by Christa Wick
“If you want me to ask him something, I can try,” the woman continued. “He doesn’t deal well with new people, so I would really prefer you not come by.”
“I understand,” I answered, pulling out the placemat with Frank Messeger’s initials on it. “I think my inquiries would be too vague in your father’s present condition.”
“Even if they were clear as glass, his answers might have you chasing ghosts,” the woman added.
I already am, I thought.
“True,” I answered. “Thank you. I won’t take up any more of your time and I’m sorry to hear about your father’s decline.”
“You’re welcome, Agent Callahan. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I echoed.
Grabbing my notebook, I recorded the basics of the call and the information from the placemat then fed the placemat into the shredder.
Muttering, I reached for my pencil. I needed another line of leads. Or I needed to connect the leads I had into something that generated insight and put me on the right path.
Turning to the next blank page in my notebook, I made a grid of events, from the skinned fox, to the packs tied to the trees before being subsequently removed, to the four incidents of vandalism. Then I looked for where I could draw connecting lines.
The fox didn’t directly connect to anything. I had read a morning briefing from a park in another state about potential fox farms, the cages filled by poachers for a massive, and completely illegal, hunt in which every participant was all but guaranteed several kills. Often, the only way for the hunt organizers to come up with enough animals was to slip onto protected land and trap them.
The briefing had been reason enough to check on the fox population at the parks within my enforcement zone. This time of year, finding an empty den wasn’t suspicious on its own. But finding a freshly skinned carcass so close to the den was ominous.
Still, the downed trees and closed roads only cut off one route of access to the fox den and didn’t require the other two sites being vandalized. The missing supply packs we had observed with the drone, however, connected to the sabotage against Walker’s company based on their location.
It was entirely possible I was looking at two groups of criminals occupied with different crimes in the same general area.
Thomas returned with the coffee. He placed the cup down then turned my notebook around so he could read it.
Shaking his head, he returned the notebook. “You’ve got nothing but puzzle pieces that may not even come from the same box.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, tossing my pencil onto the desk. “We either move on or shake the box a little harder to see if more pieces fall out.”
Thomas slid one of the Marla’s Cafe papers over with the name flipped up. “Wanna grab some lunch?”
I scratched my chin.
“You’re an only child, aren’t you, Callahan?”
“So what if I am?”
Reaching across my desk, Thomas scooped up the Jeep’s keys.
“Time for the student to become professor,” he teased. “I’m going to give you a lesson in how to play with others.”
Pulling my sidearm and holster from the filing cabinet, I put it on then concealed it with a blue agency windbreaker.
“Fine,” I said, pointing my chin at the office door. “But if we don’t come up with a lead, you’re buying lunch.”
“Those ribs were amazing,” Thomas chirped two hours later. “And that shake and slice of double-layered cake, I’ll have to get an extra workout tonight to make up for them.”
Signing the receipt for the lunch bill, I rolled my eyes at the young man. He didn’t need to poke at me. Even if we had come up empty at the restaurant, I would have been happy to buy him a meal. His enthusiasm reminded me of the early days working the job. Watching our young waitress fall all over him was also worth the cost of the meal.
Reaching the Jeep, I slid into the passenger seat and plugged a local address into the GPS system. We were headed for a privately owned campground not far from park land.
Thomas put the Jeep in reverse. “You been that way?”
“Nope,” I answered, pulling out my notebook. “This is month two, week two and I’ve got a huge territory to deal with. What was the name of that waitress?”
“Tracy?”
I wrote the name down.
“Phone number?”
His gaze locked on the road, Thomas didn’t answer.
“I saw her slip it to you.”
Taking one hand from the wheel, he dipped into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tightly folded piece of paper that he handed to me.
“This says Monica,” I chuckled. “Maybe you put it in your other pocket, Romeo.”
Tanned cheeks darkening as his mouth smashed a grin into submission, Thomas reached into the other pocket and handed over a piece of paper folded just as tightly.
I opened it up, wrote down Tracy’s last name and phone number.
“So who’s Monica?” I teased, writing a summary of the information Tracy had provided.
“Barista near my hotel.”
Finished with my notes, I pulled up the browser on my phone and put in the name of the campground. The first hit was a decrepit looking website with a cartoon moose. Seeing that the last post was from a few weeks ago, I hit the link for STAFF.
“Okay, the Joyce she was talking about is Joyce Franco and she’s listed as the owner and resident manager.”
Thomas slowed for a turn.
“Hopefully she doesn’t have a problem talking to law enforcement,” he said.
“That’s always a problem in this job,” I sighed. “People move out in the middle of nowhere for a reason.”
“So what’s your reason?”
Hearing his voice drop low like it had with the waitress, I shot a side glance in his direction. Catching the flash of interest on his face, I shook my head.
“No way, Junior. You don’t get to head shrink me more than once a year. You already reached this year’s quota with the only child shtick.”
Seeing the sign for the campgrounds and the entrance just beyond, I pointed them out. “I’ll do the talking on this one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he smirked, rolling to a stop in front of an RV that had an OFFICE sign on a post in front of it.
