Chapter 25
A text message from Harding was waiting for her when she got up: Get thru last night ok?
She deleted it, showered and went downstairs to have breakfast with Shana, who seemed even more tired than normal for a teenager in the morning.
“What are you doing today?”
Shana raised her head but didn’t reply. Her eyes and nose were red.
“Are you coming down with something?”
Janine Becker had missed a week of work with the flu. Shana had been working hard since they’d arrived. She could have become run down, susceptible to catching what was going around.
Shana shook her head with her eyes squeezed shut. “It’s just a headache.” She drank all of her milk, keeping her eyes shut the whole time.
“Did you take anything?”
“Before I came down.”
Shana had inherited her mother’s affliction of suffering miserably through her period as a teen. It was about the only thing that knocked Shana off her feet.
She took a sip of coffee.
“Can I have some?” Her voice had no energy behind it.
She let Shana finish what was left.
She stuck out her tongue. “It needs more sugar.”
“I’m going to the Colter farm today.”
“You have my sympathy.” She lowered her head and rested it on her arms. The table creaked and wobbled.
“And you have mine.”
“Can I borrow your gun for a second?” Her weak voice was muffled even more because she spoke into her arms and the table top.
“Dr. Harding invited us to his farm on Saturday. Are you going to be up for that?”
“He’s handsome but he’s too old.”
“What?”
“Give the twins my best.”
She left Shana groaning at the rickety table and went to work. Kelly was escorting two teen boys to the cells when she entered the office. Amelia Truman was on her chair at the reception desk. Janine Becker, as impeccably lovely as she had been yesterday, was at her desk working on something. Both wished her good morning.
“What’s up with them?”
Kelly held on to the boys when she turned them around to face the sheriff. “They were found stuck inside the security staff room at the mall this morning. The door closed and locked behind them when they broke in and these two geniuses couldn’t get themselves out.”
Both boys wore torn and faded jeans and black T-shirts. Both were shivering. One fancied himself a skinhead. The other had dirty blond hair down to his shoulders. They were covered in tattoos and going through withdrawal from something.
“Show me their hands.” She made sure they didn’t have that howling tattoo. “I’m going out to the Colter farm.”
“We’ll take care of these two.”
The dirty blond suddenly bolted from Kelly’s grasp.
Joan grabbed a handful of greasy hair when he tried to shove her out of the way, swung him around, stepped on his foot to trip him and slammed him into the floor. That maneuver brought gasps from both Amelia and Janine. She allowed herself to think they might be gasps of admiration.
“Stupid little shit.” Kelly pushed the shivering skinhead toward the cells, picked up the shivering, bleeding blond by the hair and dragged him along into the back.
Amelia said, “I’ll clean up the blood and the boy, Sheriff. You have an appointment.”
She took the Sheriff’s Chevy Suburban to Colter’s farm and arrived into the middle of men and machinery working everywhere on the grounds. The machinery was new. The men were young, muscular and looked dangerous. Every last one of them was white. A lot of testosterone floated through the air here.
“A man farm,” she muttered with a chuckle.
Buildings were being constructed. Materials and supplies were piled near each site. Bobby and Billy Cotton were carrying metallic cylinders the size of garbage cans on their shoulders.
The farm had the kinetic energy of a military base going about its business. The apparent chaotic motion belied purpose to everyone’s actions. Colter wasn’t giving up any of the discipline he had imposed while in the marines, which struck her as similar to Harry hanging around to investigate two cases she should be dealing with.
She exited the Suburban when she saw Colter exit an annex attached to a long greenhouse and approach her.
“Good morning, Sheriff.” He shook her hand. His grip was far stronger than Leo’s.
She took his cheque out of her blouse pocket and handed it to him. “No one is pressing charges.”
“Speaking of which,” he said and looked around until he spotted Bobby and Billy. He signaled to them.
The twins put down the grey, metallic cylinders they were carrying and came over. Their bare, muscular, tattooed torsos didn’t have an ounce of fat on them.
