Thinking, that was what did it. If I just didn’t think so much I’d live longer. I was sure of it. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking. And I was thinking about Agnes and that map. What had been on that map? I hadn’t had time to look. Then it occurred to me that there were several other maps at the homestead. Maybe they were similar. Maybe if I knew what they said I’d get a feel for what had piqued Agnes’s interest. Then I kicked myself. If I went out to that homestead Rusty would kill me. I’d be grounded for life. But what was the danger? I’d be less conspicuous alone than we had been with Chase. Once I got the snakes out I could get down in there, out of sight and no one would know the difference. All I needed was enough information to point me in the right direction. I remembered the person on the dirt bike. They had fled as soon as they were spotted, but why were they there? Why would they care if a few people were poking around the ruins of a house? I decided the operation had to be as low profile as possible. I couldn’t go at night. Rusty would forbid it and I couldn’t be sure about the snakes. Our visitor had showed up in the morning. So I decided afternoon would be the best time to go.
I returned to the station and quietly made my way to the K9 unit and borrowed their pole again. I sure would be glad when I didn’t need this thing anymore. Wrestling rattlesnakes was not my idea of fun but I wasn’t going to go down through the hole with them there and this time I did plan on going down into the hole. I didn’t want anybody to see a person at the site if they rode by checking things out.
I ate lunch before I left. I packed a good flashlight and plenty of water. I wore desert camouflage and carried my camouflage rifle. I was set for my mission. The goal? To find out why Agnes had taken that map.
I left the rental car on the shoulder of the road and jogged across the desert to the old homestead. It reminded me of my time in Afghanistan but I didn’t have to worry about land mines here. It didn’t take me long to reach the house but then I had to get rid of the snakes. My rifle rested comfortably across my back as I reached in with the pole and swept it around, low to the ground. I only found one small snake and I dragged it well away from the area. I shined the flashlight around looking for more snakes. I waved the pole around again. Nothing. I did a quick tracking inspection of the area. Someone had been here, but they had only looked around, seemingly out of curiosity. I hoped that’s all it was. They had stepped up onto the floor, but who wouldn’t? Any curious person would have walked around all over it. If they had been on the floor, had they removed the floorboards? There were only a handful of people who would know about the floorboards: the original owners, Rusty, Chase, me… and maybe the guy on the dirt bike.
I lay on top of the floor as I removed the boards. I shined the flashlight down in the hole knowing the snakes could be anywhere down there. When I was sure all the nooks and crannies that I could see were snake free, I slipped down through the hole in the floor, did a last flashlight inspection and pulled the pole, flashlight and rifle down in with me, then I pulled the boards back into place and settled in for a time of study. I turned on the flashlight and then opened the box the maps had been in. I pulled out a map. It was just a general map of southern California. I was amazed how few towns it showed. The roads were all different. The freeway didn’t exist. The paved roads were few.
The commercially made maps just showed generalities. I needed specific information. I needed local information. I reached in for another stack of papers. The paper was brittle. I had to be very careful when I unfolded the papers that I didn’t rip them apart. Folding them up was nearly as frustrating. At last I began finding smaller maps and a few with notes penned in, a dot with a name by it, an area traced out that I presume was property lines. Several of the penned-in dots had the same name next to them and the large areas also seemed to belong to the same family. Predominately I saw two names. A few minor properties had other names. I noticed one of the dots matched the location of the homestead but there was a dirt road that ran to it that was long gone. Wind and sand had taken possession of it. I was so engrossed in reading the maps that a movement against my leg made me jump out of my skin! I tensed instantly. The movement was constant. A soft, long stroke across my calf. A snake. I analyzed its movements estimating where its head would be. It was headed into the boxes. Damn. I didn’t have room to move and I didn’t want to shoot towards the boxes. Who knew what was in them? We’d found a pistol in them last time we looked. There could be eighty year old gunpowder back there. Did gunpowder work after eighty years? I didn’t want to find out sandwiched between a thick wooden floor and the hard ground. Even I could smell the fear in that small area. So far the snake didn’t feel threatened but if I moved around much that could change in an instant. I froze, glad I had plenty of stalking experience. I could stay still for a long time. As I sat there waiting for the snake to make up its mind I thought about my options. I didn’t want to have to get out of that place quickly. Sitting cross-legged on the ground the floor was only inches above my head. To get out I needed to go around the boxes and I couldn’t move that direction. I looked at the hole the snake had come through. Either way I had to pass over part of the snake to get there. Okay, Cass, just stay still. I felt a movement against my back. The snake checking out this warm blooded invader of his domain. Sweat trickled down my back and still I stayed frozen. The snake’s head slipped down by my hip and I saw a small window of opportunity. I smoothly grabbed my rifle, pointed it at the snake’s head inches away from the barrel and pulled the trigger. The snake’s head vanished and its bloody, headless body thrashed around spraying blood everywhere. The snake didn’t do much to stop the bullet, which continued on and blew away a large hole in the dirt bank enclosing the storage area. Dust and rocks flew. Blood flew. The smell of gunpowder was everywhere. I scrambled to the hole in the floor and shoved the boards up, coughing and fanning away the smoke.
