by Mike Baron
“I’ve talked to the ten staff members who were here when I arrived last night. They all pretty much describe the same thing, which is what Otto told us. We have not yet entered Witherspoon’s or Casey’s private quarters. Figured I’d leave that to you.”
“What about his computer?” Otto said.
“Haven’t touched it.”
“Will the employees submit to X-rays or EMR scans?” Alvarez said.
“I imagine they would.”
“Can we arrange that ASAP? Lon, can you think of a facility that could do this for us?” Otto said.
“We have a good working relationship with St. Mary’s. They have state-of-the-art equipment.”
“Are the employees still here?” Alvarez asked.
“No. We let them go last night.”
Steve licked Barnett’s pants.
“Steve! Don’t lick the pants.”
Barnett pushed the dog gently away. “Is he a tracker?”
“He can track a snowflake through a blizzard. I have a feeling Witherspoon, at least, is still on the property.”
“We checked every cabin,” Barnett said, “and every guest room in the main house. We checked the outbuildings too. If they’re here, they’re well hidden.”
“It’s a big place,” Otto said. “Plenty of room to hide.”
“I’ll show you to Witherspoon’s quarters and you can take it from there.”
“Otto,” Alvarez said. “you take the apartment. I’ll take the computer.”
The caretaker’s apartment was on the third floor of the three-story lodge overlooking the lake. Otto bade Steve sit while he examined the room from the open door, seeking tell-tale signs of improvised explosive devices through long habit. He entered the apartment followed by Steve. It consisted of a living room/kitchenette, a separate bathroom and a bedroom.
The living room was ten by twelve with a picture window overlooking the lake. Mt. Archimedes gleamed gold in the late afternoon sun. An old plaid fabric sofa faced a wall-mounted LCD HD TV. Otto recalled seeing the dish on the roof. The old coffee table in front of the sofa held several issues of Reader’s Digest and National Geographic from the sixties. There was also one recent issue of Vibe. The place was immaculate. The walls were decorated with historic photos of the Grove from the beginning: Teddy Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, Harry Houdini, Nicola Tesla, Charles Lindbergh, all the way up to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Witherspoon began appearing in the photos in the early seventies.
There was nothing else of a personal nature. No photos of loved ones or Witherspoon’s childhood. The room had a peculiar antiseptic quality as if it had been preserved for future generations.
Steve roamed the apartment sniffing.
Otto looked in the refrigerator. It contained a bottle of quinine water and a box of baking soda. That was all. The freezer contained a pair of desiccated ice trays. The kitchen cupboards held a few mismatched dishes but the stove was spotless as was the floor. Witherspoon must have taken all his meals in the main kitchen or dining hall. Otto checked beneath the sink and found cleanser, Pine sol, window cleaning liquid and a half dozen other cleaning agents as well as a neatly stacked pile of clean rags.
The bed in the small bedroom was tightly made in military fashion with an olive drab blanket and white sheets. The bedroom closet held a number of suits and smelled of moth balls. The cheap laminate dresser contained dozens of identical black socks, boxer shorts and T-shirts. Nothing out of the ordinary. No pictures of family or friends, no porno, not even a radio. No books or magazines. It was a monk’s quarters.
Otto carefully searched the closet shelves, opening the shoe boxes, going through the pockets in all the suits, shirts, and pants. Not even stray pennies. He went into the bathroom and opened the mirrored cabinet over the sink. It contained toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss. That was it. No aspirin, no cold remedies, none of the prescription drugs one would expect to find in a man of Witherspoon’s age. Otto lifted the lid of the toilet tank. Nothing but water and float. He got on his knees and looked up underneath the sink counter for anything that might have been affixed to the underside. A wicker laundry hamper contained clothing. Otto chose a pair of boxer shorts and held it for Steve to sniff. Steve sniffed. Steve barooed. He had the scent.
On hands and knees, Otto looked beneath the bed. Nothing--not even dust bunnies. The lack of books and personal items was troubling, as if Witherspoon was only alive when he stood in front of others. Otto lay on the bed and slowly took in everything the caretaker saw. He stood on the bed and unscrewed the overhead lamp shade.
