by Joseph Flynn
Roger Sutherland didn’t have a big money house on the lake shore. He had the next best thing, a medium big money house on a ridge opposite a public park and an unobstructed view of the lake. The chief and the special agent introduced themselves to the Sutherland family.
Jessica Sutherland surprised Ron by leaning forward and kissing his cheek.
“Thank you for saving our lake,” she said.
Roger and Brant Sutherland shook the chief’s hand.
John Tall Wolf kept a straight face.
The men in the family led the two coppers into Roger’s home studio.
A photographic portrait of the Sutherland family hanging on the wall behind Roger’s desk was lit by a sunbeam as the foursome entered the room.
John Tall Wolf smiled. “Beautiful picture, great placement. Must get that light most of the day, this time of year.”
Ron looked at the glass wall and the skylight that admitted the sunshine.
He could guess how Roger Sutherland would feel if the city condemned the nearby public park and allowed a high-rise filled with condos to be put up between his house and Lake Adeline, “our lake,” as his wife thought of it. The Sutherlands and their peers in scenic privilege would file suits to stop construction. Others with a more rustic turn of mind might just unload their firearms on any politician who dared to consider doing such a thing.
If Hale Tibbot had been elected mayor, he might not have survived his first term.
Come to that, if some ornery soul, other than Clay Steadman, had gained advance notice that the picturesque vista he’d long taken for granted might be stolen from him by a scheming real estate developer, he might decide to take a prophylactic approach. Ding the sonofabitch with the big plans before he even got his financing in place.
That thought enlarged Ron’s possible suspect pool beyond reckoning.
The chief felt Tall Wolf give him a light nudge.
“Sorry,” Ron said. “I was just taken by your view.”
“We love it,” Roger told him.
“I don’t ever want to live anywhere else,” Brant said.
Ron and Tall Wolf declined the offer of a drink and took the seats Roger offered. The homeowner took a chair opposite them and his son stood next to him.
“How can we help you?” Roger asked.
“Tell us about your morning,” Ron said, “from the moment you left your house until you called 911.”
“That’s a pretty short story, I’m afraid,” Roger told the lawmen. “Sunrise today was 5:36 a.m. Our plan was to be on the water by then, and we were. We got up an hour earlier, brushed our teeth, got dressed, packed our gear and provisions for the day and drove to the marina. We were the first boat out that I could tell … except for that boat we found, of course.”
Roger turned to Brant. “Is that about the way you remember it, buddy?”
Brant furrowed his brow in concentration.
Then he said, “Well, on the drive down to the marina, I did see this one truck.”
Ron and Tall Wolf stood on the police dock at the shoreline of Lake Adeline at sunset, scheduled that day at 8:20 p.m. The lake patrol coppers told Ron there hadn’t been a recreational boater on the lake for the past fifty minutes. No one intended to get sideways with Clay Steadman when it came to preventing a disaster.
That and they didn’t want to be on the water if a bomb off nearby.
“That’s the whole point of terrorism, scaring people,” Ron said.
Tall Wolf asked, “Who are they more afraid of, the mayor or the bad guys?”
“Bad guys come and go, the mayor is forever.”
Brant Sutherland had told them the truck he’d seen was either dark green or dark blue. Maybe a little of each. It wasn’t new. At least it wasn’t shiny. But it didn’t look real old either. It wasn’t a big truck. More like an SUV. He wasn’t sure if it was a personal vehicle or the kind someone with a city job might drive.
“I was still kind of tired,” Brant said of the moment he’d seen the vehicle.
And he was eight years old.
Roger Sutherland sketched a vehicle from his son’s description.
Shaded it with green first. No, Brant said. Roger added some blue shading.
“That’s sort of it.”
Roger made a copy for himself and gave the drawing to the chief. “If Brant remembers anything else, I’ll send you an update.”
The chief and the special agent spent two hours driving around town looking for any vehicle that came close to resembling Roger Sutherland’s rendition of his son’s memory. They made three stops, spoke briefly to the drivers, two residents and a tourist. Eyeballed them. Talked to them. Weighed the information they collected and didn’t get the least tingle of guilt from any of them. They did keep the information gleaned from the driver’s licenses and the vehicle’s tags. They entered the names and numbers into Ron’s computer. You never knew. Someone with a far darker nature might be driving one of those SUVs the next time they spotted it.
Ron bought dinner for himself and Tall Wolf at a Japanese steak house.
“You up to working through the night, special agent?” he asked.
“Patrol? The mountains or the lake?”
“Both. You have a preference?”
“I’ll take the water.”
“Okay. Just remember, it’s cold and deep.”
Tall Wolf nodded. “I’ll wear my life vest. You have some woolies I can put on?”
“We’ll find something to keep you warm. Probably won’t be too small.”
“Snug’s okay.”
The Goldstrike PD managed to outfit its federal colleague without discomfort. But Tall Wolf didn’t want to take one of the department’s patrol craft. Damn things had cops written all over them, literally. He wanted something less conspicuous. Lull any bad guys he might meet into underestimating him.
