Dead Horses

by David Knop

  “Okay, red flag,” I said. “Let’s look at the certifier’s signature on the real one and the fake one,” she said. She brought up both certificates on her screen.

  I bent down behind her to get a better look at the monitor. Her perfume, a woodsy blend of vanilla and coffee, went straight to my head, then my heart. I shook it off. “Right. Signature,” I said. I heard a sigh, must’ve been mine. I caught a slight upturn at the corner of her mouth.

  Each certificate on the screen was identical with the same signatures.

  “Dr. Donald LaBarge, MD,” Reel said.

  “LaBarge ?”

  “Know him?’ she asked.

  “LaBarge is manager of the Rocking Double Bar Ranch where I found the sheep herder Rafi Maestrejuan murdered. A real charmer. Hostile when I asked for Maestrejuan’s whereabouts.”

  Reel worked at her keyboard. “Okay, I sent someone to have a talk with LaBarge. Tell me more about the ranch, Peter.”

  I put my head in my hands, rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, a Delaware corporation owns it. Strange name. Let me think. Freedom Calls. Yeah, that’s it.”

  She typed; the monitor blinked. “Here we go. Owner of record, Freedom Calls. DBA name of Fraternal Action for Racial Equality or FARE, Inc., founded in 1978 and headquartered in Denver,” she said.

  She had access to databases much bigger than mine.

  “Listen to this.” She read, “FARE leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and have made many public inflammatory and racist statements. FARE’s founders have expressed their goal that America must maintain a white majority at any cost.”

  “Any cost?” I asked. “Not sure I’d vote for that.”

  “You’re about five hundred years too late.”

  She read on, “FARE is known to support groups favoring violence against non-whites.”

  “Sounds like they’re talking about the Chivingtons. Wanna bet there’s a link?”

  “I wouldn’t take that bet, but I’ll find the connection,” she said.

  “What’s an MD doing in a group like that?” I asked.

  “Not that uncommon, I’m sorry to say. Let me check something else.” Reel mumbled as she typed. Her eyes lit up. “Well, well. Seems that Doctor Donald LaBarge had his license revoked a year ago by the Colorado Medical Board.” She tabbed to Oso Walker’s death certificate. “Yup, had it jerked before he signed this off. And, there’s more. LaBarge is under indictment for overprescribing painkillers, criminal sale of prescriptions, and falsifying records. Might connect him to those punks, the Colorado boarders and their Sinaloa sponsors.”

  I had a hard time with this line of thinking. “Okay. The certificates are the same and you can nail him on practicing without a license, but that does not answer the big question.”

  Reel looked up. “Go on.”

  I could’ve dived into those black eyes now, but she was the all-business Reel.

  “Assume our Indian-hating friends are in some way responsible for the demise of the real Oso Walker and had LeBarge falsify his death certificate. Or, maybe the real Oso died naturally, and they took advantage. Doesn’t matter.

  What matters is, how did a skinwalker insert himself into a conspiracy to disrupt a hospital groundbreaking so he could seek revenge? Another thing, the Navajo beef with the Utes began in late thirteen hundred. Why seek retribution now?”

  She smiled. “Well, that’s your next assignment, Peter. Find out why. In the meantime, I’ll try to figure how much damage he’s done to my investigation.”

  “Am I under arrest?” My tone suggested a pleasant evening in a bedroom somewhere, but at the back of my mind, I had a bad feeling I was being jerked around.

  She smiled in a way that quickened my pulse. “Let’s call it supervised custody.”

  “Really? Then who is my, uh, supervisor?” I couldn’t help but grin.

  “You’ve been working with him all along. My assistant, Special Agent Leslie Ponsford.”

  It would have been less deflating had she tossed a hand grenade in my lap. I went from merely frustrated to thoroughly pissed, but kept my mouth shut while pretending to find a bug on the command post’s ceiling.

  She called out the door and Special Agent Leslie Ponsford— No Name—took a seat at the conference table. No Name nodded in my direction.

