See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

by Bart Paul

  Then I saw it all. That day Jack’s dog found the body in the bog, I’d had a feeling I couldn’t nail down. That I somehow recognized the dead woman. That I’d seen her before. I thought it must be because the body was Erika’s. But standing next to Erika now, I knew it wasn’t her that I recognized in that pruney face. It was the dead woman’s daughter. And I’d seen that girl just the morning before.

  “Whose child is Audie?” she said.

  “The murdered whore’s, I expect.”

  We stood up. I looked at the sky. I was in a sweat to get this woman off my hands and into Aaron’s. He was getting paid to straighten all this out, not me, and she wouldn’t be safe till she was in custody. She stood close again and leaned against me.

  “What would VanOwen need to make the transfer without you?”

  “A set of numbers on two thumb drives, one for me and one for him.”

  I had a general idea what that was.

  “So where is your drive now?”

  “Hidden,” she said. “in a safe place where I can get it and give it to the FBI—with your help. I can show them how to access the full amount.”

  “So when you disappeared, he figured you’d cheated him.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “It took some nerve to cross Sonny.”

  “That’s why I thought of you. I heard you were back in the valley. I thought you were the one guy who could protect me from him—if only I could catch you alone. Then you could hook me up with the FBI.” She looked at me hard. “Can you?”

  “So you’ll turn over the keys to the million and hope for short time in some federal pen.”

  “That was the hope,” she said. “I had to find a way to contact you without alerting that pretty deputy you married. I didn’t know how sympathetic she’d be.”

  “You don’t know how sympathetic I’m gonna be, either.”

  She let go of my arm.

  “Why didn’t you just go to Agent Fuchs yourself? He told me his office hauled you in when the first thirty-eight thousand was stolen. Why didn’t you ask him for protection then?”

  “It’s hard to admit to yourself that you’re going to prison. That your whole life is ending. Not to mention your reputation. It’s like riding a runaway horse. You know you might break your neck if it stumbles, but you’ll for-sure break your neck if you jump.” She reached down and put her hand on mine, more timid this time. “I was scared to jump.”

  “Well, you found me. How’d you keep yourself hid up here?”

  “I set up a tent in the canyon the day before the search. I even shouted at you two days later when I saw you leading Jack Harney on a horse by Blue Rock, but you were too far away.”

  “That about when you hid those bills in my saddle pockets?”

  She nodded. “That was my calling card.”

  “So when he couldn’t find you in North Reno, Sonny put the plan in motion anyway?”

  “He didn’t have any choice,” she said. “He thought I must be in league with … with a third party.”

  “If you’ve been on the dodge, how do you know all this?”

  “Buddy told me.”

  “Your brother is up to his eyeballs in this—you know that.”

  She nodded, looking beat. “He was the third party. He was helping me.”

  “Bullshit. He was trying to help himself. Buddy told VanOwen I was the third party. He’s trying to stiff VanOwen and lay it off on me, but he doesn’t have the brains or the huevos.”

  Erika helped me bring in the stock hobbled out on the meadow and tie them to the picket lines for the night. By now the wind was swirling hard and I felt the first snap of raindrops scattering down from the west.

  “Being wanted by the government is pretty intimidating, but I was more afraid of Sonny. He’s crazy mean.”

  “He ain’t afraid of burning his bridges, that’s for sure. He let a woman fry to death in a shootout at his LA house and made out it was his wife. Then he killed his wife later and buried her in the desert.”

  “Is that supposed to reassure me?”

  “Just making small talk.”

  “I know that could’ve happened to me,” Erika said. “He shot the prostitute because she tried to go to the police on him.”

  “For what?”

  “For molesting her little girl,” she said.

