The Other Side of Silence Read online

  But he did locate her, and in less than ten minutes. Pure blind luck.

  She was a quarter of a mile away to the southwest, in partial shade at the bottom of a salt-streaked wash. Lying on her side, motionless, knees drawn up fetally, face and part of her blonde head obscured by the crook of a bare arm. It was impossible to tell at this distance if she was alive or not.

  The wash ran down out of the foothills like a long, twisted scar, close to the trail for a considerable distance, then hooking away from it in a gradual snake-track curve. Where she lay was at least four hundred yards from where he’d parked on the four-wheel track. He picked out a trail landmark roughly opposite her position, then scrambled back down to the Jeep.

  His cell phone was in his pack. He dragged it out, switched it on. No signal. Sometimes you got one in the more remote sections of the Valley, sometimes you didn’t; out here, the ramparts of the Panamints must be blocking it. No emergency help, then. Whether she was alive or dead, it was up to him to deal with the situation.

  It took him more than an hour to get to where she lay. Drive to the landmark, load his pack with two extra soft-plastic water bottles and the first-aid kit, strap on the aluminum-framed pack, and then hike across humps and flats of broken rock as loose and treacherous as talus. Even though the pre-noon temperature was only in the eighties, he was sweating profusely—and he’d used up a pint of water to replace the sweat loss—by the time he reached the wash.

  She still lay in the same drawn-up position. And she didn’t stir at the noises he made, the clatter of dislodged rocks, as he slid down the wash’s bank. He went to one knee beside her, groped for a sunburned wrist. Pulse, faint and irregular. He didn’t realize until then that he had been holding his breath; he let it out thin and hissing between his teeth.

  She wore only a thin, short-sleeved shirt, a pair of Levi’s, and worn-out Reeboks. The exposed areas of her skin were burned raw, coated with salt from dried sweat that was as gritty as fine sand; the top of her scalp was flecked with dried blood from ruptured blisters. A quick inspection revealed no snake or scorpion bites, no limb fractures or swellings. But she was badly dehydrated. At somewhere between 15 and 22 percent dehydration a human being will die, and she had to be close to the danger zone.

  Gently he took hold of her shoulders, eased her over onto her back. Her limbs twitched; she made a little whimpering sound deep in her throat. On the edge of consciousness, he thought, more submerged than not. The sun’s white glare hurt her eyes through the tightly closed lids. She turned her head, lifted an arm painfully across the bridge of her nose.

  Fallon freed one of the foil-wrapped water bottles, slipped off the attached cap. Her lips were cracked, split deeply in a couple of places; he dribbled water on them, to get her to open them. Then he eased the spout into her mouth and squeezed out a few more drops.

  At first she struggled, twisting her head, moaning softly now: the part of her that wanted death rebelling against revival and awareness. But her will to live hadn’t completely deserted her, and her thirst was too great. She gulped down some of the warm liquid, swallowed more when he lifted her head and held it cushioned against his knee.

  Before long she was sucking greedily at the spout, like a baby at its mother’s nipple. Her hands came up and clutched at the bottle; he let her take it away from him, let her drain it. The notion of parceling out water to a dehydration victim was a fallacy. You had to saturate the parched tissues as fast as possible to accelerate the restoration of normal functions.

  He opened another bottle, raised her into a sitting position, then exchanged it for the empty one in her hands. Shelter was the next most important thing. He took the lightweight space blanket from his pack, unfolded it, and shook it out. Five by seven feet, the blanket was coated on one side with a filler of silver insulating material and reflective surface.

  Near where she lay, behind her to the east, he hand-scraped a sandy area free of rocks. Then he set up the blanket into a lean-to, using takedown tent poles to support the front edge and tying them off with nylon cord to rocks placed at forty-five-degree angles from the shelter corners. He secured the ground side of the lean-to with more rocks and sand atop the blanket’s edge.

  Casey Dunbar was sitting slumped forward when he finished, her head cradled in her hands. The second water bottle, as empty as the first, lay beside her.

