I reached up and snapped the cover from the dome light and unscrewed the bulb. I got out, pushing the door closed without snapping it shut. I walked to the rear of the car and opened the trunk. I wasn’t worried about the trunk light. Nothing on the back end of Dolan’s vehicle worked, including the taillights. I felt my way across the darkened space until my hand came down on Dolan’s Smith & Wesson, snug in its holster. I picked up the gun and the holster, eased down the lid of the trunk, and returned to the driver’s seat. I slipped under the wheel again, leaving the car door ajar. I fumbled in my bag until I found my pen light. I snapped it on and placed it on the passenger seat, keeping my inspection process well below the level of the dashboard. This was the gun Dolan carried on duty; a 9mm Parabellum, with a clip that held fifteen rounds. I hit the clip release button and checked the magazine—fully loaded—and then smacked it back into place. I pulled the slide back and released it, then checked to see that the safety was on. I hefted the weight of the gun, close to twenty-eight ounces, feeling its clumsiness in a hand as small as mine. At least it was an equalizer, wasn’t it?
I stripped off my jacket. Dolan’s shoulder holster had a Velcro and leather strip shoulder strap that I adjusted and secured under my left arm, the gun tucked snugly in place. I pulled on the jacket again, tugging at the front until it lay flat. I kept an eye on the rearview mirror, waiting for a break in the flow of cars. As soon as I was clear in both directions, I made a wide U-turn, swinging across the two-lane highway and onto the berm on the far side of the road. I eased the car along on the berm until I found a spot that seemed to provide at least a modicum of cover. I was now facing in the direction of Creosote instead of Quorum on the same side of the road as the entrance to the Tuley-Belle. Cornell was laboring away somewhere to my right, though I couldn’t really see him from where I sat.
I killed the engine, tucked the keys in my jacket pocket, and got out of the car. It wasn’t my intention to do anything dumb. I wasn’t going to tackle the guy or try to make a citizen’s arrest. I just wanted to see what he was up to and then I’d slip back to the car and be on my way. Even so, if there’d been a public phone in a five-mile radius, I would have bagged my scheme, called the Sheriff’s Department, and let them handle him.
The entrance to the abandoned property had been blocked by bright orange plastic cones and a sign mounted on a sawhorse designating the entire area as a crime scene. Someone had moved the No Trespass warnings aside and the sawhorse now lay toppled on its side.
The thin crescent moon worked to my advantage. The road itself was dark, but the sky was a muted gray. The landscape—largely sand and gravel basins—gradually came into focus as my eyes adjusted to the dark. I could make out a number of features: clusters of tumbleweeds, like giant beach balls, creosote bushes, bayonet cactuses, yuccas, and the leggy branches of the palo verde trees. Ahead of me, I caught glimpses of a stationary light, possibly a lantern or a good-sized flashlight. I was getting closer, but as I’d noticed before, distances were difficult to calculate.
I could hear the peeping of ground frogs, probably poisonous, and the intermittent hooting of an owl. Unbidden, my brain suddenly played back in excruciating detail Dolan’s earlier recital about Mojave insect life, specifically the tarantula hawk, a species of desert wasp, the female of which sniffs out a tarantula, stings it into a state of paralysis, drags it back to her burrow, and lays an egg in its abdomen. Once hatched, the tiny grub feeds daintily until its final moult, then rips open the spider’s abdomen, thrusts its head and part of its thorax inside and devours everything in sight. Sometimes the tarantula is even dead by then. I was grossing myself out. This is the very same Nature that some people find spiritually uplifting. I picked up my pace, trying to block the interminable list of other insects he’d mentioned, scorpions and fire ants among them. Whatever else happened out here, I wasn’t going to sit down.
The road made a slight bend, and I found myself not ten yards away from Cornell’s white pickup truck, its engine still ticking as the metal cooled. Tucked in behind Cornell’s truck was Justine’s dark Ford sedan. I stared in disbelief. The last time I’d seen it, it was parked in front of Felicia’s house. Apparently, while I was struggling to get Dolan’s car started, Justine left the house in her car and followed him. By the time I was finally under way, it hadn’t occurred to me to glance back and see if her car was still there. She must have caught up with him, passed him, and turned off the highway before he did. She was the one who’d moved the barrier from the entrance to the place. She’d been back in her car and heading up the road before I’d caught sight of him making his turn.