by Bart Paul
Chapter Twelve
“You bet,” the Nevada deputy said. “It was me who was first on the scene with Dave Cathcart’s body, okay?”
The guy sitting in the Douglas County sheriff’s Chevy Tahoe talking on his radio was somebody Sarah and I semi-knew called Roger Parrott. He was speaking so loud about her dad’s corpse that Sarah could hear every word until the sound of the chopper covered him up. He’d pulled up to the burned-out truck just minutes before the evac flight, and agreed to the landing spot we’d picked. Two EMTs got out of the chopper after we guided it down. I told them where the Mexican guy was, and they pulled out a long-board stretcher and started to follow me. They were jokey and matter-of-fact until they saw the burned Ford and the shriveled corpse and Sarah standing to the side looking shocky and devastated. They asked me if the body was her missing father. I went to Sarah and put my arm around her shoulders, and whispered that I wanted to borrow her radio. She gave it to me, then she led the EMTs and the deputy up the jeep track to the clearing. She was warning them about more booby traps, but her voice was faint and they might not have heard. I got hold of Agent Fuchs and gave him a rundown, then caught up with the others. We got to the clearing and the EMTs tended to the guy while Sarah showed Roger the pot farm layout, including the 12 gauge, which he picked up with no concern for fingerprints.
The EMTs worked on the Mexican a good while before they called us over. Roger told us that the Reno DEA office had a team on the way to take evidence of the pot operation and the Douglas County medical examiner was on its way to catalogue the scene and remove the body in the truck.
“I’m going to want to take Sarah out of here before all that gets rolling.”
“She could help answer their questions big-time, though,” Roger said.
“Assuming that’s her dad, she’ll need some time to re-group.”
“She had to know this was how that kidnapping deal would end,” he said.
One of the EMTs was a guy around my age. The other was a woman with a brown ponytail about ten years older than Sarah. They said the guy would probably live, and showed Roger, Sarah, and me just how they wanted to ease him on to the long-board. Then we lifted him slow, and the five of us carried him out of the clearing and down the jeep trail to the road. We tried not to slip on the steep ground and dump the poor bastard. He was hefty and all dead weight, so we had to set him down more than once. The woman and Roger teased each other all the way down about who their exes were sleeping with and about their kids who went to the same high school in Gardnerville and what sports the kids would play in the fall. We got near the pickup and were huffing. Sarah let us go on without her. She turned away and started walking back up to the horses. On the hike down she hadn’t said a word.
We transferred the guy to a gurney, and the EMTs stowed him aboard the chopper. They went to work with IVs and monitors and such, getting him stable for the eighty-mile flight up to the hospital in Reno. Roger and I hiked back following Sarah, watching her climb up the jeep track, stiff from her wreck but moving fast. She never once turned around.
“So who besides the DEA and Forest Service does your department notify about a deal like this?” I handed Roger the shotgun shells from my pocket.
He took the shells and looked at me like I’d asked him some big secret. “It’s more like who don’t we notify, okay,” Roger said. He barehanded the shells into an evidence bag. “We got this interagency drug task force going, with us, Copper County, Carson City, Frémont Lake Tribal, plus the DEA. Oh, yeah, the Nevada National Guard, too. Every-freakin’-body. Too many chiefs and not enough freakin’ Indians, okay.”
“Sheriff Mitch?”
“Shit yes,” he said, “or he bitches all to hell. Thinks he’s the Super Chief of Frémont County and us other agencies are just sorry-assed braves.” He was back to joking again.
Sarah met me horseback coming out of the clearing and handed me the sorrel. I checked my cinch and stepped up. I told Roger that he could find us at Dave’s, and we left him there to poke around. I noticed Sarah had reset my Navajo and tied my coat behind the cantle. And I noticed that she didn’t give Roger the ziplock with the blood smear. I looked back and Roger was on his radio again.
