Bad Country: A Novel

by CB McKenzie

  Rodeo espied a tall stack of mattresses overarching all this junk and so he tried the handle of the French doors. The studio was unlocked.

  * * *

  Rodeo rummaged the large room in a general way picking through various antiques and human bones, crockery, glassware, textbooks, yearbooks, CDs, records and tapes. When he found an eight track of Brother Dave Live in Houston he pocketed it.

  When he happened upon a collection of Indian artifacts stored in ten compartmentalized wooden boxes, he stopped still in his boots.

  Each archeology site box was identified with a typed label—Navajo, Tarahumara, Hopi, Apache, Yuman, Havasupai, O’odham, Seri, Paiute, Yaqui.

  Rodeo recognized his tribe, Yaqui.

  With his rubber kitchen gloves still on, Rodeo examined and handled the artifacts in the storage boxes—the rattles and combs, ironwood trinkets, potsherds, trading beads, bits of leather thong, bound feathers, arrowheads—then he used his cell phone to call Eryn Hage.

  He described the wooden storage boxes and the contents in the compartments of the boxes.

  Don’t sound familiar to me, said the homeowner. But you know I bought and sold artifacts for years when that was still a thing to do. And I got hundreds of pieces of Indian crap out there in the studio from my days as a dealer and a lot of burial crap we found on the ranch I never even tried to catalogue or sell once the market went down and the Government Indians and University Professors took over and turned the world politically correct. Rodeo heard the rattle of ice in beverage. But Burke was an archaeologist or claimed to be, so he probably has all kinds of stuff back there too. Arrowheads, potsherds, who knows what? Probably some skulls and bones out there related to you by blood, Little Rodeo.

  Did you tell Professor Burke he could be out here, Eryn? In your outbuildings and such?

  He had free rein and keys to everything on this place except my house proper, the landlady said. He maintained the pump house for the pool and was cleaning out all the Tuff Bilts and the greenhouse and the bar-b-que ramada. He drained the Koi pond and resurfaced it. He reorganized my garage and even fed the chickens for me so I wouldn’t have to make the trip to the back of my place since it seems like a mile to the rear gate and to the trash bins and recycle bins, so I seldom go out there anymore, Eryn Hage said. And as soon’s those chickens die that’s it for me keeping livestock. My ranching days are over. The woman sounded drunk or stoned or both. Same with dogs. I am tired to death of dogs, so once Skinny dies that’s it with me and dogs because I have paid all the pet health insurance I am ever going to pay and once Skinny kicks the bucket and I bury her I buried the last dog I am going to bury because I’m too old to take care of any animal but myself. Eryn took a noisy drink. I saw you hauling off that old mattress, Little Rodeo. Are you going to put a new one back on the bed for me and make up that bed? There’s fresh linens in the bathroom closet.

  I’ll take care of everything I can take care of, Eryn, Rodeo said. But it will take me a little while. So if I’m here for a little while don’t panic.

  I hadn’t panicked since Oprah Winfrey invented mad cow disease, Eryn Hage said. So take your time, Little Rodeo. Nice to have a real cowboy man around my place again. You being here reminds me of the old days on the Ranch, she said. And come over to the house and get a pill if you need one. Oxys are better’n booze and no calories.

  * * *

  Rodeo carefully moved the stack of artifact boxes until he had a clear angle to the mattress pile. There were twins on top of a queen on top of a king. Rodeo levered the twins off the queen and when he did he saw a bound manuscript.

  He picked up Running in the Dark, a Memoir by Tinley Burke, held the book in his hands staring at it for almost a minute. And then he took off his gloves, settled into a bean bag chair, propped his boots on a stack of Norton Anthologies and started to read.

  * * *

  With the bed on his back his eyes were downcast, so he noticed on the haul to the apartment a number of different shoe prints in the dust and some cigarette butts. He knew Eryn would not have allowed smoking in her rental, so some of these could have been discards from Burke though Eryn had described her renter as a neat freak. Several of the discards were Marlboro Reds stained by various shades of lipstick on the filters. There were also several Gitane butts. He carried the queen into the rental unit and placed it on the bed frame. He did not make up the bed.

