See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Bart Paul

  “That would be correct,” he said. “Anyway, after months in the drink, the body isn’t telling us much more without a more thorough exam, and with a positive ID from the brother, that notion doesn’t seem warranted to your department. But based on what happened last night, I can’t leave anything else to chance. I’ve authorized my people to go ahead with a full autopsy. I can’t dink around with Mitch anymore.”

  “He’ll be so pleased,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah. Anyway, the wound to the temple is consistent with the note.”

  “The note?”

  “A suicide note,” Aaron said.

  “Is a handwriting expert looking at it?” Sarah said.

  “It was written on a computer and printed out then folded in a ziplock sandwich bag and stuffed in her shirt pocket.”

  “Who the hell?”

  “Someone who wants it readable after a whole winter underwater in the Sierra,” Aaron said.

  “So what did it say?”

  Aaron read it off the tablet. “‘My luck has run out. I’m sorry for letting you down.’ Some locals said she had a gambling problem.”

  “There was talk in town,” Sarah said, “that Erika liked video poker, playing the horses, that sort of thing, but mostly just talk.”

  “So who’s the ‘you’ she’s writing to in the note?”

  “Could be her brother,” Aaron said.

  “Or her bosses at the bank,” Sarah said.

  “It’s obvious the note’s bullshit. Planted like this.” I pulled out my own ziplock with the cash I’d found in my saddle pockets. I handed it to Aaron and told him where I’d found it, and when.

  “If she committed suicide, how did this get in my saddle pockets?”

  We all just sat there for a minute. This was taking all the life out of Aaron.

  “This is all on me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left them alone up there. My fault.” He stood up and took off the shades he was wearing and pinched the bridge of his nose. “In my twelve years I’ve never lost an agent.”

  Sarah reached out and squeezed his arm.

  “There’s no way you could’ve seen this coming,” she said.

  “That what you think, Tommy?” he said.

  “We know the dead woman didn’t die in a fall or from exposure. And she didn’t scatter ratty fifty dollar bills around then lay down in that water, cover herself with leaves and branches, and blow her own brains out. Someone killed her and dumped her in that water or found her dead and stashed her there. Someone placed her where Jack’s dog would find her a few days ago. A place Jack and I’d be looking because in this whole big canyon that’s exactly where somebody planted Audie’s jacket. Now, almost a year after Erika disappears, that same somebody wanted her found real public-like and used this bullshit story of a missing child to do just that.”

  “The brother says the body’s Erika,” Aaron said.

  “Buddy’s lying.”

  Sarah’s sheriff radio crackled and buzzed. She handed me Lorena and stepped away a few paces and talked, then got quiet and listened. In a minute she walked back to us and sat down.

  “That was Jack,” she said. “Alicia Castile finally was flown out, and she’s okay. Your lab guys started right in on the first chopper load, starting with ballistics.” She looked at me. “Cody Davis, the fake dad you packed out? He was killed by a single shot to the forehead. The round was a polymer-tipped thirty-thirty.”

  “Not Jack’s three-fifty-seven that Tommy was carrying?” Aaron said.

  “Correct,” Sarah said. She looked at me kind of relieved. “And the shot that killed Agent D’Angelico? A twenty-five caliber. Alicia recovered the weapon. The same gun that killed the woman in the bog almost a year ago was used on your agent last night.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We lay under light blankets letting the night breeze cool us. Lorena was asleep in the next room in a crib Sarah borrowed from May’s sister, and Audie was tucked in Sarah’s bedroll right beside her. I watched the stars through the aspen outside the cabin and watched the tree shadow skitter across the curve of Sarah’s bare back in the last of the moonlight.

  “The one bright spot”—she spoke in almost a whisper—“you got this child back safe.”

  She turned her head towards the open door, then rolled back until we were laying nose to nose.

  “Yeah. that’s the only thing that makes sense. I’m sure as hell missing the rest of the picture.”

  “The money. The body. The missing girl,” she said. She nuzzled closer. “How does it all fit?”

  “I know. I thought we were for sure supposed to find that body but couldn’t figure why. Now we got four more bodies and nobody’s got any answers. Maybe it just—”

  “Go to sleep, honey.”

