Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  Knobby leaned over to examine Sylvia’s finding, then looked her in the eye. “’Course I can. It’s raccoon droppings.”

  Leaping from her seat, Ban went up to see as well. “Yes, yes, it is! Sylvia, where did you find this?” Her gaze zoomed around the area, looking through the scenery wildly, and she took the crumpled tissue into her hands almost with affection.

  After relinquishing the poop, Sylvia wiped her hands together in the air, then shoved them back into her pockets. “I asked the clerk which room the people in the yellow pickup had stayed in, and if I could please examine it before housekeeping went in. I showed him my badge and he let me in. I found those in a corner of the room. So they still have Clara. I don’t think they let her out of the carrier. I think those fell out as they were moving her around. There was also a smell, but to be honest, it could just as easily have been from them. Their shower was NOT used.” With that, she moved further into the bus and took her seat behind Ban, who was looking at the droppings in her hand. Ban wrapped the poop tightly in the tissue and stuck it into her own pocket.

  Briefly, I slid into the seat behind her, keeping my voice low. “You know Billings is right, Sylvia. You should have told one of us what you were doing. He could decide to put that in his mission report.” I glanced down and noticed that the back of her seat featured the phrase “Minny Soda Sux” in black permanent ink with a shape that I assume was supposed to be the state but looked more like a profile of Millard Fillmore. Or maybe that’s just me.

  “I was hoping maybe no one saw me go toward the building and that if I didn’t find anything it would just look like I was walking around for exercise. I didn’t want expectations, you know?” She nodded a little bit toward Ban.

  I understood. But it didn’t change the fact that if I hadn’t seen her walk away, we could have left without her. She promised to apologize to Billings privately.

  “And there’s something else,” she said. “There was something in the truck bed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  As she talked, she was thinking about what she had seen. “In the surveillance video the truck bed was empty. Just now, it was covered by what looked like an Army surplus canvas tarp. Could mean nothing. Luggage, protected from the weather. Who knows? But it wasn’t there before.”

  I sat back in the seat, though it was where Butte had sat before. I didn’t think I could stand to watch Roxy crochet anymore. Without a complaint, Butte passed me and took my vacated seat, taking up a conversation with Roxy.

  A couple of minutes later we were headed back to the freeway. “Do you know where this cabin of theirs is?” asked Knobby.

  “No, but Upper Red Lake is hardly metropolitan.” Fergie was shaking off the mystery of the phone call and getting his head back in the present. “It’s mostly resorts and rental property run by the Chippewa. It includes the new preserve, which was given the names of its American financial backers. The Chippewa are more or less silent partners whose interest lies solely in preserving the wildlife. They have no interest at all in tourism or making a profit.”

  “Right,” Roxy said, looking up from her crocheting. “Leave that stuff to the European Americans.”

  Ban was watching the road ahead. I imagine she was hoping to spot the pickup, but there was little chance of us catching up to them. This was a bus, and an old one. It couldn’t speed. In fact, if this bus had been used in the film Speed we probably would have blown up a long time ago. Pickups, fortunately, aren’t much better. They’d probably gain several more minutes but not a lot. In any case, the odds of seeing it again before we reached the cabin were very small, considering they knew the exact location and we didn’t. Nevertheless, most of us were watching the traffic anyway.

  Traffic was heavier than yesterday, though still far from bumper-to-bumper. Alongside the road were miles and miles of snow fence doing its job of containing the five or six inches of last night’s snowfall. Only parts of the bright orange fencing were visible. Some of it had been buried by the plows in nearly regularly spaced piles, so that it would be lost for a few feet, then poke out of the drifts again. Watching it was hypnotic. Smaller vehicles, cars, vans, and trucks, passed us often, some weaving from one lane to another to get beyond the annoyingly slow bus. It was 2 hours before we found them.

  And all Hell broke loose.

