Bye, Bye, Love

by Virginia Swift

And so they’d lost the trail.

  Sally thought Scotty Atkins might have left them shivering in the blown-out truck cab, using their discomfort to advantage as he questioned them about the shooting. But Dickie Langham had taken the job of working with them, and he was nothing if not compassionate. He noticed their blue lips and, as soon as he could, took them to his Blazer, where the heater was cranking nicely. For a few minutes, he sat quietly, watching them carefully for signs of shock and hypothermia. Once he was confident that they were thawing out, he observed, “It’s a fucking miracle you weren’t killed, Sally.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ve pretty much had it with this whole thing.”

  “Me too,” said Hawk.

  “Mind if I smoke?” Dickie asked.

  “It’s your truck,” Sally said.

  With hands that trembled a little, he went for his cigarettes, managed to shake one out of the pack, got it lit, shook out the match, blew out a stream of smoke. “Okay. I want you to tell me everything you can remember, from the time you left the restaurant to the moment that bullet hit. Everything.”

  They told him.

  “You didn’t notice a car following you? Weren’t looking in the rearview, worried somebody might get out of control and rear-end you?” Dickie asked Hawk.

  Hawk thought it over. “Yeah, of course I was checking the rearview. And I guess I remember a car there. But I don’t recall being too worried about it. I must have decided they were following at a safe distance.”

  Dickie regarded the glowing tip of his cigarette with narrowed eyes. “You were wrong.”

  “Evidently,” Hawk said.

  “Do you remember anything about the car or the driver? Were there any passengers?”

  Hawk thought hard. “Nondescript sedan, I think. Not dark, but I can’t remember the color. No passengers. But I’m not completely sure. I was pretty busy coping with the guy who skidded out in front of me at the light at Third. You know how it is. You avoid an accident and your adrenaline starts pumping, and it takes a minute to take it all in. Plus Sally was all over the floor dealing with all the crap that had spilled out of that suitcase she carries around.”

  “Why do you always carry so much shit?” Dickie asked her.

  “I don’t. Every woman’s got a big bag that’s the mother ship, full of littler bags you might call the dinghies and dories. Sometimes you can get away with just a lifeboat or a tender.”

  “Yeah. Well, you’re gonna be picking safety glass out of the fleet for the foreseeable. Now you—what do you remember?” Dickie said.

  “Clearing off the windows and worrying about the visibility and the traction,” Sally replied. “Hawk’s the best driver I know, but it’s the other fools who scare me. Then Hawk started pumping the brakes to avoid the guy who skidded, my purse capsized, I bent down to try to put everything back, and the next thing I knew I was covered with broken glass.”

  “Don’t worry, honey,” said Hawk. “I’m sure my insurance will cover the repairs.”

  “Very funny,” said Sally.

  His mouth went hard. “Sorry. Guess I’m just one of those people who cope with attempted murder by making stupid jokes.”

  She could almost see his internal temperature rise. She’d seen him in this state before. When he got this mad, he had a tendency to break things. She reached for his hands. “We’ll get through this.”

  “Damn straight,” he said. “But I might have to shoot somebody before it’s all over.”

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” said Dickie.

  “Oh, go ahead, Hawk. I mean, it’s clear guns are a great thing. Why, everybody in Wyoming seems to be shooting somebody this fall. Why should you be any different?” Now it was her voice rising, the pressure building in her chest, lights exploding behind her eyes. “This is just a fabulous flaming festival of shooting and killing and killing and shooting!”

  The tears gushed again. Hawk wrapped her up tight, again. It took a while to get her calmed down.

  Then, as if he’d waited out her hysteria, Scotty Atkins got in the Blazer, and made them go through the whole sequence of events all over again.

  And now Sally said to Dickie, “I need to tell you why I wanted to meet you at your office.”

  “Does it have something to do with the call I got a little while ago from a woman at the state vet lab?” he asked.

  “Yes. So you’re aware I took a can of what I thought was some kind of soy powder out there to be tested, and it turned out to be animal product, from cows, they seem to think. And they’re worrying about abnormal proteins.”

