by Bart Paul
I sat up there for a long time wrapped in that saddle blanket with my rifle. Finally I was ready and called Sarah. She said she was just lifting off from the Piute Meadows airstrip in the Highway Patrol helicopter.
“They are going out of their minds in Mammoth,” she said, “so I was coming to look for you. I was afraid something happened to Les.”
“Lester’s dead, Sarah.”
She made a sound then was still for a minute. “You said he—”
“The chopper crashed into the lake on takeoff. Tony crashed it on purpose. Lester and the paramedic drowned right in front of me.”
She tried to say something like oh god but just made a sobbing, gurgling noise, then the phone was quiet. She’d known Lester his whole life, just like me. She started to say my name, then ask how, but the words wouldn’t come out.
“It was planned. Tony planned it. Some controlled drop thing they teach chopper pilots for emergencies. Tony swam away, but Lester was strapped in. The paramedic was trapped in the back.” I stopped. I couldn’t talk any more either.
She was quiet for another minute. When she finally could talk she was all business.
“But why?”
“Same reason they drove Callie off the road.”
I heard her take a deep breath.
“Put Tony on the phone.”
“Tony’s dead.”
“But you said he . . . I see. Good.”
“You’ll want to have Mitch send whoever’s on duty to the Summers Lake campgrounds and wait just above the trailhead with lights off for a couple of ATV’s or two Cubans on foot coming in from Boundary Lake. They got automatic weapons, so your guys best look sharp.”
“I’ll call right now,” she said. “You sit tight. I’ll be up there in thirty minutes.”
She clicked off. There wasn’t any point in arguing with her. By then the moon had rose up just past full, so she could guide the pilot by sight following the canyon trail up from the campgrounds and making the turn at Henry Lake, staying high enough to avoid the peaks. They’d see my campfire easy enough, but I lit the Colemans and set them out on either side of the patch of grass so they’d know where to land. No one likes flying those things at night if they can help it. You got to be nuts. I could hear the Highway Patrol chopper thumping up the canyon from down by Henry Lake and see the searchlight before they cleared the rim. It flew in with the running lights flashing and the moon behind it and set down right where Tony had.
Sarah climbed out slow, looking around. The pilot was a guy I didn’t know. Sarah wore her ranch clothes and hat instead of her uniform, but she had her service belt with the 9mm strapped on, her nylon deputy coat, and carried the 12 gauge pump out of her cruiser. I could tell she’d been crying, but so had I. She gasped a bit when she saw my face, which probably looked like hell in the firelight. She set the shotgun down and just held me for a minute, and the only sound was the chatter of the radio on her belt and the whap-whap of the chopper idling. When she pulled back, she put her fingers on the raw spots on my cheek but didn’t say anything. Then she walked back to the helicopter and talked to the pilot. He nodded and she stepped back, and the chopper revved up and lifted off. We watched it fly east into the moon then disappear down over the rim.
“You staying?”
“He’s sending a CHP black-and-white to the campground to back up our guys,” she said. She took a big breath. “Show me?”
She picked up the 12 gauge and followed me back to the lake. She took the Maglite from her belt, but turned it off when I asked her to. It would be easier to follow the trail in the moonlight and wouldn’t draw attention. I pointed to her belt and shook my head and she turned off the radio, too. First I showed her where the Jet Ranger took off, and pointed out to the spot where it sunk.
“He must have been so scared,” she said. I could barely hear her.
We circled the lake like I’d done before. I stayed watchful toward the trail ahead in case those last two shooters had changed their minds about walking home. When we got around to the other side, I showed her Tony’s body. It was just like I left it, so the Cubans hadn’t messed with him. She looked at him for a minute in the moonlight then turned her flash on him. I could see her sort of wince when she saw that the back of his head was gone.
“Does it usually happen that way?”
“If you do it right.”
She ran the beam over the Glock in his fist, then over the inflated vest.
“Did he try to shoot you?”
“No. I was clear across the lake.”
She just nodded. “He looks huge,” she said. “It’s the vest.”
“It looks like you shot the Michelin man.”
“I knew something was hinkey when he inflated it just after takeoff. I never figured on this.”
“How could he kill two men he’d known for years with no more thought than . . .” she said. The words came out hard. “Mike Mildenberg has a wife and a seven-yearold.”
“They’d have killed Tony quick enough if he hadn’t.”
“Like that’s an excuse,” she said.
“He’d been working for GQ before today. He’s my pick for the one who snatched the body from the plane last week. And the one told GQ that Albert would make a likely patsy.”
“Oh god, poor Les,” she said. “Tony was always the one I’d call. Everybody knew that.”
I showed her the tent to keep her busy. She turned on her flashlight again and poked at stuff but didn’t touch anything. I showed her how it was just thrown up more like a prop than a shelter. I told her about the Kalashnikov I tossed into the lake.
