by Robin Lamont
Jude entered the town hall troubled by Oliver’s fury at Wildlife Services and his knowledge of unreported details about Eberhardt’s death. But after seeing some of the anti-derby folks, especially Kylie Harrington, her doubts about Oliver had some company.
“
Chapter 13
Damndest thing,” Charlie Ferrow went on, “you’d a thought with a thirty-thirty load, they coulda killed him outright, even from a hunnert yards.”
Ben gazed out the passenger window of the car while his friend drove and kept talking. “That’s what I heard, anyhow. You know Gary Powell at the Post Office? His brother-in-law works at the hospital where they brought Eberhardt. A thirty-thirty. The bullet blew a hole right through his shoulder. Then while he’s down, they snap a big ole coil spring on his leg. Poor bastard. No way he could get that thing off, not when he couldn’t move his arm. Christ! I’m still having nightmares ’bout it. Those animal activists are a bunch of sicko’s, I’ll tell you that much. Can you imagine? Left to die in a twelve-inch steel jaw? If the cops catch whoever did this, they better lock him up the hell away from here ’cause everybody I know would like to take a crack at this guy before they give him the death penalty. Oh, and get this … two FBI agents come to my house to hear the story from me direct, and whiles they’re at it, they’re perusing my collection. They see my Marlin 336 and ask me what kind of ammo I use. Oh, shit. Can’t lie about it, I gotta tell ’em it takes a thirty-thirty load. But I says there ain’t a hunter around here who don’t have a rifle like that. I mean, hell, you got a Marlin, right? Or a Winchester?”
Ferrow drove up the dirt driveway and Ben winced every time the wheels hit a rut. The pain in his back had spread to his abdomen, and the news from his doctor this morning hadn’t helped.
“Listen, uh, you want me stick around?” asked Charlie, hoping the answer was no. His discomfort about “the cancer” was unmistakable. They’d been pals for years, but he hadn’t even asked what the doctor said. Ben understood; he didn’t want to hear it either.
“Nah, Charlie,” said Ben. “You’ve done enough. I appreciate the lift. I would have canceled today, but my doctor gets peeved at me when I do that.”
“A lady doctor, yeah? That’d be all I need – another woman touching my private parts and bossing me around.”
Ben chuckled weakly and opened his door. The sound of a power saw came from the back of the house. He hesitated.
“You got some work goin’ on?” Ferrow asked.
There was no contractor van anywhere to be seen.
“Yeah,” Ben lied reluctantly. “Um … just some little things.”
“Sure you don’t want me to stay? You need help getting inside?”
“No, I’m good.”
Ben got out and walked slowly toward the front door. He paused long enough to watch Ferrow turn his car around and drive off. The saw whined as it cut through another board.
Colin was in the back adjusting a three-foot board into the space where he’d removed one of the rotting planks on the back deck. A pencil clenched between his teeth, he held the board in place, nailed in one side, and then the other. He turned to cut the next and saw his father standing at the edge of the driveway above him.
“Mornin’, Dad.”
Ben stared at him.
“I borrowed your saw. Hope that’s okay.” Colin was shaken at how pale and thin his father appeared.
“I thought you would have left by now,” said Ben.
“Yeah, soon. I just … when I was here before, I noticed that some of the boards were looking pretty weathered. You don’t want to let that go, you know? And you had a little bit of this red oak left, so I thought…”
Ben walked away.
“Thanks, son,” Colin finished under his breath. He stood for a moment, corralling his emotions, then went into the house after his father.
Ben had dropped into his favorite chair and was leaning back, eyes closed.
“Are you alright?” Colin asked.
His father answered coldly, “You bring the key?”
“A couple more days.”
“I want you out of there.”
“Like I said, just a couple more days–”
“Leave!” Ben barked harshly. It cost him, and he winced in pain. “Agents from the FBI – they came looking for you.”
Colin licked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t tell them anything … not this time. But they’ll be back, you know it. The Eberhardt thing is serious business, son.”
“Jesus, Dad, you can’t think I had anything to do with that, do you?”
“I’m not saying you did, but they must think you know something.”
“They can’t prove anything.”
“And what did they prove to put you in jail for two years? You had tools in your car? You were in the vicinity of the mink farm? They had nothing,” said Ben bitterly.
“The judge thought they had enough. And I wasn’t innocent.”
“But they cannot bend the rules just because…”
“I’m an unrepentant animal activist?”
“Among other things.” Ben started to cough which turned into agonizing spasms in his gut that doubled him over.
Colin ran to get a glass of water for his father, who was pushing his hands against his knees, trying to breathe through the pain. “What can I do, Dad?”
Ben surrendered. “There are some pain pills in the drawer next to my bed.”
Colin went to the bedroom, relieved for the few moments alone to digest what he had learned. He knew the FBI would come looking for him, but he didn’t know they’d already visited Ben. More surprising, though, he never thought that his father had followed his case. All this time, every day of the trial and every hour in prison, he believed his father didn’t know and didn’t care. The conflicting emotions and the memory of life inside suddenly took his knees out from under him; he sat on the side of the bed and put his head in his hands.