Satisfied that the room had given up its secrets Otto and Steve took the stairway down to the first floor, opening a door onto the corridor. Alvarez was intent on Witherspoon’s computer, spiral notepad at hand. Half the valley lay in shadow, including the lodge, as the sun sank.
“Room’s clean,” Otto said. “Find anything?”
“Mr. Witherspoon was well-versed on world affairs, which is damned odd considering that he was apolitical.”
“We don’t know that. This place tilts right.”
“If he had strong beliefs he kept them to himself. I’m still trying to crack the e-mail. I’m about ready to knock off for the day. What say you?”
Otto shrugged. “Might as well. We’re not going to find them at night.”
***
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
“Otterbox”
Tuesday evening.
The larder contained enough food to last all summer. Otto searched the walk-in freezer on the off chance it contained bodies. One of the sheriff’s deputies had been a cook in the army and made chili to feed the two FBI agents and the two Larimer County Deputies who remained. They ate in the voluminous mess hall beneath glass-eyed trophies. Someone started a fire in the massive fieldstone fireplace and the diners congregated toward that end of the hall on picnic tables.
It reminded Otto of the Boy Scouts, which he’d joined over his father’s objections.
After supper, Otto and Steve visited the bunkhouse, a pole-barn dormitory with monastic cells for the employees, a communal bath, and a rec room equipped with a flat screen, an Xbox, and a copious supply of DVDs. Otto flipped through the titles, which included the first three Detonators as well as Mamacitas I through VI. The Xbox held Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, a busman’s holiday. Otto had played the original Call of Duty at Quantico waiting to be shipped out.
Casey’s room overlooked the parking lot and was the size of a college dorm. On the wall was a framed poster of a surfer riding a monster wave, the only decoration. A clock/radio sat on the small bed stand. Otto picked it up, removed the battery panel and checked inside. He went through the night stand’s drawer and found an antihistamine, some rubber bands, a paperback copy of Great Expectations and a set of car keys with a remote Honda fob. Underneath the bed was a slide out drawer. Inside were combat fatigues. One corner of the drawer remained blank as if something had recently been removed. He smelled gun oil.
Otto searched the closet finding nothing of interest. Casey’s discarded socks lay in a heap on the closet floor but Otto had no interest in muddying Steve’s clear scent of Witherspoon. Steve at his heels, he left the bunkhouse and walked out to the middle of the parking lot. He squeezed the key fob. A Honda Pilot beeped and flashed its lights.
Otto opened the driver’s door and eased into the seat. Steve sat on the tarmac and watched, tail wagging. Otto searched under the seats and through the center console bin. He found Casey’s registration in the glove compartment listing his home address at a condo in Colorado Springs.
Otto put the key in the ignition and started the vehicle. He looked at the digital odometer--it was in the nine hundreds. Casey wasn’t one of those guys who carefully reset their trip odometers. Otto turned the engine off and opened the hood. Using a pocket flashlight, he poked around in the engine compartment, pulling up the windshield washer basin to see if anything was hidden inside.
The back of the vehicle contained
snow shoes and heavy weather gear. The sunken tire bin held no surprises. There was a disturbing lack of personality in both Casey’s and Witherspoon’s quarters, almost as if they were only alive in front of others. As Otto and Steve headed back to the main lodge, he paused in the middle of the parking lot and looked up. Stars glinted like tiny lasers in the velvet dark. A sliver of moon peeked over the mountains to the northeast. Otto paused to inhale the dry, pine-scented air.
Thank you God for bringing me this far. Thank you for my health and loved ones.
Otto did not pray to God to help him with his assignment because such a prayer would have been frivolous if not blasphemous considering what God had on his plate.
They found Alvarez in Witherspoon’s office still trying to find the password. It was nine-thirty.
“Gus--we have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow. You ought to knock off. I’m in Taylor--it’s the last cabin toward the lake. You can take the other room.”
