by Mark Stevens
The thought was hard to shake. The drive to Down to Earth offices was out of obligation. She knew Jerry would read the contradictions on her face. Duncan Bloom understood the human struggle in Alfredo Loya’s predicament. To Jerry, Alfredo Loya was a business complication.
Jerry stood up from behind his desk and gave her one of his too-long, overly purposeful hugs, as if she might crack unless he held the pieces together. The hug said more about him and his needs.
“You look refreshed,” he said. “Smell great, too.”
“Showered at your place,” said Trudy.
“I can smell the shampoo,” he said. He circled back behind the desk. “It’s already a busy day around here, practically an invasion.”
The implication was clear. Get to work.
It would be unlike her to ask for time on the computer. She wanted to muck around on the websites Bloom had shown her, see what she could find out about Ricardo Reyes and the company he listed on a car loan application as the place where he worked. They had the company name, Pipeline Enterprises, but no solid information about location, service, products, or purpose.
“Anything new?” said Jerry. “I assume you haven’t been talking to the police.”
The space between them felt dead. Trudy sat in the chair for salesmen and visitors.
“No police,” said Trudy.
Jerry took a swig from a quart-size cup. She could smell Jerry’s custom roast. “You’re tense,” he said.
“Hard to feel settled or centered,” said Trudy. “People in your house, you know. Creepy. I don’t want to be here, in fact. I feel like we’re a target.”
She had a right to a healthy streak of paranoia, given the late-night intruders.
“They won’t come here in broad daylight,” said Jerry. “I hope. I think. If they were broad daylight types, they would have official roles, specific powers. Names, too.”
The words came tightly, with restraint. They had the air of instruction. He tapped twice on his keyboard with one hand, glanced briefly at the computer screen, picked up his coffee and leaned back.
“You still want me to go to the cops,” said Trudy.
Jerry paused like he was thinking, but Trudy knew better. “What I want is for you to be out mingling with our customers and showing them how to turn Roaring Fork clay into power-packed loam.”
Jerry took a drink from his coffee. He could work on the cup all day, didn’t mind it tepid.
“And, yes, a quick trip down to the police,” he added. “Would it hurt? Put it on the record? Forget about everything that led up to it, but someone broke into your house and they drove a long way to do it. Let the cops decide what they want to do with the report, but give them the option. What if they come back tonight, still looking?”
Trudy’s thoughts drifted to River Meadows Mobile Home Park and she imagined their home now bare to the walls, their lives blown apart.
“At some point Alfredo must have told them where he had been working,” said Trudy. “So when he ran from the van they knew where to come looking.”
Minor businesswoman celebrity good for sales, bad for every other reason. Her late-night visitors had probably figured out where Tomás or Alfredo had lived, asked around enough with their quasi-ID’s to find his home and then they put the screws to his girlfriend or one of the others who coughed up the fact that Alfredo had been squirreled away by his boss. “No cops. Not yet.”
Jerry folded his arms. Trudy could feel the admonishment before it was uttered.
“There’s more at risk here than you think,” he said. “The business is an extension of you and when the business doesn’t play by the rules, it will come out. If they both came to your house, this spot is next. Everyone in town knows I sold the grocery store to work with you. Any ten-year-old with an old phone book could find my home address and the I’m-Feeling-Lucky button on Google would fork it over in nanoseconds.”
He had rehearsed this pitch. Trudy felt every ounce of his logical fretting but what came through his look had more to do with his disappointment in her, like she was the feisty renegade who didn’t know her limits.
“All this is at risk,” he said. “Somehow or someway it will all get dragged out. Businesses are not immigration authorities. The humanitarian gestures, getting Alfredo back on his feet—it’s all well and good up to a point. But we’re not in a good position to sit here and wait for their next move. It would be a public relations disaster if this hits the news.”
Actually, thought Trudy, the newspaper in this case sees the bigger picture and knows that her business had been working in the murky waters of the immigration issue, like virtually every other firm out there that depended on physical labor.