It all came back – the interminable stretches of time, the boredom so thick it could suffocate a man. The constant noise, no escape from the cacophony twenty-four-seven. Shouting, steel doors clanking, bolts screeching. It was even worse in solitary where he’d spent weeks, all for refusing to wear their leather shoes. Guys going nuts, cackling, screaming, pounding and kicking on the doors and unbreakable windows. On the day of his release he checked into a motel in the middle of nowhere and stayed for a week, drinking beer and eating junk food, watching TV. At the time he thought it was just the quiet he was after, but as the days passed he knew it was more – he wasn’t quite ready for what came next. From the moment they slapped the handcuffs on him, all he wanted was to go home. But when the jail doors were open there was no home to go home to.
His father’s cough put Colin back in motion. He rummaged through the drawer and found several bottles of pills. Some of the names of the medications were new to him, but he did recognize Fentanyl. A convicted stock broker two cells down had gotten some smuggled in and was blissed out for a week until a guard found the drugs. Something jingled in the back of the drawer and Colin pulled out a handful of dog collars. Along with the pain pills he scooped them up – a possible bridge over the enormous gulf that separated father and son.
“How come you named him Far Away?” asked Colin, fingering one of the frayed leather collars. He had one ear tuned to the gravel driveway in case the agents showed up again.
The meds had started to kick in and Ben’s face had taken on the same absent, glassy-eyed look as the guard who’d confiscated the Fentanyl.
“I didn’t. I named him Farley, but your brother couldn’t say it. He called him Far Away and it stuck.”
Colin picked up a thick red nylon collar and looked at one of the tags. “Hooper. Oh man, Hoop. What a great dog. Do you remember when
we drove to Saint Claire and he followed us?”
“Sure. Probably ran five miles.”
“He got into a couple of fights, didn’t he?”
“He could be testy.”
“Hoop was a good dog, though.”
“They were all good dogs.”
“You kept their collars,” noted Colin sadly.
“Sure, I wasn’t much for taking pictures.”
Colin gathered up the old keepsakes and recalled something Laurel had said. “Where’s your dog now?” he asked. “Don’t you have a dog named Oona?”
“Used to. She got hit by a car.”
“Oh, sorry, Dad. What happened?”
Ben shrugged. “She ran off. Went over to the main road one day and got hit.”
“There was no way to save her?”
Looking out the window at the ice-covered pond below, Ben shook his head. “She was dead. I buried her down by the pond. She liked it down there.”
“Didn’t the driver stop at least? I mean, did they explain how it happened?”
Ben closed his eyes and didn’t answer for awhile. Finally he said, “Think I’ll just rest here for a bit. Those pills make me sleepy.”
“Okay. I’ll go finish the deck.”
Waving his hand weakly in the air, Ben retreated from his son once again. “I wish you wouldn’t, Colin. All that hammering. I just want some peace and quiet.”
It was forever the way with Ben, thought Colin. His youngest son had always been too vocal, too loud and abrasive. Ben, like the other dads, wanted to share the weekend hunting parties with his two boys. But Colin wouldn’t even look at a rifle. As a youngster, he wept inconsolably at the sight of a deer carcass being dragged home. Then as a teenager, he argued for the sentience of animals and proclaimed his rejection of meat at the dinner table. He pounded away at his father’s closed mind and his mother’s bowed head until he left for good, slamming the door behind him. But it was just all noise to Ben, and it seemed as though nothing had changed. His father would choose to live a mute life even as the last remnants of it were falling down around him.
Colin put away the saw and locked the shed. He retrieved his motorcycle from behind the bushes. As he was strapping on his helmet, a familiar ache of longing constricted his chest. It wasn’t that he expected his father to see things the way he did, it was that he felt so invisible to him. There were no photographs of his childhood on the walls. No, that space had been reserved for deer antlers … until recently, apparently. Hell, he kept souvenirs of his dogs instead of his children, and even then he kept them hidden away in a drawer – all the memories in a place where they would never remind him of anything. To hell with him. Colin kick-started the cycle forcibly and roared away.
Chapter 14
Saint Claire was three times the size of Stanton. Still, Jude was wary about being seen with Lisbet so she slid into a booth at the back of the coffee shop and kept her head down. A few minutes later Lisbet bustled in and sat across from her, unwrapping a long scarf from around her neck. She looked decidedly unhappy.
“I had to rent a car to get back to work,” she said. “It’s going to take them a week to get the windshield replaced.”
“I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” said Jude.
“Well, one of these days they’re going to aim the brick right at my head,” complained Lisbet.
Jude leaned forward and asked intently, “What is going on? I’ve never seen anything like the venom that runs through this wolf debate. And John Tripp was deliberately adding kindling to the fire. I was up half the night trying to figure out what’s at stake for him.” She pulled out a spiral notebook from her backpack to review some of her notes. “According to the USDA’s own stats, three quarters of all livestock loss last year was non-predator related: disease, birth complications, weather. And wolves are only a small fraction of the predators who do kill livestock. Heck, I found a USDA report that showed feral dogs take down more sheep than wolves. So why is there so much animosity toward them?”
