by Sue Hardesty
We tracked rustlers all morning and found a cut in the fence where a truck loaded the cows. Without a brand, it's going to be hard to get them back. These old mother cows have been here for years, dropping calves to keep my grandparents going. Selling the steers is about their only income. I'm putting a BOLO out tomorrow and hope for the best.
Remember the plane wreck? Went to Rene's funeral and watched some interesting interactions. I also had an unexpected visitor tonight, Rene’s half sister Dot. Went to school with her but I forgot she was related to Rene who was my history teacher. She said she thought her husband was into drugs but she didn't know about Rene. Knowing the old Dot, I find that hard to believe. First time I've been hit on since I got home, though. She wants me to help her get rid of her husband. Told her if he was doing something illegal, I would arrest him. But that’s as far as I’d go. Hope she doesn't get caught in whatever Larry and Rene were doing.
Write more tomorrow if I can.
Loni
The cold sheets felt wonderful on her hot burned skin. If she kept this up, she'd soon be as dark as Willie.
CHAPTER 7
July 7, 3:00 a.m.
ALL THAT LONI RAN INTO on patrol were the bugs that splattered on her windshield. Sore, burning muscles and her aching butt made her want to scream as she squirmed in the sweltering heat, but she still had trouble staying awake. She finally drove off the highway part of the way down an abandoned trail and parked the SUV. Snatching the plastic baggie of aloe vera leaves, she got out and turned Coco loose. Behind a bush, she dropped her pants and squeezed the goo out of a leaf, rubbing it on the inside of her thighs. It helped for a little bit, but she wished for her grandma's salve.
At four in the morning, she rounded the town square, slowing down to stop in a circle of light flowing from the bakery's open door and windows. The smell of the baking doughnuts made her saliva run. Through the screen door, she watched the baker, dressed all in white, as he poured a large bag of flour into the huge mixing bowl. The white flour dust puffed up almost as high as his white Dr. Seuss hat. Smiling at the Doughboy image, Loni moved on, circling a few blocks before she returned into the darkness.
As she drove into early morning, lights flickered on one by one in shadowed houses as ranchers and farmers got ready for work, people she knew from long ago. To pass the time, she made up stories about what had happened to the families during the years she was gone.
The sky turned from pink to yellow. Her slow night was almost done when she parked in a wide spot on Harper Road. A car fishtailed by her, spinning its tires as it raced down the highway. Jolted into pursuit, she clocked it at 120 mph. As it shrank to a dot on the horizon, she called to warn Bobby, hoping she could get the car stopped before it reached the outskirts of Caliente. Cold day in hell. "It's a dark blue Mercedes, Bobby. Looked like S Class."
"Oh lord, I want one of those so bad."
"If I catch this guy with drugs, I'll get it for you."
"James drives a confiscated drug car. Why not?"
Loni heard Bobby's sigh as she hung up and clutched the steering wheel. At ninety miles per hour, the SUV began to dance and shimmy. She grabbed the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white as she fought a vibration so savage, she felt herself losing control. Forcing herself to slow down, she relaxed her grip on the steering wheel and sped toward town. The car was long gone.
As her patrol car reached the first cluster of houses, she spotted the Mercedes slowly weaving onto the wrong side of the road. It lurched onto the shoulder of the road, motor running, its fender up against a guardrail. The back window was too tinted for her to see inside. "Something's not right," she said to Coco. "Hey, Bobby. That Mercedes ran off the road, and I don't like it. It's got a Mexican plate." Loni rattled off the numbers and letters. "Get me some backup."
"I'll send James," Bobby said.
Loni flipped on the loudspeaker. "Get out of the car," her voice blared into the early dawn. She waited. Nothing moved. "Get out of the car, now!" She waited. "Well shit, Coco," she reluctantly told the dog, "we better go see."
She pointed her gun down as they slipped by the darkened windows on the driver's side of the car. Her mind flashed back to a good friend who had stopped a speeding car and called for backup. First to arrive on the scene, Loni found Tom face down in the middle of the highway in his own blood, no car in sight. Never found the shooter. It was times like this Loni felt the most vulnerable. She liked having a partner, knowing someone was there for her. Waiting for backup, she rapped on the window. "Out! Now!" Nothing stirred. She yanked open the door, her gun ready, and found a man slumped over the steering wheel. He was alone. And dead.
His wrinkled Western shirt and dress pants had that travel look. So did the stubble on his pasty face and food wrappers covering the floor. The blood on the grey floor mat under his feet oozed toward the door. Pulling him back, she saw a knife handle sticking out of his stomach and a large red circle on his white pearl-snapped shirt. She let him flop back and closed the door.
"Bobby. That Mercedes? The driver's dead, a knife in his stomach. Maybe he was trying to get to the clinic."
"Guess he didn't make it," Bobby answered.
"I need CSI out here now. And send me a wrecker."
"Know who he is?"
"Nope. Young, well dressed, all I can tell. Didn't want to disturb the crime scene."
"Maybe you shouldn't move the car."