  Hawk looked at her in amazement. “That stuff you brought home from Nina’s place? The powder you said she used in her breakfast drinks?”

  She nodded.

  “You didn’t actually swallow any of it, did you?” Hawk said.

  “No. I kept meaning to whip myself up a power smoothie, but I never got around to it.”

  “How did you happen to come by it?” Dickie asked.

  “Pammie gave it to me,” she said. “There’s a lot more of it out there.”

  Scotty stared out the window at the worsening weather. “We’d better get somebody out there before the highway guys close the road.”

  Dickie picked up his radio transmitter and dispatched a deputy to Albany.

  “Would you mind telling me,” Scotty asked Sally, “why you took that stuff home with you?”

  “I didn’t even think about it,” Sally said. “It was like borrowing a cup of sugar from the neighbors.”

  Scotty closed his eyes and ran his hand over his head.

  “A cup of sugar,” said Dickie. “Fine. But why, then, did you get suspicious enough to take the stuff out to the lab? And why, oh why, oh why, did you choose to withhold from us the fact that you had done so?”

  “Because I didn’t want to look like a fucking idiot when it turned out to be nothing!” Sally exploded. “Because you’ve been very clear that you don’t want my help, don’t want me anywhere near the investigation!”

  “Do you recall my telling you that I expected you to tell me anything and everything you learned, with regard to the life and death of Nina Cruz, no matter how insignificant?” Dickie asked her.

  “Yes, of course I do. Just before you seized her papers and told me to bug off,” Sally answered.

  Dickie reached out and took her hand, making her meet his eye. “I’m only going to say this once. Never, ever, withhold information in a police investigation.”

  “Especially,” Scotty added, “when it would appear that somebody has gone from playing tricks on you to trying to kill you.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. Really. You’re always accusing me of taking stupid risks, and I guess you’ve had reason to do that. But isn’t it equally foolish for you guys to be holding out on me when I’m obviously in danger? I need to know everything—I mean it, Scotty, no holding back—if I’m going to be able to protect myself. What I don’t know can hurt me.”

  Dickie and Scotty exchanged glances. “She’s got a point,” Dickie said at length, and lit yet one more cigarette soon to be reduced to a crushed-out butt in the Blazer’s reeking, overflowing ashtray, a lingering pall of smoke.

  Scotty said, “Do I have to recite the warning about leaks and confidentiality and compromising our investigation?”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t.”

  “I guess not. All right.” He glanced from Sally to Hawk and back again, reluctant but resigned. “To begin with, the moment Nina Cruz moved into the county, we had her under surveillance.”

  “Surveillance?” said Sally. “What do you mean? Tapping her phone? Video cameras in her woods? Bugging her e-mail? Airplane flyovers?”

  Scotty scowled at her. “We’re not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  “It’s all pretty boring stuff anyway, Mustang,” Dickie said, trying to placate her.

  “Yeah, fascists are real boring,” Sally shot back. “That’s one of the secrets to t
heir success.”

  “Don’t get carried away, Sally,” Scotty said, refusing to take the bait. “It wasn’t that elaborate.”

  “At least before September 11,” Dickie muttered, but Scotty left that remark alone, too.

  “Why?” Hawk asked. “Apart from the fact that she was involved in left-wing politics, of course. I mean, she might have kissed a Viet Cong or two, many long years ago, but why snoop on her now? So she never gave up on trying to change things. So she threw herself into feminism and environmentalism and animal rights. It’s not like she was downloading specs for nuclear weapons off the Internet. That seems a little extreme to me.”

  “Did to us, too,” said Dickie, joining in. “But the feds were absolutely insistent. They showed us something they called a ‘very partial dossier’ on her, going back all the way to the sixties. Twelve file boxes full of folders with labels like ‘Visit to Algeria,’ ‘Black Panthers,’ and ‘Ditches.’ ”

  Hmmph, said the historian in Sally. The feds had kept more paper on Nina’s life than Nina herself had. She’d have to file a Freedom of Information Act request for this book project, and given recent political developments, the government would very likely stonewall her request. “Ditches?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” said Dickie. “Ditches. Evidently, at one time Nina agreed to sponsor a ditch-lining operation in New Mexico—some cousin of hers or something, marketing a product that would line and cover irrigation ditches, which would decrease evaporation and absorption, theoretically saving water, and saving ranchers and farmers a lot of money. Nina wrote them a letter telling them she approved of green-resource management and saying she was enclosing a check. They went broke nine months later.”

