by R. A. McGee
The hardest decision of the morning was what else to pull out of his lockbox. He was wearing his Glock in a comfortable holster on his waist and had an extra magazine. He looked down into the lockbox at an AR-15 that he’d brought with him from Florida.
The first rule of a gunfight, he’d learned long ago, was to bring all your friends with guns. The second was to bring more guns than the other guy. Since Porter had no friends with guns, he considered bringing the rifle, in case he ran into the types of problems a pistol wouldn’t solve.
In the end, he slammed the lid, leaving the rifle in place. While the thought of a gunfight against meth traffickers sent his pulse racing, he decided it was probably better not to terrify any soccer mom in designer yoga pants that he might encounter on the hike in.
He pulled on his backpack, which had several bottles of water inside, and set off down a gravel path.
For the first thirty minutes, the path was wide and flat and circuitous. He was instantly glad he hadn’t slung his rifle across his chest. Somewhere there must have been another parking lot full of Volvos and minivans, because he saw more women pushing strollers than he would have thought lived in the entire town.
Porter’s map took him past several of the trailheads, and all the soccer moms, until he came to a poorly marked path. Consulting the map again, he pushed through the wall of thickets until it opened up into a small but serviceable trail. Porter knelt and looked at several sets of tracks—multiple shoe prints and an errant bicycle track or two.
He kept moving, head on a swivel, possessed of a deep desire to see any meth traffickers before they saw him.
He was concentrating so hard that he noticed smells he never had before. With the faint dew still lingering and the musk of decay from the first volley of fallen leaves, Porter took deep breaths as he went—partly because he enjoyed the smell of the outdoors, and partly because he was sucking wind, moving around at that elevation.
Eventually, Porter reached the spot where Scarlett said he’d need to climb. He took a swig from a water bottle, then spent the next ten minutes trudging up a near vertical hill. He slipped on the already-fallen leaves and used the small trees growing out of the hill to pull himself up.
He wondered how the hell kids on bikes made it.
Cresting the hill, he squatted to stay low and looked out over the valley underneath him. He could see why the kids would like the spot. The valley was the size of a misshapen football field, with dozens of tall trees and a small creek that bisected it before snaking out of sight around a bend. Opposite him was another series of tall hills, lending the valley privacy.
Great for meth cookers.
Porter knelt, silently listening to his surroundings, eyes straining for any bit of movement in the valley.
Deciding there was no one down there, he descended the hill, half walking, half sliding.
At the bottom, he again stood, leaning on a tree, looking for another person in the valley. He didn’t see anyone, but saw a small walking path that paralleled the stream and turned around the bend as well.
“The hell with that hill,” he muttered to himself, “that’s how I’m leaving.”
He walked slowly along the valley floor, moving from one thick tree to another, looking for things that were out of place.
It didn’t take long.
Buried in the creek at regular intervals were the types of large water jugs one would find in a cooler at an office. Moving closer to the creek, Porter could see the rest of the setup, with tubes snaking this way and that, connecting the jugs.
The water in the stream was low, and more tubing was dug into the embankment. Porter looked left and right, finding the stream full of the devices, all in various stages of the meth-cooking process.
It looked like a hillbilly mad scientist lived in the area.
Porter was trying to figure how much meth the cookers had going when he heard a robotic, echoing sound.
Porter dashed for the nearest tree trunk for protection, pulling his pistol as he went. He knelt and stayed perfectly still. He would hear whoever made the noise again, this time before they saw him. He waited, still as a statue.
Not the type to easily dismiss odd things, Porter believed that everything meant something. There were rarely coincidences. The sideways glance from a stranger at the mall. The television remote not being where you left it. Seeing a couple of sheriff’s deputies twice in the same afternoon, in two different locations. Still, he waited so long that he was ready to change his usual assumption and chalk the robotic noise up to hearing things.
Then the noise happened again. Porter snapped his head around, looking for its source. The large trees that were giving him cover were also playing havoc with the sound, and Porter couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He waited, still and quiet, trying to slow his breathing.
Again, the echoing sound. This time, Porter stood and looked around the entire valley. While he couldn’t tell exactly where the sound was, he could tell it wasn’t moving.
Pistol pointed ahead of him, Porter moved from tree to tree, pausing to look and listen. He was sure there was no one else in the valley—no person could be that quiet moving on fallen, brittle leaves.
He looked up to the ridges of the hills around him, wondering if he’d see movement or the glint of a rifle scope.
The ridgelines were clear as well. He stopped moving and sat as still as he could, eyes closed, listening for the sound. Minutes later, it went off again. This time, he had a good idea of the direction it came from.
Pistol down at his side, he moved past two more big trees, then past a small bundle of thickets and stopped.
The leaves here looked different. They were not smooth and uniform, like the rest of the forest floor. These leaves had been disturbed and moved around messily. He slid his feet through them, scraping up big piles as he did.
After several minutes, his foot hit something that wasn’t a rock or acorns. A second later, he heard the robotic chime again. He dropped to his knee, brushing away the rest of the leaves with his hand until he grabbed something thin and hard.