  I crawled out in the early dawn chill without waking her. Even before I ran the stock in from the creek I put on my jacket and hiked back up to the trailhead in the near dark, going through the cut in the fence. I saw the turned up dirt and pine needles where Tiny had found his way through the cut wire before he headed down-canyon. I followed the fenceline up towards the road and saw the scraps of oily blue jean and black leather where he misjudged the hole in the fence in the dark and sproinged hard on taut barbwire. There was a bunch of blood, too, and a bit of motor oil from the flipped dirt bike. I started studying the ground by the light on my phone. There’d been so much traffic I could barely see traces of my own truck and trailer from a few days before when I hauled Aaron up-canyon. I made out VanOwen’s crew’s motorcycle tracks, but there was nothing new to learn from any of them. I walked a few hundred yards up the canyon as the sky lightened, and I put my phone away. I wasn’t looking for motorized tracks anymore. I was just seeing what the canyon had to show me. I was following the uphill side of the old excavation for the fishing lake when I stepped into another disturbed spot in the dirt and pine debris. Instead of beer cans and Copenhagen tins, I found a neat little cache of Greek yogurt cups, an empty sea-salted almond bag folded up neat, and a half-torn tab off a teabag. It made me wonder just who the hell I was dealing with. Some tough gunsel who shopped at Whole Foods, maybe. I looked across the excavation and could see right about where I’d found the first mess. It looked like we had one watcher watching the other. I took it all in, then kept walking.

  In the dawning light I spied something new where a stock trail from up in Ox Bow Canyon curved down to join the dirt road. I saw a single a set of horse tracks that came along that trail and mixed with the dirt bike traces. The shod prints had stepped in the tire tracks so they were newer. The front shoes had hand-drawn clips like the tracks I’d seen the day Jack got shot. The clips made little irregular indentations at ten and two on the curved steel of the toe that were real distinctive. I took off my jacket and hunkered down for a second look. With all the traffic, I couldn’t tell if the hoofprints belonged to the first watcher, or the second. Or maybe neither. By now the sun was up, and it was already getting warm.

  A Newport Beach couple in a Land Rover drove up with their gear. I’d just started pulling the shoes off my sorrel gelding. Sarah sat on the porch in her uniform looking serene and pretty, eating a ham and cheese omelet I’d made for her and talking with Mitch on her radio. Audie ate a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats while she stared down at Lorena dozing in her car seat. I dropped my pull-offs in my shoeing box after only getting the fronts yanked, and went to greet the customers. I caught Sarah watching the man and woman get out of the Land Rover with that blank Comanchero stare she sized up strangers with when they weren’t looking, a look that no one could ever measure up to—like she already knew all she wanted to know about them. She signed off with Mitch, and, all smiling and charming, came down the steps to the tree where I’d tied the horse.

  “Mitch is meeting with Aaron about VanOwen in about an hour,” she said. “You should probably be there.”

  “When I get our party and their goods squared away.”

  “Okay, babe. I’ll tell them you’re on
your way.”

  She gave the Newport Beachers a little wave, kissed me goodbye, fired up her truck, and headed out of the canyon with the baby and Audie. A big lanky woman waved at Sarah, then called over to me.

  “Well, you certainly are on intimate terms with the local authorities,” the woman said.

  I walked over, and the woman shook my hand just as cheerful as hell and said her name was Scottie and she was in real estate and her husband’s name was Drew and he was a lawyer. Her hand when I shook it was smooth, and the rings she wore were hard and cold. I told her that the deputy I just kissed was my wife. She said she was just teasing, and that her friends had researched us on the website Mom and Sarah had set up that winter and seemed to know all about us even before she first phoned. In their boat shoes and rugby shirts, they didn’t look like they were ready to line out behind a string of mules, but the guy spoke about streams he’d fished and peaks he’d climbed in this part of the Sierra like he knew what he was doing, so I was hoping for a good trip.

  I’d be packing these two plus a second couple up to Little Meadows the next day. They’d brought their own food and wall tent, but they wanted both me and the stock to stay with them in camp the whole three nights while they climbed Hawksbeak and Tower Peaks and did some fly fishing in the high lakes. A month earlier Sarah had walked in the cabin when I was trying to give them cheaper options over the phone. She made a throat-cutting gesture and tried not to laugh out loud at my foolishness.