Lisbet took a huge breath before attempting to answer. “Historically, cows and sheep were never on the menu. But as far back as the Middle Ages, when huge tracts of forest were cleared for farmland, deprived of their habitat and the prey that naturally lived there, wolves were forced to kill livestock. Back then it was all small farms, so it pissed off a lot of people and made it easy to demonize the wolves. For centuries in myths and stories, they’ve been associated with great strength and ferocity. I honestly think that hatred of wolves is ingrained in our culture, especially out here where they do still take livestock.”
“There were hunters at the town hall last night,” said Jude. “Are they in the same camp? Angry that wolves will take all the elk and deer that they want to shoot?”
“That’s part of it. But I have this theory that because we have imbued wolves with an aura of mythical strength and cunning, hunters particularly enjoy the challenge of killing them. And it’s a vicious cycle. Hunters kill wolves because they are so ‘bad’ and continually manufacture evidence that they are ‘bad’ to justify killing them.”
“And a rancher like John Tripp gets votes by telling people what they want to hear, which is why he stirs up the pot.”
“Exactly right.”
Although there were only a few people at tables too far away to overhear, Jude lowered her voice. “A couple of days ago I saw a wolf gunned down from the air by Wildlife Services. She was wearing a radio collar.”
“So that’s what happened,” said Lisbet, hanging her head. “I have a colleague who’s been tracking a small pack in the north. They lost the signal on one of them just about two days ago. I wish we had some proof.”
Jude added, “They were using John Tripp’s plane.”
“Well, ain’t that a sweet deal,” said Lisbet caustically. “Wildlife Services budgets about a thousand dollars for each lift-off to go after coyotes and wolves, so they’re probably paying Tripp to lease his plane while they’re taking care of his ‘predator’ problem.”
Jude doodled in her notebook for a moment before telling Lisbet, “You know, everyone in Stanton is under the impression that Eberhardt was killed by animal activists. But he was no Eagle Scout, I can tell you that. He got a real kick out of killing animals.”
“All the more reason to think that sticking his leg in a coil spring was a statement of some kind. Like an animal rights thing, yeah?”
“Unless that’s exactly what the killer wants people to think.”
“You mean to throw the cops off track?”
Jude shrugged. “Maybe. Let’s not forget, too, that Eberhardt worked for Wildlife Services, and the stuff I’m starting to learn about them stinks to high heaven.”
“You got that right. What are you going to do?”
“Pay a visit to John Tripp,” replied Jude grimly.
* * *
The old Subaru clattered over a cattle grate; the marquee overhead was intended to look rustic and unassuming, but the letters spelling out TRIPP RANCH, fashioned from twisted barbed wire, sent out a more foreboding message. Showing up uninvited was risky, but to Jude, the practices of Wildlife Services seemed nothing more than industrialized animal abuse, which in her experience was driven by money and power. In Stanton, that money and power belonged to John Tripp.
The dirt road continued for a mile with little else but flatlands and utility poles on either side. Then it split and she stayed to her left, where sheep began to dot the fenced-in pastures. The outline of a large warehouse-like building came into view, and Jude pulled up behind a piece of farm machinery parked along one side.
She wandered into the building where a handful of men were repairing the rails on rows of empty stalls in preparation for winter shed lambing. To protect them from the cold temperatures and predators, the ewes were moved inside to give birth, then they were herded with their lambs i
nto larger pens until they were ready to join the rest of the flock to graze on the open range. Come spring, the lambs and ewes were separated, the ewes and rams shorn of their wool, then bred again for the next cycle. At about three months, lambs were herded into trucks and shipped to a slaughterhouse. Prices for their young flesh were higher in the spring, especially for Easter dinners.
“Can I help you?” a dark-skinned man asked in accented English. In addition to reading up on sheep farming, Jude learned that Tripp hired scores of Peruvian workers to tend to his herd. He was proud of the fact that after staying on for a few years, working hard and sleeping in tents on the range, his immigrant employees could come away with nearly twenty-thousand dollars apiece. “Not bad money to send home when all is said and done,” Tripp was quoted as saying. “A lot of them even put on weight here.”
Jude said, “I’m looking for John Tripp.”
“He’s up at the house.” The man told Jude to keep heading up the road. “’Bout a quarter of a mile. You can’t miss it.”
Indeed, no one could. The Tripp home was a grand stone and redwood manor with sparkling floor-to-ceiling windows. Set on a hill with views of a pristine snow-topped mountain range, it was part of a complex that included a garage and barn and behind the house an airplane hangar and landing strip. As she drew near the house, several cars and trucks passed her in the opposite direction. Names painted on the sides of a few, such as C&B Ranch, T Bar Farm, and Williams Dairy, told Jude that a gathering of ranchers had just ended. She parked behind a dark sedan out front and checked herself in the rearview mirror. She’d let her hair down and put on a hint of blush; it couldn’t hurt. Leaving her jacket in the car, she walked up a series of steps and rang the bell.