He let the truck roll down the incline, its wheels gripped by the ruts. The truck rocketed straight toward the boulder.
He slid to a stop and reversed fifty feet up the hill, then climbed out and inspected the ground around the rock, taking soil samples from the still blackened area left by the wreck. He then backed up to the flat where he scoured the top and, clucking softly, scraped up more dirt samples.
More out of habit than hope, McLean searched the hilltop in a series of concentric circles. Reaching the edge of the flat, he stared down the side of the hill into a small ravine. He crabbed down the slope, boots kicking up puffs of dust left by the abnormally dry autumn.
He walked the ravine, picking up and discarding the odd bits of rusted metal, car parts, and other trash that somehow always find their way to the bottoms of gullies miles from the nearest settlement.
After fifteen minutes his knees began to ache. Half crawling, he worked up the slope toward his truck, using the occasional bush for a handhold. Partway up a loose section of talus gave way and he slipped backwards, flailing for a grip. His slide stopped against a manzanita bush, and he rapped his knuckles on a tire iron dangling in its branches. He started back up the slope, paused, and slid back to the bush, where he examined the tool’s unrusted finish. When he scrabbled up the slope again, he was clutching his find in a handkerchief. He stuffed it into the truck’s utility box and, whistling softly, started for home.
The dark red tanker’s snout caught McLean’s attention as his pickup lurched up onto the wider, and marginally smoother, main road. He hopped out of his truck and walked around the tanker toward an aging couple sitting shoulder to shoulder on a sofa sagging beneath an awning nailed to a small yellow house trailer.
“Afternoon, mister.” The man, weatherbeaten and thin, sounded cautious but unworried. His round wife said nothing but watched him with a sparkle in her grey eyes. They looked starved for company.
“Good afternoon.” McLean squatted on his heels, pleased to have found a greying couple who still enjoyed touching one another. “You folks been on fire watch long?”
“About a month, give or take.” The man glanced toward the cutoff to the side road. “You been hunting?”
“No, just looking into an accident that got a man killed.” The couple looked at one another, then back to him. The woman spoke for the first time, her voice motherly. “We wondered if you folks were going to come around.”
“We?”
“Yes, aren’t you from the sheriff or something?”
McLean tried his most disarming smile. “Something. I’m a fire investigator, just trying to tie up the loose ends. Why were you expecting someone?”
“Well—” the husband sipped from a coffee mug and nodded toward the pot, sitting on a small propane stove. “Want some? No?” He shrugged. “It’s just a guy gets hisself killed you figure people are gonna check up, you know?”
McLean felt a surge of success. “You saw something that makes you wonder about the accident?”
“Naw, nothing special. Just figured someone would ask is all.”
Deflated, McLean pulled off his hat and scratched the ever-widening bald spot where his cowlick used to be. “You see the smoke from the fire?”
“Naw, too far away and on the wrong side of the hill.” The man rubbed his chin. “Surprised the other guy didn’t see it, though.”
“Other guy?”
“Yeah, some guy in a red Bronco went by, oh, I dunno, half an hour after the guy that got killed went by. Took the same road. Another hunter, I figure. Was hard to tell with those stupid damned tinted windows.”
“You see the Bronco come back out?”
“Naw, me and the missus,” the old man leered and his wife blushed, “we were kinda occupied. Ain’t much to do on them high fire danger days when they stop loggin’ altogether.”
McLean studied the ground between his toes, embarrassed for the woman. He didn’t like the old man quite so much. “You’re sure you saw the Bronco and the Blazer on the same day?”
Annoyance flickered across the old man’s face. “Of course I’m sure, it was the first day of the logging ban, and the damned thing went on for better’n a week. Why we noticed them two cars, they really shouldna been up here.”
On his way home, McLean stopped to ship the dirt samples to a friend’s laboratory in San Francisco and to pick up his photographs and graphics from Axel Reed.
He spent the next two days working the phone, calling a prickly friend at the sheriff’s department, Sergeant Mac Toon; the bankruptcy court in Medford; and Carl Sutton.
On Saturday, the insurance company’s deadline day, he called Sarah, then slipped into a cashmere turtleneck, the closest he’d come to wearing a tie, a pair of cotton twill pants, and a deerskin jacket. He dropped the tire iron, lab reports, pictures, and graphics into a large leather briefcase, and went out to the garage, where he stripped the cover off his one prized possession.
The Porsche 928S smoothed out the lumps in Sarah’s office parking lot. She climbed in with a quizzical smile. “Bit out of character, aren’t we?”
McLean shot her an enigmatic smile. “The tweed and cashmere set has trouble taking us jeans and Old Spice types seriously.”
Sarah, wearing a wool wrap skirt and silk blouse, couldn’t be accused of dressing any more stylishly than usual. She twisted around in the contoured leather seat and sniffed. “Actually, I think you wear Tabac. What’s the big mystery?”
“It’s time we had a discussion with the principals.” He stared resolutely ahead as he guided the Porsche out of the lot, then rocketed toward Medford and the Archer villa perched on a bluff overlooking the Rogue Valley. Sarah sat bolt upright, occasionally giving him a hard stare at his refusal to say more.
Trent Archer opened the massive oak door and took his time surveying McLean and Sarah. His eyes once again caressed her chest. McLean gave her a sideways glance.
She smiled at Archer and, in her best Miss America voice, said, “Your fly’s open.”
He slithered backwards and sideways, his right hand surreptitiously fingering his zipper. His look turned poisonous on finding it closed, and he said in a strangled voice, “This way. Mercy’s in the den.”
McLean, fighting to keep a straight face, glided after them, automatically casing the house. Not as a burglar, although first-time acquaintances had been known to quietly count their silverware, but as a fireman; checking for smoke alarms and assessing the fire load as well as construction technique. Given the multiple rooms jammed with furniture, the abundance of wooden paneling, the thick carpets and heavy drapes, he decided the house would be an absolute bitch if it caught fire.
Mercy Archer didn’t rise from behind a massive rosewood desk that dominated the high-ceilinged room, heavily masculine with its gun racks, glass-eyed trophy heads, and black leather chairs. She motioned abruptly toward two wingbacks directly before the desk. Archer went to the bar, poured two drinks, kept one, and handed the other to Mercy. He leaned against the desk, drawing an irritable glance from his stepmother, which he ignored. He raised his tumbler in a half salute. “So, Rocky Point has come to its senses. We’ll just sign the papers and put this incident behind us.”
Sarah glanced at McLean with a lifted eyebrow.
“Rocky Point won’t be settling out of court,” he smiled inwardly at Sarah’s sharp intake of breath, “and you’d be foolish to take this before a jury.”
Mercy jumped to her feet and leaned, trembling, on the desktop. “How dare you. Of course they’ll pay. They owe me. My husband is dead, and they owe me. They owe me.”