"This isn't the original crime scene. The man can't sit in this heat all day."
* * *
Loni followed the wrecker to the police garage. Gary Beasley, the police mechanic, was on duty. He wore a police baseball cap, and darkened blotches of grease covered the front of his shirt and his frayed cuffs. Like a doctor, he wore plastic gloves. "Allergic to grease," he had told her once. She made him promise not to take his eyes off the car until the crime scene people and coroner got to it.
* * *
Her shift finally at an end, Loni traded the SUV for her truck, noting the car was still sitting in the police garage. Gary waved as she climbed in her truck. Her adrenaline had faded enough for her to remember again how much her thighs burned. She drove to her grandparents' ranch trying not to squirm. Every movement only made her burn worse. As she stopped in front of the house, her cell phone rang. "Hey," she said. "Tell me what you have to say won't hurt as bad as I already do."Lola's laugh was infectious. "Chief wants you back. I'll protect you."
"Why?"
"Because you're special?"
"No," Loni said, embarrassed. "Why do I have to come back?"
"What? I know everything?"
"Well, yes."
Lola laughed again. "Not this time."
Loni sighed. "When?"
"Twenty minutes ago."
"Listen. I've got to get my grandma's salve on my thighs and ass. Give me another five."
"What's wrong with your ass?"
"I spent the weekend on a horse, and I'm dying here."
Loni could still hear Lola's laugh as she hung up and slowly climbed out of her truck.
Unscrewing the lid on the homemade salve from the bathroom shelf, Loni slathered the foul-smelling grease all over her butt and the inside of her legs down to her ankles. She stood and sighed in relief, feeling the fire leach from her skin. Then it hit her. She had forgotten how her grandma's crap smelled like a fresh skunk dead in the road. She would have to stay far away from people or get hassled. And she was in no mood for that. Backing up, Coco kept at a distance, her nose tilted up, sniffing the air. Loni pushed through the screen door, leaving her behind. "I'll be back soon. Very soon. Very soon," she kept repeating to the woeful dog as she backed to her truck.
Her grandma came to the door and patted Coco on the head. "Dogs can't reckon time, child."
"Shush, Shiichoo. Don't tell Coco that. She'll think you're lying to her," Loni teased. "Would you tell Bahb to take Coco home for me?" she hollered out the window of her truck. "I gotta get back to work."
As she reached the last tree under the row of clustered salt cedars overhanging the circle driveway, one of the banty hens flew against her windshield and nose-dived onto the hood of her truck. Loni jerked to a stop. Please, lord, let that chicken be all right. It wasn't the time to make her grandma mad. In a few seconds, the tiny mottled brown and red hen stood up, shook her head, wagged her tail, and crapped on her hood. Gracefully leaving the scene of her crime, she flapped back into the tree.
Ignoring the poop, Loni finally reached the highway and waited to get onto the road while seven John Deere combines passed, fancy refrigerated king cabs with CD players, as they headed for the safflower fields. The sound of Western twang from a local radio station poured out of the last one as it rumbled by. Pulling onto the highway, she smelled the hot exhaust from the combines' powerful engines as they turned into a safflower field, splashes of green against the blinding yellow flowers.
The field ended abruptly at Caliente's city limit sign boasting a population of four-thousand twenty-five. The outlying gated developments made the town seem much bigger, and Caliente Butte and the reservation village near its southern border, along with the development at the Wagner Airport to the west, added to the population. Farmers, ranchers and miners also came to town to shop, as well as Mexicans who came across the border. It seemed the strangers in and out had erased the quiet, safe place of her childhood. Or was it ever that safe? Loni wondered.
As the truck rolled through the outskirts of town, familiar landmarks, all in the same shades of desert tan, unfolded. Wood, adobe brick, sidewalks, sand pitted vehicles stripped of color; this was what Loni remembered most about the desert: the lack of color and open space. Abandoned cars and pickups rose in the middle of dead weeds surrounding older, unpainted houses bleached pale tan. screened-in porches filled with rocking chairs, tables, and beds stretched across the front of each home. Too poor to have refrigeration, old time residents like Miss Mickle, her favorite grade school teacher, spent their time on these porches, waiting for a stray breeze. The frail woman waved at her, and Loni waved back.
Loni passed the Mormon Church, stucco white with a tall cone shaped sphere reaching into the sky. She remembered counting the churches and bars in town. The churches won, whatever that meant.
An empty service station huddled next to the old abandoned movie theater, with its faded yellow sign on the big double doors that read "CONDEMNED." She admired the marquee, pushing out in all of its past splendor. Carved wood with chipped gilt surrounded a few plastic letters hanging precariously from their railings. The city refused to confiscate the property because it cost them too much. The building waited, the last owner dead and no heirs to be found. Or, at least, no one who admitted to owning it.
The last owner was Old Man Jandas, mostly deaf and blind. Every night after he closed, he climbed up to a small one-room shack on top of the building. The last time she saw him, he was coming out of it in his white night shirt.