“One more day,” said Trudy. She tried to hit a tone somewhere in the general neighborhood of non-inflammatory, but she was sure it came out argumentative. “Maybe two. And maybe you turn off the lights here for a day or two and spend time at the store or the herb stand, where there’s lots of people around.”
“And after one day or two?” he asked.
“I go down to the police, lay it all out.” Trudy had a hard time picturing it, but she said it. Her head was already thinking ahead to when she was back with Duncan Bloom and they were studying the dirt on the underside of every rock they could find.
forty-four:
thursday mid-day
The fire was hot enough to melt steel. It was cooking hard. It was pleased with itself and looked like it could go strong for days without another twig. Unfortunately, there was no water anywhere nearby. No creek, no stream, no spring. Had there been one, she also had no pail. A couple gallons of water on this blaze would be the equivalent of mist. She wished the helicopter had come with a giant Bambi Bucket and an hour to spare.
The only idea she had was lame but it would have to do. She unpacked Juniper’s saddle bags and remembered from her wood gathering a patch of undergrowth where the soil was loose enough—and pleasantly damp enough—to scoop by hand.
The fire laughed in a mocking crackle at the first loads of dirt. By the fifth, it was starting to sit up and take notice of the attack. Allison emptied her new lunch cooler and used it to haul dirt, too. By the third trip, she had rigged a rope from Juniper’s saddle and walked him to drag the loads from the dirt mine to the fire. An hour later, her skin slick with sweat, the fire was coughing and sputtering. The next-to-last attack was fueled by the rage prompted by the howling dogs and her inability to make sense of anything. The final attack was double the pace so the fire didn’t have time to think it could regain the upper hand. Allison’s goatskin gloves took a beating. Her hunger was exquisite, but it was no time for a break. Her thirst hit new depths. She chased all the aches away until the fire receded to a gently-smoking mound of dirt only capable of a non-poisonous hiss from an old, dying snake.
Saddle bags repacked, Allison walked a mile across the valley and let Juniper slurp and satisfy himself in a mosquito-bite pond. It was three o’clock. Allison found a spot in a grove of Colorado Blue Spruce, its silvery blue cast shining in the afternoon sun, and downed her sandwich, homemade ham and cheese packed in its own Tupperware, complete with freezer pack. There were fresh red grapes and a packet of peanut butter crackers in her gift pack of reinforcements. In her package of manna from the mechanical bird.
Sleep tempted but she shook off the notion, sat up with her arms around her knees. A flicker cut a jagged line across the sky, a pair of ducks paddled the edge of the pond and, to the south, three fat does and a healthy buck walked out of the woods, well upwind. The does picked at the grass and shrubs, the buck played guard. He sensed something. All four animals were plump and prime. The buck’s rack was a wide-beam affair that would make trophy hunters drool. On top of the fresh elk scat, she could declare her scouting task done.
The deer bounded off when she climbed back on Juniper. She felt satisfied, transformed by the
nutrients in her lunch, though a nap would be the capper on refreshment.
Once more back to the main east-west valley. Once more a choice. Four o’clock now, barely four hours of daylight left. This stretch of the Flat Tops was a no man’s land of sorts—too far for day-trippers coming from any direction. She and Juniper were alone.
An hour later, she found the spot that would lead into Dillard’s camp. There was a break in a dense thicket of gambel oak where horse tracks funneled in from all directions. Allison dismounted, let her breathing subside.
On foot, Allison led Juniper into the woods. She hadn’t approached the camp from this side, but knew that it should be within a hundred yards, tops. She approached with care, peering intently for a flash of movement and listening for a voice. Or voices.
The trail was distinct, well-worn by a month or two of horse and foot traffic this summer and maybe five years prior. The clearing came into view and Allison stopped to watch and listen but the eerie quiet and lack of horses at the rail screamed empty.
