Linda awoke in the soft gray of false dawn to Frank’s humming. She didn’t hum in the mornings. She showered, drank coffee, spoke to no one until she hit work. She pulled the covers over her shoulders against the morning chill. He was stirring about near the stove. Linda could smell coffee. She made an exception. “Mmm. Smells good. How about some of that coffee?”
“Ask the Flynn and the Flynn delivers.” He poured coffee into a thick brown china mug and took it over to her. As she sat up to take the coffee, the blankets fell away, reminding them both of her nakedness. She reached for the covers with one hand and the coffee with the other.
“Hungry?”
She was. In fact, she was ravenous. “Yeah, you bet.”
“How about a breakfast burrito? Beans, eggs, and cheese, and some of Flynn’s special store-bought salsa, or, if you’ve got the stomach for it, some Swab’s High Sierra Chileno Indian-style peppers?”
“You’re kidding, Swab’s Indian-style peppers?”
“Nope, I’m not kidding, and yup, you can have some. They’re really good, too. Made right here in the valley. They’re not really that hot, just a bit of a bite.”
“Why not. Let’s have ’em.”
Frank turned back to the stove. Linda watched him as he went about warming the tortillas and beans, scrambling up the eggs and then deftly folding eggs, cheese, beans, peppers, and salsa into perfect
burritos, ends tucked nicely in, no drips or leaks. Definitely a morning person. He was still humming.
“Hey, you’re good. You could give old Ralph a run for his money.”
Frank smiled. “Nope. I’m an amateur; Ralph’s a pro. Twenty minutes a burrito doesn’t cut it. It’s still fun for me. Besides, I could never match that black scowl.” He handed her a burrito on a warm plate. Wisps of vapor rose from the food into the cool air of the morning, filling the caboose with a spicy fragrance.
“It gets cold up here next to the mountain, doesn’t it?” Linda took a bite of burrito. The flavor of the Chileno peppers was delicious, like no other pepper she’d ever eaten, warm and not too hot. It tasted of the desert air after a rain, pungent and just short of sweet. “Mmmm. These peppers are really great.”
“Grown on the slopes of the Sierras, right here in the Owens Valley,” he intoned in a radio voice. “They are good, aren’t they? And yeah, it gets cold here. We’re at almost at forty-five hundred feet.”
“Mm, mm, mmmm,” she replied, her mouth full of burrito. Her morning mood was softening. Breakfast in bed. A breakfast of real food.
Frank sat on one of the cloth camping chairs he’d brought inside. They ate in silence as the valley filled with light. Though they had shared the same bed and passion in the dark, Linda felt awkwardly modest about her nakedness, especially in the intimate closeness of the caboose. Reyes had been the last man with whom she had shared a bed. That was just over a year now. Reyes. She wondered how much baggage Frank was lugging around.
Frank interrupted the domestic stillness. “Listen, I have to get an early start.” The seriousness in his voice pulled Linda abruptly away from her thoughts and into the affairs of the day.
“Weekends, we rotate duties when we can. I’ve got a ‘walk and talk’ over at the charcoal kilns near the dry lake this afternoon.” He leaned forward, an earnest expression on his face. She recognized the look from the classroom lecture, serious and intent. “Did you know that there used to be steamships on Owens Lake? Before Los Angeles took the water. And there’s a story about a steamer sinking with a cargo of silver bars.”
Her thoughts drifted back to the previous night. Their lovemaking had been both tender and passionate. She had let herself be naked with this man, exposed, vulnerable, and yet perfectly safe. It was something new to her.
He saw that she was smiling at him and changed course. “Anyhow, Meecham will probably have a few things for my plate besides burritos, and I have to get up to Bishop and look in on Eddie Laguna’s cat. I’ll pick up a BLM vehicle on the way back, so don’t look for my truck.”
She caught Frank’s hand. “I want to know all about the steamships and the lost silver. You’re a treasure of information. That’s what you are, my treasure chest of information.” She pulled him toward her and kissed him on the mouth. He set his plate on the bed, and she could tell that affection had shifted into desire.
She put her hands against his shoulders. “Me, too.” She nodded, smiling up at him. “But I have to be at work. The story’s coming out today, with the pictures of the poacher and Eddie. Be sure and buy a paper. You and the BLM show up as heroes, not to mention this intrepid reporter.” She was still thinking about having to get out of bed naked. Being with Frank was still so new, and there was stuff to get done.
“Thanks. The boss loves good publicity, and the truth is, we need it.” He noticed her hand clutching at the bedclothes. “I hung your clothes up in the bathroom; here’s my ratty bathrobe.” He reached behind the door and laid it on the end of the bed. “I’m going to put a few scraps out for my other foxy girlfriend. Back in a minute.”
