kerosene lantern off a hook, raised the glass chimney, lit it, and hung it on a nail. The friendly, yellow glow illuminated the room, perhaps eight by ten feet. It wasn't such a bad place, thought Maddox. He'd laid a mattress in one corner, covered with a fresh sheet, ready to go. Next to it stood an old wooden cable spool serving as a table, a couple of old chairs dug out of a ruined house, a horse bucket for drinking water, another bucket for a toilet. Opposite him, affixed into the stone of the far wall, he had sunk four half-inch-steel eye bolts, each with a case-hardened chain and manacles-two for the hands, two for the feet.

Maddox paused for a moment to admire his handiwork, and he marveled once again at his luck in finding a setup like this. Not only was the tunnel perfect for his purposes, but he had managed to find most of his timber on-site, old beams and boards stacked up in the back of the mine where they had survived the ravages of time.

He broke off this pleasant reverie and glanced at his rough mechanical drawing, which lay on the barrel, curled up by moisture. He flattened it, weighing it down with bolts, and looked it over. A few more beams and he'd be done. Instead of a door, which would be vulnerable, he would bolt three beams over the opening-a simpler, stronger, and more secure solution. He would only need to go in and out at most a few times.

The cave was humid and warm. Maddox stripped off his shirt and tossed it down on the mattress. He gave his well-muscled torso a flexing, ran through a series of stretching exercises, then picked up the heavy-duty Makita cordless and slapped in a fresh battery. He went to the old pile of beams, probed a few with a screwdriver until he had found a good one, measured it off, marked a spot with a pencil, and began drilling. The whine of the Makita echoed in the cave and the smell of old, damp wood reached his nostrils as brown ribbons of oak curled out of the drill hole. Once through, he grasped the beam and hefted it upright, muscling it into position. After tacking it into place with a nail, he drilled a matching hole in the fixed beam behind it, slid through it an eighteen-inch bolt, twirled on a hex nut, and cranked it down so hard with a socket wrench that it bit a good quarter inch into the wood.

Nobody, no matter how desperate, was going to get that nut off. In an hour Maddox had finished all, leaving only the door opening. The three beams that would bar the opening lay stacked next to it, predrilled and ready to go.

Maddox strolled the length of the finished wall, caressing the beams. Then with a yell he seized a beam between two massive hands, jerked it back and forth as hard as he could, this way and that, stepped back and side-kicked the beams, shouted, screamed, swore, slammed his shoulders into the wall again and again. He spun, picked up the wooden table, and hurled it against the wall of beams, all the while shrieking, "Sons of bitches! Bastards! I'll kill you all, I'll pull your guts out.

All at once he stopped, breathing heavily. From his knapsack he fished out a hand towel, dried the sweat off his chest and shoulders, patted his face, smoothed back his hair, then combed it back with his fingers. He picked up his shirt, slipped it on, flexed his back muscles.

Maddox allowed himself a grin. Nobody was going to bust out of his jail. Nobody.

3

WYMAN FORD SHOOK the dust out of the hem of his robes and sat down on the fallen, corkscrewed trunk of an ancient juniper. He had hiked almost twenty miles from the monastery and had reached the lofty heights of Navajo Rim, a great long mesa running for many miles along the southern boundary of the Echo Badlands. Far behind him lay the vermilion canyons of Ghost Ranch; and the view to the northwest was framed by the snowcapped peaks of the CanjilonMountains.

Ford removed four 1:24,000 U.S.G.S. topographical maps from his backpack, unfolded them, and laid them side by side on the ground, weighing down the corners with stones. He took a moment to orient himself, visually matching various landmarks to their corresponding outlines on the maps. With his binoculars he began searching the Echo Badlands, looking for a rock formation resembling the one on the computer plot. Whenever he saw something promising, he marked its location on the map in red pencil. After fifteen minutes he lowered the binoculars, encouraged by what he saw. He hadn't found a likely match, but the more he looked into the endless canyons crisscrossing the Echo Badlands, the more he was convinced that the formation containing the T. Rex would be found there. The domelike shape of the rock in the plot seemed to be typical of the badland formations he could see from his vantage point. The problem was that much of his view was blocked by intervening mesas or canyon rims. Adding to his difficulties, the computer plot only showed a two-dimensional slice through the rock. There was no telling what the formation might look like from a different angle.

He raised the binoculars again to his eyes and continued searching, until he had covered all that he could see from that vantage point. It was time to move on to a point he had marked on the map as Vantage Point 2, a small butte at the far

end of Navajo Rim that stuck up like an amputated thumb. It would be a long hike, but well worth the trouble. From there, he'd be able to see almost everything in the badlands.

He picked up his canteen, shook it, estimating that it was still more than half full- He had another, completely full, tucked away in his pack. As long as he was careful, he would have no problems with water.

He took a small sip and set off, following the edge of Navajo Rim.

As he hiked, he fell into a pleasant reverie brought on by the physical exertion. He'd told the abbot that he needed some spiritual time by himself in the desert, and he'd promised to be back by Terce the following day. That was now out of the question, and if he went into the badlands it might be two more days before he got back. The abbot wouldn't mind-he was used to Ford going off into the desert on spiritual retreats. Only this time Ford had the vague feeling that he was doing something wrong. He had misled the abbot as to the purpose of this trip; just because he prayed, fasted, and denied himself bodily comforts while in the desert did not mean he was on a spiritual quest. He realized he had allowed himself to become swept up in the intrigue of it, the mystery, the thrill of finding the dinosaur. The monastery had taught him the gift of self-reflection, something he'd never been too keen on before, and now he used that to reflect on his motives. Why was he doing this? It wasn't to recover the dinosaur for the American people, as much as he'd like to think he was acting from altruistic motives. It wasn't for money, and certainly not for fame.

He was doing this because of something deeper, a flaw in his character, a craving for excitement and adventure. Three years ago he had made a decision, impulsive at the time but by now well considered and confirmed by prayer, to retreat from the world and devote his life to serving God. Was this little expedition serving God?

Somehow, he didn't think so.

Despite these thoughts, as if in thrall to a power not his own, Brother Wyman Ford continued to hike along the windswept cliffs of Navajo Rim, his eye fixed on the distant butte.

4

IAIN CORVU5, STANDING at the window, heard the phone-set chime on his desk

and the voice of his secretary announce, "Mr. Warmus from the Bureau of Land Management is on line one."

Corvus slipped quickly around behind his desk, picked up the phone, and assumed his friendliest voice.

"Mr. Warmus, how are you? I trust you received my permit application."

"Sure did, Professor. Got it right here in front of me." The western cracker accent grated across Corvus's ear. Professor. Where did they find these people?

"Any problems?"

"As a matter of fact there are. I'm sure it was just an oversight, but I don't see any locality data here."

"That wasn't an oversight, Mr. Warmus. I didn't include that information. This is an exceptionally valuable specimen, highly vulnerable to looting."

"I 'predate that, professor," came the long-distance drawl, "but the high mesas are a big place. We can't issue a museum paleontological collection permit without locality info."

"This specimen is worth millions on the black market. Giving out that information, even to the BLM, is a risk I'm reluctant to take."

"I understand that, sir, but here at the BLM we keep all our permit data under lock and key. It's very simple: no locality, no permit."

Corvus took a deep breath. "We could certainly give you a generalized location-"

"No, sir," the BLM man interrupted. "We specifically require township, range, section, and GPS coordinates. Otherwise we can't process it."

Corvus took a deep breath, tried to moderate his voice. "I'm concerned be-

cause, as you may recall, last year up in McCone County, Montana, a first-rate diplodocus was nicked right after the permit was filed."

"Nicked?"

"Stolen."

The nasal voice went on tediously, "I'm not in the Montana district of the BLM, so I wouldn't know about a nicked diplodocus. Here in New Mexico we require locality coordinates to issue a collecting permit. If we don't know where the specimen is, how are we supposed to give you permission to collect it? Or to prevent someone else from collecting it? Should we put a moratorium on all nonprofit fossil collecting in the high mesas until you get your specimen? I don't

think so."

"I understand. I'll get you the locality data as soon as possible."

"See that you do. And another thing."

Corvus waited.

"There aren't any photos or a survey attached to the application. It's supposed to be in Appendix A. It's spelled out right there in the rules and regulations: 'Permittee must attach a scientific survey of the site, showing the fossil in situ, along with any remote-sensing surveys, if existing, as well as photographs of said specimen.' We've got to have some kind of proof that there's a fossil out there."

"The discovery is recent and the site is remote. We haven't been able to return for a survey. The point is, I wanted to be sure of establishing precedence, on the off-chance another application comes in for the same fossil."

A bureaucratic grunt. "Precedence goes to the first 501(c)(3) museum or university in official standing to file a legal permit. I have to tell you, Professor, that there isn't enough in this here permit of yours to qualify for precedence."

Corvus gritted his teeth. This here permit. "Surely there must be a way to establish precedence without giving the exact coordinates."

There was a long, superior sniff at the other end. Corvus felt the blood pounding in his temples. "As I said, when you get your paperwork in order, we'll issue the permit. Not before. If someone else submits a permit for the same fossil-well, that's not our problem. First come first served."

"Bloody hell, man, how many complete T. Rex's could there be out there?" Corvus exploded.

"Hold your horses, Professor."

Corvus made a huge effort to control himself. This was the last man in the world he could afford to alienate. He was the bureaucrat who had the power to grant him permission to collect the fossil on federal land. The man could just as easily give it to that bloody bawbag Murchison at the Smithsonian.

"My apologies for speaking precipitously, Mr. Warmus. I'll get you the required information just as soon as I can."

"Next time," the man intoned, "when you're applying for a fossil collecting permit on federal land, take the time to get the application right. Makes our job easier. Just because you're a big New York City museum doesn't mean you don't have to play by the rules."

"Again, my sincerest apologies."

"Have a nice day."

Corvus placed the phone back in its cradle with elaborate care. He took a long breath, smoothed back his hair with a trembling hand. The arrogant little prick. He glanced up: it was just five o'clock, which made it three o'clock in New Mexico. Maddox hadn't called in forty-eight hours, damn him. The last time they talked he seemed to have everything under control, but a lot could happen in two days.

He paced his office, turned at the window, and paused to look out. The evening rowboats were just venturing out into the pond, and he found himself looking for the father and son. But of course they weren't back, why would they?-once was enough.

5

SIX O'CLOCK, THE sun had fallen below the canyon rim and the heat of the day was going down, but it was still stuffy and dead between the sandstone walls. Wilier, trudging up yet another endless canyon, suddenly heard an eruption of baying from the dogs from just around the bend, followed by Wheatley's high-pitched shouting. He glanced at Hernandez, met his partner's eye.

"Looks like they found something."

"Yeah."

"Lieutenant!" he heard Wheatley's panicked voice. "Lieutenant!"

The hysterical baying of the dogs and Wheatley's yelling echoed down to him distorted by the narrow canyon walls, as if they were trapped in a giant trombone. Even though he was fed up with searching, Wilier had dreaded this moment.

"About time," said Hernandez, his short legs churning him forward.

"I hope to hell Wheatley's got those dogs under control."

"Remember last year when they ate that geezer's left-"

"Right, right," said Wilier hastily. When he rounded the last bend, he saw that Wheatley did not have the dogs under control. He'd lost the leash of one and was unsuccessfully trying to haul back the other, both dogs frantically trying to dig into a patch of sand at the base of a tight curve in the canyon wall. Hernandez and Wilier rushed forward and snatched up the leashes, hauling the dogs back and tying them up to a boulder.

Huffing and red-faced, Wilier examined the scene. The bed of sand had been disturbed by the dogs, but it was no great loss, considering that the hard rain of the past week had already swept it clean of any traces. As he examined the area he could see nothing that indicated anything lay under the sand-beyond a faint,

unpleasant odor that the breeze wafted past his nostrils. Behind him, the dogs whined.

"Let's dig."

"Dig?" Hernandez asked, his round face showing alarm. "Shouldn't we wait for the SOC team and the M.E.?"

