Too bad it hadn’t worked for Heath. Too bad he hadn’t run to the bunkhouse with his sister. “You know,” she said, “we always wondered why the Wynne children didn’t stay together. I assumed from where I found him that Heath was trying to get to the Scurlocks’ for help. But why didn’t Oriana go with him?”
“Maybe they didn’t start out together.”
“No, one of the few things she remembered was that she and her brother were in the dome’s play area when they heard the first shots.”
“He was older and could run faster, so he was the one who went for help?”
“Probably. But here’s another question we had: Given that the bunkhouse is an obvious hiding place, why wasn’t she killed?”
“Either the shooters didn’t know about her, or they decided to go after their primary target, Ulrick, instead. If they did know about her, they must’ve counted on her being unable to describe them.”
“I guess. It would be interesting to talk with her, see if she’s remembered anything more.”
“I intend to try. Shall we take a look at the rest of the property?”
Rho stayed outside while Guy examined the bunkhouses and the shack where Bernhard Ulrick had lived. The formerly blue bunkhouse and the shack had not been part of the crime scene, and she didn’t need to have another look at the little pink structure where she’d found Oriana. When he came out he was frowning, but shook his head when she asked him why. Holding something back on her, or simply disturbed by the emotions that surely must live there?
Guy looked at his watch. “It’s after three. You want to keep going, or call it a day?”
“Let’s keep going. I want you to see all of the canyon, but I’m not sure I can make myself come back another time.”
They walked uphill on a path made narrow by encroaching pyracantha bushes. The ground was soft and muddy in places from heavy fog and recent rain. Guy didn’t speak, and Rho sensed he was working out something, rearranging facts he’d previously known to fit with what he’d learned today. Another plane droned overhead and she looked up in time to see its white tail section glide above the pines.
“Wait a second.” Guy put his hand on her arm.
“What is it?”
“Someone’s walked along here recently.” He pointed down at a series of impressions in the mud. “Two people. From the size of the prints, I’d say a small woman, and either a large woman or a man.”
She went over and squatted down to examine them. “They must’ve been made after it rained last Thursday. The larger ones’re superimposed on the smaller. Tread of the larger prints looks like athletic shoes. And look how deep they are — whoever made them was quite heavy. They go right, toward the stream, while the smaller ones go straight.”
She stood up and began to follow the larger prints, ducking under thorny pyracantha branches that were heavy with red berries. On the other side of the thicket a ledge of rock extended over the stream bed. The footprints led to it.
Guy was thrashing around in the bushes behind her and now he let out a yelp.
“Be careful in there,” she called. “They’ve got big stickers.”
He emerged, sucking his right thumb. “I already found that out.”
“City slicker.”
“Watch it, woman. You’re talking to a man who’s hacked his way through jungles.”
“Then it’s a wonder you survived.”
She started across the ledge, conscious of the rush of the stream and splash of the nearby waterfall. When she peered over the edge, she saw the drop was significant, eight or ten feet, and—
“Oh my God!”
“What is it?” Guy asked.
She didn’t reply. A figure dressed in jeans and a blue jacket lay prone on the rocks below. Its left arm was out-flung, and the sun picked up glints from a diamond wedding band. Rho recognized it and the thick fall of red hair as Virge Scurlock’s.
Guy came up beside her and looked down. “Jesus,” he said softly, “she did come here.”
Guy stayed with the body while Rhoda went back to her truck to radio in. She’d been upset, but professionalism quickly took over, and she’d climbed down into the streambed to make sure the Scurlock woman was dead. Her neck appeared to be broken, she told him when she came back. She’d taken quite a fall and had probably died instantly.
Guy watched her go, wondering if her assumption that Virge’s death was an accident had validity. He couldn’t get the image of the woman’s tense face out of his mind, and if the canyon murders had affected her as strongly as Gregory Cordova claimed, he couldn’t imagine her venturing here alone.
Three deaths: A murder. An accident. And now an apparent accident. Coincidence, maybe, but when deaths piled up, particularly in a remote and sparsely populated area like this, there was usually more to it. His journalist’s nose for trouble was smelling something unpleasant, but he couldn’t identify the odor.
For a moment he toyed with the idea of climbing down to take a closer look at the body, but quickly dismissed the notion. He’d leave the investigation to the professionals. Besides, the tragedies that had occurred in the Signal Port area since his arrival were not the focus of his research. He could incorporate them into the book as dramatic counterpoint, but he should concentrate on the old murders. Plenty to think about there; the sensations he’d both experienced and not experienced on his two trips to the canyon disturbed and puzzled him.
He’d told Rhoda he believed his experience of such phenomena, but that wasn’t quite true. They had happened too sporadically over the course of his career to be trusted, unless they could be backed up by hard fact. And he was no natural receptor. If he were, surely he would have been able to tap into the currents of emotion that had moved under the surface of those last days in Asia, before his blind selfishness had caused Diana to lose her life.
No, he didn’t believe. Or receive.
The lack of sensation he’d experienced in the little bunkhouse was proof of that. The child who had hidden there had been in extreme terror, yet he’d felt nothing. Perhaps he was only capable of tapping into adult emotions. Or perhaps the ability simply came and went at will.
He considered the events of the fatal night, trying to reconstruct them in a logical fashion. The family who were squatting on the ridge had arrived in their bus before dark. At sometime after dark the killers entered the property, probably from the highway, since they had cut the utility wire. They shot the Blakeleys, then Heath as he fled, then the rest of the Wynne family. And last they shot Bernhard, who was probably hiding in his lab, hoping they wouldn’t realize it was tucked back there at the very end of the canyon.
But what about the other family? Had they left before the killers arrived, or seen them and escaped? Chances were they’d seen something, or they wouldn’t have abandoned their cabin and most of their possessions.
Damn! Those people were key to what had happened here, but no one alive knew their last name, where they had gone next, or what had become of them.
Rho stood beside the muddy path with Ned Grossman and his partner, Denny Shepherd, while they waited for the photographer to finish with Virge’s body. It had taken a long time for everyone to assemble at the scene, and now the light was fading. The wind had risen, blowing chill and steady. Grossman, who possessed not an extra ounce of body fat, shivered and turned up his collar. Rho had just finished explaining Virge’s emotional state, and from the expression on the detective’s face she gathered that he was entertaining the notion that Virge hadn’t come to the canyon alone.
“Where’s Gilardi?” he asked, glancing around.