  I unbuckled my shoeing chaps and draped them over the anvil stump and started to help the guy unload their stuff, sorting it all on the pack platforms as we went. They had a lot of stuff. It was turning into one of those hot summer mornings where the flies buzzed around the pressure valve of the propane tank. We hadn’t got very far when he started messing with his phone, and I let him discover that he’d get no service in the canyon. I finished emptying his gear except for the bags they said they’d leave at their motel. Then he got in the Land Rover and drove off without a word.

  “He’s running up to the airport to pick up our friends,” Scottie said. She had been taking pictures of the stock in the corral.

  “In Reno? You’re going to be stuck here for hours.”

  “No, silly,” she said, “the airport here—by the reservoir. Our friend Bill is a pilot.”

  I already knew from their reservation that the other guy was a beach club friend of theirs. There was a strip of asphalt that stuck out into the reservoir north of town, but there was no tower and no landing lights so you wouldn’t exactly call it an airport.

  The woman shielded her eyes as she watched the Range Rover grind up the hill across the creek. “Would that be so bad?” she said. “You being stuck here with me for a few hours?”

  It was going to be a long couple of days.

  Down in Paiute Meadows Aaron briefed Mitch about the dead agent and about VanOwen’s history and about the money I’d found in my saddle pockets. Mitch interrupted every few minutes, and Aaron tried to keep him semi-focused. I put in my two cents about the machined steel beat-marks from VanOwen’s cane on the flesh of the woman in the motel.

  “I had a guy from Sparks PD stop into Vicious Cycles where Sonny hangs out,” Mitch said, “and he asked him about that custom steel stick you say he carries. The pattern on the shaft is maybe similar to the untrained eye to the marks on the skin on the dead woman, but to a professional, it’s not even close to being a match.”

  “Ask Jack. The guy had two of them. Steel canes.”

  “Well, shit,” Mitch said.

  Aaron looked like his life was draining away in absolute bullshit.

  “And the guy who was shot in the canyon you called Cody Davis?” Mitch said. “Jack says his real name’s Carroll Gopnik.”

  When Mitch looked down at his notes, Jack reached around and gave himself an imaginary pat on the back.

  “He’s done hard time in Lovelock for grand theft. Seemed to be kinda an all-purpose thug and errand boy for some Reno loan shark and pimp.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said. “Sonny VanOwen.”

  Mitch looked up at Aaron. “What kind of name is Carroll for a dude?”

  “Last questions,” Aaron said.

  “Okay,” Mitch said. “Your team found the guy’s rifle in the trees near the bog lady, but there was no magazine.” He just sort of smiled to himself then looked up at me. “I wondered how come?”

  “I threw the magazine in the creek.”

  “That was evidence,” he said.

  “Jesus Christ, Mitch, have you ever been shot at?” Aaron said. “We’ve got a BOLO out on VanOwen, and my team will do a full autopsy on our possible Erika Hornberg. I think we’re done here.” He stood up and thanked us. He looked rocky and stretched thin. By now it was about eleven in the morning. I noticed Aaron hadn’t bothered to tell Mitch about VanOwen’s story of me and the million bucks.

  I hadn’t got my sorrel shod before I’d headed to town, so I was glad to get out of there quick and get back to work. Plus, I had the hole in the fence to fix and my own gear to square away before morning. All I knew was that it looked like VanOwen had faded into the woodwork. Killing his loser flunkies was one thing. Just tying up loose ends. Putting them in a position to swap shots with a federal was way past stupid. But as long as he thought I had his money, I’d be sleeping light.

  I could see Dan Tyree’s new dually Ram and gooseneck parked alongside the trailhead gate and a saddled horse tied to the side of the trailer. Dan was walking down the fence line to the hole that VanOwen’s guys cut carrying a light coil of used barbwire and wire-pliers. I pulled over and got out.

  “Forget where your gate was?” he said.

  “Not exactly. You gonna fix it for me?”