She watched him go out the door, her heart swelling inside her. It was good that he liked cats. She shifted gears. So let’s get on with it, she thought. She wolfed down the rest of her burrito, put her plate on the table, and dashed into the bathroom, taking the robe with her.
The desert stretched before them in the morning light, but Linda’s mind was already at the paper. She had several projects going besides bighorn sheep. There was the story on the railroad museum at
Laws. Frank had given her the idea. She had found a man in Bishop who used to be an engineer on the old narrow-gauge railroad. He was full of stories; some of them might even be true. Then there was the ghost town of Beverage, so hard to get to that it hadn’t been looted, or so one old boy had told her. She’d have to ask Frank if he’d ever been there.
But the project on the front burner was the research she was doing on the new open-pit gold mining operation near Ballarat. The Indians were very unhappy, and they had reason to be, but they were only a scattering of brown voices in the wilderness. They might just as well be coyotes howling in the night, she thought. Maybe she could focus some attention on it. Too late to do anything about this one, but perhaps public awareness might serve in the future. She tried not to get discouraged. Policy and politics seemed such a quagmire. Her job was to write about it—“just the facts, ma’am.” She envied Frank, actually doing something out there in the desert, protecting the land. But then again, she knew he chafed under the BLM’s policies, which shifted with changes in politics.
“It’s not easy, is it?”
He lifted his eyebrows and shot her an inquiring look.
“Sorry, just voicing my own thoughts. I was thinking it must be hard for you. Taking care of the Winnebago crowd, I mean.”
“Sometimes, but not as much as you might think. They come out here because they’re drawn to the desert. Maybe it’s just about getting away from the city, the sense of freedom. Do what you want in the wide-open spaces. Howl around on ATVs, have barbecues and drink too much beer. Some of them even come for the beauty of it. They might not put it that way, but that’s what it gets down to. Whatever it is, they come. So it’s our job to make it safe for them and the land safe from them. Dropping by the campgrounds, making sure everything is okay, gives me and the BLM a chance to do a little educating. I really like doing the campfire talks and leading people on nature walks.” He glanced over at her, grinning. “Rangers don’t have to give talks. I’m a volunteer. Besides, I used to give a lot of them before I shifted to the enforcement side of things. Sometimes people just open up. When you hear things like ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’
or ‘Hey, that’s neat,’ and see people talking about the things they’ve just heard, you know you’ve made a difference, helped take care of the land, because these people go home with a different outlook.”
She looked skeptical. “The new and improved citizen, huh?”
“Hardly that. God knows, some of them would make a maggot puke.” A frown passed over his face like a cloud shadow on the landscape. “But that’s the exception, a nasty exception. Most people are okay. It’s important to remember that. And attitudes change over time. Hell, even the pillage and grab crowd pays lip service to the environment. In my dad’s time, people thought of the desert as a big wasteland, except for a few characters like Joseph Wood Krutch and Mary Austin. They were the start.”
“How about Edward Abbey?”
“Your dad and his pals, huh? The Grumpy Wrench Gang.”
“Are you pissed off about that?”
“Getting a flat, naw. At least not anymore. But at the time, I had a few choice things to say.” He rested his hand on hers. “My priorities kinda shifted when I saw the cop cars at your dad’s place.”
She considered this man, a quiet, thoughtful optimist. An optimist, an endangered species. It gave her heart a lift. “So what about Abbey?”
“How can you not love his work, especially Desert Solitaire? I remember when I first read it. I thought, I know this guy. He’s me. I’m him, even the anger, especially the anger. It was like I had someone to share it with. It wasn’t just me, so I could let some of it out. I was just a kid, maybe twenty, twenty-one. But at the time, all I could see was the place where I lived being trashed by a bunch of rich white people from the city. I had some ugly fantasies.”
“So you became a cop?”
“Just about perfect, isn’t it? I’m being paid to protect my home. How can you beat that?” He grinned into the morning sun.
Linda stood by the truck, resting her hands on the window. She raised her voice over the sound of the traffic. “Five o’clock, right here, okay? Remember that I hate to be kept waiting when it’s hot.
You never met moi when I’m pissed off. So be on time. I don’t want to ruin a good thing.”
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me twice. You left that ten-gauge job at home, right?” He grinned. “Not to worry. I’ll be here, or if I’m late, I’ll just keep on rolling as a matter of survival.”
She waved as he pulled out, then watched as the truck was swallowed up in the traffic, his arm waving back out the window. She felt a pang at his departure. How could she start missing him already? It was ridiculous, but then again, it wasn’t. Obviously, she was in love. She laughed to herself. In love, in love with love. No, in love with this strange, enigmatic man, who laughed at things, especially himself. She felt her heart quicken. Get a grip on yourself, Linda, she thought.
