8. Hunter's Moon

The safe house phone rang at three in the morning. Elias was awake before the second ring, his hand reaching automatically for the revolver on the nightstand before his brain caught up with his body and remembered where he was.

He picked up the receiver. "Yeah."

"It's Márquez. Get dressed. We have a problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"Dr. Cross is dead."

The words landed like stones dropped into still water. Elias sat on the edge of the cot, the phone pressed against his ear, trying to make sense of them. Helena Cross. The forensic analyst who had written the lab report, who had handed it to Crowder personally, who had given the interview to Elena Reyes. The woman who had spent seven years waiting for someone to ask the right questions.

"How?"

"House fire. Her cabin in the mountains. The local fire marshal is calling it an electrical fault, but the timing is awfully convenient." Márquez's voice was brittle with barely contained fury. "She was supposed to testify at the evidentiary hearing. She was our star witness. Without her—"

"Without her, the lab report is just a piece of paper with a blank signature line."

"Exactly. Crowder's lawyers will argue it's unauthenticated, that there's no way to verify its origin, that it could have been fabricated by anyone with a grudge and a printer." Márquez paused. "This wasn't an accident, Elias. Someone got to her."

Elias stood up and walked to the window. The capital was dark and silent, the streetlights casting pools of pale orange on the empty sidewalks. He thought about Dr. Cross's cabin in the mountains, the pine forests and the gravel driveway, the woman with silver hair who had kept a copy of the report hidden in a safety-deposit box for eight years.

"Who else knows about her death?"

"The police. The fire department. And us. I got a call from a contact in the medical examiner's office—she flagged the case because she knew I was working with Cross. The news hasn't broken yet, but it will by morning."

"We need to get ahead of it."

"We need to find a way to authenticate the report without her." Márquez's voice was strained now, the exhaustion of the past week finally bleeding through. "There's only one other person who can do it."

Elias knew the answer before she said it. "Crowder."

"He received the report. He read it. He buried it. If we can prove that chain of custody—if we can show that the report passed through his hands—then we don't need Cross's testimony. The document authenticates itself through the circumstances of its discovery and the corroborating evidence of its suppression."

"But Crowder is missing."

"He's missing, but he left a trail. Rourke's files. The shredded documents you recovered. The memo with his partial signature. It's all circumstantial, but if we can connect enough dots, it might be enough."

Elias thought about the fragments he had pulled from the shredder, the strips of heavy stock paper, the half-legible handwriting. He had given copies of everything to Márquez, but the originals were still in his possession, folded in an envelope at the bottom of his bag.

"There's something else," Márquez said. "Elena Reyes has been digging into Rourke's death. The car accident. She talked to the state police officer who responded to the scene. He told her something off the record."

"What?"

"The brake lines on Rourke's car were cut. Clean cuts. The kind of cuts a professional makes." Márquez let the words hang in the air. "It wasn't an accident. It was an assassination. And if they killed Rourke and Cross, they're going to come for you next."

Elias felt the familiar weight of the revolver against his hip. He had started carrying it everywhere, even inside the safe house, even when he was alone. The gun had become an extension of his body, a part of him he no longer noticed until he needed it.

"I know," he said. "What do you need me to do?"

"There's a man named Gerald Webb. He was the court reporter during the original Gutiérrez trial. He transcribed every word of the proceedings—every objection, every sidebar, every bench conference. After the trial, he retired to a trailer park outside the capital. He's been living off a state pension for twenty years."

"What does he have to do with the lab report?"

"Reyes found him two days ago. She was going through old trial transcripts, looking for any mention of the DNA evidence, any hint that the defense knew about the report. She found something in the margins—a handwritten note from Webb to the judge, asking for clarification on a piece of evidence that was mentioned during a sidebar but never introduced. The evidence was Item 14. The hair fragment."

Elias felt his pulse quicken. "He knew about it?"

"He knew something was missing. He asked the judge about it, and the judge told him to strike the reference from the record. Webb did what he was told, but he kept a personal copy of the original transcript. The uncorrected version. Reyes thinks it might contain enough information to authenticate the lab report, even without Cross's testimony."

"Where is Webb now?"

"That's the problem. When Reyes went to his trailer this morning to interview him, he wasn't there. His neighbors said he left in a hurry two days ago—right around the time Rourke's car went off the mountain. No one knows where he went."

Elias closed his eyes. Another witness. Another loose end. Another person who might be dead or running or both.

