by J K Ellem
Shaw expected to find clutter and chaos in the room. Most men were hopeless with paperwork but kept immaculate sheds. But what greeted him as he stood in the doorway was the reflection of a man who was fastidious, organized and meticulous, a man who demanded order in his life and was not given over to chance or speculation. Shaw was pleased with what he saw, it meant the task of finding answers would maybe be a little easier.
Two large bookcases of dark wood hugged the far wall and were filled with bound books, paper scrolls tied with ribbon, and numerous box files lined up in neat rows. An old filing cabinet, dented and rusted with age, sat in the corner. It was the same familiar shade of dove-grey that Shaw had seen many times in government offices.
The floor was polished timber and covered with a rug that was worn and tattered at the edges. Two leather chairs sat across on the opposite side of the desk. There was a framed map of Kansas on one wall. On another wall hung a framed flag, folded thirteen times into a triangle, leaving only the blue field with stars.
Shaw didn’t ask.
Behind the desk stood a button-studded leather chair that tilted slightly to one side, the leather dull and cracked from many years of faithful support. He walked into the room and went to the desk. The desk was relatively bare. Just a stack of old manila files, a pen stand with three vintage-looking fountain pens, a bronze tray with various bottles of ink, letter opener, some old tarnished picture frames displaying photos of happier times, a heavy-looking chunky telephone with a twisted cable and a large blotting pad, the paper insert yellow with age, covered in a myriad of doodles, numbers, words, lines and arrows, and cubes in various colors of ink and script. The idle thoughts of a man pouring his troubles onto paper.
There was a stack of dog-eared crinkled paper that looked like bills and old letters, and a map had been partially unrolled and pinned down by what looked like old machinery gears, the corners of which had scrolled inwards towards the weights. There were more scrolls rolled up and piled on a low shelf next to the desk. Shaw could tell some of these were maps of some sort.
“What do you want to look at?” Daisy asked, coming around to where Shaw was standing looking down at the desk.
“Is it alright if I take a look?” he asked, indicating the desk. He didn’t want to offend her. He wanted to search the room in full, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen yet. This was her father’s domain, his sanctuary, and probably the last place left that reminded her of him. The barn was a functional building full of tools and parts. However this room was a more personal space, where a man retreated at the end of the day to find solace and to think.
Daisy just nodded.
“Are you sure?” He felt like a grave-robber desecrating a site, but he needed answers.
“No, it’s fine. I’ve been avoiding it for too long.” She smiled at Shaw, thankful he was there. It would have been too much coming into her father's study alone. Too many fond memories of a man taken away from her before his time.
Shaw preferred to stand as he explored the desk. It had a single drawer on each side and he found only the typical things one would expect; pens, paper, envelopes, and a sea of loose stationery.
Shaw spread the map out further. It was a detailed survey map of the entire McAlister property, lots of lines, distances, contour markings and elevation measurements, none of which meant anything to him. There were no handwritten notes or marks on it, no clues as to why Daisy’s father was looking at this particular map.
“This is our property here,” Daisy leaned over and placed her finger on the map, then she traced a line up to the ridge, the contours on the map narrowing as the elevation increased. She pointed out the place where they had ridden. “This is where we were yesterday,” she said.
Shaw tried to create a mental picture of where he had stood on the edge of the ravine, relative to where her finger was on the map, but it was just a bunch of lines, squiggles and shapes that represented hills, mountains and the change in inclination of the terrain. There were some dotted lines that indicated trails and roads. Give him a street map of any city and he could navigate it to any location, check building elevations for sniper positions and determine the quickest escape route to the nearest hospital. But this was like looking at the surface of Mars.
Shaw looked at Daisy. “Where would the trail around the side of the ravine go to? If I had continued along the narrow path around to the other side, where would I have come out?”
Daisy bent forward more. The front of her cotton shirt was unbuttoned, he could see the hanging curve of her breasts under the thin fabric as they swayed, the dark buds of her nipples rubbing against the inside of the shirt.
She caught him staring out of the corner of her eye. “Keep your eyes on the map, Mr Shaw,” she said without looking up.
He smiled, “I’ve taught you well.”
“Sometimes you forget yourself, how to look without looking.” Her finger followed another line on the map. “Here, I imagine this is where you would have ended up, if you had followed the path.” She slid her finger further along the map. “You would descend on the other side, see how the elevation numbers start to decrease. I think this is where the old cattle trail ends too. Maybe it joins up with that, where the old cattle yards are. As I said, there’s nothing there, just some old sheds and outhouses.”
He leaned his forearms on the map, trying to make sense of what he saw and what Daisy had told him. Why was her father up on an edge of the ravine, on the path where no horse could possibly go? No cattle could have strayed up there, so why was he there? What was his sudden interest in the place, and why was he camping out up there so often before his accident? Was it an accident at all?
Shaw traced the path with his own finger on the map as Daisy had done. The paper was smooth under his touch. He continued past the line and followed it to where she had pointed to. “Can you get to the same spot, if you followed the trail that runs by the barn?”
