River Run

by J. S. James

  He was silent for a long while more, rubbing at the leg. “I came to in the water. By then, the Bastard was a half mile downstream. Metcalf was under his overturned boat, screaming about piranhas finding his sorry ass.”

  “Where’s Metcalf now?”

  Bannock shifted in his chair and reached up behind his head. “Out of the picture. Demoted to some backwater assignment in Southeast Asia.” He brought the canes around and laid them across his knees. “You get Metcalf’s cut.”

  Gus wet his lips. “So mine’s seven-five?”

  “Close to. Half of what we recover. The Bastard couldn’t have spent much of that fifteen mil, and there’s no bank traces—in or outside the country. He’s got to have it close by.

  “But here’s something that’ll get us closer. The Bastard’s name is not Bastida. The Utah relative he’d listed in his induction papers was a Basque rancher who needed the ultimate convincing to give him up. But that’s another story.” He handed over a piece of paper with squiggly lettering, as if written under duress. “That sheep rancher took him in after he’d run off from a family here in Oregon. Ring any bells?”

  “No.” Maybe. Something back in his mind’s murky recesses clicked about Chavez—a case that had sold Harvey Schenkel on her detecting prowess. Gus sat up. “Not sure. Have to review my files.”

  The man’s eyes blazed, watching Gus like he’d lasered in with a truth scanner. As if a decision were made, Bannock aligned the canes on either side and hoisted himself onto his feet. “C’mon outside. I got a real eye-popper in the back of that Navigator.”

  Gus set down his glass but stayed put at the dresser. “Whoa up a minute.” He waited for Bannock to shuffle around and face him. “I just can’t help but feel like we’re fixing to rope a longhorn with dental floss. Any other police action, this is where we call in SWAT”—Gus already had his palms up, cutting Bannock off midsnarl—“which, for obvious reasons, we cannot do. But no matter how that kind of money might tickle my testicles, I won’t commit suicide.”

  Bannock explored the ceiling, then dropped his stare back on Gus. “Well, shit. Me neither. Now will you just shut up and let me show you my goddamned equalizer, you dumb son of a bitch?”

  38

  Delia had nearly caught up when Robb disappeared into the evergreens. She parted the outer boughs and peered in. Faint moonlight shone back from the opposite side, where the evenly spaced tree trunks ended and the hill dropped off into nothing. The narrow grove was less than forty feet across, but Robb was nowhere in sight. Whatever he wanted her to see had to be on the other side. She ducked into the trees.

  Coming out at a low bluff, she gazed down on a carpet of whiteness. A stream of fog skimmed the surface of the Willamette, crowding between its banks. Tendrils crept into the upper fields, only to be sucked back into the ferment. She felt but a slight queasiness, mildly clammy skin. The river beneath never let go of anything without a struggle. Not even fog.

  She followed a faint trail heading west along the bluff. The trees thinned at the corner of the field where a fence ended and the drop-off was steepest. She found Robb crouched beside an abandoned piece of farm equipment—a honey wagon, judging by the coating of dried cow dung. A rear wheel hung free where the cliffside had fallen away.

  He motioned for her to take cover beside him, then pointed toward the middle of the river, where a break in the pall of whiteness bared a dark patch of current. “Now do you believe?”

  The fog swirled under the moon’s pasty light. The gap below them closed in on itself, void of anything but river and mist-laden air.

  “In what?”

  He cocked an ear toward the south, listening. “Hear that old Elgin? They’re headed upriver, trying to draw me away again.”

  Except for his whisperings, the night was as still as the Willamette was empty.

  He got to his feet. She got up as well, wondering just how head-sick her maybe brother was. She wondered, too, where she’d heard or seen that name. Elgin. Not the wristwatch, something else …

  His back was to her. She eased past his shoulder and stood facing him. “Robb, help me understand. What in the holy hell are we doing here?”

  He plucked at his lip. “Sometimes they come straight at me. Other times, they play head games. Like tonight.”

  Quietly but firmly, she led into it. “You’ve been in combat, right?”

  “All my life.”

  “No, I mean in a war. In firefights.”