“You might have wanted to leave it for evidence,” she said.
“I left you the Glock. That AK’s the bad-guy weapon of choice. I didn’t come home eleven thousand miles to get shot by one. You want a Kalashnikov, I left one with a couple more bodies back at the forks.”
She gave me a real strange look.
“The two that shot Lester?”
“Yeah.”
We walked back to Tony’s body. She ran her light over his face for a minute without saying anything.
“I never went to bed with him,” she said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Never said you did.”
“But you thought it. You and Les and everybody.”
“Nope. I figured he wasn’t your type.”
“There was a time he was exactly my type,” she said.
She turned off the flashlight, and I let her lead the way back along the trail to our camp. My fire still reflected across the lake. When we were close to where the trail forked off toward the switchbacks, a branch rustled out ahead of us and we both froze. I motioned for her to stay still and stepped ahead of her. She moved the shotgun muzzle to the side and I waited two or three minutes with my rifle ready, but there was no other sound.
“Probably just an owl or marmot or something.”
“Or a bear,” she said.
“You sound exactly like Lester.” It just came out like that before I even thought.
When we got into the camp, she set the shotgun down and sat on a rock, huddled in her jacket.
“Think you’ve got enough wood on that fire?”
“I didn’t want you to get lost.”
She got up and stood by the fire, then turned her back to it and stared out at the lake. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she watched me slip the .270 back into the scabbard.
“Is that a nightscope?”
“Nope.” We both kind of glared at each other. “Didn’t think I’d be needing one.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just . . . I don’t know. I just can’t believe all this is happening.”
“I know.”
She watched me unlace my packers and take off my wet socks. I set the boots close to the fire and got dry socks from my bedroll.
“Where do all these people come from?”
“Who knows. Cuba, Miami, Sinaloa, Hell.”
“How many
more, do you think?”
“Millions.”
She sat back down on the rock.
“I hope you don’t mind my, I don’t know. My being here,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t want to be alone.”
That was exactly what Nora Ross had said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Are we safe here?”
“No. I don’t know. Safe as anyplace. I feel better up here anyway.”
“Shows what you know,” she said, but she smiled kind of sad when she said it.
I dug out some cheese and crackers. When I held up the Crown Royal bottle she nodded, and I poured her some in a Sierra cup. She moved over and sat on the rock next to me and went back to staring at the fire. She was always the hardnose about doing the right thing and following the straight and narrow and all that. Especially since she became a deputy. Now she just sat there and tried not to cry. After a while I put my boots back on, got up, and took my rifle and checked the stock on the picket line. When I was finished, I walked the perimeter just outside the firelight. I could hear her radio then, and hear her talking to someone. When I got back, the moon was way up and she was taking off her boots and jacket and crawling into my bedroll by the fire. A toothbrush stuck out of her shirt pocket, her radio was off, and the 12 gauge lay on the ground between two saddle pads to keep the dew off the bluing but close enough for her to grab.
“I called in,” she said. “I told them we had a crime scene, but it was secure till morning. It would be too risky to send another chopper out at night.”
“Okay.”
“I told them you could show them everything tomorrow.” She looked up at me from the bedroll. “Do you mind?”
“No, but you’d have more room in Lester’s bed.”
She pushed her socks and toothbrush under the fold of the canvas and scrunched over so I’d have some space.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I’d cry all night.”
I crawled into the bedroll next to her and she put her arm over me like we did this all the time. I must have stiffened up.
“Come on,” she said. “Move over. It’s not like you haven’t thought of this before.” She tried to laugh but started to sob.
I held her then and kissed where the hair grows soft just past the corner of your eye. She held me close, front to front, and kissed me on the raw cheek, her tears getting it wet and stinging until she’d wore herself out and stopped crying. She’d pecked me on the cheek a million times and given me big sister hugs, but laying this close felt different and I didn’t fight it much. She made a little sound like she wasn’t fighting it much either.
“If Lester could see us,” she said, “he’d laugh his head off.”
She could barely get the words out, but when she did, I was the one who just lost it.
Chapter Fifteen
I tried to stay awake. I’d figured to slip out and spend the night wrapped in a saddle blanket with my rifle up above the picket lines, watching from the dark, but I passed out and slept till sunup for the second straight day. Sarah was still holding me when I woke up. She looked wrecked.
“You finally slept,” she said.