  He returned to the pool house and retrieved Running in the Dark, returned to Burke’s apartment.

  Even though his job for Sisely Miller was technically finished, Rodeo searched the apartment now seeking evidence of old crimes.

  He started at the back of the apartment, in the small bathroom and examined the contents of the medicine cabinet. There were no drugs, prescription or nonprescription, and nothing else unusual beyond three large tubes of personal lubricant. The room was clean but not clinically so. Rodeo inspected the drain cover in the bathtub and found a few long hairs, all shades of blond. There was a used tampon in the trash can, nothing hidden in the water tank of the toilet.

  In the kitchen Rodeo searched the cabinets where cans and boxes were organized and aligned—SpaghettiOs and mac-and-cheese, chili, beans, canned tomatoes, boxes of pasta. Dishware occupied the rest of the cabinet space and was mostly new Fiesta dinnerware and Jadeite. The pots and pans were in the storage area in the antique gas stove and were all copper. The silverware was all silver.

  In the main compartment of the refrigerator was soda pop and seltzer water, Bloody Mary mixer, condiments, salad dressing, olives, pickles, capers with the liquid poured off. There was no fresh food at all. The freezer held two bottles of Stoli vodka, one still sealed and one three-quarters empty. A liter bottle of Jägermeister was about half empty. There were frozen Tony’s single-sized pizzas, an assortment of expensive Omaha steaks, Jimmy Dean breakfast snacks, Lean Cuisines and several cans of frozen juice concentrate. One of the orange juice cans was not as frosted as the others and obviously a fake can used as a hideaway for small valuables.

  Rodeo pulled out the fake OJ can and unscrewed the top. Inside was a single spent shell casing. He tipped it out onto the kitchen table and identified it as from a .38. He replaced the brass cartridge in the OJ security can using a tine of a silver fork and put it back in the freezer.

  Rodeo sat for a while at the kitchen table and scanned the room. The low ceiling was braced by three rough-cut vigas and with a ceiling of ocotillo with the dried fibrous wood closely packed, bound with baling wire and shellacked. Decorative plates hung on one wall, probably Eryn’s as they all had Western themes and seemed to have been in place for a long time judging by how the wall paint had faded around their perimeters.

  But one plate seemed newly hung. Rodeo put his rubber gloves back on now and removed this plate from the wall and flipped it over. Taped to the back of a Grand Canyon commemorative plate was a Polaroid Instamatic snapshot of a Dairy Queen somewhere in the desert. Though the location was not identified, Rodeo guessed it had been taken in Sells, Arizona near where one of the Los Jarros victims had been shot with a .38.

  Rodeo replaced the plate and moved to the front room that had served as Tinley Burke’s living room and study. Rodeo found a Polaroid Instamatic amongst a small collection of cameras displayed on a bookshelf but it was empty. None of the other cameras had film in them and none of these cameras was digital. Rodeo checked behind and under all the furniture in that room but found no child pornography or drug stash.

  He moved to the bedroom to do a quick check on the furniture there. Except for the several pairs of plastic handcuffs, personal lubricant and a hunting knife in the bedside table there was nothing of note in the sleeping quarters so Rodeo moved back into the study and settled down in front of the bookcase.

  He scanned the shelves quickly and paused at The Old Man and the Sea. He noticed that this version of Ernest Hemingway’s very short classic was much longer than usual so he slid the book out of the shelf. It was a fake book, a realisti
c-looking hideaway for larger valuables, hollowed out and holding a gun, a short-barreled .38 Police Special, old and not well maintained with what looked like very old dried blood spatter rusting on the barrel and the body and staining the white pearl handle.

  He sat looking at the gun for a few minutes then he called Sisely Miller.

  Yes, the woman answered immediately. Have you found it?

  No ma’am, Rodeo said. Professor Burke had access to all the out buildings on Eryn’s property, so it’s a bigger project than I thought it would be. Maybe might take a few days.

  Are you calling for more money then?

  Not yet, Mrs. Miller. Though that might become necessary at some point.

  Then why are you calling me?

  I just wanted to know about your brother’s gun.

