by Bart Paul
He ignored me and turned to Sarah. “I’m going up by chopper,” he said. “I bet I can get pretty close.”
“Oh for christ’s sake, Mitch,” Sarah said. “From what Jack said, in that rough country you won’t get within a mile of the bodies. I thought you wanted to save money.”
She was using that tone on him she used on me when I wanted to buy a new spade bit and the bill for conduit on the cabin hadn’t been paid.
“I can’t let this guy ride roughshod over his own crime scene,” Mitch said.
“Bank embezzlement is a federal beef,” Sarah said. “Call Aaron Fuchs at the South Lake Tahoe FBI office. He headed the Erika investigation. Let the Feds handle the crime scene and move the body out for us.”
“Okay,” Mitch said. “Then contacting Fuchs should be our first priority.”
“Your first priority oughta be a little girl back in that canyon with some killer.”
“What’s it to you?” Mitch said.
“Not a damn thing. You’re the sheriff. Do your job.”
The sun was a low glare when we walked around the corner from the sheriff’s office towards the side door of the Sierra Peaks. Sarah stopped at the curb and radioed Mom to let her know where we were headed, then we went inside and took a booth against the rear wall. Sarah used to tease me about keeping my back against the wall, but that would only make me more fixed on doing that exact thing, so she quit. After a couple minutes, Judy Burmeister came over. Instead of taking our order she started talking about Jack getting shot a few hours before and me killing one of the gunmen with Jack’s revolver. I kind of grunted, wishing she’d just get to it. Sarah interrupted her and asked for some rib eyes with iced tea for herself and a Jack on the rocks for me. And she told Judy that I hadn’t shot anybody. While Judy wrote on her pad, I scanned the room. A big shaved-headed county deputy named Sorenson was sitting at a table near the bar with a Paiute Meadows mechanic and some folks we didn’t know. We could hear bits of talk from them about the shooting, too, including that it was my shot that killed the guy.
“Some of my colleagues are idiots,” she said. “Ignore them.”
“Small town. Folks like to talk.”
Judy brought drinks and garlic bread. Sarah tried to distract me from the deputy and the other diners who were looking at us and talking about the shooting. She told me her plans for a branding at her dad’s ranch in a couple of days and said she wanted me to be there. She skooched over next to me in the booth and took my mind off of all the jerks. We were digging into our steaks and talking cattle when somebody in the other room called my name. I turned to look. It was the guy I’d roped off his Harley that morning. He was sitting at the bar with a girl.
“Ignore him,” Sarah said.
I got up. “I’ll just be a sec. I don’t want him coming over here.”
I went into the bar before Sarah could tell me not to again.
“Hey, young dude,” he said, “I hear you’ve had a hell of a day since the last time I saw you. You and that wagon-burner deputy. Heard somebody notched his ear. Just sorry they beat me to it.”
The girl on the barstool next to him stuck her tongue out at me. I recognized her as one of the high school kids who flipped burgers at the Sno-Cone down the street. The bartender avoided looking at either of them.
The biker nuzzled the underage girl. “Busy day. I’d say you’re lucky to get out of that alive.”
“And this would be your business, how?”
“I’m just one of the concerned citizens who was looking for that missing kid, same as you. I heard about it last night out at Summers Lake Resort. It’s all the guys at the bar could talk about. Poor little girl lost in the mountains like that.” He tried to look real concerned. “I wanted to do my part.”
“Good for you.”
This was the first chance I had to look at the guy up close. He was still in the leathers he’d had on when I roped him, and he had a raw spot on the side of his forehead from hitting the dirt. He was maybe in his mid- or late forties, so he had about twenty years on me. He looked pretty weathered—like he’d had a lot of pain from whatever wreck he’d had that crippled him up. I know pain can age you pretty quick.
“Name’s Sonny VanOwen.” He reached past the girl and held his hand out. “And you’d be Sergeant Tommy Smith, recently hot-shit sniper of the United States Army.” He wore those fingerless gloves like a jerk in an old biker movie. “A real-life rifleman.”
