“Or the contractor who made the equipment was a big political contributor,” Eileen said bitterly. “What’s the reputation of a single pilot, a woman pilot, compared to a scandal?”
“Now you know,” Lucy said. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” Eileen said. “I didn’t get this officially, and I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said with a sigh. She’d support her friend however she could, but she was afraid her hacking would be discovered if Eileen tried to bring the information to the public.
“It’s good to know,” Eileen said at last, smiling a grave and lovely smile at Lucy. “A mystery is solved.”
“There are always more,” Lucy said, crinkling her nose and bumping her shoulder into Eileen’s.
“Always,” Eileen said, grinning.
“Let’s go get some of my father-in-law’s homemade wine and get snookered,” Lucy suggested.
“A fine idea,” Eileen said. And they did.
“What about the other two people?” Eileen said into her ear.
“Let’s move on to Jacob Mitchell. This guy is as sanitized as a brand new baby diaper. Every hit on the Internet looks like a public relations piece. If I do hits on ‘mitchellsuxs. com’ or ‘mitchellblows.com’ I come up with a glossy Web site that tells me all about Jacob Mitchell, the man who should be President. He’s got some savvy computer people working for him, I know that much.”
“Any dirt at all?” Eileen said.
“Yes, of course, I am a relentless snoop,” Lucy said smugly. She shifted Hank to the other side of her lap and moved the phone to her other ear. “He divorced his first wife and his second is as glossy and shiny as he is. The first is where the dirt comes in.”
“I’m all ears.”
“She called 911 twice during their marriage, both times for domestic assault, and both charges were dropped. She had a very good lawyer during the divorce and got a substantial settlement. According to sealed police documents—sealed except to me, o’ course—she had pretty good proof that he beat her up.”
“How nice to hear,” Eileen said in a voice both satisfied and hungry.
“Yes, it does make one interested in where he was the night Krista Lewis was murdered. However, you can’t use this information to bring him in since—”
“It was obtained illegally, yeah, I figured,” Eileen said. “But it’s good to know anyway. What about Jim Leetsdale?”
“He’s clean but in a different way. Clean, as in ordinary. He went to Rolla University, got an undergraduate in Geology and a Masters in Computer Science, joined the Air Force, traveled around, ended up at Peterson Air Force Base where he was killed.”
“Do you know what they were working on? The project?”
“I don’t,” Lucy admitted. “I feel awful about it. I might take Hank up to the Pentagon and do some strolling around. Sometimes you have to talk face to face. Whatever this project is, it’s hidden well. I’ll keep looking.”
“Thanks, Lucy,” Eileen said. She sounded tired and strained. Lucy jiggled Hank on her lap and frowned.
“You okay?”
“Doing okay,” Eileen said, and laughed in a way Lucy didn’t like at all. “I’m just having a hard day.”
“Take it easy, okay? I know you won’t, but try.”
After Eileen promised with a total lack of sincerity that she would definitely take it easy, Lucy sat with the phone in one hand and stared into space. There was something wrong with Eileen, something different. Hank dropped the toy in his hands and lunged at her computer mouse.
“No way, kiddo,” Lucy laughed, pushing the mouse away from his grasping fingers. “Let’s find some other toy that won’t get wrecked by a good soaking in drool.”
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Alan Baxter walked into Beth Williams’s kitchen to see Sheriff Reg Gonzalez having lunch. His lunch was a huge steak and egg breakfast. His sister was working her way through a salad. Both looked up as Alan walked through the kitchen door, and both smiled identical smiles. Despite their coloring, they looked enough alike to be twins. Alan had left for the Rio Grande before dawn, too wound up to sleep more than a few hours and too polite to wake his sleeping hosts. Instead he’d left a note, put on his fishing waders, and headed for the river.
“H’lo, Alan, how was the fishing?” Beth asked.
“I hooked one, landed one, spent a lot of time looking at the water and the trees,” Alan said. His fishing gear was stowed neatly in his Bronco and he’d changed out of his waders and muddy wading shoes, so all he needed to do was wash his hands. He headed for the sink as Gonzalez washed down an enormous bite of steak with a swig of Beth’s coffee.