"We don't know we've got a body yet. Could be a dead deer. We can't chopper a whole SOC team out here until we know."

"I see your point."

Wilier heaved off his backpack and slipped out the two trowels he had brought, tossing one to Hernandez. "I doubt it's very deep. Our killer didn't have a hell of a lot of time."

He knelt and began scraping the trowel across the loose sand, removing one layer at a time. Hernandez did the same at the opposite end of the area, making two careful piles that the forensic team would later sift through. As he swept the sand aside he kept an eye out for clues-clothing or personal articles-but nothing came to light. The hole deepened, moving from dry sand into wet. There was something down there, for sure, Wilier thought, as the smell intensified.

At three feet his trowel scraped against something hairy and yielding. A sudden wave of stench, thick as soup, hit his nostrils. He scraped a bit more, breathing through his mouth. It had been buried five days in wet sand in ninety-eight-degree heat and it smelled the part.

"It's not human," said Hernandez.

"I can see that."

"Maybe it is a deer."

Wilier scraped some more. The fur was too coarse and matted to be a deer, and as he tried to clear more sand off it to see clearly the fur and skin began coming away in patches, exposing slimy, brownish-pink flesh underneath. This was no deer: it was a burro. The prospector's burro, the one that Broadbent mentioned.

He stood up. "If there's a stiff it'll be next to it. You take that side, I'll take the other."

Once again they began scraping away the sand, piling it carefully to one side. Wilier lit a cigarette and held it between his lips, smoking it that way, hoping to chase off some of the stench.

"Got something."

Wilier abandoned his side and went over to where Hernandez was crouching. He troweled some more sand away, exposing something as long and swollen as a boiled kielbasa. It took Wilier a moment to realize it was a forearm. A second foul

wave of odor seemed to strike him bodily, a different and far worse smell. He inhaled a lungful of smoke, but it did no good: he could taste the dead body. He stood up, gagging, and backed off. "Okay. That's good enough. It's a stiff- that's all we need to know."

Hernandez beat a hasty retreat, only too eager to get away from the makeshift grave. Wilier moved upwind, smoking furiously, inhaling a. lungful of smoke with each breath as if to scour his lungs free of the odor of death. He looked around. The dogs were at their rock, whining and eager. For what? A meal?

"Where's Wheatley?" asked Hernandez, looking around.

"Hell if I know." He saw Wheatley's fresh footprints going farther up-canyon. "Find out what he's doing, will you?"

Hernandez hiked up the canyon and soon disappeared around the corner. He returned a moment later, a smirk on his face. "He's puking."

6

FRIDAY MORNING DAWNED a flawless blue, with flocks of jays squawking and

fighting in the pinons, the cottonwoods casting long cool shadows across the meadow. Tom had fed the horses that morning, given them an hour to eat, and now he led his favorite horse, Knock, over to the rail to be saddled. Sally joined him with her buckskin gelding, Sierra, and together they worked in silence, brushing out their coats, picking the hooves, saddling and tacking up.

By the time they set off, there was only a memory of coolness in the green cot-tonwood shadows along the creek. The flanks of PedernalPeak rose on their right, the steep slopes ending in the chopped-off summit made so famous by the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. They rode in their usual silence, preferring not to talk when on horseback-the pleasure of being together was enough. They reached the ford, the horses splashing across the shallow stream, still icy from melting snow in the mountains.

"Where to, cowboy?" Sally asked.

"Barrancones Spring."

"Perfect."

"Shane's got everything under control," Tom said. "I don't have to get back at all this afternoon."

He felt a twinge of guilt. He'd been relying on Shane far too much this past week.

They reached the bluffs and began climbing the narrow trail to the top. A hawk circled above them, whistling. The air smelled of cottonwood trees and dust.

"Damn, I love this country," Sally said.

The trail wound up the side of the mesa into the cool ponderosa pines. In half an hour they reached the top and Tom turned his horse to look at the view. He

never got tired of it. To his left was the steep flank of Pedernal, and to his right the sheer orange cliffs of Pueblo Mesa. Below lay the irregular alfalfa fields along Canones Creek, which opened to the vast PiedraLumbreValley, one hundred thousand acres broad. On the far side rose up the stupendous outline of the Mesa of the Ancients, notched by canyons-the beginning of the high mesa country. Somewhere, out there, lay the fossil of a fabulous Tyrannosaurus rex-and a half-crazy monk looking for it. He glanced over at Sally. The wind was blowing her honey hair and her face was turned into the light, her lips slightly parted in pleasure and awe.

"Not a bad view," she said with a laugh.

They continued on, the wind rustling through the sideoats grama grass that edged the trail. He let Sally ride ahead and watched her on her horse. They continued to ride in silence, the only sound the rhythmic creaking of their saddles.

As the country opened up to high grasslands of Mesa Escoba, she touched her heels to Sierra's flank and moved into a trot. Tom followed suit. They abandoned the trail, riding across the windblown grass, dotted with Indian paintbrush and

lupines.

"Let's go a little faster," Sally said, giving her horse another nudge with her

heel. He broke into an easy lope.

Tom kept pace. At the far end of the meadow Tom could see the cluster of cottonwoods marking Barrancones Spring, at the base of a red cliff.

"All right," cried Sally. "Last one to the spring is a rotten egg! Giddyap!" She gave Sierra one final touch of heel. The horse shot forward, stretching out into a dead run while Sally gave a whoop.

Knock, who always wanted to be in the lead, needed little urging to follow suit, and soon they were tearing across the meadow, neck and neck. Sally began to pull ahead, her hair streaming behind like a golden flame. Tom watched her fly, and he had to admit she was one hell of a rider. The two horses whipped over the grass and into the sudden cool of the trees surrounding the spring. At the last minute, Sally reined in and Tom followed; the horses leaned back and dug in like the well-trained reining horses they were, sliding to a stop. When he looked over, he saw Sally sitting on her horse, her hair wild, her white shirt partly open, having popped a couple of buttons, her face in high color.

"That was fun."

She hopped off the horse.

They were in a small grove of cottonwoods, with an old fire ring in the center

and a couple of logs for seats. Geniza.ro cowboys from days gone by had built a line camp here, with tables shaped from rough-hewn logs of ponderosa, a wooden box nailed to a trunk, a broken piece of mirror wedged into the fork of a tree, and a chipped enamel washbowl hung from a nail. The spring itself lay at the bottom of the cliffs, a deep pool hidden behind a screen of desert willows.

Tom collected the two horses, unsaddled them, watered them at the spring, and staked them out to graze. When he returned, Sally had spread out lunch on a thin blanket. In the middle of the table was a bottle of red wine, freshly opened.

"Now that's class," said Tom, picking it up. "Castello di Verrazzano, '97 Riserva.,”

"I snuck it in my saddlebags. I hope you don't mind."

"It's been dreadfully shakenup, I fear," said Tom in mock disapproval. "Are you sure we should be drinking at lunch? It's against the rules to drink and ride."

"Well now," Sally drawled in imitation of him, "we're just going to have to bend the rules, aren't we?" She tucked into her sandwich,

taking two great bites, and then poured some wine into a plastic glass. "Here."

He took it, swirled it around, and sipped, aping a connoisseur. "Berries, vanilla, hints of chocolate."

Sally poured herself a glass and took a good slug. Tom took a bite from his own sandwich and watched her eat. A green light filtered through the foliage, and every time a breeze blew the trees rustled. When he finished his lunch, he lounged back on the blanket they had thrown down over the soft grass. In the distance, through the cottonwoods, he could see the horses grazing out on the flats, dappled in sunlight. Suddenly he felt a cool hand on his temple. He turned and found Sally was bending over him, her blond hair falling like a curtain.

"What are you doing?"

She smiled. "What does it look like?"

She laid her hands on either side of his face. Tom tried to sit up, but the hands gently pushed him back down into the grass.

"Hey . . ." he said.

"Hey yourself."

One of her hands slid inside his shirt, caressing his chest. She bent down and put her lips to his. Her mouth tasted of peppermint and wine. She leaned over him and her hair fell heavily across his chest.

He reached up to touch her hair, then stroked it and ran his hand down to the strong hollow of her back, where he could feel her back muscles moving. As he drew her down, he felt her slender body and soft breasts glide up against his.

AFTERWARD, THEY LAY next to each other on the blanket. Tom's arm was thrown over her shoulder and he was looking into her amazing turquoise eyes. "Doesn't get much better than this, does it?" he said. "No," she murmured. "It's so good it almost makes me afraid."

7

MADDOX STROLLED UP Canyon Road and rounded the corner at Camino del Monte Sol. A forest of hand-carved signs greeted his gaze, festooning both sides of the narrow lane, each trying to outdo the other in hand-crafted cuteness. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists decked out as if for a trip across the SaharaDesert, with floppy sun hats, water bottles strapped to their waists, and big-lugged hiking shoes. Most of them looked pale-faced and confused, as if they'd just emerged like grubs from the rain-rotten cities of the East. Maddox himself was going for the rich Texan look today, and he figured he'd gotten it down pretty good with his Resistol, boots, and a bolo tie sporting a manly, golfball-sized chunk of turquoise.

The road passed some old Victorian houses, converted like everything else into gallery space, windows gleaming with Indian jewelry and pots. He checked his watch. Noon. He still had a little more time to kill.

He wandered in and out of the galleries, amazed at the sheer quantity of silver, turquoise, and pottery there was in the world-not to mention paintings. Art, Maddox felt, was basically a scam, as his eye took in one more window full of Day-Glo-colored canyons, coyotes howling at the moon, and Indians draped in blankets. Another easy way to make money, and all perfectly legal. Why hadn't he seen the opportunities before? He'd wasted half his life trying to make money the hard, illegal way, not realizing that the best moneymaking scams were all legal. When he was finished with this last job, he'd go one hundred percent legit, plow some money back into Hard Time, and maybe even look for investors. He could be the next dot-corn millionaire.

One gallery packed with enormous sculptures in bronze and stone caught his eye. The stuff looked expensive-just moving it would cost a fortune. The door

chimed as he entered and a young woman came clicking up on high heels, giving him a bright lipsticked smile.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Sure thing," he said, already hearing a drawl in his voice. "This sculpture here"-he nodded at the biggest one he could see in the store, a life-sized group of Indians carved out of a single piece of stone that weighed three tons if it weighed an ounce. "If you don't mind me asking, how much is it?"

"Blessingway. That's one seventy-five."

Maddox stopped himself just in time from asking, Thousand? "Do you accept

credit cards?"

If she was surprised she didn't show it. "We just have to verify the credit limit, that's all. Most people don't have that kind of credit limit."

"I'm not most people."

Another bright smile. He noticed she had freckles on her chest where her silk shirt was unbuttoned.

"I like to charge things whenever possible and get the frequent flyer miles."

"You could go to China with the miles on that one," she said.

"I'd rather go to Thailand."

"There, too."

He looked at her more closely. She was one good-looking woman, as she'd have to be, working in a place like this. He wondered if she was going to get a commission.

"Well. . ." He smiled, winked. "How about the price on that one?" He pointed to a bronze of an Indian holding an eagle.

"Freeing the Eagle. That's one-ten."

"I just bought a ranch out of town and I've got to furnish the damn place. Ten thousand square feet, and that's just the main house."

"I can imagine."

"Name's Maddox. Jim Maddox." He held out his hand.

"Clarissa Provender."

"Good to meet you, Clarissa."

"The artist is Willy Atcitty, an authentic, registered member of the Navajo tribe, one of our foremost Native American sculptors. That first one you were looking at is carved out of a solid block of native New Mexico alabaster from the SanAndresMountains."

"Beautiful. What's it about?"

"It represents a three-day Blessingway sing."

"A what?"

"The Blessingway is a traditional Navajo ceremony which is meant to restore balance and harmony in one's life."

"I need one of those." He was close enough to her now to smell the creme rinse she had used that morning in her glossy black hair.

"Don't we all," said Clarissa Provender, with a laugh, her sly brown eyes looking at him sideways.

