“Tell it to Dwayne’s family.” Jerry pulled Ben backward till the rope was extended and pulled taut, then he motioned for the man with the keys to jump in the cab.
“All right,” Jerry said. A trace of a smile cracked his stony exterior. “Drag him.”
Chapter 20
“You can’t be serious!” Ben said. Panic was setting in. Beads of sweat trickled down his temples.
Jerry didn’t bother replying. He raised his arm and then, like an orchestra conductor marking the opening note, brought it down with a flourish.
All at once, the eighteen-wheeler lurched into Drive. Ben was jerked forward, hands and head first, onto the hard red dirt.
He hadn’t expected that. He thought it would take the huge truck a while to warm up, that he would be able to jog behind it, at least for a while. Instead, it had taken off like a souped-up Camaro.
And it continued to barrel across the parking lot. Ben was dragged along the ground, his chin scraping the hard earth. Dirt flew up into his eyes, stinging them; he soon learned it was smartest to keep his eyes shut.
But all of that was minor compared to the pummeling his body was taking. He was battered by every bump, rise, and pothole. And there were lots of all of them. He was skinned and bruised and the truck seemed to be increasing in speed.
“Oof!” Ben’s chin socked the ground hard. He could feel blood trickling down his neck, his cheeks. It stung so badly he almost didn’t see the rock-
Until it was too late. It struck him square in the chest. Ben cried out in pain, but the truck kept moving and the rock rumbled under his body, cutting and bruising him all along the way. The hum of the engines told Ben the truck was accelerating. At the current speed, he was probably only looking at serious injuries. But if the truck moved any faster …
“Stop this!”
Ben heard the voice behind him, but he was in no position to check the source. The truck was still moving, and he’d spotted another rock with a sharp edge coming toward him. Fast.
“Stop this immediately! Stop or you’re all out of work!”
The truck braked. Ben heard the hydraulic hissing before he actually felt any decrease in speed.
He stopped just inches short of the jagged rock. Up close, it looked positively lethal. If he’d been dragged over that, he’d be in seriously bad shape.
“I’m so sorry about this.” A man he didn’t know had crouched down and was untying the knots around Ben’s wrists. “This is inexcusable. But don’t worry. I’ll take appropriate action. Listen, men, you’re all-”
Both he and Ben looked all around. They were alone. The loggers had fled.
“Typical.” The man made a clicking noise with his tongue, then finished untying Ben. He offered Ben a hand. “Are you all right?”
Ben slowly raised himself to a seated position. His whole body ached. His clothes were ruined, but he thought he could walk. “I’ll live.”
He pushed up to his feet, but his legs wobbled like jelly. The other man caught him and helped him back down to the ground. “Don’t rush it, son. It’ll be a spell before you get your strength back.”
Ben decided to take his advice. He wiped a trickle of blood from his chin. “Thanks for intervening.”
“No problem, son. They had no business doing this. The boys are just so riled up right now. Feel like they’re under attack, like danger’s coming at them from all sides.”
Really? Ben thought. That’s almost exactly how the Green Ragers say they feel.
Ben extended his hand. “Anyway, my name’s Ben Kincaid.”
“Jeremiah Adams,” the man said. He was in his late fifties, with short-cropped hair and a spotty white beard on his chin. He was wearing jeans and a western shirt, complete with studs. “I’m the supervisor out here. I think you were coming to see me.”
“You must be Granny’s father. I mean Granville’s. The prosecutor.”
Adams laughed. “You know my little girl?”
“I do.” Ben pushed himself to his feet again, and this time he was relieved to see that his legs held. “Could we go inside and talk?”
Ben followed the man as he led the way up the ramp and into the building. He tried his best not to wobble, but his left ankle felt twisted and kept dropping out from under him. Like it or not, he was going to limp; he decided the best he could do was to stare straight ahead and limp with dignity.
As soon as they passed through the front doors of the building, Ben was overwhelmed by the piercingly loud roar. Fierce, menacing, and metallic.
“Takes a mite to get used to that sawmill,” Adams said as he shuffled down the main corridor. “Nowadays I barely even notice it.”
Barely even notice? Ben thought, wincing. The man had to be kidding. Inside, the shrill roar was so insistent he could barely think, much less hear.
“I remember the first time I visited the mill, back before I worked here. ’Round ’70, ’71, I ’spect. Noise hurt my head so bad I stared wearing earplugs. ’Course that didn’t set too well with the regulars. They marked me down for some kind of sissy boy, if you know what I mean. So I took out the plugs and learned to deal with it. Haven’t had any problems since. Oh, I get some ringing in my ears from time to time, but not enough to complain about.”
I think I’ve got plenty to complain about already, Ben thought, but he decided to keep it to himself. He wasn’t at all sure he could make himself heard over this din anyway.
They emerged in the main part of the building, the mill itself. Ben saw the long ramp where timber was loaded and the conveyor belt that brought it steadily closer to the big blade. And a big blade it was, too. Enormous-at least six feet in diameter, maybe more. Big enough to split a house, Ben thought, much less some puny five-hundred-year-old tree.
