Riddles that Kill Read online

  She spoke again. “Natalie …”

  Rod pulled his face back, utter surprise registering on his face.

  Maria’s head lolled. “… is the kidnapper.”

  The anesthesiologist pushed the mask back over Maria’s face and pushed the gurney away from Rod.

  The curtain fell on the stage of Maria’s mind.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The unincorporated town of Jarbidge sits in the 113,167-acre Jarbidge Wilderness. A thirty-foot-tall giant is said to lurk nearby. Local legend claims the giant named Tsawhawbitts grabbed anyone who ventured into his canyon, put them into a basket, and carried the victims to his cave where he’d eat them. The Shoshone chased Tsawhawbitts into the cave, and imprisoned this man-eating monster by blocking the entrance with boulders.

  “Exploring American Monsters: Nevada,” by Jason Offutt, Mysterious Universe.org, January 7, 2016.

  Maria didn’t think you were supposed to be able to dream when under anesthesia, but she couldn’t seem to stop. Even though she deeply wished she could.

  The walls of the Tehran prison were painted in colorful murals. Some of the pictures depicted nursery rhymes—Humpty Dumpty being the most notable—while others portrayed the horrid scenes Maria had witnessed when she’d been a prisoner there. Part of the torture she was subjected to by the terrorists was that of being made to watch the death of each of her team members. As if being graded on their creativity, the terrorists killed each of them in a different way.

  Alex had been beheaded by a machete. He was the first one to go.

  Jerry was shot point blank. It had been mercifully quick.

  Not so with Deborah. She was starved to death. It took her a couple weeks to pass away, and Maria was forced to see her every day during the ordeal. In the end, Maria was sure it was an infection that killed her, but the intent had been there. Evil and repugnant.

  Gil was next. The very thought of Gil tore at Maria’s sanity. The terrorists had pulled out his teeth. The pain that man went through was unfathomable. But in the end, it was a blunt object to the back of the head that killed him.

  Samantha was water boarded until she drowned, and Ryan … Ryan was hung, a brown bag placed over his head so he was in the dark when his last moments finally came.

  All of them gone, but her.

  The last mural on the wall was freshly painted. The pungent fumes still lingered in the air. It was Justin’s image. He was tied up and was being forced to drink something.

  Please no, please no.

  Maria woke up screaming.

  A nurse was at her side in seconds. She spoke to Maria, but Maria couldn’t calm down enough to hear what she said. Screaming and thrashing about, she detached a few wires and tubes before the nurse slipped her syringe into the base of the IV bag and administered more medication.

  Within moments, Maria slept again.

  Maria’s second attempt to wake up went more smoothly. This time Rod sat at the edge of the bed. He was showered and shaven, looking at her with a kindness that helped calm Maria from the top of her head to her feet.

  Rod held her hand. Fingers interlaced. The way his smile grew upon seeing Maria sent a wave of peace through Maria.

  He bent down closer to her and whispered, “Hey, you.”

  If Maria’s nose hadn’t been full of two little plastic tubes pumping oxygen into her nostrils she would have enjoyed the rustic smell he always carried about him. But as it was, she just had to imagine it.

  “Hi,” she answered.

  Was that me? Maria sounded like a seventy-year-old man with a significant cigarette addiction.

  Ignoring her raspy voice, Maria asked a one-word question. “Justin?” She was surprised to see a continual heart beat on the monitor since it felt like all movement in her chest had stopped as she waited for Rod to answer.

  “We found him. He’s okay.”

  Euphoria rushed through Maria’s body.

  Rod continued, “He was being kept in a vacation house Natalie rented just for that purpose. We’d been keeping our eyes on hotels for suspicious behavior so she circumvented the situation by renting privately. Sorry, that’s probably more detail than you want to hear right now.”

  Maria shook her head fervently. “No. Tell me everything.”

  Rod continued. “He’d been chained to a bed and hadn’t eaten for the last day—when Natalie took off to Jarbidge with Grant and me—but he was alive. He was so happy to see his parents.”

