CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jordan Powell was standing on the elevated wooden sidewalk, leaning against one of the old steel tethering posts, scrawling something in his notebook. The yellow crime scene tape that he had strung across the entrance of Mother Nature’s Sandwich Shop was fluttering in the wind, making a sound like a snake’s rattle. Shards of shattered glass glinted in the sunlight across the width of the walkway, and crunched beneath my heels as I stepped up beside my deputy.

“Morning, Captain,” Jordan said. “Hell of a way to start the day.”

“Is there any damage inside, or did they just smash the front window?”

“They tipped over some tables, smashed up a few chairs, stuff like that.”

“How about the cash register?”

Jordan shook his head side to side and looked up from his notebook.

“Either they got scared off before they could break into it—”

“Or it wasn’t a burglary at all,” I finished for him. “Anybody see anything?”

“Naw. The girls who work here said it was like this when they arrived this morning.”

“Did you take photos of the scene?”

“Yes, sir.”

I looked up the block, at the storefronts of small shops, and the bank, and the Richfield gas station on the corner, where the blue neon tubing still glowed along the parapet. The businesses hadn’t opened at this hour, except for Rowan Boyle’s diner a couple blocks up, and Mother Nature’s, which had been vandalized, possibly burglarized, in the dark hours of the night or early morning.

“What time did the girls say that they came in this morning?”

He flipped a couple pages in his book.

“A little before six.”

“Did you check with Rowan Boyle? Did he see or hear anything?”

“He said he didn’t, said it was still dark when he opened up. He’s two blocks away anyhow.”

Two of the girls from the commune stepped out onto the sidewalk. The one I didn’t recognize held a broom in her hand, and the other was Dawn, one of our Wayfinders from the field trip to the ranch. I touched my fingers to the brim of my Stetson in greeting.

“I forgot to get your last name,” Jordan said to her. “For my report.”

“Just ‘Dawn.’”

“I need a full name.”

“That is my full name,” she said. “Once Deva Ravi reveals our Universal Identity to us, that’s the only name we need.”

Jordan looked at me with a question written across his face.

“Sheriff?” he said.

“It’s okay. Just take her picture for the file. The Deva has no objection to that, I suppose?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s never come up.”

I stood to the side while Jordan Powell snapped a few shots of both girls, then tucked the camera back into its case.

“Sorry about this,” I said to Dawn. “Any idea who might have done it?”

Dawn looked up and down the empty street, and shrugged her shoulders when her eyes landed on me.

“Everyone?” she said.

“Have you got anybody to help you fix that window? Any men, I mean. It’s going to be a bit of a job.”

“No.”

I recalled what Sam Griffin and I had both registered as odd when we had been out at the commune.

“Can you give a few of them a call?”

“They’re gone. Out on sojourn,” Dawn said. “There’s no phone at the ranch anyway.”

“What’s a sojourn?”

“I don’t know much about it. It’s a guy thing. You’ll have to talk to the Deva.”

I looked across the intersection at the Gemini Record store, another of the commune’s businesses. I wondered to myself why the sandwich shop had been targeted and not the record shop. I don’t know if it mattered, but the question remained. If you wanted to punish the hippies, wouldn’t you hit both places at once?

“Is it okay if we start sweeping up?” Dawn asked. “You fellas finished out here?”

“Sure, you go right ahead.”

She turned to step inside and I called out to her.

“You don’t happen to have a hammer and nails in there, do you?” I asked.

Dawn shook her head.

“What for?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’m going to drive over to the hardware store and pick up some supplies to get this window boarded up. Maybe you can answer a couple of questions for me when I get back.”

“That’s mighty kind of you, Sheriff,” she said. “I’ll make you and your deputy a fried egg sandwich on whole wheat for your trouble.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I insist. You want avocado and sprouts with that?”

She saw the expression on my face and laughed out loud.

“How about a couple slices of bacon instead?” she asked.

“That sounds fine.”

“Don’t look so surprised. We offer a few choices for the carnivores, Sheriff Dawson. If we didn’t, we’d be out of business.”

By the time I finished nailing the plywood over the hole where the plate-glass window had been, I saw Lankard Downing up the street, unlocking the front door to the Cottonwood Blossom. If anybody had an ear for scuttlebutt, it was Downing.

I walked a short distance up the block and ducked inside the bar, where Lankard was busy pulling the strings that lighted the decorative beer signs hanging on the walls. The room was stale from the night before, pungent with an odor like ambergris, and I took a seat at the bar while I waited for Lankard to finish.

“What can I do you for?” Downing asked, once he’d returned to the duckboards. It was a quip I had grown to detest, but was largely an accurate statement of intentions where Lankard Downing was concerned.

“Mother Nature’s had their front window smashed in, and their restaurant vandalized during the night. You know anything about that?”

I studied his hatchet face as he listened to me, watched his septuagenarian eyes dance with delight at the news of fresh scandal.

“The hippie kids? First I’ve heard of it. Damned shame.”

“What time did you close up last night?”

“Usual time. Around two, two thirty, I suppose.”

“Anybody out of the ordinary come in here?”

“Like who?”

“How the hell should I know, Lankard? You know what passes for ‘out of the ordinary’ around here.”

He appeared to consider my question for a few moments, even scratched at the three days’ growth of gray whiskers that grew on his chin just to underscore how hard he was working at it.

“Can’t think of nobody unusual.”

“And you didn’t hear anything? No windows breaking, or cars tearing off down the street?”

“No, sir. Not a thing.”

I stood up from the barstool and readjusted the Colt Trooper in the holster at my waist.

“You call me right away if you hear anything,” I said.

“Count on it, Sheriff.”

It was one of the constants in this town that I knew for a fact I could count on. Downing not passing idle gossip quite possibly would be one of the signs of the End Times.

I walked the few blocks to the substation, the near-midday sun warming my back. The shops and businesses along Main Street had all opened by now, and I was certain that word of the damage to Mother Nature’s had circulated all the way up one side and back down again.

I tucked my sunglasses into my shirt pocket as I stepped through the doorway into the station. Jordan Powell was hunched over the typewriter on his desk, pecking out his report with two fingers. Nolan Brody sat in one of the chairs in the waiting area, his legs crossed at the knee, thumbing through a back issue of National Geographic. He looked up as I crossed over the threshold and dropped the magazine on the table. The smile he showed me was both pernicious and smug.

“What are you doing in my office?”

“I won’t state the obvious, that I warned you about something like this happening,” Brody said.

“Then I’ll extend you the same courtesy. Failure to report the foreknowledge of a crime could land you in hot water with the state bar.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I came here to tell you that Harper Emory is of the opinion that the freaks caused that damage to themselves, to garner sympathy for their cause.”

“Harper Emory ought not to involve himself with too much free-range thinking. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of my business?”

Brody stood and picked up his briefcase from the floor beside him.

“I believe you suggested that I should not second-guess you. And something unintelligible regarding bribery. I’m still trying to figure out what you meant by that.”

“You need to scrape the wax out of your ears, then, Nolan.”

I stepped to the door and held it open for him.

“I thought I made myself pretty clear,” I added. “Next time, call ahead.”