Bobby bowed his head. “Sheriff McGowan, we apologize for causing you any difficulty Monday night.”
Billy said, “We overreacted to Dr. Harding’s accusations. It won’t happen again.”
There wasn’t a bit of difference in the timbre of their voices.
“I thought he was only asking questions.”
Billy said, “They sounded more like accusations to us, ma’am.” He glanced at Colter. “But that was no excuse for our behavior.”
“No harm done.”
The twins went back to their cylinders, hoisted them onto their shoulders and took them into a new building of corrugated aluminum siding.
“That couldn’t have been easy for them.”
Bobby and Billy could have apologized to her at the banquet last night. Colter had likely orchestrated this performance so it would be on his turf and terms.
His twitch of a smile, with his hawk-like features, left the impression he was about to assign her to a suicide mission that he had in mind specifically for her. “It was easier than being fired.” He pointed to the building they had just entered. “They’ve been paying penance since they got back by lugging those sections of conduit to our new heating and ventilation control center for the greenhouses. They weigh about a hundred pounds each.”
The twins had brought them up to their shoulders as easily as she might pick up a bag of groceries. One of their hands could completely cover her face. Über-testosterone filled the air at this place, maybe some steroids or gamma radiation.
The first stop on their tour was a series of three older greenhouses growing tomatoes, cauliflowers and peppers. Colter explained with great amusement that they were trying to breed taste back into tomatoes. The fourth and last greenhouse, which was newer than the other three, contained decorative plants.
“Business,” he said, “if you will pardon the pun, is growing. We’re adding another one hundred thousand square feet of greenhouse space to accommodate that growth and facilitate some government research starting next year.”
They had come to where the new greenhouses were being built, though assembled would be a better term to describe the process. Pre-fabricated panels and sections of glass were being fastened together using an elaborate metal skeleton that not only acted as a support structure but also provided conduits for electrical wiring and pipes for water distribution.
“What kind of research?”
“Other than the tomatoes, I’m not exactly sure. I’m just providing the facilities for it. All I know is some of it will be on biological control of greenhouse pests and some will be on genetically modified plants.” He twitch-smiled again and she instinctively averted her eyes. “After all, I couldn’t allow Dr. Harding to be the only one doing research. You could say he has the animal kingdom covered, while I am taking care of the plant kingdom.”
“That leaves Do-Dads and Karyon to take care of the science fiction kingdom. Dominion has it all covered. You and Harding both served in Afghanistan.”
He took her through a barn full of harvesting equipment.
“Harding was in the army. I was a marine.”
“That’s where you got that
tattoo on your hand.”
“You’re very observant. I like that.” He held up his hand. “Everyone in my unit got one of these. We’re very proud of it. It represents the term they used in Afghanistan to describe us.”
“And that would be?”
“They called us the Black Hounds of Death. We did most of our work at night. We were very successful.”
She pointed to two cargo containers that had been raised up on cinderblock foundations and modified to have doors on the sides. Three steps led up to each door. “What’s in there?”
He continued walking. “Those are experimental growth chambers.”
“Are there pod people in there?” They could be housing the gamma ray equipment.
He sustained a wider smile this time. It didn’t make him look any friendlier. “We do grow them as big as we can in there before transplanting, but it’s only squash. I’ve grown some of the biggest pumpkins around. Wait till you see what I bring to the fair this year.”
They had arrived back at the Suburban. Most of the tour had been meaningless to her, forgettable. It all seemed like a normal, very large, very boring agricultural operation.
“What kind of work did you do in the marines?”
“I am not allowed to speak of it.”
For a city with such an active gossip network, there were certainly a high number of members in it who were tight-lipped about themselves. She didn’t find that at all surprising.
“How did a colonel in the marines end up a farmer?”
“I was raised on a farm in Idaho. I just returned to what I know.”
“Were these men in your unit?”
“Most of them, yes.”
Two men about to enter the office turned away from her when she looked at them.