Porter pulled it up and wiped the smartphone off. He pushed the circular thumb button and the screen blinked to life.
The home screen was a picture of Pima and Scarlett, laughing at something happening off-screen. Their picture was obscured by a screen full of missed calls and texts.
“Shit,” he said, wiping the screen off again.
Nineteen
Porter stood, flipped the phone to silent, then slipped it into his pocket. He exhaled as he halfheartedly kicked through the leaves to see if he’d missed anything.
Pima had been here. And judging by the fact that a teenage girl had left her cell phone behind, it was obvious she hadn’t left in a safe manner.
Porter felt a pang in his stomach. He tried not to get tied to the outcome of the cases he worked; it was too easy to hope a kid was still alive and smiling, and instead find them dead. He’d done it too many times.
He’d hoped she’d been with her boyfriend. He’d hoped she was high or drunk somewhere, angry about how her teachers or parents treated her. He’d lost a bit of that hope when Scarlett told him about their secret spot.
That hope was destroyed now, and things would get worse before they got better.
He followed along the path by the stream, away from the hill he’d slid down and off toward the bend he hadn't been able to see around. As he neared the sharp curve of the path, he saw a bicycle wheel sticking up, seemingly levitating above the fallen leaves.
Porter reached down and unearthed it, wiping off errant leaves stuck to the seat, and heeled the kickstand down, leaving the bike upright on the path.
“Damn.”
As if the phone weren’t enough evidence, Pima’s only mode of transportation was still there as well. Porter looked around, trying to see if he’d missed anything else, when he heard the tell-tale sound of crunching leaves.
He stopped moving and trained his ears towa
rd the sound. He didn’t see anything, but a moment later, a searing pain tore through his forearm. When he leaned back against the closest tree, he was surprised to see an arrow sticking out of its trunk—the arrow that, moments earlier, had nearly buried itself in Porter’s arm.
He knelt behind the tree, facing the bend in the path. He glanced down at his arm, blood already soaking his sleeve. “Son of a bitch.”
Porter pulled his pistol and leaned around the tree, looking for the source of the arrow. He was driven back by another impact near him, a new arrow nearly taking his face off, slamming in the tree he was kneeling behind.
“What you doing here, big man?” a muffled voice called out. “You Mexicans here to sabotage our shit?”
Sound traveling within the woods like it did, Porter couldn’t pinpoint the location of the voice. He needed another chance. “I look Mexican to you, asshole?”
The voice laughed. “Hell, I can’t tell the difference.”
Porter peeked around his tree. He felt sure the voice was elevated, from a position of advantage. He stood and backed away from the tree, then dashed to the next one. Another arrow impacted right as he ducked behind it. “You shoot an arrow about as good as you know a map.”
The voice laughed again. “I’m just a little rusty. I got plenty of arrows; I’ll get ya.”
Porter leaned around the tree, looking at the hillside and the dozen or so trees in between him and it. He lingered for a moment too long, and an arrow ripped across the top of his thigh, sticking firmly into the ground.
Porter was at once furious and glad. The angle of the arrow meant it was coming from higher than he’d expected, and now he knew where. “Still missed,” he lied.
“Give me time, friend,” the muffled voice said.
“You can kill me,” Porter said, peeking briefly around the tree, “or you can listen to what I have to offer. You like money, don’t you?”
There was silence for several moments, and Porter heard the crunch of leaves in the distance. High on the hillside, he just caught the movement of a figure, camouflaged well. The figure stopped moving and was still again.
“Hey? You hear me? I asked if you liked money.”
Porter leaned out of the other side of the trunk, and looked at the figure.
“I don’t like your money,” the muffled voice said. The figure sat completely still.
“Why?” Porter said. He raised his pistol and rested the front sight on the camouflaged figure. He took the slack out of the trigger, then stopped and let the trigger back out.
This guy might know where Pima was. If Porter shot him, he’d be back to square one. He took his finger off the trigger and slipped back behind the tree.
The camouflaged mass hadn’t moved, apparently confident he couldn’t be seen. Porter darted to the next tree, one closer to the hillside. He hid behind it for a moment, then peeked out to find the mass had moved and was coming down the hillside. In his hands was a black pistol.
“What happened to the arrows?” Porter yelled.
“You’re right, I’m too damn rusty. This’ll do.” The man held the gun high, aiming it as he went.
“Screw this,” Porter muttered. Still behind the tree, he fired his pistol into the ground several times. When he leaned out, the man in the camouflage had startled, and was running away from him toward the cover of a tree. Porter fired twice at the moving target, hitting the man and dropping him flat on his stomach.
The wounded man screamed and cursed. Porter didn’t rush, instead moving from tree to tree as he closed in on the man. He made his way to a tree that was ten feet from the shot hunter and leaned against the trunk.
“Shit, shit, shit. Oh my God! My legs… why can’t I move?”
“You didn’t think I had a gun?” Porter said.
“Oh no,” the man said. He screamed a blood-curdling cry.
“Roll over on your back,” Porter said.
“I… I can’t.”
“If you say so. Where’s your gun? Toss it.”