"You think Crowder got to him?"

"I think someone got to him. Whether it was Crowder or his people or just the fear of ending up like Rourke—I don't know. But Webb is out there somewhere, and if we can find him before the hearing, we might have a chance."

"How do we find a man who doesn't want to be found?"

Márquez was silent for a moment. "You know the desert better than most. Your father's people came from the border. You spent summers there as a child. If Webb is hiding, he's probably hiding somewhere in the backcountry—the kind of place where people go to disappear."

Elias thought about the colonias, the unincorporated towns, the places that didn't appear on maps. He thought about Arturo's adobe house and the cave with the ancient pictographs and the blue water tower rising above Tierra Seca like a monument. He thought about the border and its gravity, the way it pulled things back.

"I might know someone who can help," he said.

Mateo answered his phone on the fourth ring. His voice was tired but alert, the voice of a man who had learned to sleep lightly.

"Vega. What do you need?"

"I need to find someone. A court reporter named Gerald Webb. He's in his seventies, probably scared, probably hiding somewhere in the border country. He might have information that could save Gutiérrez's life."

"Why me?"

"Because your uncle said you know the desert better than anyone. Because you know how to find people who don't want to be found."

There was a long pause on the line. When Mateo spoke again, his voice was quieter. "My uncle is still missing. I tracked his trail to an old coyote camp in the foothills, but he was gone by the time I got there. There was blood on the ground, but not enough to be fatal. He's alive, Vega. I know he's alive."

"Then help me find Webb. Maybe he can help us end this."

Another pause. Then: "Meet me at the gas station on the old highway. Same place I picked you up. Bring water, food, and whatever you need to stay alive for a few days. We're going into the deep desert."

The sun was just beginning to rise when Elias reached the gas station. Mateo was already there, leaning against his pickup truck, a map spread across the hood. He looked older than his years, the lines around his eyes etched deep by sun and wind and loss.

"I've been thinking about where a man like Webb would go," Mateo said, gesturing at the map. "He's old, he's scared, he's probably not in great health. He wouldn't go too far into the backcountry—he'd need access to supplies, maybe medical care. But he'd also want to stay off the grid, away from places where people might recognize him."

"What about the old mining towns? There are dozens of them scattered through the mountains."

"Most of them are ghost towns now. No supplies, no water. He wouldn't last a week." Mateo traced a line on the map with his finger. "But there's a place called Agua Verde. It's a hot springs resort that went bust in the 1980s. Now it's a retirement community for people who want to disappear—ex-hippies, draft dodgers, people who got on the wrong side of the law and never went back. Cash only, no questions asked. If Webb is hiding anywhere, it's there."

"How far?"

"Six hours, if we take the back roads. We'll be there by noon."

They drove east, into the mountains, following a highway that narrowed from four lanes to two to a single strip of cracked asphalt winding through pine forests and abandoned mining claims. The desert gave way to cooler air and taller trees, the temperature dropping as they climbed. Elias watched the landscape scroll past and thought about all the people who had disappeared into these mountains over the years—the fugitives, the hermits, the broken men seeking refuge from a world that had no place for them.

Arturo had been one of them, once. He had told Elias about the years he spent in the mountains after his wife died, living in a cabin with no electricity and no running water, talking to no one, waiting for the grief to pass. It never passed, he said. It just got easier to carry.

They reached Agua Verde just after noon. The town was a cluster of dilapidated motels and trailer parks built around a series of natural hot springs, the pools steaming gently in the cool mountain air. The streets were empty, the storefronts dark, the only sign of life a small diner at the edge of town with a hand-painted sign that read OPEN in faded letters.

Inside, the diner smelled of bacon grease and old coffee. A woman in her seventies stood behind the counter, her gray hair pulled back in a braid, her eyes sharp and watchful.

"We're looking for someone," Mateo said. "An older man. He would have arrived a few days ago. Might be using a different name."

The woman studied them for a long moment. "You cops?"

"No."

"Bounty hunters?"

"Friends of a friend."

The woman snorted. "Everyone's a friend of a friend in Agua Verde." She picked up a coffee pot and poured two cups without asking. "What's this man done?"

"Nothing," Elias said. "He's a witness. He has information that could save an innocent man's life."

The woman set the coffee pot down. "The Gutiérrez case," she said quietly. "I've been reading about it in the papers. The AG, the suppressed evidence, all of it." She looked at Elias more closely. "You're the one. The whistleblower."

