by Ben Rehder
“You watchin’ the Cowboys this afternoon?” Colby asked.
“Probably catch it on the radio,” Marlin replied.
“Lookin’ like a pretty bad year.”
Marlin nodded.
“Their runnin’ game has gone to hell,” Colby said, “and their defense is a sieve.”
Marlin heard the jingle of the bell hanging on the front door of the diner and glanced over, but it wasn’t Rodney Bauer.
“Have I told you about my new two-seventy?” Colby asked. “That sucker can hit the same hole twice at a hundred yards. Can’t wait to get out hunting next week.”
“Yeah, you mentioned it,” Marlin said. He knew Colby was trying to draw him into conversation, to help him quit dwelling on other, less pleasant topics. Like the fact that Becky was gone, probably for good.
Unfortunately, in a small town, gossip travels faster than a spooked mare, and Marlin knew the locals were wondering whether he and Becky were still seeing each other. Marlin had no idea why people were so interested in other people’s social lives. They were always asking vague, not-so-innocent questions, giving him sympathetic looks, trying to draw information out of him. What have you been doing lately? Haven’t seen you in town much… where you been? You still living by yourself out there in the sticks? Like the other day, when Susannah Branson had asked him if he had lost weight. What Marlin had heard, between the lines, was: Haven’t you been eating? What’s bothering you? That’s why he had given her the smart-ass “tapeworm” answer. Because Marlin didn’t want to talk about it.
Colby went quiet and focused on the basketball game playing on the TV mounted above the bar.
After a few minutes of silence, the bell jingled again and Rodney Bauer walked in. He spotted Marlin and Colby and strolled casually to their table. “Hey, John-hey, Phil. Y’all mind if I join you?”
“I thought that was the plan,” Marlin said, and Rodney sat down.
Rodney signaled the waitress for coffee, then leaned in close over the table. He whispered, “Something really strange happened to me yesterday, John, and I’m pretty pissed off about it.” In a quiet voice, Rodney led Marlin through the events of the day before.
“She jammed the muzzle of your gun into the mud?” Marlin repeated. Next to him, Colby let out a small laugh.
Rodney nodded. “That’s what I said: She shot the shit outta my truck, and when she was done, she shoved my gun into the mud. Then she said that I should be ashamed of myself. For shootin’ birds, of all things.”
Colby suppressed a giggle by trying to disguise it as a cough. “Ain’t funny,” Rodney said, glaring at Colby. “Took me a solid hour to clean that mess up. And my Chevy is all screwed up.”
“She driving an old yellow Volvo?” Marlin asked.
“Never did see what she was drivin’. By the time I came to my senses, she had hopped the fence again and was gone.”
“What’d she look like?”
Rodney looked down at the table. “Well, that’s why I’m keepin’ this kinda quiet.” He glanced furtively around the diner. “She’s finer than frog hair, boys. Tall and blonde and an absolute knockout. See, I don’t want word to get back to Mabel. She may think I’ve got something going on with this gal.”
Colby finally lost it and erupted in laughter. “You been datin’ your way through the supermodel circuit, Rodney?” he managed to ask.
Rodney tensed, and Marlin held up a hand to quiet them both. “She look anything like that?” Marlin gestured to the front windows of the diner.
Outside, two people had just arrived in a rusty yellow Volvo. The driver was a short, scruffy guy with ragged curly hair, a wispy beard, and a weathered camouflage jacket. The other was a tall blonde woman who would have looked right at home on the cover of Cosmopolitan. She was dressed casually, in a tailored jacket and cream-colored denims.
The residents of Blanco were accustomed to strangers passing through town; after all, Main Street was also U.S. Highway 281. But the majority of visitors looked like they belonged on the streets of Austin or Dallas, whereas this woman looked like a vision from the runways of Milan. When she walked through the front door of the diner, the small crowd went dead quiet.
The couple found a table and, as she prepared to sit down, the woman removed her jacket. She was wearing a tight red turtleneck that hugged a curvy torso. Marlin was embarrassed when one deaf old regular said, a little too loudly, “I’m glad I took my heart medicine this mornin’.” The crowd tittered.