“The Kern County Sheriff’s Department has something going on near some mine in Randsburg. The radio chat sounds like arson, maybe ecovandals.” Marston pulled at his splashy purple tie; its swirling white blossoms intertwining with the stylized Art Deco vines complemented his brown-and-white basket-weave shoes. It must have cost him fifty dollars, she figured.
“Reyes?”
“Um-hm. I’m listening.” She hoped it wasn’t ecovandals. It would be bad timing, and she hoped especially that it wasn’t the Grumpy Wrench Gang. Dad and Co. could get out of hand. The hijinks with the caltrops was serious business, and the last thing she wanted was a confrontation between her dad and the BLM, especially Frank. That could really gum things up.
George Marston, the retro dweeb, squinted at her through nonexistent cigarette smoke. “Say there, Reyes, why don’t you call your buddy over in Tehachapi and see what’s up.” With him, it was always “Reyes.” He’d seen Bogart in Deadline—U.S.A. and taken it to heart. He thought of himself as a tough, street-smart city editor. She thought of him as a bright Clark Kent, except for the pocket protector. How could he try and sound like a cynical, world-weary newspaper man and wear a pocket protector?
“What buddy?”
“The one who’s always calling here. ‘Is Ms. Reyes there?’” he mimicked in a deep baritone. “Voice all aquiver when he says ‘Ms. Reyes.’ The tall, blond, muscular, oh-my-what-cute-buns Kern County deputy sheriff, Officer Eugene Bohannon. That buddy.”
Damn, Linda thought, sorry she’d asked. The dweeb kept his finger on the pulse of gossip, which was just local news, wasn’t it? God, how often did the goofy kid call up? She hated to call him, but a source was a source.
She went to her desk and dialed the Tehachapi station of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department. She counted the rings. They always picked up by the third ring. She liked them for that. Kern County’s finest knew something about serving the public.
“Yes, this is Linda Reyes for Officer Eugene Bohannon.” She doodled a daisy flower on a scrap of paper. “I’m returning his call.” God, she hated explaining things twelve times. The “returning his call” gambit cut through traffic.
“Hi, Gene. It’s Linda Reyes here.”
“Linda! How’re you doin’?”
“Fine. How about you?”
Now he was telling her. What was the matter with the man? Didn’t he know a rhetorical question when he heard one?
“Say, listen, Eugene. What’s up over in Randsburg? Heard something about a fire. Is it worth the drive? … Okay, I can wait.” She doodled another daisy, then started counting the petals. Loves me? Loves me not? Loves me? Loves me not? Loves me not, it came out. Too bad about that. She drew another petal. It’s my daisy, she thought.
“Yeah, I’m still here. Um-hm. Yeah. So nothing on who set the fire. The Ophir mine—isn’t that part of the Rand District? I’m less than an hour away. I’ll go have a look. Say, can you let them know I’ll be on the scene? Thanks, Gene. I really appreciate it.”
Uh-oh, here it comes, she thought. Couldn’t he figure out she was at least ten years older than he was? “Can’t this weekend, Eugene. Working my other job. It’s a long story. Listen, I gotta get goin’.” She nodded. “Sure, anytime. I’ll buy you a beer. Thanks again, Eugene.”
She felt like a hypocrite. He had a schoolboy crush, and she was using it. Then she remembered she’d been banished from her dad’s club. A feeling of dread came creeping back.
Marston was sitting on the edge of his desk, adjusting the margins on his old Smith-Corona. He claimed he wrote better stuff on the typewriter than on the computer, but she’d never seen him type anything on it but notes and memos. He avoided office E-mail. Too impersonal, he said. He’d be dead meat on a big paper, but he was okay. She liked the typed memos. The stuff of Deadline—U.S.A.
“Marston,” she said, making her voice crack with a cynical lack of interest.
“Yeah, what’s up?” He twisted in his chair. The cameras were rolling.
“Need the news wagon. Car’s at home.”
He frowned. “I was planning to go over to the base.”
She knew he liked the official car with the paper’s seal on the side when he rolled through the gates at the China Lake Naval Ordnance Test Station. The official car provided presence. The news wagon gave him the right gravitas.
“So borrow Lucky’s MG.”
Lucky Rogers had seen Deadline—U.S.A., too. Norman Rogers thought of himself as the plucky kid—the kid who’d make the big scoop. He and George Marston inhabited the same movie. She briefly wondered if Marston’s mother had the Ethel Barrymore role, plucky grande dame. After all, she did own part of the paper.
Lucky Rogers had a fire engine red 1953 MG TD, restored to its original quirky beauty. It was classy in a way that new cars never seemed to be. What a place, she thought. Small-town newspapers were the last refuge for the weird, and Lord knows, she fit right in.
Marston twisted farther around in his chair, facing Norman Rogers as he kicked one foot up on a partially opened drawer. “Hey, that’d work out, and you could come along, keep your eyes open. Whatta ya say, kid?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Marston. Glad to help out.”
