Orchard Press Online
Mystery Magazine
March 2002
Honorable Mention
Orchard Press 2001 Short Mystery Story Contest
Pink
a
short story
by Jean Nealon
Copyright © 2002 Jean Nealon. All rights reserved.
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Jean Nealon has published stories and travel articles in a number of publications, including Woman's World, St. Anthony Messenger, Attaché, and Route 66. This is her first story for Orchard Press Mysteries. |
The wrong time of day. Nothing moving except insects, nothing sounding except insects--noon in the Chihuahuan Desert uplands. A light breeze. Quiet as bleached bones. Life retreated underground, lizards, rabbits, coyotes waiting out the sun. Mesquites, their roots descending fifty feet to water, holding on.
They were walking along a dry wash, the kind they warn tourists about in case of flash flood. Zero chance of that, the sun on broil, not a filament of cloud. Cameras hanging from their necks, dead weight, clothes sticky with insect repellent. The umbrella one of them carried not as silly as it looked, a parasol providing a circle of pink shade.
A bird broke into the insect din: to-whee-to-whee-to-whee-to-whee-to-whee...repeated the call three times, rested, then started over. To-whee-to-whee-to-whee...
If they'd expected to see thousands of snow geese and sandhill cranes, they were three months early. The only wildlife in sight was the haze of insects just outside the cloud of repellent. And not another human besides them for miles (or so they thought).
He’d been watching them through binoculars, alerted to their presence by the white Mercury parked at the trail head. From a shelf in the sandstone ridge he had a clear view of them on the trail below. The heavy one in jeans, a several-sizes-too-large blue shirt, and a no-color canvas hat trudged stolidly ahead, consulting a New Mexico guidebook and pointing out rabbit burrows and fox droppings to her companion. She stopped every 10 or 15 yards for the other one to catch up. The thin one all in white—pants, tennis shoes, long-sleeved shirt and Panama hat—hoisted a pink umbrella like a flag. A hot-pink flag that said easy pickings.
Two thirtyish tourists hiking in the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge on a Saturday in August when the visitor center was closed, and there didn't appear to be anyone else but them in the 57,000-acre preserve. It was almost too easy. And definitely too much. Time was he'd have gone for both of them, but years on the run had had their effect. One was plenty, and he'd pegged Miss Pink Umbrella from the minute he saw her fumble with the button that opened her little sunshade.
Right from the start, where the trail is loose sand and walking like plowing through a dream, she faltered. Her companion turned and said something. He couldn't hear, but a life spent second-guessing people told him she'd asked her less fit friend if she'd be all right in the heat. Despite the posted warning that they were entering a desert area, neither of the women carried water. How difficult could a two-mile hike be, they probably thought. He shook his head and spat, patting the insulated cover of the canteen on his belt, filled fresh that morning courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
"Of course," he guessed the thin one replying from the way her back stiffened and the Panama hat angled back prissily. Her hair was silver like the limestone that mottled the ridges and mesas. Rock created, cut, smoothed, left to dry by water. She wore it in a long braid down her back, but she wasn't an Indian. Her skin, what he could see of her face under the hat, her hands, the triangle where her blouse opened, was sunburned pink. He adjusted the binoculars. Her mouth was pink, too. And full. He imagined how the braid—it reminded him of a soft silver snake—would feel under his hand.
He'd killed a rattler once just to prove he could.
After only a couple hundred yards, Pink Umbrella flopped down on one of the big stone trail markers. "You go ahead, I have to rest a minute," he read into the stubborn angle of the umbrella. "There's no point in me going ahead, you'll never catch up," in her companion's resigned, arms-folded stance, feet wide-spaced in the sand. The heavy one faced him now. He could see her severely cropped dark hair at the edges of her hat. Poor Dark Hair. Stuck with such a weak sister. She didn't know it yet, but this was her lucky day—he was going to take Pinky off her hands.
Two of them presented a problem, though. Dark Hair was obviously equal to the trail, which the Fish and Wildlife Service had designated "moderately strenuous." Tall, broad in the shoulders for a woman. Heavy, none of it fat, muscular arms and legs. His life depended on being able to size up people who crossed his path, and he'd put money on Dark Hair finishing the hike without even breathing hard.
Pinky took off her hat, fanned herself. Her face, unobstructed, was flushed and sweaty but beautiful to him. The face he'd been waiting for. Dark Hair looked at the sky, pretending interest in a raven. The bird rode a rising air current then tumbled like an acrobat back to earth. Like she'd never seen a crow back in Boston or wherever.