The fire was out. The tent was zipped tight.
Rocks around the fire radiated heat. Ash in the pit smoldered. A wisp of smoke curled up from the ash. Allison squatted by the fire and waited, Juniper still on the rope.
The camp was a mess, as if it had been quickly abandoned. A short-handled spade leaned against a tree, a brown sleeping bag drooped on a makeshift clothesline. A pile of plates and bowls looked like they contained enough food scraps for a chipmunk feast. Scrambled eggs and some grease, by the looks of it. A fat fly was working on his share. A white all-plastic spatula sat upside-down nearby, dusted in a coating of fireside dirt and pine needles. One pile of horse manure near the hitching rail sported a shine. She guessed an hour old, no more. A feed bag hung off the back of the tree nearby and, tapping the bottom, she could tell it held cups of oats. Above the oats, hanging from a branch in a bear-proof manner, a dark green trash bag dangled. It was tied to a rope that had been slung over a branch as a hoist. The bag strained under the weight like it would burst at any second.
Allison hitched Juniper to the rail and circled the wall tent. An open window would have been convenient, but no such luck.
Opening the outer door of the tent involved unfastening a flap, penetrating the inner layer meant tugging down a tent-high zipper as wide as her forearm that gave way only after much fidgeting and fussing. By the time the zipper was up, if anyone had been in the tent, a warning shout or shotgun blast would have already identified her—guilty as charged—as a trespasser or intruder, take your pick.
The inside of the tent was another unkempt mess, more like frat-house untidiness than anything else. Either the crew wouldn’t be gone long or nobody in this camp knew the definition of shipshape.
The smell was of impacted sweat and smoke—a smoking lodge inside a high school boy’s locker room. There were six cots. If they all came back at once, she was in trouble. If one or two came back, same thing. On her left, a simple table and three fold-up camp chairs, the small ones that supported your butt and nothing else. On the right, in the middle of the tent, a stove. Stone cold. There were plastic tubs with dried food inside—graham crackers, cans of pinto beans and corn, tomato sauce and pasta. One day pack coughed up T-shirts and a pair of jeans. The pockets were empty except for one piece of white paper, half an envelope with a telephone number scrawled in blue ink. A 970 area code. Allison stuffed the envelope in her back pocket.
A soft-sided suitcase hiding underneath one cot turned out to be a messy cache of tools and archery-related gear and gizmos, from a spray bottle of fox urine to a feather repair kit, cans of green greasepaint and a pack of high-tech broadheads that looked menacing enough to kill without being fired. “Stainless steel instant cut tip.” “HexFlat design for exceptionally stable flight.” “Body machined from aircraft quality aluminum.” There was that whole aircraft thing again, chasing her around. The tips were designed to create fast blood loss on impact. The package of tips was wrapped in a white plastic bag with a receipt inside from a Wal-Mart in Rifle.
Allison thought the suitcase was empty but ran her hand along the bottom anyway, hoping for some scrap of something with useful information. The back of her hand touched something soft and light and she pulled it out.
A blindfold.
A professional, real-deal model—the kind you imagine for firing squads or kidnap victims being held by back-alley terrorists in Afghanistan. It was black, padded and big enough to cover half an average face—not only the eyes. It appeared well-used, with a faded line of jagged white streaks, maybe dried sweat. The elastic strap was tired.
She wondered how long it might take them to realize the blindfold was missing, if at all.
Back outside, Allison walked the perimeter of the tent, hoping for anything dropped or windblown or lost. Nothing. She walked around the camp for the same reason, here and there poking into the woods to look and listen. Except for the occasional bits of camp junk—a dirty plastic fork, a scrap of aluminum foil, a dried-up apple core—nothing.
Back on Juniper, feeling a rising bit of panic that she might be lingering too long, she took one more walk around, this time studying everything from horseback height.
