Nightzone

by Steven F Havill

  Whether such complete publicity would be a strategy that worked to Waddell’s advantage, or gave his opponents plentiful ammunition to kill the project, only time would tell.

  I noticed that no mention was made, in any of the stories, about a locomotive chugging across ranch land to the NightZone mesa. Miles Waddell was becoming adept as a politician.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It’s easy to allow oneself to dwell on events about which nothing can be done—but life goes on. I turned another page of the Posadas Register, and was startled again. There, nicely printed, was the concert poster photo of Francisco Guzman and Mateo Atencio, with a three-column headline running underneath. Concert Debuts Two Works, the bold print heralded. Were the two youngsters “the works?” I scanned the story and chuckled. Dayan had seen the posters, talked with the school’s music teacher, Jerry Reader, and maybe even called Leister Conservatory. But he hadn’t found out anything new. He hadn’t been able to talk with the child musicians. He’d missed having the story in the previous week’s paper, since the posters hadn’t appeared soon enough.

  Here again, patience was forced upon me. Sure, I could call my godson, and I didn’t doubt that Francisco Guzman would talk to me, his padrino…after a vow of secrecy. But I wasn’t about to intrude there, either. I could wait, like everyone else. Damn it.

  A big week for the Posadas Register, though. Dayan would be swelling with pride. The concert story should have graced page one, but I knew I would have had a hard time convincing the publisher of that. Crime sells. Classical music concerts are lucky to make it out of the classifieds.

  Finished with the paper, I settled in the big leather chair down in my library, and picked up the rusted hulk that used to be a Colt Single Action Army revolver.

  The trigger, which in the flower of youth was a slender little sliver of polished, blued steel, had rusted away, leaving only a little nub projecting from the frame. Interesting that the sear, protected in the gun’s guts and perhaps bathed in oil, hadn’t rusted away too, allowing the powerful hammer spring to slam the hammer down. The whole mechanism was one big lump of corrosion.

  Was the original shootist killed while holding the Colt at full cock, ready to defend himself? Had he fired once, and was ready to put a second slug into his victim? What stayed his hand? A slug in him, most likely.

  I turned the gun this way and that, enjoying both its heft and history. To whom had it been shipped? Was it a single-gun shipment to an individual, or one of several to a hardware distributor? The one compartment of my mind not occupied by other things contemplated all that.

  I put the relic back on the shelf, found my notebook, and with a coffee refill, headed out the door, grateful for my burst of ambition. With no phone messages from the sheriff, the State Police investigator, or the district attorney, I opted to continue enjoying the day with a project that was solely mine. I made sure I had the County Assessor’s map portfolio that I’d managed to copy years before, and piled into my SUV. Posadas sheriff’s dispatch sounded politely interested when I informed them of my location and intentions.

  Intuition had rarely done much good for me—I didn’t have Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s finely tuned dousing rod. But powered by professional-quality wishful thinking, I knew without a doubt—no doubt whatsoever—that the Colt had belonged at some point to someone from the Bennetts’ camp. The wrong caliber to be a military issue, the gun was certainly civilian, and its loss would have sparked a panicky search…unless its owner had been dead by the time the revolver had clunked down into the rocks. The gun had been lost exactly where I proposed Bennett’s Trail—named by me—to pass through that rugged country.

  Within rifle-shot distance of Waddell’s project to the south, I had found the revolver on the south-facing slope of the “fort,” that rough mound of rock that had protected travelers from the wind and weather. When dropped, the Colt had most likely been only a year or two old—still a treasure, and still worth a month’s pay in those days. Junk or treasure, I’d added the relic to my collection of artifacts from that portion of the county. Every single one added something to the legend of the Bennetts…at least to someone like me, with an active imagination.

  My objective on this clear, brisk day was a small trash dump that I’d found late one afternoon several weeks before, discovered when I’d been ready to head in to town for dinner. I hadn’t taken the time then to do a proper survey as the light failed, and I hoped this was just the therapy I needed. I couldn’t quiet the unanswered questions about the weeks’ events that persisted in my mind, too many avenues of investigation that I wished—all right, longed—to pursue. Too many people deserved answers.

  Instead, I tried to force my attention to this small scatter of junk. A tin can was an interesting artifact, believe me. If the label was paper, it was gone in a year or so, remnants turned face down lasting a bit longer. Printing on the metal itself faded evenly with time. After only a year, a bright Coke can will fade to a soft pinkish. The metal of the can itself hadn’t been tin for generations, and the steel corroded at a sedate pace.

  At one point, cans were sealed with a drop of solder in the fill hole—not exactly high tech, but it worked. As these older cans turned to deep rust, almost black, what did remain, happily, was that little touch of solder. That solder plug dated the can’s remains back to the latter years of the 19th and early 20th century. That wasn’t exact archeology, but it was fun. What I hoped to find was a fragment of something that shouted out, loud and clear, “Eighteen Ninety-one,” the last year I’d been able to find any trace of Josiah Bennett being in Posadas County. His name was on a property claim. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t lived long enough to make his mark on the land, but there his name was, in beautiful script, in one of the musty old county ledgers. The ink had flowed on 2June1891.

