CHAPTER TWENTY

The chain-link gate blocked the entrance to Rainbow Ranch, strung through with heavy bindings and fastened with a Schlage padlock. I slipped a pair of riding gloves on my hands and grabbed a bolt cutter from the toolbox in the truck bed.

Deva Ravi was sitting cross-legged in a patch of sunshine on his porch when I drove up. The girl he had rechristened as Aurora sat behind him, fashioning his long ponytail into a braid. She was wearing shorts that had been snipped from a faded pair of jeans, and a Mexican-style blouse with tiny flowers embroidered on the yoke. He stood and dismissed Aurora back into the house, then strode across the parking lot to meet me as I climbed out of my truck.

“I could have sworn I locked the gate,” he said.

The length of fabric that encircled his waist was printed in some sort of Polynesian design, and the muscles of his barrel chest stretched the seams of a V-neck T-shirt.

“I cut the chain,” I said.

“You did what? Do you have a warrant?”

The ranch was quiet, no sign of activity that I could see. I cocked my head and looked at him in puzzlement.

“Why is it that every time I come to visit here someone asks me if I have a warrant?”

“’Cause you’re the fuzz, maybe?”

“You really need to stop it with the epithets,” I said. “Exigent circumstances supersede a warrant, by the way.”

I studied his face as he processed what I had just told him, and saw no sign of surprise or alarm; no sign of anything at all.

“What ‘exigent circumstances’ would those be?”

Aurora stepped back outside, leaned a shoulder on a post, and peeled the skin off of an orange while she watched us.

“You weren’t aware that your record store burned down this morning? Or that someone was inside when it was torched?”

He looked off in the direction of Meridian. The distant sky was still suspended with a pale gray pall that veiled the sunlight.

“I was concerned that some harm may have come to your ranch as well,” I added.

“No, I wasn’t aware of that. I don’t have a phone.”

“Then you understand my situation. Exigent circumstances.”

I reached into my shirt pocket and extended the Polaroid to Deva Ravi. He hesitated for a moment before he glanced at it.

“Do you know these two men?” I asked.

“No.”

“I’d feel better about your answer if you had a closer look.”

I dangled the photo between us until he took it in his hands.

“Why are you wearing gloves?” he asked.

“I burned my hands while fighting your fire.”

A crease formed on his brow as he studied the image, but his eyes did not give up secrets easily.

“I don’t know these guys,” he said, and passed it back to me.

“First the health food shop and now your record store? As I said, one of your people was inside. You don’t look overly upset.”

I heard the whistle of the wind as it passed between the blades of a water well, and the bleating of a goat inside the orchard.

“We don’t live in fear, man. We live in preparation.”

“Preparation for what?”

He looked away toward the forest and shook his head.

“You’re not the only heavy cat I’ve had up in my ears lately,” he said. “You don’t want to have this conversation with me.”

“Try me.”

“Look, humans are aspirational, man, they’re acquisitive. If they weren’t, nothing would ever get built, nothing invented; nothing would ever be stolen. Hell, nobody would ever get laid for that matter. Everything runs on friction, my man.”

“I thought you repudiated conquest and war.”

“I don’t love your tone, Sheriff. It sounds like an argumentative brain-fuck to me.”

“I’m trying to understand your logic.”

He studied me, eager to detect deception, appearing almost disappointed when he found none.

“It’s a paradox,” he said. “Humans are acquisitive beings, but, in truth, they really don’t want to acquire everything they dream of. If they did, they’d die. We all need somebody to be better than, something to aspire to. What could be worse than being devoid of purpose?”

“You’re telling me that you don’t care that somebody’s trying to run you out of town.”

“I’m saying that we don’t live in fear about it. They want something; we want something. Everybody wants something.”

“What do you want?”

“Mostly to be left alone to do our own thing.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Cause you’re a cop and you don’t believe anybody?”

I had to hand it to him, he had his rap down cold. But in spite of his tranquil demeanor, an undercurrent of repressed hostility continued to emanate from this place. He cloaked himself inside an aura of hippie mystic ennui, but inside I could see that he was seething. I maintained no illusions regarding his capacity to have assaulted Harper Emory, but I was relatively certain that if, in fact, it had happened at all, it had nothing whatsoever to do with sheep.