  Fallon gripped her shoulders again, and this time she stiffened, fought him weakly as he drew her backward and pressed her down into the lean-to’s shade. The struggles stopped when he pillowed her head with the pack. She lay unmoving, half on her side, her eyes still squeezed tightly shut. Conscious now, but not ready to face either him or the fact that she was still alive.

  The first-aid kit contained a tube of Neosporin. He said as he uncapped it, “I’ve got some burn medicine here. I’ll rub it on your face and scalp first.”

  She made a throat sound that might have been a protest. But when he squeezed out some of the ointment and began to smooth it over her blistered skin, she remained passive. Lay silent and rigid as he ministered to her.

  He used the entire tube of Neosporin, most of it on her face and arms. None of the cuts and abrasions she’d suffered was serious; the medicine would disinfect those, too. There was nothing he could do for the bruises on her upper arms and along her jaw, the scabbed cuts on her left cheek and temple. Those weren’t the kind of injuries you got from stumbling around in the desert. They were more than two days old, he judged, already starting to fade. He wondered where she’d gotten them, if somebody had used her for a punching bag.

  When he was done, he opened another quart of water, took a nutrition bar from his pack. Casey Dunbar’s eyes were open when he looked at her again. Hazel eyes, dull with pain and exhaustion, staring fixedly at him without blinking. Hating him a little, he thought.

  He said, “Take some more water,” and extended the bottle.

  “No.”

  “Still thirsty, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, we both know you are.”

  “Who’re you?” Her voice was as dry and cracked as her lips. “How’d you find me?”

  “Richard Fallon—Rick. I was lucky. So are you.”

  “Lucky,” she said.

  “Drink the water, Casey.”

  “How do you know my . . . ? Oh.”

  “That’s right. I read the note.”

  “Why couldn’t you just let me die? Why did you have to come along and find me?”

  “Drink.”

  He held the bottle out close to her face. Her eyes shifted to it; the tip of her tongue flicked out, snakelike, as if she were already tasting the water. Then, grimacing, she raised onto an elbow and took the bottle with an angry, swiping movement—anger directed at herself, he thought, not him, as if she’d committed an act of self-betrayal. She drank almost half before a spasm of coughing forced her to lower the bottle.

  “Go a little slower with the rest of it.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I can’t do that, Casey.”

  “Don’t call me that. You don’t know me.”

  “All right.”

  “I want to sleep,” she said.

  “No, you don’t.” He unwrapped the nutrition bar. “Eat as much of this as you can get down. Slowly, little bites.”

  She shook her head, holding her arms stiff and tight against her sides.

  “For your own good.”

  “I don’t want any fucking food.”

  “Your body needs the nourishment.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll force-feed you if I have to.”

  She held out a little longer, but her eyes were on the bar the entire time. When she finally took it, it was with the same gesture of self-loathing. Her first few bites were nibbles, but the honey taste revived her hunger and she went at the bar the way she had at the water bottle, almost choking on the first big chunk she tried to swallow. He made her slow down, sip water after each bit
e.

  “How do you feel now?” he asked when she was finished.

  “Like I’m going to live, damn you.”

  “We’ll stay here for a while, until you’re strong enough to walk.”

  “Walk where?”

  “My Jeep, over on the trail. Four hundred yards or so, over pretty rough terrain. I don’t want to have to carry you the whole way.”

  “Then what?”

  “You need medical attention. There’s an infirmary at Furnace Creek Ranch.”

  “And after that, the psycho ward,” she said, but not as if she cared. “Where’s the nearest one?”

  Fallon let that pass. “If you feel up to talking,” he said, “I’m a good listener.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Why you did this to yourself.”

  “Tried to kill myself, you mean.”

  “All right. Why?”

  “You read my note.”

  “Pretty vague. Who’s Kevin?”

  She turned her head away without answering.

  He didn’t press her. Instead, he shifted around and lay back on his elbows, with his upper body in the lean-to’s shade. He was careful not to touch the woman.

