He rang off, looked at Anna and nodded: 'Message from Pam.'
'That was him.'
'Yeah. No number.'
'Shoot.'
'Call Wyatt, tell him, see if they got a record of it.'
Anna nodded, but asked, 'How long to the ranch, do you think?'
He glanced at the car clock, then said, 'Half an hour, maybe.'
'Got to be a few minutes faster than that,' Anna said.
He nodded, and Anna took the phone to call Wyatt. But as she was about to punch in the number, it rang again. 'Give it to me,' Harper said. Anna handed it to him.
'Hello? Hello?' He shook his head, clicked off, handed it back. 'Check up call,' he said. 'He was calling to see if the phone was busy. To see if we turned right around to call somebody.'
'No dummy,' Anna said.
'Crazy as a loon, but not stupid,' Harper said.
'Drive faster,' Anna said. She sat with the gun upright, the butt of the little gun resting on the seat between her thighs, looking out the window.
'Most likely a wild-goose chase,' Harper said.
'Most likely,' she said.
She waited another minute, then tapped Wyatt's phone number in. 'Yeah?'
'We just got a call from the guy, within the last minute or so, if you're doing a trace.'
'Nothing's working, but I'll check,' he said. 'The woman from Oregon called: you were set up. He was somewhere down here when you called for him.'
'All right. We're building a picture, and he fits,' Anna said.
'Better'n that. I just talked. Jesus watch out.' Wyatt broke away, speaking to somebody else. 'Just missed a goddamn truck by about an inch,' he said, talking to Anna again. 'Listen, a woman named Daly called about three minutes after the Oregon woman, wanted to know what was going on. She said you screwed them on that animal rights protest, and you might be out to frame Judge for some reason.'
'Bullshit.'
'Yeah, I know. Anyway, I asked her when she'd last seen him, and she said she saw him this morning. And I asked if he showed any signs of injury from a fight.'
'His cheek,' Anna said, remembering the fight in the parking lot.
'Exactly,' Wyatt said. 'She said there was something wrong with his cheek and she looked at it and he got madshe said there was a bruise covered with makeup. He told her he'd been bitten by a cat that he supposedly was trying to pick up.'
'Goddamn, he's the guy,' Anna said.
'He looks good: and we're getting some people together up in Ventura, heading out to that ranch. We'll be ready in a couple of hours.'
'Right,' Anna said. She pulled her face back from the phone, and started rubbing her hand across the mouthpiece. 'We're on the way there, now. If you don't get something from Pasadena.'
'Anna, you're breaking up.'
'Can't hear you,' Anna said, blocking most of what she said with her fingers. 'Can't.'
She punched the 'end' button: she would not be told at this point to wait for a few hours.
'What?' Harper asked.
'He's the guy,' Anna said.
'But he might not be at the ranch.'
'Oh, he's there,' Anna said. 'He's there, all right. I can smell him.'
She bared her teeth, and Harper stared at her for a second, then jerked his eyes back to the dark road. Anna felt like she did on those nights when she and the crew were really operating, when everything was turning in their favor: like the night of the raid, and Jacob's leap. She was on, and she could feel the attraction of the ranch.
The ranch was pulling her in.
Chapter 29
The night was so deep that it seemed like a piece of black velvet had been folded over the car; the only relief came from the dark-walled tunnel carved out by the BMW's high beams.
Anna punched Louis' number into the phone, at the same time saying, 'I'd like to talk to Daly. I wonder if she knows where Judge is?'
'She would have told Wyatt,' Harper said.
Louis' number got no response at alclass="underline" now they wereout of range.
'I thought those fuckin' towers were everywhere. They're building one on the hill over my house,' Harper said.
'Not everywhere,' Anna said. Harper slowed at a gravel intersection, and they peered up at a road sign. 'Right,' Anna said. Two miles.'
Harper didn't hesitate at the ranch gate. He passed it by, still climbing the gravel road, over a rise, down the side of a canyon, up the rise on the other side, around a turn.
He pulled over against the mountainside, killed the engine. 'Five tenths of a mile,' he said. 'Five- or six-minute jog.'
'Let's go,' Anna said, popping her door.
'There's a flash in the glove box,' he said. His voice was tight, edgy. 'Better get it. Give me the rifle.'
Anna handed him the Ruger and found the flash, a black aluminium cylinder about the length and diameter of a fat man's cigar.
On the road, Anna found she could cup her fist around the flash, and project a needle-thin beam of light, enough to keep them on the gravel. As their eyes adjusted, moonlight began to show. Anna turned, looking for the moon, and finally, below a break in the hillside, found it lurking in the trees above them, a quarter-crescent.
'There'll be more light up on top,' she whispered, as they jogged.
Harper grunted, then put up a hand, touching her chest. 'Coming up,' he said. Anna slowed, felt the slope of the road easing beneath her feet. The drive had started up from a short flat stretch; they should be close.
'There,' she said. The galvanized gate was a gray shadow in the darker brush around it. 'Let me check it.'
She shined the needle of light on the post side of the gate, sliding down the metal joint between the hinges. Nothing.
'All right?' Harper asked.
'Just a minute.' She checked the opening side, and found the contact: 'No, it's alarmed,' she said. Harper came up, squatted, looked at the light. Anna aimed it at the patch of ceramic insulator set in the post. 'We've got one like it on the farm,' she whispered. 'There's a magnet in the gate and a needle in the post. When you move the gate, the needle goes with the magnet and hits a contact, and that sets off the buzzer inside.'
'Can't even climb over?'
'Nope. That'll push the gate down. Let's look at the fence.'
The barbed-wire fence showed a single strand of electric wire running along the top. 'Bottom should be okay,' Anna said. 'Let's find a low spot, where we can squeeze under.'
They found a spot fifty feet down the road, the desert brush ripping at their jackets as they slid under the wire. Anna stood, pulling pieces of dead brush from her hair.
'You okay?' Harper whispered.
'Yeah. Let's go.'
They jogged the first couple of hundred feet up the hill, but Harper was enough out of shape that he caught her arm and told her to slow down. Impatiently, she walked ahead of him, urging him along.
The hill seemed to go on forever, gently sinuous, always climbing. After ten minutes, they topped the first rise and saw the orange glow of a yard light. Harper caught her arm and said, 'Stop for a minute. We've got to talk.'
They squatted beside the road, looking slightly down at the ranch yard. The house was ahead and to the right, with an open yard further to the right. A light showed in what they knew was the office window, along with the blue glow of a computer monitor or television. Another light showed behind that, but from the same window, adding a slightly warmer glow. There was no movement in the window with the light: and the light had the stillness of an empty room.
To the far left of the house, they could just see the hulk of the barn; between the barn and the house, two buildingsa garage, Anna thought, and what must once have been a machine shed.
A hundred yards behind the house were two long gray-white structures, almost too far out to recognize; but Anna thought that they must once have been chicken coops. Directly behind the house, a hundred feet back, the beginning of the corral complex.
As Anna squatted by the road, picking out the main features of the ranch, she could smell the broken brush beside the road, and the dirt beneath their feet: like Wisconsin on a dry summer's night, but with the special peppery pungency of the desert.