I drove down to the general store, which wasn’t open yet, and spent another three-plus minutes inside my least-favorite public phone shell. As early as it was, Joe DeFalco’s home number was busy. Busy speeding along the information highway, I hoped. I paged through a damp Lassen County directory, to find out if there was a listing for George Duquesne. No listing. Then I tried DeFalco’s number a second time, with the same results. Busy, busy. Just like I was going to be.
I left the car where it was and went by shank’s mare to the Modoc Cafe. Half a dozen unfamiliar customers and Lorraine on duty. The buzz of conversation died when I walked in; eyes watched me until I looked their way, then pretended I was a larger version of Yehudi, the little man who wasn’t there. I ordered coffee and tried to ask Lorraine about George Duquesne. She wouldn’t talk to me or even look at me. I was about to try the question on the customers—in a loud voice, all of them at once—when the door opened and the blond kid, Johnny, walked in alone.
He was three paces inside when he spotted me. His about-face was sudden and sharp enough to have pleased an army drill instructor. I went after him as fast as I could move. Just fast enough: I caught up with him, laid a hard hand on his shoulder in front of Trilby’s Hardware & Electric.
“Hold on, Johnny. What’s your hurry?”
For a tight little clutch of seconds I thought he might shake me off, run away as he had yesterday. Scared, all right, but not a coward; there was at least some courage in him. He even held my eyes when he finally turned.
“I told you,” he said, “I don’t want to talk to you. Not about . . . you know.”
I studied his face. Same as yesterday, only cleaner. Not much chance that Johnny had been the second slugger last night, but I was looking close at every male I encountered today—Bartholomew, the Modoc’s customers, Johnny. I had not only broken Ollie Ballard’s wrist, I’d gotten in a few good licks on his partner, enough to mark him.
“I’m not going to push you on that subject, Johnny. I just want to ask you one question.”
“Yeah? What question?”
“George Duquesne. Can you—”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“Take it easy. All I want to know is how to get to his ranch.”
Blink. “His ranch?”
“You know where it is, don’t you?”
“. . . Yeah, I guess.”
“Directions, okay? Then I’ll leave you alone.”
“Why don’t you go away and leave everybody alone?”
“Can’t do that, and you know why. Duquesne’s ranch?”
He hesitated again, but not for long. “South on the highway about three miles. You’ll see a sign for Parson’s Flat. You go out there—another couple of miles.” Blink. “But it won’t do you no good.”
“Going out to the ranch? Why not?”
“Duquesne, he don’t let nobody in.”
“Strangers, you mean?”
“Not anybody. He don’t like people. He’s a recluse.” He pronounced it “reek-loose.”
“Well, maybe he’ll make an exception in my case.”
“I don’t think so,” the kid said. Then, in a rush, “You better watch out, mister.”
“For what? Duquesne?”
“You just better watch out, that’s all.”
Cryptic warnings. Creekside was as full of them as it was of pretense, denial, and outright lies.
Johnny was right about the Duquesne ranch. The drive out there was a waste of time.
I found the place easily enough—a sprawling little enclave of more than a dozen buildings of varying sizes, tucked away behind chain-link fencing. All the buildings were painted a gleaming white. An electronic gate barred entrance to the property. The look of the gate and the absence of barbed wire made me wonder if the fence might be electrified.
On one of the support pillars was an intercom thing; I used it and a male voice answered, probably at the main house. When I gave my name and asked to see Duquesne on an urgent matter, there was a short silence while he either conferred with somebody or checked a list to see if my name was on it. The voice said then that it was sorry, Mr. Duquesne was not available. How about if I made an appointment for later? I said. No appointments, he said. I told him the urgent matter had to do with the Sentinels, but that didn’t buy me anything either. The voice informed me in chillier tones that Mr. Duquesne was not available to anyone at any time for any reason, and cut me off before I could make another pitch.
