Stephen Gallagher - Valley of lights

'Of course I would,' he said. 'How else could I have lived so long?'

'You really want to live forever?'

'There is no forever. There's only now.'

Angela Price was frowning now. She'd picked up on the antagonism between us, but she was mystified by the details. So in an attempt to steer us onto more accessible ground, I said to Winter, 'Let the child go, and face me.'

'Sure,' he said lightly. 'What kind of face would you like to see?'

'How about the Encanto Park killer?'

There was a long silence. Glancing to the side, I could see that Angela Price's eyes were wide-open in surprise… and they were shining with a light all of their own.

Winter said, 'Are you trying to trace this call?'

'No,' I said.

'Never lie to me, Alex,' he said. 'Just sit 'back and watch the show, and think about the day when you'll be the star of it. Because that day's coming sooner than you think.'

And then he hung up, and after a moment I did the same.

Then I looked at Angela Price and said, 'That was Bobby Winter.'

She nodded. She walked up and down a little, trying to get it all straight in her mind before we went any further. Winter had suspected me of having the call traced, that was why he'd hung up so fast, which meant that he was ringing from somewhere that he regarded as a base. Somewhere that he wanted to protect, somewhere that he couldn't leave in a hurry.

Somewhere that he kept his insurance, in the form of those empty shells pulled back from the brink of death.

Angela Price said, 'What was that about a child?'

'He's holding my neighbour's kid,' I said. 'You see why I want to find him?'

'And he's the Encanto Park killer?'

'He's all messed up. He thinks he's a lot of things. I got onto him and he found out about it, and this is his way of keeping my hands tied. How do you see why I want to know where he was sighted?'

She took this in, added it to what she already knew. I wanted her to make up her own picture, because she sure as hell wouldn't believe mine.

She said, 'Before we go any further. I'm in on this, right?'

'I kind of thought you might want to be. You want to make a deal?'

'Depends on the terms.'

'You can follow me around and watch the whole thing,' I said, 'as long as you don't get in the way and you don't ask questions. You want to try making sense of it, you work it out for yourself.'

'Is this the department talking, or just you?'

'The department isn't involved,' I said flatly. 'This is just me and him.'

'Oh, wow,' she said, starry-eyed and looking into the distance, but I knew that it wasn't because of me – she was seeing what her report was going to be like when it came out as an exclusive, I Walked with the Manhunter or High Moon in the Valley of the Sun or some other heap of purple-prose guano.

I said, 'I don't care how I come out of this, but we've got to start moving now. He's probably planning to hit somebody tonight, that's the show he's talking about – and I don't want to be wasting time looking for those two kids and hauling them out of class, so how about it?'

She dug in her bag, brought out some keys.

'We can go in my car,' she said.

This suited me fine, as Winter would probably know my car by now. She also wanted me to drive, which suited me as well because I tend to get carsick as a passenger, although I didn't realise the reason behind this request until we'd been on the road for about half an hour. She had me heading south, but wouldn't say exactly where we were going. This was good policy from her point of view, whether she knew it or not, because my intention was to dump her as soon as I had the information I needed. I'd already reported in sick with a phonecall, so from then on my way would be clear.

Ahead of us lay more than a hundred miles of dry cotton-country leading on to Tucson, and beyond that the Mexican border; in between were maybe a dozen small farming towns strung out along the main road, to which I could add homesteads and ranches and a big air base somewhere close to Marana. I'd tried fishing for specifics already, and she hadn't risen to the bait; for my part I was playing it cagy about my own background in the affair, and when she asked me how I'd come to be suspicious of Winter, I said, 'I never was. He's the one who picked me out with some crazy idea about having met up with me in his other lives. He's about as loopy as they come.'

'And you didn't report the kidnap to your superiors?'

'No.'

'Do you know what effect this may have on your police career?'

'I'm more concerned with the effect on the little girl,' I said, and then something about the style of the questions made me curious and I glanced down, and then glanced down again when I realised that I'd just seen that she was holding a microphone and that there was a compact reel-to-reel machine turning on her lap. I said, 'How long have you been recording me?'

And she said, 'It's what I'm here for. Give me a break, Sergeant. We're en route to foil a kidnap, it's actuality.'

'Call me Alex.'

'Give me a break, Alex.'

'Only if you'll tell me where we're going.'

She half-smiled then, and looked out of the window. At that moment we were on a long bridge over a dry creek that had tyre tracks in it. She must have decided that we'd come far enough for me not to turn back and set out again alone, because she said, 'He was seen in Florence. The University's got a cotton research station or something like that around there, so sometimes the kids out on field studies drop into town to buy stuff. One of them recognised Winter coming out of the general store and saw him climb into a red pickup and drive away, end of story.'

'And that's all?'

'It's a start, isn't it?'

'Yeah,' I said, although it wasn't as much of a start as I'd been hoping for. Florence was the main town out in Pinal County, not exactly big but certainly big enough for somebody to hide out unseen, especially if they were to base themselves on the outskirts and only come in for essential supplies.

Angela had stopped the tape now, and she took off the full reel and slipped it into a box which, after she'd marked it, went into the glove compartment. I made sure that I noted where it went. There were some other boxes just like it in there, but most of the space seemed to be taken up by a disorganised private pharmacy.

I found out the reasons for it five minutes later, when she started to sneeze.

I'd been driving along with my window open, as was my habit; but now we were running through wide open fields with ploughed land to the right and cotton to the left, and there was some kind of fine white dust that was lifting and drifting across our path from the planted areas. It was like a dry desert snow, and it seemed to be getting to her. I closed my window, but by then it was too late.

'I moved to the desert because of my asthma,' she said apologetically, 'so now I have allergies instead. I'm going to have to take something. Just long enough for me to get a glass of water, okay?'

'Sure,' I said.

We pulled off the road at a small wooden-hut diner that stood in the middle of a stony clearing on its own. We went in and sat at the counter, and along with the iced water for Angela I ordered a cup of coffee that I didn't want, by way of rent. There was nobody else in the place apart from an older man in a straw Stetson at the far end of the counter, who only seemed to be here to talk to the waitress.

When I looked back to see what Angela was doing, she'd taken four or five different bottles out of her bag and was checking the labels on each to see which one she wanted.

I said, 'The doctor says you have to take all these?'

'They're not prescription drugs,' she said. 'They're homeopathic medicines. And before you ask, no, it doesn't mean anything kinky.'