by Joe Gores
At just eleven a.m., they were at the water’s edge, where four guides were holding three rubber rafts in place against the steep earth bank. The clients crawled enthusiastically to their places, and were pushed out into the swirling current.
Thorne had driven hard well into the night, had checked into the Groveland Hotel, an 1849 adobe wedded to a 1914 Queen Anne Victorian. Two story, white with red-brown trim, with pillars all the way around. While he was checking out in the morning, he asked where the post office was. The clerk, a middle-aged man with silvery hair, faraway blue eyes, and turtle-wrinkles in his thin neck, smelled faintly of mothballs.
He nodded with little jerks of his head. ‘Street behind the hotel, up the hill. Along there a ways.’
Groveland had a population of 1,500, which doubled on the weekends during the summer months. The AAA Tour Book said the town’s main recreational activity was white-water rafting on the Tuolemne River a few miles distant.
Thorne found the post office easily, an ugly modern brown building with what looked like a corrugated iron roof and inset doorways and a somehow incongruous blue mailbox at the foot of the gleaming concrete front steps. Inside, behind the counter, was a round, rosy-faced woman in a blue uniform with a nametag, ROSIE, pinned to the front of her shirt.
‘A few months back I sent a package from LA to a Janet Roanhorse at General Delivery,’ Thorne beamed. ‘I was wondering if you have any record that she ever received it?’
Rosie didn’t have to look anything up. ‘Sure did. Roanhorse, that was her daddy’s name. Her folks had a little cabin in the woods a few miles out of town. They died a few years back. She came back to take the place over, and calls herself Janet Kestrel now.’
‘I’m just in town for the day, and I was really hoping I’d get a chance to see her…’
Rosie shook her head, making her curls dance, and beamed confidentially at him. ‘We can’t give out folk’s home addresses. But you can catch her at work, AQUA River Tours, at a little spot called Casa Loma. Right on highway 120 north, you can’t miss it. The only building there is called the River Store. It’s set back on a little knoll. There’s a cutout of a big blue coffee cup on top of it.’
He thanked her and left. It was just nine a.m.
Janet loved it on the river, narrow, twisting, fast, here dark and deep and swirling, there white and shallow and boisterous, throwing up spume and leaping over sharp half-submerged rocks with joyful exuberance. It took great skill to keep the rafts from hitting anything.
But the letter had come from the Sho-Ka-Wah Casino. Today was her last ride down the river as a guide. Tomorrow, she would catch a bus to Hopland and find a place to live and start work at the casino as a blackjack dealer. She felt a sadness at leaving the river-rafting she knew and loved for an indoor casino job dealing blackjack, something she also knew but had never loved. But it paid better than rafting, and she had to start building a new life. At least this would be at a casino run by her own people. And she might never get that call on her cellphone from Hal to go retrieve her 4-Runner.
They stopped for lunch at one p.m. at a pre-arranged spot that in another month would be sun-washed and toasty. No more snow lingered in the steep mixed oak and pine forests flanking the river, but in here under the trees it was still chilly. They lit fires and ate their sandwiches around them.
Jimmy, the fifteen-year-old boy who couldn’t get enough river lore, attached himself to Janet. As they ate, he kept plying her with questions about rafting and about what seemed to him the wilderness they were passing through. He ate quickly, so after they finished, she walked him around, naming the various trees and bushes. He reached out for a red-leafed vine curled around one of the oak trees, and she grabbed his arm.
‘That’s not sumac, Jimmy. It’s poison oak.’
He jerked his hand back. ‘That stuff gives you a rash.’
‘I’ll tell you a secret.’ She picked one of the leaves. ‘There’s a way you can develop immunity for it.’ She ate the leaf. ‘You do that for a while, carefully, and pretty soon—’
‘Oh wow! That’s way cool.’
‘But don’t you try it,’ she cautioned. She suddenly giggled, in the boy’s world. ‘Your mom would hunt me down and kill me dead if you did.’