We heard the chopper revving up a few minutes later. The canyon amplified the sound as it flew over our heads, gaining altitude to clear the ridges.
“Do you think that was Jedediah’s pot setup?” Sarah said.
“He was on your place yesterday and seemed pretty interested in what Hoyt was up to, so it’s likely.”
“That being his business,” she said.
“And Randy Ragazino getting killed kinda tells us there was trouble in reefer paradise.”
“Hoyt should’ve taken some law enforcement with him,” she said. “I wonder if we’ll find him alive either.”
“Hard to tell.”
“Who was Roger Parrott talking to just now?” she said.
“Probably his boss.”
“Thanks for getting me out of there.” She looked like death. It doesn’t matter how much you steel yourself to accept something like that. It just doesn’t.
We saw the first DEA crew a few minutes later, two guys and a woman in their DEA windbreakers and agency truck. They stopped and I rode over. They were from the Reno office, like Roger said. I told them that Dave’s missing person’s case and the pot farm up the road were connected somehow, and that Jedediah had been on Dave’s ranch the day before. They were scribbling fast. I told them about the disappearance of the federal water guy, how that was connected, and said the FBI should be along directly.
“We’ve got a lot of questions,” the lady said. “We really need you to come with us to the scene.”
“This is Deputy Cathcart from Frémont County. It’s her dad’s truck that burned and likely his body inside. I’m riding with her back to their ranch. The deputy on site can tell you how to get there.”
They were a little sniffy, but we just rode off down the road. The Douglas County Medical Examiner van was close behind them with two more sheriff’s SUVs following after, but none of those stopped.
“It’s a good thing you checked for tracks on the way up,” Sarah said. “There won’t be a trace left now. And did you see how Roger handled the shotgun? What a bozo.”
We rode down past the first abandoned mine and then past the National Forest boundary sign. We were quiet a long time.
“I should’ve listened,” she said. “Dad had been sad and depressed when I moved back in with him. He was sorry my marriage had tanked. He never talked about it, but I know the vultures really got to him, too.”
“What do you mean?”
She waited a second. “I told you we’d seen them once before. It was the spring when I was eight—when my mom was dying from pancreatic cancer. It took her quick.” Her voice got shaky. “They showed up in that tree one night just after sunset. They stayed about a week and then were gone. Mom died right after. Dad always associated them with losing her, like they were some sort of messengers of doom. And I guess he was right.”
“Still, they’re just ugly old scavengers, just like turkey buzzards.”
Sarah took her eyes off the road to look at me.
“But they’re not just scavengers. They’re birds of prey. That spring I was just finishing third grade. I was out riding with Dad in the same field where our first-calf heifers are now. He was worried because he’d lost two calves in as many days. The calves were picked clean, and he thought we had a predator problem. Maybe coyotes, maybe even a big cat. We were riding down that willow thicket along the main ditch when we saw a little calf sitting in the sun about fifty feet from its mama. Couldn’t have been more than a day old. Then we saw shadows coasting over us and heard creepy wing flaps, and about five of those birds landed all around the calf. He was so little he just froze. They moved right in on him and started pecking his eyes out, then his mouth and tongue, and he went into shock. Then he just disappeared under those birds, black wings f
lapping and beaks pecking. The heifer bellowed and ran up when it first started, but those nasty things backed her off. We galloped up and Dad tried to scare them away, but they spooked his horse off instead. He was afraid they’d come after me the same way so he got me out of there. It still gives me nightmares.”
“Damn, Sarah.”
I told her about the vultures moving in on the calf the morning before and how I pushed it and its mother into the willow ditch.
“I know the birds showing up was just some natural occurrence,” she said. “Some anomaly in their migratory patterns with a perfectly sound scientific explanation. But you can understand how Dad was freaked out to see them again.”
“That’s hard.”
She looked me right in the eye. “Some people never get over losing their one true love.”
