Earthquake Games

by Bonnie Ramthun

  “Wait, let me put these down,” she said breathlessly. Less than a minute inside his door and he was already trying to strip off her clothes.

  Joe took the disks from her and set them carefully on the top of the computer she’d brought. Then he turned to her with a look of such leering anticipation that she started laughing helplessly.

  “Come on, Joe,” she protested, as he picked her up, managing to get one hand on her other breast as he did so. He shifted her with a grunt as her shoulder holster dug into his chest. “We had sex last night, remember?”

  “That was yesterday,” Joe said with an incredulous look. “That was hours and hours ago.” He carried her into the master bedroom and dumped her with an undignified bounce onto the bed.

  “Well, okay,” Eileen said, in mock reluctance. She reached up and pulled him down across her on the bed.

  San Luis Valley, Colorado

  When Sheriff Gonzalez hung up the phone on his last call, he shrugged his shoulders and turned to Alan Baxter, who was sitting in the corner chair of his office. The calls had taken an hour and a half. The rest stop was the first order of business and then Gonzalez had worked his way through calls to the Pinedale Police, Alan’s friends in Laramie and Pueblo, and finally Sam Williams. As Gonzalez spoke to Sam Williams, he waved Alan to the corner chair.

  The corner chair was a comfortable wingback affair upholstered in a plush fabric. The chair in front of the sheriff’s desk, where Alan had started that day, was a straight-backed wooden chair. Alan felt like he could breathe again once he’d settled into the embrace of the nonsuspect’s chair.

  “You’re clean, once I have the local cops check out your alibi,” Gonzalez said. “I didn’t expect different.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched powerful arms above his head. Alan distinctly heard the big man’s neck crackle. “From here on out, we’re going to backtrack Krista Lewis. Every move she made, every place she’s been.”

  “She’s an—she was an environmental engineer. She specialized in river pollution. I know she was investigating that E. coli outbreak in Medano Creek.”

  “That’s right,” Gonzalez said. “Some kids got sick from playing in the water, and that never happened before.”

  “That’s right. The contamination was found where the river rose up from the sand, and that water should have been all but distilled. So she said she was backtracking the contamination, trying to find a source in the sand dunes or in the water drainage from the mountains. That’s all I really know, except we were going to meet for dinner—tonight? I think so. Tonight,” Alan said miserably. Now that the enormous weight of being a murder suspect seemed to be easing, he could feel the first real stirrings of grief. He dropped his head into his hands, massaging his forehead with his fingers.

  “She worked for the government?”

  “No, a private company called Riverworks. She worked with the government a lot, though. I guess you’d call Riverworks a government contractor. State and federal, wherever the work took her,” Alan said. He lifted his head and looked at Gonzalez, who was taking notes.

  “Family?”

  “Her parents are alive, and she’s real close to one of her sisters. I don’t know about other relatives.”

  “What was her job here in the dunes? Federal? Tell me it’s federal.”

  “Federal, I think. She was working with a guy up in Colorado Springs, some Air Force officer. I can’t remember his name, though.”

  “Federal,” Gonzalez said cheerfully. “You know what this means?”

  “No,” Alan said.

  “The FBI, if we’re lucky,” Gonzalez said with satisfaction. “With any luck, I’ll be shoved aside by the Bureau kids and they’ll take care of this.”

  “You want to be shoved aside?” Alan asked carelessly. But Gonzalez was not angered. His grin broadened.

  “Shoved aside is good, if I care about finding Krista Lewis’s murderer. I don’t have the resources to work a murder like this. I have my hands full, Alan, and I don’t have any detectives. The last murder here was four years ago and it was real easy to solve, since Vic went straight to the bar and started drinking after killing his girlfriend. I’d have to work evenings and weekends on this, and I have a new baby.”

  “No time for a case like this,” Alan said in understanding.

  “Nope, and the FBI kids have lots of toys and lots of money,” Gonzalez said. “They’re also arrogant as hell, and annoying, and whatever else you want to say. But they’ll work it, I hope, if I can get the right words said.” Gonzalez paused and looked out his own window, a frame that showed the enormous sweep of mountains that made up the walls of the San Luis Valley.