  He gazed past her, filling his coat pockets with his hands. “Iraq.” After a beat, “Somalia.” A long breath. “Couple snatch-and-grabs in Central America. Antidrug actions farther south.”

  She pointed toward the river and whatever he thought he’d seen. “Flash back on it much? Have anything against hunters?”

  “Not like you’re thinking. Nothing against hunters, so long as they steer clear of the poacher and his boy.”

  He stepped over the wagon tongue and gestured for her to follow him to the edge. She did. Had to find out whether he could be salvaged.

  Stopping feet short of the drop-off, he leaned his backside against a fence post. She came up beside him. His hat was at his side again, tapping.

  “Okay, sure. Been in beaucoups ops where it was balls to the wall and check your skivvies later.” He gave a dismissive shrug. “All walks in the park.”

  “How so?” His attention was locked in on something out beyond them.

  “None came close to the hellhole I swam out of right over there.”

  She traced his gaze across the river, to a stretch of woods where branch tops stuck up from the mist like finger bones. Made out the crumbling roofline of an old house. An uneasy feeling latched on—she was looking down through a time gap. The high-water stone foundation that held up a sagging porch. The paint-bare walls and shot-out windows. The hundred-year willow, its roots littered with broken target bottles. They were standing above the mouth of the Luckiamute, directly across from the Gatlin place.

  He toed a rock loose from the field’s icy crust and nudged it toward the edge. “That ramshackle excuse for a house makes you think you could waltz right in there. Like Rose could just slip away from the poacher anytime she pleases. Well, you’d be wrong. It’s a devil’s keep, and—”

  Delia stopped his toe with the tip of her Reebok. “Wait. Rose?” He canted his head at her, and she drew her foot back. “So, the man you think lives down in that house, the man you believe uses the river to poach animals—”

  “The poacher takes souls.”

  Moonlight reflected off the snow, magnifying the tension in his jawline. “Willard skins the spirit right out of you. Tacks it to his shed like an animal pelt.”

  Beneath her workout clothing, a shiver of understanding rippled over her chilled skin. Rose hadn’t been the only one who’d suffered from Willard Gatlin’s abuse.

  “The poacher, him and his boy. When we were too young to fight them off.”

  “We? You were a Gatlin?”

  “Not by choice.”

  A kick from Robb’s boot sent the stone flying off into the darkness. “Soon he’ll have all of Rose’s soul. I have to get her out of that hellhole.”

  Delia had the feeling Robb was circling a drain and out of her reach. She hooked a finger inside his coat sleeve and tugged. “No, Robb. You don’t.”

  Latching on to his arm, she spun him toward her, then drew her hand back. There was no easy way except straight out.

  “I’m sorry, Rose Gatlin is—is gone.” She touched his arm again, more hesitantly. “She’s—deceased, I mean. So is Willard. Jess, too.”

  He was a standing stone.

  She swallowed and went on. “Robb, I can show you the grave sites. They’re at Buena Vista Cemetery.”

  Gray light streaked the sky above them. Dawn was a while off. She had no idea whether she was making headway.

  Jamming on his hat, Robb reached into his coat, his head shaking like a frond in the wind. Not a good sign.

  “No
. No, Rose wrote to me.” A finger-worn picture postcard appeared. He waved the card in front of her face, then tucked it away. “The poacher made her write, but I know she would never—”

  Delia grabbed up his hands, putting urgency into her voice. “Listen to me. You’ve been chasing ghosts. Willard and Rose shot each other over a note. I was the investigator. I saw the holes she put in Willard Gatlin’s belly trying to save herself. Believe me, your poacher is so dead, Jesus would pass him over for Lazarus.”

  He shook his head again, hands dropping away from hers. “Lazarus rose from the dead. I’ve seen lights down there, stove fires. Hell, Willard and Jess ambushed me. Knew I was coming from the river and bookended my approach with automatic-weapons fire.”

  He swept an arm back toward the Willamette. “Since then, I’ve tried to catch them away from the house. Out on the river where they’re vulnerable. But they’re chameleons. I close in and they disappear into a slough or up a backchannel. Sometimes into their own smoke.”