Good for you, Pinky girl, he thought, make the bitch wait.
After a full minute Pinky got to her feet, a slow, delicate (so delicious to him) exercise. They resumed their hike, but Pinky fell progressively behind. Some ten or so minutes later he noticed Dark Hair begin to relax the control game. The meaningful halts, the tense waiting for Pinky to catch up, grew farther apart. Yes, the Bosque del Apache wildernesses have that effect. They make you realize just how much you are in control of nothing.
Pinky sauntered up the trail like a woman with time to burn, snapping pictures, caressing rocks, reading them with her fingers. If she felt like sitting, she sat, and she sat longer than necessary to annoy Dark Hair. She sprayed fresh repellent on her ankles, gazed at the turquoise sky, and recorded her thoughts in a notebook with a little silver pen that glinted in the sun. Dark Hair trudged ahead. Left-right, left-right, eyes straight. Like an ox, he thought. Long powerful legs under her jeans. He'd always enjoyed long-legged women. Women with meat on their bones, women who could sit a horse like they belonged there. Women who ... briefly, he considered his options. No. Pinky was tracing the trail of a lizard through the sand with a sunburned finger. Pinky it was.
Soon Dark Hair would get to the bench that marked the trail’s halfway point. Everything he'd seen so far told him she’d rest then, not before. And she would rest for a prescribed time, so many minutes and no more (he imagined her mind ticking like a clock), then continue the climb. A delicious tension pulled at his muscles. This time, not only was it going to be simple, it was going to be right. Dark Hair would keep on to the overlook; Pinky, he would divert into his arms. Pinky was different, she'd want to stay with him. Not like the dumb one.
He decided on a place where the trail switched back between two cliffs. All he had to do was climb down and wait, surprise her when she made the turn. Pinky wouldn't know what hit her. They'd be deep in the Chupadera Wilderness before Dark Hair could call for help—the nearest phone was in San Antonio, New Mexico, a thirty-mile drive. Eventually police would come poking their noses and dogs where he didn't need them. But he'd learned a thing or two about dogs. One, they’re very poor climbers. Two, he'd never met one he couldn't out-climb. Or a cop.
Dark Hair had slipped behind an outcropping that broke his view of the trail. She hadn't put on the superior outdoors-woman act for some time now. Why not? He didn't like leaving Pinky alone, but he didn’t like not knowing what Dark Hair was up to more. Besides, he felt uneasy in his gut. He scrambled up the rise using a route only he and the coyotes knew. And there she was at the halfway point. Resting on the bench, reaching inside her loose shirt and retrieving a bottle of water. As he watched from the cover of a mesquite thicket, it occurred to him—surprised him—that she’d hidden the water from Pinky. His big weathered hands opened, closed, opened again. Killing her, letting her live. He didn't like surprises.
She slurped a mouthful, swished water through her teeth, and spat. Thinking of Pinky hot and thirsty, he almost went for Dark Hair then. But she surprised him again. Levered herself up by her thick knees and moved off the trail towards him. He froze, still as a statue of a cougar. This was beginning to feel like fun.
What was she doing? Moving from rock to rock, stepping carefully to get to the ones that interested her—the ones that fit her hand. She dropped a gray stone and did a little backward dance. Now what? Probably spooked by a lizard. After that she turned a rock over with her tennis shoe before picking it up, adding it to her pile. One rock, the right size but embedded in the ground, presented a problem. Dark Hair bent over, spread her legs to get a better hold, and pointed her broad rear end directly at him. He'd always enjoyed big-assed women. He could be on her like a hawk on a rabbit. There'd be a struggle, but he liked that. A few slaps would wipe the superior smirk off her face, a few more might even make her pretty.
Dark Hair straightened, dusted off the red rock. Hefted it in her right hand—the right size, right weight. Then she raised the rock, gathered her strength into her arm, and smashed somebody’s imaginary head with a force that propelled her forward. She recovered her balance, cradled the rock in both hands, smiled like a cat.
To-whee-to-whee-to-whee-to-whee-to-whee...
