DULL KNIFE OUTFITTERS, C&C SEWER AND SEPTIC TANK SERVICE, BIRTHPLACE OF PRCA WORLD CHAMPION COWBOY DALLAS CATES
“SON OF A bitch,” Dallas Cates said, spitting out the words. “Someone took our sign down.”
“What sign?” Bobbi Johnson asked sleepily from the backseat. She’d dozed off once it got dark and was slumped against Axel Soledad’s shoulder. Cates saw her scramble back into her place once she realized what she’d done. Cates admired her discomfort in the rearview mirror.
The interior of the pickup reeked of broken fruit, the odor emanating from the device in the bed of the vehicle. They should have cleaned it thoroughly after leaving Powell, Cates thought.
“What’s the sign say now?” Johnson asked.
“Now it says BLUE SKY LLAMAS,” Cates said from behind the wheel. “What the fuck is that all about?”
“I hate llamas,” Lee Ogburn-Russell said from the passenger seat. “They look stupid and they spit at you.”
“Everybody hates fucking llamas,” Cates said, his mood suddenly black.
The compound in which he’d grown up was largely concealed by the dark, but Cates still knew every inch of it. The main two-story house; the four-stall garage, where his father, Eldon, had parked his service pump truck; the guesthouse, where his brother Bull and Bull’s wife, Cora Lee, had lived; the original log cabin homestead house that had once been filled with saddles and other outfitting gear; the corral where Dallas had learned to ride wild bucking horses; the deep hole on the edge of the property where his mother, Brenda, had imprisoned Liv Romanowski before she was Liv Romanowski.
All that could be seen of it now, as Cates steered under the arch and his headlights painted the sagebrush on the side of the dirt road, were some yellow lights at the main house and a single blue pole light in front of the garage.
“So this is where you grew up?” Johnson said to Cates.
“It is.”
“Who lives here now?”
“No idea. It went into foreclosure after they killed and crippled my mom and dad, and somebody must have bought it.”
“Llama ranchers,” Soledad said from the backseat. His tone was more provocative than Cates appreciated at the moment. “Llama ranchers bought it.”
Cates was miffed by the idea that strangers, llama ranchers, now lived in his family house. It was just one more humiliation on top of a mountain of them.
Cates felt a bolt of anger, like a lightning strike, arc through his chest. It was the same feeling he used to have when he dropped down into the chute onto his saddle and grasped the rope and settled in for the ride. That anger, directed then not only at the bucking horse but his competitors, had been his rocket fuel.
“When I get to the house,” he said, “I want all of you to stay here inside. I don’t want to spook the people living in my house any more than I need to. I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.”
“Let us know if you need any help,” Soledad said, leaning forward and patting Cates on the shoulder.
“I won’t, I suspect,” Cates replied.
*
HE PARKED IN front of the house and got out and waited for the interior pickup lights to douse. Cates didn’t want the occupants inside the house to see how many people were in the vehicle. When the inside of the truck went dark, he turned toward the structure. He could see by the glow of the interior lights that the wooden porch had been painted white and that the old rocking chairs Eldon and Brenda used to sit in on warm summer evenings had been replaced by a Peloton bike. Cates was disgusted.
He assumed the people inside the house must have seen him coming. The sight lines from the compound to the road were treeless and vast. It was a long driveway from the arch, and his headlights were the only thing out there. No one had ever sneaked up on the Cates family, especially at night. Brenda kept a shotgun near the front door if anyone ever tried.
But the porch light didn’t click on as Cates approached the front door, and nobody looked out the windows at him.
He strode up the porch steps and rapped twice on the door.
There were tentative footfalls inside and then the porch light went on. Cates took two steps back so he could be seen clearly and appear nonthreatening. Then he manufactured a smile on his face and waited.
The door opened about eight inches and a woman looked out. She was thin, angular, and birdlike. Late thirties or early forties, wearing yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt. Her legs were like sticks and she wore flats that hugged her feet. She had short blond hair, a pair of readers pushed up on her head, and a multitude of plastic and leather bracelets on her thin wrist supporting a multitude of causes, he guessed. Beads of perspiration dotted at her hairline and she was flushed and mildly out of breath.
Obviously, she’d been working out. That was why she hadn’t seen them drive up.
She looked at him with suspicion. “Are you lost?”
“I hope not,” Cates said, maintaining his grin. “I’m out here looking for property and I understand that this place is for sale.”
“For sale?” she said. Then: “No. It’s not for sale. I don’t know where you heard that.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
From inside the house, a male voice called out, “Britney? Is there somebody at the door?”
She turned her head. “Yes, Rob, but I’m taking care of it.” Cates thought her voice had a certain edge to it.
“Is that your husband?” Cates asked.