"Clarissa, you must get asked this all the time, and if I'm out of line tell me

but how about dinner tonight?"

A bright, phony smile. "I'm not supposed to date potential customers."

Maddox took that as a yes. "I'll be at the Pink Adobe at seven. If you just happen to run into me there, I'd be happy to treat you to a martini and a Steak Dunigan."

She didn't say no, and that encouraged him. He waved a hand at the sculptures. "I think I'm going to take the one in alabaster. Thing is, I have to measure the space first, make sure it fits. If not that one, the other one for sure."

"I have all the specs in the back: dimensions, weights, delivery routine."

She clicked back and he watched her behind twitching in its little black dress. She came back with a sheet, a card, and a brochure about the artist, handing them to him with a smile. He could see a streak of lipstick on her left canine. He slipped them into his inside jacket pocket.

"Mind if I use the phone to make a quick local call?"

"No."

She led him to her desk in the rear of the gallery, punched a line, and handed him the phone. "This'll just be a second. Hello? Dr. Broadbent?"

The voice on the other end said, "No, this is Shane McBride, his associate."

"I just moved to Santa Fe, bought a ranch south of town. I've been looking to buy a reining horse. It's a paint, a beautiful animal, and I need a vet check. Is Dr. Broadbent available?"

"When?"

"Today or Saturday"

"Dr. Broadbent's not here right now, but he can do it Monday."

"Not Saturday?"

"I'm on call Saturday, and let's see ... I've got a slot at two."

"Sorry, Shane, nothing personal, but Dr. Broadbent came highly recommended and I'd be more comfortable with him."

"If you want him, you'll have to wait 'til Monday."

"I need it done Saturday. If it's a matter of his day off, I'm willing to pay extra."

"He's going to be out of town that day. Sorry. As I said, I'd be happy to do it."

"Nothing personal, Shane, but like I said . . ." He let his voice trail off in disappointment. "Thank you anyway. I'll call on Monday, reschedule."

He replaced the receiver, gave Clarissa a wink.

She looked back at him, her face unreadable.

"See you at the Pink, Clarissa."

For a moment she didn't respond. Then she leaned forward, and with another sly smile said in a low voice, "I've been in this job for five years and I'm very, very good at it. You know why?"

"Why?"

"I know bullshit when it walks in the door. And you're so full of it you're

leaving tracks."

8

THE HELICOPTER TRANSPORTING the forensic team had to land almost half a mile down the canyon, and the team was forced to hike their equipment up the wash. They arrived in a ferocious mood, but Calhoun, head of forensics and always the wit, had turned it around with jokes, stories, slaps on the back, and the promise of cold beer all around when it was over.

Calhoun had run it just like an archaeological dig, the site mapped out with a grid, his men troweling down layer by layer, the photographer documenting every step. They ran all the sand through one-millimeter wire mesh and then again through a flotation tank to recover every hair, thread, and foreign object. It was brutal work and they'd been at it since eight that morning. Now it was three o'clock and the temperature had to be close to a hundred. The flies had arrived in force, and their droning sound filled the confined space.

Pretty soon, Wilier thought, it would be time for the "scoop"-that moment when a ripe corpse is rolled into a body bag, ideally without falling apart like an overcooked chicken. A lot happened to a body in five days in the heat of summer. Feininger, the police pathologist, stood nearby, supervising this particular operation. She seemed to be the only one who managed to remain cool and elegant in the heat, her gray hair done up in a scarf, not a bead of sweat appearing on her lined but still handsome face.

"I want all three of you on the right side, please," she said, gesturing to the SOC team. "You know how it works, slip your hands under, make sure you've got a good grip, and then, at the count of three, roll it over and onto the plastic sheet, nice and easy. All got on protective covering? Check for tears and holes?" She looked around, her voice ironic, perhaps even half amused. "Are we ready? This is a challenging one, for sure. Let's get it right, fellows. Count of three."

A few grunts as the men got in place. Feininger had long ago banned the SOC boys from smoking cigars, and instead each one had a big smear of Vicks VapoRub under the nose.

"Ready? One . . . two . . . three . . . roll."

With a single economical motion they rolled the body onto the open body bag. Wilier noted it as a successful operation, in that nothing came off or was left behind in the process.

"Good work, boys."

One of the SOC team members zipped it up. The body bag had been prepo-sitioned on a stretcher, and all they had to do was pick it up and carry it down to

the chopper.

"Put the animal head in that one," directed Feininger.

They duly placed the burro's head in a wet-evidence bag and zipped it shut. At least, thought Wilier, they had agreed to leave most of the burro behind, just taking the head with the gaping hole made by a 10mm round fired into the animal at point-blank range. The round had been found imbedded in the soft sandstone of the canyon wall, an excellent piece of evidence. They had uncovered the prospector's equipment, and the only thing they hadn't found, it seemed, was any indication of his identity. But that would come in time.

All in all a good haul of evidence.

He checked his watch. Three-thirty. He wiped his brow, pulled an iced Coke out of the cooler, rolled it against his forehead, his cheek, and the back of his

neck.

Hernandez came up beside him, nursing his own Coke. "You think the killer

expected us to find the stiff?"

"He sure went to a lot of trouble to hide it. We're, what, two miles from the killing? He had to strap the body on the burro, lug it up here, dig a hole big enough for the burro, the man, and all his shit.. . No, I don't think he figured we'd find it."

"Any theories, Lieutenant?"

"The killer was looking for something on the prospector."

"Why do you say that?"

"Look at the prospector's shit." Wilier gestured to the plastic tarp on which all the prospector's gear and supplies had been laid out. One of the SOC boys was lifting each piece of evidence in turn, wrapping it in acid-free paper, labeling it, and packing it away in plastic evidence lockers. "You see how the sheepskin padding on the packsaddles is torn off, the other stuff ripped or slit open? And you see how the guy's pockets were turned inside out? Not only was our man

looking for something, but he was pissed that he wasn't finding it." Wilier took a last noisy sip, chucked the empty Coke can back into the cooler.

Hernandez grunted, pursed his lips. "So what was he looking for? A treasure map?"

A slow smile spread across Willer's face. "Something like that. And I'll bet you the prospector gave it to his partner before the shooter could hike down from the rim into the canyon."

"Partner?"

"Yeah."

"What partner?"

"Broadbent."

9

IT WAS EARLY Saturday morning. The rising sun clipped tops of the ponderosa pines along the ridgeline above Perdiz Creek and invaded the upper valley, pencils of light shooting into the mists. The trees below were still wrapped in the coolness of night.Weed Maddox rocked slowly on the porch of his cabin, sipping his coffee, rolling the hot, bitter liquid around in his mouth before swallowing. His mind wandered back to the day before and he remembered the bitch in the art gallery. Rage suddenly swelled his veins. Somebody would pay.He swallowed the last bit of coffee, put the mug aside, and rose. He went into the living room and brought his knapsack out on the porch, laid it down, and began methodically lining up all the equipment he'd need for the day's work.First came the Clock 29, with two magazines, ten rounds in each. Next to that he laid his usual kit: a hair net, a shower cap, stocking, two pairs of surgical gloves, plastic raincoat, surgical booties, and condoms; next came pencil and drawing paper, cell phone (fully charged), Ziploc bags, buck knife, bag of gorp to snack on, bottle of mineral water, flashlight, handcuffs and key, plastic clothesline, gaffing tape, matches, chloroform and a cloth diaper ... He laid out the drawing of the Broadbent house and scrutinized it, visualizing all the rooms, doors, windows, locations of telephones, and lines of sight. Finally, he checked all the items off his list as he packed them into the knapsack, one by one, each snug in its own place.He went back into the cabin, dropped the knapsack by the door, poured himself a second cup of coffee, picked up his laptop, and came back out, easing into the rocking chair. He had most of the day to kill and he might as well make good use of the time. He leaned back, flipped up the laptop screen, and booted it up.

While waiting for the start sequence to finish he took a small pack of letters out of his pocket, undid the rubber band, and began with the top one, at random.

He worked through them, one at a time, translating the shit-stupid prison English into acceptable prose. Two hours later he was finished. He uploaded it and sent it as an attachment to the Webmaster who handled his site, a guy he'd never met, never even spoken to on the telephone.

He rose from the rocking chair, tossed the rest of his cold coffee off the railing, and went inside to see what there was to read. The bookshelf was mostly biographies and history, but Maddox passed by those to check out the small section of hardback thrillers. What he needed to kill the time was something he could really sink his teeth into, keep his mind from dwelling too much on his plans for the afternoon, which he had already mapped out in detail. He scanned the titles, his eye arrested by a novel entitled Death Match. He pulled it off the shelf, read the flap copy, leafed through it. He carried it out to the porch, settled in the rocking chair, and began reading.

The rocking chair creaked rhythmically, the sun slowly moved higher in the sky, and a pair of crows flapped up from a nearby tree and glided through the ruined town, cutting the air with a rusty cry. Maddox paused momentarily to check his watch. Almost noon.

It was going to be a long, quiet Saturday-but it would end with a bang.

10

WILLER SAT BEHIND his desk, his feet thrown up, watching Hernandez waddle back from the records department with an accordion file tucked under his arm. With a sigh he plumped himself down in an easy chair in a corner, the folder in his lap.

"That looks promising," said Wilier, nodding at the file. Hernandez was a hell of a good researcher.

"It is."

"Coffee?"

"Don't mind if I do."

"I'll get it for you." Wilier rose, stepped out to the coffee machine, filled two foam cups, and came back, handing one to Hernandez. "Whaddya got?

"This Broadbent's got a history."

"Let's have it, Reader's Digest style."

"Father was Maxwell Broadbent, a big-time collector. Moved to Santa Fe in the seventies, married five times, had three kids by different wives. A ladies' man. His business was buying and selling art and antiquities. He was investigated by the FBI a couple of times for dealing in black market stuff, accused of looting tombs, but the guy was slick and nothing stuck."

“Go on.”

"Strange thing happened about a year and a half ago. Seems the family went off to Central America on some kind of extended vacation. Father died down there, kids came back with a fourth brother, half Indian. The four of them divided up about six hundred million."

Willer raised his eyebrows. "Any suspicion of foul play down there?"

"Nothing definite. But the whole story's confused, nobody seems to know anything, it's all rumors. His old mansion is occupied by his Indian son, a guy who writes inspirational books, New Age stuff. They say he has tribal tattoos.

"Broadbent lives modestly, works hard. Married last year, wife's name is Sally, born Sally Colorado. Comes from a working-class background. Broadbent runs a large-animal vet clinic up in Abiquiii with an assistant, Albert McBride-calls himself Shane."

Wilier rolled his eyes.

"I talked to some of his clients and he's equally respected among both the fancy-horse crowd and the old-time ranchers. Wife gives horse-riding lessons to kids."

"Record?"

"Other than a few minor scrapes as a juvenile, the guy's clean."

"McBride?"

"Clean too."

"Tell me about these 'minor scrapes.'"

"Records are sealed but you know how that is. Let's see ... A dumb prank involving a truckload of manure and the high school principal. . ." He flipped through some papers. "Went for a joyride on somebody else's horse . . . broke a guy's nose in a fight."

"The other brothers?"

"Philip, lives in New York City, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, nothing unusual there. Vernon, just married an environmental lawyer, lives in Connecticut as a house husband, stays at home with the baby while the wife goes to work. Got into a couple of financial scrapes a while ago but nothing since the inheritance."

"How much they get?"

"It seems they each got about ninety million after taxes."

Wilier pursed his lips. "Kind of makes you wonder-whatever it is that guy is looking for in the high mesas, it can't be just about money, right?"

"I don't know, Lieutenant. You see these CEOs with hundreds of millions risking prison for a few thousand more. It's a disease."

"True." Wilier nodded, surprised at Hernandez's insight. "It's just that this Broadbent doesn't seem like the type. He doesn't flash around his money. He works even though he doesn't need to. I mean, here's a guy who'll get up at two in the morning to stick his arm up a cow's ass and make forty bucks. There's a piece missing here, Hernandez."

"You got that right."

"What news on the stiff?"