  It was easier to hike across the rugged prairie than to drive, so I parked on the county road. Major construction was going on at the power-line site down by the cattle guard south of me, with half a dozen big rigs and a towering crane. Through binoculars, I could see a flat-bed truck loaded with the transformer jugs. Not far from the scorch of the fire, a chain-link fence with top strands of barbed wire was being erected around an area a hundred feet on a side. Miles Waddell was getting more than just a little gray bottle hung from a cross buck. His development would drink juice at an astounding rate, and the new substation would supply it.

  Picking my way with care, I climbed the south slope of Bennett’s Fort, scanning every pebble, chunk of dried cactus, or stump of creosote bush. What I really wanted was a pack rat’s den. Those little critters are an archeologist’s best friend, right up there with skeletons and fire circles.

  The can scatter was where I had remembered it, on the east slope where the sunrise would catch it. Just downgrade was a gnarly juniper with multiple stumps and shaggy, long strings of bark. It had seen and heard the whole tale, but it wasn’t talking. Mounded around its roots and stumps was enough detritis to suggest a pack rat at work.

  The first can to attract my attention was two-thirds buried, its punched top open, the dirt cascading inside. Easing it out of the ground, I could make out the ghost of its embossed metal announcing KC baking powder. You gotta have biscuits. KC cans were scattered across the entire Southwest, right along with cans that had once held peaches or pears, and a few years later, Prince Albert’s finest.

  What I wanted was a circle of stones, natural or otherwise, with charcoal inside the ring. Locate a camp’s fire circle, and the odds of finding other artifacts escalates exponentially. A group of folks takes their ease by the fire, and trouser pockets point the wrong way. A coin slips out, or a pocket knife, or a comb. And in the toss-perimeter around the campfire, the empty bottles land, sometimes to smash, sometimes only to chip. The French investigator Locard was right. You can’t pass this way without leaving something behind. Early campers didn’t even try.

  I picked at thi
s and that, making a mental note to build a screen sifter someday. The trouble with a sifter, though, was that it presumed digging, which presumed a shovel. Next thing you know, you have work. Pretty soon somebody stops by to see what you’re doing, and the trance is broken.

  That idea had no sooner crossed my mind than the distant chuff of a diesel and the faint crunch of gravel alerted me. I’d been sitting with my back to the afternoon sun, soaking it in like a grand old lizard, and I turned when Miles Waddell pulled his big pickup truck to the shoulder of the county road a hundred yards away. Sure enough, he’d found me. He parked immediately behind my SUV, and dismounted. He had company. A vehicle I recognized as the courtesy car from the airport, an aging, sun-faded Chevy Malibu, parked in trail.

  I admitted to being a creature of first impressions, and I watched as Miles and a statuesque woman advanced across the prairie. She was of equal height to Miles, but a trifle stouter—powerful, if it was appropriate to apply that term to women. A dark blue monogrammed cap was pulled low over her eyes, double concealed behind a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. Hair just a shade off white was cut pixie style, long enough to look nice, too short to grab.

  Rising to my feet as they approached, I saw that they were in no hurry, and the rancher was clearly in motor-mouth mode, the murmur of his explanations floating across to me. She walked with her hands slipped into her hip pockets, and that pulled her shoulders back enough that the open quilted jacket proved my first impression correct. In addition to a spectacular figure, the open jacket revealed something else—a moderately sized automatic in a high-rise holster.

  Cop. With a half dozen agencies currently at work in the county, which one was she? And why the hell did she need the airport’s long-of-tooth heap? She smiled at something Waddell said, and then the two of them hit the scatter of rocks and boulders on the hillside. Steep enough that he had to attend to business, I saw Miles lean forward and work at climbing, his hand occasionally dropping down to a rock as an assist. She followed, obviously waiting on the rancher. Had she wanted, she could have danced up the hill.

  “Thought we’d find you out here,” Miles called. I didn’t reply, but waited as he panted the last few feet. “You sure can find the spots,” he added. He reached out to shake my hand, turning as he did so. “Bill, this is Lynn Browning. Mrs. Browning, this is Bill Gastner,” and he added the list of titles, former this and that, that people always seem to think important.

  “A pleasure,” Mrs. Browning said. Her voice was a throaty alto. Mrs. was an old-fashioned label I hadn’t heard much lately. “I saw the article in today’s paper. I hope the Baum case will resolve itself for you.” She took off her dark glasses and let her interesting, just-off-gray eyes bore into mine.

  “One way or another,” I replied. “And you are with…”

  “Lynn is CEO of United Security Resources.” For someone who hours before had been so dead set against a private security army, Miles sounded pleased with himself. “Out of Denver,” he added. “They’re the ones who contacted me earlier.”

  “Uh huh.” Astounded, I wondered what she had told Miles to effect such a complete switcheroo in a matter of hours. I settled on the tried and true. “You folks have had some winter.”

  I’m sure Lynn Browning hadn’t flown 700 miles to discuss the weather, especially since Denver always had winter.

