Killer View

by Ridley Pearson

“They’re guidelines, recommendations, not requirements, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “But you’d think with his history-”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’m sure if you ask him, he’ll tell you. Danny isn’t what you’d call shy.”

  Bezel said, “Please instruct your officers to remain alert for flulike symptoms and nosebleeds.”

  “You make it sound like Ebola.”

  “We don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Bezel said, her face suddenly severe, her husky voice an octave lower. “I wouldn’t be making any jokes.”

  “Nerves,” Walt said. “I’m not real comfortable with biological agents.”

  “Neither are we, Sheriff,” Bezel said.

  22

  “I T’S REALLY QUITE SIMPLE,” THE MAN SAID, OVER THE sound of wood popping and crackling inside a woodstove. Aker sat, tied to a ladder-back chair, wearing a black hood. A syringe and some vials sat in an enamel tray on a game table to his left. A dog was curled up by the woodstove. The ceiling was vaulted to the cabin’s roof, the scissor trusses exposed. The air smelled strongly of coffee and, less so, of the distinct but foreign odors of pharmaceuticals.

  “We need you to write up a report on what you found,” he continued.

  “Found where?” Mark Aker asked through the fabric of the hood.

  “The sheep. Don’t play dumb with me.”

  “Writing a paper requires lab work, research, patience, and a lot of time,” he said.

  “You’ve done all that.”

  “I did some. It’s true. But I need more time. If you release me…”

  “All I’m talking about is a discovery of findings.”

  “I’m a long way from that. It’s true, I have theories. If you want me to stop my research, I will. No questions asked.”

  “To the contrary: I need you to scientifically confirm what I already know. You can help me here. I want you to publish what you’ve found, not hide it.” He paused. “You think I’m trying to fuck you, don’t you? I’m not! I want you to publish.”

  “If you want me to do that, I will. But first you need to drop me off near a hospital and you need to do it real soon, if you’re going to avoid manslaughter charges.”

  “I’m not going to kill you. Relax. This isn’t about stopping you from doing your research; it’s about publishing it. You’re misunderstanding. Publish what you know and we’ll release you.”

  “It’s you who’s not understanding, asswipe. See, I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic. In a couple of hours, if not sooner, my heart rate’s going to increase, I’ll start breathing rapidly, and I’ll pass out. I’ll go into shock. And if I don’t receive medical care, I’ll die. As for your report: I won’t live long enough to write the first paragraph. Get me to a hospital; I’ll do whatever you want.”

  A dark musical score ran through his head; it had begun with the mention of diabetes. He untied Aker’s feet and wrestled to bring his unwilling body out of the chair. Aker fell sideways and the chair crashed to the floor. Aker thrashed, and landed a kick to the man’s left ear, before he was restrained. The man unfastened Aker’s belt and pulled his pants down.

  Aker’s left buttock was riddled with circular bruises, the result of insulin shots.

  “Motherfucker!” the man shouted. He snorted and paced the small area angrily.

  “I need insulin, Coats,” Aker said.

  During the ruckus, the hood had come off.

  Roy Coats heard his name spoken. He stared at his hostage. How in the world?

  “R. Coats, right?” Aker said. “And she would be Dimples,” he said, referring to the dog, now by the fire. The dog had gotten close enough earlier for Aker to see down through the opening at his neck. And he’d recognized her. “Front right paw bitten by a rattlesnake… what, two years ago? You owe me a hundred and eighty bucks for that, Coats. I tend not to forget the customers who don’t pay.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “What are you going to do, kill me?” he said, amused. “I’m going to die here, Coats. And let me tell you something: it won’t be pretty.”

  “You’re not going to die. You’re going to write your report.”

  “Would if I could, but I don’t think so. I don’t remember how you got me here. I don’t even remember how you found me. Ketamine?” he asked. “Headache tells me it’s ketamine. But there’s not a sound anywhere near us. Not even planes going over. So I’ve got to think we’re a long way from anywhere. And that doesn’t bode well for me. Challis? Salmon? The Pahsimeroi? Stanley? You’re never going to get the insulin in time.”