  I told her that she should stay in camp that night, and we’d figure the best plan to get her to Aaron in the morning. With no working communication, that probably meant leading the stock all the way back to the pack station, then dragging them back the day after that. No way was I leaving my new mules with a bunch of sailboaters, no matter how well intentioned. So they’d just have to do without my company for a day. When I got service with the sheriff radio, I’d have Aaron meet us at the pack station and take Erika into custody. The rest would be up to federal prosecutors and judges, and how well she played her hand with Aaron. My part would be over by midafternoon.

  “Did Dan Tyree haul this dun into the canyon for you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She almost smiled. “We were sweethearts once.”

  “Figured. Is he the only one who knows you were coming up here to find me?”

  “Oh, Dan doesn’t know. I didn’t want to expose him any more than I already have.”

  “Great.”

  “I needed to get you alone,” she said. “Buddy knew you were taking these people here, so I thought it was a safe place to approach you. A place guys on motorcycles couldn’t reach. Buddy talked to one of these lady campers of yours in the General Store yesterday when he heard her talking about the dashing Tommy Smith taking her and her friends to Little Meadows. Then he followed them out to the lake last night. Buddy was just trying to give me a chance to catch up to you.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Buddy was talking to a guy at the pack station about fishing, though. Typical. We’ve turned ourselves into a family of criminals, and he’s yakking about Mepps Spinners.”

  “Who was the guy?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “Just some out-of-shape red-headed city dude in a Hawaiian shirt.”

  “Well, shit.”

  The rumbling thunder in the west came pretty much right on cue. The folks hunkered at the flap of the wall tent and ate steaks Drew grilled on the fire and drank a French red that was beyond my pay grade to appreciate. I watched them try to keep windblown ash out of their dinner then cut myself a piece of a steak without sitting down and told them I was riding out that night. They were pretty upset—half worried about me, half sorry I wouldn’t be around to entertain them with stories of true-west mayhem. When they asked me why, I made up a story that my new mules would be antsy in the storm.

  “They are fine looking animals,” Scottie said. I was walking away from them. “Where did they come from?”

  “Afghanistan.”

  Right about then, I was wishing I was back there.

  Erika followed me out to the stock. I told her that we were bottled up. That the guy in the Hawaiian shirt was a crooked Reno cop, and he’d be waiting out on the Sonora Pass road with a slick-shoed friend or two to grab her and turn her over to Sonny if she headed back the way she came. I told her that Creed, the horseman she’d spied on in the trees above the pack station, was waiting on the other side of the pass so he could block that route down-canyon.

  “How do they know for sure?” she said.

  “I wasn’t kidding. Buddy sold you out.” I told her about his triple-cross offer the night before. “He knows how to get the bank codes ’cause I’m betting you told him. Your brother’s sent us both to hell.”

  She turned away so I couldn’t see her face.

  “Grab a chunk of beef for the road. We’re out of here in twenty.”

  I walked over to the campfire and made small talk with the folks for two minutes. Drew asked if I’d ever climbed Hawksbeak. I told him I’d climbed it in high school. I told him he could try it
the next morning as the storm would’ve passed by then, but there’d be slick spots and maybe fresh snow, so he needed to be careful and not take chances. He seemed semi-oblivious that something was going on between me and the lady visitor. Bill followed me over to the picket lines.

  “Everything okay?” he said.

  “No. I gotta take this woman out of here.”

  “Is she someone close to you?”

  “No.”

  “When do you want to leave?”

  “Now.”

  “Tell me what I can do,” he said.

  “Help me saddle.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  “I should be back with Harvey and the animals late tomorrow. If not me, his wife will help him. I know you paid for me to stay with you guys, but you’ll be fine without me.”

  “Why wouldn’t you come back with Harvey?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Oh,” he said, when he caught my meaning.

  I told him the spot I was in. How Erika and I got ourselves boxed in between the crooked cop and the buckaroo we’d passed that morning. I didn’t get specific, that if Creed showed up on this side of the pass, it meant I was already dead, but I think he was getting the drift.

  “And Bill?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “This trip’s on me.”