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  The fence was more-or-less Sarah’s and mine and the Forest Service’s, but the cattle up-canyon were Dan’s and his mom’s. I told him what had happened up there the night before.

  “This whole Erika thing is crazy,” he said. He cut some short lengths of wire and handed me a couple. I took a hammer and gloves out of my toolbox. “Guys gettin’ shot almost a year after she flies the coop.”

  “Where you headin’?”

  “Check a couple of drift-fence gates,” he said, “Harvey thought the search-and-rescue folks mighta left some open gates closed and closed ones open, so I figured I’d best check for myself.”

  We spliced in lengths of barbwire at the cut spots and stretched them tight. Dan tucked his head, concentrating on the splice but looking pissed. “You think Erika did all the things they said she did?”

  “Nope.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause I knew her. Same as you.”

  A guy with a straight-clawed hammer can hook a barb in the claw then wind the slack around the hammerhead until the strand is tight at the splice if he knows what he’s doing. Sort of a mini wire-stretcher. The trick is bending the wire back on itself once you wind it taut. Dan and I took turns.

  “Tommy?”

  It was my turn, and I’d been woolgathering.

  “What’s eatin’ you?” he said.

  “I saw a guy in Reno when I brought the girl home. I’d never seen him before, but he seemed kinda familiar.” I described the super-intense guy in the palm-leaf hat I’d seen sitting next to VanOwen at the Italian place.

  “Hell, I know him,” Dan said. “That sounds like Twister Creed. Or that’s what he calls himself, anyway.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “All over,” Dan said. “Originally from a ranch in Doyle, north of Reno. He’s one of those guys who always finds something wrong with every job he takes, then ships his freight and moves on to the next one. He’s a decent hand but a total jerk. Thinks he’s a badass.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Well, he worked right here,” he said, kind of nodding down the hill, “packing for Harvey when you were in Iraq. He worked a couple of deer seasons but Harv shit-canned him for
stealing cash and a pack saddle. Guy was a real good hunter and an awesome shot, though.”

  He clipped a spliced strand on to a steel post.

  “Seen him recently?”

  “Nah,” Dan said. He handed me another length of wire. “Don’t want to, either. Got a bad temper. Folks say he killed a guy down at McGee Creek.”

  We got back to it.

  “This whole thing with missing bodies and missing money feels like it’s gonna end bad,” Dan said after another little bit.

  “It’s making Sarah nuts, I can tell you that.”

  “Isolated as you are, you guys think you’re in harm’s way up here?” he said.

  “Yeah, I kinda do.” I told him about the trip I’d be taking in the morning and how antsy being gone for three nights made me. “That’s why Harv isn’t going with me.”

  “You want me to help?” he said. “Maybe put a bedroll down in the trees where I can’t be seen? Rotate standing watch with Harvey?”

  “I’d be obliged. The more the merrier.”

  The second trick is paying attention. Dan turned away to cut the last length of wire. I looked over to say something and the straight strand I was tightening snapped out of the loop-end and tore my shirt and cut my forearm. I always hated fixing fence.

  Sarah had invited the Newport Beachers to dinner that night and told me to be on my best behavior. The two of us talked about our eating options while I nailed new front shoes on my sorrel. I told her my choice.

  “Why are you so hot to go out to the Summers Lake Lodge?” she said. “The Mansion House would be so much more these folks’ style.”

  “Just in the mood for a chicken-fried steak, I guess.”

  “You are so contrary sometimes. Fried batter, grease, and gravy? For this bunch?” She checked the time on her phone. “You better wrap this up and get in the shower, or we’re going to be late.”

  We dropped the baby at Becky Tyree’s. Besides being cranky and fearless and armed, Becky was unknown to VanOwen—at least for now.

  At the end of her lane I turned left onto the Summers Lake Road. A mile west, the pavement crossed the tip of a sage-covered moraine. To the left, the moraine rose fifteen hundred feet, treeless sand and sagebrush pouring out from the mountain wall. The ice that dug Summers Lake and carved the twelve-thousand-foot-high Sawtooth range behind it had ground the granite, pushing it miles out into the meadow, the ridge as clear to see as a row of fresh dirt turned by a plow.