Sketch of a Murder

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

The next morning as they waited for the five K-9 teams, flown in from all over the country, to suit up, Dr. Nelson wended her way to Nita. "Some research I thought you'd be interested in."

Nita flipped open the official, thin manila folder. The brief report consisted of one page stapled inside the folder. It read like a nightmare. Eugene Longshield had been ranked as one of the Army Special Forces' most accomplished members and a wilderness survival expert as well as one of the CIA's top ten covert operatives. The CIA knew Longshield began freelancing a year after he went rogue. He had sent the director a bouquet of red roses with a sympathy card for the death of an operative who had been investigating a drug cartel. A twenty-two bullet was drilled and strung on a leather thong and tied to the vase of flowers.

He had slipped their nets, time and time again, triumphantly signing his kills with a .22 tap to the head. The bullets dug from Zelda's victims matched the bullet sent to the director all of those years ago, as well as one retrieved from one of her father's kills.

Nita folded the cover over the typed page. "Would've helped if they had cooperated a little sooner."

Dr. Nelson took the proffered folder. "I know."

She stuffed her hands in the front pockets of her jeans. "You joining the hunt?"

"No, I am really more a desk jockey than a woodswoman." Dr. Nelson gave her a gentle smile. "You know, Dawn will be okay. She's a survivor."

Nita's eyes skipped around the parking lot before settling on the gravel at her feet. "Yeah, well." Turning away from Dr. Nelson she said, "Gotta go."

"Nita?"

It was the first time since Ed's murder at the warehouse that a co-worker had used her first name. She stood still.

"Take care of yourself out there."

She jerked a nod and jogged across the parking lot.

The teams picked up and lost Zelda McIntire's trail numerous times over the next two days. It led deeper and deeper into the wilderness.

It was dusky dark when the law enforcement manhunters entered an alpine meadow green with thick, short-lived grasses. Some kind of dark blue flower poked numerous tiny heads up through the grasses. McIntire's trail led across the open area. A chasm to the left ruled out circling the area while sheltering in the tree line. A wall of gray rock rose to the right.

On high alert, they moved into the meadow. Body tense, eyes probing, finger tight on the trigger guard, still fear crawled up Nita's spine with sharp, ice-pick feet as the police line spread across the open area. The altitude had little to do with her shortness of breath.

A rifle shot ricocheted from the area near the cliff, its echo nanoseconds behind the tiny shower of rock chips from a boulder. Every man and woman dropped, rolled, and fired. Bullets strafed the meadow, most likely none even getting close to the point from where the shot was fired.

Irrelevantly she hoped no deer were nearby. She held her fire. In her heart she knew McIntire would not have been so careless as to shoot if the police had the hope of a snowball on a BBQ grill of catching her with return fire.

Minutes later McIntire bounded off a boulder and raced across the darkening landscape. Three law enforcement people fired. No hits.

They sprang to their feet and made a mad dash after the suspect. Even as Nita and the lieutenant led the race, she wondered if they were being led into a trap. The cliff face loomed over them and the land on the left began to rise rapidly. Boulders were scattered across the hillside like marbles flung to the sidewalk. Where in God's name is she going? Nita wondered as she ran.

A three-quarter moon rose above jagged peaks, its white light hesitant in the face of the fading day. Snowfields glistened with icy diamonds halfway up the creased and creviced hillside. She felt it vibrating the ground before she heard it. Somewhere up ahead a waterfall gushed from a broken peak. Around a bend in the cliff face and dead ahead, from hundreds of feet above, white water leapt into the cool air. Even this high up summer squeezed winter's snowfields until they ran their cold blood to the river. The river boiled at the waterfall's base. Foaming and rushing, it thundered through a narrow channel that was partially hidden from view.

McIntire's slender figure stood ramrod straight, facing the police line across the rocky fields that had overwhelmed the meadow. "Zelda! Give up!" Lieutenant Williams' bellowed.

Nita wasn't sure McIntire heard until the killer turned towards the lieutenant. He stood a couple feet to Nita's right.

McIntire's arm arched upward. Her movement would have been invisible if not for the moon pouring silver light between the peaks.

Nita dove sideways slamming into the lieutenant's shoulder, twisting as she fell. A great hand punched her thigh. Fire blazed into her hip and seared her leg. She grabbed her leg as she rolled across the bruising, sharp-toothed rocks hidden in the tall grasses.

Shots rang out.

"We got her!" Someone yelled. Nita barely heard the words through the cotton in her ears.

The moon bathed Lieutenant Williams' gray-threaded, black kinks with a cap of silver as he leaned over her. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Nita, why'd you do that?"

Through clenched teeth she gritted out, "I saw her. Saw the gun. Meant to kill you...too."

"Bring the med kit!" He roared.