I didn’t shake his hand. “What do you want?”
He slid off the barstool and stood in front of me leaning on his steel walking stick. He looked to be about six-four, so he had a couple inches on me and wanted me to notice. Instead, I noticed the stick. The shaft was steel like the one he had strapped to his handlebars that morning, but the machining pattern was different somehow. And instead of the brass rattlesnake head, it had a grinning skull at the top. I looked back at him. He was looking at me looking.
“I’m from LA,” he said. When he got tired of holding his hand out for me to shake, he hooked a thumb in his belt. The buckle had a skull and crossbones on it. Real subtle. “Not the same as here, where everybody knows everybody’s business.”
“They only think they do.”
“I bet you know a lot of folks’ business,” he said.
“What’re you gettin’ at?”
He ran the back of his hand along the bare arm of the girl from the Sno-Cone. “The missing kid up in those spooky woods? Pretty little girl. Be a shame if the big bad wolf took a bite of her. I got a couple of little girls of my own.” He smiled under his Fu Manchu. “All cute, blond, and not a day over fifteen.” He laughed. “I’m just trying to help find the kid—same as you.”
I started to walk out of the bar. The guy looked past me into the dining room. He was looking at Sarah. Sorenson turned to watch the guy.
“Just find that girl … Tommy.” VanOwen said, loud enough for me to hear. He smiled over at Sarah. “Find that little girl.”
My mom caught up with us to hand off Lorena. She asked how I was handling what had happened that day and tried to be cheerful, but I could tell she was in a hurry to get out of Paiute Meadows and drive back to her place on Dave Cathcart’s ranch. The news I might’ve shot some guy had made her sad and distracted.
When we got back to the pack station, the stock was out on the meadow and Harvey and May were off to Carson City, so we had the place to ourselves for a few hours. The bumpy truck ride up the logging road from Paiute Meadows had Lorena sleeping hard. Sarah tucked her in her crib, then we just stood over her and stared for a few minutes. I was wondering what her life would be like when she was as big as the missing kid. I built a fire outside in the pit, then we showered up and sat on the porch to enjoy the evening together, our feet dangling, making out like teenagers. Sarah’s dog slept nearby. Sarah kept her arm around my shoulders, and we didn’t talk for a bit.
“Did Mitch’s crack about the forty acres get to you?” she said. “You seem bummed.”
“More bummed than I’d be for shooting somebody today and not meaning to?”
“Okay,” she said. “That was a dumb question.”
“I quit worrying about what that idiot boss of yours says when I was in high school. I was thinking about being lied to about that kid.”
Sarah made a serious face and lowered her voice. “‘That’s none of my affair.’”
“You been talking to Jack.”
She kinda smirked.
“Do you figure she’s alive?” she said.
“Who knows.”
“What does your gut say those shooters wanted?”
“Jack’s been a deputy for a lot of years. Maybe he made an enemy he didn’t know he had.”
“I’m just glad he’s okay,” she said.
“He’s a tough old bird.”
Sarah squeezed me and looked glum. “Maybe it was somebody after you, babe.”
“Could be.”
I went inside and brought a coat out
for Sarah, then threw big chunks of pine on the fire.
“I hate to think of any child being raised by that horrible pair,” Sarah said. “Maybe the dead guy was up to something funny and he forgot to keep an eye on the girl.”
“And on top of that, he just happened to be in the same spot as a body that’s been missing nine months?”
“I’d rather wrap my head around all that coincidence,” she said, “than think someone was targeting you.” She kissed me like that would make the craziness go away. “And what’s with the guy on the Harley showing up at the Sierra Peaks?”
“What I wonder is, how he knew to call the kid a pretty little girl if he’d never seen her, and how come he knew I’d been in the Army if he’d never seen me before?”
The pine blazed up in the fire pit and put a flickery glow on her face. The flames lit up our half-done cabin, bouncing shadows high off the open rafters. I held her close. I was hoping that this whole new life—the marriage and the baby and the pack station—wasn’t just me spitting in the eye of fate to see what fate would do to knock me down a peg.