When she turned to listen, he examined her profile, her stubby nose, the limp, cropped hair sweat-pasted to tanned skin. Oh Pinky, he thought, silver braid and pink umbrella. It’s you, Pink Girl, or nothing. But he allowed his eyes a final sweep of Dark Hair's ample hips. What she reminded him of was a mule deer he'd found grazing in a clearing in the days when he'd hunted for sport. The deer fixed in the cross hairs of his Winchester, his finger poised on the trigger, he'd lowered the rifle, backed off.
He found Pinky only a dozen yards past where he'd left her, limping. Leave the woman alone for 10 minutes, she goes and twists her ankle.
The braid had worked its way over her shoulder and down her breast. She’d unbuttoned her blouse—he could see the pink scoop-necked shell she wore next to her skin—and was fanning herself with the cloth. She took off her hat, dried her face delicately on her sleeve. The gesture aroused a powerful protective urge in him. He would never hurt this woman except to give her pleasure.
He was close enough now to see her earrings through the binoculars, leaf-shaped silver set with turquoise. He imagined her buying them at the Indian market in Santa Fe. Their money would be locked in their rental car, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that Dark Hair had the keys. Pinky leaned over to tie her shoe. He tried to get her cleavage in focus, but shifted position too quickly and sent a loose rock skidding downhill. She turned to the sound, head tilted like a doe scenting the air. She looked straight at him and didn't see him. Add nearsightedness to her other vulnerabilities, one more reason she should be his. This woman would want to stay with him. She wasn't like the other one, who was dumber than a horse.
He'd worked with horses and liked it before the thing had happened that brought him to the bosque. On a ranch in Arizona. Taming mustangs. Not right for everybody but easy, pleasurable to him, work that came natural. That left him satisfied and tired and smelling of horseflesh when the sun went down. What's your secret, they'd ask. No secret, he'd say, just the same old bronco-busting system everybody else used. Only he used it like a pro, maybe because he understood what it was like to be the horse. Because they'd pulled the same thing on him at the State Hospital, only they called it the Merit System. So many merits for good behavior, you got to go to crafts class or cooking class or you earned a day pass. Rack up enough demerits, you got a day in restraints.
He'd untied the woman who hadn't had as much sense as a horse after three days when she promised she wouldn't run. But she lied, bolted as soon as his back was turned. Didn't get far.
Pinky was resting on a boulder now, staring at nothing. Then it must have hit her that Dark Hair had made herself scarce because she bounded to her feet, called out something (he couldn't make out what, Dark Hair’s name?), and dragged her injured ankle up the path. He trailed her from above on the sandstone shelf. They were approaching the cliffs where he'd planned to surprise her when Dark Hair emerged from the rocks ahead. He adjusted the binoculars and saw the smile that spread her lips. She watched as Pinky called her but didn't answer. Pinky, nothing between her and the noon sun except the flimsy umbrella, limped painfully over the hot trail, while Dark Hair rested in shade under an overhanging rock. Drinking her secret water.
The limp had gotten worse. Still Pinky had managed to work up to a lopsided trot when she stopped short at something shimmering in the sun off the trail. She picked her way through pebbles and sage to what looked through the binoculars like a large piece of quartz. She knelt, traced its outline with her finger. He wanted to come on her from behind, feel her shoulders, her slender back against his chest.
She stood, took the camera out, adjusted the lens, reached down to move some brush out of the way. She must have gone on to take the picture, but he didn't see that. What he saw—what he remembered—was Dark Hair hefting rocks until she found one that perfectly fit her hand...
The danger to Pinky hit him like a blow to the belly.
...
“Jeeezuzzz.” In his agitation to get to Pinky before Dark Hair did, he forgot for a minute what he knew like his own breath about these ridges—long enough to go hurtling down a canyon slot he should have seen coming.
Ten, fifteen, eighteen feet of hard falling, thirty more of sliding to the bottom. Then he was picking himself up, checking his bones, cursing his luck—the sandy erosion deposit that had met him halfway the only reason he wasn’t dead.
Cool air turned his sweat icy. He shivered, eyes adjusting to diminished light. The canyon floor was packed sand, washed smooth. A heavy, dry smell of sandstone. Blood on his face and hands—abrasions, nothing washing and time couldn't cure. He tested his knee and felt fresh pain in ligaments he’d torn in a horse fall. Except for the knee, he could find no real damage, nothing broken. He waited for his breath to get back to normal and his instincts to take over. There was a way out of every hole he’d ever gotten himself into, and there’d be a way out of this one. Calm now, he identified his options: follow the canyon to an opening, or climb thirty feet of debris then twenty feet of sheer rock.