  Chapter Five

  We took Highway 71 to Highway 72 and eventually turned onto County Road 23, which turned into a gravel road marked by a snow-crusted, illegible sign. But Fergie, being a state trooper, knew his state like the back of his hand. With complete confidence, he told us to turn right. Left, he said, was the Red Lake Indian Reservation, which, according to Fergie, held almost exclusively ice fishing rental places and cabin resorts, and a couple small casinos, but barely any private cabins. It was too early in the season for the lake to be completely frozen and safe for ice fishing, so the big winter tourist season had yet to begin. It would be mostly deserted, and nearly impossible for the Nonegans to hide from the Reservation’s Patrol. The Chippewa policed their own land and were very throrough. The odds were better to the right. The gravel road traveled around the perimeter of Upper Red Lake, sometimes with the lake visible on the left and other times with it hidden by trees. Tall, green pine trees mixed with the bare skeletons of oak, elm and maple. The gravel could be felt under the wheels of the bus, but ahead the road looked nearly as paved as any other road with the flattened, packed snow left by the plows. We slowed to a crawl as we all watched for signs of the yellow pickup. It would have been more difficult if they had chosen a white car, or a black one, which would blend with the snow or the bark of the tree trunks. We highly anticipated any brief glimpse of color.

  There was a row of red structures with large numbers on the front, which turned out to be ice fishing huts belonging to a nearby resort. We drove on.

  It was actually Knobby who saw it first. The yellow seemed to glow through the woods like a small sun hovering a few inches off the ground. “I think that’s them,” Knobby said. We couldn’t see the cabin from there, and could only barely see the truck. The driveway was also not immediately visible.

  Fergie produced a pair of small binoculars and peered through them. “Looks like them. Should be an access road around here somewhere.”

  “Got it,” said Knobby after a moment, making a tight turn around a tree with a rural mailbox next to it. It was shaped like a big mouth bass.

  “Go slow. We don’t want them to spot us.” The element of surprise should almost always be kept available as long as possible. There are very few instances where rushing in noisily is a good idea, and they all involve an approaching brush fire.

  “Got it,” said Knobby again, spotting the double tire tracks left behind by the pickup on the still uncleared driveway.

  Standing in the aisle holding onto a support bar, Billings examined the scene. “I’m going to need someone to disable that truck so they can’t get away.” Sylvia volunteered, and Billings accepted it. He could have assigned someone else to the job, but she probably would have been his choice anyway. Sylvia could disable an Army tank if she had to. In her personnel file there is an account of her psych evaluation at CURDS Academy, a test to determine one’s ability to react under pressure. She was put in a room where the walls and ceiling all move in. It is programmed to stop before actually crushing the occupant, but when you’re in it you don’t know that. She had all five moving partitions disabled in thirty seconds and refused to tell the instructors how she did it. She got both a commendation and a citation. The test room had to be dismantled and rebuilt.

  Billings continued, “The rest of us will need to surround the cabin. I want to do this without bloodshed.” He didn’t really have to say that. It’s pretty much CURDS’ motto, even though our missions do seem to involve bloodshed fairly often.

  The crudely built log cabin came into view as we crept the bus forward, pulling up a few dozen feet behind the pickup. It was not a log cabin, per se, but built
of roughly shaped medium pieces of wood with knots and imperfections in every board, what some people called character and others called saving money on low quality supplies. Centrally located, three steps led up to an open porch with mission style railings that ran the full width of the front. A walkway to the porch and the porch itself had been cleared of snow. There was a large picture window in the front wall to the left of a solid wood door with black iron hardware. The single story was covered with a sharply slanted roof currently dotted with small packets of snow that had been trapped by the shingles. Mindful of the previous engine breakdown, Knobby kept the bus in idle. “Have your guns ready,” Billings added, “but no shooting, I repeat, no shooting unless I give the order. Guns can be just as intimidating as bullets. We all know that. Is that clear?” He straightened, moving his gaze from outside to in to observe the nods and affirmations. “Mom, give Dad your HEP belt.”

  “What? Why?” It was like telling Galileo to hand over his telescope. I was naked in the field without my HEP.

