“These are pretty amazing little gizmos.”
He handed it to me and spent a few minutes showing me the basics of how it worked. As the display came up with a longitude and latitude reading, he said, “Of course, it won’t work in narrow valleys or in dense forests, or other places where it might have a hard time picking up signals from the satellites. I noticed Detective Thompson is using one, too.”
I handed it back to him. He tucked it away, started to stand up, and swore. “Excuse me,” he said, sitting down again.
“Why don’t you let me take a look at those blisters? If they aren’t too bad, this moleskin will help.”
But when he took the boots off, it was clear that he had already done some real damage. Over the years I’ve taken first aid classes, but I was relieved when J.C., much better trained and experienced, stepped in to do what he could for Newly.
We moved out again, Newly moving slowly but not giving up. When we stopped about an hour later to get our bearings, he didn’t hesitate to take the boots and socks off again. I could see new blisters forming. I was starting to cut another set of moleskin pads for him when we heard Parrish call out, “I want to talk with my lawyer. Privately.”
“What kind of idiots do you take us for?” Duke said. “You can’t just go off somewhere in the woods with your lawyer.”
Phil Newly sighed, and with a wince, stood on his bare feet. “I’ll talk to him over here, in plain sight of all of you. Surround us, if you like, but give us a little room to confer.” When Duke looked skeptical, he added, “I’m in no shape to ‘go off somewhere in the woods’ with anyone.”
Duke looked over to Bob Thompson, who nodded. “But I want them surrounded,” Thompson said. “And nobody else near them. Ms. Kelly, get the hell away from Mr. Newly.”
No one had to coax me to move out of range of Parrish, who was smiling at me. “Ah,” he said, feigning disappointment. “And I was hoping she’d play with my feet, too.”
That earned him a sharp push from Earl.
Wary, none of the guards stood too far away from him. “Newly,” Bob Thompson said, “you two will just have to whisper.”
Parrish looked down at Newly’s bare feet. “You’re moving too slow, Counselor,” he said, not trying to lower his voice.
“There’s nothing I can do about that now,” Newly said. “What do you want?”
“To move faster,” Parrish said, and brought one of his sturdy boots down hard on Newly’s bare left foot.
Newly gave a shout of pain, and Bingle began barking, but the guards had already moved in, shoving Parrish hard to the rocky ground and pinning him there. Houghton, gun out, covered them from a short distance away. Earl was on top, holding Parrish’s face against the earth, distorting Parrish’s smile of satisfaction.
J.C. hurried over to Newly, who looked as if he might faint. The ranger spent a moment examining the foot and said, “I think he broke some bones. It’s swelling up fast.”
He opened his first aid kit again and applied an instant cold pack to the foot. Soon it became clear that Newly would not only be unable to walk, he wouldn’t be able to put his left boot back on.
This led to a heated discussion over whether to end the entire trip then and there.
Thompson was the main proponent of calling it quits. The others pointed out the time and expense already incurred. “If we have him up here without his lawyer—” Thompson began, but Parrish interrupted.
“I fire him, then.”
“And I’ll take you right back to Las Piernas anyway,” Thompson said. “You think the D.A. won’t go for the death penalty if he finds out how you screwed up this expensive search? Which may just be a wild goose chase, after all.”
“I can promise you,” Parrish said with a cold smile, “that this is no ‘wild goose chase.’ ”
There was a long moment of silence before another round of arguments began. Newly agreed to allow Parrish to lead them to the grave out of his presence. “Leading you to her saves his life,” he gritted out, his face pale and drawn.
Thompson finally relented, and decided to let J.C. and Houghton take Newly back to the plane. “Houghton, you fly back with him, take him to a hospital, then get in touch with the D.A. as soon as possible. Let him know exactly what happened here, and that Newly agreed to these arrangements.”
J.C. and Houghton divided up the contents of Newly’s pack, then supported Newly between them. Newly, still white with pain, tried to give me the GPS, saying, “Mark the position of anything I need to know about, will you?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said, not wanting to be even vaguely involved with Parrish’s defense.
He managed a small smile and said, “You’ll be using your compass, then?”
“Yes, and although I don’t think any sane judge will let you get your hands on my notes, we both know Bob Thompson is using a GPS, too.”
He nodded, but seemed too distracted by the pain in his foot to keep talking.
J.C. asked Andy to keep an eye on things while he was gone. “Leave trail signs for me,” he said, “and don’t let them destroy too many acres of forest, if you can help it.”
We all watched the trio move slowly away from us.
I had a few chances to talk to Andy when he stopped every so often to mark a turning with a strip of cloth on a bush or small rocks in the shape of an arrow.
“Do you think J.C. will ever catch up to us again?” I asked.