I left the Jeep and walked over to the RV. There were metal stairs attached to the side, but I stayed on the ground and knocked low on the door. I hadn’t done much walking since we discovered the packs were missing, so the leg was healing. But stepping up or down was pure murder. Walking on a gradient wasn’t much better.
The door opened to reveal a woman somewhere north of sixty, a stripe of gray running across her scalp where the roots hadn’t been dyed in months. Other than the two-toned hair and the addition of half a decade, the woman matched the picture of the owner on the website.
“Joyce Franco?” I asked.
The woman looked at the agency windbreaker and the badge visible on my belt. Her gaze skipped over to where Thomas was out of the Jeep and standing warily by its front fender.
“What’s this about?”
I swallowed an irritated smile and replaced it with a phony, relaxed version. The woman had avoided agreeing that she was Joyce Franco. That meant she was on the defensive for whatever reason.
“You had a problem Thursday night with some people renting one of your spaces. You mind telling me about it?”
“Not if you want me to do the talking standing here,” she answered, waving us inside. “I’m flashing something terrible right now.”
Gritting my teeth, I climbed up the three steps and entered the RV, Thomas following after me.
Sitting in a chair that had two fans pointing at it, Joyce Franco gestured for us to sit on the plastic wrapped couch.
She cleared a phlegmy throat. “We have a strict curfew here. No in or out between ten p.m. and five a.m. Everybody I rent to knows that includes no guests. The fellas you’re talking about broke both rules—and t
hey were loud jerks before that. Swearing when we got kids and church folk running around. Ninety percent of our guests are return customers or referrals because of my rules.”
She pulled one of the fans closer and dialed its speed up.
“I was set to kick them out, but they pulled away a little after three on Friday morning.”
I added the times to my notebook then looked over what Tracy had told us. “The guests hiked in from the north at night, is that right?”
Joyce’s gaze narrowed. “That’s right, but who told you?”
“A couple of people heard you mention it in town, Miss Franco.”
“Mrs. Franco if you’re going to be formal,” the woman corrected. “Joyce if you’re not. Karl’s been dead four years, so I’d rather you go with Joyce.”
“Thank you, Joyce.” Pulling a business card from my pocket, I handed it to the woman. “I go by Ashley or Ash. This is Thomas.”
Joyce looked him over, a girlish smile making her face appear a decade younger. I conquered the urge to roll my eyes. Thomas was on the pretty side, not bad to look at, and a hard worker, which was what really mattered. But I couldn’t see what had Tracy, Monica, and Joyce Franco, tittering over the kid.
I could only imagine the reaction the three women would experience coming face-to-face with Walker Turk.
“He’s awfully young for a lawman.”
“I’m still studying to be one,” Thomas answered before getting the woman back on track. “So the visitors hiked in. Does that mean they were wearing backpacks?”
“Not exactly,” Joyce answered. She pointed at a laptop sitting on the kitchen counter and cooed. “Bring me that, would you, Thomas?”
Yep, I thought, hiding my smile behind a cough. The woman was definitely playing the coquette.
Thomas jumped up, crossed the three steps it took to go from living room to kitchen in the RV, carefully picked up the computer and returned to Joyce. Gaze bouncing between Thomas and the laptop, the woman lifted the lid, typed in a password, then clicked through a few screens. When she found what she was looking for, she showed the display to Thomas first, then me.
There were five men. Strapped to their backs, bundled with ropes and plastic tarps were packs of the same approximate size as those hanging from the trees.
“This is from a trail cam?” I asked.
Joyce nodded. “Just got the one shot when they reached the perimeter of my property.”
“Again, the northern perimeter, correct?”
“Correct,” Joyce answered.
“Can you bring in the topo map?” I asked Thomas then turned my attention back to Joyce. “How did these men pay for the space.”
“Park only takes cash,” Joyce answered, gaze narrowing.
Mentally tucking the fact away, I nodded. A lot of businesses around the national parks did most of their transactions in cash because of the bank charge every time a customer swiped their card. There were other reasons they preferred cash. None of the owners liked talking about that part. Many looked at anyone from the government as an IRS agent in disguise.
It wasn’t my job to care about taxes. But I did care about money laundering—another activity that thrived with cash operations. For now, I was fine pretending Joyce was only thinking about the taxman.
“Did you get their names and the license plate number for the vehicle you rented the spot to?”
“Yeah.” Squinting at her phone, Joyce tapped at the screen a couple of times then picked up my business card and squinted at it.
Feeling my phone buzz, I pulled it out of my pocket and saw a photo of a driver’s license followed a second later by one of the RV’s plate.
“Can you send me a copy of the trail cam photo, too?” I asked as Thomas returned with the map. Looking at him, I smiled. “Need you to be my map stand.”
He unrolled the glossy twenty-four by thirty-six sheet, his arms as wide apart as the space would allow. I pointed at a spot. “This is you, yes?”
“Yeah.” Joyce outlined a small blob of land. “This is all of my property and…this…is where the trail cam caught them. Glad to be rid of them, especially since they paid this week in advance and also forfeited the two-hundred dollar deposit on the space.”
