"Moab, this's Cessna Two One Papa Delta," he said into his radio.
"D'ya copy? Repeat, this's Two One Papa Delta calm' Moab Air."
"We hear you, Chippy," a voice crackled.
"Morton, put Marianne on, will ya?" He turned to Bernard. "Jes'had me a thought," he said.
"Hi, Chippy, it's Marianne."
"Say, beautiful, how's it going'?"
"You coming back soon?"
" 'Nother hour, m'be. We're out here 'bout twenty miles north of Hanksville. Do you 'member a ways back tellin' me 'bout some ghost town near here?"
"That'd be Charity. It ain't no ghost town, though.
It's a hospital of some sort now. A mental hospital, if you can believe that. Set up, oh, two or three years ago. But the head doctor there sent a notice around forbiddin' any overflights."
Bema.Td nodded quickly.
"Jes' wonderin', thassall," Chippy gaid. "Who'bouts is't anyway?"
"Twenty or twenty-five miles west of St. Joe's.
Don't you cause no trouble, now, Chippy Smith. For all I know they're listening to us right now."
"Hey, do I cause trouble? Well, we'll jes' be swingin' by Hanksville an' back. See you in a hour.
Papa Delta out."
"Can you find it, Chippy?" Nelson asked.
"I kin try."
Bernard gazed down at the vast, ruiz ed terrain, rocky and barren of all but the simplest vegetation, yet in its way serenely beautiful. Of primary interest to him, though, were the dirt roads and tire tracks that from time to time skimmed past.
They had flown northwest for twenty minutes when Bernard caught the flash of sunlight off something metal or glass.
"Chippy, there, over there," he said. "Did you see it?"
The pilot nodded and banked to the east. It took another five minutes of circling before they spotted the Jeep, which was largely covered with dust and from the air by a rocky to 120 feet and made a was an elongated moun(of dirt. Protruding from the mound were what looked like shoes and pieces of clothing.
"Can you set us down?" Bernard asked.
"If I do, the takeoff's gonna use up our remaining fuel."
"Can we still get back to Moab?"
"Pro'bly."
"Go for it."
Smith shrug ed and pulled back up to 200 feet.
Minutes later, he dropped down over what might have been a roadway or dried-up creek bed, and neatly set the Cessna down in a cloud of dust and pebbles.
"You're a hell of a pilot," Bernard said.
Chippy smiled. "I try," he said.
They located the Jeep with little difficulty. Its canvas roof was intact, although covered with half an inch of fine sand. Together, they walked around to the mound they had seen. TWo skeletons, locked in each other's arms, lay in the shadow of the vehicle. Their tattered sneakers and the bleached white stalks of their legs protruded obscenely from beneath the covering dust.
"You can wait over there for me if you want," Bernard said. "I'm going to try and figure out who they are."
"Ain't much that upsets me," Chippy Smith said.
They used a rag from the Jeep to brush the dust away from the bodies.
The flesh had largely rotted or been eaten away from the two skulls, but from the ragged clothing, jewelry, and what hair and gristle remained, they were able to determine that what they were seeing had once been man and woman.
Bernard knelt beside the two forms and caught a whiff of the fading scent of death. He noticed the bulge of a wallet in the jeans of one of them, and reached for it. The pocket fell open at his touch.
"Richard Colson, Santa Barbara, California," he read, sadly looking from the sniffing face in the driver's license photo to the grotesquely grinning skull.
Chippy found a purse on the floor of the Jeep, and from the wallet inside they learned the name and face of Colson's wife.
"Nice-looking' couple," he said. "Any idea how they died?"
"None, except I don't think they were shot. How close are we to that Charity place?"
"Ten miles, m'be." Bernard slipped the wallets into his jacket pocket.
"Think you could keep this a secret for a while?" he asked.
"You police?"
"Private." He fished his ID from his wallet and flashed it, along with a hundred-dollar bill.
"That ain't necessary," Chippy said, pointing at the money. "I'll jes' take whacha owe for the flight an' keep quiet."
Bernard handed the bill over anyway.
"I promise these folks'fl get taken care of properly," he said."
I just don't want anybody at the hospital alerted yet until I get a look at what they're up to.
These two may- not be connected at all with what I'm looking for, but then again, they just might."
The two men stood in silence for a time, gazing down at the ghostly remains. Then they turned and headed back to the plane. As the engine roared to life, a scorpion crept out of the eye socket of Marilyn Colson's skull and scampered across to the safety of a nearby pile of rocks.
Except for a single tiny window built at eye level into the steel door, the room at the rear of Warehouse 18 was like a vault-a hollow cube of concrete, perhaps twelve feet on a side. In one corner of the room were a plastic bottle of water and an empty metal bucket, presumably for holding human waste, and along one wall was a stack of four quilted packing blankets.
For more than an hour Laura Enders had been alone in the room with her brother-or rather with what remained of his mind and body.
After whipping the two of them down with his pistol, and coolly murdering the hobo named Rocky, Lester Wheeler had driven through a side gate at the docks and then around to the front of the warehouse.
The huge hangarhke doors had opened for them without a signal, allowing Wheeler to drive straight down a long aisle between packing crates to the back room.
There, two men-whom Laura recognized from her close call on the docks with Eric-undid the manacles binding her to Scott and shoved her alone into the bleak cen.
Several times over the hour that followed she heard her brother's sickening screeches from somewhere in the warehouse. She pounded at the door, screaming until her hands and voice could do no more. Then she sank down on the foul-smelling blankets and cried. Finally, Scott was thrown in with her, moaning and barely conscious. His breathing was even more labored than before, and his face and hands were bloody.
When Laura knelt to tend to him, she realized that several of his fingernails had been torn Off.
Now, as she paced from one side of the narrow prison to the other, Scott slept, at times moaning, at times crying out softly like a child. She ached for his pain, for his crippled body and memory, and for the hopelessness of their situation. And she struggled to ignore the gruesome, fleeting wish that his breathing would simply stop.
Outside the small window she could see men working as if nothing were amiss. One of them drove a forklift, transferring crates from one section of the warehouse to another. Several others wandered by, laughing or talking or drinking beer. One of them actually looked over at her and smiled.
"Damn you," she muttered. "Damn you all to hell."
She tore off a piece of her shirt, dampened it, and gently wiped Scott's face. His eyelids fluttered and then opened. He focused on her with an ease that surprised her.
"Have they hurt you?" he asked.
"No," she said. "Not yet. Did you tell them what they wanted to know?"
"I… I don't think so. Right now that videotape is keeping us alive."
"You do remember the tape then?"
"Yes. So much is still missing for me, but I do know that. The receiver's locked in that Aphrodite trailer, just as you said."
"And how much else do you remember?"
Scott winced as he propped himself up on one elbow.
"Some little scenes or details clear as day. Most things not at all. I wish I could say I remember you, but I really don't. mire we close?"