Elias felt a chill run down his spine. "How do you know that?"

"Your picture's been all over the news, son. Every paper in the state has you on the front page." She leaned across the counter. "Gerald Webb is staying at the Sunset Motor Court, room 7. He's been there for two days. He's scared out of his mind. Wouldn't even come in for coffee this morning, and he's been in here every morning for twenty years."

"Twenty years?"

"Webb's been living in Agua Verde since he retired. Keeps to himself mostly, but he's a regular here. Tips well. Never causes trouble." The woman's expression hardened. "Whatever he knows, whatever he's seen—he's a good man. Don't bring trouble down on him."

"We're trying to stop the trouble," Elias said. "That's all we're trying to do."

The Sunset Motor Court was a horseshoe-shaped building at the end of a gravel road, its paint peeling, its neon sign long dead. Room 7 was at the far end, the curtains drawn, no light visible from outside.

Elias knocked on the door. "Mr. Webb? My name is Elias Vega. I'm working with Sofía Márquez. We need to talk to you about the Gutiérrez trial."

Silence.

"I know you're scared. I know you've been running. But the hearing is in two days, and without your testimony, the lab report might not hold up. You're the only one who can authenticate what happened during that sidebar."

The door opened a crack. A pair of pale blue eyes peered out from the darkness.

"How do I know you're who you say you are?"

Elias held up his phone, showing a photo of himself with Márquez at her office. "You can call her right now. She'll confirm everything."

Webb stared at the phone for a long moment. Then he opened the door.

He was a small man, frail and stooped, his skin translucent with age. The room behind him was neat but sparse—a single suitcase, a stack of papers on the nightstand, a portable typewriter on the desk.

"I've been waiting for someone to come," Webb said. "Ever since I heard about Rourke. I knew it was only a matter of time before they came for me too."

"What do you know about Rourke?"

"Not Rourke. Crowder." Webb sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands trembling slightly. "I transcribed every word of that trial. Every objection, every sidebar, every whispered conversation at the bench. I heard things that never made it into the official record."

"What kind of things?"

"Crowder arguing with the judge. The judge asking about Item 14—the hair fragment. Crowder saying it was irrelevant, that it had been excluded on a pretrial motion, that it would prejudice the jury." Webb looked up at Elias, his eyes wet. "I wrote it all down. Every word. And then the judge told me to strike it from the record. To pretend it never happened."

"But you kept a copy."

"I kept all my copies. Forty years of trials, every transcript, every note. I thought someday someone might need them." Webb gestured toward the stack of papers on the nightstand. "The Gutiérrez transcript is in there. The uncorrected version. It shows exactly what Crowder said, exactly what the judge ordered. It proves the state knew about the hair fragment and deliberately suppressed it."

Elias felt something crack open in his chest—something that might have been hope, or might have been relief, or might have been the fishbone finally working its way free.

"Mr. Webb, will you testify at the hearing? Will you tell the court what you just told me?"

Webb was silent for a long moment. He looked at his hands, at the stack of papers, at the dusty curtains and the dead neon sign and the life he had built in this forgotten town at the edge of the world.

"I've been hiding for two days," he said quietly. "Ever since I saw the news about Rourke. I knew they would come for me. I knew what I had was dangerous." He looked up at Elias. "But I also knew I couldn't hide forever. That's not what my wife would have wanted. She always said the truth was worth the risk."

He stood up, his movements slow and deliberate, and began to gather the papers into a folder.

"Take me to the capital," he said. "Take me to the hearing. I've been quiet for too long."

They left Agua Verde within the hour, Webb sitting in the back seat of Mateo's truck with the folder clutched against his chest. The mountain road unwound before them, the pines giving way to scrub and then to desert as they descended toward the capital.

Elias sat in the passenger seat, watching the landscape change, thinking about all the people who had risked everything to drag the truth into the light. Dr. Cross, who had written the report and handed it to Crowder personally. Arturo, who had taught him to shoot and bought him time in the desert. Rourke, who had spent his life serving power and been consumed by it in the end. And now Webb, an old man with trembling hands and a folder full of secrets, driving toward a courtroom where he would finally tell the world what he had seen.

The hearing was in two days. Crowder was still missing. And somewhere in the darkness, the men who had killed Cross and Rourke were still hunting.

But Elias was not running anymore. He was moving toward something now, not away from it.

And he was not moving alone.