The woman turned, found the old man, and gave him a sly wink, which caused a murmur. “That’s her!” Rodney hissed. “She’s the one who blasted my truck!”
“You sure about that, Rodney?” Marlin sounded skeptical. “I mean, if I go question her, I won’t be making a complete ass of myself?”
“No doubt whatsoever. Look at her, John. You think there’s two of her kind runnin’ around Blanco County?”
“Good point.”
Marlin gave Colby a look that asked, What am I about to get myself into?
Colby responded with a shrug. “Duty calls.”
Marlin rose and crossed the room to the woman’s table. The crowd was silent, enjoying a front-row seat to whatever was about to happen.
“’Mornin’, ma’am…sir.” Marlin nodded to them both.
The woman gave him a poker face. “Good morning, Officer.” The woman appeared so Scandinavian, Marlin was expecting an accent, but there was nothing but a Midwestern twang.
“Ma’am, I was wondering if I could speak to you outside for a minute.”
“Pardon?”
“Well, I just want to ask you a few questions about an incident. I’m the game warden in Blanco County.”
The woman started to reply, but her scruffy companion spoke up, with a bit of an attitude. “We can read the badge on your shirt, sir. Do you mind telling us what this is all about?”
The internal radar Marlin had developed by interviewing thousands of poachers simply said: Asshole. Marlin dealt with all types of people in the course of a season. Most were respectable, law-abiding citizens. But some were belligerent, some were drunk, and still others-like this guy-were self-righteous jerks who thought they were above the law.
Marlin responded with a little attitude of his own: “Sir, at the moment I’m speaking to this young lady. If I have any questions for you, I’ll be sure to let you know.” He kept a firm glare on Mr. Scruffy for a moment. The man gave Marlin a contemptuous sneer, but remained silent.
Marlin turned back to the blonde woman and gestured toward the front door. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind…” The woman remained seated. “I believe I’ll stay right here, but feel free to ask all the questions you want.”
“Fine,” Marlin said, taking a breath. “We’ve received a couple of reports of hunter harassment in the last few days, and you match the description of the woman involved. Now, can you tell me where you were yesterday at about two in the afternoon?”
The woman raised her hand and drummed her fingertips theatrically on her cheek. “Well, let’s see. After lunch we stopped at the grocery store and got a few things, then we filled the car with gas. And then, yes, right at about two o’clock, I was teaching good ol’ Rodney over there the error of his ways.” The woman looked across the room at Rodney and said, in her best cocktail-party voice, “Why, hello, Rodney! Good to see you again, sweetheart.”
The crowd turned and stared at Rodney, who blanched and turned toward the wall.
Marlin was taken aback. Most lawbreakers, when questioned, knew how to do three things: Deny it; deny it; and deny it some more. “Ma’am, are you saying that you were over at Mr. Bauer’s ranch yesterday, and you are responsible for the damage to his truck?”
“What I’m saying is that I was saving the lives of quail, dove, deer, and all the other innocent animals he would have murdered with his shotgun.”
The crowd had grown tense. Someone murmured, “Take her in, John.”
Which was exactly what Marlin was
planning to do. “Stand up, please,” he said.
The woman crossed her arms. “I will not.”
Marlin glanced at Mr. Scruffy, who gave him a smug smile. Inside, Marlin groaned. He had had run-ins with anti-hunting activists in the past, and it was almost always a messy business.
“Ma’am…please…stand up.”
“Like hell I will. Why are you here bothering me when you should be out arresting guys like Rodney? They’re the ones carrying guns, blasting everything that moves. And yet I’m the one who’s causing trouble? That’s a joke.”
Mr. Scruffy began to add something, but Marlin hushed him with a stare.
Marlin took a deep breath. He was determined not to let this situation get out of control. “Miss, I’ll ask you once again: Please stand up. Don’t make me use the cuffs.”
