Read Online Rock with Wings by Anne Hillerman - Free Book Online Page B

want to be lost out here.”
    Chee headed the direction the woman had indicated. Unless Melissa had already returned to the movie camp, he felt confident that he’d find her, help her if she were hurt, give her a lecture if she wasn’t.
    He heard faint music long before he saw the red car. When he got closer, he recognized the sound as jazz, a saxophone playing something vaguely familiar. He followed the beat to a Chevy parked on the road at the top of the ridge and stopped in front of it. The music was full bore, loud enough to scare the coyotes. Getting out of his unit, he reached through the open window, pulled the key from the ignition, and put it in his pocket. The music died.
    â€œMelissa?” he called. “Melissa Goldfarb? I’m Navajo Police. Your friends are worried about you.” If she could hear the music, he figured she could hear him.
    Silence.
    He shone his light on the road, noticing other tire tracks and something white. He walked over to it. A poker chip, standing on end like a wheel. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
    He went back to the red car and found footprints leading away from the driver’s side up a steep, sandy hill, and similar prints coming back to it and heading away again. The footprints were smaller than the ones he made and had a concentric circle design on the soles. He followed the tracks, calling out, “Melissa!” He listened, but there was no response.
    The moon was rising, and after about fifteen minutes of slogging through the sand, he saw a figure silhouetted in its light at the top of the rise. A person and a tripod.
    â€œMelissa!”
    The figure turned toward him, tensed. “Who’s there?”
    â€œSergeant Jim Chee, Navajo Police.”
    â€œI have a gun,” the voice called back. “You have ID?”
    He knew from the voice he’d found a woman. “I’ll shine the flashlight on it, but you won’t be able to see it from way up there. Are you Melissa?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYour boss called the police station, and they sent me to look for you. Are you OK?”
    She laughed. “So that’s what this is about. You scared me half to death. I’m better than OK. I’m fabulous. Come up here, Sergeant Jim Chee. Look at this view. Unbelievable.”
    He climbed up the sand slope, his smooth-soled boots slipping a little. He was breathing harder by the time he reached the ridge and had worked off some of his irritation at being ordered to do something by a civilian he’d come to help.
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    The vista across the valley, lit by the rising moon, was stunning. The moonglow subdued the colors, tamed them. The monuments looked ethereal, like enormous petrified creatures frozen in time on a landscape huge enough to accommodate them.
    â€œI’m safer here than in LA, don’t you agree?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “I’ve got great shots of the sunset, and now the moonrise with these formations.”
    â€œI think you’re lucky to have people concerned about you. You need to get back to them.” He sounded stricter and more official than he meant to.
    â€œWhatever. I’m done anyway. I can’t believe they actually called the police.” She removed the camera from the tripod, stowed it in the pack on the sand next to her, and took out a water bottle.
    â€œWant a sip?”
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    â€œHey, what happened to my music?”
    â€œI turned it off.”
    He would have guessed that she was a few years under thirty. She looked more like a long-distance runner than an accountant. Maybe lugging around camera equipment kept her in shape.
    Melissa picked up a backpack and hoisted it onto her shoulders. She grabbed the water bottle and a walking stick, and then reached for the tripod.
    â€œI’ll take that,” Chee said.
    â€œThanks.”
    He led the way back, a different, more direct, and