  Involuntary tears gathered in the corner of Maria’s eyes.

  “Nobody knows how you did it, Maria, but you saved Justin.” Rod paused. “Just like you saved me. You like to make that a habit, don’t you?” He smiled and caressed his thumb over the top of her hand.

  Maria wanted to scream for joy and pain. Justin was alive! Beth had her boy back. But Maria was the reason Natalie had chosen the boy in the first place. She had seen Maria at the reservoir. She’d seen Justin was special to her and had used it against her.

  Maria was no savior. She’d gotten lucky with Justin, but she hadn’t saved a single member of her black ops teams. She turned her face away from Rod’s gaze.

  What?” Rod asked with concern. “What did I say? Justin’s back home. Everything is going to be okay thanks to you.”

  Maria took as deep of a breath as she could without causing additional pain on her left side. “You didn’t say anything wrong. I’m so happy he’s okay,” Maria croaked. And she was. She had learned it was possible to be happy and profoundly sad at the same time.

  Rod’s smile broadened. “And you,” he exhaled “are going to heal up just fine. The bullet was inches from your heart but didn’t hit anything critical. You did lose a ton of blood, but the doctors say you’re going to be okay.” His finger stroked the side of her face. There was warmth in the touch, and Maria recalled the words he’d spoken to her before she’d gone under for surgery. He’d said he loved her. Or at least she thought he had. Had she dreamt it? The past week of her life had been such a blur.

  “Your parents are here. They flew into Twin Falls when they learned you were going in for emergency surgery. They stepped out for just a minute, but I’ll go get them for you. We’ve been having a great time chatting. Sounds like you were quite the child.”

  Try as she might, Maria couldn’t stop a voracious yawn from escaping.

  “I’m talking too much. You need to rest. I’ll tell you everything when you’re more awake.” He took a deep breath, looked into her eyes, and said, “Maria, you’re amazing.”

  The next time Maria awoke, she felt as if she’d finally regained citizenship in the land of the living. She hurt, ached, throbbed and felt nauseated, but her mind felt stronger. Thoughts were coherent. She pushed the call button by her bedside. Moments passed. Then, both a nurse and Rod entered her door simultaneously.

  Maria looked at them and said three words, “I am starving.”

  Dinner consisted of red Jell-O, chocolate pudding, and apple juice. Rod sat on one side of the bed while Maria’s mother sat on the other. She was an attractive woman—in her mid-fifties with a full head of long dark hair that reached down her back. She was smaller framed than her daughter and had a much more delicate way about her. Her slender fingers continuously picked at the small balls of fiber that had pilled all over the well-used hospital blanket.

  Maria’s father, a broad-shouldered man, paced back and forth in the room, a habit he’d had ever since Maria was a little girl. Worry lines around his mouth were deep and grooved—a consequence of having a daughter go missing in Tehran for eight months.

  As Maria served question after question to Rod, he batted answers back like he was playing a championship World Series baseball game.

  “Were Natalie and the game hunters siblings?”

  “Yes, they were her younger brothers. Both have been on New Mexico’s most wanted list for the last several years.”

  “What for?”

  “A bunch of things. Recently they were believed to be
involved with an armed robbery where several bank employees ended up dead. Not sure which of the two was the actual gunman.”

  “It was Jim who shot Dillan?” Maria hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she had dreamed that fact.

  Rod looked at Maria’s mother as if he needed to protect her from news she was too innocent to hear.

  “Rod, Mom can take it. She’s had to live with me being in the CIA for almost a decade.”

  “Yeah, Jim shot Dillan. He did it on the run with a handgun. The man is like a ninja.”

  “And Clyde?”

  “He lost too much blood from the knife wound. He died not long after Dillan.”

  “And Natalie?”

  “She’s in jail at Kanab for the moment. The FBI will take her up to Salt Lake City soon where they’ll question her father as well.”

  “Was Nathan Porter in on it too?”