“Some are skittish around a cop.” She pointed to the two men entering the office.
“Some are skittish about any stranger coming to the farm. They’ve had problems adjusting to civilian life. Keeping them here and keeping them busy is the best thing for them right now. It mimics the routine they had in the military. Sometimes, if any of them appear to be getting too agitated, we spend the evening going through manoeuvers to finish the day. It stabilizes their mindset.”
“Do they get help?”
“VA sends counselors and doctors regularly to check on them. I’ve even been asked if I could accommodate a few more, but we are over capacity now.”
“It did seem like a lot of men for a mostly automated farm.”
“That’s the nerve-wracking part. After all the new construction is complete, I’m only going to need about twenty. But I won’t abandon any of them. People who served our country deserve our care.”
“Preaching to the converted, Mr. Colter.”
“Despite your experience with them last Monday, Billy and Bobby are very good at keeping every man here in line.”
Their people skills likely consisted of little more than grunts and fists. Just the thing for a man farm, though, especially if some of the men had unique problems that sometimes only responded to such discipline.
“I did confirm your licences and permits.” She hadn’t, but Colter needed to believe she would follow through on her word. “As you know, Harding has expressed concern about illegal trapping and hunting. His people found a wounded elk last weekend.”
“As you know, I believe it is poachers. I have offered a ten thousand dollar reward for any information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of anyone caught hunting illegally.”
“You run a trophy hunting business, too, don’t you?”
“And a taxidermy service to go with it. I didn’t show you that shop, but I can if you want to have a look. I have all those licences, too, should you want to see them.”
“The elk was shot three times with small-caliber bullets.”
“That just proves my point, Sheriff. I make sure my clients are competent with their weapons before we ever take them hunting. None of them would be stupid enough to use small-caliber ammunition on such a large animal. We put them through a rigid indoctrination about killing humanely. We would rather see our target get away than make a bad kill. It is a matter of professional pride for us.”
“I don’t want you to have to endure any financial hardship, but would it be possible to suspend your hunting operations until we catch the poachers?”
“I have one more group coming in for some special training, but there will be no hunting until the end of September, end of October for elk. I can delay things for up to six weeks with minimal discomfort.”
“Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Can I offer you a cup of coffee or tea? I have some pastry cooling. I baked them this morning.”
“Pastry?”
He laughed. “You have just discovered my dark secret. I usually have some at the end of the day, but,” he patted his flat, hard stomach, “at forty-eight I have to watch what I eat now. You, however, could simply ride off the calories.”
She shook her head. “The distances are getting shorter, going slower and happening with less frequency.” She offered her hand. “I have taken up enough of your time.”
“It’s been my pleasure, Sheriff. Bring Shana with you next time. And if you do get even a whiff of whoever is out there, I’d be glad to offer some of my men to help catch them.” He returned to his office rather than wait to wave good-bye.
It was a perfectly normal farm operation undergoing construction to expand capacity. Nothing looked out of the ordinary or suspicious except for the forty or so battle-hardened men here, most of whom were likely not fit enough at the moment to set foot off the Black Hounds of Death ranch.
Colter had been open, straightforward and forthcoming about the mental health of some of the men. His claim of medical and psychological care from the VA could be checked easily enough.
The military could effectively train someone to kill, but it was impossible to know with any certainty what would happen to them after they did. Many veterans fell into the cracks when they returned home traumatized after what they’d been through.
Were some of them going through horrendous flashbacks that sent them into the wild on a mission only they were aware of? Were they setting traps because they believed they’d been isolated from their unit? They were staying alive any way they could until they were rescued. Colter might be rescuing them on a regular basis. He could be covering for them out of loyalty.
She would not look forward to having to take action against such men or anyone who was offering refuge to them.
Once back inside the Suburban, she checked her phone for messages. The only one was a text from Harding repeating his previous question and adding another: still think he has nothing to do with illegal trapping and hunting?
She deleted the text without responding.
Wear Something Red Page 25