We didn’t say another word till we got to Dan’s truck. An FBI pickup blasted by us as we loaded the horses in the trailer. The driver nodded but didn’t stop. They didn’t even slow down. A Forest Service truck brought up the rear in no particular hurry. The driver gave us a wave and a sort of here-we-go-again look. They were the poor bastards who’d have to clean up the mess the pot farmers left.
We headed straight across the valley on the dirt lane when we were opposite the ranch and pulled into the yard about five. We’d drive back for Sarah’s truck at the other end of the valley later. I wanted to get the horses squared away and be with her before the questions came. I rounded the barn and saw the Impala parked in front of Dave’s house and Agent Fuchs sitting on the steps playing with the pup.
“I’ll take care of the horses. You go on in.”
Fuchs and Sarah went inside the house. The pup followed me as I doctored the mare’s wire cut and stowed our saddles. I saw that Kip’s saddle rack was empty. I turned the horses out and gathered up the dog. His dish on the porch had some soggy kibble in it that he tried to get to, but it looked nasty so I set it up on an outside shelf where he couldn’t reach it.
Inside the house, I got us some beers and listened as Fuchs questioned Sarah about her dad, the pot farm, Jedediah Boone, and Hoyt Berglund. He had a quiet, all-business approach that made it easier for Sarah to talk about the bad things. He said he’d sent some Bureau lab staff up to False Spring to help the county medical examiner. Those would have been the folks we saw hauling ass up the road. He admitted his crew’s job was to keep the county folks from trashing the crime scene or touching the body, much less removing it, until his guys gave everything a major going-over. He was especially concerned with ballistic and dental evidence and time of death.
Sarah asked him if his people could look at Hoyt’s truck, too, as Hoyt was working on a federal project.
“Between federal drug law, two missing persons and possible kidnappings, probable homicide, another county in on the Ragazino murder two days ago, and the attempted murder of you two,” he said, “you’ve got yourself a jurisdictional cluster … a perfect storm.”
He told us he’d let us be for now and would take the point with the other agencies as much as he could. Sarah thanked him and handed him the ziplock with the tissue and fluids trace, then we walked him out to his car. When we crossed the porch to the steps, a pair of magpies fluttered up from the dog dish I’d set on the shelf. I watched them fly away over the ironpumpers’ shed. Sarah asked me what was wrong.
“The honyockers’ Blazer is gone. Haven’t seen it move since I got here.”
“They almost never use it,” Sarah said.
I explained to Fuchs that though they were pals of Sarah’s husband, they were well known to Jedediah Boone, too. He scanned his phone like he just thought of something.
“So where is your husband?” he said.
“He was in Carson last night,” Sarah said. “At least that’s what he told me. Why?”
Fuchs gave a little shrug like it didn’t mean anything. He told her he’d be back in touch in the morning. Then he got in his car and drove off.
“Want me to whip up some steak and eggs or something?”
She gave a nod and walked toward the house. She still moved stiff from her mare falling on her.
I rustled up the dinner, but Sarah didn’t eat much. When we were cleaning up I looked out the kitchen window.
“If you’re up to it we should check out your double-wide to see if anybody’s been messing around.”
We left Dave’s house and crossed the yard. The sun was going down and the air was getting cool. There was a bit of cloud cover like we might get some weather. Sarah stopped dead as soon as she opened the front door.
“Someone’s been here,” she said.
“Then don’t go in yet.”
She waited while I trotted down the steps and scanned the dirt in front of the place. It was easy to see a Dually truck had been parked there and that the driver had got out and climbed the steps, then turned around, the new tire tracks semi-wiping out the boot prints.
“Do you want me to get your rifle?”
“Nah. Whoever was here is gone.”