“Go to hell.” She grabbed her mug and threw her coffee onto Marlin’s chest. The crowd gasped. This, Marlin thought, isn’t going well at all.
Marlin drove northward on Highway 281 in silence for a few moments, steadily covering the sixteen miles between Blanco and Johnson City. He noticed the sky was clear of clouds now, and the temperature was rapidly climbing. So much for the cold front.
He glanced over at his passenger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a handcuffed woman in custody. In fact, in nearly twenty years of enforcing hunting and fishing laws, almost all of his dealings had been with men. Simply put, men would do things women would never dream of. Like shoot deer on the side of the highway at night. Throw dynamite into a lake to kill fish. Blast a hundred doves in one day, instead of the legal limit of fifteen. Then they would spin lie after lie to try to escape punishment. At least this woman had owned up to her behavior. Too easily, Marlin figured. There had to be something behind it.
“You didn’t have to throw the coffee on me, you know,” Marlin said.
“Pardon me?”
“I was going to arrest you anyway.” He looked over, but her face remained expressionless. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? I mean, my cruiser was sitting right in the parking lot, plain as day. You came in there for a reason.”
“What are you, Sherlock Holmes?”
Another mile went by.
“These are really hurting my wrists.” The woman shifted in her seat, arching her back to relieve the pressure of the handcuffs behind her. Marlin tried not to notice the way her breasts strained against the front of her turtleneck. He hadn’t wanted to cuff her, but after the coffee, he’d wanted to make sure she was restrained, at least until he had a bead on her companion, Mr. Scruffy. That guy had turned out to be the placid one, merely sneering-apparently a trademark of his-while Marlin read the woman, one Inga Karin Mueller from Minnesota, her rights.
Marlin pulled to the shoulder of the highway and put the cruiser in neutral. He held the handcuff key up for Inga to see. “Gonna behave?”
She snorted and rolled her eyes.
Marlin started to put the key back on his belt.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Can’t you take a joke?”
She twisted toward the window and Marlin removed the cuffs. She rubbed her wrists as Marlin pulled the cruiser back onto the road.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem.”
They crossed over Miller Creek, which was barely more than a slow-moving mud puddle despite last night’s brief rain.
“What’s the deal with your friend, anyway? Did he take a mail-order course on the fine art of sneering?”
Inga laughed. “Oh, that’s just Tommy. Not a real happy guy, but he’s pretty harmless.”
Marlin wasn’t sure he agreed. Thomas Collin Peabody had been arrested three times for destruction of property and twice for trespassing. A typical rap sheet for an aggressive activist. Unfortunately, when Marlin had radioed him in, there were no warrants. He had to watch the mousy little guy get back in the Volvo and drive away.
“He’s a very intelligent man, actually,” Inga continued. “Has a bunch of degrees. Philosophy. Government. History. Went to Harvard for about a zillion years. And now he wants me to marry him.” She gave Marlin a sidelong glance, but he just nodded.
“So you’re not going to share your secret with me,” Marlin said, “tell me why you wanted to get busted?”
Inga gave him a hard stare for several seconds, as if sizing him up. Finally, she said, “Unlike some people, I love nature. When I see people shooting animals, dumping sewage in creeks, destroying forests, I do something about it.”
Marlin was tempted to chastise her for putting hunting in the same league with polluting and deforestation, but he held his tongue.
She went on: “When I see a guy like Rodney Bauer blasting away at beautiful, defenseless birds, it just makes me so angry-” She shook her head in frustration.
He gave her a few moments to continue, but she stared out the window at the passing countryside instead.
Marlin said, “Surely you didn’t drive two thousand miles to get Rodney Bauer all hot and bothered and then vandalize his truck.” He was hoping to make her grin, but had no luck. He was certain she had a wonderful smile.
“Nope. We drove down here for a different reason entirely.”
“And that would be-?”
She paused, seeming reluctant to let Marlin into her confidence. But he must have passed some sort of test. “Let me ask you something. Have you ever heard of the red-necked sapsucker?”