  She cocked her head, arms across her chest, fending off the chill. “How long have you been at this?”

  “Dunno, weeks. Boat snares haven’t slowed them one bit.” He rubbed at his thighs. “I coast along, listening for that Elgin. I close in on their boat till the fog eats them. Grit my teeth when they laugh and start over.” He stopped rubbing. “Almost knocked me out of it the night you and your jet boat got on my tail. Now that was kick-ass.”

  Jesus. She shivered, tightening her grip on her elbows. He sounded like somebody out of that Bill Murray movie. Instead of a time loop, Robb was stuck chasing phantoms, over and over again.

  She reached out and drew him close, made him look her in the eyes. “Robb—Tío—I’m your big sister, I think. So I get to say stuff nobody else can, right?” She didn’t let him object. “First off, your eyes and your mind play tricks on you. The Willamette is just a river”—God, that came from her?—“The Elgin motor is a rusted-out hulk, and that hovel down there is just a wrecked empty house with a nasty past.”

  She waited, letting it sink in.

  He peered down at the fogbound structure, kneading at the back of his neck for a full minute. He stopped rubbing. “But the lights, the suppression fire. The holes I patched in my boat.”

  Ha! Took off like a bat anyway, so we didn’t— Lonnie. The comeback Bryce had stifled in his twin brother swam up out of Delia’s memory. Right place, wrong time.

  “Some young guys partied there on weekends. Used that old willow tree for target practice, until I confiscated their toys.”

  Robb’s hand fell away from his neck. “AR-15s?”

  She nodded. “You must’ve been in the vicinity when those idiots cut loose with ARs converted to full auto.”

  The fog had begun to thin. Early light cut into the gloom and blur of current gliding past the house. She set aside old aversions and imagined herself on that tributary. Looked through Robb’s eyes. Down at the water, picturing him on the receiving end.

  She voiced her acceptance aloud, as much for herself as for him. “To someone in a boat, moving into the Luckiamute at the wrong moment, it would look, feel, and sound like he’d entered a kill zone. Robb, you’re walking wounded. You need to come in and get help. My help, for starters …”

  Feeling his absence like a stolen breath, Delia spun on her heels. She made out his backside disappearing over the slope of the cornfield and called out. “Robb, Tío. Wait up. Where are you going?

  “To shut the lid on hell.”

  Chingada. “Get your ass back here. You’re still under arrest.”

  Seconds later, she barely heard his shouted reply over the rumbles of twin outboards coming to life.

  “Save me a cell.”

  * * *

  “Don’t get mad,” Gus’s mama used to say. “Wait’ll the turd sack’s takin’ a nap and stuff a rattlesnake in his boot.”

  Still, his gut churned as he drove off from the motel, and not from a bellyful of bad Scotch. He’d looked over Bannock’s special ordnance, bitten his tongue, and formed a backup plan.

  Dumb son of a bitch, huh? Like the fox that finds a hole in a henhouse and has the patience to wait till dark.

  Water Street butted into the Dallas-Coast highway, the pavement shiny in his headlights. Wet snow had frozen, glazed the roadways, and coated the fields in a white crust. He ignored the icy conditions and kicked the Interceptor in the ass. His heart thumped with fear and excitement. What he could do with fifteen million bucks.

  Let Bannock take his revenge on Bastida. Gus’d take the rest. Along with a little rattlesnake revenge of his own.

  Bannock placed a high value on good intel. If Bastida was who Gus thought he might be and had gone to ground in the old homestead, it would be suicide going in blind. Chavez’s closed-case file would give him the name and the property’s location, but not its current status. Was it occupied or vacant? Sold or left to go to seed? How about road access? Surprising how much Gus could learn from the county assessor’s office. The rest of the time he’d use to make other arrangements.

  “You in your car, Sheriff?” That was Castner on Gus’s PMR, his private mode radio frequency. Just the boy he needed.

  “Craig. You still at Bowman Park?”

  “Yeah. Can I leave now? Linn County Marine pulled their boat out hours ago.”

  “What’d they find?”