  “You’d work it anyway, wouldn’t you?” Alan asked, smiling.

  “I would, and I will, if I can’t get the FBI to take this,” Gonzalez said with a nod. “You’re going to be at Beth and Sam’s place for a while?”

  “At least a week,” Alan said.

  “Don’t leave without contacting me,” Gonzalez said. “If the FBI wants to talk to you, make sure I’m with you. They have a tendency to forget little things like the Constitution when they get their boxers in a bunch.”

  “Okay,” Alan said gratefully. “Thank you.”

  “Sam isn’t a good judge of character, he’d bring home Ted Kasczinski if Ted asked him nice enough. But Beth, I know Beth. You wouldn’t stay more than a night if you didn’t pass muster with my Beth,” Gonzalez said with a grin.

  “Your Beth?”

  “My big sister,” Gonzalez said. “She got a dose of our Spaniard DNA, which is why she’s got that light brown hair and light skin. Kind of a Mexican-lite.”

  “You look alike,” Alan said, smiling for the first time since he’d seen Krista’s body. Their smiles were the same, and the shape of the eyes, now that he knew.

  “Except for the coloring,” Gonzalez said with a grin. “Every once in a while the Gonzalez family produces a Spanish throwback. Sam was lucky to catch her.”

  Alan, who agreed, nodded firmly. “She’s a great cook, too,” he added.

  “Well, stick around for her cooking,” Gonzalez said. “I’ll get a hold of you in a few days and we’ll see where this goes.”

  Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

  “Baby?”

  “Don’t call me baby,” Eileen grumbled, mostly asleep. She was vaguely aware that Joe’s weight had shifted on the bed, that he was no longer pressed against the length of her.

  “I’m going to look at that computer you brought me,” he whispered.

  “Sleep,” Eileen said, trying to put her arm out and draw him back to her side. The television was still on in the living room and she could hear the roar of a television audience in laughter. The late-night shows were on then. She wiped a sheaf of hair from her face and pried open an eye. Joe was sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on a pair of boxer shorts.

  “I’m wide awake,” he said softly, turning to her and kissing her on the cheek. “You sleep, babe.”

  Eileen tried to say something, tried to get up, but she couldn’t seem to make the words come together in any particular order. The next time she drifted to the surface she heard the Star Trek theme music. The original Star Trek. Joe was a complete addict for all things Star Trek. Eileen did a sleepy calculation and realized that it must be one o’clock. She struggled up on one elbow and saw Joe through the door that led to his office. He was still in boxer shorts, a half-eaten cheese quesadilla in one hand, and his face was lit by the computer screen. His desk was angled so he could watch the television at the same time. This so he could see William Shatner say lines Joe already knew by heart. He saw the movement through the door and looked up.

  “Go to sleep,” he ordered. “You wouldn’t understand what I’m doing anyway.”

  “Classified,” she said sleepily. “Don’t go on the Net with anything.”

  “Okay,” he said with a smile. “I figured that one already. Go back to sleep.”

  Eil
een wisely lay back down and curled up on her side. There was something immensely comforting about Joe working in the next room while she slept. Some half-sensed memory of sleeping while the grown-ups talked, perhaps, when she was a child. Whatever it was, she fell back into sleep so soundly she didn’t wake until dawn flooded the windows with light.

  San Luis Valley, Colorado

  Alan drove straight back to the Williams’s Ranch. He didn’t try to fool himself about his motives. He was going home, or at least as close as he could manage. He longed for the warmth of Beth’s kitchen, the merry eyes of Susan Williams, the comfort of his clean white guest room. He kept seeing the blank eyes of Krista Lewis, filled with sand. He kept smelling the morgue, the clean antiseptic smell that wrapped over the deeper smell of death like clear cellophane. How had he come to this place, this death?

  The sun sank quickly over the range of mountains to the west, throwing the enormous valley into shadow. Alan spotted the turnoff to the ranch and slowed down, putting on his blinker and turning on his lights at the same time. There was no other traffic on the long stretch of highway and the air blowing through his open window was redolent with the smell of sage. Stars began to spring out over the sky. Venus appeared over the mountains, glowing with her bright and serene light. Sam had given him the combination to the gate so Alan didn’t have to wait for someone to open it for him. Once he was on ranch property, Alan began to relax.