  Reel briefed him on what we’d learned about Donald LaBarge and his suspected falsification of the real Oso’s death certificate. He maintained his silent demeanor but raised an eyebrow when Reel mentioned the skinwalker. “Say what?”

  She said, “We suspect Oso is a skinwalker and killing Utes as a bear. Grizz, Peter calls him.”

  No Name’s shrug emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. “Figures.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Ain’t no Grizz in Colorado.”

  Reel started laughing, tried to hide it.

  Everyone’s a comedian. “Okay, what’s the deal?” I asked.

  “Special Agent Ponsford has been with the FBI for 10 years. Brown graduate. MS in Cybersecurity, right? And, yeah, a former Green Beret.”

  Ponsford chuckled, held out a hand. “Call me Les.”

  I took his hand, but my face heated. “Is there anything real about this investigation?” I pointed to Reel. “You’re scammin’, he’s scammin’, Oso’s scammin’. What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Calm down, Peter,” Reel said. “Nobody’s scamming anyone. What we have is a very fluid situation.”

  I said, “I might just float out the door on your fluid situation.”

  “Okay, Peter, okay. Cool your heels. Sit and I’ll explain everything,” she said, with a mixed expression of worry and determination. “My operation, as I’ve told you, has very highly-placed interest, not only in our government, but in certain foreign governments as well. That gives special facets of this investigation a high classification and you do not have the clearance or need to know.”

  I said, “I don’t need a clearance to know what my role in this investigation is or what part of this classified information is going to get me killed?”

  “Try listening, Peter, something you don’t always do well.” My ex-wife said the same thing. I shut up. I’d already screwed up one relationship with my hot head and this one threatened to slide downhill.

  “At first, this operation was multi-state graft and corruption, pure and simple. Our investigation has revealed so much more. I can’t tell you everything, Peter, but I can give you an overview. As you know, we have four groups involved in a conspiracy to disrupt the groundbreaking for a new hospital.”

  “Right.”

  “Militant traditionalist Utes oppose the hospital, because they feel it threatens their traditional medicine and religion. They’re planning a demonstration at the groundbreaking.”

  “Okay.”

  “The Chivingtons are planning to counter with armed violence, but’s that not all the players.

  A group of Breckenridge snowboarders is supporting the Chivs and the Utes with firearms to divert attention from their drug operations in the state.

  Finally, the reason this investigation has such high interest in the Bureau is the Breckenridge snowboarders have small group of local law enforcement officers in their pocket.”

  “You’ve told me all that, and I’ve run into all of the players in the past week. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “You know everything you need to,” she said. “But, now we have additional complication, the skinwalker.”

  She gave it a dramatic pause. “And, Peter, you are going to make Oso the skinwalker go poof.”

  I agreed Oso Walker, or whoever he really was, had to be stopped. But a skinwalker was still human. Part of the time, anyway.

  “You want me to kill him?” The fact she had said it set me back, but it didn’t surprise me.

  As a Marine or cop, killing comes with the territory. Warriors kill, but never murder. Murder is committed in cold blood for no
good reason. When a warrior kills, he is influenced by a moral code subject to the law. A true warrior kills not for self. His motive comes from a higher cause and supports a noble belief.

  Reel’s request stirred up the muck of nightmares; A confrontation with a tweeker teen in New Mexico and a strapped-up woman in Iraq. Never mind the kid was armed and one more sleepless night away from full psychosis. Makes no difference the woman was wearing an explosives belt, ready to die while taking a few U.S. Marines with her. I still wake drenched over both, reliving regret and possibilities I didn’t take. Legal or not, some things never leave you.

  “We need a minute,” she said to Ponsford who took the hint and left the room. By the time he’d closed the door, she looked at me concern in her eyes.

  We sat in a forced silence so deep, only the hum of the command post’s generator penetrated the room. Here was the woman I had fallen for asking me to kill someone. What scared me was how she could sacrifice her soft side to her job so easily. Flirt to functionary, just like that. It made for an accordion relationship. Pulled in one minute, pushed away the next.