Ron got the keys to Officer Dennehy’s Sea Ray Bow Rider. It was tricked out with all sorts of electronics. And, being a cop’s boat, it had a spotlight. Dennehy took the special agent through all the controls. Pretended like he didn’t worry about someone else using his boat.
Said he’d topped off the gas tank that afternoon.
After the patrol officer left them, Tall Wolf turned to Ron.
“So what do you think, Chief?” he asked. “Just a coincidence you find a bomb the same morning Hale Tibbot turns up dead?”
Ron said, “I think the same thing about coincidences you do, I’m sure.”
“Yeah. I don’t see the connection yet, but I’ll be surprised if we don’t find one.”
A more honest appraisal than what Tall Wolf had offered Marlene.
The chief said, “Maybe we’ll both be smarter tomorrow.”
The two men shook hands on that. Tall Wolf set off onto the lake, handling the Sea Ray like it was something he’d done before. Ron watched until he was out of sight. They’d agreed to check in with each other hourly. Tall Wolf took the odd numbers, Ron the even ones.
Goldstrike had its normal compliment of six patrol officers working overnight within the town limits.
Ron would work the state roads and backroads.
Looking for anyone who might have plans to destroy his town.
John Tall Wolf’s plan to explore Lake Adeline was to survey the shoreline, then use his borrowed boat to draw a nautical X across the middle of the lake. He began by cruising just above idle speed. The Sea Ray’s motor produced little more sound than a burble of bubbles. The dark blue finish of the boat made it disappear into the night. The shoreline was visible in the shielded soft green glow of a small multifunction navnet display. The system’s features included: GPS, chart plotter, radar, fish-finder, accident avoidance alarm, satellite compass, weather fax and Sirius radio.
John mused to himself, “We’ve come a long way from a lone brave paddling a canoe.”
Then he thought of what it must have been like for the first Native American, making his way across this lake, to spot the first white set
tler’s cabin. Human nature being what it was — comfortable with the familiar, fearful of change — he probably felt the way the Sutherlands would feel about having a high rise go up and block their view.
Ron Ketchum had told him about having that thought.
Tall Wolf had agreed that plenty of people in Goldstrike were certain to be angered by any drastic architectural change in the character of their community. They’d position themselves as conservationists. Few if any would think of themselves as the beneficiaries of the real estate developers of an earlier time.
Not that John Tall Wolf had any objections to modern amenities.
He was partial to room service, if the hotel kitchen was up to snuff.
John had been abandoned by his birth mother, left to perish from exposure on a crudely built scaffold, when he was a newborn. Mom’s parents wouldn’t have approved of either her pregnancy or John’s parentage. She was Northern Apache; Dad was, probably, Navajo. Mixed marriages were frowned on in those days, at least in Mom’s family.
A large coyote was sizing John up for breakfast when his adoptive parents happened along and drove the creature off. His father, Haden Wolf, was Caucasian, a pediatrician. His mother Serafina Wolf y Padilla, was Latina y india, a professor of cultural anthropology. Haden Wolf’s forebears included a number of conjurers. Serafina Padilla’s ancestors numbered both curanderas and brujas, healers and witches, among them.
John was raised in a Western rationalistic tradition.
But neither of the people who took him in thought their son’s suspicion that Marlene Flower Moon could be Coyote, with a capital C, was misplaced.
They’d quoted the Bard to him more than once, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shakespeare knew you had to keep an open mind. So did John Tall Wolf.
He kept his eyes on the video display and his other senses attuned to the infinite.
You did what you could to keep from being taken by surprise.
By Coyote, eco-terrorists or your random murderer.
Ron Ketchum waited on his end of the Tightrope for the driver of a semi-tractor trailer to clear the narrow strip of roadway. There was no guardrail on either side of the two narrow lanes. The drop-off on each side was more than a thousand feet. Tourists were advised to avoid the Tightrope at night and in difficult weather.
Most commercial drivers knew better than to risk the crossing in those conditions.
At night, the edges of the roadway weren’t easily visible and drivers tended to crowd the middle of the pavement and even enter the oncoming lane. If someone was approaching with the same idea an impasse was inevitable. Local custom said in such instances both drivers should back up, a nerve-wracking exercise in itself. Once they’d cleared the danger zone, they could work out who should cross the span first.
If someone insisted on pressing forward with only the other party backing up, and didn’t have a compelling reason for this breach of courtesy, no court in the county would convict the offended party of beating the hell out of the other guy.
It was, however, considered bad form to throw an offender over the side.
The face behind the semi’s steering wheel didn’t look like it was long out of high school, and the kid’s eyes were as big as the rising moon. When he cleared the point at which a strong gust of wind might have blown his vehicle off either side of the road, he flashed Ron a wide smile and gave his horn a celebratory toot.
The chief knew some people had schedules to keep, but he’d rather lose a job than spend his last moments alive in a state of free-fall and horrified regret.
He made sure that no one was approaching from the other end of the Tightrope, drove out to the middle of the span, his SUV occupying space in both lanes and put his flashing lights on. He took a pair of Zeiss binoculars onto the roadway with him. On one side of the road was a wilderness of evergreens. On the other was a stunning view of Lake Adeline. The moon, still nearly full, shone on the water.