"No ID yet. It's in the works, dental records, fingerprints. It's going to take a while to work it all through the system."

"The monk? You follow up on him?"

"Yeah. He's got quite a background. Son of Admiral John Mortimer Ford, Under-Secretary of the Navy in the Eisenhower administration. Andover, Harvard, undergraduate major in anthropology, summa cum laude. Went to MIT and pulled down a Ph.D. in cybernetics, whatever the hell that is. Met his wife, got married, both of them joined the CIA-and then nada, just like you said earlier. Those guys are serious about keeping a lid on their own. He did some kind of cloak-and-dagger work with code breaking and computers, wife was murdered in Cambodia. He up and quit to become a monk. The guy just walked away from everything, including a million-dollar house, bank accounts up the wazoo, a garage full of antique Jaguars. .. Unbelievable."

Wilier grunted. It just wasn't coming together. He wondered if his suspicions of Broadbent and the monk were justified-they had all the attributes of the straight and narrow. Yet he was sure that somehow, some way, they were in it up to their eyeballs.

11

IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON by the time Tom drove into the parking lot of the Silver

Strike Mall, located in a sea of shabby sprawl on the outskirts of Tucson. He parked his rental car and headed across the sticky asphalt to the mall entrance. Inside, it was air-conditioned to just above arctic conditions. The Fossil Connection was at the unfashionable far end of the mall, where Tom found a surprisingly modest storefront, with a few fossils on display in a window that was mosdy whitewashed out. A sign on the door announced: "Wholesale Only. No Walk-Ins."

The door was locked. He buzzed, the door clicked, and he stepped in.

It looked more like a law office than one of the largest fossil wholesalers in the West. The place was carpeted in beige, with inspirational posters on the walls about entrepreneurship and customer service. Two secretaries worked at desks flanking each side of a waiting area with a couple of taupe chairs and a glass and chrome table. Some fossils decorated a shelf on one side and a large ammonite sat in the middle of the coffee table, along with a stack of fossil magazines and brochures advertising the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.

One of the secretaries looked up, took in his two-thousand-dollar Valentino suit and handmade shoes, and gave an ostentatious raise of her eyebrows. "May I help you, sir?"

"I have an appointment with Robert Beezon."

"Name?"

"Broadbent."

"Please have a seat, Mr. Broadbent. Can I get you anything to drink? Coffee? Tea? Mineral water?"

"No, thank you."

Tom sat, picked up a magazine, nipped through it. He felt a twinge of antici-

pation thinking about the deception he had planned. The suit had been sitting in his closet, along with a dozen others he never wore, bought for him by his father in Florence and London.

A moment later the phone on the secretary's desk chimed. "Mr. Beezon will see you now." She nodded toward a door with a frosted glass window that said, simply, BEEZON.

Tom rose as the door opened, framing a heavyset man with a combover, in shirtsleeves and a tie. He looked indistinguishable from an overworked, smalltown lawyer.

"Mr. Broadbent?" He held out his hand.

The office itself finally betrayed that the man's business was not accounting or law. There were posters on the walls of fossil specimens, and a glass case contained an array of fossilized crabs, jellyfish, spiders-and in the center a curious fossil plaque containing a fossil fish, with a fish in its belly, which in turn had a minnow in its belly.

Tom sat in a chair and Beezon took a seat behind his desk.

"You like my little gem? It reminds me that it's a fish-eat-fish world."

Tom gave the obligatory chuckle to what was obviously Beezon's standard opening line.

"XT' »

Nice.

"Now, Mr. Broadbent," Beezon went on, "I haven't had the pleasure of working with you before. Are you new to the business? Do you have a shop?"

"I'm a wholesaler."

"We sell to a lot of wholesalers. But it's odd I haven't run into you before. We're a rather small club, you know."

"I'm just getting into the business."

Beezon folded his hands on the desk and looked at Tom, his eyes flickering up and down his suit. "Card?"

"Don't carry one."

"Well then, what can I do for you, Mr. Broadbent?" He cocked his head, as if awaiting an explanation.

I was hoping to see some samples."

"I'll give you the cook's tour 'round the back."

"Great."

Beezon heaved up from his desk, and Tom followed him through the office suite to an unassuming door in the back. He unlocked it and they stepped into a room as cavernous as a Sam's Club, but instead of merchandise the metal shelves were heaped with fossils, thousands, maybe even millions of them. Here and

there, men and women drove about with forklifts or hand-pushed flatbed carts loaded with rocks. A smell of stone dust drifted in the air.

"It used to be a Dillard's," said Beezon, "but this end of the mall never seemed to work for retail, so we got it at a good price. It's a warehouse, showroom, and pick-and-pack operation all rolled up into one. The raw stuff comes in one end, the finished stuff goes out the other."

He took Tom's elbow and led him forward, waving his hand along a wall against which leaned gigantic slabs of buff-colored rock, braced with two-by-fours, padded and shrink-wrapped. "We just got some excellent material from Green River, super stuff, you can buy it from me by the square yard, split and break it down and sell it by the fish, quintuple your money."

They came to bins heaped with fossils that Tom recognized as ammonites.

"We're the largest dealer of ammonites in the world, polished or rough, in matrix or no, sell by weight or by number, prepared or unprepared." He kept walking, passing shelf after shelf covered with boxes of the curious-looking curled-up ammonite shells. He paused, reached into one box, pulled one out. "These are pretty basic at a two bucks the pound unprepared, still in matrix. Got some over there with pyrites, and over here some really nice agatized specimens. Those cost

more.

He walked on. "If you're interested in insects, I just got some beaut spiders from the Nkomi Shales of Namibia. New shipment of crabs from Heinigen, Germany-those are hot these days, they're getting two, three hundred dollars apiece. Agatized wood-sell that by the pound. Great for tumbling. Crinoids, concretions with ferns. Coprolites-kids love 'em. We got it all-and no one can beat our prices."

Tom followed. At one point Beezon stopped, pulled out a concretion. "Lot of these haven't even been split. You can sell them that way, let the customer split them. The kids'll buy three or four. Usually there's a fern or leaf inside. Once in a while a bone or jaw-I've heard of mammal skulls even being found in some. It's like gambling. Here-"

He handed Tom a concretion, and then he swiped a rock hammer off an anvil. "Go ahead-split it."

Tom took the hammer and, remembering his cover, fumbled with it a bit before placing the fossil on the anvil.

"Use the chisel end," said Beezon quietly.

"Right, of course." Tom turned the hammer around and gave the concretion a whack. It split open, revealing the single leaf of a fossilized fern.

He found Beezon eyeing him thoughtfully.

"What do you have as far as, er, higher-end material goes?" Tom asked.

Beezon went silently to a locked metal door and led him into a smaller, win-dowless room. "This is where we keep the good stuff-vertebrate fossils in here, mammoth ivory, dinosaur eggs. In fact, I just got a new shipment of hadrosaur eggs from Hunan, at least sixty percent of the shell intact. I'm letting them go at one-fifty apiece. You can get four, five hundred for them." He unlocked a cabinet, hefted a stone egg out of a nest of crumpled newspaper, held it up. Tom took it, looked it over, gave it back, then fussily dusted off his hand with a silk handkerchief pulled out of his pocket. The little move did not escape Beezon's notice.

"Minimum order a dozen." He moved on, coming to a long, coffin-shaped metal box, unlocked it to reveal an irregular plaster lump about four feet by three. "Here's something really sweet, a Struthiomimus, forty percent complete, lacking the skull. Just came in from South Dakota. Legal, strictly legal, came from a private ranch. Still jacketed and in matrix, needs preparation."

He gave Tom a rather pointed look. "Everything we deal in here is legal, with signed and notarized documents from the private land owner." He paused. "Just what are you after, Mr. Broadbent?" He was not smiling now.

"Just what I said." The encounter was going exactly as he had hoped: he had aroused Beezon's suspicions.

Beezon leaned forward and said in a low voice. "You're no fossil dealer." His eyes flicked over the suit again. "What are you, a fed?"

Tom shook his head, putting on a sheepish, guilty smile. "You smoked me out, Mr. Beezon. Congratulations. You're right, I'm no fossil dealer. But I'm also no fed."

Beezon continued to gaze at him, all his western friendliness gone. "What are you then?"

"I'm an investment banker."

"What the hell do you want with me?"

"I work with a small and exclusive clientele in the Far East-Singapore and South Korea. We invest our clients' money. Sometimes our clients seek eccentric investments-old master paintings, gold mines, racehorses, French wines . . ." Tom paused, and then added, "Dinosaurs."

There was a long silence. Then Beezon echoed, "Dinosaurs?"

Tom nodded. "I guess I didn't cut a convincing figure as a fossil dealer."

Some of Beezon's friendliness returned, combined with a look of a man taking satisfaction in not having been fooled. "No, you didn't. First of all, there was that fancy suit. And then as soon as you held that rock hammer I knew you were

no fossil dealer." He chuckled. "So, Mr. Broadbent, who is this client of yours and what kind of dinosaur is he in the market for?"

"May we speak freely?"

"Naturally."

"His name is Mr. Kim, and he is a successful industrialist from South Korea."

"This Struthiomimus here is a pretty good deal, at one hundred and twenty thousand-"

"My client is not interested in junk." Tom had shifted his tone, and he hoped the new persona of crisp, arrogant investment banker would be convincing.

Beezon lost his smile. "This is not junk."

"My client runs a multibillion-dollar industrial empire in South Korea. The last hostile takeover he launched resulted in the suicide of the CEO on the other side, an occurrence which Mr. Kim did not find displeasing. It's a Darwinian world my client inhabits. He wants a dinosaur for the corporate headquarters that will make a statement about who he is and how he does business."

There was a long silence. Then Beezon asked, "And just what kind of dinosaur might that be?"

Tom stretched his lips in a smile. "What else-but a T. Rex?"

Beezon gave a nervous laugh. "I see. Surely you're aware that there are only thirteen tyrannosaur skeletons in the world and every single one is in a museum. The last one that came up for sale went for eight and a half million. We're not talking chump change."

"And I am also aware that there may be one or two others for sale-quietly."

Beezon coughed. "It's possible."

"As for chump change, Mr. Kim will not even consider an investment under ten million. It's simply not worth his time."

Beezon spoke slowly. "Ten million?"

"That's the lowest limit. Mr. Kim is expecting to pay up to fifty million, even more." Tom lowered his voice and leaned forward. "You will understand, Mr. Beezon, when I tell you he is none too particular about how or where the specimen might have been found. What is important is that it be the right specimen."

Beezon licked his lips. "Fifty million? That's a bit out of my league."

"Then I am sorry to have wasted your time." Tom turned to leave.

"Now hold on a minute, Mr. Broadbent. I didn't say I couldn't help you."

Tom paused.

"I might be able to introduce you to someone. If ... well, if my time and effort is compensated, of course."

"In the investment banking business, Mr. Beezon, everyone involved in a deal is remunerated to the extent of his contribution."

"That's exactly what I was hoping to hear. As to the commission-"

"We would be prepared to commission you with one percent, at the time of sale, for an introduction to the appropriate person. Satisfactory?"

The calculation clouded Beezon's brow for only a moment and then a faint smile spread on his round face. "I think we can do business, Mr. Broadbent. Like I said, I know a gentleman-"

"A dinosaur hunter?"

"No, no, not at all. He doesn't like to get his hands dirty. I guess you might call him a dinosaur seller. He lives not far from here, in a little town outside Tuc-

,, son.

There was a silence.

"Well?" said Tom, pitching his voice to just the right level of impatience. "What are we waiting for?"

12

WEED MADDOX CROUCHED behind the barn, watching. Children were riding around the arena in circles, shouts mingling with laughter. He had been there an hour and only now did the gymkhana for retards or whatever it was seem to be winding down. The kids began to dismount, and soon they were helping to unsaddle and brush down the horses, turning them out one by one in a back pasture. Maddox waited, his muscles aching, all keyed up, wishing he had come at five instead of three. Finally the kids were shouting good-bye and the pickup trucks and soccer-mom SUVs were driving out of the parking area behind the house amid a lot of waving and shouting good-byes.