The trash. She lowered the bag easily and decided to sift through the waste at home. The bag was knotted tightly. It weighed about fifteen pounds. She didn’t want to cut it open here, lacking another bag or container. After rearranging Juniper’s load, the trash was securely on board and Allison headed for home, trying to think of innocent reasons for why anyone would need a blindfold in the woods.
She reached the valley and turned east, the sun dropping like a cannonball. She might have an hour of good light left, but that was it. There was really no point in riding in the dark, she thought, when she could make camp here and hope to catch sight of them in the morning.
Dillard and his pals.
And the dogs.
Them.
forty-five:
thursday, late afternoon
“You’ve gotta help me,” said Bloom.
“How’s that?” said DiMarco.
“When I talk to my editor, I want to come bearing a few fucking gifts.”
Marjorie Hayes looked around quickly. She frowned on use of the F-bomb in the office. Bloom had an image of her working at Sunset magazine or Highlights for Children.
“A bottle of good whiskey might do the trick,” said DiMarco.
Bloom let the sarcasm die without a laugh, waited.
“How big a gift does it have to be?” said DiMarco.
On the phone, standing, Coogan stabbed the air with his finger.
“Size doesn’t matter,” said Bloom, cradling the phone tight to his lips. He turned to put his back to Hayes. “Preferably shiny. Gold is good.”
“And remind me again why I’m helping you,” said DiMarco. “I need my motivation if you want an Oscar-worthy performance.”
Bloom wanted to say the truth—that there is always a cop or two who get their limelight jollies by trying to be friends with the media. DiMarco enjoyed being the dark whisperer, relished the feeling of influence.
“You don’t want your reporter pal to have his fingernails harvested one by one via dull scissors,” said Bloom. “That’s your motivation.”
“Oh, thank you,” said DiMarco. “I was losing my focus.”
“Glad to help,” said Bloom. “Now don’t make me beg.”
“Okay,” said DiMarco. “First, that partial plate you gave me. My guys here said it only took an hour of crunch time on a supercomputer but they narrowed it down. Registered by a private corporation called Pipeline Enterprises. Out of Rifle.”
Two Pipeline Enterprises hits. That was enough. Bloom drew a mental dotted-line from Trudy’s house in the Flat Tops, through Ricardo Reyes’ rental home in New Castle to a place of business in Rifle.
“Some company names are pure ge
nius,” added DiMarco. “You know? No messing around with cutesy.”
“What do you mean?” said Bloom. The connection made sense. The same people who had lost Alfredo Loya had come back to look for him.
“I mean you’ll do all your investigative reporter things with that name.”
“But you’ve already looked,” said Bloom.
“Why would I do that?” Self-mocking.
“Because you’re curious. Your middle name should be Alice.”
“And you deserve the thrill,” said DiMarco. “It’s your lead. Chase it down.”
“The name of a meaningless company in Rifle is not going to mollify, satisfy, or pacify my editor.” Bloom heard his own terribly white voice doing a Jesse Jackson impersonation. Weird.
“It won’t take you long,” said DiMarco.
Bloom inserted “Pipeline Enterprises” and “Rifle” into the search engine and retrieved a batch of hits. One looked likely. He’d have to check each link one by and one as well as the incorporation papers with the Secretary of State.
“Clean? Dirty? Legit?” said Bloom. “And let’s say it was a Pipeline Enterprises van that grabbed an innocent pedestrian off the street. Wouldn’t you want to talk to them? Isn’t that your old-fashioned, straightforward kidnapping?”
Bloom knew he had to play along, but leaving the office and re-connecting with Trudy couldn’t happen fast enough. She had stayed in Glenwood Springs for the night with Jerry but she had sounded tense and couldn’t talk long. New ideas were occurring to Bloom that didn’t involve enigmatic Allison.
“It depends,” said DiMarco. “What if we don’t have a complaint? Or a complainant?” He hit the last ‘t’ like a speech coach.
“It happened,” said Bloom.