What of Terry Conniston?

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Carl Oakley walked out of the sagging barn and blinked when the hard sunshine hit his face. He snugged the dark glasses against the bridge of his nose and stood, feet apart and arms akimbo, squinting up the sun-bright dusty street of this dead and gone town that had once been called Soledad.

His right shoe intersected a narrow tire track faintly traced in the gravelly dust. Too narrow for the big car, Oakley judged; it must have been Terry’s rump-jolting little sports car that left this print. He squatted on his haunches, elbows on knees, and brooded upon the dim track. It pointed into the barn, or away from the barn; in any case the barn was empty.

Beyond doubt this was where they had held her. There in the barn they had concealed the cars.

He rose to his feet with easy coordination and looked up the length of the ghost street. Beyond the abandoned wreckage of the buildings, two hundred yards away at the head of the town, Diego Orozco’s obese shape waddled slowly, head down, looking for sign. Carl Oakley shook his head. You won’t find anything more. They were a smart bunch — we won’t find anything they didn’t want us to find.

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