He checked his watch. Four o'clock. Nobody seemed to have stayed on to clean up-Sally was alone. She wouldn't go out like she did last time. It had been a long day and she was tired. She'd go inside and rest, maybe take a bath.

With that interesting thought in mind he watched the last SUV drive out of the driveway with a flourish of dust. The slow cloud drifted off and disappeared into the golden afternoon sunlight and all became quiet. He watched her cross the yard carrying an armload of bridles and halters. She was a knockout, dressed in western riding boots, jeans, and a white shirt, long blond hair streaming behind her. She came toward the barn and entered it, and he could hear her moving around, hanging up stuff, talking to the horses. At one point she was no more than a few feet from him on the other side of the flimsy wooden wall. But this was not the time; he needed to seize her inside the house where the confined space would deaden any noise she might make. Even though the nearest neighbors were a quarter mile away, sound did carry and you never knew who might be walking or riding around within earshot.

He heard more activity in the barn, the horses blowing and pawing, the scraping of a shovel, more murmurings to the animals. Ten minutes later she emerged and went into the house by the back door. He could see her through the kitchen window, moving around, filling a kettle at the faucet and putting it on the stove, bringing out a mug and what looked like a box of tea bags. She sat at the kitchen table, waiting for the water to boil, flipping through a magazine. Tea and then a bath? He couldn't be sure, and it was better not to wait. She was where he wanted her anyway, in the kitchen. The making and drinking of the tea would take at least five minutes, giving him the opportunity he needed.

He worked quickly, slipping on the plastic booties, the plastic raincoat, the hair net, shower cap, and stocking. He checked the Clock 29, popped out the magazine, and slapped it back in place. As a last step he unfolded the map of the house and gave it a final scrutiny. He knew exactly what he wanted to do.

Maddox moved around to the other side of the barn, where she couldn't see him from the kitchen window. Then he straightened up, walked easily across the yard, in through the gate leading to the patio, and then quickly flattened himself against the side of the house, with the patio doors on his right. He peered into the living room and saw it was empty-she was still in the kitchen-and he swiftly inserted a shim into where the door latched, worked it through to the other side, then pulled it down. The door latch released with a loud click; he slid the door open, ducked inside, shut it, and flattened himself behind an angled wall where the hall led from the living room to the kitchen.

He heard the chair scrape in the kitchen. "Who's there?"

He didn't move. A few soft tentative footsteps into the hall to the living room. "Is someone there?"

Maddox waited, controlling his breathing. She would come in and see what made the noise. He heard several more hesitant steps down the hall, which paused as she evidently halted in the entryway to the living room. She was just around the corner, close enough that he could hear her breathing.

"Hello? Is someone there?"

She might turn and go back to the kitchen. She might go for the phone. But she wasn't sure . . . She'd heard a noise, she was standing in the doorway, the living room looked empty ... it could have been anything-a falling twig hitting the window or a bird flying into the glass. Maddox knew exactly what she was thinking.

A low whistle started from the kitchen, climbing in shrillness. The kettle was boiling.

Son of a bitch.

She turned with a rustle and he heard her footsteps receding down the hall to the kitchen.

Maddox coughed, not loudly, but distinctly, as a way to bring her back.

The footsteps halted. "Who's that?"

The whistle in the kitchen got louder.

She suddenly came charging back into the living room. He leapt out at the same time that he saw, to his complete shock, that she had a .38 in her hand. She whirled and he dove at her legs at the same time the gun went off; he hit her hard and dropped her to the carpet. She screamed, rolled, her blond hair all in a tangle, her gun bouncing across the carpeted floor, her fist lashing out and dealing him a stunning blow to the side of the head.

The yellow-haired bitch.

He struck back wildly, connecting with his left somewhere in a soft place, and it was just disabling enough to get himself on top of her, pinning her to the floor. She gasped, struggled, but he lay on her with all his weight and pressed the Clock to her ear.

"You bitch!" His finger almost-almost-pulled the trigger.

She struggled, screamed. He pressed down harder, lying on top of her, pinning her flailing legs in a scissor grip between his. He got himself under control. Christ, he'd almost shot her, and maybe he would still have to.

"I'll kill you if I have to. I will."

More struggling, incoherent sounds. She was unbelievably strong, a wildcat.

"I will kill you. Don't make me do it, but so help me I will if you don't stop."

He meant it and she heard that he meant it and stopped. As soon as she was quiet he slid around with his leg, trying to snag the .38, which lay on the rug about ten feet away.

"Don't move."

He could feel her under him, hiccuping with fear. Good. She should be afraid. He had come so close to killing her he could almost taste it.

He got his foot on the .38, pulled it to him, picked it up, shoved it in his pocket. He pushed the barrel of the Clock into her mouth and said, "We're going to try this again. Now you know I'll kill you. Nod if you understand."

She suddenly twisted hard and gave a vicious kick backward to his shins, but she had no leverage and he checked her struggling with sharp, wrenching constriction of his arm around her neck.

"Don't fight me."

More struggling.

He twisted the barrel hard enough to make her gag. "It's a gun, bitch, get it?" She stopped struggling.

"Do what I say and nobody'll get hurt. Nod if you understand." She nodded and he loosened his grip, slightly.

"You're coming with me. Nice and easy. But first, I need you to do something."

No response. He pushed the barrel deeper into her mouth.

A nod.

Her whole body was trembling in his arms.

"Now I'm going to release you. No sound. No screaming. No sudden moves. I'll kill you fast if you don't do just what I tell you." A nod and a hiccup. "You know what I want?" A shake of the head. He was still lying on top of her, his legs entwined around

hers, holding her tight.

"I want the notebook. The one your husband got from the prospector. Is it in

the house?"

Shake of the head. "Your husband has it?" No response.

Her husband had it. That much he was sure of already. "Now listen to me carefully, Sally. I'm not going to screw around. One false step, one scream, one bullshit trick, and I'll kill you. It's that simple." He meant it and once again she got the message.

"I'm going to get off you and step back. You will go to the telephone answering machine over there on the table. You will record the following message: 'Hi, this is Tom and Sally. Tom's away on business and I'm out of town unexpectedly, so we won't be able to get back to you right away. Sorry about the missed lessons, I'll get back to everyone later. Leave a message, thanks. 'Can you do that in a normal voice?" No response. He twisted the barrel. A nod.

He removed the gun barrel and she coughed. "Say it. I want to hear your voice." "I'll do it." Her voice was all shaky. He got off her and kept the gun trained on her while

she slowly got up.

"Do what I said. I'm going to check the message on my cell as soon as you're

done, and if it isn't right, if you've pulled some kind of stunt, you're dead."

The woman walked over to the phone machine, pressed a button, and spoke the message.

"Your voice is too stressed. Do it again. Naturally."

She did it again, and a third time, finally getting it right.

"Good. Now we're going to walk outside like two normal people, you first, me five feet behind. You won't forget, even for an instant, that I've got a gun. My car is parked in a grove of scrub oaks about a quarter mile up the road. You know where those trees are?"

She nodded.

"That's where we're going."

As he pushed her across the living room, he became aware of a sensation of wetness on his thigh. He looked down. The plastic raincoat was torn and a tuft of material stood out from the pant leg. There was a dark patch of blood, not a lot, but still it was blood. Maddox was astonished because he had felt nothing, and still felt nothing. He scanned the rug but saw no evidence that any of the blood had dripped to the floor. He reached down with a hand, explored, feeling the sting of the wound for the first time.

Son of a bitch. The blond had winged him.

He marched her out of the house and across a brushy flat and alongside the creek, soon arriving at the hidden car. Once in the cover of the scrub oaks he took a pair of leg cuffs out of his rucksack and tossed them at her feet.

"Put them on."

She bent over, fumbled with them for a while, snapped them on.

"Put your hands behind your back."

She obeyed and he spun her around and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. Then he opened the front passenger door. "Get in."

She managed to sit and swing her feet in.

He took off his knapsack, took out the bottle of chloroform and the diaper, poured a good dose.

"No!" he heard her scream. "No, don't!" She swung her feet up to kick him but she had little room to maneuver, and he had already lunged in on top of her, pinning her manacled arms and mashing the diaper into her face. She struggled, cried out, writhing and kicking, but in a few moments she went limp.

He made sure she had breathed in a good dose, then got in the driver's side and slid behind the wheel. She lay slumped on the seat in an unnatural position. He reached over, hefted her and propped her up against the door, put a pillow

behind her head and drew a blanket up around her, until she looked like she was peacefully asleep.

He powered down the windows to get the stench of chloroform out of the car, and then pulled off stocking, shower cap, booties, hair net, and raincoat, balling them up and stuffing them inside a garbage bag.

He started the car, eased out of the grove, and drove down the dirt road to the highway. From there he crossed the dam and drove north on Highway 84. Ten miles up the road, he eased onto the unmarked Forest Service road that ran up into the Carson national forest, to the CCC Camp at Perdiz Creek.

The woman lay against the door, eyes closed, blond hair all in a mess. He paused, looking at her. Damn, he thought, she was good-looking-a real honey-haired beauty.

13

"THEY SAY IT used to be a bordello," Beezon said to Tom as they stood in the dirt turnaround in front of a shabby old Victorian mansion, which rose incongruously from a desert sprinkled with palo verde, teddy bear cholla, and ocotillo.

"Looks more like a haunted house than a whorehouse," said Tom.

Beezon chuckled. "I warn you-Harry Dearborn's kind of eccentric. His brusqueness is legendary." He clomped up onto the porch and lifted the ring on the big bronze lion doorknocker. It fell once, with a hollow boom. A moment later a rotund voice inside said, "Come in, the door is unlocked."

They entered. The house was dark with most of the drapes drawn, and it smelled of mustiness and cats. It looked like a traffic jam of dark Victorian furniture. The floors were laid with overlapping Persian carpets, and the walls were lined with oak display cases of rippled glass, mineral specimens crowding their shadowy depths. Standing lamps with tasseled shades stood here and there, throwing pools of feeble yellow light.

"In here," came the deep rumble of the voice. "And don't touch anything."

Beezon led the way into a sitting room. In the middle, a grossly fat man was imbedded in an oversized armchair of flowered chintz, antimacassars resting on the armrests. The light came from behind, leaving the man's face in shadow.

"Hello, Harry," said Beezon, his voice a little nervous. "Long time, eh? This is a friend of mine, Mr. Thomas Broadbent."

A large hand emerged from the darkness of the chair, made a vague flicking motion toward a pair of wing chairs. They both sat down.

Tom studied the man a little closer. He looked remarkably like Sidney Green-street, dressed in a white suit with a dark shirt and yellow tie, his thinning hair

combed carefully back, a neat and tidy man despite his corpulence. His broad forehead was as smooth and white as a baby's and heavy gold rings winked on his

fingers.

"Well, well," Dearborn said, "if it isn't Robert Beezon, the ammonite man.

How's business?"

"Couldn't be better. Fossils are going mainstream as office decor."

Another dismissive gesture, a raised hand and a barely perceptible movement of two fingers. "What do you want with me?"

Beezon cleared his throat. "Mr. Broadbent here-"

He stopped Beezon and turned to Tom. "Broadbent? You aren't by chance related to Maxwell Broadbent, the collector?"

Tom was taken aback. "He was my father."

"Maxwell Broadbent." He grunted. "Interesting man. Ran into him a few times. Is he still alive?"

"He passed away last year."

Another grunt. A hand came out holding a huge handkerchief, dabbed away at the fleshy, slabbed face. "I'm sorry to hear that. The world could use a few more like him, larger than life. Everyone's become so ... normal. May I ask how he died? He couldn't have been more than sixty."

Tom hesitated. "He ... he died in Honduras."

The eyebrows rose. "Is there some mystery here?"

Tom was taken aback by the man's directness. "He died doing what he loved doing," he said with a certain crispness. "He might have asked for better, but he accepted it with dignity. No mystery there."

