Then he made a movement, which I’m sure the anchor didn’t catch. But I did. Krom inclined his head, the slightest move — he made a little bow.
I’d seen that bow eons ago, midnight at Hot Creek, as he bowed to his enemy and gave it the finger.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Dawn, and I did not see Walter.
I spent an hour trying to reach Eric, routed from one command center to another, one official to another. When Eric finally called back I blurted “where is he?”
“He’s gotta be out. His car was parked with everybody else’s, along 203. But I gotta tell you I did not personally see him leave. I blew that. I owe you, Cassie. Hang in there, okay? There’s nobody left in town.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You sound beat.”
“Beyond.”
“Please take care of yourself.”
“You better believe it.”
I called Walter’s cell phone. Then I dialed, for the fifteenth time since midnight, the motel down the street where Walter was booked. The desk clerk was beginning to worry.
I went out to the Soob and unloaded the Lindsay and Georgia boxes and parked them in my room. I wrote a note to Jimbo. Antsy. Driving down to Big Pine & Independence. Check motels. Maybe got signals crossed with W. Got my cell on. I left the note on my dresser then locked the door. Jimbo has a spare key.
I didn’t turn southbound on highway 395, as my note promised. The worried Bishop desk clerk had already phoned every motel and B&B in Big Pine and Independence for me. She promised to keep trying. She promised to call on my cell if she located Walter. I promised her a fancy dinner for her efforts, when this was all over.
I promised, in my heart, to apologize to Jimbo for my lie, when this was all over.
I turned northbound on 395, heading home. There was no traffic, just me following the long Sierra scarp. And then in the distance, just spilling over the lip of the caldera, which sits on the Long Valley plateau above Bishop like a hanging lake, came a National Guard truck down the highway grade. The last of the evacuators were now evacuating.
And above and beyond was the unchanged bulk of Mammoth Mountain. The old mountain looks me in the eye: coming back?
The Guard truck and I passed each other and I craned to look. The back end was half open and the guys in camouflage were slumped.
I hadn’t really thought he’d be in there anyway.
At the top of the grade there was a barricade. Nobody in sight. I went around it on the median. Just past the Hot Creek turnoff, I reached another barricade. This one was manned.
I pulled over and checked in with my motel clerk. Nothing new.
If a call came on my cell and caller ID said it was the clerk, or Walter, or Eric, I would answer. If a call came from any other number, I would not answer. I counted on Jimbo to sleep until noon. If he woke earlier, I counted on him to try calling a few times and conclude I was in a no-service zone, and then decide to try later. I counted on him to be Jimbo and go hook up with Bobby or the deMartinis. I counted on him not to alert someone that I’d gone missing, because I intended to be back before he put two and two together. I did not intend to have someone come after me and stop me. And if I encountered a problem, I did not intend to have someone come share the risk.
I hadn’t really expected the guys at the barricade to let me through. Didn’t matter. I had a Plan B. I headed southbound, as if going back to Bishop. Around a curve, out of anyone’s sight, I took the unmarked turnoff. I knew this Forest Service road — I’d taken it in summer, on field trips, and I knew where it accessed another lateral that would put me in the neighborhood of the Lakes Basin. I wondered, briefly, if Krom had walked that lateral in his quest for an alternate route. If he had, he would have rejected it because it would put evacuating traffic in the neighbhorhood of Red Mountain. I didn’t reject it. There was no other choice. Two miles uphill I turned onto the lateral, just wide enough for a snowplow. I crept along, fingers crossed, but within a few hundred yards the road ended. Hadn’t been plowed. Every available snowplow, I guessed, had been diverted to Krom.
That much farther to ski. So I’d better get going.
As I was stepping into my bindings I gave a glance to Lindsay’s doll. She has porcelain skin like Lindsay’s and a proud chin, and she brought me Lindsay’s voice, which I had lost in the crime-scene horror of her office. She says, sharp, don’t do anything foolish, honey.
I promised to be wise.
I followed the unplowed road, which banded the mountainside, and then began a gentle descent. The snow was slow but once the slope steepened I kicked into a smoother stride and picked up speed.
Within two hours I’d reached the Lakes Basin. I came downcanyon in a tuck, trying not to think about the lay of the land, about the rift up on Red Mountain. There was no other way in. It was just that simple. Just ski. Don’t fall, don’t break an ankle. I tried not to think about Walter lying off the road someplace with a broken ankle. I tried not to think at all.
The cell phone in my pocket was silent. Jimbo was sleeping, or he’d gone straight to breakfast without checking my room. I didn’t blame him.
I focused on my stomach. It was hollow. Nothing to eat since last night in Bishop, and that was toast forced down me by Jimbo. Now, I was hungry. I fantasized swinging by the house and grabbing something. It’s on the way. Jimbo cleaned out the fridge but what about the freezer? Last time I looked there was a sweet potato pie, microwaveable. God, I wanted that pie. So creamy, like a sweet cloud in your mouth.
The canyon road dipped below a ridge and the slope fell into shadow. I hit deeper snow, and had to work. My stomach growled.
Jimbo ate the pie. I just knew it. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to the house because Walter was not there waiting for pie.
There was something. I stopped. A rumbling, deep within the mountain. I waited, but detected no movement. The sound trailed off as the earth settled itself. Another quake. So what’s new?
There was thunder and I looked up to the clear sky, and then to the ridge above me. Even as the thunder died another sound came — a thick sucking. In utter amazement I watched an entire section of snow detach from the bowl beneath the ridge and slide in a great slab downhill toward the road. The leading edge wrinkled over a cluster of boulders and loosened and slurried ahead of the main body of the avalanche.
In slow motion, taking forever, I bent to release my bindings.
Wind hit me, roared past me. The snow in front of my skis humped up and I felt the ground below me move. Snow exploded up and the crust under my skis crumpled. I was ripped off my feet. I gasped, inhaling needles of snow.
Swim.
But the snow’s got its own agenda and it’s tumbling me along like I’m a load of wash and I can’t see and can’t breathe and all I want in the world is to get my head above the snow. Then without knowing how I do it I’m swimming all right, fighting for the surface. Something hard bangs into my leg. My ski. A rock. I’m swimming, dog-paddling to beat all hell but I don’t know which way is up.
And then the snow and I slow and finally come to rest and the snow, which only seconds ago had been liquid, turns to cement.
I lay pinned. I could see nothing but my mind was free to roam and it dived down into the crevassed glacier, blue walls closing around me. I screamed.
There was snow in my mouth. I spat but it was already dissolving on my tongue, creamy as sweet potato pie. I stuck out my tongue, tasting cold air. Free air. There was a hole in the snow around my face. Hope surged.