“I think we’re finished here, Sheriff,” he said.

I took a couple steps toward my truck and pulled up short.

“One other thing,” I said. “Where is everybody?”

“Working.”

“I haven’t seen a single man here at the ranch in quite some time.”

He crossed his arms along his chest and looked into the sky.

“They’re on sojourn.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does it sound like it means? Good-bye, Sheriff.”

“Care to tell me about the airplanes?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Good-bye, Sheriff.”

And now I knew without a doubt he was lying.

I paused at the fork in the road outside the gate, took a minute to slip the Polaroid Deva had handled into an evidence bag, then turned left in the direction of the Emory place. The wind was blowing harder across this part of the valley, the well fans rotating furiously where they stood out in relief against the clouds that scudded along the jet stream. Ranching had never been an easy life, but between the stagnant economy and the long absence of rain, I wondered whether Harper Emory had properly prepared himself, and whether he could hold out through another dry season.

There were no automobiles parked in the driveway when I pulled to a stop in front of the old Victorian. Mrs. Emory’s zinnias and irises were heeled over in the garden, and the magnolia in the side yard seemed to sigh in the wind.

I rang Emory’s doorbell and waited on the porch. The sun had scorched the acreage beyond the yard the color of desiccated chaff, and I saw Harper’s son, Bryan, pushing feed bales off the bed of his truck onto a patch of pasture that had been nubbed down to the topsoil. I was about to ring the bell again when the door finally sighed open.

Harper Emory’s wife took a step backward into the foyer, cast her eyes down to the floor, and crossed her arms over her chest as if to form a barrier I could not pass through. I removed my hat and remained on my side of the threshold.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, ma’am. I came to speak to your husband. Is he home?”

She shook her head slowly, as if it induced pain to do so. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, loose tendrils dangling, framing her face. The hem of a flannel nightgown drooped beneath the housecoat she wore tied tightly across her waist. It appeared as though she had been sleeping, the shadow of a bruise beginning to show through the heavy makeup where her cheek had rested on her pillow.

“Tea?” she asked. Her voice was thin and childlike, so hushed that I almost missed the question.

“Mrs. Emory,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Tea?” she whispered again, oblivious to my question, and I had to look away.

“I’ll be leaving, ma’am,” I said and tucked my business card into the pocket of her robe. “But if I can be of any assistance to you at all, please call me. Anytime.”

She turned and shuffled toward the stairway in the narrow hall. She hadn’t bothered closing the door, so I reached for the handle and shut it behind me as I left.

In my grandfather’s time, any man who physically abused a woman would have been bullwhipped and chain dragged by his neighbors. He would have shared the squalid social standing of a pedophile or a zooerast. What did it say about a society that seemed to have gone both blind and deaf to civil accountability, but demanded post factum reparations in its place? I did not want to believe that the codes I had spent a lifetime being loyal to had grown outmoded or, worse yet, irrelevant.

I drove up the same narrow track I had taken once before, when Bryan and I had set off to examine the alleged break in the fence.

He wore scuffed work boots and old Levi jeans, his work shirt sweated through along his backbone and a collar of fresh sunburn on his neck. He slipped off his work gloves and knocked the dust off his pant legs as he stepped up to the door of my truck.

“My dad isn’t here,” he said.

“I gathered.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

He swatted at a cloud of gnats as they passed between us.

“What’s going on around here, Bryan?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“I can’t help you or your mom if you won’t let me.”

His eyes narrowed into slits, his knuckles white. Dust devils swirled down through the folds in the foothills, the grit that carried on the hot wind ticking against my windshield.

I reached into the glove box and drew out the cellophane evidence bag that had the photograph inside.

“Do you know the names of these two men?”

“No,” he said and backed away.

“How about your dad and Carl Spinell? Do you know where I can find them?”

His eyes slid off my face and he began working his fingers into his gloves.