Daisy nodded. “Yes you can, but I haven’t been through there in years, well before my father died. There’s nothing there.”
But there was something there. There had to be. Her father was a man who didn’t do things on a whim. His life was one of careful thought, deliberate action and planning. He hadn’t written any annotations on the map. He didn’t want anyone else to know what he was doing up there. He kept that information tucked away safely in his head and unfortunately he had taken it to his grave.
He was playing a game of chess, always thinking a few moves ahead. But was he playing chess against a far cleverer and more dangerous opponent?
Or maybe Shaw was reading too much into the situation. Maybe he wanted to see more than what was really there. Maybe Daisy’s father went up there to be alone and think. Maybe Jim Morgan does just want the McAlister land to expand his cattle property. Maybe Daisy’s father just stumbled and fell off the edge of the ravine.
Shaw had spent most of his young career linking a series of unexplained coincidences just like these ones, looking for patterns—links that would take a jumble of seemingly unrelated events and reshape them into a well-organized, intricate plan. When he had been correct in the past, he had saved lives and neutralized a threat. When he had been wrong, he had still been praised and encouraged for such foresight and intuition.
Shaw lined up the coincidences in his head: Military trained guards, night-vision cameras, aerial surveillance, high-security perimeter fencing, a skilled horseman, a family feud going back centuries, and Jim Morgan.
These weren’t a series of random facts.
His intuition was telling him there was something premeditated and disturbing here.
The afternoon sun was fading, and shadows were growing from the corners in the study.
Shaw rubbed his eyes, sore from looking at the map too long.
It was time.
“Are you ready?” Shaw asked.
Daisy nodded. “Do you think the time is right?”
Shaw had no idea, he was just guessing based
on what he would do. Most clandestine activities usually happened after dark, but he hoped the drone would come at dusk, while there was still enough light. “Let's see,” Shaw replied. By his judgment they had about an hour of natural light left and he wanted to see if his theory was correct.
29
It took to the air fast, rising vertically from its position then climbing quickly to five hundred feet in a matter of seconds. Within two miles it dropped below the line of the surrounding hills as it tracked inbound, the rugged backdrop helping mask its approach. Then it crossed the property boundary and entered the McAlister land from behind the ridge, using it as cover, dropping further until it skimmed the forest canopy, hugging the tree line so its shape would be lost amongst the cottonwoods. When it reached the edge of the forest, it held back, hovering under some branches, using the structure of the barn as a reference point while it surveyed the terrain with its high-definition camera.
The camera zoomed in and did a slow pan of the area.
The operator of the drone sat in a small room, four miles away, with three wide-screen monitors in front of her that displayed a wide-angle panoramic view of what the drone’s camera was seeing—all in crystal-clear high-definition. She had two drones at her disposal and her employer hadn't skimped on the price tag of each one after she had made her recommendation. The daytime drone that she was currently operating had been used before on previous commercial and surveillance assignments. While the commercial application of her skills was relatively mundane, she had found a lucrative market for them after returning from Afghanistan. She'd used the night drone equipped with a high-res night-vision camera to track her target last night. She was pleased with that flight and it was more interesting. The man she followed had no idea she was there, almost looking over his shoulder as he crossed the hills.
She toggled the joystick expertly with one finger, adjusting the drone's pitch slightly, her eyes never leaving the bank of monitors. The image on the three screens moved horizontally to the left in one motion as she pushed the other joystick. It was like her own head was turning looking to her left, but it was the camera on the belly of the drone that swiveled under the slight pressure from the finger of her left hand.
A few weeks back, just for fun, she had flown down the center of the horse stables just to scare the horses. She hated horses. She had watched from the cover of the trees as the blonde girl had gone into the barn, gotten into the pickup truck and had driven into town. Her employer had friends in town who had kept an eye out for the girl and reported her every movement. She used the time to do a complete reconnaissance of the ranch and all its buildings. She’d even flown up to the house and peered in every window, but they were closed with the blinds and curtains drawn shut.
The drone had thrown a propeller that day, and she was angry with that. Like Afghanistan, she didn’t like leaving any trace, not until it was too late for the target and she then obliterated them off the face of the earth.
She pushed the drone forward, slowly at first, bringing it out from under the cover of the trees and towards the back wall of the barn, altering the angle of her approach, placing the barn between her and a direct line of sight to the bunkhouse structure. Sneaking up behind the barn was a tactic she had used plenty of times before when she was watching the blonde girl. She stayed well clear of the stables in case the drone spooked the horses.
Something moved to her left and she stopped the drone.
It wasn’t that anything actually moved. Something altered in the distance, a grey shape past the edge of the barn, beyond the bunkhouse, but before the main house. It was hard for her to judge the depth of field from the video screen.
She saw it again, like a ghost moving, a wisp of something, then the breeze took it and it evaporated.
She knew the risk, but didn’t care. There was something odd. She applied a tiny amount of pressure to the pitch and rotated the direction. The drone moved diagonally, towards and out slightly from behind the edge of the barn, into the open, exposed, twenty feet off the ground.