“I whipped up breakfast for Reg because he loves my steak and eggs, but we have some of that leftover meatloaf and some salad in the fridge,” Beth said. She started to get up, and Alan waved her back down with his hands still dripping water.
“I can rustle up my own lunch, if you don’t mind me rummaging in your fridge,” he said.
“You can’t use my stove, that’s my only restriction,” Beth said. “She’s an old gas beast, and I don’t like letting amateurs near her.”
“I’ll make myself a meatloaf sandwich and have some of that salad,” Alan said with a smile. Beth relaxed back into her chair.
“Not that I like eating salad for lunch,” she grumbled, spearing a carrot with her fork. “But if I eat like Reg, here, I’ll be as wide as he is and look like a beer keg.”
“I don’t look like a beer keg,” Gonzalez protested mildly, putting another chunk of beef in his mouth.
“I’m only half your height,” Beth said crisply, and bit into her carrot. Alan grinned, his arms full of supplies from the fridge. They talked like siblings, too. He felt much better this morning, after spending time in the river. Fly-fishing was the best therapy he’d ever had. The peace and the calm of the rushing water, the solitude, the sharp jerk of a fish taking the fly, these took every problem out of his mind. Even the horrible memories of Linda that were brought up by meeting his daughter, the nightmare of his marriage, was soothed and flattened by his time in the river. Everything would work out. He had found his daughter, and whatever else happened, he would hold on to that for whatever time he had on earth. He’d found his daughter.
“You going to make that sandwich, or just stare at it?” Beth asked from behind him. He jumped, and started assembling ingredients.
“Sorry, I got lost there for a minute,” he said sheepishly.
“Thanks, sis,” Gonzalez said. Alan turned around with his sandwich on a plate to see Gonzalez’s plate polished clean. “I needed a break from town. And my little Maria Elena, if I go home right now I won’t be able to think.”
“Reg goes all goo-goo eyes around his kids,” Beth explained to Alan, still working on her salad. “He goes home and his brain melts. So he comes out here to take a think-break.”
“And to talk to my favorite senior-citizen homemade detective, Alan Baxter,” Gonzalez said with heavy sarcasm. Alan, with his sandwich halfway to his mouth, froze. “Captain Harben called me this morning. Krista Lewis was working with Major Jim Leetsdale, who was killed the same day she was, or near enough. Luckily your alibis are sound, or I’d be herding you into our facilities right now.”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Alan began guiltily, his sandwich still in the air. “I just remembered, all of a sudden, so I thought I’d drive up and talk to him, then come down here and tell you—”
“You’re not a deputy, you’re not a detective, and I don’t need your help,” Gonzalez said. “Are we clear about this, Alan?”
“We’re clear,” Alan said. He felt awful. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay then,” Gonzalez said. “Now, eat your sandwich and tell me what you found out.”
Alan gaped at him, and Gonzalez gave him a wicked grin. “Just because I don’t need your help doesn’t mean I won’t use your information. Since you deput
ized yourself, Deppity Baxter, I want a full report.”
“Okay,” he said, and put down his sandwich. “I met a detective in the Springs. Her name is Eileen Reed. She’s working the case, and she told me everything about Major Leetsdale.”
“As long as you told her everything about Krista, right?” Gonzalez said unhappily, and Alan nodded. “Oh well, that’s what I expected. Shit. Go ahead.”
“First I need to tell you something. Eileen Reed is—well, she’s my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” Gonzalez asked.
“My daughter,” Alan said. He blinked heavily a few times, then took a large and determined bite of his sandwich. He chewed and swallowed. Gonzalez looked confused while Beth looked stunned. She knew something about Alan Baxter’s past, and there had never been a daughter there before.