  “A lot of people tried to get their hooks into her,” Sally said wonderingly.

  “A lot succeeded. Most were harmless. A few seem to have been doing good things, and doing them well. But a few of Nina’s pet projects weren’t so benign,” Dickie said.

  “I heard about some of that from Cat and, less directly, from Randy Whitebird,” she said. “Some of the people she subsidized used her money to do things like smuggle dope, buy weapons, and build bombs. But I didn’t hear anything that made me think that she knew ahead of time, or approved of that sort of stuff. And for quite some time, her sister’s been keeping a pretty close eye on where the money goes. That’s a woman who doesn’t suffer fools gladly,” Sally pointed out.

  “True,” said Scotty, “but recently the pattern has shifted again, toward more questionable enterprises, including this Wild West Foundation. The FBI has been interested in a number of the people involved in this project for some time.”

  “They’re interested in everybody left of Rumsfeld,” Sally grumbled.

  “Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore,” said Dickie.

  “You and seven or eight other people in Wyoming,” Scotty remarked.

  “About the FBI being interested in these people,” Hawk said, trying to keep them on track. “Who and why?”

  Sally jumped right in. “Randy Whitebird, for one, has a political history that makes Nina Cruz look like Condoleezza Rice. Joining the student left and then moving into the most radical cadres. Clearly he engaged in some violent actions, and then went underground. When he came back up, he was a Changed Man in a Gray Flannel Suit. But I wonder if all the years while he was polishing his corporate image, changing his name, he kept up the old school ties, so to speak.”

  “Did you learn all that from your ‘oral history’?” asked Scotty.

  “He was vague on the details,” she said, “but, yeah, I did. Do you have more?”

  Dickie spoke up. “Charter member of Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front, in a very quiet way. He’s not the one out there pouring sugar in bulldozer gas tanks or releasing rats from research labs, but they’re cashing his checks, and maybe even crashing at his pad when they need a place to cool down. Four years ago, two dudes who’d blown up a construction trailer at a new development in the Arizona desert were arrested at the Mexican border. They were wearing Hugo Boss suits and driving a late-model BMW, but the border guys got suspicious when they found grocery bags full of broccoli and bulghur in the trunk. The car was registered to Whitebird. He claimed they’d stolen both the suits and the vehicle.”

  Hawk cocked an eyebrow and said, “What about the groceries?”

  “How about Kali?” Sally asked.

  “Utah native with a biology Ph.D. No arrest record, and in many ways, an inspiring success story for you modern career gals. She’s worked her way up the research side of the biotech industry, to become a senior vice president at a fast-growing Wasatch Valley firm called BIOS. The company does a lot of business with the government,” Dickie told her.

  “What kind of business?” Sally asked.

  “The FBI wouldn’t tell us, and if we did know, we wouldn’t tell you,” Scotty put in.

  “So, nyah-nyah,” Dickie added.

  Sally rolled her eyes. “Kali didn’t strike me as a paragon of patriotism.”

  “Come on, Sally. As you know, the West is full of people grabbing up fistfuls of government dollars just as fast as they can denounce federal tyranny. As far as the folks in Salt Lake City are concerned, she’s a model citizen, with one small quirk. She’s an outspoken animal rights activist,” Dickie said.

  “I can’t imagine that goes down smooth in Utah,” Hawk observed.

  “She’s found a way to make her politics palatable to the more conservative element in Salt Lake by making common cause with the antiabortion movement,” Scotty answered.

  “That seems pretty far-fetched,” Hawk said.

  “You’d be surprised,” Sally said. “There’s a faction of the ecofeminist movement that would be right at home at a Right to Life prayer vigil.”