“What the hell?” she whispered, her eyes glued to the screens.
Something lay on the ground, to the left of the bunkhouse, on the road beyond the barn.
Smoke rose into the air.
An object? Something on fire?
Ignoring all protocols she pushed forward, creeping closer towards the object, the drone now completely out in the open and low.
A body. A man, lying on the ground, an ATV toppled on its side beside the body, smoke spiraling into the air from the vehicle.
She moved the drone closer still. The man lying on the ground occupied her left screen.
He looked dead. She zoomed the camera and panned it, the drone at twenty feet.
The front of his shirt was soaked in blood, dark red patches on his chest.
“Who the fuck shot him?” she muttered.
If only the drone operator hadn’t panned the camera too far to the left, she would have still had the bunkhouse in the frame, on her right screen. She would have seen the woman come out from behind the side of the bunkhouse, the hidden side. The blonde woman who was crouching down. She would have then seen the shotgun aimed at the drone, at her.
If only she hadn’t been so distracted by the man's body.
“Motherfucker!” Daisy pulled the trigger, the shotgun boomed.
The drone was a sitting duck.
The shot tore off two of the drone’s arms and it pitched wildly to one side. Daisy leveled the shotgun again, following the drone’s erratic movements as it struggled to stay aloft. It careened towards her and she pulled the trigger again.
Four miles away in the small room, the world had tipped on its side and the three screens showed nothing but the dirt ground.
“Damn it!” the operator screamed, hitting the console with both her fists.
The screen suddenly changed. Jumpy at first as someone tilted the camera on the broken belly of the fallen drone.
A face appeared, filling all three screens at once, and the operator jumped back in fright.
It was the man, the one from last night. The one who had been lying on the ground dead with the blood-soaked shirt. He was bending down, on his knees, looking at what remained of the drone, his face huge across all three screens.
As the operator watched he smiled at the camera, at her. Then his face pulled back and was gone. The sole of a boot grew across all three screens, massive, its tread filling the view, crushing down on the camera lens.
The screens fizzed with static and went dark.
* * *
Shaw lifted his heel off the camera. It was smashed to pieces.
“Is it dead?” Daisy walked over. She had reloaded the shotgun.
“Yes, it’s dead,” he smiled, turning to her. “Nice shooting.”
“Nice work playing a dead man,” she returned the compliment. Daisy stood triumphantly over the remnants of the drone, its body shattered, arms scattered everywhere.
She leveled the shotgun at the drone and pulled the trigger again, obliterating what remained and blowing a small crater in the ground.
“Beers are on me,” she said.
30
The next day they had made the study the ‘nerve center’, as Shaw termed it. After Daisy had done her rounds of the paddocks, checking on the cattle, she cleaned her father's study, attacking the dust and grime with vigor.
Shaw cleaned up the debris left by the drone, boxed it up and placed it in the barn. When he returned to the study he almost couldn’t recognize it as the gloomy, dusty room he was in the day before. Daisy had removed, washed and replaced the fabric blinds, dusted, wiped down and vacuumed every surface, opened the windows and had cleaned them inside and out. There was even a vase of bright sunflowers sitting on the desk. The room was now bright, airy and ready for work.
They sat at the desk, Daisy in her father's old chair, Shaw sitting opposite her, the map spread in front of them, the shotgun propped up in the corner. Shaw didn�
�t know if they would send another drone now that they had been discovered, but Daisy wasn’t taking any chances. She had grown accustomed to having it close by. She much preferred shooting at drones than pheasant.
They had already spent an hour unfurling the other maps that were on the low shelf, but they proved to be more of the same. No notes, no directions or clues.
“So what now?” Daisy asked.
Looking at all the contour lines on the map was giving Shaw a headache. He sat back rubbing his eyes. “We need to go up there again, but not to the ravine, the other side, follow the road to where you said the old mine site is.”
“But why would my father take the longer route, up along the edge of the ravine, on foot. Why leave his horse behind?”
“I don’t know. Can you see that part of your land from the Morgan property? Maybe he didn’t want anyone seeing him, so he always went along the ravine.”
“The road travels along the boundary between our two properties, but then it cuts inland and disappears into the trees and comes out on the other side of the forest. It’s secluded and you can’t see it from the Morgan side.”
“So let's take a look,” Shaw said.
“But first I want to drop by the diner and check in on Callie.”
“Why?” Shaw asked impatiently.
“I haven’t heard back from her, I just want to make sure she’s alright.”
Daisy locked the homestead up tight and Shaw checked that the other buildings were secure. They met at the barn, Shaw slipped into the passenger seat and Daisy drove.
The tires hissed over the blacktop and Daisy kept the Dodge coasting at an even forty five miles per hour. The shotgun sat behind her head secured in a rear-window gun rack and the Glock was under her seat. She brought along permits for both just in case they were pulled over for a traffic stop, even though Kansas was one of the few states that allowed open carry without a permit.