Thorne parked the 4-Runner on the blacktop in front of the River Store and checked out the other vehicles: a white van with a big metal luggage rack on the roof, and a pale green camper with a dark green plywood box on top to hold belongings. There was also a three-year-old Suzuki and a ’94 Chevy Astrovan. Inside, he was greeted by the rich smell of espresso and a big old man with a grey handlebar mustache and a long grey ponytail.
‘Sam Arness,’ said the man. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘A cup of coffee for starters. Is Janet Kestrel working today?’
‘Yep, and nope. She’s working, but she ain’t here.’ Arness gestured down the store to a door in the back wall. ‘AQUA Tours. She’s a damn good white-water rafting river guide for them, one of the best. AQUA does class four trips – toughest is class five. They’re off down the river on a one day trip and’ll be back after dark.’ He squinted at the store’s electric clock. ‘Might catch ’em at the Put-In Spot down on the river, but I doubt it, they’re usually on the water by eleven.’
‘I’ll drive on down. I’m just waiting for Janet anyway.’
‘Hope you got four-wheel, road’s mean as a damn snake.’
Sam Arness was right. Thorne needed the four-wheel all right on the incredible five-mile dirt track to the river thousands of feet below, a narrow slanting cut down the steep side of an immense brown tree-covered slope. The hillside rose on one side, fell away into infinity on the other. Roll your vehicle here, and you’d still be rolling at sundown.
Around the next turn he braked sharply. A golden eagle was in the road, a jackrabbit clutched in its talons. It flapped away in wide-winged, indifferent dignity. As he neared the valley floor, the air got cooler. He could hear the distant rush of the river. The road levelled out and there it was, the Tuolemne, its banks overarched with pines and angled hardwoods.
He found a tiny park area with a gently-sloping earth ramp down to the river. The Put-In Spot. As Sam had warned, the rafters were long gone. Just rustic restrooms and a signboard posted with pet-leashing and fishing regulation notices, and a stern red-edged warning about hazardous, turbulent waters and sharp edged rocks beneath the surface and WEAR YOUR LIFE JACKET.
A quarter mile downstream he sat down on the grass between the road and a leaky old boat, minus oars, hidden in the bushes, leaned back against a tree with his eyes shut, and listened to the rushing water.
Just how much jeopardy might he have put Janet Kestrel in by trying to track her down? Hatfield would ferret out her address in Groveland from Houghton’s office staff, would know Thorne was ahead of him, and would come rushing down Thorne’s backtrail trying to find her – probably with his ball-breaker Hostage Rescue/Sniper Team in tow.
Marlena Werfel was bursting with news and enthusiasm.
‘The package was taken from the locker by one of Dr. Houghton’s nurses. Mary Coggins.’
That lying bastard! Hatfield had just known Houghton was holding out on him. But it was easy to go around him.
‘Outstanding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Just one more question, and I’ll let you get back to work. Does Dr. Houghton have afternoon rounds here at the hospital today?’
Werfel checked the schedule. ‘He does. At three o’clock.’
‘Oustanding,’ Hatfield said again, this time softly.
It was 3:15. There were two patients in Houghton’s waiting room, and two nurses behind the glassed-in check-in desk.
‘Mary Coggins?’ Hatfield demanded.
The petite brownette he remembered from last time looked up. He pushed through the door beside their cubicle and as it closed behind him to shut them off from view of the waiting patients, he grabbed her arm, half-dragged her down the hall to an empty examination room and shove
d her inside.
She started to protest, but he slammed the door and snapped, ‘You’re in a lot of trouble, lady. Federal trouble. Aiding and abetting a possible terrorist fugitive fleeing to avoid prosecution.’
‘I did no such thing!’
‘You unlawfully removed a package from a Cedar’s-Sinai locker and sent it to Janet Amore. She’s a federal fugitive, so your action is aiding and abetting. You’ll be detained at the Federal Building in Westwood, in the morning you’ll be arraigned in federal court…’
‘I’ve got a five-year-old daughter at home!’
‘Leaving a child alone is a criminal offense—’
‘She’s not alone. My mother’s with her. You can’t—’
‘Can and will if you don’t tell me everything.’