  “According to her FBI file, Dr. Brisbane has attended any number of those prayer vigils,” Dickie said. “But what’s more interesting is that she’s made several trips to Europe, ostensibly either to do business or to go skiing, where she’s had contact with members of radical fringe Green groups. The feebs wouldn’t have known about her involvement, but, for once, the CIA tipped them off. The spooks were keeping a close eye on a couple of German players, and she showed up in some of the surveillance pictures.”

  Sally found herself imagining grainy photographs of slack-haired people in trench coats, meeting at dingy cafés. Or maybe snowsuit-clad Valkyries and Vikings lounging on ski-lodge decks? “Photos? How would they ever manage to track her down?”

  “Secret-agent stuff,” said Dickie. “We could tell you, but then we’d have to shoot you.”

  This was an ill-advised remark, given where they were and why they were there. “Sorry,” said Dickie, leaning over to squeeze Sally’s hand as she let loose once more.

  Sally finally squeezed back, took the handkerchief Hawk offered, blew her nose. “Forget it.” She took a deep breath, shook her shoulders. “What about Lark?”

  Scotty spoke up, resuming business. “Another animal lover—met Kali at a PETA conference. But she got her start with that Deep Nature bunch in Oregon. Did some time up there for tree spiking.”

  Hawk grimaced. “Very nice. The monkey-wrenching technique they use to slow down timbering in old-growth forests. You pound big nails or spikes into trees that are slated to be cut, and when the loggers come through with their chain saws, they hit a spike and it busts the chain. Problem is, sometimes a piece of flying chain or spike will hit the logger. It’s a pretty ugly way of saying you love the planet,” he said.

  This was what they called tree hugging? “But not all the Wild West people are like this,” Sally said. “Nels Willen wouldn’t approve of spiking. From what I’ve seen, he’s an incredibly thoughtful, not to mention nonviolent, man.”

  “I talked to a couple of people I know in environmental groups,” Hawk said. “Willen’s given millions to environmental organizations. He seems particularly interested in funding outfits that bring people who think they hate one ano
ther together to work out solutions to tough problems, starting at the local level.”

  “There are a couple of red flags where Willen’s concerned. The animal rights connections, of course—lots of donations to various groups, some of them sketchy in the extreme. But that’s not the main concern with him. Do you know why he quit being a surgeon?” Dickie asked.

  “Yes,” said Sally. “He told me about his epiphany.”

  “Did he tell you about his malpractice suit?” Scotty asked.

  Sally just stared.

  “Sorry to burst your bubble,” said Scotty. “Obviously, you’re taken with the guy. But epiphany or no epiphany, Willen quit fixing blown-out knees shortly after a five-million-dollar suit against him was settled out of court. Some kid broke her hip snowboarding, and her parents claimed that Willen deliberately botched the surgery so the kid wouldn’t get out on the mountain again and break her neck. The lawyers had witnesses who claimed to have heard Willen say that somebody needed to do something to save the rich from themselves. But Willen was his own worst witness. He’d said in a deposition that when it was all over, he’d have to find a way to live with the fact that he’d made a fortune off ski developers’ urge to wreck mountains, and helping people hurt themselves.”

  “That’s a serious load of guilt,” said Hawk.

  “Beyond serious, I’d say,” Dickie said. “If they made a statue of Guilt, it’d look like him.”

  “Willen, Kali, Lark, Whitebird.” Sally ticked them off on her fingers. “What about Quartz? You can’t possibly tell me the kid’s some kind of ecoterrorist, and he hasn’t lived long enough to be driven crazy by guilt.”

  Dickie answered quickly. “Nope. Quentin Schwartz, it seems, is just a nice, bright young man who wants to do good in the world. Guess there are a few of them left.”

  Sally looked at Scotty. He nodded. “We’re not concerned about Schwartz.”

  She’d learned her lesson. She really was going to stay away from the Dub-Dubs. But if, somehow, that wasn’t possible, she might keep an eye out for Quartz. In that crowd, a nice, bright young man might need some looking after.

  Hawk spoke quietly. “You haven’t said anything about Stone Jackson,” he said.