  What makes you think he had a gun? Sisely Miller sounded very suspicious.

  Not much doubt about it, Mrs. Miller, Rodeo said. I’m looking at it right now. Smith and Wesson, pearl-handled .38 revolver. Maybe twenty-five or so years old I’d say. He paused. And it really needs a clean.

  So what if my brother does, did have a gun? What’s that to you?

  Well, if this gun was used in the commission of a crime, then that’d be police business, Mrs. Miller.

  What crime? My brother didn’t commit any crime here.

  Suicide is a crime in most states, Rodeo said.

  He overdosed. On prescription medications. That’s a very different matter than suicide.

  I didn’t say I was talking about Professor Burke’s suicide, Rodeo said. He waited long seconds for Sisely Miller to respond.

  Have you found the memoir, she asked.

  No. Not yet, said Rodeo. But you said something when we met at Riverpark Inn about your father having committed suicide and I am looking at a gun that has blood on it.

  Sisely Miller did not speak for a moment, but Rodeo could hear her breathing deeply. She then sighed loud enough to be heard. It’s public record anyway, she said. You could look it up in the Santa Barbara and LA papers from twenty-five years ago. My father committed suicide when we were teenagers and my brother … She hesitated. My brother discovered the body. But the gun was never recovered by the police.

  So, your brother kept that gun? The one your father used to commit suicide?

  It is possible. I have never seen it, but as I said he was very secretive and liked to bury his treasures.

  All right, Mrs. Miller. I’ll not bother you anymore about this. I’ll call when I’m done with the investigation. He disconnected without saying good-bye. His phone rang but he let Sisely Miller get redirected to voice mail.

  He closed the hollowed-out book on the .38 and put it back where he had found it and started a close search of each book, starting at the top shelf with archeology.

  After an hour Rodeo had read down to a shelf height at which a man seated at the desk would have an easy reach from his chair to the bookshelf. And the books in this area were obviously the most used. Rodeo identified and examined the book most clearly dog-eared. Paths of Life: American Indians of the Southwest and Northern Mexico was a nontechnical reference book published by the University of Arizona Press describing and analyzing the cultures of the ten major tribes of Native Americans in the Southwest. As he read the table of contents Rodeo felt a cold hand press his chest.

  * * *

  An hour later Rodeo knocked on Eryn Hage’s back door. She called him in. Eryn was sitting on the cowhide couch staring at the mantelpiece. She nodded Rodeo into the straight-back chair near the hearth but seemed to be lost in serious reverie or simply stoned. Rodeo cleared his throat and she looked at him then.

  Jesus Christ, you look like you got run over by a bull, she said. That just happen out back? Your drop something on yourself?

  Something sort of got dropped on me recently, Eryn, Rodeo said. It’s nothing.

  You know your daddy came in my house one day and looked about like you do right now. When I asked him what happened he said he got drunk and fell off a tractor and the tractor ran right over him. Right over his pretty face. The woman stared again at Buck’s photo on the mantelpiece. He left right after that. I guess he recovered?

  I guess he did, Rodeo said.

  You got things straightened up in my rental, Little Rodeo? Eryn asked.

  Somewhat, Eryn.

  You staying around then?

  I don’t think so, Eryn. I could be here a little while longer but I maybe might have already wrapped things up for Sisely Miller. At least as best as I can.

  Eryn Hage suddenly seemed sober.

  Hard to make a living when you work by the hour and work that quick, the old rancher said.

  Sometimes it’s like that in my business, Rodeo said. Sometimes it’s the other way around.

  Well, whatever you were doing for that Miller woman, charge her double your regular rate because the Millers have more money than the Pope and I guess her people do too from the looks of her and the way she acts, said Eryn Hage.

  What do you mean, Eryn? How does Sisely Miller look and act?

  Like money, the old woman said. Like a Power Player.

  How’d Burke get here to your place then, Eryn? Rodeo asked. No offense, but this place is not exactly the Ritz.