He looked up at the narrow cutout of sky and knew then for a fact that the climb was beyond him. It was that simple. Pinky's face was in danger of being smashed by a rock, and still he could not climb that smooth wall.
By the time he got out of here, it would all be over. He might as well rest a little. Pinky had her fate, he had his. For some reason she’d hooked up with a killer. Which, he supposed, was what he was, too, officially. It was true he’d killed a man once, in Arizona, but he hadn’t planned it, hadn’t picked a weapon and lain in wait for him. And he hadn’t personally killed Dumber-Than-a-Horse Woman. Hadn’t had to, she’d run from his arms straight into a cougar’s. Now, nobody’d expect him to separate a cougar from her kill. What was really crazy—he wagged his head, chuckled—was that the killer he was, Mr. Wanted Fugitive, would never kill Pinky, while the killer that Ms. Dark Hair was, the lady tourist with her guidebook, would.
Now, why, he asked himself, would Dark Hair want to kill Pinky? Why would anyone, short of doing it to survive, plan to kill somebody? Only two reasons that he could think of—a woman or money (make that a man or money in Dark Hair’s case). But somehow Dark Hair and Pinky after the same man didn’t fit. Dark Hair jealous that Pinky had a lover was more like it but not a good enough reason to kill her. Maybe Dark Hair was in debt. The two of them took out insurance policies for the trip, the kind that paid double for accidentally falling off a cliff, and named each other the beneficiary. Or Dark Hair was tired of being the strong one, tired of Pinky’s dizzy ways. Also not a reason to kill somebody. Unless ... unless Pinky had something on Dark Hair. Say, Dark Hair and Pinky were lovers and Dark Hair was tired of Pinky and wanted to get rid of her but Pinky threatened her with something so she decided to kill her and get the insurance, maybe a hundred, two hundred thousand too.
The thought of Dark Hair’s hands on his Pinky made him want to puke.
The pain in his knee be damned, he walked in the direction the water that had carved the rock had gone. The canyon drifted downhill and he followed. About thirty yards down he saw it. A shelf cut into the rock at shoulder level. He moved close. The outline of an alcove banked with stones materialized in the twilight. The alcove must lead to an old Indian storeroom. He searched the shadow over the shelf until he found what he knew had to be there—hand and footholds leading to the surface.
Seven-hundred years had worn away all trace of the people who'd used them. The only clue they left, judging by the spacing of the cuts, was they were small, something that made the ascent for someone his height even more precarious. But living on the run had made him animal-lean and flexible. After twenty minutes of stepping slow, reaching blind, not looking up or down, he dragged himself into daylight.
The sun stroked his face like a warm hand.
...
The trail end and the overlook rose 200 yards ahead. The cliffs where Dark Hair had watched Pinky were directly behind him. High-pitched sounds cut through the buzzing insects. Their voices.
Forty minutes had passed, but Pinky was still alive, thanks to her dawdling. If she'd been there with him, he'd have hugged her. Thank God, you silly broad, he’d say. If you weren't such a weak sister, you'd be dead.
He crept catlike toward their voices until he came to a slope directly over them. Dark Hair towered over Pinky. Pinky’s hair straggled out of the braid, the camera case strapped around her neck and over her left shoulder, the umbrella, folded into a tight club, clutched in her right hand. A weapon to defend herself?—he could make out her knuckles white against pink skin.
They’d run out of words. A dead silence separated them. A calm so heavy he was starting to think he’d dreamed the whole Dark Hair as killer thing up when she made her move. Grabbed Pinky by the throat. Woman-fighting was a sport he’d enjoyed watching once or twice, but this was too one-sided to be any fun. Pinky's defense was about what you'd expect—dig in, hold on, try to scream. He dropped from the shelf, ignored the protest from his knee, and scrambled down the slope.
A boulder the size of a tank blocked him a third of the way down. As he pulled himself over the top, he saw Dark Hair’s left hand tightening over Pinky's throat, the rock raised in her right. Then something—a lizard?—spooked her. She shivered, repeated the little back-stepping dance he'd seen earlier. Whatever it was, it was enough to loosen her grip on Pinky. The rock dropped with a thud. Pinky charged past her and scurried up the trail faster than he'd thought possible with her bad ankle. That's my girl, he thought, then realized this would only lead Dark Hair to the overlook with its sheer drop. A well placed shove was all it would take, and it would be his fault. His stupid mistake in not seeing the canyon slot coming.