  Then he saw the cluster of lights in one of the Williams’s pastures. Alan turned toward the lights and boosted his Bronco to a teeth-rattling speed. Irrationally, he thought of Susan Williams, the same age as Krista Lewis. Not her, he thought. Not her, too.

  As he bumped to a stop over the pasture, he breathed a gusty and trembling sigh of relief as Susan herself came running to his truck.

  “Who’s that?” she called. Her face was grim and pinched and she carried a very ugly looking shotgun in her left hand. The business end was pointed in Alan’s general direction, which made the gun look even uglier.

  “It’s me, Susan,” Alan shouted, waving his hand out the window. “I thought someone was hurt.”

  “Well, shit, Alan, you scared me,” she said, coming up to the Bronco and leaning against the side. The shotgun now drooped toward the ground but was still held firmly in her left hand. She was wearing her work clothes, jeans and a sturdy patterned shirt. Her cowhide gloves were tucked in the pocket. “Nobody is hurt. But I’m sorry you didn’t come any later.”

  “Why?” Alan asked. He got out of the Bronco and peered into Susan’s eyes. He suppressed an urge to take her in his arms and hug her. He was not her father. But she looked forlorn somehow, weary and lost.

  “Because you sure don’t want to see this,” Susan said, then breathed a gusty sigh and shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to, though. You’re here, anyways.”

  “The—what?” Alan asked. Here the sage was stronger, along with a whiff of girl-sweat from Susan and the ever-present smell of cattle. The sun was long gone over the mountain range and the twilight was deepening.

  “Come with me,” Susan said, with a touch of grim amusement. “Come and join the club, as it were.”

  Alan, mystified, followed her as she trudged back toward the headlights of the two ranch trucks. Frank gave a brief wave as he approached. Alan noticed without surprise that Frank was wearing two western-style holsters, crossed at the hips like a gunslinger, and that both holsters were full of what were assuredly not toy revolvers.

  “Hey, Alan,” Frank said. “Have a look.”

  Alan moved to Frank’s shoulder and looked at what was in the glow of the headlights. He stared for an eternity, transfixed.

  “Pretty bad, eh?” Susan murmured. She put her free hand on Alan’s shoulder, her big callused palm warm through his thin shirt. “You gonna be sick, now?”

  “No,” Alan said numbly, looking at the bodies of the two cows. They were lying back to back, their heads thrown over at awkward angles. The flesh was stripped from the jaws of the cows, stripped so completely that half the faces were polished white bone. Where the udders and back ends of the cows were supposed to be there was nothing but gaping holes. Small circular holes were punched along the body of one cow, circles as big as a coffee cup and as black and gaping as the spaces where the udders were.

  “There’s no blood,” Alan said numbly, and was grateful his voice did not tremble.

  “And no ants or flies,” Frank said conversationally. “Won’t be, either.”

  Alan was suddenly aware of the immensity of the night that surrounded them. The sky was littered with stars, stretching from one end of the valley to the other. Alamosa was a feeble glow in the distance. There were no other lights, no car lights or streetlights or traffic lights. The night seemed to press against him.

  “I wish I had a gun,” he murmured plaintively. Frank surprised him by throwing back his head and roaring with laughter. Susan, too, giggled madly. She and Frank staggered into each other, laughing, and the night seemed to recede a bit from Alan.

  “You are so funny!” Susan finally gasped, wiping her streaming eyes with a grubby hand. “You don’t even ask about what did this, you just want a gun. You’re my kind of guy, Alan.”

  “Thank you,” Alan said. “So what did this?”

  “Predators,” Frank said, his laughter gone in an instant. His eyes were angry. “Predators, Alan. We don’t report UFOs at the Williams’s Ranch. We don’t report cattle mutilations, no matter how often they occur. This was done by predators.”

  Alan looked silently at the dead cattle, at the surgical precision of the circular holes punched into the tough hide, at the polished bone of the jaws.