Ben watched as the men below used a large yellow crane to hoist a particularly large trunk onto the ramp. Another man in a hard hat standing a few feet from them pushed a button, and the conveyor belt lurched into action. A few seconds later, the huge rotating blade was slicing clean through the trunk like a knife through butter.
“Trunk like that, they’ll have to split three or four times ’fore it’s manageable enough to transport,” Adams explained. “Be different if we were on a waterway, if we could float the timber to market the way they used to do. Even those big eighteen-wheelers like the one you got to see up close and personal have their limits.”
The sawmill blade finished subdividing the trunk. A whistle blew somewhere outside. The workmen checked their watches. A few moments later, the blade began to slow. The insistent whine of the engine dropped in pitch until, to Ben’s enormous relief, the noise faded.
“You’re in luck, son,” Adams said, chuckling. “Mid-morning break. Engine’ll be down for fifteen minutes. We can talk.” He gestured for Ben to follow. They returned to the main corridor, then took a sharp left. Ben caught his reflection in a window as they passed; there was a streak of blood across his left cheek. He raised a sleeve and tried to make himself more presentable.
A few moments later, they were in a room that appeared to be Adams’s office.
“Sorry about the clutter,” he said. Clutter was an understatement. The office was packed with huge piles of paper, maps, and charts filling every available bit of floor space. There was a desk, but it was so buried under food wrappers and empty beer bottles that there wasn’t a place to put a pencil. There did appear to be some framed photos hanging on the wall, but the trash and debris were so dense Ben couldn’t tell what they were.
Check that, he told himself. There was one picture he could identify. It hung just behind the desk. A framed four-by-seven photo, slightly yellowed, of a teenage girl receiving her high school diploma. And if he wasn’t mistaken, the girl was a considerably younger, though no less shapely, version of Granville Adams. Prosecutor Granny.
“That’s my baby girl,” Adams said as he wedged himself into the space between his desk and the wall. To Ben’s surprise, once the litter was rearranged a bit, there
turned out to be a chair back there. “So you know her?”
“I do,” Ben said, not adding that he had a damned hard time thinking of her as anybody’s baby girl. Most likely she ruled the roost from the day she came home from the hospital. “She’s prosecuting the Gardiner case.”
“ ’Course she is,” Adams said, beaming. “She’s the D.A., ain’t she?”
Ben nodded. “You must be very proud of her.”
“That, son, is one whale of an understatement. Hell, I’ve always been proud of her.” He gazed out his window, a large wall-length aperture affording a commanding view of the front parking area and the forest beyond. “Only had one time up at the plate-she’s the only child I’ve got. But man, what a home run I hit. I never seen the like anywhere. Drop-dead gorgeous, ambitious, hard-working. And smart?” He made a long, low whistle.
“She is all those things,” Ben agreed. And a few more he wasn’t going to mention.
“I don’t know where she got it all. Not from her daddy. That’s for damn sure.” His smile faded a bit. “My wife Jenny died before Granny turned five.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t-”
“Don’t worry about it, son. It’s been a long time.” He pushed himself up in his chair. “No, I had to raise that girl all on my own. Though the truth of the matter is, she raised herself.”
Ben could well imagine. He wondered if this might be a good time to lead the conversation to the more pressing matter at hand. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about Dwayne Gardiner? And his murder?”
“You’re welcome to ask,” Adams replied. “Like I told your little lady on the telephone, I don’t know how much help I can be.”
“Did you know Gardiner?”
“ ’Course I did. He was one of my boys. Had been for some ten”-he shrugged-“I don’t know, twelve years.”
“Did you like him?”
“You bet. He was a good man. Hard worker. Even though he was only thirty and change, he was a logger from the old school. One that didn’t mind pulling a long day and working up a good sweat. Knew the value of hard work. Knew the importance of what we’re trying to do. The lifestyle we’re trying to preserve.”
“Did he have any friends? Family? Wife?”
“He had a wife all right. Lu Ann is one of the shapeliest, sexiest numbers in these parts. Not pretty in a classy way, like my little Granny. But she did have a certain appeal for a certain type of man, if you follow my drift. Like the type that likes to get drunk and do the hokey-pokey in the back of a pickup truck.”
Ben nodded. He thought he got the general idea.
“ ’Course Dwayne had plenty of friends, too. All his logging buddies, all the boys who spend every other night of their life out at Bunyan’s slurpin’ tall cool ones.”
“Any enemies?”
Adams pressed his lips together, as if trying to think how exactly to put it. “I wouldn’t say enemies, exactly. Dwayne never did anything that would cause a man to have enemies. But there was some … friction. Between him and some of the other boys.”
“Over Lu Ann?”
“You’re a quick one, ain’t ya?” Adams winked. “Yes, sir, when a man has a wife like Lu Ann, he’s bound to be just a wee bit jealous. Almost has to be, really.”
“And had reason to be?”
“ ’Course I wouldn’t know any of this from personal experience, you understand, but … I think it might be fair to say that some of the boys aren’t always too good about honoring the sanctity of the marriage contract. If you know what I mean.”
Ben did, and he was glad to hear it. This was the first glimmer he’d had of a possible motive for Gardiner’s demise other than eco-terrorism. “Do you know of any specific cases?”