We crawled out of the bedroll and tended to the stock, leading them to water two at a time then hobbling them out to graze. There wasn’t much feed left, but we’d be out of there quick enough. I got a breakfast fire going from the last night’s embers, and we rolled up the beds while we waited for the coffee to boil. I handed Sarah a cup then took her hand and led her down to the lake. I left my rifle and the shotgun behind, but I still had Lester’s Ruger reloaded and in my jacket pocket. We walked around the lake, and when we got to Tony’s body I started climbing up in the rocks and through the snow and she followed. We got up a ways then we stopped and turned around, looking down on the dome tent and across the lake to the horses and mules at the edge of camp. Then we climbed a little higher. When we looked down again we could see the Jet Ranger in the clear water, the rotors only down about twenty feet. Once our eyes adjusted we could see it all. I would have thought the lake was deeper there. If it had been ten minutes later, the morning sun reflecting on the surface would have hid it. It sat upright with the one door open and the rotors intact like it could fly right out of there. Neither one of us said a word. We just held hands and stared down at it. After a minute we walked back to grab some breakfast before we saddled up.
Sarah cooked sausage and eggs on the fire, taking her time while I mantied up our goods, dividing the camp stuff into light loads for two animals, not just the one mule who’d carried it all before.
Then we ate and I told her everything. About how we found the plane that morning fixing trail seven days before, how it looked, and how Lester swiped the watch and money from the body so we didn’t dare report it to her office that first night. I told her how Callie got dollar signs in her eyes, and how she and Lester started stirring the pot right off, calling GQ and the wife’s lawyers from the cabin, trying to make something happen. I told her how the wreck had been tampered with when we got back two days later, the body gone and the fake note left behind, and how spooked we were when we knew we’d started something we couldn’t finish. She pretty much knew the rest, about Callie, about Albert, about the jacket planted in Albert’s Firebird, and the Cuban hottie who got killed because she was probably just somebody’s junkie whore who couldn’t be trusted to keep her mouth shut. I told her about meeting Nora in the cabin by the lake, and how we had to hide and just got out before the Cubans blew it up. I left out the part in the Ponderosa Motel, but Nora had said women always know anyway. And finally, I told her how GQ figured he’d pretend to discover the wreck and claim his dad had walked away, and how the only way for that story to stick was for Lester and me and anyone who knew the truth to be dead.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me,” she asked, “to protect me?”
“No. I was just too chicken to tell you the mess I made.”
“You’re not chicken. Wound a little tight, but never chicken.”
“I figured if there wasn’t any wreck, GQ’s whole story would look like a lie.”
“Good guess,” she said. “The Reno news crew said their chopper couldn’t find the plane where he said it was. It started to sound like a scam.”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” she said.
“We heard a chopper, but I couldn’t tell where it was heading.”
“There’s one thing you still haven’t told me.”
“What?”
“Where’s the plane?”
“Everywhere. It’s hid in pieces from North Pass to the Forks to Aspen Pass. Every-damn-where.”
“You’re totally crazy,” she said.
Her county radio chattered and she picked it up.
“Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ve got to give Mitch the Cliff Notes version.”
I started cleaning up the plates while she talked into the radio.
“Hey Mitch. Yeah, I’m still up here at Boundary Lake with Tommy Smith. Right. I flew up with CHP last night. Here’s what I know. Les Wendover and Mike Mildenberg were murdered by Tony Aguilar. He tried to make it look like a chopper accident, but Tommy figured it out. Then Tony tried to shoot Tommy and Tommy shot him in selfdefense. No. Tony was working for the same people who killed Callie Dean and Albert Coffey. No, not Mexicans. Cubans from Miami and the missing guy’s son. Big money.”
She looked up at me for a minute, listening.
“No. The meth was bogus. To throw us off the track, of course. Callie was trying to work some sort of con on the son and his family. Get them fighting, saying she knew where his father’s plane crashed, trying to get paid for her information.” She listened some more. “I told you, there was no meth. Callie stumbled on a scheme by the son to defraud the estate. Right, huge, huge money. That made her a target, then Les too. What do you mean how do I know there was no meth? God, Mitch, concentr
ate. I know these people.” Without looking my way she reached her hand out to take mine. That surprised the hell out of me. She kept on, talking about GQ getting Tony to make drowning Lester look accidental, and how much he must have paid him, about the Cubans at the bridge and the two more at the forks. She told him we were only up there fixing trail. Then she let go of my hand and got one of her cross looks.
“My god, Mitch. These guys had automatic weapons. Tommy only had an old deer rifle. Yes, he is that good. And lucky for him.”
She nodded a couple of more times. “Can you get hold of Harvey Linderman and have him meet us at the Summers Lake campground with his stock truck between noon and one?” She listened another minute. “No, Tommy can’t wait. He’s got seven head he’s got to get off this mountain. He can give us a flyover later.” She listened some more, then said yeah and switched off.
“Well that’s a flat pack of lies, Sarah.”
“It’s half of the truth,” she said.
“Yeah. You left out the half with the plane, is all.”
“I just bought you a day to figure a way to tell the other half and not go to jail or get yourself in a tangle with lawyers. It’s either that or we pick up every piece of the wreck and I watch you spend a month putting it all back together.”