  Coats paced between the stove and back again, his head hanging, the fingers of his right hand tugging at whiskers in his beard. Then he stopped and addressed Aker, who remained on the floor. “The islets of Langerhans,” Roy Coats said.

  Aker couldn’t conceal his astonishment.

  “My mom was type 1,” Coats explained. “I know all about acidosis.”

  Aker’s focus changed as he took in the cabin walls, all floor to ceiling with books. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them.

  “The second coming of Ted Kaczynski?”

  “I’d watch my mouth, if I were you.” Coats began searching the stacks for a particular title. “There’s a cow, two pigs, and some chickens out back.”

  “I’m a little old for a petting zoo. I’ll pass.”

  “Last warning about that mouth.”

  “What exactly do you think you’re holding over me, Coats? Without insulin, I’m on my way out.”

  “Bovine and pig insulin kept diabetics alive for decades. It wasn’t until the nineteen fifties that they synthesized it.”

  “You cannot be serious,” Aker said. “Oh, I get it: you’re Frederick Banting, not Ted Kaczynski.”

  “Both the pig and the cow have a pancreas, and that’s all we need.” Coats pulled a book from a shelf, returned it, and selected another. “All I’ve got to do is keep you alive until the next radio check. We stay off the airwaves. Only check in once a day. You’re the vet. You want to live, doc, you’re going to have to earn your supper.”

  23

  TWO MOUNTAIN PASSES THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AVAILABLE to Walt in the summer months were closed by snow for the winter, forcing him to travel southeast around the ends of three mountain ranges that pointed like fingers into central Idaho’s vast, arid plain. He and Brandon said little on the two-hour drive that took them through Carey, Arco, and, finally, the tiny town of Howe, which consisted of a Church of Latter-day Saints, a post office, and a general store. He drove northeast into the Pahsimeroi Valley. With long, subzero winters, and only enough surface water to support a dozen ranches, the Pahsimeroi existed in a time warp, virtually unchanged for a thousand years. Majestic mountains surrounded a valley floor of rabbitweed and sagebrush. Aspen and cottonwood trees lined its few streams and creeks. Herds of antelope flashed their white tails like garden rabbits while red-tailed hawks sailed effortlessly on the steady winds that made this place so inhospitable to man.

  A two-lane road, dead straight, plowed through a tablecloth of white, splitting the valley in two. It was as breathtaking a piece of Idaho scenery as could be found, and Walt never grew tired of looking at it.

  “You get over here, it’s like another world,” Brandon said.

  “My father used to hunt here.”

  “You don’t hunt,” Brandon said, as if it had just occurred to him.

  “No.”

  Brandon tracked a handheld GPS, the topo map unrolled on his lap, his actions awkward due to the sling. He cross-checked the map with the device, occasionally glancing over to the right, where he imagined the first of Mark Aker’s three pinholed locations.

  “You think I’m nuts coming here,” Walt said.

  “Did I say anything?”

  “It’s all we’ve got to go on: three pinholes in a map.”

  “Maybe it’s enough,” Brandon said.

  Walt gripped the wheel more firmly. The tension he was feeling
had nothing to do with the snow floor he was driving on.

  “There was a time I wanted her back,” Walt said.

  Brandon took the opportunity to check the GPS and then to look out the window for the umpteenth time.

  “If I fire you, I look resentful. Maybe you sue me.”

  Brandon reached for the door handle. “I could walk home from here; it’s only a couple hundred miles.”

  “It’s the girls I’m thinking about,” Walt said. “First and foremost, it’s the girls.”

  “Shit,” Brandon whispered. “Can we stop this?”

  “You want to fuck my wife, that’s your business. Your risk. But you’re fucking me along with her, and you should have thought about that.” He glanced over at Brandon.

  “You think I didn’t?”

  “Ketchum has an opening for a deputy. Bellevue, maybe.”

  The suggestion hung inside the car as it raced up the empty two-lane road. Walt felt insignificant and small.

  “My guess is,” Brandon said too loudly, acting as if the recent exchange had not happened, “we’re not going to get in there because the road won’t be plowed.”