Now he quit caution altogether and ran after them in the open. He wanted water but didn't stop running. He wanted his cool shelter in a Piro ruin in the Chupadera uplands. A rabbit roasting for supper, ghosts of long-dead Indians for company. He wanted Pinky, soft in the firelight.
He covered the last yards in a burst of speed, pain spiking his knee. Dark Hair had Pinky backed up to the overlook, the edge close, dangerous. Pinky’s face at this range wasn’t beautiful the way he’d imagined but in another way, luminous with something—the will to live. Before he could say Pinky, I’m here, Dark Hair advanced, then suddenly backed off. He couldn't believe his luck when she careened down the trail into his open arms.
He was almost afraid of her, the solid woman, hot breath and wild eyes. He guessed her weight at one-eighty, most of it muscle. But she took no notice of him, looked right in his face and didn't see him. Then he understood. The panorama at the overlook. It wasn't just lizards she was afraid of. Dark Hair was terrified of heights, and she'd walked straight into her worst nightmare. A raven's view of miles of ridges, canyons, and mesas rising from the desert floor thousands of feet down. Floating into nothingness, threatening to take her with it. Guidebook or not, she hadn't anticipated that. An honest mistake, he thought. People who haven't experienced the southwest firsthand usually find it exceeds their imagination. Add in the exertion of trying to kill her best friend, no wonder she was overwhelmed.
His hands closed over her throat. Thick, sinuous, sweaty, it reminded him of a mustang he'd broken. A strong-willed filly who'd bucked and snorted and kicked, even bit him once. He'd hobbled, sugared, prodded, praised her into shape without breaking her spirit. When he finished, she was 1100 pounds of perfect horse, eating out of his hand and still a fiery mount, the only creature who’d ever loved him. Leaving her when the ranch gig turned sour was the one thing he regretted. Until now.
He eased the body to the ground—he’d never killed a murderer before.
"Pinky," he called. "I won't hurt you."
A thick buzzing silence blanketed everything. A few gauze-thin cirrus clouds blown in by high-altitude winds made their way east. On the western horizon, the Chupadera Mountains were a thin stripe of slightly darker sky. Tiny legs sawed against each other, tiny wings beat the air. All other life was mute, the overlook where Pinky had almost died was empty. He looked down on the shifting landscape spread out like a postcard. She couldn’t have fallen, not after all he’d been through. She must be hiding from him.
He heard a rustling noise from the only place around to hide, a mesquite thicket wedged between the trail and a limestone boulder. So soft he'd almost missed it. He strained to hear, and for a minute he was back in Texas, five years old, crouching under a bush in the side yard of the house in Amarillo, where for a couple of days between stepfathers he and his mother had been happy.
"Pinky," he said softly, parting the branches. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."
A black bird spiraled up from the mesquite, flashed orange and white patches, and winged its way down the ridge.
To-whee-to-whee-to-whee-to-whee-to-whee...
He watched it fly over something pink bobbing close to the ground.
Pinky’s umbrella. Pinky ignoring the trail, running in a straight line toward the road. God, she was beautiful. Like a white-tailed doe. So beautiful he wished he had a rifle.
"Pinky." He bolted down the ridge. "Come back, I won't hurt you."
But she'd already reached the Mercury. She unlocked the door—he’d been wrong about Dark Hair having the keys. And wrong about the injured ankle. She'd faked it. For sympathy, to give Dark Hair a false sense of power, whatever. Watching her toss the umbrella onto the front seat, he had the feeling he'd never know.
Then in a single liquid movement that sent his desire flash-flooding, she turned to face him. She was waiting for him to come to her. He felt purely happy. Like he hadn’t felt since the mustang nuzzled his face.
She unzipped the camera case, removed the camera.
He was running hard, winded, didn’t care about anything, the pain in his knee, the cops. They’d get away in her car. Fifty yards to go, the ground softened to loose sand, slowing him down. It was like plowing through a dream. In the dream he watched her raise the camera, adjust the lens, aim at him. He didn't hear the shutter click but felt it like a bullet in the gut. Did hear the car door slam.
"I'd never hurt you, you little bitch."
She cranked the engine, shifted into Drive. Made a perfect three-point turn.
Dust was still settling when he reached the road, the Mercury already the size of a toy car speeding toward San Antonio.
Contact the Author - nealonj@hotmail.com