“I don’t have my badge with me. This is an undercover assignment. We’re checking into a report we’ve had.”
“Oh, really!” Chandler said.
“My partner will be in here anytime joining me. If he sees you holding that gun on me, he’ll shoot first and then ask what you’re doing. Better give it to me.”
“Put your arms straight out from your sides,” he said. “Miss Craig here is going to pat you down. See if you have a weapon. You would have, even if you are doing something undercover.”
“You’re getting into serious trouble. Both of you.”
“Go pat her down,” Chandler said, nodding to Joanna. “Make sure she doesn’t have a weapon.”
“No. No,” Joanna said. “I’m not having anything to do with this.”
Chandler stared at her, expression grim.
“I see,” he said. Then, to Bernie: “Turn around, little lady, arms straight out, hands open.” He took a step forward, checked for a shoulder holster, checked her belt line, patted her on the back. Nodded.
“Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll show you my credentials.” He took out his billfold, opened it, thrust it at Bernie’s face. “There you see my own badge as a Los Angeles County, California, deputy sheriff. And here”—he took a card from his billfold—“is my authorization as a criminal investigator for the same county. I am here to continue an investigation of a cold case, an old homicide in California, the investigation of which has led us all the way out here.”
Bernie nodded, very aware that Chandler had jerked both the badge and the certification card away before she had a chance to read them. The man was lying, but perhaps he was a private investigator with some sort of credentials. The world seemed to be full of them.
The thunder was booming again. The sharp crack of a lightning strike on the mesa top near the slot echoed around them. Bernie noticed the dusty stone streambed was no longer dusty. It was carrying a thin sheet of water. And as she watched, it repeated something she’d seen untold times after the “male rains” of summer in desert mesa country—another wave of runoff raced down the floor and left the thin sheet an inch or so deeper. She felt a sense of urgency. Another such wave would be coming, and another, and another. As gravity rushed the runoff water down, the stream would became a flood.
“Well, then,” she said, “what can I do to assist you?”
“Just take a seat somewhere and stay out of the way,” Chandler said. “We want to get our evidence collected and get out of here before this storm turns into something serious.”
He picked up the strap of his backpack, pulled it away from the stream floor, and zipped it open. Bernie watched as he sorted through its contents, moving a shirt out of the way, pushing aside underwear, shoving a small pistol under the shirt, finally taking out a pair of heavy wool socks. He inspected them and looked at his companion.
“Joanna,” he said. “You got any sort of sack in your pack?”
“For what?” she said.
“For what we came for,” he said, and pointed to the double line of diamonds.
She shook her head.
“Hell with it, then,” Chandler said. He tucked one of the socks under his belt, went to the shelf where the bone had been erected, and began picking snuff tins off the sand there, dropping the diamonds into the other sock and tossing aside the empty containers. It took longer than it might have because he was keeping his pistol ready.
Diamond after diamond clicked into the sock. Bernie watched and counted, conscious of the time, aware that the runoff stream was widening fast, thinking of how much water that dam of fallen stones up the slot must be holding back. What was flowing past now was merely what was running under the slab where she had been sitting. If it came over the dam, if the dam washed out, everything here would be swept down the slot canyon.
Chandler stopped. All the tins on the sand were emptied now and the foot of the sock, from heel to toe, bulged with diamonds. He tucked the pistol in his belt, knotted the sock at the ankle, and began extracting diamonds from the tins fastened to the sandstone wall, dropping them into the second sock, knotting it above the diamonds, tying the two socks into a single strand with each end a bulging knot of diamonds.
Job done, he faced the women.
“Here we have a big bunch of diamonds,” he said, gripping the combined socks where they were knotted, and swinging the bulges back and forth and laughing. “Big diamonds. Perfect blue-whites with expensive cuts. About thirty or so in this sock and”—he pointed—“maybe forty or so in this one. Call it seventy, and multiply that by maybe twenty thousand dollars on the average, and I have let’s say a million and a half dollars.”
Thunder drowned out what else Chandler was telling them. The storm now must have moved directly overhead. Water was dripping down from the rim of the slot above. The light popcorn hail was peppering directly on them now. The flow down the slot floor was widening fast.
Bernie made a “wait” gesture to Chandler with an open palm, rushed to his backpack, and pulled it away from the spreading water. She reached under the shirt, extracted Joanna’s little pistol, slipped it into her pocket, zipped the pack shut, picked it up, and deposited it on high ground well away from the flood. Then she exhaled. The man hadn’t noticed, so he hadn’t shot her. Not yet. She glanced at him. He was grinning at her.
“Thanks,” he said.
“It would have washed away,” she said. “There’s sort of a dam up there where rocks fell down. If the runoff sweeps that out, everything is going to wash away. We better get out of here.”
“Nice of you to warn me,” Chandler said. “And thank you for saving Joanna’s little pistol from getting wet.”
“Oh,” Bernie said.
“In return for your kindness, I guess I should tell you that when you get a chance to shoot me, and try to do it, just don’t try. It won’t work. I unloaded Joanna’s pistol, just in case she got careless with it.”
He laughed. “However, if you try to shoot me anyway, then I want you to know that I will shoot you. Probably several times. And”—he pointed to the shriveled body of the Skeleton Man—“leave your body here with our deceased friend.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Bernie said.
While she was saying it, lightning flashed again, followed a moment later by the crack of a nearby strike, and booming echoes of thunder. And as that faded, another sound emerged.
“Oooh!” said Joanna, in something between a shout and a shriek. It was a rumbling, creaking, crashing sound of boulders being swept along by the overpowering surge of flash waters rushing down-slope. With the sound came the sight of the slot-bottom stream abruptly rising, spreading, sweeping along with it the variety of leaves, twigs, assorted debris the bottom had collected in the years since the last “male rain” downpour had settled over this section of the Coconino Plateau and sent untold tons of water pouring off the rocky surface into the canyon.
Bernie had expected this, but in a more gradual and less violent form, and had decided what she had to do when it happened.
Chandler had not waited for a plan to reveal itself. He was running down the slot, splashing along the edge of the stream against the cliff. Looking for a place to climb, she guessed, or hoping to reach the exit where the slot would pour its water into the canyon. He was clutching his diamond-filled socks as he ran.
Bernie grabbed Joanna Craig’s arm. “Come on!” she shouted. “I know a place we’ll be safe.”
Saying it, Bernie was wishing she felt as confident as she tried to sound. The place she had in mind was the basalt shelf where the Skeleton Man had made his bed. He must have known the canyon, perched there to be safe from such flash floods. And coming in here, she had noticed on the walls of the slot how high flood debris had been deposited by previous floods. Maybe the Skeleton Man’s shelf wasn’t totally safe, but it would be safer than here.