19
BY EIGHT O’CLOCK the sun had gone down beyond the ridge, and a broad black shadow had swept the canyon into evening. Above, on the ridges and the brush-covered hillsides, the chaparral shone pink and purple and gray in the waning light. Peter bumped along in the Suburban, edging around potholes and creeping across rocky, wind-scoured washes. Leaves blew across the hood of the car like tumbling black shadows in the darkness.
The lower end of the road cut through a gravelly section of river bottom where the canyon widened out. There were stands of sumac and greasewood and a few scrub oaks and stunted sycamores, but the low vegetation was upstaged by the hulks of stripped cars, rusty and shot full of bullet holes.
About a mile in, the canyon narrowed, and the steep walls rose away on either side, deepening the evening twilight. The Suburban navigated through the darkness, the headlights barely penetrating the black spaces between the heavy trees on either side of the road.
Peter was full of steak and french fries and salad, and could almost imagine being able to fall asleep tonight— something that would have seemed impossible to him a few hours ago. Beth and Bobby were coming over tomorrow. He would take things a day at a time.
The Suburban rounded a curve, its headlights momentarily illuminating the waters of Trabuco Creek, which was lined with alders and edged with enormous water-polished lumps of granite. Falls Canyon, where the hiker had supposedly seen the bodies, lay somewhere off to the left, and Peter slowed down, suddenly imagining the narrow, rock-strewn canyon again, littered with autumn leaves and fallen limbs.
Although no one had described the scene to him in any detail, he still pictured it with chilling clarity: the crumpled bodies of the woman and child, veiled by mist, lying half-submerged in the shallow pool at the base of the falls, their clothes buoyed up on the moving current, strands of the woman’s hair trailing away from her upturned face like delicate waterweeds.…
The Suburban crept along as Peter looked out into the night, abruptly certain that he would be able to see something meaningful in the dark tapestry of the forest. The trees and the shadows were suddenly compelling, as if he were reentering the abandoned landscape of a long-forgotten dream. Something, an answer, a cipher, lay hidden in the windblown darkness.…
He suddenly saw a movement in the rocks along the creek.
He stopped the Suburban, shifted, backed up far enough for the headlights to illuminate the rocks again. Then, shifting into forward, he pulled off onto a grassy little turnout, shifted into park, and let the engine idle.
He had glimpsed it only for a split second—something, someone, moving along the trail. What remained in his mind was the memory of dark fabric billowing in the wind, just as it had billowed on the top of the pool of water in his memory only moments ago.
He watched, barely breathing, slowly growing more and more conscious of the wind-haunted darkness around him, thinking about the disappearance of Amanda and David, automatically putting their faces on the bodies in the pool. Beyond the glow of the headlights the trees were night black, their ponderous limbs swaying against an inky backdrop of vegetation and rocky canyon wall.
He switched the lights off, leaving his hand on the knob. The Suburban shuddered in the wind, and dry leaves and twigs ticked against the door panels and windows. Moonlight gleamed on the creek waters. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see farther into the trees, making out a grassy little clearing across the creek and a cave mouth in the steep hillside.
But now nothing moved aside from the wind-shifting vegetation. Whatever it was—probably an animal—had gone. That it had anything to do with Amanda’s disappearance was impossible. His imagination was running him ragged. He pulled the lights back on, shifted into reverse, and glanced into the side mirror.
A face stared back at him, reflected in the mirror: a woman’s face, her flesh ivory white in the moonlight, her long black dress and black hair tossed by the wind.
He slammed his hand down onto the steering wheel, accidentally honking the horn, then slammed the transmission into drive, jerked the wheel savagely to the right, punched the accelerator, and drove straight through the brush alongside the turnout and up onto the road before stopping and shifting again into reverse, the backup lights blinking on.
He swiveled around to look, gripping the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking. The woman was gone. He slammed the door locks down one after another, catching sight just then of movement across the creek, someone— the woman in black—disappearing into the trees.
For one hollow moment he had been certain it was Amanda. He had known it. The sight of her ghostly face in the mirror had unnerved him. Now, although he could still picture the woman’s face, he knew absolutely that she wasn’t Amanda; and just as absolutely he knew who she was: the woman he had pictured lying dead at the base of the falls.