“And I’m glad you asked,” he said, “because I’ve been wanting to tell somebody about this since it happened. But I don’t want to take the sheriff’s time with a family issue when he needs to get back to work—”
“Right now I’ve got CNN, Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, and the Sightings people in town,” Gonzalez said, turning his empty coffee cup around in his hands. “I have UFO investigators from all over the country making reservations at every hotel, motel, and trailer court. I have a call in to the FBI but they haven’t given me an answer yet. Tonight I’ll be busting up fights when drunken journalists pinch local barmaids’ bottoms, and I’ll be giving out speeding tickets to UFO fanatics trying to get here before the mothership lands, or whatever the fuck they believe. I believe right now I’m going to have another cup of coffee and listen to your story, Alan.”
“Alan, you didn’t tell your daughter about—our cows, did you?” Beth suddenly spoke up, her eyes worried. Gonzalez gave her a sharp look, groaned, and started rubbing his forehead.
“No, I didn’t,” Alan said, bewildered. “I didn’t think—they aren’t connected. Are they?”
“Not unless you believe in UFOs,” Reg said grimly. “How many, Beth?”
“Two. We burned them. Alan helped Susan and Frank.”
“Grantham might have seen the fire,” Reg said heavily. “Has he called you yet?”
“No,” Beth said. She put her fork in the remains of her salad and stood up. She started cleaning up the dishes with a distracted air.
“Who’s Grantham?” Alan asked.
“Daniel Grantham. He teaches math at the high school. He also writes books on the San Luis Valley. He’s brilliant, and very dedicated, and as hard to shake as dogshit from your shoes when he’s on to a story.”
“Books?” Alan asked. Beth set a big cup of coffee in front of him, creamed and stirred just the way he liked it. She sat down with a mug of her own.
“UFO books. They sell well. The San Luis Valley has a lot of sightings, strange lights, abductions, crap like that,” Gonzalez said. He held out his mug to Beth who threw him a withering glance. He pouted, then got up and poured himself another cup of coffee.
“Cattle mutilations,” Alan said.
“That too,” Beth said grimly. “We aren’t wealthy, Alan. We can’t let the insurance company get away with denying our claims because some of our cattle are killed under mysterious circumstances. Susan told you about this, didn’t she?”
“She did,” Alan said, sipping his coffee. “I wonder if Krista’s death has anything to do with all of this.”
“CNN, Fox News, MSNBC all seem to think so,” Gonzalez said heavily, sitting back down. The afternoon light was just starting to come in through the kitchen windows. It would be dark in less than nine hours, Alan thought, suddenly feeling a touch like a cold hand at the back of his neck. Something was out there, something that had killed Krista, and maybe Jim Leetsdale, and the cows that lay so forlornly with the holes gaping in their sides . . .
“Creeps you out, doesn’t it?” Gonzalez said with a nasty grin. Alan barked out a laugh at being caught with his thoughts on his face.
“Your daughter,” Beth said. “This has to be all connected. I want to know about your daughter.”
“Okay,” Alan said. “Maybe this does all tie in, somehow. I married when I was thirty-two. I lived in Los Angeles and I was a salesman, can you believe it? I sold data storage, big tape machines for the big computers we had back then. I made a lot of money, and I fell in love with this young girl at Lockheed. She was the desk receptionist as I was finalizing a big deal with the aerospace division at Lockheed, and she was beautiful and full of energy and her name was Linda Doran.” He took a sip of coffee to clear a throat suddenly dry and scratchy with memory.
“So we had a short engagement and we married, all within six weeks, and I took her to Hawaii for our honeymoon and when we got back she was pregnant. Life was perfect, you know. Then she changed. She got depressed, really depressed, and I took her to the doctor, and they thought it was pregnancy-related. They thought she might just have mood swings because of the hormones. So we struggled through, and our little girl was born, and we named her Eileen.”
“Eileen,” Beth said with a smile.
“Eileen. So six months after she was born, Linda got better, then she got worse, then she got better again. I think she was manic-depressive, what they call bipolar nowadays, but I never got her to the right kind of doctor. She thought I was going to have her committed because I wanted to have her evaluated.” Alan looked down at his coffee and it was sloshing around in his cup. He was trembling a little with the memory, even though it was thirty-three years old. Funny, that a memory so old could hurt so much.
“So she took off. I got back from an overnight business trip up in San Francisco and she and Eileen were gone. She took all our cash from the bank account, packed the car, and left.”
