Bill Pronzini: The Other Side Of Silence

Well, there was some truth in that. He’d been a fighter once, yes-the army had honed that tendency in him-but it had been more of necessity than choice. Like his drift into corporate security, the only well-paying job his four years of MP duty qualified him for, but work that didn’t really satisfy him. He’d never felt comfortable in mainstream society. Cities and suburbs made him feel hemmed in, even though he’d lived in one or another most of his life. Too many complications, pressures, distractions. Traffic-clogged freeways, urban blight, random violence, gang-infested neighborhoods like the one he’d grown up in in East L.A. Those, and all the other by-products of what was laughingly called modern civilization: global warming, Nine-Eleven and the looming threat of terrorism, the stupid Iraq War.

Timmy’s death had eroded the bonds that not only held him to Geena but to the hostile urban environment and a lifestyle that was mostly of her choosing and direction. Disenchanted, disaffected-he was both of those things. An escapist, too? Not the way Geena had meant it. He didn’t want to hide from the world; he wanted to narrow it down to a better fit for Rick Fallon. And that meant open spaces, places without people, places without engines.

The desert country had a way of simplifying things, reducing life to an elemental and much more tolerable level. It cleansed your mind, allowed you to think clearly. Allowed you to breathe. It was in his blood; it kept calling him back. The one place he truly belonged.

This wasn’t a new thought by any means. It was the main reason he’d taken the time off. Spend a couple of weeks in and around the Valley, reassure himself that the pull was strong enough to hold him permanently. And then quit Unidyne, quit Encino, start a whole new life. He wouldn’t be able to live in the Monument-permanent residence was limited to a small band of Paiutes and Park Service employees-but he could find a place in one of the little towns in the Nevada desert, Beatty or Goldfield or Tonopah. Hire out as a guide, do odd jobs-whatever it took to support himself. Money wouldn’t be a problem anyway; once the house and the rest of their joint possessions sold, he’d have several thousand dollars to fall back on.

Late that third afternoon he hiked back to where he’d left the Jeep. It had a sophisticated alarm system and he used the Club to lock the steering wheel, but they were habitual, city-bred precautions. He’d never had any trouble with thieves or vandals out here.

Before he crawled into his sleeping bag he sifted through the topos again to pick his next spot. He wasn’t sure why he chose Manly Peak. Maybe because he hadn’t been in the southern Panamints, through Warm Springs Canyon, in better than three years. Still, the region was not one of his favorites. A large portion of the area was under private claim, and the owners of the talc mines along the canyon took a dim view of trespassers. You had to be extra careful to keep to public lands when you packed in there.

Just before dawn he ate a couple of nutrition bars for breakfast, then pointed the Jeep down Highway 178. The sun was out by the time he reached the Warm Springs Canyon turnoff. The main road in was unpaved, rutted, and talc-covered-primarily the domain of eighteen-wheelers passing to and from the mines. You needed at least a four-wheel-drive vehicle to negotiate it and the even rougher trail that branched off of it. He wouldn’t have taken a passenger car over one inch of that terrain. Neither would anyone else who knew the area or paid attention to the Park Service brochures, guidebooks, and posted signs.

That was why he was so surprised when he came on the Toyota Camry.

He’d turned off the main canyon road ten miles in, onto the trail into Butte Valley, and when he rounded a turn on the washboard surface there it was, pulled off into the shadow of a limestone shelf. No one visible inside or anywhere in the immediate vicinity.

He brought the Jeep up behind and went to have a look. All four of the Toyota’s tires were intact, a wonder given the road condition, but the car was no longer drivable. A stain that had spread out from underneath told him that the oil pan had been ruptured. The Camry had been there a while, at least two days; the look and feel of the oil stain proved that. He had to be the first person to come by since it was abandoned, or it wouldn’t still be sitting here like this. Not many hikers or off-roaders ventured out this way in the off-season, the big ore trucks used the main canyon road, and there weren’t enough park rangers for daily backcountry patrols.

The Toyota’s side windows were so dust- and talc-caked that he could barely see through them. He tried the driver’s door, found it unlocked. The interior was empty except for two things on the front seat. One was a woman’s purse, open, the edge of a wallet poking out. The other was a piece of lined notepaper with writing on it in felt-tip pen, held down by the weight of the purse.

Fallon slid the paper free. On top was a date-Wednesday, two days ago-and the word “Dear” scratched out, as if the writer had decided there was no one to address the note to. Below that were several lines of shaky backhand printing. He sensed what it was even before he finished reading it.

I can’t go on anymore. There’s no hope left. Court Spicer and his man Banning have seen to that. I’m sorry for everything and sick of all the hurt and trouble and it’s too painful knowing I might never see Kevin again.

He couldn’t quite decipher the scrawled signature. Casey or Cassy something. He opened the wallet and fanned through the card section until he found her driver’s license. The Camry had California plates and the license had also been issued in the state. Casey Dunbar. Age 32. San Diego address. The face in the ID photo was attractive, light-haired, unsmiling.

The wallet contained half a dozen snapshots, all of a boy eight or nine years old. Fallon felt a wrenching sensation when he looked at them. The boy might have been Timmy if he’d lived to that age-different features but the same lean, smiling face, the same mop of fair hair falling over his forehead.

Nothing else in the wallet told him anything. One credit card was all Casey Dunbar owned. And twelve dollars in fives and singles.

Fallon returned the wallet to the purse, folded the note in there with it, and slid the purse out of sight under the seat. A set of keys dangled from the ignition; he removed them, locked the car before he pocketed them. In his mouth was a dryness that had nothing to do with the day’s gathering heat.

If she’d brought along a gun or pills or some other lethal device, she was long dead by now. If she’d wanted the Valley to do the job for her, plenty enough time had elapsed for that, too, given the perilous terrain and the proliferation of sidewinders and daytime temperatures in the midnineties and no water and the wrong kind of clothing.

Yet there was a chance she was still alive. No carrion feeders in sight-a favorable sign, but not conclusive. It all depended on where she was.

All right. Alive or dead or dying, she had to be found, and quickly. He hurried back to the Jeep for his Zeiss binoculars.

HE CLIMBED UP ON the hood, made a slow scan of the surrounding terrain with the powerful 7 × 50 glasses. The valley floor here was flattish, mostly fields of fractured rock slashed by shallow washes. Clumps of low-growing creosote bush and turtleback were the only vegetation. He had an unobstructed look over a radius of several hundred yards.

No sign of her.

Some distance ahead there was higher ground. He drove too fast on the rough road, had to warn himself to slow down. At the top of a rise he stopped again and went to climb a jut of limestone to a notch in its crest. From there he had a much wider view, all the way to Striped Butte and the lower reaches of the Panamints.