Norman Partridge - Saguaro Riptide

The two women scrambled out of the Jeep. Both of them were okay. Nothing more than a few bumps and bruises. Wyetta jumped off the passenger side of the Jeep and started jogging up the road. She didn’t even break stride. The only thing Rorie could do was follow.

The wind lashed her, and the blowing sand slapped her with callused intensity. Rorie squinted into the storm. She could hardly see Graceland at all. And Wyetta stood next to her, but she looked like a ghost. Suddenly, Rorie worried that the storm would tear Wyetta apart and the wind would steal her away.

“You see Komoko’s car?” Wyetta yelled.

“No.” Rorie answered. “You think he saw us? You think he heard the siren?”

“I don’t think he could have seen anything in this goddamn bliz-”

Wyetta’s words died in her throat. Just ahead, twin fireballs raced through the storm-a pair of headlights coming straight for them.

Rorie hit the dirt and rolled through a tangle of stunted mesquite. Wyetta held her ground, opening fire with her.44 American.

One of the fireballs died. The other stopped moving as Wyetta squeezed off her last shot.

Rorie couldn’t believe that Wyetta had actually hit the driver, not in this concrete wind. But the surviving headlight remained motionless, and there was no arguing with that.

Rorie stood and drew her pistol. Wyetta was suddenly at her side, reloading her.44.

The wind tore at them.

They both knew what they had to do.

Together, they raced toward the light, firing their weapons but hearing nothing more than the angry scream of the concrete blizzard.

The car was empty.

Wyetta dipped her head inside.

“He took the keys,” she yelled.

“No he didn’t.” Rorie stood at the rear of the car. The keys were in the trunk. And the trunk was open.

Wyetta swore. “He’s got the money. He’s rabbiting.”

Once more, they reloaded their guns. Rorie’s fingers wouldn’t move right. She gave up with only five shells in the clip, jammed it into the butt of her automatic. The crash, the storm, the gunshots. . she was numb. Colder than she’d ever been in her life. She felt dead, and the wind was shoveling dirt over her, a boot hill of dirt blowing out of the night sky.

She didn’t want to go anywhere. She just wanted to stand there in the storm, and take it, and wait for it to finish her off.

But Wyetta was moving. “This way,” she yelled. “He’s gotta be heading back to Graceland. It’s the only shelter for miles.”

Rorie sucked a deep breath and tasted that boot hill dirt on her tongue.

She swallowed hard.

If she didn’t move, she’d lose Wyetta in the concrete night.

She moved.

They stood by the grave. A warm breath of wind washed Rorie’s forehead. Tonight it was so very quiet. Almost peaceful.

“It has to be here,” Wyetta said. God, but she couldn’t seem to shut up. “Wyatt spelled it out on the Ouija board. EAP. . TCB.”

She pointed at the big bronze marker. Rorie stared at it. The grave of Elvis Aron Presley. EAP . His personal motto stood out in stark relief at the bottom. TCB , with a lightning bolt sprouting from the C. And any fool knew that TCB stood for takin’ care of business.

EAP. . TCB. Rorie wondered if the Ouija board had really spelled out those letters for Wyetta. She decided that it really didn’t matter. Even if the board had spelled out the message, the fingers on the heart-shaped cedar planchette belonged to Wyetta, and Wyetta already knew about the grave marker, which was a twin to the marker at the real Graceland. The message could be nothing more than a trick of the sheriff’s subconscious mind.

“Damn!” Wyetta said. “Check this out, cowgirl!”

Wyetta was kneeling at the bottom corner of the marker. She slipped one Annie Oakley-gloved hand into a hole. Elbow deep, then further.

“Maybe it’s only some jackrabbit’s burrow.”

“Looks a little bit wide for that.” Wyetta grunted. “But it doesn’t matter if it is. Komoko could have jammed the money into it during the storm. Damn hole probably filled up with sand that night, anyway. Maybe the storm buried his loot for him.”

Rorie could see that Wyetta was probably right about that last part. Fresh sand was heaped around the edge of the hole. Maybe the storm had filled it up.

If that was true, someone else had already emptied it.

Or some thing. Rorie wondered if a Gila monster waited in the rabbit hole. Those nasty suckers sometimes took over other animal’s burrows, and they were dangerous, venomous. .

“Be careful,” Rorie warned. “You don’t know what the hell’s down there.”

Wyetta’s eyes gleamed. “Yes I do.”

Her arm traveled deeper. Almost up to the shoulder. “Whatever made this hole did a damn good job-practically hollowed out the area under the marker. Damn. I wish my arm was longer. .”

Rorie stared at the fresh dirt heaped around the hole. She spotted a boot print pressed in the soft sand. The pattern wasn’t anything like Wyetta’s Noconas, or the Tony Lamas Rorie was wearing. The print didn’t look like one of Ellis’s motorcycle boots, either.

“The money isn’t here, Wyetta.”

“Hold your horses, cowgirl. It’s got to be here. Maybe Komoko shoved it in real good with a branch or something. Maybe what we need to do is get a truck with a winch on it. Haul this goddamn hunk of bronze out of the way and-”

Rumbling thunder slapped the sheriff’s words.

Rorie looked to the heavens.

Nothing there but blue sky.

Again the thunder. Only this time she recognized it as a shotgun blast.

Maybe a mile away. Maybe not that far.

Maybe as close as Priscilla’s trailer.

Wyetta pulled to a stop in a tangle of brush surrounded by cottonwoods. She drew her pistol and stepped out of the Jeep. Rorie did the same.

Fifty feet of scrub separated them from the trailer. Ellis’s scab-colored Caddy was parked in front, but Rorie didn’t see any other cars. Of course, it would be easy enough to hide one in the brush. She kept her eyes peeled for Baddalach’s Range Rover or Benteen’s Dodge Dakota. The Range Rover was new, metallic blue. It would be easy to spot. Benteen’s truck would be tougher-painted a dry-twig beige, with rust spots, it could blend in pretty easy.

Wyetta flashed a hand-signal. The two women parted, advancing on the trailer from different angles.

They were getting real close now.

Rorie stepped over a net of twigs. Middle-of-nowhere quiet out here. The least little sound was magnified a hundred times. The way the shotgun blast had been. The way-

A loud voice came from the trailer, “I'll tell you anything you want. . but you have to get me out of here.”

Rorie stopped dead in her tracks. She glanced to the right and saw Wyetta frozen the same way. Because it was Priscilla’s voice they’d heard. And it was so loud. And Priscilla never raised her voice at all, not even when-

"I'll do my best. That’s all I can promise.”

Rorie had only talked to Jack Baddalach twice. Still, she was sure that the second voice belonged to him.

But why was he yelling?

"That's not good enough,” Priscilla said, “I can't stand it here. Not another minute. not with that son of a bitch I'm married to. If you want to know what happened to Komoko, you have to get me out of here. Either that, or you’ve got to kill him for me.”

Rorie was shaking. Priscilla’s voice was so cold. And it sounded like a whisper. But it was the loudest whisper she had ever heard.

Something square and black ripped through the trailer’s screen door. Rorie brought her pistol up. Out of the comer of her eye she saw Wyetta mimic the action.

The black thing kicked up dust as it landed between them.