  “Because you’re staying on the bus. You know that!” He held out one hand in a “gimme” gesture.

  Darn. I was kind of hoping he’d forget about that. My ribs weren’t really bothering me right now, although some of that was because my adrenaline was pumping like an active oil well. Doctors should probably look into that. Adrenaline is an awesome painkiller. Plus I really really wanted to be in on this. “Okay,” I relented. “But I’m keeping my phone. I might want to play Candy Crush.” Allow me the dignity of the technological equivalent of underwear, please.

  Billings’ head tilted. “You hate Candy Crush. You’re on level 5.”

  I took my phone from my HEP belt and tucked it into my sock. “Level 6. I did one before I went to sleep last night.” I did Candy Crush without enthusiasm. I’d heard horror stories from Badger about self-replicating chocolate squares and while I would certainly be in favor of that in real life, it sounded like a cursed idea for the game. I looked at the other contents of the belt and immediately gave up any hope of keeping the gun. But maybe I could increase my inventory a little more. There was a flashlight, but it was broad daylight and would be useless no matter who was carrying it. “And the walkie,” I said, taking that, too. “I need to hear what’s going on.”

  “And Butte’s going to need to hear my instructions. Put it back.” I did so, refraining from engaging in a mock pout. This wasn’t the time for petulance, even if it was fake. After a bit of consideration, he added, “Sylvia, give her your walkie and everyone leave the channel open. There’s no reason she needs to be left out entirely, and you already have your mission.”

  “What about after that?” protested Sylvia, suggesting that she would also need instruction. Despite being the newest member of the team, Sylvia had excellent instincts, however, and almost never needed instructions. Part of me worried that she would beat out Billings for my spot someday, but she had yet to choose a path within CURDS. She did seem naturally suited for command eventually, but not everyone who was clearly suited wanted it.

  “Improvise.”

  “Hold on there,” said Roxy. “Butte isn’t authorized for that.”

  Butte came to his own defense. “I helped you in Italy.”

  And Roxy had an immediate answer. “Because I was being held captive. I wasn’t there to tell you you weren’t authorized. And as I understand it, that mission was kind of off the record. This is different. This is official stuff, and you are not licensed to carry a firearm in the name of CURDS. It could be very messy if this ends in gunplay.” She was referring to the legal consequences, but her comment kind of applied on its own terms as well. I could tell that mention of gunplay and bloodshed was bothering Ban, but it couldn’t be helped. This was CURDS terminology 101: Discussing the Worst Case Scenario.

  “Well, I’m authorizing him, then,” said Billings. “And don’t tell me I can’t do that, because I don’t care. I need him, and I’m not taking anyone in who can’t defend themselves. Dad, you can shoot, right?”

  “Well,” Butte started to say. He probably had fired a gun a few times, but it’s not like he was particularly comfortable with it, to the best of my knowledge. In fact, he most likely was uncomfortable with the whole idea, but it seemed bad form to oppose Billings right now. This was his mission. As long as we weren’t trying to espionage each other, I could read Butte pretty well. He would simply follow Billings’ moratorium against shooting and stay as much out of the way as he possibly could, knowing that extra eyes and hands were never a bad idea.

  “I guess that means I’m keeping Helena company, then,” said Ban almost too quietly to be heard.

  But she was sitting right behind where Billings was standing and he heard. “No, you have to come. You need to get Clara. You stay behind me at all times, until I give you the all clear. Can you do that?”

  Ban nodded solemnly. “Absolutely.” Billings’ words reminded her that Clara was close, that soon Clara would be back in her arms safe and sound. It was almost over.

