She had to silence Maria Fischer.
Listening to the tap and hum of the big twin turbine-jet helicopter, Dan watched the mountains roll underneath. Sitting next to him was a young officer they called Shane. Curly blond hair framed intense blue eyes that seemed to take in everything. The guy was slender but strong and fit. When they couldn't get Kier Wintripp, a Tilok Indian from the next county who was evidently on his honeymoon in Hawaii, they got Shane.
Next to Shane sat Sergeant Frank Spinoza, a dark-haired man with a reputation for grim determination that often irritated the sheriff but usually resulted in a conviction. Squad cars were to arrive in thirty minutes, but Shane and Frank were authorized to go in if it looked manageable. The highway-patrol copter would go in first. Dan was to remain in Otran's chopper with the pilot until the all clear was given and under no circumstances was the aircraft to enter a live fire zone. The rules were irritating but unavoidable.
Upon arriving, they circled with the highway-patrol chopper. No vehicles were visible at the farm. Staying back about 300 yards, they watched the California Highway Patrol (CHP) copter land.
"We're down and taking no fire," the CHP radioed.
Frank nodded at Otran's pilot.
"We're coming in," the pilot said.
In seconds they were on the ground.
"House or barn first?" Shane asked Frank.
"Let's knock at the house first."
Dan watched them head out, impatient to look around but constrained by his promise to stay. On the front porch they drew their revolvers while the CHP headed toward the back door. No one came to the door. Dan watched them try to open it. Locked. In a couple of minutes the CHP opened the front door. Obviously, they had walked in the back.
"No one home, but two cars in the carport," Frank said over the police radio as they exited the house.
"Ground to Helo," Shane said.
"Helo here," the pilot said.
"Any signs of life?"
"Not yet."
"Stick around. We're going in the barn."
After what seemed like minutes, the radio crackled.
"Come on in," Shane said.
Dan jumped from the copter, his heart in his throat. At the door he slowed.
"Careful," Frank said. "There's no Maria Fischer so far, but it's a murder scene. Don't touch anything. Don't step in anything. You shouldn't even be in here." Frank walked ahead, nodding at the body in the corner.
Dan involuntarily began to retch.
"Somebody castrated him."
"They did more man that. Cut off everything down there. Not to mention his eyes."
"Anyone home?" Frank shouted again. He received no reply.
"Look at that," Frank whispered, nodding at the hangman's noose and the two concrete blocks, bathed in bright light.
''Somebody built themselves a special little room," Shane said, entering what looked like a giant plywood box. It was crude on the outside, but Dan marveled at the finish work within-Sheetrock, carpet, the large two-way mirror. And a single chair. Cuffs on the ground. Blood. A lingering odor-pepper spray.
"They had her in here, I'll bet," Shane said.
Dan went back out and to the other side of the mirror.
The camcorder, mounted and ready to record, sat beside the huge recliner. A single bottle of German beer sat by the chair with no more than two or three swigs gone.
"We'll print it all," said Frank.
Shane nodded, analyzing the scene.
"Maybe they were interrupted," Dan said.
''Why would anybody want to go to this much trouble to interrogate Maria Fischer?" Frank asked.
"I would guess because somebody wanted to know what she knew about a lot of things."
"Like what?"
"Turning trees into gasoline, toxic ponds, stuff like that. And maybe somebody wanted to know if Patty McCafferty was selling favors to the timber industry."
"Can they really turn trees into oil?"
"Price is the issue. It can be done, though. In twenty years it'll be commonplace."
"How do you know about all this?"
"Seems Ms. Fischer and I are a nosy pair." Dan looked at the empty interrogation chair, the bloody cuffs. He bit his lip and offered a wordless prayer that she had escaped.
There must be something, some kind of clue, he thought, walking out of the room and along the perimeter of the barn. Minutes later Dan came to the broken board. He studied the hole. Then he noticed a handprint just outside, in the mud, and seconds later he made out the plaid fibers of a Pendleton shirt on the board's rough edge. Maria liked those shirts. A big fan of wool. She had even bought him one.
"Frank, Shane, come here," Dan called. "She went through here."
Two minutes later, Dan was back in the helicopter, flying under the high overcast, studying the terrain. Frank Spinoza had joined him, the pilot, and the sheriff's deputy while Shane followed the trail on the ground.
Situated on a bench near a ridge top, the house was surrounded by thick, mixed conifer forests, with the exception of two small emerald-green meadow areas nearby. At low altitude the forest looked like a textured, rolling mosaic of pointy dark greens-the conifers-and bubblelike, lighter greens-the hardwoods-with occasional flecks of gray and earth-tone reds in areas of thinner growth, where tree trunks were visible. The trail leading from the barn was exceedingly hard to make out, but it was apparent to Dan that if Maria had stayed on the flat bench paralleling the ridge top, she would have remained in the thick forest.
About a mile and a quarter from the house, the bench narrowed and met the headwaters of the Marmon River. Dan willed his eyesight to improve, desperate to see Maria safe, but the forest floor was for the most part obscured from the air; they could fly over a small army and not know it. Occasionally, though, he did catch a glimpse of Shane, moving quickly, jumping over logs, and zigzagging through the trees along the bench like a determined tailback hurtling toward the goal line.
Frank pointed. "More than likely, if she stayed on the bench, she hit that creek and went down it. It's human nature to run downhill when you're in trouble-and water always leads to civilization. Let's concentrate there."
28
Maria moved quickly despite the pain in her hands and the watering of her eyes, able through years of conditioning to maintain a steady jog except in the most obstructed areas. By her reckoning, she was now more than a mile from the barn. Moving through some dense brush, she suddenly imagined that she could hear a low-flying helicopter. She stopped, looked up, but could see nothing through the dense canopy of leaves. Could be the police, she thought-or it could be the bad guys. She plunged on through the forest, head down, moving like an animal, making herself small by shrugging her shoulders inward, squeezing along narrow pathways in the underbrush.
After traveling for about forty-five minutes, she began following a small stream downhill, but the stream's course was choked with fallen trees. Growing up through the crisscrossed logs were huckleberry, salmonberry, thimbleberry, young alders, and a host of other greenery, all of it forming an almost impassable wall. It was tough-going: a bruising, scraping, and soon bloody experience. She was forced to move up the sidehill, higher up the ravine above the creek bottom.
She had been running for maybe twenty minutes when she came to the first marijuana patch. Black plastic pipe traversed the hillside, sometimes partly buried and sometimes above ground, feeding the young marijuana plants in their large clay pots. The pots had been placed next to large trees, effectively concealed from prying eyes in police helicopters.
Knowing she was in danger from growers determined to keep their gardens a secret, Maria moved quickly downstream, where the country opened up. The trees and undergrowth thinned, allowing her to move easily-not hunched over all the time-but also making her more vulnerable to detection. Natural meadows formed great green ribbons down the hillside. Interspersed with the meadows were patches of forest comprised of leafy hardwoods and arrow-shaped conifers. Maria moved along the meadow edges now, trying to stay hidden without delving into the denser forest. Deep blue-gray gullies were water-carved, appearing like giant tears flowing down the flanks of the mountain, often choked with brush, sometimes vertical sided and not easily crossable. She suspected she was on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property, designated a wilderness area despite the pot-growing squatters.