“When did you find them again?” Gonzalez asked.
“Yesterday,” Alan said, and nodded at the stunned expression on their faces. “Yup.”
“Oh my god,” Beth said.
“I thought she’d killed them both, because I never found them. Not the car, not a record, nothing.”
“Like they dropped off the face of the earth,” Beth said. “Did your daughter tell you anything about it?”
“She was about as upset and surprised as I was,” Alan admitted, remembering again the odd look of her face, so much like his own, shutting down like someone putting on a mask. “She said she didn’t want to talk about our past, and I respected that. She’s a detective with the Colorado Springs police, and she’s—she’s just beautiful.” Alan took a last gulp of his coffee and set the cup down.
“Wise, to go slow,” Reg said. “Who knows what her mother told her about you?”
“Nothing good, I fear,” Alan said sadly. “But I know she’s alive, and she’s my daughter. At least we can keep in contact.”
“She’s on Leetsdale’s case?”
“She’s a homicide detective,” Alan said, and smiled at Beth who was grinning at him. “Nothing I can take credit for, of course. But I’m still proud.”
“I know Harben,” Gonzalez said. “I’ll give him a call later today and talk to him about Leetsdale and Krista Lewis. If they’re related, this could help everyone.”
“Can I go back up there and talk to her again?” Alan asked, as Gonzalez stood up and adjusted the mile of black leather around his waist. Gonzalez fixed him with a baleful eye, then shrugged his shoulders.
“You are a strange duck, Mr. Baxter,” he said. “You’ve been here three days and you’ve got the most important women in my life treating you like a long-lost uncle. If my wife falls in love with you too, I’m just going to have to shoot you.”
Beth giggled and stood up. She gave Gonzalez’s shoulder a hearty punch.
“You big softy,” she said. “Go spend some time with Conchita and your little Maria Elena.”
“Call me a softy tonight when I’m throwing Mr. Important Journalist in the drunk tank,” Gonzalez said wryly. “Hopefully I won’t be scraping his puke off my shoes at the same time.”
; “I won’t talk about Leetsdale or Krista,” Alan promised. “I just want to talk to her.”
“Well, whatever,” Gonzalez said. “If she lets anything slip about her case, you trot on back here like Deppity Dawg and unload it, hear?”
“Deal,” Alan said with a grin. “And thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, thank your loyal brigade of supporters,” Gonzalez said, putting a huge arm around his sister and hugging her. “Thanks, Sis. I’ll call you with any news. I wouldn’t come in to town for dinner for a few days. It’s going to be a circus for a while.”
“We’ll stay away,” Beth promised. “If some journalist pinches Susan’s bottom, you’ll be picking up pieces of him all over Main Street.”
“I know,” Gonzalez sighed. “So keep her here.”
“I’ll try,” Beth laughed. “But I haven’t been able to tell her what to do since she was ten. She’s just like I was.” She opened the kitchen door and waved her brother through, then came back and started cleaning her massive stove. To Alan’s eyes, it already looked spotless.
“I’m making roast beef enchiladas for supper, Alan,” she said. “I could sure use some help grating cheese.”
“You bet,” Alan said. “I think I’ll head back up to the Springs tomorrow morning, and see if I can get an appointment to see Eileen.”
“Good idea,” Beth said, setting a block of cheese and a grater in front of Alan. “Now, grate. And tell me about Eileen. You haven’t told me what she looks like. What happened when you met? Is she married?”
Alan grated cheese, and waited for Beth to stop talking so he could answer her questions, and hoped that things would be well, all things would be well. The kitchen was safe and warm with sunlight and the smells of cooking. Alan tried to avoid thinking about the emptiness beyond the windows and the coming darkness.
14
Crestone, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Marcia Fowler was huddled over Daniel Grantham’s computer when the door to his tiny study burst open. She looked up in surprise to see a fantastic creature standing in the doorway, fierce green eyes glaring at her. Marcia gaped. The creature resolved itself into a woman after a few blinks of her computer-blurred eyes, a woman wearing a wild shawl of a hundred colors, fringed extravagantly.
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