“Oh, no. Nothin’ like that. I just know that with a gal like Lu Ann, the possibility is ever-present.”
Well, it was a start, anyway “Any other problems in Gardiner’s life? Anything that might’ve caused some ill will or rancor?”
“I don’t know if ill will is exactly the right word …”
“Don’t worry about the words,” Ben urged. “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
After a few more moments, Adams spoke. “I mentioned before that Dwayne was a logger’s logger. A true believer. Someone who was willing to take a stand to preserve our way of life.”
“You said it, but I didn’t really understand it.”
“The logger is under attack right now, son. Least that’s how we feel about it. There are folks out there threatenin’ our way of life.”
“You’re talking about Green Rage.”
“I am.” He licked his lips. “I don’t know where you stand, son. I don’t know if you’re really into this tree-hugging crap or if you’re just a lawyer tryin’ to make a few bucks. But there are people-criminals, is what they are-determined to make it impossible for a man to make a living in the logging business. Folks who want to see the lumberjack become an extinct species.”
“And Dwayne was upset about this?”
“Dwayne came from three generations of loggers.” He nodded his head grimly. “Yeah, I guess you could say he was upset about this.”
“Upset enough to get himself killed?”
Adams leaned back against the wall. With his head so close to the photo of his daughter, Ben could easily see the resemblance. “I’m going to tell you something that’s not altogether public knowledge, son, and I hope you’ll respect the confidence in which it’s given.”
“If it doesn’t relate to the case, I won’t tell a soul. If it does, I can’t make any promises.”
“Fair enough.” Adams eased forward. “We in the Magic Valley logging community have been aware for some time now that there is in our midst a … well, what’s the word? Turncoat? Quisling? Someone reporting to the other side.”
“A spy? But why?”
“Too many times, these Green Rage punks have known what we were doing, known what we were planning to do, almost as soon as we knew ourselves. The first few times, well, you just write it off to chance. But after a while it becomes apparent that somebody’s doing some talkin’.”
“What kind of talking?”
“Like tipping off Green Rage when we’re planning to move into a new area.
“You mean, when you’re trying to quietly go after the old-growth trees that are supposed to be protected?”
He held up his hands. “I don’t want to quibble with you, son. I know that won’t get us anywhere. Just suffice to say that we knew someone was talking.”
“Did Gardiner know who it was?”
“No, he didn’t.” He set his lips firmly together. “But he was determined to find out.”
“Did he have any leads?”
“It’s possible, but if he did, he didn’t share them with me. I do know this-he’d been asking some of the boys some pretty pointed questions, and some of them didn’t take none too kindly to it.”
“I don’t understand that,” Ben said.
“You got to understand what’s goin’ on here. Like I said, we loggers feel like we’re under siege, like someone’s tryin’ to rob us of our way of life. What I never understood is why these eco-people, these high-minded out-of-towners, think they know more about the forest than we do. Or why it is they love trees more than they do people.” He sighed. “I could never trust someone who puts trees first, because I know that deep down, that person doesn’t love his fellow man. Probably doesn’t love himself. Gives me the shivers to think about it, really. How can you appeal to a man’s humanity if he doesn’t have any?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a sign of self-loathing to respect the natural forest.”
“And why do you folks think you’re the only ones who respect the forest? Let me tell you something, son. We loggers respect the forest-more than most. We have to; it’s our lifeblood.”
“How can you say you respect something you’re tearing down?”
“We are not tearing down the forests. But we’ve got a job to
do.” Adams pressed his spread fingers against the desk. He was an amiable man, but Ben could see that his patience was being tried. “Do you know how many people the logging industry employs? How many families depend on logging for their livelihood?”
“But there are other ways to make a living. You don’t have to kill trees.”
“You don’t have to defend murderers, either. But some folks still do it.”
Ben decided to take that kick in the teeth with his mouth closed.
“For every tree we cut down,” Adams insisted, “we plant two in its place.”
“Which is admirable,” Ben said. “But as a scientist was explaining to me just yesterday, the forest doesn’t grow back the same.”
“Why should it? Nature is about change. This planet has changed constantly since life began.”
“But surely rows of evenly spaced saplings are no substitute for a vibrant, wild forest.”
“If you were one of the men who depended on logging for a livelihood, you’d see it differently.”
Probably true, Ben realized. Probably very true. “How many of those men are there? I understand logging companies are employing fewer men every year.”
Adams tilted his head to one side. “Well …”
“Profits are way up, but employment is way down. Why is that?”
“It’s these eco-terrorists. Spiking trees and blowing equipment. We have to cut back.”
“According to my client, you hire fewer men because you’re replacing them with machines.”
“There are advantages to mechanized labor,” Adams admitted. “You don’t have to worry about machines going on strike or complaining about unsafe working conditions. You don’t have to pay Social Security on a machine, or for that matter, health insurance or disability benefits. Which is pretty important, since statistically the average logger will be disabled before he turns fifty-two.”
“I read that logging is the most dangerous occupation in the country, bar none.”
“It’s true. Still, it’s been our way of life, and we’re not going to let you tree huggers-”
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