Staggering like a pair of inept skiers, they skidded down the slippery bank and into the water, where they landed, floundering and sputtering, in the chemically saturated water of a Phelps Dodge leaching pond.
THE FIRST shock of landing in frigid water took Joanna’s breath away. For a moment, she was too stunned to move. When she tried, her hands and knees slipped and slid on the oozy, slime-covered bottom. Finally, though, she managed to pull her self out of the evil-smelling water and back up onto the bern.
Grabbing Holly’s arm, she dragged her out as well and up onto the bank where they both lay gasping and spent. As soon as her head cleared she realized her gun was gone. Her brand-new First Edition Colt 2000 was lost somewhere in the whitish slime at the bottom of the coppery colored pool.
If Joanna had paused long enough to think about how cold the water was or how filled with God-knows-what kinds of chemicals, she never would have plunged back into the pond. But the semi-automatic was essential. Without a backup coming, she had to have a weapon.
Holding her breath against the assault of cold Joanna plowed back into the icy water, splashing through the mud in her numbed bare feet, using them to dredge through the thick sludge on the murky bottom. The harsh leaching chemicals burned fiercely in the lacerations on the bottoms of her bleeding feet, but she was grateful for the burning sensation. At least she could feel her feet again, and she used them to good advantage dragging them through the water.
Although it seemed much longer, it was only a matter of seconds before she smashed the end of her big toe on the grip of the missing weapon, and once she had it in her hand, it was all she could do to hold on to the slippery, slime-covered metal.
With fingers stiff and awkward with cold, she pulled the relatively clean tail of her blouse free of her skirt and used that to wipe off the muck from the Colt.
Her hands were shaking violently with the cold.
How long before hypothermia sets in? she wondered.
“Where are you, Holly?” Amy Baxter’s voice came again, calling from much closer now, from somewhere on the other side of the bern.
At the sound of her voice, Holly moaned like someone in desperate pain. She dropped to the ground and didn’t move.
“Come here,” Amy continued. “I only want to talk to you.”
“What’s going on?” Joanna demanded, falling down on the bern beside Holly, urging the woman to lower her head so it would be out of sight. “Why was she keeping you locked up? Why doesn’t she want you to get away?”
But Holly didn’t answer. She huddled next to Joanna, quaking with cold and saying nothing.
“Holly,” Joanna snapped. “Answer the damn question!”
“This has to be where it was,” Holly muttered through chattering teeth. “Right here. below where we are right now.”
“What was here?” Joanna asked, raising her head an inch or so, trying to peer over the top of the bern without being seen herself.
“His house,” Holly answered. “Not a house really. Just a Cuonset hut with a bare concrete floor. I remember that now. I remember seeing the green trees of Cosa Viejo from there, the trees and the terraces.”
“Holly,” Amy’s disembodied voice called.
“Where are you? Come out so I can see you, so we can talk.” She spoke her words slowly, putting a peculiar weight behind each and every syllable.
“Come here.”
At once Holly’s eyes began to glaze, and she started to rise to her feet. With a grunt of effort, Joanna jerked her back down.
“I’ve got to go,” Holly said. “Amy wants me.
“Why?” Joanna demanded. “Just tell me why.”
“I don’t know.” Holly began sobbing. “She sounds mad at me. I must have done something wrong.”
It was becoming more and more clear to Joanna that the sound of Amy’s voice exerted some kind of hypnotic mental hold on Holly, and the only way to counter it was to keep her too occupied to fall under Amy’s spell. Joanna moved closer to the weeping woman, until their faces were mere inches apart.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Holly. They had you locked in your room. Getting away from people like that isn’t bad, believe me. Why didn’t they want you to come up here?”
“They were afraid I’d remember.”
“Remember what?”
“His face,” Holly whispered. “I saw it for a while. I think I saw it on a piece of paper, but it went away again, and now I can’t remember.”
“Holly,” Amy Baxter said. “Where are you? We have to talk.”
“Whose face?” Joanna asked. “I don’t under stand.”
“The man’s face… the man who…” Holly’s voice faded into nothing.
“The man who what?” Joanna demanded.
“The man who hurt me. A long time ago.”
Joanna remembered Isabel talking about Holly looking at the paper, the Bisbee. She had seen a copy of the paper that morning herself. There had been two pictures on the front page: Harold Lamm Patterson’s and Thornton