Looking at the location of the trail cam, I traced my finger along the map to a nearby river branch then drew Joyce’s attention to the spot.
“Is this deep enough for rafts or canoes?”
“Rafts, yes,” Joyce answered. “Have to be experienced though. There are some rough rapids about a mile north of here.”
I traced the stream north and tapped on another spot. Standing up, I took the map from Thomas and turned it to face him.
“Could you show my associate that last location, Joyce.”
The woman fluttered her lashes. “I’d be delighted.”
He leaned forward, studying the map while Joyce tilted her head to the side and eyed the cut of his pants.
Grinning, Thomas straightened.
“I think you owe me another rack of ribs, Agent Callahan.”
15
Walker
The top half of my torso suspended over the engine of a disabled skidder, I heard the muffled ring of the phone in my back pocket. Ignoring the intrusion, I forced another turn on the socket wrench buried in the machine’s guts.
“That should do it,” I grunted, sliding down and leaving it to Kostya to secure the engine cover.
The phone had stopped ringing, so I took a second to wipe the sweat from my brow and the grease from my hands. Before I could finish, the phone started up again. This time, I could make out the ringtone, the intro to Steppin’ Stone identifying the caller as my cousin Siobhan.
“What is it, Monkey Butt?”
Usually, only my older brother Adler still called Siobhan by her childhood nickname, but my cousin had been needling me something fierce since she met Ashley. Siobhan had it in her head there would soon be another Turk wedding. As hard as Siobhan was campaigning, I worried she would scare Ashley off before my growing relationship with the woman solidified into anything half as serious as marriage.
“Your girlfriend is en route to urgent care in Roundup,” she said before adding a verbal slap for my earlier offense. “Stop calling me that, jerk face.”
A blanket of cold dread wrapped tight around me.
“You mean Ashley?” I scratched out. “Why?”
“Yes, Ashley. She and that intern boy-toy were out at the rapids by Joyce Franco’s place. All I know is her leg was jacked up while she was out there. Boy-toy wa—”
“His name is Thomas Crane,” I growled. The kid was at least seven years younger than Ashley and her subordinate, not her plaything.
At least I hoped there wasn’t anything else between them. She wouldn’t have kissed me like she had if she was harboring an interest in her intern.
“Thomas,” Siobhan said, starting over and drawing out the two syllables of the kid’s name, “wanted an ambulance dispatched, but Ashley took the phone from him.”
Finding a tree stump to sit on, I rested my head against my free hand and groaned. I could just see Ashley stubbornly walking back to her vehicle, maybe leaning on the intern, but certainly not willing to call for extra help.
“How long ago?”
“I’ve been trying to call you for an hour,” Siobhan answered. “When Thomas first radioed in, but you clearly haven’t had a signal because it kept going immediately to voicemail.”
“So he got her back to the vehicle and is driving her to Roundup?”
“Yes. He said he would call again when he had her checked in. He hasn’t done that yet.”
“Text me his number,” I ordered then ended the call.
Marching over to Kostya, I drew the man’s attention. “You know the plan, keep them going while we’ve got daylight.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Kostya answered. “Everything okay?”
I stared at him, the answer obvious in my mind. It was the crew’s first day b
ack to work, all of the equipment finally repaired and run through its safety checks in case the vandals had sabotaged the machines in multiple ways. After a week of downtime, only an emergency would draw me away from the site.
“Sorry,” Kostya blushed. “Dumb question.”
I shook my head. “Agent Callahan was injured. Not too badly because she wouldn’t allow an ambulance to be called.”
I clapped my hand on Kostya’s shoulder and lightly squeezed. “Keep the guys safe. Yourself, too.”
“Always, boss.”
Leaving the men to work, I sprinted to my truck. Siobhan had finished sending the number for Thomas. I copied it over to my contacts then sent a message asking the intern to call or text updates to me instead of Siobhan.
Finished with the text, I strapped in, kicked the truck into gear and sped away from the job.
16
Ashley
I stared at the doctor as he studied my x-rays. He fiddled with the position of his glasses, pushing them lower down his nose as he leaned in then sliding them back up as his tongue clicked against his upper palate.
Wheeling the portable lightbox over, he used the cap of his pen to point out several dark lines along my tibia.
“The ankle is just a sprain,” he said. “But these are surface fractures.”
I tightened my grip around the edge of the exam table. I could see the prior break in the tibia. The surface, aka stress, fractures the doctor pointed to were positioned just slightly south of where the original break had occurred.
“This was a stable fracture?” He asked and pointed to the remodeling visible on the film.
“Yes,” I answered. For all the bad luck I'd had in breaking the leg a few years back, the ends of the bone had fit together and my skin and muscle tissue hadn’t been pierced.
Left alone in the exam room, I had put my windbreaker and holster, complete with gun and badge, over top of the ridiculous gown the nurse had made me wear. The doctor looked over the symbols of my job, his mouth mashing in a downward curl.
“You need to wear a soft cast for a minimum of three weeks, probably six.”