  “The FBI’s not sure. But it turns out he’s a strange man. His wife left him when the kids were young. He took them out of school and lived off the grid so they could spend their days looking for treasure with him. Natalie said for an entire year they used metal detectors every day to comb California beaches. They were beaten at night if they didn’t find anything of value.”

  “That’s awful.”

  Rod nodded and Maria’s mother slid the apple juice closer to her. “Take another sip, sweetheart.”

  Maria did as she was told.

  “Nathan Porter took the job with Steven Veil hoping to get more information about the location of Veil’s hidden treasure.”

  “I’m surprised he wasn’t successful getting Veil to tell him where the treasure was,” said Maria, apple juice still in hand.

  “I was too until Natalie divulged Steven Veil’s biggest secret.”

  “Which is?” Maria set down the drink and almost spilled it.

  “Steven Veil has Alzheimer’s. He puts on a good show, but his cognitive loss is significant.” Rod was rubbing Maria’s leg as he talked. The sensation it gave her contributed to the goose bumps that popped out on her skin.

  “Alzheimer’s? Does that mean …?”

  “Yep. Veil has no idea where he hid his treasure. Nathan Porter has tried and tried to see if the old man left any hidden clues as to the location of the loot, but he hasn’t found anything yet, at least not according to Natalie. Several years back Nathan Porter started hiring soothsayers and psychics to find it, but none of them could. The man is desperate, out of money, and out of his mind, if you ask me.”

  “That is so sad. But Natalie seemed so … I don’t know … normal.”

  “I thought so too until Pete told me what she’s been saying to the FBI. She claims she’s a psychic herself and the voices told her you could find the treasure. She’d actually read about you in a Phoenix newspaper after you were involved with finding Dakota. Something sparked her curiosity, and she came to Kanab to meet you and see if you might be the person who could solve the riddle for them. After she saw you at the reservoir, when you touched the water and the skeleton came up, she was positive you were the one. But she also knew you weren’t the type she could just ask for help.”

  Maria shifted in her uncomfortable hospital bed.

  “She decided to force your hand by taking Justin, but then you called the FBI and got them involved.”

  “Of course I would. Doesn’t she know anything about kidnapping?”

  “I don’t think so. She has led a pretty sheltered life. After she took Justin, you didn’t seem to be working on the riddle, so she called in her gorilla brothers. They wanted to kill the kid and kidnap you, but Natalie convinced them to be patient. She said you would find the treasure if they pressured you.”

  Maria leaned her head back onto the pillow. “Who takes a kid to make someone else go look for a treasure? That’s insane.”

  “Oh, trust me. Natalie’s not right in the head. That much is obvious.”

  “How’s Grant doing?”

  “He’s pretty much freaked out, but I told him not to worry. I told him we Thorton men have one really bad experience with women first; that way we know the real thing when we find it.” Rod blushed but kept a steady gaze into Maria’s eyes. “I told him he’s just that much closer to finding the woman of his dreams.”

  Maria blushed. A smile tugged on the corner of Maria’s mother’s mouth and her father cleared his throat several times. Rod didn’t seem to care.

  Mr. Branson stopped pacing for a moment and said, possibly as an attempt to change the subject, “You should tell her about the ricin, Rod.”

  “Ricin? The poison?” Maria asked.

  “Yeah. From the seeds of the castor oil plant. Pretty potent stuff,” her father answered.

  “What about ricin?” she asked.

  “The FBI went through Clyde’s things at his room at the Inn at Jarbidge. They found a vial of ricin and a notebook with his crazy rantings. His plan was to find the Veil treasure and then kill off Steven Veil with the poison so Veil wouldn’t know it had been taken. I guess the old man had some sort of tracking device on the treasure?”

  “Yes, he did,” said Maria, remembering the conversation in the police station.

  “Clyde didn’t even want his dad to know he’d found the treasure. He was going to take his brother and sister overseas, away from their father, and they were going to go hunt for some lost treasure in the African Sahara.”

  “And how did Clyde know I was in Jarbidge?”