  “For a little while, I wasn’t sure we were going to get out of town,” she replied. Her bright smile was sincere and charming—melting, one could say. “By the time we crossed into New Mexico,” and she made a curtain rising motion with her hands.

  “That’s the way we are,” I said.

  “You are fortunate.” She pivoted at the waist to survey the prairie. “And just look at this,” she said in a reverential whisper. She turned back and studied me with blue-gray eyes. “Are you looking for something in particular, sir?”

  “Pack rats would be nice,” I replied.

  “Industrious little collectors.” I was pleased that she hadn’t instead asked, “What are they?” Instead, she’d instantly made the correct connection, and I was beginning to understand the wily Miles falling under this young woman’s spell. Although now, at close range, I saw that I would be hard-pressed to make an accurate guess at her age—thirty-five, perhaps. Forty, maybe even forty-five. The fine skin around ears, eyes and mouth hadn’t been ruined by smoking or sun-worshipping.

  “Mr. Waddell tells me that you’re working to trace the movements of a frontier family that might have passed this way.”

  Miles Waddell shifted when I looked at him, glancing off into the distance as if thinking some version of the modern lingo, “my bad.” How effortless it was to share information with someone who first appeared congenial and…attractive. And in fact there was nothing wrong with Lynn Browning knowing what I was doing—except the principle of the thing.

  “Sure enough. A grand waste of time, no doubt. It’s just a curiosity of mine.”

  “Puzzles can become consuming.” She sounded as if she really meant it. “How do you know they came this way, these people?”

  “Well, actually, I don’t,” I sighed. “Little pieces here and there. An educated guess.”

  “And their significance?”

  With a laugh, I said, “Absolutely none. It would be nice if I thought he’d left a chest of gold bullion behind somewhere, but as far as I can determine, he died nearly penniless, bludgeoned to death by his own son-in-law.”

  “Right on this spot?”

  “I doubt it. Family legend places the murder up north somewhere.” I shrugged. “I don’t think anyone knows.” We had tested Miles Waddell’s patience to his limit.

  “In light of what happened in the past couple of days, Lynn came down to express her company’s interest in person,” Miles said. “I have one of their packets over in the truck. And you know, regardless of what I was saying the other day, it sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

  That was fast, I thought. “More power to you.”

  “I wondered if I could get you to take a look at it.” He managed to sound as if I’d already agreed to do such things for him. I decided not to argue, not to play hard to get. A more sincere entrepreneur than Miles Waddell there never was, but I had the feeling he was going to have to work hard to avoid being skinned. Someone as attractive, smooth, and sweet-talking as Lynn Browning could pull the wool over his eyes with a few elevated heartbeats. More importantly, I was curious.

  “I’m not familiar with United Security Resources,” I said to Mrs. Browning. “How about a company capsule in fifty words or less.”

  She smiled, but it was a practiced delivery. She slipped the earpiece of her sunglasses into her pocket, and her gaze was direct and unflinching—almost as if she knew exactly what impact those eyes had on men, and wanted their full effect turned loose on me.

  “We employ two hundred and forty security specialists around the world, almost always in small teams. We work entirely with private enterprise. No embassies, no politics, no celebrity security. One of our newest contracts is with a small container shipper, placing two employees on each of their seven container ships. We have people with a contractor on the ice roads up in the north country. We have two people helping with a massive university study in Peru at Machu Picchu. There is a team at a major health facility that’s being built by one of the big computer companies in Zimbabwe.”

  She paused, maybe to see if I’d been counting words. I hadn’t, and looked expectant.

  “Our primary interest is providing security for very special needs. We do not do box store parking lots at Christmas, or provide ride-along armed services for bank couriers. As I said, we do not stand guard for celebrities or politicians.”

  “You pick and choose.”

  “Yes, sir. We do.”

  “You flew into Posadas today?”

  She nodded. “The new airport paving
job and runway extensions are impressive, by the way.”

  I picked up an abandoned zip top lid that had faded to a nice soft silver. Trash or artifact—it was only a matter of perspective. “And what challenges does Mr. Waddell face that your firm is eager to help with?”

  “He and I discussed some of the commonly held impressions the public might have about private security firms,” Lynn said. “First of all, we are not a gang of thugs. We don’t stand in the corner dressed in black, glowering at folks while every once in a while talking into a little wrist radio. We learn the entire operation, and then we phase into it in the most seamless and effective way possible.” She clasped her hands together. “We like to be proactive, not reactive.” She smiled. “We can react, if the need arises. We prefer to make confrontation unnecessary. We do that by making sure that our employees have a sincere interest in the project to which they’re assigned, and understand its unique challenges.”

  “That presupposes a hell of an educated, trained staff,” I said.

  “Two things are absolute for our hires,” she said. “One, a four-year college degree in something useful.” She smiled. “One of our newest hires has a bachelor’s in music from Ithaca College in New York. Second, we require successful completion of a reputable, nationally ranked law enforcement academy. We pay for that if it isn’t already on the resumé. Our folks need a clear understanding of what their boundaries are.”

  “Lots of cops don’t have that,” I scoffed. “Military experience?”