  The wind like to take my hat off as we saddled. We had them rigged-up fast. I secured my bedroll, the panniers, lash ropes, and bridles against the weather under the tarps and left them in camp. I tied the four mules together, then did the same with the saddle horses. Bill watched me finish up.

  “I never meant to put you folks in harm’s way.”

  “No way you could’ve known, Tommy.”

  “You’ll be safer without me.”

  “What else can I do?”

  “You might want to try a 911 call now and then to see if you got service, and to fill Sarah in if you get through. Tell her ‘Erika Hornberg is alive’ and I’ve got her.” She’ll know what to do.”

  “Glad to,” he said. “So what will this badass do if he gets his hands on this woman?”

  “Kill her for a million bucks.”

  “Do you know how puny a million dollars is in the real world?” he said.

  “Up here it’s a helluva payday, whether you’re a horseshoer or a pimp ex-cop. Guys die for a lot less.”

  “Go do what you have to do, Tommy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Just another average day in the life of an Eastern Sierra mule packer.”

  “You’re pushin’ it, Bill.”

  He laughed.

  When I was ready, he pulled his bottle of high-end Jim Beam from his parka. We each took a pull, then we laughed ’cause there was nothing else to do. He nodded down towards his friends about a hundred feet away.

  “How much should I tell them?”

  “Whatever makes you comfortable. Make sure Drew doesn’t break his neck on the mountain tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  “Sure sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “My wife thinks this is our coolest vacation ever.”

  “If this is your idea of fun I don’t know if I want to go sailing with you.”

  I checked my horse and Erika rode up, dressed for weather. I handed her the string of four mules. They were used to traveling together and would be easier for her to lead.

  “Can you handle these?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I nodded to Bill, swung up, and took the rope of the lead saddle horse and we headed for the pass.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We rode in the moon shadow of the crest, crossing the meadow into the pines just at dark. The trail narrowed in the rocks as we climbed the pass from the west. It was a hard hour later when we topped out at ten thousand feet on the sandy clearing of North Pass and stopped between boulders in bright moonlight to let the stock blow. They were carrying no weight but the saddles, so even with the long climb they’d had that day they were pointing downhill and ready to move.

  We paused again at the top of the switchbacks as the storm picked up. In just minutes the moon was only a glow behind black clouds, and the trail had vanished under our feet. I let my red horse pick his way down and kept my rope hand resting on the butt of my .270. One likely spot for Twister Creed was right here, with us exposed on the open slope and him tucked in the rocks to the side of the switchbacks so he could shoot whenever the mood suited. By him not killing us there, I knew he’d been told to bring Erika back alive.

  The four mules brought up the rear behind her. They were solid and sensible, just like I knew they’d be. Two of the saddle horses I was leading got antsy coming down that trail in the dark, the mahogany scratching and jabbing, the crushed granite giving way under their hooves, their iron shoes sliding on slick rock at the edge of steep drop-offs. It was another half-hour when we got to the foot of the switchbacks. We kept moving without slowing and without saying a word. My horse followed the trail like a pro, although it was mostly closed-in sky, with moonlight poking through the storm only now and then. We got further down into the trees as time stopped and the night wrapped us right up.

  If Creed hadn’t shown himself on the switchbacks, the next place he might be waiting was at the forks by the snow cabin. He knew that ground and knew the roofless old relic would give him a place he would think was somehow safe, though it would be the first place I’d guess. After what seemed like another lifetime in the saddle, I pulled up a hundred yards from the forks. I sat still, listening, then got off my horse. I tied him and the saddle horses in the trees, then walked back to Erika and told her to stay mounted and not let go of the mules. Then I told her about Creed.

  “This is the kind of place an amateur would think was a great shooting spot. Plus, he knows if he waits farther down-canyon, he won’t know if we’ve taken the South Fork trail and circled around him to come out through the Summers Lake drainage.”

  “So what do I do?” she said.