Alvarez stretched and pushed himself back from the computer.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They walked in companionable silence beneath the ponderosa hearing the occasional call of a pika. The cabin had not been touched since Otto and Winner had used it twenty-four hours ago.
Otto said goodnight and went into his room. Steve hopped up on the bed.
A moment later Alvarez knocked on his door.
“It’s open.”
Alvarez walked in holding a flat plastic device with the word Otterbox on it. “What’s this?”
***
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
“A Jog in the Park”
Tuesday afternoon.
Hornbuckle’s ankle shot a bolt of pain with every impact as he ran after the punk. Kid had long legs and was a sprinter, but Hornbuckle had been a distance runner and still ran several miles a day. The punk led by twenty meters but you could tell he was flagging the way he gripped the backpack. He’d gas out from all the dope he smoked.
The punk dashed across six-lane Monroe Blvd. eliciting horn blasts, curses and middle fingers. Hornbuckle closed the gap as traffic prevented the punk from cutting straight across. Astonishingly, the punk leaped on the hood of a sedan causing it to sink with his weight. By the time the outraged driver was out of his vehicle, the punk had leaped atop a slow-moving Lincoln Town Car, onto a parked Prius, over the hedge-border and into Ghirardelli Park, a green space with bike lanes, picnic tables, and a fast-moving stream tumbling down from the Rockies.
The suspect rabbited past surprised picnickers and strollers heading upstream toward the mountains. He pounded on the bike trail infuriating cyclists who pointed at the perfectly good adjacent dirt groove. Hornbuckle found his rhythm, stretching out in long, easy lopes, ignoring the stabbing pain in his right calf. Blood trickled into his sock. Maybe he should have seen a doctor but it was too late for that now, not with his security clearance on the line.
The perp no longer bothered to look as he stretched his long legs for seven league leaps. Maybe he didn’t smoke dope. Maybe he was one of those fitness freaks who liked to skate. Fifty meters on lay an oval tunnel over which ran Colorado Boulevard. Hornbuckle fingered the tiny automatic in his belt pouch. The tunnel was long and dark--if he found himself alone with the perp, he might risk a shot. But the .25 was notoriously inaccurate beyond six or seven meters.
Hornbuckle followed the perp into the tunnel. The temperature dropped ten degrees. Ahead he could see several bicyclists riding his way including a couple illegally riding side by side. They must not have seen the black clad punk because they were blocking his way as he came upon them. The punk shoved the girl’s bike into the boy’s causing both to go down, leaped over the tangled mess and pounded on.
The girl squealed in pain. The boy shouted, “HEY MOTHERFUCKER!”
Hornbuckle leaped the girl like Jeremiah Johnson catapulting into the end zone, the bottom of his shoe scraping the top of her head. He emerged into bright sunlight on the other side of the tunnel just in time to see the perp disappear beneath a crest in the path. Hornbuckle redoubled his efforts, gritting his teeth and ignoring the pain that now shot all the way to his knee.
A stitch developed in his side as he topped the low hill. And then he caught a break. Twenty-five meters on the perp stood in the middle of the bike lane, back to Hornbuckle, staring at a dense squadron of bicycles that not only covered the bike lane but spread out onto the narrow dirt paths on either side. No way could he get around that bunch. The mutant bikers, already stoked on numbers and Red Bull, screamed at him to get out of the way.
The perp looked back into the face of death. He unhooked the backpack and twirled it around his head--once, twice, three times--and hurled it out over the fast moving creek.
“FUCK!”
Hornbuckle didn’t hesitate. He leaped the gorse and alder growing through the rocks, landed in the icy cold water and sank to his crotch. It took his breath away and shriveled his testicles. Hornbuckle waded out into the middle of the stream--his backpack was caught in the current heading his way fast. He had one chance to snag it. Feeling cautiously along the bottom, which was lined with slippery rocks, he waded out to where the water was over his bellybutton and grabbed his backpack.