The sapsucker again.
“Sure,” Marlin replied. “Endangered species.”
“And obviously you know about all the brush-clearing that’s going on around here. But I don’t think most people even realize the effect it’s having, that they’re wiping out the last of a species. If all the cedars are removed, that’s it, end of story, the red-necked sapsucker is gone. I’m here to change that.”
“Meaning what?” Marlin had already admitted to himself that he liked the woman, despite the coffee stain on his chest. But if she was going to get out of hand, he knew he’d have to do something about it.
“I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure everyone knows exactly what they’re doing. I just can’t believe that these ranchers will continue clearing land if they know they’re removing an animal from the face of the Earth forever.”
Thinking of Thomas Peabody, Marlin said, “Maybe you know birds better than you know men.” Marlin hadn’t meant it as an insult, but the woman got red in the face. Marlin could tell that Inga had a temper.
“Oh, I see. You probably agree with them, right? That they can do whatever is best for man regardless of the consequences. Just cut all the trees down, who the hell cares. What’s one less bird, anyway?”
Marlin let her finish, then handed her a copy of the Blanco County Record that had been resting on his dashboard. It was opened to Susannah Branson’s article. The reporter had captured Marlin’s thoughts accurately, stating that “our local game warden encourages area residents to consider the impact of brush-clearing on native wildlife.”
Inga read it through, then looked at Marlin sheepishly. “Sorry. Guess you’re not one of the bad guys. My mistake.” Marlin decided now was not the time to mention that he was an avid hunter. That would surely set off some fireworks. “Guess this Susannah Branson has the hots for you, huh?” Inga said in a teasing voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, God, it’s obvious. Listen to her opening line: ‘Beneath John Marlin’s rugged good looks lies the sensitive soul of a nature lover.’ See that? She managed to get ‘Beneath John Marlin,’ ‘rugged good looks,’ and ‘lover’ all in one sentence. The woman is shameless.”
Marlin started to speak, but couldn’t come up with anything, just sat there with his mouth open. Inga responded with an impish smile. He saw that his guess was correct; it was a wonderful smile.
CHAPTER SEVEN
At four o’clock on Monday afternoon, a tall, muscular young man with a purple birthmark on his neck walked into the Save-Mart two miles nort
h of Johnson City. He was browsing in the Lawn amp; Garden section when a clerk approached him.
“Can I help you find anything, sir?”
“Yeah, I need a shitload of rat poison,” the young man said with a pronounced East Coast accent.
An elderly woman in the same aisle gave the young man a glare and scurried away with her shopping cart.
“Well, let’s see…if you’ll follow me, I believe that’s in the next aisle over. How much do you need, exactly?”
“Enough to kill a small army of those fuckers. We got rats everywhere.”
“Indoors or out?”
The young man shrugged. “Some in, some out. What’s the diff?”
The clerk picked up a yellow box and read the label. “It’s just that some of these poisons are pretty strong, so you have to make sure other animals don’t get to it. Yeah, like right here, it says to keep it away from pets and livestock.”
“What, so, a cow could accidentally eat that stuff and croak?”
“I believe so, sir. You have to be very careful.”
“Gimme a box of that, then. That should do the trick.”
“I’m sure it will. Anything else I can help you with?”
The shopper glanced around and said, “Uh, yeah, can you tell me where the saws are at?”
The clerk pointed toward the rear of the store. “Those would be in Hardware. Aisle twelve, I believe.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
The customer strode away and the clerk thought: Rat poison and a saw. What a strange young man.
Marlin was in the kitchen, drinking a beer and eating some cold pizza for dinner, when the phone rang. He was tempted to let the machine get it, but during deer season duty called at all hours.
On the third ring, he grabbed the phone, his mouth full of cheese and pepperoni. “John Marlin.”
“Hey, John, it’s me.”
His heart thumped, as it always did lately when he heard her voice. It was Becky, calling from Dallas.
“Oh, hey, I was just thinking about you.” The truth was, he thought about her all the time. “How are you doing?”