instead taken place down here, away from any possible witness's line of vision. 'Chiefl' ' He looked up to see Stu Thiebert hurrying around the curve of the arroyo, his feet pumping furiously in the shifting sand, his body moving forward at an incongruously slow pace, looking almost like a cartoon figure.
'We found something! ..... Robert stepped away from the wall, placing his Coke can on the sand where he could retrieve it on his way out, and headed toward Stu, motioning for Jud to follow. His own feet moved slowly through the sand, but he hardly seemed to notice. 'What is it?' he called.
'Mice! Dead desert mice! They're about a hundred yards downt'
Robert stopped walking, frowned. 'Mice?'
'They look like they've been drained! You gotta come and see it!'
Robert felt his stomach clench up. He suddenly wished he'd brought Rich along. He followed Stu around the corner, Jud hurrying close behind. Ahead, he could see the other three men in a huddle next to the arroyo's eroded east wall ...... 'Here!' Robert, Stu, and Jud reached the spot almost at the same time.
'Ben found them.' Stu pointed toward a crack in the arroyo wall. 'In there.'
Robert's gaze followed his deputy's pointing finger. On the floor of the upward sloping fissure, reaching all the way o the surface, were twenty or thirty desert mice. They had indeed been drained of blood and fluids. Their bodies looked like deflated sacs of fur, their heads like- hairy eyeless skulls, i Surrounding the top half of each mouse was a semicircle of shriveled, dried black beetles.
'Mother of shit,' Jud breathed. The other men were silent. He looked at Robert. 'What do you think this means?'
The knot in his stomach tightened. 'I don't know,' Robert said. 'But go up and get the camera. And radio for Woods. I want him to see this.'
He stared for a moment at the dead mice and their halos of bee des then turned away.
After shutting off the lights, closing the blinds, and locking up the office, Rich walked around to the rear of the building, sorting through his overstuffed ring for the keys to the pickup. The sun had almost set, was little more than an orange half circle on the flat border of the cloudless western horizon, and the ground, the cactus, the buildings, and the mesas behind were all bathed in a muted amber glow that lent the town a fake, cinematic quality.
He stood next to the pickup, fingers on the door handle, watching the sun's slow descent, knowing that if he stood here long enough he would see the sky directly above shift from white across the red spectrum to purple. This was his favorite time of day, this hour of dusk between daylight and dark. He breathed deeply.
God, he loved this land.
Especially the horizon. He loved the horizon. Standing here in his parking lot, he could see the curve of the earth, a gentle rounding of the corners between north and west and south that somehow dwarfed the entire landscape. There were desert mountain ranges in the distance, and isolated mesas, but they were like bumps on a log, noticeable but not large enough to affect the totality. What he liked most was the open space. There was room to breathe here, the vistas were spectacular, the air was clear, and the sky covered three-fourths of the world.
That was one thing he'd noticed when they'd lived for that first year with Corrie's parents in California: The sky had seemed so small. It had been white there instead of blue and was revealed only in small segments between buildings and houses and trees. Even in the flatter areas of Los Angeles, the sky had still seemed low, claustrophobically close, not wide and expansive as it was in Arizona. He had never said so to Corrie, but it was that smallness of space, that feeling that he didn't have enough room to stretch even in the open air, which as much as anything had made him want to return to Rio Verde. It was a stupid reason for returning, he supposed, an immature attachment to the emotions of place. But strange as it might sound when articulated, it felt right, and he had never regretted coming back.
He opened the pickup door and slid onto the seat. He'd wanted to call Robert this afternoon, but things had been so busy with Corrie gone that he just hadn't had the time. Something had been nagging him. He should talk to his brother and find out what was going on with the investigation, but he'd rationalized his inertia by telling himself that if anything important happened, Robert would call. Besides, the scanner had been silent the end re time he'd been in the office.
He would phone Robert when he got home.. Rich looked at the clock on the dashboard as he turned the key in the ignition and the truck roared to muffierless life. Six-forty. His new class started at seven. That gave him only twenty minutes to grab some chow and dig through the pile of papers on the seat next to him for the lesson plan he'd roughed out last weekend.
Buford's Burgers was on the way, and while it wasn't a drive-thru, it was the closest thing to it. He could sort through his papers in the pickup while he waited for his order.
He threw the truck into reverse, pulled out of the parking lot, then jammed it into gear and took off down Center, slowing only for a moment at the corner, then speeding down 370 toward Buford's.
He passed the small brick American Legion hall and saw that both the U.S. and Arizona flags were at half- mast, their colors altered and darkened by the setting sun and the growing twilight.
The obit for Manuel Torres he'd written this afternoon had been pitifully inadequate. He had spoken to Troy and Manuel's other coworkers at the garage, but they had not been very articulate in their expression of grief. Manuel's widow had not wanted to talk to him at all, and he had respected that, leaving her alone. He'd done the best he could under the circumstances, but he had not really known the man himself, and that distance, combined with the bizarre circumstances of his death, had cast an almost tabloid air of sensationalism over everything he'd tried to write.
Maybe he would go over the obit tomorrow, try it one more time before putting it permanently to bed.
He found himself thinking about the autopsy report and what Robert had told him. It had not been a surprise, really. But somehow the written confirmation--typed, dated, and signed in triplicate on official county forms-gave it an air of authenticity and turned what had been merely a suspicion into frightening fact. He'd been right when he'd told his brother that it was like being in a horror movie.
The coroner, he knew, had pressured Mrs. Torres into having the body cremated, and although, as a devout Catholic, she had wanted to see her husband decently buried, she had reluctantly agreed to the cremation, electing to bury the ashes afterward in a traditional cemetery plot instead of having them interred. This capitulation of faith worried Rich because he knew the impetus behind it. He had heard all day the whispers, the thinly veiled references. He knew the word in everyone's mind. Vampire.
It was a belief that such a creature really could exist which had led Woods to suggest cremation and Mrs. Torres to agree to this otherwise unsatisfactory burial alternative.
Cremation was insurance that Manuel Tortes would not rise from the dead.
Rich wanted to be angry at this superstitious regression on the part of what would seem to be rational people, but he too had seen the body, he too had seen the halo of animals, and he could not drum up as much anger as he would have liked. The shriveled and empty form of the old man had frightened him far more than he would have thought possible.
He was equally frightened at the prospect of mass hysteria and paranoid panic. Deep down, he did not believe in vampires. Not really.
Something strange had happened to Manuel Torres, but he had no doubt that once the murderer was found, a rational explanation for the death would be forthcoming.
He drove into the dirt parking lot of Buford's, pulling next to a dusty Jeep with a round NRA sticker on the corroded back bumper. He turned off the ignition and got out. Reading the lighted menu, he realized that he was hungrier than usual. Tonight he wanted more than just his usual hamburger and medium Coke.
Stress always made him hungry.
It was Corrie's fault as well. She could have waited until things calmed down a little before bailing out on him. He told himself not to be so harsh on her, not to be so unsympathetic; he was her husband, not just her editor; he should be able to understand her side. But, as she never tired of pointing out, that was one of his chronic problems He was too selfish and insensitive to sympathize with her feelings. :
But, damn it, she should've given him warning.
She'd already found a job. That surprised him. She'd been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, and she was now the secretary for the Church of the Holy Trinity. That was okay, he supposed, but the fact that she was going to be working for Pastor Wheeler bothered him a little. He did not know the pastor, had had no real contact with the man aside from a few short phone conversations regarding events for the 'Church Notes'
