the girl who was Tina's best friend. She gave me the address, and the child's mother said it looked like one her daughter had been given for her birthday last November, but she thought the kid had lost it. So we talked to the girl—she was scared, thought I was going to arrest her I guess—and she finally told me that she'd given it to Tina on her last day in school. Tina told her that it was a magic ring and that she was going to use it to fly to Never- Never-land—their teacher had been reading them Peter Pan, you see—and this kid was convinced that's where Tina was, in Neverland. She wanted—' His voice broke, and Kate realized how young he sounded. 'She wanted to know when Tina was coming back. If you talk to Trujillo tell him I'm home getting drunk.' The line went dead, and Kate slowly hung up, watching Hawkin do an imitation of a stone.
'That's it, then.' He hung up his receiver.
'Are you going to have Trujillo pick her up?'
'No, damn it, I'm not. If she hasn't made a run for it by now, she's not going to, and I want to see her face when she hears about the ring.'
'If you go like that, you'll ruin a nice suit,' Kate noted mildly.
'Hell, you're right. We'll have to go by my place on the way. What about you?'
'Al, the last few days have turned me back into a Girl Scout, always prepared. I have a bag in the car.'
12
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Tyler's Creek runs year-round. Ten months out of the year it is a tidy, attractive, well-behaved little stream where salamanders creep and damselflies skip. On a lazy August afternoon, when the kids laugh and haul rocks for a dam and the deepest pools are barely waist-high to an adult, it is very difficult to visualize the process by which that snarl of tree roots ten feet up the bank came to be wedged there or to imagine the force that caused the convenient sunning spot of a flat granite boulder to come to rest half a mile downstream from the nearest granite outcropping. Moss turns sere and brown, tadpoles become frogs, water bugs dimple the surface on a hot August afternoon.
Kate stood well back from the gaping edge of Tyler's Creek and realized that living in San Francisco, with the occasional power outage and blocked storm drain, did not fully prepare one for this. The image that had come to mind with the phrase 'the road is out' combined a deeper degree of rutting, a lot of mud, and a bit of a gap across which some boards could be put; certainly nothing like this.
Tyler's Creek was a ravening, greasy gray monstrosity, thirty feet of grasping, hungry, primal power. It thundered like Niagara, pulling bits of the hillside, roadway, and vegetation into itself with its strong greedy fingers and eying its human audience hungrily. Kate swallowed, mute, as a piece of the opposite bank the size of a small car suddenly broke away and slithered down into the muddy torrent. A good-sized tree came washing around the turn, its naked roots twelve feet across. The waters rammed the roots into the soil. They stuck for a long moment before the bank gave and tossed the tree back into the center of the flood, where it whirled around crosswise in a fast, ponderous spin before being caught on a cluster of boulders, snapping instantly with a crack that momentarily silenced the constant roar, and folded itself in a streamlined fashion for the flume to run it to sea. All in barely thirty seconds.
She turned to Hawkin and raised her voice.
'We'll never get across that, not for days.'
He shook his head, thin-lipped, his eyes on the boiling, white-capped demon that was Tyler's Creek.
'Any chance of a chopper?' she asked.
'Not until these gusts die down.'
'Which won't be until after dark, if then. Al, I want to go around, find a place to cross.'
'No, Casey, we'll just have to wait until they can rig a sling across.'
'Tomorrow? Look, we've got an hour and a half of light, maybe more, and I can cover a lot of ground in that time. The creek isn't that long, according to the map. Let me try it. Please?'
He looked at her, at the waters, at the small group of people who stood well back from the opposite bank. His eyes traveled back to her, to Mark Detweiler and Tyler where they stood talking, and on to Tommy Chesler, who sat on a rock and watched the waves go past like a kid at a space movie.
'Tyler?' He had to shout, but the man looked up and limped over to them.
'Inspector Martinelli is thinking of taking a walk upstream to visit a friend on the other side. Is that practical?'
Tyler looked astonished, then even more so.
'You mean—?'
'I mean we should have someone over there to keep an eye on things. Can she get over there before dark?'
'It'd be a near thing, but it wouldn't be the first time someone's gone around—this section's been washed out before. There's even a sort of a bridge about a mile up, if it hasn't gone. It's hard to find, though,' he said doubtfully.
'Could someone go with her, as far as the bridge?'
'I know where it is, but I'm not the fastest thing on two feet. Mark might, or, no, what about Tommy? He knows these hills better than anybody.'
'Tommy Chesler?'
'Yes. I'm sure he'd jump at the chance to help.'
'Casey?'
'Fine with me. I'll need a flashlight and a walkie-talkie. And a plastic bag if they're not waterproof.'
The flashlight was waterproof and clipped onto her belt. The radio was not, and went into a pocket of her jacket, inside a doubled-over garbage bag from one of the cars. She settled her gun under her arm, zipped up the front of the jacket, and turned to Tommy, who was looking self-important and a bit nervous at his assignment.
'Let's go, Tommy.'
A light hand touched her shoulder, and Al murmured into her ear.
'You don't have to put her under arrest unless you think it's best. Just keep an eye on her. And, Casey? Watch yourself.'
'Thanks, I'll try. I'll give you a buzz on the radio from her house.'
It was nearly impossible to make any kind of speed, but they tried. Kate was faster than Tommy, but he knew where to put his feet, which leaves were most slippery, what branches most likely to drench a passerby. Kate went down three times in the first half mile, once gouging her thigh badly on the exposed end of a broken branch. Tommy led, Kate scrambling in his wake, along the ridge of the hills over Tyler's Creek. Once when Kate looked up, she caught sight of a house on the opposite ridge, a mile off, that looked like that of Vaun Adams. She peered through the wet trees, trying to see if there was any movement, and her foot hit a slick smear of leaf-covered clay that threw her ten feet down the hill to fetch up hard against a tree trunk. She lay on her back for a moment, eyes closed, chest heaving, until the stab of the flashlight into her spine forced her to sit up. Tommy stood looking down at her, a worried expression on his young face.
'You okay, Inspector Martinelli?'
'Oh great… and to think… some people… do this… for fun.'
'You're bleeding, Inspector Martinelli.'
'Not much… Call me… Casey.'
She accepted his hand to be pulled back onto her feet, clapped him on the back, and gestured that he should lead on.
What are you trying to prove, Martinelli? she berated herself. Trying to prove they didn't make a mistake, choosing you for the wrong reasons; watch that slippery bit, that's better, you're learning. Wonder if the damn bridge is there, what'll we do if it isn't? I don't much care for the idea of coming back this way by flashlight, but if the other choice is sitting under a tree with Tommy Chesler until morning, well, I hope the bridge is there. How could she have done it? How