  “Just follow my lead. You hear shots but don’t hear me, slip off your horse and hide in the timber. Keep listening but keep moving. VanOwen probably wants you alive, but if he’s given up on getting the money, then revenge’ll suit him just dandy.”

  I slipped my rifle from the scabbard and walked down-trail slow over the uneven ground towards the cabin ruins. I was getting close before its dark shape was outlined by a few seconds of shifting moonlight. A few seconds more and things faded to black again.

  “Creed?”

  “Who wants to know?” He sounded surprised.

  “Tommy Smith.”

  “Aw-right,” he said. “Are you trying to get yourself shot, Smith?”

  “I’m coming through.”

  “I got orders not to let you. But to take the woman.”

  I heard the click of a hammer cock just as clear as if he was standing next to me.

  “You can try. Either way, I’m coming.”

  “Snake’s got a couple more friends on the way,” Creed said. “They’re coming up behind me, so your trail ends here.”

  Every time he started talking, I moved closer in the shifting dark.

  “He wants that Hornberg woman bad, and I’m betting she’s right there with you. Carl said this morning she was headed back my direction.”

  I moved closer.

  “Did you hear me?” he said. He asked again louder.

  I knew that chunk of ground as well or better than he did and was up on him quick.

  “You get by me, you still gotta deal with those guys between here and the pack station,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  I hunkered down and kept quiet, ignoring his crap. He was talking because he was nervous. The creek was far enough away I could just hear the tink of plastic or glass. Like the cap of a bottle of whiskey getting screwed on or screwed off.

  “You worked for Harvey same as me,” he said. “You and me shouldn’t … well … you know.”

 
I heard him rustle in the dark and what might have been the sound of him lowering his hammer then cocking it again with his thumb. It made me think he had a lever action like a Winchester or a Marlin with a round already jacked in the chamber. And that he was more than nervous, he was scared. I heard him puff out his breath just before his first shot. Three more came in short intervals right after. There wasn’t much muzzle flash, but I could spot it well enough, and hear the double clack of the lever action and hear one of the rounds ricochet off the granite behind me. Even in the dark he was letting me know exactly where to shoot. I took my time, then fired once.

  I hadn’t wanted to shoot him but couldn’t risk him hitting Erika or my mules.

  “Erika?”

  “Tommy—are you all right?”

  “Yeah. How’s the stock?”

  “Antsy but okay,” she said. “Is it safe?”

  “Just sit tight.”

  By then I’d covered the last few steps and was crouching over Twister Creed inside the walls of the roofless cabin, checking him with a pocket flash. He was still alive with a chest wound from the single round that entered from his left. It didn’t look good. I patted him down as easy as I could till I found a phone. I knew it’d be worthless for another couple of miles but pocketed it just the same. Even though he’d been trying to take me out, we’d both come from the same sort of place and done the same sort of work for some of the same people. Just another hard-working, whiskey-drinking wastrel like some more I could name.

  In the white light of the pocket flash, I could see his eyes were open and he was watching me. His lips moved, and I saw blood on his teeth. I stayed with him for those few minutes with my hand on his shoulder. I heard Erika calling out in the dark but didn’t answer. While I waited, I found his whiskey bottle. I unscrewed the cap and took a pull then spit it out. It tasted like something drained off a corpse. When he was gone, I rolled him just enough to pull his rifle out from under him. It was a Marlin 336 that had seen hard use. A good, no-frills woodland and brush kind of gun. The scope was the same. An old Weaver that probably only cost half a hundred. Creed was a guy that lived close to the margins with no room for error.

  I stood up and walked back to where Erika waited with the stock. I thought it best not to disturb another crime scene, even if it meant leaving a semi-loaded .30-30 just lying there. The clouds raced overhead in the moving storm and let the moon show for a minute, higher now than it had before. Sometimes the moon looks yellow. Sometimes white. I got no idea why.