  His sister just rang my doorbell one day. Eryn took a drink. I let her in since she knew some people I knew and she’s not bigger than a fried pie except for her plastic tits. Her Chanel suits weigh more than she does. Said she’d heard about my place for rent from some Gem and Mineral people I might have known once and she wanted a place for her brother to stay. I know the Millers have their in-town family home nearby the courthouse. Had that since forever, of course. Millers were around here even before the Hages were.

  So it was Burke’s sister that actually got Professor Burke in your rental here? Rodeo asked.

  She said her brother wanted someplace private, I guess. With a back way in. Like I told you, the little girl said she was Randy Miller’s wife and I know Randy from Tea Party rallies and I know the Millers who’ve been in south Arizona as long as dirt has been, so it seemed all right. Millers are good people even if some of them are peculiar.

  What does that mean, Eryn?

  Nothing. That’s just the way it is with families. Always have the weird one now and again.

  What do you think of Randy Miller?

  If he doesn’t get himself assassinated then Randy will be our next Congressman from District Seven if I have anything to do with it. Then he’ll probably run for President before he gets too much older or somebody lands some mud on him.

  Who says Randy Miller has been threatened, Eryn? Who would assassinate Randy Miller?

  Some radical leftist crackpot what I heard. It’s all over the Internet, the woman said. She waved her plastic tumbler. You know Randy scares hell out of all them over at the University, all those liberal intellectual types with their heads up their asses.

  What about Sisely Miller, Eryn? asked Rodeo. What did you make of her?

  Well, the little lady carries cash. Which is probably not too smart these days. But it was good for me because she gave me cash money for twelve months, double for Gem Show time and a big damage deposit so I didn’t care if she moved the Ayatollah Khomeini into the rental as long as he didn’t smoke. Like I said, I can’t hear much of anything that goes on in that far apartment. The man kept to himself and so I had no complaints until he killed himself. Truth told I hardly ever saw him. I thought his sister might be the crazy one to tell more truth.

  How so? asked Rodeo.

  She seemed to have an agenda, said Eryn Hage.

  Of what sort?

  Nothing in particular. She’s just not upfront and seems sort of manipulative if you know what I mean. I don’t like sneaky people. I just wasn’t raised that way. Your mother was like that.

  Like what, Eryn?

  Working on their men behind the scenes. Not upfront about things.

  You think Sisely Miller was like that?

/>   I think she had an agenda with Randy, is what I think.

  Like what?

  She needed a husband, he needed a wife. Some people are like that.

  What was the relationship between Sisely and Tinley?

  Before he moved in that sister of his came over here and made out like her brother was some sort of basketcase.

  Was he? asked Rodeo.

  When I met the man he seemed to be just quiet. Maybe he was a little weird. I thought he was queer but then when I was on the back patio one night I heard him banging away at some screaming woman.

  Did you see the woman, Eryn?

  No, she said. I didn’t see her. I heard her. But I don’t meddle with my rentals.

  But his sister told you that Professor Burke was crazy?

  She didn’t say it outright. She said it like, “if you could keep an eye on him and give me a call if he needs anything, Judge Miller and I would appreciate it,” like that. As if I’m going to spy on my own renter or something. I didn’t care what he did as long’s he left me out of it.

  Did you ever visit with him, Eryn?

  He just kept to himself mostly, but when you talked to him he would talk and be friendly enough. Seemed normal for the most part. Just that he wanted to talk about things that weren’t regular, you know.

  Things like what, Eryn?

  Well, not about the weather or horses. My men always wanted to talk about weather or horses. Or dogs or cattle …

  Politics? Did Professor Burke talk about Randy Miller or politics?

  Not about politics, Eryn said. About life stuff, you know. About feelings, whatever the hell those are. And about how I felt being old and being a single woman and what’s the meaning of life kind of crap. The old woman jiggled the ice cubes in her drink and shook her head. Not interested, I told him. Life is life. You live and you die and work in between. So he left me alone after those first few conversations.

  Was Burke acting different lately?

  Seemed downer than usual, Eryn Hage said. But he wadn’t hardly a bundle of joy to begin with. Just seemed preoccupied is all. I know he lost his job at the U and so I thought he probably just missed the teaching work. I gathered from his sister that he didn’t need the money but men need to have work.