I walked around a bit more, then we went inside. The living room and kitchen seemed the same, but Sarah looked around like she was seeing it all for the first time. She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge and stared at the food. When she shut it she just stood there shivering. She asked me to come with her while she checked out the bedroom. I followed her down the hall and watched her slip her 9mm out of its holster. She stepped inside and turned on a bedside lamp. The room was trashed and the bed was stripped, an expensive Pendleton blanket on the floor. There was a handwritten note from a yellow legal pad where the pillows had been. Sarah picked it up and read it. She held it out to me. The paper rattled when her hand shook.
I said NEVER leave me. I warned the old bastard what would happen to him if you did…
She handed the note to me then dropped on the bed.
“I guess I knew all along,” she said. I could barely hear her. “I was so afraid to admit it. At some level I knew he’d hurt Dad.” She looked me in the eye then. “The random things he said—I knew he blamed Dad for me leaving. Even though it was Dad who threw us together.”
She dragged herself up and opened the closets. I just stared down at that big bed of theirs.
“He’s taken a lot of his stuff,” she said. “Like he’s going to be gone a while.”
“Try forever.” That was cruel and I was sorry I said it as soon as it came out. “What kind of stuff?”
“Work clothes,” she said, “not that he ever worked. Outdoor stuff like his Carhartt coat. I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.”
“He took his saddle. Or somebody did.”
“What—like he’s some sort of Old West desperado?” she said. “Like he’s going to make his stand horseback?” She closed the closet door. “He must have known about the pot farm,” she said. “He and Jedediah and all the rest of them. All the cash Kip threw around—that had to be where it all came from.”
“I thought that was from selling his trailer business.”
“If he even had a trailer business,” she said. She looked at me just as calm as could be. “I’ll kill them all.” Then her eyes flashed red like a damn banshee, and it was a second before I realized it was just the lights off some emergency vehicle.
“That’s too close to be out on the highway,” she said.
More red light ran along the walls, sliding from one wall to another. We got down the hall to the living room and looked out. The flashing lights were crossing the valley to the north.
“Probably units from the volunteer fire department down by the high school,” she said.
We went outside and stood on the deck of the doublewide. We saw the orange flame from Hoyt’s truck way out in the dark, and the flashing lights closing the distance across the field. More lights, blue, red, and white this time, flashed in our direction from the Reno Highway.
“That would be Mitch,” she said. “And we’ll have to go over everything again.”
“
Except now we have a suspect.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Now we have a suspect.” She stood there on the deck watching the lights come closer, hugging herself like spring would never come.
Mitch and Jack took Sarah into the doublewide for half an hour. I fetched my dad’s rifle from Dan’s truck, then went into Dave’s house. I rooted around the kitchen till I found a bottle of Jim Beam, built myself a drink and sat on the porch. I had this idea that the burned body at False Spring wasn’t the end of this—that Kip had just begun a rampage, and that the fire at the end of the valley tonight was probably only a little part of it, and that we wouldn’t find Hoyt alive. I thought that even half an hour after Sarah drove into her dad’s yard back on Monday morning Dave was already dead. I knew her well enough that she probably was thinking the same thoughts on her own. And to believe her when she said she’d kill them all.
Mitch and Jack finally left. I met her in the yard and she took my hand and we walked back toward the house.
“Mitch has a theory,” she said. “He thinks Hoyt is a person of interest in Dad’s … in his killing. Hoyt and Jedediah.”
“Why the hell?”
“Because Dad backed out of the water deal.”
“That is eight kinds of stupid.”
“It gets better,” she said. “He thinks that it was Hoyt’s pot farm as well as Boone’s, and now that it’s discovered, Hoyt’s hiding out.” She almost smiled. “He says we have to be open to any possibility.”
“Roger that.”
She kept hold of my hand as we walked the rest of the way back to Dave’s. At the foot of the porch steps I stopped and let her trot up without me. She looked back at me with her hand on the screendoor.
“You’re not coming in?” she said.
“I don’t know if I should.”
Her eyes were puffy from crying but I could see I was pissing her off.
“I’m going to set up the coffee for morning and get the pup situated for the night,” she said. “Is there somewhere else you need to be?”