  It was another windless day, the near-noon stillness as complete as it had been the other morning in the Funerals. For a time nothing moved anywhere; then a chuckwalla lizard came scurrying up the bank of the wash, followed a few seconds later by a horned toad. It looked as though the toad was chasing the lizard, but like so many things in desert country, that was illusion. Toads and lizards weren’t natural enemies.

  Before long, Casey stirred and asked if there was any more water. Her tone had changed; resignation flavored it now, as if she’d accepted, at least for the present, the burden of staying alive.

  Fallon sat up, removed one of the remaining two full quarts from his pack. “Make this last until we’re ready to leave,” he said as he handed it to her. “It’s a long walk to the Jeep and we’ll have to share the last bottle.”

  She drank less thirstily, lowered the bottle with it still two-thirds full. Good sign. Her body was responding, its movements stronger and giving her less pain.

  He let her have another energy bar. She took it without argument, ate it slowly with sips of water. When it was gone, she lifted herself into a sitting position, her head not quite touching the slant of the blanket. She was a few inches over five feet, more sinew than flesh. Her relatively young age, and the kind of body she had and the fact that she’d taken care of it, explained her survival and the relative swiftness of her recovery.

  She said, not looking at him, “I guess you might as well know.”

  “Know what?”

  “About Kevin. The rest of it.”

  “If you want to tell me.”

  “He’s my son. Kevin Andrew Spicer. He’s eight and a half years old.”

  “Court Spicer your husband?”

  “Ex-husband, and I hope his soul rots in hell.”

  “So you hate him. Divorce does that to some people.”

  “Hate doesn’t begin to describe what I feel for him.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He took Kevin.”

  “You mean a custody battle?”

  “Oh, yes, but I won that. I had full legal custody of my son.”

  “Had?”

  “Court kidnapped him,” Casey said. The words seemed to stick in her throat; she coughed again and swallowed heavily before she went on. “Four months ago, not long after the judgment. He had visitation rights, every other weekend. He picked Kevin up one Friday afternoon and never brought him back.”

  “Where was this? San Diego?”

  “Yes.”

  “You still live there?”

  “I don’t live anywhere anymore,” she said.

  Fallon said, “You must have gone to the authorities.”

  “The police, the FBI, a private detective I hired—nobody’s been able to find them.”

  “How could they vanish so completely?”

  “Money. Everything comes down to money.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Court claimed he was broke when I divorced him. All I got was custody and child support that he never paid.”

  “But he wasn’t broke. Hidden assets?”

  “I thought so, my lawyer thought so, but we couldn’t prove it.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “Musician. Second-rate musician.”

  “Then where’d the hidden assets come from?”

  “He had another income, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

  Fallon said, “He must have wanted the boy pretty badly.”

  “Not because he loves him. He did it to hurt me. He hates me. He can’t stand to lose money, property, people, any of his possessions.”

  “He sounds unstable.”

  “Unstable is a polite term for it.”

  “Abusive?” Fallon asked. “You, your son?”

  “The verbal kind. His rants caused Kevin to have more than one attack.”

  “Attack?”

  “He’s asthmatic. He needs medication . . . if he doesn’t get it and he has a serious attack, he could die.”

  “Spicer wouldn’t let that happen, would he?”

  “He’s capable of it. He’s capable of anything, any kind of viciousness.”

  “Against his own son?”

  She didn’t answer. She sat stiffly, squinting in the direction of Striped Butte, where the sun threw dazzling glints off its anamorphic conglomeration of limestone and other minerals.

  “Banning,” Fallon said. “Who’s he?”

  “The last straw.”

  He waited, but she didn’t go on.

  “What happened to your face? You didn’t get those cuts and bruises from the desert.”

  The question made her wince. She said in a dry whisper, “I don’t want to talk anymore. My mouth hurts and my throat’s sore.”

  “Drink some more water.”

  She sucked from the bottle, then lapsed into a brooding silence.