  “No body recovery. I mean, besides that gut-shot kayaker they brought in earlier. But the boat blind some duck hunter left out there? Everything in it matched up with Chavez’s account. No clear prints on the ten-gauge, either.” A sour feeling started in the pit of Gus’s stomach. “Oh, yeah. And they grappled up a ton of weird shit off the bottom of Black Dog, including a nasty-looking pistol-grip crossbow.”

  The sourness started to burn. “That screws the pooch.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Those findings alone meant Chavez was right about somebody attacking her. Sooner or later, another body would turn up and corroborate her story. He peeled off an antacid tablet and thumbed it into his mouth. The good thing was that Bastida, or whatever he went by, was still alive and kicking. That much he’d known. He crunched the chalky wafer in two and chewed.

  So what if that stubborn bitch got reinstated? Ole Gus’d be long gone. Entertaining Playa Venao señoritas at Casa del Grice.

  “Sheriff?”

  “Uh, yeah. You tell anybody at our shop?”

  “About what?”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  “Uh, will do, Sheriff. So am I done here? Man, I gotta get some pub grub in me. A beer or three.”

  “Okay, you do that, Craig. But then we need to meet up. By the way, when’s the last time you sighted in that scoped deer rifle?”

  “Three weeks back, and it’s dead on. Got a four-point in the freezer to prove it. Why?”

  “Think you could pull down on a two-legged buck?”

  39

  Delia had gained early-morning access to the case file storage area, for once thankful the sheriff had neglected his duty, as her office keys remained unconfiscated. Not hearing from the DA about a possible end-run appointment, she’d literally tiptoed past the squad room, down a darkened hallway, and now back to Harvey’s cubicle, where she laid out the contents of the Gatlin folder.

  She had to do something, anything to get her mind off the craziest twenty-four ever. Too wired to sleep, too conflicted to tell anyone about her encounter with a desperado who might be her long-lost brother, she decided to focus on getting herself up to speed.

  After waking Harvey’s computer, she made several Google searches based on last June’s partial message from Rose Gatlin and background notes printed and filed from Castner’s Toughbook. They confirmed that Robb had reason to fear and resent Willard, as had Rose. There was a Robbie, but no other record of his existence. An older boy, Jess Gatlin, had been expelled from school after a bullying incident in junior high. He’d followed in his dad’s wild game–poaching footsteps, th
e citations halting just before a river-drowning report on him. It was left for Robb to clarify—if Delia ever saw him again.

  Dead-ended, she sat back, succumbing to the nagging concern that Robb might somehow be linked to the river killings. Was his story plausible? Shaky at best. Did she believe him? She wanted to. Could there have been two …?

  She sat up, lifted the file, and snatched from underneath the notes she’d made the night before on Tweety Bates. Ran her finger down the notations and stopped at Evidence dump? In particular, the street address notation. Well, a road name followed by some numbers. She fed both into Google, trying several variations. She kept getting map sites and noticed a Halls Ferry Cemetery with no address. At another site, she got a pull-down with the heading “Coordinates.” She clicked it and nearly slid off the front of her chair. It gave her 44.8733 N, 123.1439 W, just a smidgeon off the numbers Tweety Bates had listed on his boat registration. That smidgeon seemed to place his location a few points north of the cemetery. Exactly where light reflected off a dull metal-roofed object in the sat-map close-up.

  And smack in the middle of an unnamed Willamette River backwater.

  * * *

  Delia’s third call got through to Zack as she pulled the Camaro away from the curb and aimed it toward Independence, Oregon. Except his half of the conversation kept getting interrupted by rattles and burps from an unhealthy-sounding outboard motor.

  “What?” He must have throttled down, because the background noise dropped to a hiccupping burble. She started in again.

  “I said, where are you?”

  “Middle of the river, running the carbon out of my Johnson.” Delia almost snickered. He meant the boat motor. She kept cop-silent while he clarified. “Had two gummed up sparkplugs from a bad gas-oil mix. You holding up okay?”

  “Been better. Doing better.” The sickly sound of that idling motor gave her pause as she shouldered the phone to her ear while tugging on the single glove she had left and reminded herself how much was riding on her Google find. “Zack, I need your help to check out something. Can you meet me at Riverview Park?”