The cycle mob hooted and honked as they flowed by. By the time Hornbuckle had crawled out of the stream and sat on the grass the perp was long gone. Hornbuckle prayed his laptop hadn’t been ruined. At least he’d prevented it from falling into enemy hands. He opened the backpack and upended the contents onto the dry grass. The laptop slipped out in its nylon sheath. He held the sheath over his lap, opened the laptop and booted up.
Much to his relief the FBI home page appeared. He’d saved it.
But he’d lost Kleiser.
He was too exhausted even to curse. Joggers and cyclists tooled by without interest. His cell phone chirped startling him.
He reached into his soggy front pocket surprised that it still worked until he remembered that the agency-issue phones were waterproof. The source was blocked. He knew who it was.
“Hornbuckle.”
Hiss and crackle.
At last, Control spoke in an eerily modified voice. “Where is Kleiser?”
Hornbuckle gritted his teeth. “Sir, I had him under observation and he slipped away from me in a crowd.”
An unspoken rebuke accompanied the hiss and crackle.
“Forget Kleiser. White’s onto something. Get up there and find out what.”
***
CHAPTER SIXTY
“Uphill Stroll”
Wednesday morning.
Otto woke first. He fed Steve and they went for a walk. Winner’s empty Otterbox bothered him. Why would the actor take his phone but leave the box, which cost almost as much as the phone?
Alvarez was smearing on sun screen when they returned to the cabin. He handed the tube to Otto. Otto slipped a paracord bracelet around his left wrist. Otto, Alvarez and Steve went to the main lodge and ate a quick meal of fruit and cereal. Otto gave Steve two all-beef Kosher hot dogs. Otto and Alvarez each had a backpack filled with supplies. They sat at a picnic table on which Otto had spread an NGS map of the area. He traced a line clockwise around the lake.
“Notice how the Grove map shows this to be an impassable wilderness. See how the ridge rises from about fifty meters west of the grove and continues all the way to the top of Mt. Pythagoras? If they have some kind of hideout it would make more sense to place it over here.”
“Yeah,” Alvarez said. “And I’d like to see what’s on top of that mountain.”
“You up for this? Looks about six klicks to the summit.”
“Been hiking all my life,” Alvarez assured him.
It was eight when they left the main lodge. They both wore ball caps. Walking clockwise around the lake, they encountered first the dormitory and then a big pole-barn garage with a concrete base in which the camp stored golf carts and other vehicles. Lon Barnett had gone through it yesterday.
Past the garage, a dir
t path began its gradual ascent amid the boulders, prickly pear, mountain mahogany and juniper. At the start of the trail Otto took Witherspoon’s boxer shorts, knelt, and held it out for Steve.
“Steve, find!”
Tail wagging the big dog trotted up the trail.
“Don’t try to keep up with him,” Otto said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
Alvarez followed Otto up the trail. It was already in the seventies and both men had brought plenty of water. They climbed in a companionable silence for forty-five minutes, Steve’s tail a semaphore beckoning them on. They paused on a natural rock shelf a half klick above the lake. An eagle gyred overhead and Otto was reminded of his vision.
God could still paint a beautiful picture.
They resumed their climb. Alvarez sweated through his shirt and used a bandana to mop his face. The climb became precipitous and Otto worried that Alvarez would not be able to keep up, but the slight agent didn’t complain. They emerged above the tree line. From here to the top was all jutting granite.
Otto gained a flat shelf after a particularly grueling session and stood leaning against a rock jutting out over the canyon waiting for Alvarez to arrive. Something whizzed past his ear. A second later, he heard the crack of a high-powered rifle.
***
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“The Bear Went Over the Mountain”
The shot bounced around the valley, over and over, getting more distant until it disappeared like a freight train in the night. Otto flattened himself against the near vertical rock opposite the boulder on which he’d been leaning.
“Steve come!” he called.
Seconds later the big dog scrambled onto the ledge tail-wagging. Otto stooped, beckoned him over and held on to his collar.
“What the fuck?!” Alvarez exclaimed out of sight beneath the ledge. “Was that what I thought it was?”