“How far?” Torrez said.
“About half a mile. Maybe less.” I looked to my left, squinting against the sun. The terrain to the east was, if possible, worse than where we stood, the San Cristobals jumbled into vertical chimneys of granite extrusions that resembled a giant’s attempt at building a massive pipe organ.
Down below, the ambulance picked its way up to the springs and stopped.
“The ambulance is here, sir,” Linda’s voice said.
“Tell ’em to wait,” Torrez replied. “Mr. Walsh, what happened? Where’s Scott Gutierrez?”
“I…I think that I hit him,” Walsh managed. His eyes opened wide with urgency. “I saw him and Connie together. They were across a canyon. At first…it was their voices. They were arguing.”
“How far away were you?”
“Across the canyon. Maybe fifty yards. Maybe more. I don’t know.” He closed his eyes and turned his head away. “They were standing out on a…kind of a spurlike thing.” He raised his right hand weakly. “It dropped off. I could hear them talking.” He shifted position, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue, as if something really foul-tasting was glued to the back of his palette.
“And then they were shouting at each other. And then…he pushed her. Really hard. She fell backward.” He closed his eyes again and his face scrinched up, either with the pain of the memory or the pain of what his innards were up to.
“You saw her fall?”
Walsh nodded. “I saw her…fall. She didn’t even have time to cry out.”
“And it was Scott Gutierrez who pushed her? You’re sure?” I asked.
Walsh opened his eyes and looked at me. “Oh, I’m sure.”
“I’m on my way up there,” Tom Pasquale said.
“Wait a minute,” Torrez snapped, and it looked as if he’d jerked an invisible line. Pasquale stopped in his tracks. “What did Gutierrez do after that?”
“I shouted at them.” He grimaced. “I mean, what could I do? I shouted and he turned around, raised his rifle, and fired at me. Just like that. He fired at me.” Walsh’s gaze fastened on the horizon, his breath coming in short, quick little gasps.
“You need to get the EMTs up here,” Posey said.
“Not if somebody’s out there with a rifle.”
“We’ve got cover here,” the officer said. “If they don’t get some oxygen up here, he’s not going to make it.”
Torrez frowned and then nodded. “Route ’em right up the middle so we can keep an eye on ’em,” he said. “But hold on a minute.” He rested a hand on Walsh’s shoulder. “Did you see where Gutierrez went after he shot at you? What direction?” Torrez turned and looked at me. “He’s got to be circling around to the vehicles, sir. That’s what worries me.”
“No,” Walsh said. “He shot at me twice. I didn’t even imagine that he’d do that. I had nowhere to go. I tried to dig in behind a rock, but he shot at me again. That’s when I shot back. Three times, I think.” Walsh sagged backward, exhausted from the effort.
“Did you hit him?”
Walsh nodded. “I think so. I’m not sure. But I think…that I did. He fell backward. Maybe he just tripped. But I think that I hit him.”
“Jesus,” Pasquale muttered.
“Okay,” Torrez said, stretching out an arm and pointing east. “I see a sort of jagged pinnacle over there maybe a thousand yards. Is that where they were, Mr. Walsh?”
Walsh nodded faintly without turning his head to look. “I…think so.”
“Tom, you and Wade circle around, come in from above,” Torrez said. “And be goddamn careful. Me and Doug will go straight across.” He stood up and peered down the hill. “Linda,” he said into the radio, “who’s got the gurney?”
“Judy Parnell and Al Langham, sir.”
“Okay. Radio dispatch and tell them that we’re going to need another unit out here with four people. Tell ’em it’s a real bad climb in rough country. They may want to pick up some folks from Search and Rescue. When they arrive, keep them at the bottom until I give the all-clear. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go ahead and tell Judy and Al to come up. Al, are you listening?”
“I’m here.” Langham’s voice was tense.
“You two be careful. I think it’ll be all right, but don’t be standing around out in the open. Keep in the cover of those rocks there in the old streambed as much as you can.”
“We’ll do it.”
“You’ve got a coronary to transport.” Torrez surveyed James Walsh. “We need you up here ASAP. Make sure you bring some air with you.”
“Ten-four.”
“Howard and I can give them a hand,” I said.
Torrez nodded. “You hang in there,” he said to Walsh, and he glanced at the others. “Let’s boogie.”
In a matter of minutes, the only sign of the four officers was the occasional clatter of their boots on loose rocks. Below us, the two EMTs, casting nervous glances up the side of the mountain, wound their way up toward us. They were within a hundred yards when James Walsh said, “Oh, my gosh.”
Chapter Forty-five
Sergeant Howard Bishop moved with surprising speed for such a big man. Even as James Walsh’s eyes rolled back in his head and his hands spasmed up against his chest, Bishop leaped forward, grabbed Walsh by the coat at the shoulders, and swung him away from the small tree against which he’d been leaning.
Striking out with his boots, he cleared the largest rocks while I scrabbled an almost clear patch of ground. Of average build weighted down by an expanding beer belly, Walsh was no child. Bishop handled him as if he were, and stretched him out on his back.
With practiced motions, the deputy lifted Walsh’s chin, cleared the airway, and took a deep breath. I dropped down on the strickened man’s right side. His carotid artery was easy to find, but instead of a nice, steady pulse, the artery jiggled under my touch as the man’s heart spasmed into a string of fibrillations.
It’d been a long time since I’d done chest compressions on a human being. The mannequins that the EMTs entrusted to us during the CPR refresher courses didn’t complain about mangled technique, and they didn’t die. I felt for the xiphoid process at the end of Walsh’s sternum, moved up a bit, took a deep breath, and used my considerable weight behind straight arms to do the work.
For what seemed like the rest of the day, I pumped while Bishop breathed, the two of us working in sync while I prayed that the two EMTs would just levitate up the hill. In reality, we worked for no more than three minutes before Al Langham dropped down beside me, puffing like a steam engine.
“Jesus, what a place,” he said.
“You ready for me to get out of your way?” I gasped. He listened with the stethoscope and even as he did so, his eyes were as much on me as on Walsh.
“You all right?” he snapped.
I nodded, continuing the compressions. The sun was almost hot, bouncing off the rocks.
“Then just keep doin’ what you’re doin’ for a couple of seconds.” Even as he said that, the radios barked.
“Sheriff?” Torrez said. “Call me when you can.” He was either a mind reader or was watching us through binoculars.
“He’s going to have to wait,” I panted.
Langham turned to the large aluminum case that he’d lugged up the hill, and then he and Judy went to work. But James Walsh had chosen a bad spot to have a coronary. In another minute, his heart gave up on the wild, run-a-way rhythm and flat-lined. The EMTs went the whole gamut for the next ten minutes, but eventually we sat back, exhausted. I touched Walsh on the neck, feeling skin that was already going cool to the touch.
“Shit,” I said.
“That just about covers it,” Al Langham said. “Where’s the rest of the hunting party?”
“I wish we knew,” I said. I pulled the radio from my belt. “Linda, call dispatch and tell Gayle she’ll have to reach us by phone. Then come on up.”
“I’m on my way,” she said. She was more eager to climb a rugged mountain than I was just to shift position to rest an aching knee.