Back into the car, back out to the highway, but not back to Creekside—not yet. I drove south another few miles, to the next little village, and ate a quick breakfast at a cafe there. The restaurant had a public phone; this time DeFalco’s line was clear and he answered right away.
“About time,” he said. He sounded revved up; I could almost hear him licking his chops. Sure. For him all of this was armchair intrigue and another phantom shot at a Pulitzer. “Everything okay up there?”
“Depends on what you mean by okay.”
“You. I meant with you.”
The anger in me had quieted to a stubborn resolve, and I didn’t want to heat it up again by going into a rehash of last night’s trouble. I said, “I’m hanging in. I slept with my gun.”
“Freudian,” he said. “Does Kerry know about this?”
“No, and you’d better not tell her.”
“You talk to the Lassen sheriffs man?”
“Briefly.” I filled him in on my nonproductive discussion with Fassbinder.
“Well, he’s not the only one up there with a closed mind. I called the editor of the North Corner Gazette last night—that’s a biweekly in Susanville—and asked some pointed questions about hate crimes in his bailiwick. He admitted to hearing whispers about both the Sentinels and the Christian National Emancipation League, but said he couldn’t pin them down.”
“He must not have tried very hard.”
“He didn’t. He’s an old-timer-ambition all dried up, disinclined to open up a cesspool in his own backyard. The old ostrich crap.”
“Lot of that going around these days.”
“Yeah. But he did tell me one thing that ties in. There’ve been a batch of incidents in the Corner in recent months that can be classified only as hate crimes.”
“Interesting.”
“I take it Fassbinder didn’t mention them.”
“Not a peep. Too inflammatory, I suppose. What kind of incidents, Joe?”
“Vandalism at a Vietnamese restaurant in Alturas, more of the same at the home of a black family near the Oregon border, hate mail sent to about a dozen black, Asian, and Jewish families in Lassen and Modoc counties. No overt violence—not so far. You can smell it coming, though.”
“The Sentinels,” I said, “sure as hell.”
“Yeah, but there’s no evidence it’s an organized campaign or who’s behind it. According to the editor, the local authorities have it pegged as random stuff, nothing serious.”
“Fassbinder claims he has no idea who the Colonel is. You get a line on the man?”
“Damn right,” DeFalco said. “If the ID is right, and I think it is, he’s a hell of a big fish.”
“Big how?”
“Wanted by the FBI and ATF for masterminding the theft of a truckload of weapons from a federal armory in Missouri a couple of years ago. There’s also a Tennessee state fugitive warrant on him—suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.”
“White supremacist ties?”
“Oh, hell yes. His name is Darnell, Colonel Benjamin Darnell. Ex-Vietnam vet, ex-mercenary soldier in Nicaragua and half a dozen small African nations. Thrown out of the U.S. Army for conduct unbecoming an officer . . . racially motivated assault on a black noncom. Reputed to’ve spent some time at Butler’s Aryan Nations hideaway as a training officer. And here’s the clincher: his brother-in-law is cut from the same lousy cloth—linked to a couple of Arizona-based racist groups and guess which one of the same in California.”
“The Christian National Eman
cipation League.”
“Right.”
“Did the name Slingerland come up in connection with Darnell? Reverend Dale Slingerland?”
“Richard Chaffee’s nephew. No direct link to Darnell, but Slingerland and the Colonel’s brother-in-law helped form a militia outfit in northern Arizona a couple of years ago. Is Slingerland mixed up with the Sentinels too?”
“According to Fassbinder, he’s the one running the camp.”
“Christ, that place is a real nest. But you figure Darnell’s the one in charge?”
“From all indications. Does Darnell’s description match the one I gave you?”
“Right down to the hawk nose.”
“Question now,” I said, “is whether or not he’s still at the camp. When I had my little run-in with his Jeep the other night, he was headed out to the highway. Could’ve been a short trip, or it could’ve been a long one—to another nest, maybe.”
“Can you find out one way or the other?”
“I can try.”
“Okay, good. Any luck with that rancher Duquesne?”
