Nature Noir by Jordan Smith (romantic books to read .TXT) 📗

In a few minutes Ricky showed up with the keys, got in, and began to drive along the road. A ways up he stopped and said he wanted to make love. She didn't refuse.

"Did he have a weapon? Did he threaten you in any way?"

"No. But he was wearing a sheath knife," she said.

"Were you worried he would use it on you?" I asked her.

"No. He never took it out. But I was still afraid of him."

"Go on."

Well, she said, they had sex there in the middle of the road, with her on her back in the gravel. Suddenly a white van appeared around a turn from the Colfax direction. She jumped up and started yelling.

"What did you yell?" I asked her.

"Like, 'Help, he's going to kill me, he's raping me.'"

"Go on."

The man in the van was Rattlesnake Jim, she said. He bought gold from the miners down on the river. He got out and asked her what was going on. She told him she wanted to leave, and then, emboldened by his presence, she grabbed the car keys from Ricky, got into her Chevrolet, started it, and put it in gear. Ricky tried to stop her by putting his foot in the door as she was trying to close it. They struggled, and she stepped on the gas by mistake and drove off the cliff. She was pretty drunk, she guessed.

The car rolled and came to rest against a tree. She was stunned but unhurt, and Rattlesnake Jim climbed down and helped her back up to the road. He said he was worried about her and offered her a ride home to her boyfriend's house. She accepted, and the two of them left in his van, leaving Ricky to walk back down the road to the river.

"What happened when you got home? Did you call the sheriff?" I asked her.

No, she said, her boyfriend didn't have much use for the police. Later that night he drove her back down to the bridge. When they got there they found Ricky. Her boyfriend woke him up and made her tell him if Ricky was the man who had raped her.

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'Yeah, I guess he did,' and they beat him up."

"Were you injured by Ricky during the rape?" I asked her.

"Not really. But my back's pretty sore from lying on the gravel with him on top of me," she answered. Avoiding my eyes, she turned her face away.

I picked up the phone on the desk, called the Women's Shelter in Auburn, and asked them to send a social worker.

"Are you at all sore or injured below the waist?" I asked her, putting down the receiver when I finished the call. "I'd like to have you examined by a doctor. It won't cost you anything, and we've got to do it to prosecute Ricky."

No, she said, she hadn't been hurt down there and she didn't want to see any doctor. I asked her if she had washed her clothes and underwear. Yes, she had, she said, because they were all dusty.

When the caseworker from the Women's Shelter arrived at the ranger station, I asked her to chaperone us into the little utility room where the copier, the fridge, and stationery supplies were kept. Closing the door, I asked Mary to remove her blouse, leaving her bra on, and face the other way. She did. I saw some small bruises and scabby scratches on her back. I took some Polaroids of them, then told her she could get dressed. Leaving the social worker with her, I went to get her purse. When I came back, she and the social worker were waiting in the anteroom, talking quietly with MacGaff's Girl Friday. I gave Mary Murphy her purse and my business card with the Women's Shelter's phone number written on it in ballpoint pen. I told her I was sorry about what had happened and to call me if she needed anything. She thanked me, I thanked the social worker, and the two of them went out the front door together. Outside they got in separate cars and left.

The next day I checked the hospital. There was no record of a female assault victim matching Mary Murphy's description since the previous Wednesday evening. But on the fifth a man had come in so badly beaten up that an emergency-room nurse had called the sheriff, and a deputy had been sent over to take a report. I went to the Sheriff's Department and got a copy. The victim was Richard Samuel Marks, his address the North Fork of the American River. In the narrative the deputy stated that although he questioned Marks for some time, the injured man refused to say who had attacked him and why.

I had three days off, and I tried to forget the canyons, the vertiginous bridge, the dark slatey cliffs, the bullet-riddled cars, and the dust. On my first day back, I went to Yankee Jims Bridge looking for Ricky Marks, Jerry Prentice, or any witness to the alleged rape or the beating that followed. I especially hoped to find Rattlesnake Jim, the gold buyer, whom I'd seen several times that summer hanging around the North and Middle Forks in his white van. He wasn't there and neither was Marks, but I did see another miner waist-deep in the water next to a dredge just upstream of the bridge. When he saw me walking down to the riverbank toward him, he emerged from the water and shut the noisy machine off. I asked him if he'd seen Ricky or Rattlesnake Jim. He told me the North Fork was about the last place I'd find either of them, because they were both scared to death of Mary Murphy's boyfriend. I said I could understand why Ricky would be scared, but what did Rattlesnake Jim have to fear from the boyfriend?

"Didn't you hear?" answered the wet-suited man, pulling off his diving gloves and lighting a cigarette. And