“My partner,” Britney nodded. She said, “Maybe you saw a listing from a year ago that hasn’t been updated. The realtors around here aren’t exactly on the ball, we’ve learned. No, we bought this place eleven months ago and even though there’s a lot of work to do to get it up to our standards, we have no intention of selling it. We’re raising llamas here.”
Although the phrase “to get it up to our standards” grated at Cates, he ignored it. He said, “Yeah, I was confused by that sign out on the arch. In the listing, it shows this place as belonging to an outfitter, a septic service, and a world champion rodeo cowboy.”
“We got rid of that, of course,” she said with an eye roll. “I mean, how redneck can you get, right?”
“I guess so,” Cates said. He put his hands on his hips and looked around. “Man, this is exactly the kind of place I want to buy. Lots of elbow room, no crime, low taxes.”
She said, “Going to the grocery store is kind of a trek. And getting used to the people around here is … challenging.”
“Where did you come from, if I may ask?”
“We’re from the Bay Area.”
Of course you are, Cates thought. “I bet your kids love it,” he said.
“We don’t have any children,” Britney said. “Our llamas are my babies.”
Of course they are, he thought.
“We’re so lucky Rob can work remotely,” she said. “This way I can spend more time with my babies.”
Cates said, “I’m sorry to have bothered you so late at night. I’ll get with that realtor and tell her to update her listings. There has to be another place like this around here, right?”
Rob called out once again. “Is everything okay, Brit?”
“It’s fine,” she snapped. Cates got the impression that Britney wasn’t thrilled that her partner was fine to let her deal with the situation at their door by herself.
“Anyway,” Britney said to Cates, “I’m afraid you might not find what you’re looking for. My understanding is that housing around here has been pretty much snapped up by people like us.”
“From the Bay Area, you mean?”
“From California,” she said. “Not all of us have moved to Texas and Tennessee, you know.”
Cates mock-chuckled at that. “Believe me, I get it. That’s why I’m looking to relocate to Hicksville.”
“I wish there were more of us here,” she said. “This state could use some new blood, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Well, again, sorry to have bothered you and sorry for the misunderstanding. I hope you have a good night.”
“You too,” she said, stepping back to ease the door shut. Cates guessed that in seconds Britney would turn on Rob and rip him a new one for sitting out her odd encounter.
Cates shot his foot out and placed it between the door and the jamb. He said, “Do you mind if I take a look inside? I’d love to see what the interior looks like.”
A look of alarm struck her face when she glanced down and saw his boot cross the threshold. As she said, “I don’t know if I’m comfortable …” he rushed the door and slammed it open with a shove from both hands. It hit her hard and Britney flew back into a heap on the floor. Cates followed.
When she recovered and started to sit up, he pulled the Hanna cop’s Glock nine-millimeter from the back of his waistband and brought it down on the top of her head, shattering her readers. Britney slumped over to the side and lay motionless and he quickly scrambled over her.
A bearded man sat in the adjacent living room in a recliner with an iPad on his lap and glasses perched on the tip of his thin nose. This was where Cates used to sit on the family couch and watch cartoons. Rob stared up at Cates with terrified eyes, his hands gripping the arms of his chair as if preparing to launch himself out of it. Cates hit him crisply in the temple with the Glock. Rob flinched and cowered, holding up his hands to ward off future blows. His iPad slid down his legs and clattered on the floor.
“I bet this feels just like where you came from,” Cates said to him. “Home invasions are actually pretty rare in these parts.”
“Please, just take what you want,” Rob said.
“That’s what I’m doing, idiot.”
“There’s some high-grade weed in our bedroom.”
“Stop talking, idiot.”
*
WITH THE STILL-UNCONSCIOUS Britney and bleeding Rob bound and sitting back-to-back against the wall in the living room, Cates said to Rob, “I was happy to see that you didn’t move the duct tape from the utility closet.”
“I told you,” Rob said, his voice choking with emotion, “just take what you need and leave us alone.”
Cates said, “Some partner you are, Rob. You haven’t even checked on Britney.”
She sat slumped with her chin on her chest, a knot on the top of her head and a bloody gash in her scalp where the broken lenses had cut through the skin. But she was breathing.
“What do you want?” Rob asked.
“I want you two squatters to shut the fuck up,” Cates said as he stripped a six-inch length of tape from the roll and approached Rob.
“Squatters?”
“This is my house,” Cates said, bending down and roughly applying the tape to Rob’s mouth. “Llamas?” he said as he did so. “Fucking llamas?”
*
CATES WENT OUT to the pickup. “It’s handled,” he said as he opened the passenger door. “Lee, go park the truck in that garage over there. We don’t want anyone to see it in the daytime.”
He could see the couple’s white SUV inside the open garage and an open space next to it.
“Are those people okay?” Johnson asked with a nervous giggle. “I saw that skeleton lady go flying.”
“They’re just fine,” Cates said.
“Welcome to command central,” Soledad added from the backseat.