"I am truly shocked to hear it." A pause. "So, what can I do for you,

Thomas?"

"Mr. Broadbent here is interested in purchasing a dinosaur-" Beezon began.

"A dinosaur? What in the world makes you think I sell dinosaurs?"

"Well..." Beezon fell silent, a look of consternation on his face.

Dearborn extended a large hand to him. "Robert, I want to thank you most sincerely for introducing Mr. Broadbent to me. Excuse me if I don't rise. It seems Mr. Broadbent and I have some business to discuss, which we should prefer to do in private."

Beezon stood and hesitatingly turned to Broadbent, wanting to say something. Tom guessed what it was.

"About that agreement we made? You can count on it."

"Thank you," said Beezon.

Tom felt a pang of guilt. There wouldn't, of course, be any commission.

Beezon said his good-byes and a moment later they heard the thump of the door, the whine of the car engine starting.

Dearborn turned to Tom, his face creasing into the semblance of a smile. "Now-did I hear the word dinosaur? What I said is true. I don't sell dinosaurs."

"What exactly is it that you do, Harry?"

"I'm a dinosaur broker." Dearborn leaned back into his chair with a smile, waiting.

Tom gathered his wits. "I'm an investment banker with clients in the Far East, and one of them-"

The fat hand rose up yet again, halting Tom's prepared speech. "That may work with Beezon but it won't wash with me. Tell me what it's really about."

Tom thought for a moment. The shrewd, cynical glitter in Dearborn's eye convinced him that he would be better off telling the truth.

"Perhaps you read about the murder in New Mexico, in the high mesas north of Abiquiii?"

"I did."

"I was the man who found the body. I happened to come across him as he was dying."

"Go on," said Dearborn, in a neutral tone.

"The man pressed a journal into my hand and made me promise to give it to his daughter, named Robbie. I'm trying to keep that promise. The problem is, the police haven't identified him or as far as I know even found his body."

"Did the man tell you anything else before he died?"

"He was lucid for only a moment," Tom said evasively.

"And this journal? What does it say?"

"It's just numbers. Lists of numbers."

"What kind of numbers?"

"Data to a GPR survey."

"Yes, yes, of course, that's how he did it. May I ask what your interest is in this, Mr. Broadbent?"

"Mr. Dearborn, I made a promise to a dying man. I keep my promises. That's my interest-no more, no less."

Harry Dearborn seemed amused by the answer. "I do believe, Mr. Broadbent, that if I were Diogenes, I would have to put out my lantern. You are that rarest of things, an honest man. Or you are a consummate liar."

"My wife thinks I'm merely stubborn."

He gave a flabby sigh. "I did indeed follow that murder up in Abiquiii. I wondered if it wasn't a certain dinosaur hunter of my acquaintance. I was aware that

the fellow had been prospecting up there and there was a rumor he was on to something big. It seems my worst fears have been realized."

"You know his name?"

The fat man shifted, the chair creaking under the massive redistribution of weight. "Marston Weathers."

"Who's he?"

"Nothing less than the top dinosaur hunter in the country." The fat man gathered his hands together and squeezed. "His friends called him Stem, because he was tall and kind of stringy. Tell me one thing, Mr. Broadbent: did old Stem find what he was looking for?"

Tom hesitated. Somehow, he felt he could trust this man. "Yes."

Another long, sad sigh. "Poor Stem. He died like he lived: ironically."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"A great deal. And in return, Mr. Broadbent, you will tell me about what he found. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

14

WYMAN FORD COULD see the tapering point of Navajo Rim a few hundred yards ahead, where the mesa ended in a small, thumb-shaped butte. The sun hung low in the sky, a disc of red-hot gold. Ford felt exhilarated. He now understood why the Indians of old went off into the wilderness and fasted in search of a vision quest. He had been on half rations for two days, eating only a slice of bread drizzled with a little olive oil for breakfast, and then for dinner half a cupful of cooked lentils and rice. Hunger did strange and wonderful things to the mind; it gave him a feeling of euphoria and boundless energy. He found it curious that a mere physiological effect could produce such a profoundly spiritual feeling.

He skirted the sandstone butte, looking for a way up. The view was incredible, but from the top he would be able to see even more. He edged along a sandstone ledge no more than three feet wide, plunging a thousand feet down into the blue depths of a canyon. He had never been this deep into the high mesa country before, and he felt like an explorer, a John "Wesley Powell. This was, without a doubt, some of the remotest country that existed in the lower forty-eight.

He came around the edge and stopped in surprise and delighted astonishment. There, wedged into the side of the bluff, was a tiny but almost perfect Anasazi cliff dwelling-four small rooms constructed from stacked pieces of sandstone and mortared with mud. He edged around the precipice with great care-how in the world had they raised children here?-and knelt down, peering in the doorway. The tiny room inside was empty, save for a scattering of burned corn cobs and a few potsherds. A single shaft of sunlight penetrating through a broken part of the wall, splashing a brilliant splotch of light on the ground. There were recent footprints in the dust of the floor made by someone wearing hiking boots

with chevron-shaped lugs, and Ford wondered if these belonged to the prospector. It seemed likely; if you were going to search this corner of the high mesas, you couldn't find a better lookout.

He stood up and continued along the ledge past the ruin, where he encountered an ancient hand-and-foot trail pecked into the sloping sandstone, going to the top of the butte.

The summit afforded a dazzling vista across the Echo Badlands, almost, it seemed, to the very curve of the earth itself. To his left, the enormous profile of Mesa de los Viejos loomed up, level after level like a great stone staircase, rising to the foothills of the CanjilonMountains. It was one of the most awesome views it had ever been his privilege to see, as if the Great Creator had blown up and burned the landscape, leaving it an utter wreck.

Ford sorted through his maps and removed one. He traced the quadrants of the map with his eye and then mentally drew those same lines on the badlands in front of him. Having sectioned and numbered the landscape to his satisfaction, he took out his binoculars and began searching the first quadrant, the one farthest to the east. When that was done he moved on to the next one and the next, methodically working his way across the landscape, looking for the peculiar rock formation outlined in the computer plot.

His first sweep yielded too many candidates. Similar formations were often found in groups, having been carved from the same layers of stone by the same action of wind and water. Ford had a growing conviction that he was on the right track, that the T. Rex was somewhere in the Echo Badlands. He just needed to get closer.

He spent the next fifteen minutes examining each quadrant a second time, but while many rock formations looked similar to the one he was after, none were a perfect match. There was always the possibility, of course, that he was looking at the right formation from the wrong angle, or that the formation might be hidden in one of the deep canyons at the far end of the badlands. As his eyes roved about, one canyon in particular captured his attention. TyrannosaurCanyon. It was the longest canyon in the high mesas, deep and tortuous, cutting more than twenty miles across the Echo Badlands, with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of side canyons and tributaries. He identified the great basalt monolith that marked its opening, and he followed its sinuous length with his binoculars. Deep in the badlands, the canyon petered out in a distant valley jammed with queer, domelike rocks. Some of the domes looked uncannily like the image in the computer plot-broader on top, with narrower necks. They were jumbled together like a crowd of bald men knocking their heads together.

Ford measured the distance from the sun to the horizon with his fingers at arm's length, and decided it was about four o'clock. Being June, the sun wouldn't set until well past eight. If he hustled, he could reach the cluster of sandstone domes before dark. It didn't look like there would be any water down there, but he had recently filled his two canteens at a fast-evaporating pothole left from the recent heavy rain, giving him four liters in reserve. He would camp somewhere down in that impressive canyon, commence his exploration at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Sunday. The day of the Lord.

He pushed that thought out of his mind.

Ford took one last look through his binoculars at the deep, mysterious canyon. Something twisted in his gut. He knew the T. Rex. was down there-in TyrannosaurCanyon.

The irony of it made Ford smile.

15

HARRY DEARBORN DREW in a long breath of air, his face hidden in shadow. "My goodness, it's four-thirty already. Would you care for tea?"

"If it isn't too much trouble," Tom said, wondering how the enormously fat man would get out of his chair, let alone make tea.

"Not at all." Dearborn moved his foot slightly and pressed a small bump in the floor; a moment later the dim presence of a servant materialized out of the back of the house.

"Tea."

The man withdrew.

"Now where were we? Ah, yes, Stem Weathers's daughter. Roberta's her name."

"Robbie."

"Robbie, that's what her father called her. Unfortunately, she and her father were somewhat estranged. Last I heard she was trying to make it as an artist in Texas-Marfa, I believe. Down there by the Big Bend. A small town-she should be easy to find."

"How did you know Weathers? Did he collect dinosaurs for you?"

A fat finger tapped on the arm of his chair. "Nobody collects for me, Thomas, although I might pass on suggestions from some of my clients. I have nothing to do with the collecting-beyond requiring documentary proof that the fossil came from private land." Here, Dearborn paused long enough for an ironic smile to stretch across the lower part of his face. Then he continued.

"Most of the fossil hunters out there are looking for small stuff. I call them the ferns and fishes crowd, like our Mr. Beezon. Crap by the truckload. Once in a. while they stumble over something important and that's when they come to me.

I have clients who are looking for somerhing quite particular: businessmen, foreign museums, collectors. I match buyers and sellers and take a twenty percent commission. I never see or touch the specimens. I am not a field man."

Tom stifled a smile.

The servant appeared with an enormous silver tray carrying a pot of tea covered in a quilted cozy, plates heaped with scones, cream puffs, small eclairs, and miniature brioches, jars of marmalade, butter, clotted cream, and honey. He placed the tray on a table to the side of Dearborn and vanished as silently as he had come.

"Excellent!" Dearborn pulled the cozy off the pot, filled two china cups, added milk and sugar.

"Your tea." He handed the cup and saucer to Tom.

Tom took his cup, sipped.

"I insist on my tea being prepared English style, not as the barbaric Americans make it." He chuckled and drained his cup in a single smooth motion, placed it down empty, and then reached out with a plump hand and plucked a brioche from the tray, opened it steaming, slathered it in clotted cream, and popped it in his mouth. He next took a hot crumpet, placed a soft dollop of butter on top, and waited for it to melt before eating it.

"Please, help yourself," he said in a muffled voice.

Tom took an eclair and bit into it. Thick whipped cream squirted out the back and dribbled down his hand. He ate it, licking up the cream and wiping off his hand.

Dearborn smacked his lips, dabbed them with a napkin, and went on. "Stem Weathers wasn't a ferns and fishes man. He was after unique specimens. He spent his whole life looking for that one big strike. Big-time dinosaur hunters are all of a type. They're not in it for money. They're obsessed. It's the excitement of the hunt, the thrill of the strike, an obsession with finding something of enormous rarity and value-that's what keeps them going."

He poured a second cup of tea, raised the cup and saucer to his lips, drained it halfway in a single loud sip.

"I handled Stem's finds but otherwise left him alone. He rarely told me what he was doing or where he was looking. This time, however, word got out that he was on to something big in that high mesa country. He talked to too damn many people looking for information-geophysicists, cosmochemists, curators of paleontology at various museums. It was very unwise of him. He was too well known. The rumors were flying thick and fast. Everyone knew how he operated-his homemade GPR and that notebook were both legendary-so it doesn't surprise

rne someone went in there after him. On top of that, the high mesas is all federal jancj-overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. He wasn't supposed to be in there. Anything taken off BLM land without a proper federal permit is grand tneft-pure and simple. And they only issue permits to a select few museums and universities anyway."

"Why would he take the risk?"

"It's not much of a risk. He's not the only one doing it. Most BLM land is so remote the chances of getting caught are almost nonexistent." "What kind of finds did he bring you?"

Dearborn smiled. "I never kiss and tell. Suffice to say, he never bothered me with mediocre stuff. They say he could smell dead dinosaurs even though they'd been buried millions of years."

He expelled an elegiac sigh, prematurely cut off by a marmaladed scone entering his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and went on.