  Was this the real Jean Reel before me? In the past, her Indian resilience and stamina led to a mutual understanding. We both knew what a cop needed to do. Now, my head whirled like newly corralled mustangs. I asked, “What’s going on with you? You telling me you want someone dead?”

  Tension lined her face. “Peter. I believe in you. I know what you can do. It’s why you’re here.”

  Her Cherokee had suddenly come through. She was appealing to my connection to the other world. My head pounded. I said, “Yes, sometimes spirits call me, but I can’t summon them.”

  “You know how to deal with the spirits. Do what you have to do,” she said. She cut off conversation by returning to the paperwork in front of her, then she turned back, and spoke as if our previous discussion had never happened. “By the way, that truck you took from the Chivingtons? My techs went over it. Someone had gone to great lengths to clean it, but my people found traces of horse manure on the cab floor under the seat.”

  Reel back at work, her Cherokee gone. If her suggestions about killing the skinwalker bothered her, she masked them well.

  “Lots of cowboys around here,” I said, dead-faced. My turn to switch off the emotions.

  “I sent the test results to the Arabian Horse Association Registry.”

  The registry had collected DNA for all foals for the past fifteen years. “And?”

  “Conclusive match with one of the horses you were looking for. Truck’s owner of record is Braydon Downing, head of the Chivingtons. He’s a nurse at Mercy Regional in Durango. Was he there at the Chiv’s cabin?” she asked.

  I flashed the dead and dying men in the cabin. “Don’t know. Only spoke to one Chiv, a Dillard Johnston, and he expired while I was there. The others died or bailed.”

  Fragments of hospital booties were found at the horse killing sites, but I didn’t tell her. It was unprofessional to hold back but the horse killings were my investigation. I kept my mouth shut. We stared at each other for a long time.

  “I’ll pick Downing up. Your job is Oso Walker. And you need to know I put Lettau and his goons under surveillance this morning. They go after you again; my people will back you up.” She rose from her chair with an armful of papers and rushed from the room.

  “No, I’m going to find Downing myself. That’s what I came up here for in the first damn place. I don’t want anything to do with your investigation, anymore.” If she heard me, she made no sign, hurried to her office and slammed the door. “I quit.”

  She called me special, claimed I had capabilities like no other. True or not, it emphasized the fact she was using me. Like a sap, I’d assumed we had a special relationship, one that would go somewhere. Turns out we were in different ballparks playing different games.

  Reel returned to the conference room with an aide and No Name who crabbed down the command post’s hallway to keep from touching both sides at once.

  The aide talked softly and glanced at me as he spoke. Reel nodded, whispered things I could not hear, and didn’t look in my direction. Fact of the matter was, I didn’t want to hear what she had to say, so I headed for the door. No Name blocked the doorway by filling it. Finally, she dismissed the aide, then focused on me.

  I put my arms across my chest and held a hand up. Whatever she was going to say, I didn’t want to hear it.

  She ignored me. “We have a police report that a bear attacked some people just off the Ute reservation. Sheriff units have responded. You and Ponsford get on it. Now.”

  Apparently, my body language didn’t mean much to her.

  Since members of the La Plata County Sheriff Department were trying to kill me, I didn’t take the idea of being at the scene with them as good news. I ran a mental movie of Grizz on one side and deputies on the other with me in the middle figuring how not to die.

  “No, I quit,” I said.

  Reel said, “Do I need to remind you, you’re under arrest?” She left the room with a my-work-is-done-here look. “Dean’s got your pistol.”

  “Sounds like we have our orders,” said Special Agent Leslie Ponsford. The big Lakota pulled me aside, said, “Don’t even think of quitting. I’ll lock you up.” His eyes said, After I fuck you up.

  I looked him up and down, mostly up, and decided I had no way out. So, I decided to follow orders, even crazy ones, and the idea of being near Lettau or Grizz qualified as crazy. But, I was not going to die that day, not by Ponsford, Lettau, or Grizz.