  Time passed. Fallon looked up at Manly Peak and the taller, hazy escarpments of Telescope Peak to the north. Some people found the Panamints oppressive. Bare monoliths of dark gray basalt and limestone like tombstones towering above a vast graveyard—mute testimony to the ancient Paiute legend of how they were formed, in an eons-long war among the gods. It was easy enough to imagine them that way, as the earthly remains of cosmic battles in which thunderbolts were hurled like spears, fire was summoned from the earth’s core, mountains melted and flowed into the Valley, massive stone blocks were ripped up and flung helter-skelter until they piled so high, new peaks were created.

  But there was a stark beauty in them, too. And to Fallon, a sentinel-like quality—old and benevolent guardians, comforting in their size and age and austerity. They held his gaze while he sat there waiting and listening to the silence.

  THREE

  HE GREW AWARE OF heat rays against his hands where they rested flat on his thighs. The sun had reached and passed its zenith, was robbing the shelter of shade. If they didn’t leave soon, he would have to reset the position of the lean-to.

  “How do you feel?” he asked Casey. “Strong enough to try walking?”

  She was still resigned. “I can try,” she said.

  “Stay where you are for a couple of minutes, while I get ready. I’ll work around you.”

  He gathered and stowed the empty water bottles, took down the lean-to and stowed the stakes, strapped on the pack. When he helped Casey to her feet, she seemed able to stand all right without leaning on him. Carefully he put his sun hat on her head, easing it down to cover her sunburned forehead and scalp. Shook out the blanket, draped it over her head and shoulders so that her arms were covered, and showed her how to hold it in place under her chin. Then he slipped an arm around her thin body and they set out.

  Long, slow trek to the Jeep. And a painful one for her, though she didn’t complain,
didn’t speak the entire time. They stayed in the wash most of the way, despite the fact that it added a third to the distance, because the footing was easier for her. He stopped frequently so she could rest; and he let her have most of the remaining water. Still, by the time they reached the trail her legs were wobbly and most of her new-gained strength was gone. He had to swing her up and carry her the last hundred yards. Not that it was much of a strain: she was like a child in his arms.

  He eased her into the Jeep’s passenger seat, took the blanket, and put it and his pack into the rear. There were two quarts of water left back there. He drank from one, a couple of long swallows, before he leaned in under the wheel. She had slumped down limply in the other seat, with her head back and her eyes shut. Her breath came and went in ragged little pants.

  “Casey?”

  “I’m awake,” she said.

  “Here. More water.”

  She drank without opening her eyes.

  He drove back to the Toyota, unlocked the driver’s door, opened it carefully because the metal was hot enough raise blisters. He fetched her purse from under the seat, then slid into the stifling interior. Usual junk in the glove compartment; he rummaged through it until he found the registration and an insurance card. He put these into the purse.

  When he switched on the ignition, the gas gauge indicator hovered close to empty. He twisted the key to see if the car would start. The engine caught on the third try, stuttering a bit; he shut it off immediately. If the only serious damage was the ruptured oil pan, repairs wouldn’t cost much. It was arranging for a tow truck to come out and haul the Camry to the station at Furnace Creek Ranch that would be expensive.

  He pulled the trunk release, got out and went around back. Two pieces of luggage in the trunk, a small suitcase and an overnight case. He took these out, closed the lid, locked the car again, and carried purse and luggage back to the Jeep and stowed them in the rear. Casey still slumped low on the seat with her eyes closed. She didn’t open them until after they were moving again in the opposite direction and the heated slipstream fanned her face through the open window.

  Fallon drove slowly, trying to avoid the worst of the ruts, but a few times as they bounced over the track she gave out low groans. Otherwise she made no complaint, said nothing at all. When they reached the smoother valley road above the Ashford Mill ruins, her breathing grew less labored and he thought she was asleep. If so, the sleep didn’t last long. They were halfway between Mormon Point and Badwater when she stirred, shifted position, and drank thirstily from the water bottle. When she lowered it, her pained gaze turned to him.