She was frightened now, crying. ‘We… I didn’t know anything about a fugitive warrant. So when she called and asked if we… I… could get her bearskin and send it to her—’
‘A bearskin?’
There were tears on Mary Coggins’ face, but he could see her deciding to go all noble and protect the doctor and the rest of the staff. He didn’t care what she did, as long as he got what he wanted.
‘Yes, a bearskin,’ said Coggins. ‘Janet said on the phone that she needed it for some sort of ceremony. That is not a federal offense, not in the United States of America.’
A ceremony, he thought? What the hell did she mean? He said, without much force, ‘I can make it one.’
She raised her head proudly.
‘Go ahead, then! I did it. Alone. Nobody else helped me, not the doctor, not the other nurses. They didn’t know anything about it.’
If anybody called his bluff, Hatfield knew he couldn’t make anything stick. Not against her, not against anyone else. Better to get what he had come for and get out, before Houghton returned from his hospital rounds and made an official complaint.
‘All right. Just give me the address, and I won’t have to file a written report on this.’
She took the offered way out. ‘Janet Roanhorse, General Delivery, Groveland, California.’
Janet Roanhorse? A red Indian instead of a Mex?
‘I thought her name was Amore.’
‘She wanted it sent to Roanhorse.’
32
They got to Ferry Bridge just at four p.m., as scheduled. The guides splashed into the knee-deep eddying water to pull the rafts up onto the earth bank so the passengers could get out. Using supplies from the guide house tucked up under the bridge, the guides turned into cooks. The clients sat around eating crackers and oysters and veggie dips while the guides worked to turn out a surprisingly complete dinner.
Jimmy’s mother abandoned the appetizers to approach Janet where she was using stainless steel tongs to expertly turn the chicken breasts grilling on the propane stove. The woman had a quizzical expression on her face.
‘Jimmy said you eat poison oak leaves. Do you? Really?’
Janet gave her an almost sheepish grin, and nodded.
‘Yeah, from time to time, to keep up my own immunity on these trips. It does work, but I don’t usually tell any of our passengers about it. But Jimmy was so curious, I just showed him. He’s a great kid. He’s so observant and interested that he got the other passengers really seeing what was around them. It was great having him in the group today.’
Jimmy’s mother leaned close. ‘I think he’s in love.’
After dinner, they brought out the guitars and more wine. Everyone felt fine and mellow, but for Janet it was bitter-sweet. A high point, but of what was her final trip as a guide down the river that she loved.
—
Hatfield was on his cellphone with AIC Sammy Spaulding.
‘I’m on my way to the Burbank Airport to meet the other members of my team. I need a smaller plane that can carry all six of us and our weapons up to a little town called Groveland, not too far from Yosemite.’
‘Christ, I can’t do that, Terrill. The red tape—’
‘This afternoon, Sammy. I don’t want to pull rank, but this is a National Security issue and I’m under direct orders from the President. How about in your report, you just say it’s a Hostage/Rescue deep-cover training exercise?’
There was a long, stunned silence. ‘That might do it.’
‘Two more things. Lean on the Groveland postmaster to get the address of a woman named Janet Roanhorse. They’ll sure as hell have it, a hick town like that. And have a couple of rental cars waiting for us wherever the pilot sets us down.’
He could hear the muted clicking of Sammy’s computer keys.
‘That’ll be the Pine Mountain Lake Airport a few miles out of Groveland. The cars’ll be there waiting.’ He added, trying to get back a modicum of control, ‘You owe me bigtime, you bastard,’ and hung up.
It was nearly dark when the party finally broke up. The bus was waiting to take the clients back to Groveland. There was a lot of loud talk and laughter; it was cold enough so their breaths sent puffs of vapor into the air. As they were filing aboard, Jimmy turned back to shake Janet’s hand, very formally.
‘I want to come back every week this summer,’ he said.
She didn’t say anything about this being her last trip. But as Jimmy boarded the bus, she gave him a little hug and a peck on the cheek. His mother embraced her; then they were gone.
