“No. I figure you’re pretty busy.” He grinned. “Just thinking about it is what gets me through the days.”
They drove past S Site, the explosives unit at the opposite end of the plateau, a new industrial plant of snaking steampipes, smokestacks, and hangars of heavy machinery. The Tech Area was the university, but S had the raw utility of a foundry, where blueprints were hammered into casings and people risked accidents.
“Who found it?”
“They were setting up a new firing range in one of the canyons off South Mesa. You know they like to keep the explosives off the Hill.”
“Yes, it’s comforting.”
Mills grinned. “Lucky this time, anyway. We never would have found it otherwise.”
At the end of a road thick with conifers, they found Holliday standing at the gate, chatting with the young sentry.
“You took your time.”
The sentry, recognizing Connolly, gave an innocent half-salute.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Mills said, catching the gesture. “All this time and I’ve never used this gate. You?” he said to Connolly.
“Once in a while,” Connolly said, not looking at him.
“Well, I don’t blame you,” Holliday said to Mills. “My friend here says they don’t get much traffic anytime. Nights they just close the road, so you’d have to drive all the way around to the front. Pretty discouraging if you didn’t know that.”
“But everybody does,” the sentry said, his voice liquid with the South. “It’s just for Hill people. Trucks go to the east gate.”
“And all us folks from the outside, eh?” Holliday said.
“Ain’t nobody from outside on the Hill.”
“No. Well, I guess that’s right. And here I was with my nose pressed against the screen, just like always.”
Holliday followed their car as they skirted the plateau on winding switchbacks. The mesa was like a giant hand with a series of deep canyons between its fingers, some in turn breaking off into smaller box canyons that dipped away under the pine cover, lying as hidden as secrets. The car was in one of these, a mile or so from the entrance turnoff, at the end of an old dirt road partly overgrown with brush. An MP was posted where the car had driven off the dirt to carve its own path into the canyon floor. Mills cleared them and they moved toward the car, looking at the broken brush along the way.
“Why the road?” Connolly said.
“Probably an old logging road,” Holliday said. “They used to take a fair amount of timber out around here. You notice that canyon just before this one? There’s a real road there. They probably just gave up on this one.”
“That’s the test range,” Connolly said.
“What exactly they firing there?”
“I don’t know.” Then, catching Holliday’s look, “Honestly.”
“They’re measuring projectile velocity,” Mills said.
They looked at each other, then at him. He laughed. “Well, I asked. That’s what they told me.”
“You mean like how fast an arrow goes when you shoot it?” Holliday said.
“Something like that.”
“Sure are chewing up the trees to find out.” He pointed toward the end of the canyon, where a series of test explosions had opened a rough clearing.
“But why come here?” Connolly said.
“Well, if they hadn’t started shooting things up around here, nobody would have found it.”
“You know what I mean.”
Holliday looked at him. “You mean why so close to the Hill.”
Connolly nodded.
“I don’t know. Let’s see what we got first. Maybe it’s not even his.”
But there had been no attempt to disguise the car; the Hill license plate, the glove compartment registration were intact. The paint in front had been scratched by the drive through the brush, but otherwise the car was as Karl might have left it. The keys were still in the ignition switch.
“That’s a nice touch,” Holliday said. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“Can you have them checked for prints?”
“I could, but I’ve got no jurisdiction here.”
“Nobody does. You’re just assisting the Manhattan Project of the Army Corps of Engineers.” Connolly smiled at him. “War work.”
“You got a paper if I need it?”
“We’ve got nothing but paper.”
“I think there’s some blood here,” Mills said, looking at the back floor.
“Yes, sir,” Holliday said. “Don’t touch that, now-we’ll see if we can get a match.”
“Try a church parking lot,” Connolly said. “I guarantee it.”
There was nothing unusual in the trunk. Aside from the bloodstains in the back, where Karl’s head must have been laid, the car was clean.
“Let me try something,” Connolly said, taking a handkerchief in his right hand. He got in and twisted the key. The motor turned over and started. He sat at the wheel for a minute, listening to the hum, running Karl’s car as he had worn his boots. When he turned it off, the canyon was quiet enough to hear the birds.
“Why save the key?” he said, handing it, wrapped, to Holliday.
“Why anything?” Holliday said. “These things-they don’t have to make sense.”
“Yes they do. They don’t have to be sensible, but they have to make sense.”
“I’ll get the boys to go over the whole thing for prints,” Holliday said, ignoring him. He was searching the ground. “Too much traffic here.”