  “My granddad reported one of the first series of cattle mutilations, back in the seventies,” Susan said. She held out her shotgun to Alan, who took it automatically. “You know how to use one of these? Safety? Yes? Good. First he was ridiculed, then he was harassed, then when everyone was having them, he was the first to shut the hell up. The insurance company began to refuse payoff on a cow lost to little gray men from saucers. So now we have predator attacks.”

  Susan picked up a shovel from the truck bed and began to dig in the sandy soil. Frank, after a sincere look at Alan’s hands on the shotgun, took up another shovel and joined her. Alan was afraid they were planning to bury the two big beasts, but then realized they were digging a trench around the bodies.

  “Firebreak?” he asked.

  “We burn them,” Susan said. “It’s my dad’s idea. First we take pictures, which the insurance company requires. I don’t know what they do with them, and I don’t care. They pay up, that’s what matters. Then we burn them. Like poisoning meat for a coyote, which of course we never do because it is illegal, of course, to poison the beautiful and lovely coyote.” She grinned at Alan, her face lit like a Halloween pumpkin by the glow of the truck lights. “Anyway, if they want to come back and—dine, or practice their surgery, or whatever the fuck they do, well, we try to deny them the carcass.”

  “Coyotes won’t eat ’em anyway,” Frank said. “No predators will touch a thing like this.”

  “How often does this happen?” Alan asked, looking away from the headlights into the darkness and trying to see if anything moved out there. His skin crawled into gooseflesh. The roof of the sky was suddenly enormous, deep, stretching over his head. There were pinpoints up there that were galaxies. It was then he realized how scared he really was.

  “Don’t be too scared; they never attack humans,” Frank said, his trench joining Susan’s. With well-practiced movements, the two cowhands threw their shovels in the back of their trucks and both took out containers of diesel fuel. They poured the fuel on the carcasses without stepping close to the bodies, an awkwardness that would have seemed comical without the look of the stripped faces beneath them.

  “Some people who touch kills get funny burns on their hands,” Susan said, capping her fuel can and setting it back in her truck. “I don’t plan to get funny burns on my h
ands.”

  Susan got into her truck and moved it to a watching distance from the fire. Frank moved his next to Alan’s Bronco.

  “You want the honors?” Frank said, dusting his gloved hands together.

  “Not today,” Susan said. Frank nodded and touched a wooden matchstick to the palm of his glove. With a soft whump and a bloom of light, the cattle went up in flames. They turned off their lights and the three of them settled on the tailgate of Susan’s truck. Susan and Frank’s calm was soothing.

  “We’ll stay until it’s done, then we’ll bury the ashes,” Susan said. “There’s not much wind, but we need to keep a watch the whole time. We’ll miss dinner but Mom will keep plates hot for us. Hey, does she know you’re out here?”

  “No, I drove straight here,” Alan said. “I thought—well, I thought someone was hurt or something.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. He reached into his shirt pocket and flipped out a small black gadget. He pressed a few buttons. “Hi, Beth, it’s Frank. We’re at a little bonfire and we’ve got Alan Baxter with us. He helped us out. We’ll bring him in when we’re done. Yes, he did. No, he didn’t. Yes, you’re right. Bye.” Frank grinned at Alan. “That Beth, she likes you. She knew you’d be fine with it. Hey, what about your friend? She okay?”

  “No,” Alan said heavily. He remembered everything about Krista again all in an instant, and his head drooped. “She’s dead. She’s the girl they found on the dunes.”

  “Oh, Alan, I’m sorry,” Susan said. She put an arm around him and hugged him against her side.

  “What a bitch,” Frank said. He nudged Susan and handed her a flask. She took a deep gulp and handed it on to Alan. He took a good mouthful and felt Wild Turkey cannon down his throat and light a fire in his belly. It felt very good.

  “You have good taste in medicinal whiskey,” he said hoarsely, handing the flask back to Susan.

  “We only chug the best Kentucky bourbon when we deal with UFOs,” Susan said solemnly. Then they were all laughing, leaning against each other in the darkness, their eyes lit by flames from the pyre of the cows, and Alan knew that this was okay, this was right. This was another way of understanding Krista’s death, and his own eventual death, and the death of everything that lived and moved and breathed under the hard sprawl of the stars above them. The flames danced and crackled, and when Susan handed the flask back to him, he took it gratefully.