"His problem wasn't finding the dinosaurs; it was what to do after he found them. The financial side always tripped him up. I tried to help but he was always getting himself into trouble. He was a difficult man, a loner, prickly, easy to take offense. Sure, he might find a dinosaur he could sell for half a million dollars, but just to get that fossil out of the ground and ship it to a lab cost him a hundred grand. It takes about thirty thousand man-hours to clean and prepare a large dinosaur-and that doesn't include mounting it. Weathers cared too much about his dinosaurs and as a result he was always broke. But he sure could find them." "Do you have any idea who murdered him?"

"No. But it isn't hard to guess what might have happened. Some of the lesser folks had taken to following him around. As I said, word got out. He asked too many questions of too many geologists, especially those studying the K-T mass extinction. Everyone knew Stem was on the prowl, sniffing up something big. My guess is he was murdered by a claim jumper." Tom leaned forward. "Anyone in particular?"

Dearborn shook his head, picked up an eclair, and swallowed it. "I know everyone in this business. Black market dinosaur hunters are a rough lot. They get in fistfights at meetings, they rob each other's quarries, they lie, cheat, steal. But murder? I can't see it. I would guess the killer is a newcomer, or perhaps a hired hand who takes his work a little too seriously." He drained his cup, poured another. "These rumors you spoke about?"

"For a couple of years Weathers had been trying to trace a layer of sandstone known as the Hell Creek Formation down into New Mexico."

"Hell Creek?"

"Almost all the T. Rexes in existence have come out of this immense sedimentary formation which crops out in various places across the Rocky Mountains, but which has never been found in New Mexico. The layer was first discovered by a paleontologist named Barnum Brown, in Hell Creek, Montana, about a hundred years ago, when he found the world's first T. Rex. But "Weathers was in search of more than just Hell Creek rocks. He had an obsession with the K-T boundary itself."

"The Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary?"

"That's right. You see, the Hell Creek Formation is topped by the K-T boundary layer. That layer, which is only half an inch thick, records the event that killed off the dinosaurs-the asteroid strike. There aren't many places in the world where there's an interrupted sequence of rocks at the K-T boundary. I think that's what brought him to the high mesa country of Abiquiii-looking for the K-T boundary layer."

"Why was he looking for the K-T boundary specifically?"

"I'm not sure. In general terms, the K-T boundary is about the most interesting layer of rock ever found. It contains the debris from the asteroid impact along with ash from the burning of the earth's forests. There's a spectacularly clear sequence of K-T boundary layer rocks in the RatonBasin in Colorado. They tell quite a story. The asteroid struck where the Yucatln Peninsula of Mexico is now, coming in at an angle that sprayed molten debris across much of North America. They've named the asteroid Chicxulub, a Mayan word meaning 'The Tail of the Devil'-cute, eh?"

He chuckled and used the opportunity to eat another crumpet.

"Chicxulub struck the earth moving at a speed of Mach forty. It was so large that when the bottom of it was contacting the ground the top was higher than Mount Everest. It vaporized a major chunk of the earth's crust on contact, blasting up a plume of material more than a hundred kilometers wide that punched through the earth's atmosphere and went into orbit, some of it rising halfway to the moon before plunging back at speeds of more than twenty-five thousand miles an hour. The falling material superheated much of the atmosphere, igniting gigantic wildfires that swept the continents, releasing a hundred billion tons of carbon dioxide, a hundred billion tons of methane, and seventy billion tons of soot. The smoke and dust was so thick that the earth became as dark as the darkest cave, all photosynthesis stopped, and food chains collapsed. A kind of nuclear winter set in and the earth froze for months; that was immediately followed by a galloping greenhouse effect caused by the sudden release of carbon dioxide and methane. It took 130,000 years for the earth's atmosphere to cool down and return to normal."

Dearborn smacked his lips, licking off a dribble of creme fraiche with a large pink tongue.

"All this is beautifully recorded in the K-T rocks in the RatonBasin. First you see a layer of debris from the impact itself. This layer is grayish and high in the rare element iridium, found in meteorites. Under a microscope, you see it's packed with tiny spherules, frozen droplets of molten rock. Above that layer is a second layer, dead black, which one geologist described as 'the ashes of the Cretaceous world.' Geologists are the most poetic of scientists, don't you think?"

"I'm still puzzled why Weathers would be interested in the K-T boundary if he was just after dinosaur fossils."

"That's a mystery. Maybe he was using that layer as a way to locate T. Rex fossils. The late Cretaceous, just before the extinction, was when tyrannosaurs ruled the earth."

"What's a good T. Rex worth these days?"

"Someone once said that all the people who have ever found a T. Rex wouldn't even be enough to field a baseball team. They're the rarest of the rare. I've got two dozen customers waiting to bid on the next T. Rex that comes on the private market, and I'd guess some of them would be willing to pay a hundred million or more."

Tom whistled.

Dearborn laid down his teacup, his face taking on a thoughtful look. "I had this feeling..."

"Yes?"

"A feeling that Stem Weathers was looking for something more that just a T. Rex. Something to do with the K-T boundary itself. But exactly what, I couldn't say. . ."

His voice trailed off and he poured himself another cup of tea.

"Poor Stem. And poor Robbie. I don't envy you, having to break the news."

He drained the cup, ate one final scone, dabbed his face, and wiped the tips of his fingers with his napkin.

"Now it's your turn to talk, Thomas. Tell me what Stem Weathers found. Naturally, you can count on my discretion." His eyes glowed.

Tom slipped the computer-plotted drawing from his pocket and unfolded it on the the tea table.

Slowly, inexorably, but with huge momentum, the great bulk of Harry Dearborn rose from his chair in silent astonishment.

16

MADDOX STOOD ABOVE the woman, who lay on the bed, her blond hair spread out on the pillow like a halo. She had just begun to stir, gave a moan-and finally her eyes opened. He said nothing, watching the look in her eyes go from confusion to fear as it all came back.

He raised the gun so she could see it. "No monkey business. You can sit up, but that's it."

She sat up, wincing as she did so, the manacles around her wrists and ankles clinking.

He gestured around. "So . . . what do you think?"

No answer.

"I worked hard making it nice for you."

He had spread a small tablecloth on the cable spool to make a table, put some fresh flowers in a jam jar, and had even hung a signed, limited edition print that he had taken from the cabin. The kerosene lantern threw a yellow glow across the room, which was pleasantly cool compared to the late-afternoon heat outside. The air was fresh, too-no mine vapors or poisonous gases.

"When's Tom coming back?" Maddox said.

No answer. The blond looked away. This was starting to piss him off.

"Look at me."

She ignored him.

"I said, look at me." He raised his gun.

She turned her head slowly, insolently, and looked at him. Her green eyes blazed with hatred.

"Like what you see?"

She said nothing. The look on her face was so intense that Maddox found it a

little disconcerting. She didn't look afraid. But she was afraid, he knew that. She was terrified. She had to be. And with good reason.

He stood up and gave her his winning, lopsided smile, holding out his arms. "Yeah, take a good look. I'm not so bad, right?"

No reaction.

"You're going to see a lot of me, you know that? I'm going to start off by showing you the tattoo on my back. Can you guess what it is?"

No reaction.

"It took two weeks to make, four hours a day for fourteen days. A prison buddy of mine did it, a real genius with the needle. You know why I'm telling you this?"

He paused but she said nothing.

"Because that tattoo is the reason I'm here with you today. Now listen carefully. I want that notebook. Your husband has it. When he gives it to me, I let you go-simple. But to do that, I need to get in touch with him. He got a cell phone? Give me the number and you could be out of here in a few hours."

Finally she spoke. "Look him up in the phone book."

"Aw, now why do you have to be a bitch about it?"

She said nothing. Maybe she still thought she had some kind of say in the situation. He would have to show her otherwise. He would break her like a young filly.

"See those shackles on the wall? They're for you, in case you hadn't guessed."

She didn't turn.

"Take a good look at them."

"No."

"Stand up."

She remained seated.

He carefully pointed the gun at her ankle, aimed just to the left, fired. The noise was deafening in the enclosed space, and she jumped like a deer. The bullet had gone through the mattress and tufts of stuffing came drifting down.

"Darn. Missed."

He aimed again. "You'll limp for the rest of your life. Now stand up."

She stood up, her cuffs jingling.

"Shuffle over there where those manacles are set in the wall. You're going to take off your cuffs and put those on."

Now he could see fear leaking through on that arrogant face of hers, despite her efforts to control it. He aimed the gun. "It might even kill you if it nicks an artery."

No answer.

"Are you going to do what I say or do I have to shoot you in the foot? Last warning and I'm not kidding."

Once again, he was serious, and she realized it.

"I'll do it," she said in a smothered voice. Water was leaking out of her eyes.

"Smart girl. Here's how. The same key goes to both sets. Switch off your ankles first, one at a time. Then your right wrist. I'll do your left myself." He tossed her the key. She bent down and picked it up, awkwardly unlocked the manacles around her ankles, and followed his instructions.

"Now drop the key."

He ducked in, retrieved it. "I'm going to do your left wrist." He stepped over to the table, placed the gun down on it, went over, and shackled her left wrist. Then he tested the manacles to make sure they had all latched properly.

He stepped back and picked the gun off the table. "See that?" He pointed to his thigh. "You winged me, you know that?"

"Too bad it wasn't centered and about four inches higher," said Sally.

Maddox laughed harshly. "We got a real comedian here. The sooner you get with the program, the quicker this'll be over. Your husband, Tommy, he's got the notebook. I want it." He aimed the Clock at her foot again. "Give me his number and we can get the ball rolling."

She gave him a cell number.

"Now you're going to get a real treat."

He grinned, stepped back, and began unbuttoning his shirt.

"I'm going to show you my tattoo."

17

THE USUAL HUSH prevailed in the reading room of the Amsterdam Club. The

only sounds were the genteel rustle of newsprint and the occasional clink of ice in a glass. The oak-paneled walls, the dark paintings, and the heavy furniture gave the place a feeling of elegance and timelessness, reinforced by the fragrance of old books and leather.

In one corner, ensconced in a deep chair, illuminated in a pool of yellow light, sat Iain Corvus, sipping a martini and perusing the latest copy of Scientific American. He flipped the pages, not really reading, before tossing the magazine on the side table with impatience. At seven o'clock on a Saturday evening the reading room was beginning to empty, with the members going in to dinner. Corvus had no appetite for either food or conversation. It had now been seventy-two hours since Maddox had last been in contact with him. Corvus had no idea where he was or what he was doing, and no way to contact him safely.

He shifted in his chair, recrossed his legs, and took a good belt from the martini. He felt the welcome spread of warmth in his chest, rising to his head, but it gave him no comfort. So much depended on Maddox; everything depended on Maddox. His career was at a crisis point, and he was at the mercy of an ex-con.

Melodic was working late in the Mineralogy lab, doing further analysis on the specimen. She had proven to be a phenomenal scientist, achieving far more than he'd anticipated. Indeed, she'd done so well that a small worry had begun to creep into his mind-that she might prove to be a more awkward person to share the glory with than he'd originally assumed. He had perhaps made a mistake turning over such an important and groundbreaking analysis to her alone, without at least involving himself enough to justify seizing the credit.

She had promised to call him at eleven with the latest results. He checked his watch: four hours.

What she had discovered was already more than sufficient to present to the tenure meeting. It was a godsend. It would be impossible to deny him tenure and watch the most important dinosaur specimen of all time walk off with him to another museum. No matter how much they disliked him, no matter how much they felt his publication record was inadequate, they wouldn't let that specimen go. It was a stroke of luck beyond all luck-but no, thought Corvus, it wasn't luck at all. Luck, someone said, was when preparation met opportunity. He had prepared well. He'd heard the rumors more than six months ago that Marston Weathers was on the track of something big. He knew the old gobshite was in northern New Mexico hoping to score an illegal dinosaur on BLM land-public land. Corvus had realized that here was a perfect opportunity: to expropriate a dinosaur from a thief and recover it for science. He would be performing a valuable public service-as well as doing himself a good turn.

Corvus had been more than a little disturbed when he learned Maddox had actually killed Weathers, but when he got over the initial shock he realized that it had been the right decision all around-it vastly simplified matters. And it removed from circulation a man who had been responsible for the theft from public land of more irreplaceable scientific specimens than anyone else, living or dead.