  No Name and I walked past a row of agents busy at their computers. At his desk, Dean made me sign for my .38. I asked him if he had a rifle because I was after Grizz.

  “Aren’t any grizzlies in Colorado,” Dean said.

  “Never mind,” I said. All I wanted was out of the command center.

  Heading for the pickup I’d stolen from the Chivs, I remembered Reel had impounded it as evidence. I asked, “You got wheels?”

  No Name Ponsford pointed to a Dodge Charger, black on black with tinted windows.

  “Seriously?”

  He stood dumbfounded, said, “What? It’s got an epic pursuit package.”

  “For a bear? You been watching reruns of the Dukes of Hazzard?”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” Waylon Jennings lyrics ran through my head…Just the good ol’ boys…Never meanin’ no harm….

  No Name walked out of sight. A vehicle started and No Name drove up in a late model Dodge Durango with four-wheel drive. He had somehow managed to squeeze his mass behind the wheel.

  “Cute,” I said hopping in. “Let’s go find Grizz.”

  We headed toward Durango and the address where the attack took place. He glanced at me. “Don’t care what you think of me, but Reel’s setting you up.”

  I said nothing for miles while I tried to figure out how I was going to turn this around. Around me, forests of ponderosa and aspen evolved to juniper, then short grass prairie, scrub, and occasional prickly pear. As we travelled north, then westerly, large swaths of beetle-killed pine dyed distant slopes red.

  “Think I didn’t know that?”

  Chapter 26

  As we drove toward Durango, I remembered I’d known Reel for years and had worked several cases with her. She protected me behind the scenes and, I suspected, creatively violated the letter of the law on my behalf. Our relationship was one of mutual trust, though shaky now, never failed before and I would not, could not let that trust go.

  I knew that I shared some of the blame for my predicament. Even though my sole involvement was reporting two crimes, I’d blundered into the middle of Reel’s case.

  Then there was the shooting of Deputy Jones while his men were trying to kill me. I hadn’t admitted the exact nature of my participation, but based on my experience with her, I would have to trust her not to probe too deeply into the case.

  At first, she said she was recruiting my help t
o find Indian suspects. Then, when I identified Oso Walker as an imposter and skinwalker, she claimed my insight would prove useful. I was pretty sure she didn’t know what she was talking about. It’s true that many times I’ve been visited by beings who have passed to the other side, but it wasn’t something I was in control of. They visited me when they wanted, I didn’t command them to come. It was laughable to think I had any power over them. I told her I had no fast-serve window to the spirits, and that didn’t seem to bother her. So, like it or not, I was assigned to find Oso; the man, the spirit animal, or both.

  No Name concentrated on the road and said, “Those sheriff’s deputies are probably waiting for you, right now.”

  “Thanks. So, what else is new?” I stared out the windshield, but with renewed interest for details. If deputies were waiting for me, I wanted to see them first. “Your job’s to protect me. Do your job.”

  “Not sure I buy this skinwalker story you’re peddling,” he said.

  “You were there, Ponsford.”

  “What I saw was a grizzly bear.”

  “You remember a lot less than what I saw. Don’t worry about it. Just take care of the deputies trying to kill me. That’s something you can buy into, isn’t it?” I didn’t care who believed the skinwalker story except Reel.

  No Name said, “How in hell are you going to find this bear?”

  “My gut says he’s gonna find us.”

  “Your gut should worry more about the deputies.”

  “Gonna let you worry about that. Protect and serve, right?”

  “Fidelity, bravery, integrity.”

  “What?”

  “FBI’s motto. Fidelity, bravery, integrity.” He looked at me like I was stupid.

  I liked him better as No Name, a Lakota of few words.

  We had a job to do and a slow burn heated my face and upper chest. I didn’t want to wreck chances of our mission’s success with my smartass remarks. Instead, I let the beauty of the distant snow-capped peaks sidetrack my anxiety.

  Leaving the reservation, we cruised west on US-160. Farms checkered the rolling plains. West of Bayfield, red and blue light bars flashed just off the road to the south. No Name slowed.