Okay, enough. Maybe I’d found enough. I ducked down into the hole and grabbed the few maps that had some specific information on them and stuffed them into a cargo pocket of my combat pants. I grabbed my tools and worked my way out of the hole. What a mess! Blood everywhere. Time to head for home.
Halfway back to the car I realized a patrol car was parked behind my rental car. Shoot. Please let it be highway patrol. They might not know me. On the other hand, maybe I wanted to be recognized if I was walking up to them carrying a rifle, dressed in camouflage, and covered with blood. At least the guys who knew me would think it was halfway normal. I just didn’t want this to get back to Rusty. Another car was cruising up and down the road. Shoot. No way was I getting out of this.
When I got closer I waved a friendly greeting. Recognition dawned on them. Smirks appeared where once they were all business. When I got closer their expressions changed from annoyed to curious. The other car circled around and parked behind the first patrol car. That was a good sign. If they were worried they would have blocked in the rental car.
“We had a report of shots fired,” Ben Tomlin said.
“One. One shot. I know. I counted. It only takes one shot to blow away a rattlesnake at three inches,” I said.
“You could have backed off just a little.”
“Easier said than done,” I countered.
“What’s all this?” he asked fingering the bloody fabric of my pants.
“Rattlesnake blood. The snake kind of lost its head.”
“What’s the pole for?”
“Rattlesnake wrestling.”
“Cassidy, do you
do these things just to provide the station with endless story telling?” Jayce
Thompson asked.
“No! You can’t let this get back to Rusty. He’ll kill me.”
“I doubt if he believes us. He’s kind of turned a deaf ear to the Continuing Adventures of Cassidy Michaels. After the sand sharks…”
“It wasn’t sand sharks. It was these same rattlesnakes. There was only one this time. Please don’t tell him.”
“What are you doing out here wrestling rattlesnakes?” Jayce asked.
“Well, first time, I was tracking a little dog. This time, I was looking for information on Agnes Cooper. I know. It seems like a stretch but it’s less than you think.”
I’d lost them somewhere. They heard about the little dog and they all knew about Agnes Cooper but the connection just didn’t connect.
“I’ll go tell the woman it was a hiker frightened by a rattlesnake. Cassidy, go home,” Jayce said.
“Is that what I should write in the report?” Ben asked.
They all looked at me. Okay, I guess I really was frightened of it. That was a fair assessment that wouldn’t get me in too much trouble.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
When I drove up to the house I knew I was in trouble. I opened the door silently and checked out the room before entering. I stalked to the wall separating the living room from the kitchen, dining room and den. I peeked around the corner. I stalked down the hall. I heard keystrokes coming from the office. That was good news. Maybe he’d be distracted and I could slip by before he noticed. I waited for the right time. He glanced down to read a file and I slipped past and into the bedroom. I quickly slipped out of the bloody camouflage shirt and pants, tossed them into the dirty clothes bin, and placed a towel on top so they wouldn’t be visible. I put on jeans and a t-shirt, trying all the time to be silent. I went to the bathroom and checked for blood on other parts of me. There was a damp washcloth on the side of the sink so I used it to dab away the spots of blood on my hands and face. I brushed my hair. There, I was almost normal again. As close to normal as I could get without making noise, anyway.