“I went out to his ranch this morning, but I couldn’t get in. Whole place is fenced like a fortress.”
“No surprise. I’ll lay odds he’s one of them too. Hard-core right-winger, worth a couple of million bucks. Used to be active in ultraconservative politics in the Corner.”
“Used to be?”
“He dropped out about five years ago. Reclusive since then—very low-profile.”
“Well, that’s easy enough to explain. Racist all along, went the hard-line route five years ago and got hooked up with Chaffee and Darnell.”
“Reads that way to me too.”
“Anything else, Joe?”
“That’s the package for now,” he said. “Doesn’t look too good for those missing kids, does it?”
“Let’s stay off that. I’m stressed enough as it is.”
“Sure. Sorry. What’s your next move?”
“Try to get a line on Darnell’s whereabouts—some hard evidence for the feds, if not the county law.”
“How?”
“My lookout. You just keep riding the information highway.”
“Will do. But call me later, whether you find out anything or not. Don’t leave me hanging and sweating.”
“I won’t,” I said. As long as I wasn’t hanging and sweating somewhere myself.
A thin drizzle was starting again as I drove up Lodgepole Lane, on the hill above Creekside. Through the wedges cleared by the clacking wipers I could see somebody moving around in the cluttered side yard of Cermak’s Bargains. A stake-bed truck had been backed up to one of the lean-tos and somebody bundled in a coat with a hood like a monk’s cowl seemed to be struggling to lift a large, round, heavy object into the bed.
The gate in the crazy-quilt fence stood open; I parked in front of it and walked along the drive and over to the truck. Mike Cermak’s bearded face peered at me unhappily from inside the coat hood. He quit wrestling with the heavy object—an old, rusty water heater—and nervously slapped gloved hands against his side, as I approached.
“You again.”
“Me again. Want some help with that heater?”
“No.” But then he changed his mind and said, “Yeah, all right. Fucking thing weighs a ton.”
I got a grip on the lower end of it and together we muscled it into the truck. Cermak climbed up after it and began to rope it down.
“So what do you want this time, man?” he asked while he worked. He sounded wearily resigned—the tone of a man who has done something against his better judgment and who is certain he will regret it for the rest of his life.
“Yesterday you said something about a badge. When you took the load of supplies to the Sentinels’ camp, they gave you a badge to show at the gate.”
“Before I went. Guy who came here with the order gave it to me. Nobody gets in without one.”
“What kind of badge?”
“Blue and white triangle, made out of felt.”
“Just show it to the guard on the gate?”
“And wore it the whole time I was inside. Pinned to my shirt.”
“They take it back when you left?”
“No. Guard was supposed to, maybe, but he didn’t.”
“What’d you do with it? Keep it or throw it away?”
“Shit, man, I should’ve burned it.”
“But you didn’t. So you still have it.”
“Yeah. Figured I might need it again if they bought any more of my stuff. But they never came around again.”
“How about if I buy the badge from you?”
“Buy it? You serious?”
“Don’t I sound serious?”
“Crazy if you go out there by yourself . . .”
“I don’t want to argue or haggle, Mike.” I got my wallet out, showed him a pair of tens from inside. “Twenty dollars, take it or leave it.”
He looked at the money with a kind of thin contempt—not so much for the bills as for himself for coveting the filthy stuff. Then he tied one last knot in the rope, tested his handiwork, and jumped down. “Wait here,” he said.
He went away into the house. In five minutes he was back with the badge, holding it between thumb and forefinger as if it were something he didn’t like touching even with gloves on. Blue-bordered isosceles triangle about four inches in diameter, the felt thin and cheap; the word Beware was stitched in blue thread at an up-slanted angle in the white center. A closed safety pin was hooked through one point of the triangle. Professionally done and crude at the same time. Badge of evil.
I held the two tens out, but Cermak wouldn’t take them. “Keep your money,” he said. “I don’t need it that bad.”
“You sure? You took their money.”
“I didn’t know who they were then.”