The movie that night was "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." The image had been so fuzzy that the crowd chanted, "Focus, focus, focus." Finally someone in the audience went up and fixed it.
When she got out of the movie, Loni had found a flat tire on Bahb's old pickup and was stuck across the street, waiting to get it fixed.
It was Halloween night. Earlier in the day, Old Man Jandas had gone to Phoenix to pick up his mail-order bride. Hurrying to get his theater open, he blasted through an outhouse that the football team had sat in the middle of the street in front of his theater. Without a word, his new bride got out of his car, picked her way through the shattered pieces of wood to the drugstore, and waited for the next bus back to Phoenix.
Jandas was heartbroken.
As Loni had waited for her tire repair, the service station owner's wife screamed, "Oh my god, he's going to jump! Somebody stop him!"
Everybody stared up at the old man as he stopped at the edge of the roof and leaned out. Stunned, they watched a steaming stream, sparkling in the street light, arc off the roof. Jandas turned and disappeared back into his shack.
Smiling at the memory, Loni stopped for gas at the new service station, the only one still open in town and the only one for a good fifty miles. There was no service. No one came to help. She poked her credit card into the slot and filled the truck's tank. A blond teenager in a small hutch behind bulletproof glass read a comic book as he waited to flip pump switches on and off.
On Main Street, she passed the general store facing the town square and turned onto B Street. Over half the storefronts were vacant, and the rest were mostly bars. Billy the Kid's bar claiming a famous fight on this spot, Last Stop Bar self explanatory, River Bar a false hope name. River waters had long since been trapped behind towering dam walls.
Loni parked in the police lot and stepped out into oven-blasting heat that sucked the breath out of her. Ducking her head to avoid the sun's glare, she hurried across the street as fast as her raw legs could move, her boot heels sinking into the soft, sun-melted asphalt that burned through her soles. She waddled up the long sidewalk and pushed the button beside the heavy, reinforced door, shoving the handle down at the click. At the first feel of cool air, she gingerly walked up to the booking desk.
Lola watched her slow approach. "You got here."
"Still no idea why I was summoned?"
"Nope." Lola nodded toward Chief's office. "But he's meaner than a snake. Better throw a piece of raw meat in first." Nodding toward the bullpen, Lola said, "Something big, looks like. You've got lots of company. I'll let you know when Chief is ready."
Sighing, Loni looked toward the bullpen. Lola's right, she thought. It must be big. This was the first time she had seen so many town cops and highway patrollers in one place.
"Makes you wonder who's minding the store, huh?"
"Hope to god it doesn't have anything to do with Rene's plane." Loni cringed. "Chief's mad enough."
Following Tully, she walked into the sound of male laughter and found a seat in the far corner. It was like roll call in LA, she thought, realizing that cop humor was another thing she missed, even though it was black.
"What's so funny?" Tully groused. "It's too damn hot for anything to be funny."
"Well shit, Tully, ain't you used to this heat yet?" said a patrolman Loni hadn't seen before.
"Hell, no."
"How long you lived here, anyway?"
"Eighteen summers."
"Ignore Tully," James told the laughing patrollers. "He doesn't even know which way to go to get out of the heat. I heard someone ask him for directions to Springerville, and he said, 'Just head north.' The man asked him which way was north. Tully told him he couldn't say. Just use a compass. This really pissed the guy off. 'Damned if you're not the dumbest cop I ever saw. You don't know anything, do you?'" James paused, basking in the attention. "So then Tully said to the tourist, 'Maybe not. But I'm not lost, either.'"
"Well, shit," Tully objected. "I only got to town the day before. You ever see how lopsided this town sits compared with the world?"
James laughed at him and continued, "My favorite is when Tully asked Old Man Phillips where the Laundromat was. Phillips said, 'It's over behind where the old theater burned down.' Tully said, 'I been livin' in this town just a month. How the hell would I know where that was?' Old Man Phillips said, 'I just told you where it was,' and he walked away mumbling about all we needed was the outsiders coming in on the short bus."
"What is this, Pick on Tully Day?" he complained.
"Thought you just said you lived here eighteen years," Bacon drawled.
"In the desert," Tully nearly yelled. "Eighteen long goddamn summers in the goddamn desert."
Tully stalked down the hall toward the restroom, laughter following him.
Another patrolman sitting next to James spoke up. He was really cute with dark blue eyes, wild red hair, and big freckles splattered everywhere. Loni guessed he was in his early thirties. "I got a ticket story. Yesterday I passed a woman with both her feet str
addling the steering wheel, painting her toenails. When I stopped her and gave her a ticket, she said, 'I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was on cruise control.'"
"Oh god, I had one of those too," Bacon said in the slow way that he told stories. "This one put his RV rental on cruise control and went back to shit. Found hisself sitting on the side of the road, with his pants gone. Said he thought cruise control meant it could drive itself."
"Was he hurt bad?"
"Not a scratch except on his bare ass. The fiberglass bathroom saved him. Couldn't drive that RV again though. It was one of those two-by-four square jobbies. Lumber scattered for blocks."