Blue Smoke and Murder

77

SEPTEMBER 17

6:16 P.M.

Jill leaned against the car and let the gas feed in through the battered metal nozzle. The long, straight highway just beyond the gas station cut across an alluvial fan that spread gracefully down the mountains to the desert floor. Just the sight of the dry ridges and shadowed ravines of the mountains loosened her tension. She knew that the desert was frightening to some people, boring to others. To her the desert was clean, spare, whispering of endless space for the mind and soul to run free.

She itched to paint the land almost as much as she itched to touch Zach again. She didn’t know if that was good or bad. She only knew it was as real as the metal towers marching away over the dry land, their arms holding lines that hummed with power.

The highway itself was an intrusion, but not as much as the heavy lines draped from steel towers. She looked through them, beyond them, to the majestic wild, lonely landscape that Thomas Dunstan-or her grandmother-had captured so indelibly.

To the right of the Cadillac, a knot of cottonwoods swept the wind with restless leaves. Their fluttering green announced the presence of water in a dry land. The cottonwoods had been here when the Indian Springs canvas had been painted. The trees were still there, still restless, still shouting of cool water in a dry, relentless wilderness.

Jill let her glance roam the landscape, seeing with the eyes of her grandmother. Take away the power lines, and the area had changed very little since Indian Springs had been painted. The gas station had evolved from a ramshackle frame building with two antique pumps into a sand-and sun-blasted metal structure with four pumps out front, but the trees and the fault line of little springs running along the base of the mountains looked the same.

Where are you, Zach?

Ten thousand feet overhead.

Somewhere.

Out of reach.

What’s the big deal? I’ve spent a lot of my life alone.

But death threats took a little more time to get used to.

Shaking off the edgy feeling, Jill went into the station, used the bathroom, bought several liters of water, and paid for everything. The old man who took her money wasn’t feeling chatty. Neither was she.

While the man slowly, painfully, counted out her change, she looked behind the counter at the faded black-and-white print of the gas station with a ribbon proclaiming the date and the grand opening of the station. The photo had been taken a long time ago, when cars in the rugged land were an adventure, not a necessity, back when the frail man counting pennies over the counter had been a little boy yearning to be old enough to break broncs and chase lean cattle through sagebrush valleys.

Jill looked from the photo to the man whose fingers were arthritic from winters spent chasing stubborn cows out of nameless ravines.

Were things really simpler then?

Or does it just seem that way now?

She put the change in her belly bag, went to the car, pulled back onto the road, and settled in for an unknown time of driving before her sat phone rang with new instructions.

She’d no more reached cruising speed when her phone came alive. She eased off the gas and answered.

“What?” she demanded.

“A sheriff’s car will stop you. Do what the deputy says.”

The connection ended.

“O frabjous day,” she said bitterly. “The local cops are friends with the other guys.”

Silence answered.

It was all she’d expected.