  “It’ll be plowed,” Walt said. He answered Brandon ’s puzzled expression. “Mark visited here. He called on a client. And, in this valley, it’s either cattle or sheep. They’ll keep the road open in winter in order to feed. The satellite map had four or five pivots clustered out there. That’s a ranch, for sure.” Walt having said that, an interruption in the plowed bank appeared a quarter mile ahead. He slowed the Cherokee.

  “She complains, I’ll bet,” Walt said. “About your trailer being so small, about your work hours.”

  “Is that why you asked me along, Sheriff? Make sure I log in a lot of OT?”

  “Yup.”

  Brandon winced. He hadn’t expected the truth.

  He was squirming inside, right where Walt wanted him.

  “Did you notify the Lemhi sheriff?” Brandon asked.

  “I might have forgotten,” Walt said.

  “Because?”

  “Lemhi’s a different kind of county. You can’t throw a stick without hitting someone’s nephew or cousin. It’s too cozy. I don’t want to give him a chance to rehearse anything.”

  “What would he rehearse?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Then why say that?”

  “Something got Randy killed. Maybe it was the poaching, but I’m not so sure. I think it was the coat he was wearing: Mark’s coat. And now that Mark’s been abducted, and we’ve found the same date-rape cocktail in Randy’s blood, I’m guessing Randy’s death was some kind of misfire. So it’s all on Mark and whatever he was hiding up in his cabin, which means one or all of these ranches are involved.”

  “No shit.”

  “What gets a vet in trouble? One thing keeps coming to me: mad cow. That’s something any rancher, and especially these good old boys out here, would make damn sure to keep quiet.”

  Brandon was no longer paying attention to his GPS. He was leaning in his seat toward Walt, hanging on his every word.

  “So what they’d be rehearsing,” Walt said, “is some piece of fiction to provide cover for Mark coming out here, and tracking their ranches, and sticking goddamn pushpins in a map to mark their homesteads, something that has nothing to do with whatever was the original reason they called him out here in the first place.”

  “Mad cow.”

  “It’s got to be something along those lines. Something big. Something that makes the truth too expensive.”

  “So why go to the trouble of abducting him? These old boys are plenty used to the rifle. I don’t see them getting all sentimental.”

  “Who knows? Could be they wanted to establish if he’d told anyone. How far along he was in his findings. Could still be their plan to kill him. He could be dead right now.”

  He wished he could take back what he’d just said. Saying such things gave them weight. He drove through an open gate in a wire fence and bounced the Cherokee across a cattle guard. Thing rattled to beat hell. A pair of steel grain sheds rose from the snow like gray hats to his left. He drove past a hundred-acre field that was probably knee-high with alfalfa in the summer. Black veins of meandering cow trails cut through the deep snow. A herd of seventy or eighty Angus was wedged tightly into the field’s southwest corner, their backs to the wind.

  Walt directed the Cherokee toward the granaries, two wood barns, and a two-story gray clapboard house with white trim. He studied the cows for signs of illness but didn’t know what he was looking for: they all looked mad to him.

  In the field directly ahead, sheep fretted, dancing nervously back and forth, as Walt’s Cherokee drew closer. White on white, broken by black legs and black heads. Puppets on unseen strings.

  “The thing I’d never get used to about living on a farm like this,” Brandon said, sniffing the air, “is the stink.”

  “It’s usually not so bad in winter,” Walt said. “I’ve got to admit: that’s funky.” It was a horrid, bitter smell. Sour and permeating. It only hit them now, as they drove close to the buildings.

  “A smell like that,” Brandon said, “no wonder they called a vet.”

  24

  LON BERNIE MET THE CHEROKEE WITH FOUR DOGS AT HIS side. In his late fifties, with a florid complexion and soft gray eyes, he wore dirty canvas coveralls, a smudged cowboy hat, and large rubber-coated gloves. His nose carried a curved scar the size of a thumbnail, as pink as Pepto-Bismol. A front tooth had been chipped in a bull-riding championship when Bernie was nineteen. He still wore the belt with the oversized silver buckle to dances at the Grange Hall on Saturday nights, after a steak at the Loading Chute.