Ron held up the binoculars and looked for any sign of a boat on the lake.
If he saw one, he’d call Tall Wolf, see if it was him he’d spotted.
If it wasn’t, he’d give the special agent as accurate a fix on the other vessel’s position as he could. Track its movement for Tall Wolf. Call out the police department’s patrol vessels if Tall Wolf needed help.
All very dramatic, Ron thought, but he didn’t see anything on the lake.
Not even Tall Wolf.
He couldn’t keep the Tightrope tied up indefinitely so he went back to his SUV. As he approached the vehicle, he smiled, remembering the fear that Oliver Gosden had always felt whenever he had to cross the heart-in-throat strip of asphalt.
Until Oliver had a close encounter with a mountain lion, that was.
After that, Ron’s deputy chief had become a fatalist. If your time was up, it didn’t matter where you were. Given his new frame of mind, Oliver had become blasé about driving the Tightrope.
Ron’s phone rang the moment he got behind the wheel.
Oliver, just as if he’d known Ron was thinking of him.
“What the hell is all this about a bomb?” the deputy chief asked.
So word had reach Arizona. Could the rest of the world be far behind?
Ron told him, “See what happens? You go away, you miss all the fun.”
Chapter 8
Tuesday, June 4
Ron Ketchum and John Tall Wolf ate breakfast at the conference table in the chief’s office. Sergeant Stanley had called for takeout from the Head in the Clouds Diner. There was just no getting away from altitude jokes, but HCD, as it was known locally, served the best breakfast in town. Tall Wolf had a deluxe portion of scrambled eggs, wheat toast and orange juice. Ron had the eggs with bacon, rye toast and coffee. The restaurant packaged its takeout in plastic. Sergeant Stanley had served the meals on china with gleaming flatware and linen napkins.
“You do all right for yourselves up here,” Tall Wolf told Ron.
“We have an image to maintain.”
The special agent grinned.
The chief added, “We also have property taxes that’d make Bill Gates overdraw his checking account.”
That one was worth a laugh. Then Tall Wolf said, “So the idea of someone running for mayor on a platform of tax relief …”
“Did have its appeal,” Ron admitted. “For some.”
“Not for you?”
“No. I like things the way they are. I make a good salary. If I have to kick back a chunk of it in taxes, so be it. That’s part of the deal.”
“How many people feel the way you do?” Tall Wolf asked.
“A few years ago, I’d have three out of four shared my opinion. The past couple of years, the economic pinch has reached Goldstrike. I’d say the ratio is probably down to two to one for holding the line.”
“So Hale Tibbot would have had to change the minds of a bit more than seventeen percent of the voters to get elected. Not easy, but not impossible.”
“Your point being?” Ron asked.
“That I wouldn’t want to be in your position,” Tall Wolf said.
Before that thread of conversation could be pursued, there was a knock at the door. Sergeant Stanley leaned in and said, “Detective Keely Powell —”
“Retired detective,” a female voice called out.
“Ms. Powell is here to see you, Chief.”
“Stand aside, Caz, before she shoots her way in.”
“In your dreams, Ketchum,” the voice told the chief.
Keely Powell glided into the office, grinning.
Her expression changed upon seeing John Tall Wolf. He’d gotten to his feet to greet her. Looking up at him, Keely was more intrigued than abashed.
“Well, you cut an imposing figure, don’t you?” she said.
“I try to mask it with modesty,” he said.
She laughed, crossed to Ron and gave him a kiss so bold it caught both the chief and Tall Wolf off gu
ard. Sergeant Stanley thought it best to withdraw.
While Ron was still dazed, Keely asked, “So who’s your big friend with the sunglasses?”
Keely made do with a cup of coffee, sitting at the head of the table between the two men. Ron brought her up to speed on both the bomb threat and the death of Hale Tibbot. John Tall Wolf explained how he came to be present.
That story tickled Keely.
“The EPA with firepower? I like it.”
Tall Wolf told her, “Some people think it should have armored divisions and air support.”
“I’d love to see that proposed in Congress,” Keely said. “Republicans wouldn’t know whether to shit or go blind, having to decide between protecting big polluters or denying the military a new mission.”
Ron told Tall Wolf, “Retired Detective Powell was that rare copper, the militant liberal. She overlooks the fact that the mayor of our fair town, a Republican, has approved the money to have her help me out.”
“Really?” Keely asked. “How much did you squeeze out of the old bastard? A lot, I hope, if you want my best effort.”
Ron said, “I thought you never gave less than your best.”
“That’s true, but for the big bucks, I flash a little cleavage.”
The way Ron blushed, John Tall Wolf thought maybe he should follow Sergeant Stanley out the door. Keely dialed it back and put a hand out to each of them, gave a brief squeeze.
“Okay,” she said, “game time is over.” Looking at the chief, she said, “You know what you have to do here, Ron, and don’t tell me you don’t.”
“Turn the homicide investigation over to you,” he said.
“Well, me and the special agent. He has the power of arrest. I don’t.”
“You’re not going to —”
“Pin on a local badge? Subordinate myself to my old partner? No.”
“Then why’d you come?” Ron asked.
“To lend a hand … and you said something about asking me out on a date.”