A small black object came squirting out from underneath the man. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know…”
Porter closed the distance, his pistol aimed in on the man. “Where’s the girl?”
“I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know…”
“Will you stop saying that? You did this. You shot at me first.”
“I… I… smell yellow. Can you smell that?”
“Damn it,” Porter said. He flipped the man over with his foot. “Hey! Pay attention. Where’s the girl?”
“Amber… baby… do you have the…” The man trailed off.
“Hey. Hey,” Porter said, nudging the man with his foot. “Hey!”
The man’s eyes were glossy and fixed on something in the canopy.
Porter shook his head. “Asshole.”
He stood for several minutes looking at the area. He wasn’t in shock and he didn’t have even a twinge of regret for what he’d done to the hunter. Porter had passed sympathy a long time ago on the highway of his life.
He didn’t like being arrested. It happened to him often enough that he’d developed an aversion. He would get his lawyer to spring into action, and eventually the matter would be cleared up; however, Porter wasn’t sure he trusted Sheriff Spaulding’s clowns to handle the matter professionally.
Besides, he was in the middle of the national forest. This was federal land, and there was no telling what the park rangers would say, if he could even find one. They’d call the FBI in to help, and then it would be revealed that he was helping them out. Joe would never let him sit in jail—he would get involved. A black mark on Joe’s reputation.
There was a dead body, guns, and copious amounts of methamphetamine. Porter wanted no part of it.
Porter checked the man’s pockets and found nothing: no wallet, no money, and no phone. He stuck the hunter’s gun into his back pocket, then grabbed the man by the camouflaged ghillie suit he was wearing, holding tight to the netting as he dragged him across the valley and toward the creek.
Porter rolled the hunter into the creekbed and, after wiping off the handle of the man’s gun, tossed it into the creek with the hunter. He then looked left and right, walked fifty yards down the creek, and came to the first meth lab. He slid down the embankment, immediately angry at his soaked feet.
He pulled the first batch of tubing until it came free of the muddy earth. Then he pulled the big water jug, careful to keep from spilling any of the yellowish liquid inside on himself.
Porter trudged down, following the tubing until he found the spot where it connected to the next water cooler jug. The makeshift meth lab excavated, he took a couple of steps up the embankment, back to the forest floor.
He dragged the drug-manufacturing paraphernalia down the creekside until he got to the place where he’d dumped the man. He tossed the caustic brew of chemicals on the man’s body. Then, he did it all again.
Nearly a dozen times he unearthed the cooking gear, and dumped it all on the hunter. When he was done, there were chemicals everywhere, and a big pile of water jugs stacked up in the creekside as well. He stopped for moment to catch his breath, the cool air burning his lungs. He pulled up the sleeve of his hoodie and examined the first arrow wound.
The arrowhead had sliced the top of his forearm open, but hadn’t penetrated. Porter felt lucky about that. This was nothing he couldn’t handle.
He pulled his pants down. The leg wound was a bit worse, but more of the same. No entry wound, just a glancing strike. He supposed he should feel good that he hadn’t gotten stuck with one of the hunter’s arrows, but he was too tired and pissed to look at the glass half-full.
Sliding his backpack off, Porter dug through a small, waterproof box and brought out the bundle of strike-when-wet matches and a small squirt tin of lighter fluid. He’d wanted to be prepared in case he got stuck in the woods overnight. Now, the fire-starting implements were going to serve a different function.
Por
ter liberally applied the lighter fluid to the entire area—water jugs, drugs, and dead body alike. Unsure he even needed to with the toxic soup of chemicals, he nonetheless used it all.
Then he struck a match.
Twenty
The shiny tape holding down the fresh bandage on his arm caught the sunlight just right, and reflected a small orb of light onto the Yukon’s headliner.
The trip to the pharmacy had been quick, and there was nothing he’d needed that wasn’t easy to buy and readily available. The pharmacist had looked at him sideways, no doubt due to the muddy footprints he’d left all over the store.
A quick stop to change, shower, and apply some first aid to himself at his hotel, and Porter was headed back to the Newtons’. He figured there was no reason to risk gangrene just to see them sooner. The bad news he had wasn’t going to get better if they heard it immediately.
Porter drove up to the gatehouse. The guard opened the security gate without a second look. Porter was beginning to wonder if the old man was even alive.
A few turns and some gains in elevation, and Porter was at the Newtons’ again. This time, he pulled into the driveway and parked. He looked past their house to the view and took a deep breath. Delivering bad news never got much easier, and it wasn’t the first time he’d have to tell someone the worst. He hoped Mike could handle it, in his condition.
He popped the trunk to the Yukon and lifted out the bike that he’d struggled to carry out of the woods, then walked it to the front door. No sooner had his finger released the doorbell than Mike Newton slung the door open.
The man looked better, like he’d used some of his wife’s Valium and gotten some sleep therapy.
“You’re back. Did you find—” Mike looked from Porter’s face down to the bicycle. He shut the door behind him and grabbed the bike, walking it away from the front door. “Come on. Bryce doesn’t need to see this.”