  “I see a sheriff’s car coming, I expect it to be Ned,” the rancher said, tugging off his glove and offering his calloused hand to both men. His voice sounded like a gearbox with broken parts. “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Couple questions, is all, if you’ve got the time,” Walt said.

  Brandon banged his boots together, already cold. Windchill was pushing the mercury into the single digits. “Ain’t got nothing but time, this time of year.”

  Lon Bernie looked out over Walt’s head-the man was a giant- surveying his animals. He reminded Walt of Hoss Cartwright. Walt sensed in him a cautiousness, a reluctance. It felt for a moment as if the rancher might be considering inviting them inside or to follow him on his chores. Something flickered in his gray eyes as Lon Bernie sucked some air through his top teeth.

  “Be my guest,” he said.

  Walt shot a quick glance over at Brandon. His deputy stopped banging his boots together.

  “Mark Aker, Sun Valley Animal Center, did some work for you recently.”

  Lon Bernie’s gray eyes iced over. There was no change in his otherwise-pleasant expression. A fog fled his mouth on each exhale. Lon Bernie: a steam engine climbing the hill.

  “Had a cow down with the bloat,” the rancher said. He didn’t seem to feel the cold. Walt was freezing. “Mel Hickenbottom was busy up to Challis. He’s usually the one I’d call. This Aker fellow stepped in. You can’t wait too long with the bloat.”

  “Well, that’s a good start for us. You remember how you paid him?”

  Lon Bernie briefly lost his composure. “I paid him good, I’ll tell you what. It’s a long drive over here, and he charged by the hour. How is it my livestock is any of your business, anyway, Sheriff? You going to answer me that?”

  “The vet’s brother was killed two nights ago. Now the vet’s gone missing. Mark’s last business brought him over this direction.” Lon Bernie’s face remained expressionless. “Mark doesn’t often tend to the bigger animals. That’s his brother’s job. Seems he made an exception. That interests me. The appointment book shows it was Mel Hickenbottom who called the center. Said your sheep were suffering. Your sheep, not your cattle. No mention of bloat.”

  “Could be right,” Lon Bernie said, without missing a beat. “Coulda been the way you say. Ma
ybe it was Mel handled the bloat and the Glitter Gulch vet the sheep.”

  The nickname for the Sun Valley area was not new to Walt. The valley’s wealth and glamour offended people like Lon Bernie, and there was nothing to be done about it. Most of the resentment stemmed from jealousy and ignorance and was therefore undeserved. Most but not all. Not by a long shot. Lon Bernie was letting him and Brandon know they were outsiders here and therefore unwelcome, business or not.

  “Was it the cattle or the sheep?” Walt asked pointedly.

  “I said one of my cattle had the bloat, didn’t I? Something’s always sick around here.”

  “What specifically was wrong with your sheep?”

  “If I’d known that,” Lon Bernie said, “I wouldn’ta needed no vet, now, would I?”

  “Did you get an answer? A diagnosis?”

  “You ever been around sheep, Sheriff?” The rancher looked to his right and the hundreds of thick wool coats milling about. “Dumb as paint. You look at ’em wrong and they take sick. Or they throw themselves in the irrigation ditch and their coats get too heavy and they drown themselves in two feet of water. I leave ’em to the vets. A couple of shots and they’re right as rain. I pay my bills on time, and that’s about all there is to it. I’m not asking for no diagnosis, just results.”

  “The sheep are better now, then? Did Mark Aker have success with the sheep? Or was he working on your cattle?”

  Lon Bernie’s eyes went stone cold. A grin twitched at the edges of his cracked lips.

  “Maybe what happened,” Walt suggested, “was that Mel called Mark about the sheep, but then, when Mark got here, it turned out Mel had misspoken and it was actually the cattle having problems.”

  “You think I don’t know which of my animals is having problems, Sheriff? You got a dog? A cat? You can’t tell the difference? Not me. A head of cattle had the bloat. That’s all.”

  “My brother,” Brandon said, “once had a cow with bloat. Stuck his Swiss Army knife in the cow and about the worst smell I’ve ever smelled came out. But that cow stood up five minutes later and went on her way. He never even called the vet.”