  “Nathan Porter. Apparently you’d said something about the treasure being in Jarbidge during your conversation with him and Steven Veil at the police station. Nathan told Natalie, and Natalie told her brothers. They went there to wait for you to come and show them specifically where the treasure was.”

  “Makes sense.” Fatigue was beginning to settle on Maria.

  “Did you even know where the treasure was when you went out with Clyde?” asked Rod.

  “No. I was winging it. I knew the kidnapper wanted to see me working at finding the treasure, so that’s what I did. I was sure Clyde was involved when we went out. I just didn’t know how.”

  “So you still don’t know where the treasure is?” Rod questioned.

  Maria thought of the little opening to the cave adjacent to the Devil’s Coup.

  “Not exactly.” The last thing Maria wanted was to have anything more to do with that treasure. Let someone else find it. Someone who really needed it.

  “I still can’t believe you went to Jarbidge on your own. With no back up. Isn’t that against some rule?” Maria’s mother sighed, as if she’d given up a long time ago.

  “Yes.” Maria wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed of her choice. “It was for Justin. I didn’t care if I made it back.”

  Maria’s words hung in the air.

  Her father patted her foot that was sticking out from under the hospital bed sheet. “I’d have done the same thing. You’re okay, Maria. We know what you’ve been through.”

  Maria’s mother held up her hands in surrender. “Sorry. I trust you, Maria. You have a sixth sense about you. I’m sure you did what you thought was best, and it all turned out in the end.”

  “And how did you know I was in Jarbidge?” Maria asked Rod, her voice tiring.

  “Ms. Tuttle. I’d gone to your house looking for you the night after we re-buried the skeleton at the reservoir. I figured we had a lot of things to talk about. Things you and I still need to talk about.”

  Both of Maria’s parents raised their eyebrows questioningly.

  “Anyhow, you weren’t there. And you weren’t at Beth’s house and you weren’t at the police station. Pete had no idea where you’d gone. I stayed up waiting for you on your porch but you never came home. That’s when I knew why you’d been in a rush that afternoon. You’d gone somewhere on your own—and I figured Ms. Tuttle knew where. She’d been working on the Veil riddle for you.”

  “And how did you get to Jarbidge so fast?”

  “My parents’ second private plane. It’s parked at the
Kanab airport as well. If you’d have asked me I would have taken you to Jarbidge.”

  “Good grief.” Maria poked his shoulder with her good arm and laughed. “You think I would have wanted to risk another emergency landing with an accompanying side trip to Vegas?”

  “You’d better watch it. I’m a good pilot.” Rod let out a hardy laugh. He scooted closer to her. Maria’s oxygen tubes were no longer in and she could smell his tempting rustic cologne.

  “For your information, Maria, my plane had a mechanical failure. It wasn’t my fault. It’s not like I planned it. And, I’d like to point out that going to Amy’s house was completely your idea. You probably took Brian’s chocolate on purpose.”

  By this time, Maria’s parents were completely confused.

  Maria grinned at their private joke but couldn’t stop asking questions. “And why was Jim with you in Jarbidge?”

  “About four o’clock in the morning I rounded up members of Kanab’s Search and Rescue. Grant came, with Natalie of course, as well as about six others. On our way out to the airport, I passed Jim on the road heading into Kanab. He waved me down and asked me where I was going. When I told him, he jumped in my car and said he thought he could be of service. As part of his government consulting job, he’d spent some time in Jarbidge working on protecting a Native American graveyard called the Devil’s Coup that was located close by. I don’t know how he knew, but he said he was sure you were headed there. The man took us straight to you. He is a crazy good tracker. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “He is a natural,” said Maria.

  “Jim was actually coming back into Kanab to survey for a new site for the reservoir. He’ll be heading up that project along with Mr. Walden.”

  “Mr. Walden decided to stay around?” asked Maria.

  “Yes. John’s got enough money sunk into the project he wants to get it done and done right. So he called in Jim. He wants to be sure to find a good spot that won’t disturb anyone.”

  “Sounds like Mr. Walden is feeling much better,” said Maria, who had pushed away her food tray.