Another hundred yards, two hundred; the peaks enlarged with a suddenness that shook me, as if I'd taken my eyes off the road and were headed for collision.
I reassessed the distance between Fairway's eastern border and the Tehachapis. Less than two miles, maybe a mile and a half. In daylight, nothing more than a relaxed nature stroll. I was sweating and breathing hard; my hamstrings felt tight as piano wire, and my shoulders throbbed from the odd, stooped posture that maintaining balance had imposed on me.
Milo stopped again, waited till I was at his side. 'See anything?'
'Nothing. Sorry.'
'What are you apologizing for?'
'My theory.'
'Better than anything else we've got. I'm just trying to figure out what we do if we get there and it's still nothing. Head straight back, or trail along the mountains just in case they dumped a body?'
I didn't answer.
'My shoes are full of rocks,' he said. 'Let me shake them out.'
A few thousand baby steps. Now the mountains were no more than a half-mile away, reducing the sky to a sliver, dominating my field of vision. The contours along the rock walls picked up clarity and I could see striations, wrinkles, dark gray on darker gray against black.
Now, something else.
A tiny white pinpoint, fifty, sixty feet to the left of the track.
I stopped. Squinted for focus. Gone. Had I imagined it?
Milo hadn't seen it; his footsteps continued, slow and steady.
I walked some more. A few moments later, I saw it again.
A white disc, bouncing against the rock, widening from sphere to oval, paling from milk white to gray to black, then disappearing.
An eye.
The eye.
Milo stopped. I caught up with him. The two of us stood there, searching the mountainside, waiting, watching.
The disc appeared again, bouncing, retreating.
I whispered, 'Camera. Maybe she's still alive.'
I wanted to run forward, and he knew it. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he whispered softly but very quickly: 'We still don't know what it means. Can't give ourselves away. Backup would be great. One last try to reach Whitworth. Any closer and it's too risky.'
Out came the phone. He punched numbers, shook his head, turned off the machine. 'Okay, slow and quiet. Even if it feels like we'll never get there. If you need to tell me something, tap my shoulder, but don't talk unless it's an emergency.'
Onward.
The disc reappeared, vanished. Circling the same spot to the left.
Focused on what? I yearned to know, didn't want to know.
I stayed close behind Milo, matching my steps to his.
Our footfalls seemed louder, much too loud.
Walking hurt and silence fed the pain. The world was silent.
Silent movie.
Images flooded my head: herky-jerky action, corseted women, men with walrus mustaches, mugging outrageously over a plinkety-manic piano score. White-lettered captions, framed ornately: 'So it's carving you want, sir? I'll show you carving.'
Stop, stupid. Keep focused.
Fifty yards from the mountain. Forty, thirty, twenty.
Milo stopped. Pointed.
The white disc had appeared again, this time with a tail-a big white sperm sliding along the rock, wriggling away.
Still no sounds. We reached the mountain. Cold rock fringed with low, dry shrubs, larger stones.
Holding the rifle in front of him, Milo began edging to the left. The nine-millimeter was heavy in my hand.
The disc materialized overhead. White and creamy, bouncing, lingering, bouncing. Gone.
Now a sound.
Low, insistent.
Flash. Whir. Click.
On. Off.
No human struggle. No voices. Just the mechanics of work.
We moved along the mountain undetected, got to within twenty yards before I saw it.
A high, ragged rock formation-an outcropping of sharp-edged boulders, sprouting like stalagmites from the base of the parent range. Clumped and overlapping, ten to fifteen feet high, pushed out twenty feet.
Natural shield. Outdoor studio.
The sound of the camera grew louder. We crept closer, hugging the rock. New sounds. Low, unintelligible speech.
Milo stopped, pointed, hooked his arm, indicating the far end of the boulders. The wall had acquired convexity, continuing in a smooth, unbroken semicircle. No breaks in sight, meaning entry had to be at the far north.
He pointed again and we edged forward inch by inch, bracing ourselves with palms against the rock. The wall curved radically, killing visibility, transforming every step into a leap of faith.
Twelve steps. Milo stopped again.
Something jutted out from the rock. Square, bulky, metallic.
Rear end of a vehicle. From the other side of the granite,flash, whir. Mumbles. Laughter.
We edged to the vehicle's rear tires, squatted, swallowed breath.
Chrome letters: Ford. Explorer. Black or dark blue. Sand spray streaked the rear fender. No license plate. A partially shredded bumper sticker commanded: ENGAGE IN RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS.
One-third of the vehicle extended past the rock walls, the rest nosed inside. Milo straightened and peered through the rear window. Shook his head: tinted. Crouching again, he secured his grip on the rifle, moved around the Explorer's driver's side. Waited. Pointing his rifle at whatever was in front of him.
I joined him. The two of us remained pressed against the truck.
Partial view of the clearing. Plenty of light now, from a spotlight on a pole. An orange extension cord connected the lamp to a gray battery pack. The bulb was aimed downward, well short of the fifteen-foot walls that created the staging area.
Forty-foot stage, roughly circular, set on flat gray earth rimmed by the high, seamed rock. A few boulders were scattered in the corners, like sprinkles of pebbles where the mountain had given way.
Natural amphitheater. Derrick Crimmins had probably discovered it as a youth, driving out with his brother to stage God knew what.
The good old days, when he'd designed sets for his stepmother, acquired a taste for production.
Tonight, he'd gone minimalist. Nothing in the clearing but the single light, a tackle box, and several videocassettes off to the side. Three white plastic folding chairs.
The chair to the left was off by itself, twenty feet from its neighbors. On it sat a young, brown-skinned, plain- faced girl, arms and legs bound by thick twine, dark hair tied in pigtails. Pink baby-doll pajamas were her sole costume. A pink spot of blush on each cheek, red lipstick on a frozen mouth. A wide leather belt secured her to the chair, cinching her cruelly at the waist, pushing her rib cage forward. Not a belt-a hospital restraint, the same kind they used at Starkweather.
Her head hung to the right. Livid bruises splotched her face and breasts, and dried blood snaked from her nose down to her chin. A shiny red rubber ball was jammed into her mouth, creating a nauseating cartoon of gee-whiz amazement. Her eyes refused to go along with it: open, immobile, mad with terror.
Staring straight ahead. Refusing to look at what was going on to her left.
The center chair held another woman captive: older, middle-aged, wearing a pale green housedress torn down