“So yesterday—what did the Harley guy say to you?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Come on. I saw him do that thing with his tongue.”
“If I’d told you,” she said, “you’d have shot him. Then where would I be? I’d have two husbands in the penitentiary, not just one.”
I could see out past the corral to the dark shapes of the animals moving as they grazed and the moving shadows of the aspen in the night breeze that got cooler as we sat there. The dirt road curved and disappeared into the trees on its way up-canyon to where Erika Hornberg or her double still floated in the shallow water and the seedy father in his cheap shirt was probably getting his first visits from the ravens and magpies. The flies had surely paid their respects already.
In the pit, a pine knot flared. Looking up the road I saw a pair of eyes glow greenish-orange in the firelight. The eyes faded just as fast, but I could make out a dark shape against the night like maybe a small bear or a big dog, and for a second I thought maybe Jack’s dog had got away from Harvey somehow. There was no sound coming from whatever it was, but Hoot growled and Sarah put a hand out to quiet him. The shape moved like it was shambling our way. We sat shoulder to shoulder, watching. There was still no sound, then the firelight caught bits of color, raggedy and indistinct.
“Hey, mister.”
It was the girl. She was wrapped in a ratty kid’s sleeping bag. She stepped closer, and I could see she was dirty as hell and barefoot.
“Can I come in?” She stopped on the rocky dirt like she couldn’t take another step.
“Oh, my god,” Sarah said.
We scrambled up the road, and I reached to scoop the kid up before she fell. She put her arms around my neck and was asleep before her feet left the ground.
CHAPTER SIX
We set her down on our bed. She was grimy and sour and out like a light. Sarah got a wet cloth and wiped the girl’s face, hands, arms, and legs, talking to the child as she did it. When the girl stirred a bit Sarah got some Gatorade down her so she’d get hydration and electrolytes. The kid drank like a champ, then passed out again. Sarah pulled an EMT kit from the closet and checked the girl’s vitals.
“We need to Care Flight her out of here?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m kind of amazed. She’s in great shape, all things considered.” She started rubbing the girl’s feet to keep the circulation going. The kid frowned in her sleep and made sounds like it hurt.
“So what do we do now?”
“We can take her to town, and the deputy on duty will call county Child Services since her family situation is sketchy,” she said.
“That sounds best.”
“Mitch will want to be notified. He’ll keep her sitting in a plastic chair under bright lights while he takes some of the credit for the department ‘rescuing’ the kid. Then one of us deputies will have to take her down to Mammoth tonight, and it’ll likely be sunup before they turn her over to a bunch of strangers—probably in some nasty group home.”
“Aren’t we strangers, too?”
“Yeah,” she said, “but she seemed pretty taken with you. I just feel so bad for her. What was she doing up in that canyon for almost two nights?”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Protocol would dictate at least notifying the parents, but you already shot one of them.” She gave me a sly look. I hoped it meant she was kidding.
“The guy wasn’t exactly father of the year.”
Sarah sat on the bed and looked down at the girl. “Since her vitals are good, I think the first thing the poor child needs is a good night’s sleep in a warm bed.”
“Not exactly protocol, babe.”
“Since when has that ever bothered you? With what happened to you and Jack, she could be in real danger.” She stroked the kid’s hair. “Don’t be in such a hurry to get rid of her.”
I got Sarah’s bedroll from the saddle shed and unrolled it on the floor on Sarah’s side of our bed and watched as she tucked the kid in with the same care she used with Lorena. She left a little battery light on so if the girl woke in the night she could see us right next to her and not be spooked.
I heard the girl rustling around a couple of hours later. I looked outside and guessed it was just before midnight. I lay there and watched her staring at the two of us in the bed and the baby in the crib. She wrapped herself in her dirty sleeping bag and walked out across the unfinished front room. For a minute I thought she was going to light out on us. She stood there watching the trees and corrals and sheds in the quarter-moonlight. She came back into the bedroom and stood on my side of the bed.