Preparation. That fellow Maddox hadn't just fallen into his lap. Maddox had contacted him because of who he was, the world's authority of tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. When Corvus had the idea that Marston Weathers was the key to getting his hands on a first-rate specimen, he had realized just how useful Maddox could be-if he were out of prison. Corvus had taken a personal risk getting that done, but he was helped by the fact that Maddox's conviction was for aggravated manslaughter instead of murder two-he'd had a bloody good lawyer. Maddox had a record of good behavior in prison. And finally, when Maddox's first shot at parole came up, the dead victim had no relatives or friends to pack the hearing and tell their tale of victimhood. Corvus himself had spoken at the hearing, vouching for Maddox and offering to employ him. It had worked and the parole board had released him.

Over time Corvus realized that Maddox himself was a man with rare qualities, a remarkably charismatic and intelligent individual, a smooth talker, good-looking, presentable. Had he been born under different circumstances he might have made a rather decent scientist himself.

Preparation meeting opportunity. So far Corvus had played this one perfectly.

He really should calm down and trust Maddox to carry through on the assignment and get the notebook. The notebook would lead him straight to the fossil. It was the key to everything.

He glanced impatiently at his watch, polished off his martini, and picked up the Scientific American. His mind was now calm.

18

IN THE DIM light of the kerosene lantern, Sally Broadbent watched the man take off his shirt. She could feel the cold steel around her wrists and ankles; she could smell the dampness of the air, hear the dripping of water somewhere. She seemed to be in some kind of cave or old mine. With a coppery taste in her mouth and an aching head, she felt as if it were happening to another person.

Sally did not believe that the man would let her go after he got the notebook from Tom. He would kill her-she could see it in his eyes, in the careless way he showed his face and revealed information about himself.

"Hey, what do you think of this?"

He was facing her, now shirtless, a lopsided grin covering his face, slowly popping his pecs and biceps.

"Ready?"

He held his arms forward, his back hunched. Then all in a rush, he swung around and turned his back to her.

She gasped. There, completely covering his back, was the tattooed image of a charging Tyrannosaurus rex, claws raised, jaws agape, so real it almost seemed to be leaping from his back. As he flexed his muscles the dinosaur actually seemed to move.

"Cool, huh?"

She stared.

"I said something." His back was still turned, and he was popping one set of back muscles after another, making the T. Rex move first one claw, then another, then its head.

"I see it."

"When I was in prison, I decided I needed a tattoo. It's a tradition, know what I mean? It's also a necessity-it says who you are and defines your alliances. Guys without tats usually end up somebody's bitch. But I didn't v/ant the usual death's head, grim reaper crap. I wanted a tattoo that stood for me. A tattoo that told everyone I wasn't going to be anyone's bitch, that I was my own man, that I didn't owe allegiance to anyone. That's why I chose a T. Rex. Nothing meaner's ever lived on this planet.

"But then I had to find the design for it. If I turned my back loose on some idiot, I'd end up with Godzilla or some prison Jack's moronic idea of what a T. Rex might look like. I wanted the real thing. I wanted it scientifically accurate''

He gave a massive flex, the back muscles swelling grotesquely, the jaws of the T. Rex seeming to open and close.

"So I wrote to the world's expert on T. Rex. Of course, he didn't answer my letters. Why would a guy like that correspond with a convicted murderer in PelicanBay?"

He chuckled softly, flexed again. "Take a good look there, Sally. There's never been a more accurate depiction of a T. Rex-not in any book, not in any museum. All the latest scientific research is in there."

Sally swallowed, listened.

"Anyway, after a year of no answer, all of a sudden this dinosaur expert wrote me back. We had quite a correspondence. He sent me all the latest research, even stuff that hadn't been published. He sent me drawings in his own hand. I had a real tattoo expert do it for me. As the T. Rex came to life, whenever I had a question my dino man on the outside would answer it. He made time for me. He was really into it, making sure this T. Rex was the real thing."

Another rolling flex.

"We got to be friends-more like brothers. And then-you know what he did?"

Sally worked her mouth, managed to say, "What?"

"He sprung me from the slam. I was doing ten to fifteen, aggravated manslaughter, but he vouched for me at my hearing, gave me money and a job. So when he asked me for a favor, I wasn't in a position to refuse. You know what that favor was?"

"No."

"To get that notebook."

She swallowed again, fought against a fresh wave of fear. He would never be telling her this unless he planned to kill her.

He stopped flexing, turned back around, picked up his shirt, pulled it on. "You see now why I'm going to so much trouble? But I've got to go make a phone call. I'll be back."

Then he turned and walked out of her little prison-room.

19

AS THE CAR neared Tucson, Tom tried his cell phone again and found there was finally coverage. He checked his watch. Half past five. He'd been with Dearborn longer than he thought. He was going to have to hustle to make his six-thirty flight.

He dialed his home number to check in on Sally. The phone rang a few times and the answering machine kicked on. "Hi, this is Tom and Sally. Tom's away on business and I'm out of town unexpectedly, so we won't be able to get back to you right away. Sorry about the missed lessons, I'll get back to everyone later. Leave a message, thanks."

The beep followed and Tom hung up the phone, surprised and suddenly concerned. What was this about being out of town unexpectedly? Why hadn't she called him? Maybe she did call-his cell phone was out of range at Dearborn's place. He quickly checked his phone but it had registered no missed calls.

With a growing sense of unease he dialed his home number again, listened to the message more carefully. She didn't sound normal at all. He pulled over to the side of the road and redialed this time listening very closely. Something was terribly wrong. Tom felt his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. He pulled back on the interstate with a screech of rubber. As he accelerated, he dialed the Santa Fe Police and asked for Detective Wilier. A frustrating two transfers later the familiar stolid voice answered.

"It's Tom Broadbent."

"Yeah?"

"I'm out of town and I just called home. Something's not right at my house. My wife should be there but she's not, and she left a message on the answering

machine that makes no sense. I think she was forced to leave that message. Something's happened."

A silence, and then Wilier said, "I'll go out there right now and take a look."

"I want you to do more than that. I want you to pull out all the stops and find her."

"You think she's been kidnapped?"

Tom hesitated. "I don't know."

A pause. "Anything else we should know?"

"I've told you what I know. Just get out there as quickly as possible."

"I'll take care of it personally. Do we have permission to break in, if the door's locked?"

"Yes, of course."

"When are you getting back to town?"

"My flight from Tucson's landing at seven-thirty."

"Give me your number, I'll call you from the house."

Tom gave his cell phone number and hung up. A feeling of powerlessness and self-reproach washed over him. What a fool he'd been, leaving Sally by herself.

He accelerated, laying the pedal to the metal, blasting down the asphalt at over hundred. No way could he miss this flight.

Fifteen minutes later his cell phone rang.

"Am I speaking to Tom Broadbent?"

It wasn't Wilier. "Look, I'm waiting for an important-"

"Shut up, Tommy boy, and listen."

"Who the hell is-?"

"I said shut up."

A pause.

"I got your little lady. Sally. She's safe-for now. All I want is the notebook. You follow? Just answer yes or no."

Tom gripped the phone so hard as if to crush it. "Yes," he finally managed to say.

"When I get the notebook, you get Sally back."

"Listen, if you even so much as-"

"I'm not going to say it again. Shut the hell up."

Tom heard the man breathing heavily into the other end of the phone.

The voice said, "Where are you?"

"I'm in Arizona-"

"When do you get back?"

"Seven-thirty. Listen to me-"

"I want you to listen to me. Very carefully. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"After your flight lands, get in your car and drive to Abiquiu. Go through town and get on Highway 84 north of the dam. Don't stop for anything. You should be there at around nine o'clock. You've got the notebook on you?"

"Yes."

"Good. I want you to take the notebook, put it in a Ziploc bag, and pack it full of trash to make it look like garbage. The trash has to be yellow. You get it? Bright yellow. Drive back and forth on Highway 84 between the dam turnoff and the Ghost Ranch turnoff. Drive at exactly sixty miles an hour with your cell phone on. Coverage is pretty good, only a few dead spots. I'll call you then with more instructions. Understand?"

"Yes."

"What's your flight number?"

"Southwest Airlines 662."

"Good. I'm going to check and find out when you actually land, and I'll expect you up by Ghost Ranch one hour and twenty-five minutes later. Don't stop at home, don't do anything but drive straight up to Abiquiu. You understand? Just go back and forth between the dam and Ghost Ranch until you get my call. Keep it at sixty."

"Yes. But if you hurt her-"

"Hurt Sally? She's going to be taken care of real good, provided you do everything I say in exactly the way I say it. And Tom? No cops. Let me tell you why. No kidnapping ever succeeded after the police were called in. You ever hear that statistic? When the cops are called in, the kidnapping fails and the victim usually dies. You call the police and I'm screwed. The cops'll take over, they'll do their own thing, and they won't pay any attention to you or your concerns. You'll lose control, I'll lose control, and Sally will die. You understand what I'm saying? You call the cops, and you'll be kissing your wife good-bye on a stainless-steel gurney in the basement of 1100 WestAirport. Clear?"

Silence.

"Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes."

"Good. It'll just be you and me, in total control at all times. I get the notebook, you get your wife. Total control. Understand?"

"Yes."

"I've got a police band radio here and I've got other ways of knowing if you call the cops. And I've got a partner, too."

The man clicked off.

Tom could hardly drive, hardly see the road. Almost immediately, the phone rang again. It was Wilier.

"Mr. Broadbent? We're at your place, in the living room, and I'm afraid we've got a problem."

Tom swallowed, unable to find his voice.

"We got a round in the wall here. The SOC boys are on their way to take it out."

Tom realized he was veering all over the highway, his foot to the metal, the car going almost a hundred and ten. He slowed the car and made an enormous effon to concentrate.

"You there?" came Willer's distant voice.

Tom found his voice. "Detective Wilier, I want to thank you for your trouble, but everything's fine. I just heard from Sally. She's fine."

"She is?"

"Her mom's sick, she had to go to Albuquerque."

"Jeep's still in the garage."

"She took a cab, that car doesn't work."

"What about the F350?"

"That's only for hauling horses."

"I see. About this round-"

Tom managed an easy laugh. "Right. It's... that's an old one."

"Looks fresh to me."

"Couple of days ago. My gun went off accidentally."

"Is that so?" The voice was cold.

Right.

"Mind telling me what make and caliber?"

"Thirty-eight Smith & Wesson revolver." There was a long silence. "As I said, Detective, I'm sorry to have bothered you, I really am. False alarm."

"Got a spot of blood here on the rug, too. That also 'old'?"

Tom didn't quite find an answer to that. He felt a wave a nausea. If those bastards had hurt her ... "A lot of blood?"

"Just a spot. It's still wet."

"I don't know what to tell you about that, Detective. Maybe someone . . . cut himself." He swallowed.

"Who? Your wife?"

"I don't know what to tell you."

He listened to the hissing silence in the phone. He had to make that flight and

he had to deal with the man himself. He never should have left Sally alone. "Mr. Broadbent? Are you familiar with the term 'probable cause'?"

Yes.

"That's what we've got here. We entered the house with your permission, we found probable cause that a crime had been committed-and now we're going to search it. We don't need a warrant under those circumstances."

Tom swallowed. If the kidnapper was watching the house and saw it full of

cops . . .

"Just make it quick."

"You say your plane lands at seven-thirty?" Wilier asked.

"Yes."

"I'd like to see you and your wife-sick mother or not-tonight. At the station. Nine o'clock sharp. You also might want to bring that lawyer you mentioned. I have a feeling you're going to need him."

"I can't. Not at nine. It's impossible. And my wife is in Albuquerque-"

"This is not an optional appointment, Broadbent. You be there at nine or I'll get a warrant for your arrest. Is that clear?"

Tom swallowed. "My wife has nothing to do with this."

"You don't produce her and your problem will get worse. And let me tell you, pal, it's bad already."

The phone went dead.