  I handed my HEP belt sans phone to Butte, who adjusted the webbed belt and strapped it on. He shifted from leg to leg in an imitation of a cowboy and pretended to tip his imaginary hat with a finger gun. It was his attempt to lighten the mood. I appreciated it, but I doubt if anyone else did. As Sylvia gave me her walkie talkie, she said casually, “Truck bed is empty now. Whatever they had is in the cabin.” Her head rose in alarm, staring over my shoulder. “Wait a minute. There’s someone else here.” Her one brilliant green, uncovered eye skipped over me like a flat rock in a lake. She moved to the opposite side of the bus and looked out, across the unbroken snow covered yard to a copse of trees beyond the cabin. “There’s a black sedan in there.”

  Unconcerned about the possibility of the bus tipping, all of us, except Knobby, moved to that side of the bus. Again, Fergie put his binoculars to his eyes. “She’s right. Black sedan, but it’s not in the yard at all. It’s between the trees. I don’t even know how it got in there.” He moved the binoculars left and right, looking for signs of life. All was quiet.

  “Is it up on blocks?” asked Knobby, still ensconced in the driver’s seat as he addressed our reflection in his rear view mirror. “Maybe it’s abandoned.”

  “Nope,” said Fergie. “Four wheels, all intact from the look of it. Tinted windows. I can’t see inside.”

  It wasn’t their rendezvous. The janitor was in custody, sitting in a jail cell back in Rochester. Who else would come here? We didn’t know, and this was no time for speculation. We’d already spent more time than we should have distributing hardware. We would have determined a lot of it earlier, but there’d been too many unknowns. We didn’t know if we’d find them here or at the Preserve, or even possibly not at all. That’s another thing movies and TV shows tend to leave out. Just like in musicals when people burst into perfectly coordinated impromptu song and dance numbers, action shows have teams of agents that already know where and what to do when they are ready for the takedown. Sure, it’s training, but often there is a string of instructions from command that the audience never sees. It’s in the boring stuff that’s removed for literary or poetic license like bathroom breaks, showers, nose-blowing and just the incredibly boring task of getting from one place to another. But in real life, all those things have to happen, even in the middle of intense drama.

  Billings told Knobby to open the door and the team lined up to exit the bus. Cold air drifted in. And something else.

  A sound.

  In the film, Fargo, Frances McDormand’s police chief tracks the killers to a cabin in the northern wilds of Minnesota and is also greeted by a sound. She follows the sound around to the back of the building, slowly, the tension building, where she finds one man forcing the remains of his partner into the mouth of a running wood chipper.

  It sounded like that.

  I couldn’t speak for Ban or Fergie, or even Knobby, come to think of it, but the rest of us had all seen the movie. There was a moment on the bus when all moveme
nt stopped and we just looked at each other, knowing we were all remembering that scene. Ban covered her mouth with one hand. Wood chippers were common equipment in this area. The sound was steady and monotonous, loud enough that whoever was producing it was not going to be able to hear the idling bus engine. So it was at least a good thing in that respect. “Keep it running,” said Billings to Knobby. No one wanted to turn the bus off. This would be a really bad place for it to stall. His face determined, Billings led the party off the bus.

  He sank into the five- inch snow, testing his footing before moving to the already cleaned front walk where he stopped to stomp the snowflakes from his pant legs. One by one, the others left the bus, stepping into his footprints, stepping toward that foreboding sound. Ban went next, staying close to Billings as ordered, keeping one hand on his right shoulder as if she were blind. Then Sylvia exited, finding her own path toward the yellow pickup, which was already surrounded by older footprints and rumpled snow. Finally, the rest climbed out and dispersed quickly in different directions. Fergie left last, handing me his binoculars as he did so. “Here, Helena. I’ll be too close for these to be useful. Now you’ve got ears AND eyes.”

  I smiled at him. “Thanks, Fergie.” He got off the bus and Knobby closed the door, ending the flow of cold air abruptly. I just hoped my vantage point didn’t make me eyewitness to carnage and mayhem. Carnage and Mayhem. I think that was a band Billings used to listen to. When I’m stressed, my brain goes into mysterious places.

  Knobby wrapped his arms around the steering wheel and shivered. “Helena, I’m beginning to think my accident was a good thing. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a field agent. I think I’m going to be sick.”