“Yes.”
“Tell me again why you thought the sheriff of Silverton and her brother wanted to kill you?”
“You’re looking at me like you don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that we don’t believe—”
“Then what?”
“Ms. Foster, we’ve got the sheriff and her brother dead here in town, and you’re telling us there’re six more bodies in the backcountry, most of which we won’t be able to locate until sometime next summer when the snow breaks, and forget the small concern that none of this jives with the Jen Primack I’ve known and worked with for three years. Look, I know you’ve been through quite an ordeal, but for a small-time undersheriff in a sleepy town like Silverton, this is a helluva lot to choke down.”
When Abigail awoke, they were sitting at the foot of her bed, whispering. She shut her eyes and eavesdropped on a debate concerning the merits of parallel versus telemark turns in champagne powder.
Silverton’s size didn’t warrant a hospital, so the undersheriff had put Abigail up in the Grand Imperial for the night and asked two nurses from San Juan County Public Health to check in on her every few hours.
She liked the undersheriff, Hans, a tall, lanky man in the neighborhood of thirty, who looked more like a snowboard instructor than a lawman—longhaired, bearded, and with a tattoo of a rock-climbing skeleton inked into the skin of his left forearm, just visible where he’d rolled up the sleeve of his khaki button-up shirt.
The special agent with the Forest Service made her nervous. She couldn’t recall the redhead’s name, but despite her rustic wardrobe, she managed to exude the cool, impassive confidence of a fed. And she’d hardly asked Abigail a thing, letting Hans lob questions while she leaned back in her chair in her muddy hiking boots, jeans, and down vest, not even bothering to veil her scrutiny and suspicion.
The special agent cut her eyes at Abigail.
“She’s awake.”
They dragged their chairs over into patches of afternoon sunlight that spilled in through the second-floor windows.
“How you feeling?” the undersheriff asked.
“All right.”
Hans leaned forward in the chair, clasped his hands together.
“Search-and-rescue just got back a half hour ago. You might’ve heard the helicopter.”
“They didn’t find my father.”
“They spent forty-five minutes hovering over the mountainside you think you came out on, with two men combing the area with binoculars.”
“I told you: There was a chimney I climbed out—”
“I believe you, Abigail. Thing is, that’s steep terrain up there. They spotted numerous avalanches, and they’re thinking a slide may have swept down the mountain at some point in the last twenty-four hours, buried the opening to the chimney.”
“So they’ve given up?”
“No, of course not. But there’s another storm coming in tonight, blizzard warnings already up, so our window for finding your father is shrinking.”
Abigail glanced at the special agent, could have sworn she caught a glint of compassion through the federal facade. “Maybe my father left that chimney room, tried to find his way back to the cavern where we first entered.”
“Okay, even assuming he was able to find his way back, this morning an avalanche swept down that hillside where you say you entered the cave. So wouldn’t the entrance be buried? And as you said, it was practically impossible to find in dry conditions in broad daylight.”
Abigail shook her head, the tears coming. “He thinks I’m coming for him. Please. Fly me back there. Let me —”
“You honestly believe you can find it?”
“Tell me something, Hans. At what point would you quit looking for your father?”
1893
NINETY-ONE
G
loria’s head lay in Rosalyn’s lap, and she saw that lonely lantern still burning in the middle of the cavern, its flame a little lower than before. The pain had intensified into something like the worst aftereffects of drunkenness she’d ever experienced, her body begging for water as it slowly dried and wilted.
Now only moans and soft bellows disturbed the silence, the whimpers of those waiting to die, wanting it more than a drink of water, worse than air.
She looked up at Rosalyn. “Hey,” she whispered.
Rosalyn’s eyes were open, but the old whore made no answer. She had died while Gloria slept, her mouth inflated by the gigantic tongue, eyelids cracked, blood rolling out of them and down her cheeks. Even while she’d been alive, the absence of water had allowed the mummification of her body to begin, the skin on her face shrinking, lips shriveling, gums blackened, nose withered by half, flesh leathered into the color of ashen purple, with livid streaks where the blood had pooled.
