By then I had driven past, and I watched in the rearview mirror as Barrie’s silver Corvette eased out onto the street, heading east. The hobby business was obviously a good one.
Scott Salinger’s home was well away from the main drag, in one of the older sections of town that had been established during the heyday of the silver mines forty years before. The place was small, overshadowed by the collection of vehicles in the graveled driveway. A big boat, its cockpit covered with canvas and the engine booted, rested with its stern close to one garage door. The trailer hitch was supported at a convenient height by a cinder block. Between that and the street was a motor home perhaps twenty feet in length. A small motorbike was obviously a permanent attachment to the vehicle’s nose, secured with two padlocks and a hefty chain. A middle-aged Chevy Nova with Texas plates was parked beside the boat. Between the garage and the brown plaster wall of the house was an old Grumman canoe, two bicycles long past their prime, and something that might once have been a wire dog-run.
I pulled into the driveway behind the Nova. It didn’t look like anyone was home, so I left the engine running when I got out.
“May I help you?”
I spun around, startled. The young lady was in grubby gardener’s clothes that served only to enhance her lithe figure. She pushed the wide-brimmed floppy hat back and surveyed me with eyes almost the color of jade.
“I’m Undersheriff Bill Gastner,” I said, and extended my hand.
She shook with a slightly grimy hand and no apologies for it. “I’m Amy Salinger.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “I remember you as the lead in that musical that the high school put on a number of years ago.”
She smiled slightly. “You have a good memory, Sheriff.”
I indicated the Nova with a nod. “You’re a Texican now?”
“I’m a nurse at Texas A and M. I’m home for a week or two vacation. I assume you wanted to see Scott?” Her tone was sober and businesslike. I nodded. “He should be back in an hour or two. He went hunting.”
“Hunting?”
Amy Salinger took off her hat and scratched her head, further tangling her already wild mane of strawberry hair. “That’s what he calls it. Mostly it’s just hiking around the hills. He seems to need the solitude. Especially now.”
“It’s been pretty rugged for him?”
“Yes, it has,” Amy said. “The car crash really threw him for a loop. Mom and Dad just get frustrated talking with him. Scott and I have always gotten along well, and they asked if I would come home for a while.”
“It helps?”
Amy wiped her hands on her jeans. “I don’t know. Maybe a little. He says he doesn’t know what to do. I don’t know what he could do, unless he knows something about the drugs you found. But he won’t tell me everything, so I can’t do much except be supportive in very general terms. He’s always been the kind to keep things bottled up. Some kids are fortunate enough to be articulate. He isn’t.” She shrugged.
“I spoke with one of his football coaches a few minutes ago. He said Scott left the camp. The coach said Scott was pretty depressed a good deal of the time.”
“Small wonder,” Amy said, and her voice carried some of the professional steel that good nurses always seem to have at their disposal.
I chewed on the corner of my lip a little, wondering how to phrase the next question. There was no easy way. I moved a few steps and leaned against 310’s fender. “He’s not apt to do anything rash, is he? I mean, you know him as well as anyone.”
“Rash?”
“Well, if he’s really depressed, and doesn’t know which way to turn…”
“You mean rash like suicide?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s what I mean.”
“I hope not.” She hesitated. “I know it’s crossed his mind, though.”
“Really?”
“I mean before. When he’s had problems before. A couple of years ago, in fact.” She shrugged and added, “What adolescent doesn’t entertain the notion at one time or another? We just hope it’s a notion that passes harmlessly, or that we can make the kid see that it’s unnecessary. All things pass. Of course, convincing even supposedly mature college students of that isn’t easy. And if they’re the kind who finally decides to go lights out, the odds of doing anything to stop them are nil.”
“You said he’s out hunting now?”
“That’s what he said. Once he told me he likes to go out on top of the mesa behind Consolidated. It’s quite a view from up there.”
“He took a gun with him?”
“His old twenty-two rifle.”
“And you’re not worried?”
“Of course I’m worried, Sheriff. He’s the only brother I’ve got. And I love him a lot. But you can’t put a teenager in a cage. Scott’s not self-destructive-just confused.” She blinked rapidly and cleared her throat. “And you can’t believe how much it hurts to talk like this. But I have faith in Scott. I really do. Other than that, about all you can do is love ’em and make ’em really believe there’s something worthwhile to come home to. And when they do come home, there better be someone to talk to who’ll just listen and not make them believe they’re being judged.”
I looked at Amy Salinger for a long minute, and she returned the gaze evenly. “Then he’s a lucky kid,” I said.
“Thanks. But I think it’s just common sense.”
I nodded agreement with that. “What’s he driving? I really need to talk to him.”
“A 1974 Bronco. Blue over rusty white. It’s got four of those big chrome lights on the roof and a power winch in front that doesn’t have a cable. You can’t miss it.”
“Would you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“If he comes home and we haven’t talked, would you ask him to call me?” I pulled a card from my wallet and handed it to her. “It doesn’t matter what time. If I’m not home, have him call the office number. They’ll find me.”
“I’ll tell him, Sheriff. But in some ways, he’s a stubborn kid. He’ll mull things around in his head and then finally decide what he’s going to do. Try and force something on him and he’ll just clam up.”
“I know. But I got to give it a try. It’s been two weeks or better since the accident. He’s had time to think. I really believe he’s got some answers we badly need.”
Amy Salinger said she’d do what she could, and I believed her. I backed out of the driveway as she headed back toward her garden. I knew the odds of finding Scott Salinger up on the mesa were slim, but I was stubborn, too.
***
To reach the mesa top, I drove up County 43 past the mine and the turn off to the lake. The pavement almost immediately gave way to gravel, then to rough and rutted government surplus caliche-hard as concrete when it was dry and slick as silicon syrup when wet. I half-expected to meet Scott’s Bronco on the way down. One of us would have to take the ditch, and it wasn’t going to be me. The county car straddled ruts most of the time, but once in a while crunched down hard enough to make me wince.
The road wound up the mesa face and finally came out on top. I couldn’t see anything through the pinon and juniper, but when the road reached a triple fork, I stayed left, knowing I was heading toward the rim. Another hundred yards on I passed a derelict refrigerator, ten miles from the nearest 110-volt outlet. I always wondered what strange soul would go to all the trouble to cart such a thing out there when the county landfill was only a mile from town. A quarter mile farther on, an old mattress and the backseat of a van rotted slowly into the dirt. At least I could figure out what they had been used for.
After another ten minutes, I could see only emptiness through the trees and knew I was making progress toward the edge. And some of the tire tracks in the dust looked fresh. The road skirted a thick grove of mixed pinon and juniper and ended in a wide spot liberally littered with beer cans, a disposable diaper or two, and two bright-yellow oil cans. Parked under a fat juniper was Scott Salinger’s Bronco.