“Hungry?”
She nodded, and I got up and pulled on my jeans. We went out to the kitchen, and I held up a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. She nodded again. I got her squared away and sat with her while she ate. When she was finished she put her bowl in the sink and took my hand, and we walked back to the bedroll on the floor. I tucked her in and let Hoot sleep on the floor next to her. The kid wrapped one arm around her bunched-up sleeping bag and reached the other arm out to the dog. Neither made another move for hours.
Sarah had the girl in the shower by dawn and scrubbed her up. She wouldn’t let her put her rank clothes back on so we went over to Harvey and May’s for breakfast with her wrapped in a clean blanket. The girl ate pancakes and bacon and drank orange juice nonstop for a bit while May rooted around in the back of their trailer. She came out with a pair of Wranglers she was mending for her thirteen-year-old grandson. Harvey cut a piece of baling twine and showed the kid how to make a poverty belt by tying two belt loops close together. The twine cinched the jeans enough so they wouldn’t fall off. May gave her a new tee shirt she’d bought for the grandson with the name of a fishing resort and a jumping trout on the front. It hung to the girl’s knees. She looked pretty Okie, but now she was clean and fed. She thanked May for the breakfast and the clothes.
“No problem, Kayleeana,” May said.
“That’s not my name,” the kid said.
“That’s what your mom and dad called you.”
“They’re not my mom and dad,” she said. “And Kayleeana’s one of them made-up names—like Chrystal Dawn.”
“Then what is your name, sweetie?” Sarah said.
“Audie Ravenswood.”
“That’s a nice name, darlin’,” May said. “Were you adopted?”
She shook her head no.
“Where are your parents, then?”
“My mom died last year, mister,” she said.
“Why then, who takes care of you?” May said.
“Sonny,” Audie said. “He’s got a motorcycle.” She didn’t look very happy.
Sarah and I swapped a look.
“Are you gonna bring the horses over, mister?” she said.
“It’s about that time. And you don’t need to call me mister. Name’s Tommy.”
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“Okay. Can I watch? Can Hoot come?”
I said yeah, and we went outside. She was still sore-footed, so I carried her across the corral and she waited with me while the Aussie blasted across the meadow toward the creek. That was the cue for the stock to haul ass up to the corral for the morning. We watched the forty-odd head running towards us, hooves slapping the wet grass and lips motorboating with every exhale. When they were corralled, I showed Audie how to close the gate. She was about the most serious, unsmiling little human being I ever met, but she seemed to be enjoying herself. We walked back slow to the cabin because of the rocks, and she took my hand in her hand like we were old pals.
Sarah radioed my mom and explained things. Mom said she’d run up to Gardnerville and buy the kid some clothes, then meet us back at the sheriff’s office. Sarah left a message for Child Services, but nobody was in their office that early.
I helped Harvey load a stout pack horse with salt blocks that he’d be hauling up the canyon for Becky Tyree’s cattle. I’d figured on going with him, but this thing with the kid seemed more important. May saddled herself a horse and packed lunches to go help Harvey instead. She was a pretty handy woman who’d helped her first husband run a ranch in Oregon before he died, so she jumped at any chance to get into the back country. Sarah and I were loading both girls into Sarah’s truck to drive down to Paiute Meadows, and May said we looked like one of those dorky family vacation movies.
The sheriff’s office was a zoo. Mitch was on the radio with the California Highway Patrol chopper crew who’d scanned Aspen Canyon from the air but were clueless about where exactly to land, and once they’d landed, exactly where to look. A pair of whipped Search and Rescue folks who Mitch said had spent the last two days looking for Audie sat on hard chairs staring at their phones. From the way one of them talked, though, it sounded like he’d been searching for a stash of bank cash up in the canyon instead. The guy acted like he had a bunch of friends, and every one of them had their own theory about Erika Hornberg and her missing money.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Fuchs stood in the doorway of the conference room drinking coffee and looking like he wished he was somewhere else. Sarah went over with Lorena on her hip and gave him a hug with her free arm.