For the next hour, the guides were busy deflating the rafts and lugging them and all the rest of the gear up to the edge of the road. When the truck arrived, they stowed everything aboard and climbed aboard themselves for the trip back to Casa Loma. Everything Janet did had an end-of-summer flavor to it. An ending. But she reminded herself it was also a beginning.
On the flight to Groveland, Hatfield planned his strategy.
He needed that girl, whatever her name was, because he needed to know why Thorne was looking for her. And he wanted her before Thorne found her. When Thorne did, Hatfield wanted to be there frst. If she was an American Indian, native-born, he couldn’t play the greencard game with her, but he could pressure her as he had pressured Mary Coggins: by using the threat of arrest as a security risk.
Franklin came up the aisle and leaned over him.
‘When do we get briefed on what’s up, boss?’
Hatfield slid over so Franklin could sit down beside him. It was always good to give his team the feeling that they were all in this together.
‘We’re trying to track down a woman named Janet Amore or Janet Roanhorse, take your pick. From the Roanhorse I think she’s at least part Indian, but I’m not sure. We want her because someone else does. And we want her first.’
‘Who wants her? Why?’
‘I don’t know why. That’s what I want find out. As to who…’ He paused, savoring what Franklin’s reaction would be. ‘Brendan Thorne.’
‘That prick!’ exclaimed Franklin. ‘I’m gonna enjoy this.’ He slid out of the seat. ‘I’ll give the guys a heads-up.’
Hatfield thought about what he’d told Franklin. Yeah. He was sure he was right. Thorne had crossed the woman’s tracks somewhere and was looking for answers just as they were. But answers to what? There was still too much he didn’t know. Did it all go back to the California Delta? He had been there himself, but he still didn’t know what really had happened there on election night.
Jaeger had been there, and Jaeger was dead. Corwin had been there, had killed them, and Corwin was dead. Thorne was trying to find out some of the same things Hatfield was, but Thorne would soon be dead, too. Did it really matter that much what had gone down before he had arived at the scene?
What did matter was finding Janet Amore before Thorne did.
Under one of the Casa Loma store’s night lights, Thorne leaned against the big spare tire mounted on the back of the 4-Runner, his arms crossed, deliberately obscuring the vehicle with his body. He watched the guides unload the rafts and equipment.
He instantly identified Janet Kestrel. She was a tawny-skinned mid-twenties, full-bosomed and lithe,
her warrior blood unmistakable: it was there in the strong nose, the high cheekbones, the deep-set liquid eyes with their predator’s fierce gaze. No physical effects seemed to remain from the savage beating she had sustained five months before. A fit companion for the much older Corwin, whatever their relationship had been.
As she talked animatedly with the other guides, Thorne could see that her eyes were the only jarring note in that Indain warrior look: they were the clearest, most crystalline blue Thorne had ever seen, glacier-deep.
After the four guides had shut and locked the shed, the other three crowded around Janet, hugging her in turn, as if she were going away and these were their goodbyes. He was glad he had pushed so hard and fast to find her.
Finally she and the other woman broke away from the men and started for the camper with the plywood box on top. As they walked by, Kestrel’s glance passed casually over Thorne, then did a double-take at the 4-Runner. She paused.
‘Why don’t you just go on, Flo? I think I know this guy, I can get a ride home with him.’
They embraced again, briefly, then Flo went on to her camper as Janet strode over to Thorne, her face set with anger.
‘Okay, Jack, start talking. How did you get my car?’
‘We don’t have time for that now,’ Thorne said, a rough, urgent edge on his voice. He needed to get her out of there, quick. ‘My name is Brendan Thorne. A really nasty FBI agent named Terrill Hatfield is on his way here right now, and he’s coming after you.’
Astonishment momentarily froze her anger.
‘After me? Why? How?’
‘He wants to ask you a lot of questions about the attempted assassination of President Gus Wallberg in Montana.’
‘That’s ludicrous! I’ve never been to Montana in—’
‘It was Hal Corwin behind the gun. Hatfield has connected you with both the man and the event.’ He didn’t say that his own search for her had triggered Hatfield’s interest. Time enough for that later, when he had her safely out of there.