“You’d have taken more of it later if they’d come back. That’s why you kept the badge, isn’t it?”
“Told myself it was. But if they had come back . . . hell, man, I don’t know. If I’d been stoned enough, could be I’d’ve told them to shove their business up their Nazi poop-chutes.” He grinned self-mockingly. “If I’d been stoned enough.”
I put the money and my wallet away, hid the badge inside my coat pocket. Then, on impulse, I made a V with my right index and middle fingers. “Peace, huh?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Power to the people.”
Chapter Sixteen
Timberline Road was backcountry, all right. Deep backcountry.
“Seven, eight miles west of Creekside,” Mike Cermak had said. But the route you had to travel to get there was so circuitous, the distance seemed twice as long. Cermak’s directions weren’t too good either; I made a pair of wrong turns, and managed to get back on the right track mostly by accident. The weather made the hunt even more difficult. The drizzle continued in a thin, straight-downward fall—there was almost no wind—and an undulant mist obscured the hilly terrain, filled every hollow as if with mounds of half-frozen smoke. Altogether I spent an hour on a network of rough, narrow lanes before I finally passed a signpost that informed me I had somehow blundered onto Timberline Road. Another sign alongside it proclaimed NOT A THROUGH ROAD.
I hadn’t seen a building in several miles, nor a driveway or branch lane that might lead to a hidden farm or ranch. Just thick stands of pine and Douglas fir, their needled branches leaking moisture, the stands broken now and then by rock-strewn meadows and hillsides patched with second-growth timber and notched with deadfalls. Old logging area, I thought; old logging road. Empty wilderness now, remote—just the right kind of terrain for a paramilitary outpost.
I followed Timberline Road for nearly a mile, through dips and curves and several switchbacks. Down and up and back down again. The road surface kept worsening, until it was so heavily pocked that I had to slow to thirty in order to maneuver around the worst of the chucks. I rolled through yet another tight turn, and fifty yards beyond, the road came to an abrupt end. Or, rather,
free access came to an abrupt end.
A semaphore lift gate, like the ones you see at railroad crossings, had been erected to bar the way. Alongside it at the edge of the road was a military-style sentry box. Two signs were mounted on the gate—a big red stop sign, and one that had been semiprofessionally painted in heavy black letters:
PRIVATE PROPERTY
NO ENTRANCE WITHOUT PERMISSION
WHITE CHRISTIANS ONLY!
I stopped the car, sat there for a minute or so with the engine running and the wipers slapping away. Past the lift gate, trees had been cleared to open up a fifty-yard-wide section of meadowland; a long, high chain-link fence ran through the middle of the cleared area, with another gate in it double-barring the road. The fence and the second gate were topped with strands of wicked-looking barbed wire. The overall effect was of a military no-man’s land, of the sort that used to exist along the border between West and East Germany.
There was nobody inside the sentry box, nobody in sight on either side of the chain-link fence. Beyond the fence, the road was visible for another seventy-five yards—resurfaced asphalt in there—before it vanished into a thick copse of Douglas fir. The buildings that formed the compound were well hidden behind the trees and the drear gray wall of rain and mist.
So where’s the guard? I thought.
Off taking a leak, maybe.
Well?
I shifted position on the seat. The movement made me aware of the weight of the gun in my coat pocket. I hauled the thing out, held it for a few seconds, then snapped it into the metal clips under the dash. I was one man and there were God knew how many wackos with God knew how much firepower somewhere close by. It was enough of a risk just trying to get myself in there; carrying heat on the Sentinels’ turf was begging for the kind of trouble I could neither handle nor afford.
I shut the car down, slid out. There was a little wind here, dead-cold; it blew rain into my face, and I could hear it making empty muttering sounds in the trees. Nothing else to hear. And still nothing to see as I crossed to the lift bar. As I stepped over it, I glanced inside the sentry box. Box was exactly what it was: an upright wooden coffin, just large enough for one man, containing a bench and nothing else.
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