I stepped across the hall and into the office and Rusty froze. Instantly froze. I saw him take in the room in the reflection of his computer screen. It wasn’t pointed towards the door. He put his hand on his service revolver.
“Hey, it’s okay, it’s only me,” I said. “Did you have a rough day? You seem overly alert or something.”
“First tell me where you’ve been. Then tell me why you smell like a fireworks factory explosion.”
“I’ve been exploring and I had to shoot a rattlesnake,” I said.
“Cass… you don’t get that full of gunpowder just shooting a rattlesnake.”
“It was in close quarters.”
“How close?”
“Very. Would you like tacos for dinner? That’s quick.”
He got up and followed me into the kitchen.
“I want you to sit down and tell me what you’ve been up to. If you had really gone exploring you would have told me where you went, what kinds of tracks you saw, and what the terrain was like. You’re hiding something.”
“Now, what would I be hiding?”
“Do you want me to list it all out? How about the reason you went? The place? Something that happened? Someone you ran into? Trouble you ran into? Umm, the fact that you weren’t supposed to go anywhere near that place? Have I hit it yet?”
On the outside I was standing up to him, irritated that I couldn’t do anything without it being stuck under a magnifying glass. Inwardly I was cringing, thinking he only cared, he only wanted to be able to trust me and I’d broken that trust. I was between a rock and a rattlesnake.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “You hit it.”
Unfortunately irritated Cassidy was winning the battle right at the moment. I was waiting for the softer side to weaken the hard side. I didn’t want to hide things from him but it seemed like, if I only did things he approved of, I’d do nothing at all. He was the one who got me thinking about Agnes in the first place and then he expected me to just drop it when my head was full of ideas and I was itching to get out. He was expecting too much if he thought I could just forget it. It was a puzzle, it had fallen apart and now I had to put it back together. I couldn’t help it. If I left it broken it would take months or years to filter out and be just old, dead memories. I didn’t want dead memories. A brain was for thinking and my brain was tuned. Once a puzzle was presented to it, it was a constant process until the puzzle was solved. Just like a search. Agnes was a search of sorts. The tracks were different but they were there. I just had to find them. They were in maps and patterns and social behaviors and cliques and… and I was making progress. But I wasn’t making much progress on myself. So I stood there, guarding my emotions and reactions.
“Rusty, the map was the only thing Agnes took from us. I thought, if I went back to the homestead and looked at the other maps, I’d be able to see what had piqued her interest in it. So I went there. I was very careful. I went at a time of day when I’d be less noticed. I got rid of the snakes and crawled down under the floor and I covered the hole so it would look like no one was there. And I looked at maps. It was cramped and small under there and when a snake surprised me I shot it. It was a smoky, bloody, dirty mess down there for just a minute but all in all it was a successful trip. I found a map that might help me see what Agnes is up to. I’m sorry I went back, but I was careful and I did take precautions.”
He leaned against the kitchen wall with a sigh of frustration.
“I asked you to stay away for your own protection. Did you read the journal?”
“No, I didn’t even touch it. I was only interested in why Agnes wanted the information in the map.”
“What if the people involved in that conflict don’t want it brought back to life. If they find out there is someone who could reveal the things in that journal they would stop them. If they even thought you might know what’s in that journal you’d be a target again. Babe, I don’t want that. Any information you have can only make you more of a target. Did anybody see you?”
“No, nobody that matters. When I got to my car there were officers there investigating a shots fired report but I told them I’d just had to shoot a rattlesnake. They thought it all sounded a lot like typical Cassidy activity and went on their way.”
“Okay.”
“I wouldn’t have gone back to the homestead if Agnes was caught. Only her interest in the map sent me there. My curiosity about it is satisfied and I won’t be going back.”
He seemed satisfied although I was really glad he didn’t ask me what I’d learned. Disaster averted.