How could he stand being called “kid”? Linda wanted to add, Gee whiz, that’s swell. Well, it was swell for her. She had a car to use, Marston would have presence, and Norman was on a mission with the boss to the China Lake test center.
Actually, Linda hated driving the damn news wagon. It was an eight-year-old Dodge minivan with over 150,000 miles on it, and the suspension was shot. With growing regret, she jounced over the washboard road leading up to the mine. She kept telling herself she’d come this far, might just as well go on. She remembered how cranky Frank had been bouncing around in the truck on the drive up to Surprise Canyon and how he’d frowned at her laughter when the glove compartment had flown open. Well, there was something else they had in common. She hated being tossed around in the cab of a vehicle like laundry in a washing machine.
Finally, up ahead she saw a Kern County police car and an elderly fire truck, probably from the Rand Volunteer Fire Department. The police car had been pulled around across the road so as to control access to the site. The fire truck was farther up, near the blackened shell of a single-wide mobile home. The scorched body of the trailer rested on cement blocks, a good two feet off the ground at the high end. The aluminum poles of what had been the awning stuck out from the top of the trailer in a pointless rectangle, bits of burned cloth draping the metal in dismal shreds. She pulled up, careful not to block access. Never start by being a problem—rule number two. Get there first was rule number one, but rule number two kept the doors from closing.
The smell of burned plastic and the acrid odor of chemicals and ashes filled her nostrils. The trailer had been completely gutted by the fire. Here and there, the remains of pink and gray paint showed through the accumulated grime at what must have been the bedroom end. Someone—probably the firefighters—had pried the burned door open. It hung there in macabre invitation to the smoke-blackened interior. She couldn’t see much. A couple of grim-faced deputies stood talking with two unhappy-looking volunteer firemen.
Their conversation lapsed into silence at her approach. No barbershop quartet here. She wondered what was up.
“Hi, I’m Linda Reyes, with the InyoKern Courier. Did Officer Bohannon contact you yet?”
The older deputy, gray-haired and paunchy, gave a small smile. “He did, and you live right up to his description.” He offered his hand. “Cotton DeLacey.”
She smiled back as she took DeLacey’s hand. “Well, I try not to disappoint.”
“This is Pete Fisher.” DeLacey gestured to a tall, husky redheaded deputy. Like most denizens of the desert, he wore dark sunglasses. Bits of skin flecked off his nose. It was tough being fair-skinned in the Mojave. He gestured toward the firefighters. “Hillyard and Sandstrom.” The two firemen made soft howdy sounds. They shuffled their feet, looking uncomfortable. They seemed to have come in the same box.
She waited. She was used to stoic cops but not to silent ones. As a reporter, she had learned not to fill in the voids of conversation, so she said nothing. Apparently, it was the end of the small talk. The mood was definitely somber. She took out pad and pencil. “So what’s up?” she finally asked.
“It was more than a just a fire, Ms. Reyes. There were two people in that trailer. Someone, or several someones, blocked them in. Then they dragged all the wood they could find and stuffed it under the trailer. By the looks of it, most of it by the door. Then they set it on fire and roasted those people alive.” DeLacey spit, as if to get the taste out of his mouth.
“Do you know who they are—were?”
“Not for sure. But Hillyard and Sandstrom here tell me there was a young couple living here as caretakers. All this property and the mining rights belong to the Ophir Mining Corporation. My guess is that’s who they were, the caretakers, but there’s no way of knowing for sure until—”
“Until you’ve got a positive identification. I know.” She was writing quickly even as she spoke. “When did this happen?”
“Rand Fire Department got an anonymous call this morning.
The man didn’t want to leave his name. Said he didn’t want to wind up having to wait around. Besides, all he claimed to have seen was smoke coming from what was left of the trailer about eight this morning. That right, Bob?” The taller of the two firemen, the one who had been identified as Hillyard, nodded in affirmation. “So that’s about it. You’ve got what we’ve got.”
Both firemen looked uncomfortable.
“Why didn’t they try to force their way out, break a window, do something?” Linda directed her question to include the firemen.
“’Cause, ma’am, they couldn’t.” She saw two tiny images of herself in the curve of the redheaded deputy’s glasses. “See, they’d been tied up.” The muscles on his jaw worked in and out.
It struck her with the force of a blow. It was them. Why hadn’t she known sooner? Frank had told her about the couple he’d talked to after the lecture, Mitch and Shawna. They’d been in the class, holding hands and talking about Jesus, and now they were gone. My God, it could’ve been me, she thought, or anyone who got in their way. Then she thought about Frank on his way to take care of Eddie’s cat. He was in the valley, so she should be able to reach his cell phone. She punched the autodial and waited. He wasn’t picking up, or he’d left it at home again. Damn. The phone buzzed against her ear.