“I really don’t want to talk about any of this,” he said. He had turned away from me, so I could barely make out his words. “You can tell my old man about the grass if you have to. I don’t think I care anymore.”

It took the remainder of the day to drive all the way to Salem and back, but there was no other way to obtain the information I needed. Over the past couple of years, I had developed a friendly acquaintance with a man named Christopher Rose, the captain of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Oregon State Police. He was athletic, personable, exceptionally bright, and particularly fond of his home town of Stinnett, Texas, which was a stone’s throw from the famed Adobe Walls. I knew this because one could rarely engage in a conversation with Chris Rose without the subject somehow being shoehorned into it. This was especially true after a couple of drinks.

His assistant guided me into his office after a short wait in the lobby. I shook one of the captain’s heavily calloused hands, accepted the offer of a cold Shasta Cola and sat down in the guest chair that fronted his desk. He rested his elbows on the blotter and leaned into the space between us.

I took the evidence bag containing the photo of Carl Spinell’s two associates from the inside pocket of my canvas vest and showed it to him.

“This is a picture of two idiots who just drifted into my town. I don’t know their names yet, but that’s not why I’m here.”

Captain Rose ran a hand through his hair and eyed the Polaroid through the clear plastic.

“Okay.”

“A commune has sprung up at the south end of the county, out in sheep country. Its leader is a man who calls himself Deva Ravi. He and his people have been on the receiving end of some dangerous acts of vandalism, which I believe to be aimed at driving them out.”

“And you think these two fuck knuckles are a part of it?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But, again, they’re not my immediate concern. I have reason to believe that this Deva Ravi character may be involved in something that may have brought this situation onto himself. But I can’t do much of an investigation because I have no idea what his real name is, where he’s from, or anything about his history.”

The captain nodded in the direction of the photo.

“So what’s with the picture?”

“I believe it’s got Deva Ravi’s fingerprints on it; a thumbprint on the front, and two, maybe three of his others on the back. I’d like CID to pull the prints and tell me who the hell this guy is.”

Rose rocked back in his chair and eyed the evidence bag.

“Let me make sure I heard you right,” he said. “You don’t know one single thing about this ass clown, including where he came from before he showed up in your town out of the blue. Is that it?”

“That’s about it.”

“Well, Ty, I gotta tell you: In the absence of anything to narrow the search—”

“I know how it works, Chris, but these prints are all I’ve got. Probably all I’m going to get.”

“How old is this person? Wait. Don’t tell me. You don’t know.”

I shook my head.

“How about a guess.”

“Between twenty-five and thirty.”

“Well, at least that’s something,” he said. “If this kid ever entered the service, or registered for the draft, the Feds might have a record of him. Even if they do, they’ve got at least a forty-five-to-sixty-day backlog.”

“I understand.”

He picked up the evidence bag with the picture inside and handed me a form that would accompany it through the system. I took a pen from the holder on his desk set and filled in the blanks while he eyeballed me.

“This is a Billy Dixon-scale long shot, Ty. You’re aware of that, right?”

“Like I said, it’s all I’ve got.”

“I’ll put it on top of the stack,” he said.

Sam Griffin was preparing to lock up the substation by the time I returned to Meridian. The carillon on the clock tower at the top of the three-story office building up the block tolled six o’clock, but the summer sun hadn’t yet fallen behind the ridge.

“Any word about the kid from the fire?” I asked.

“No,” Sam said. “But you got a call from a lawyer named …” He picked through the pile on his desk until he located the pink sheet of paper he’d written the message on. “Bill Kiefer. His number’s right here.”

“You can go ahead and break range,” I said. “I’ll take it from here.”

“You sure?”

“It’s been a long day.”

Sam seated his hat on his head and headed for the back door while I dialed the number for Bill Kiefer’s office. Sam was almost to his truck when I remembered something.

“Before you go,” I said. “Can you Xerox a copy of those photos we took this morning.”

“Sure thing.”

Bill Kiefer’s receptionist came on the line and told me he’d left for the weekend. Whatever he had wanted to tell me would have to wait until Monday. I set the receiver into the cradle, squeezed my eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of my nose. My head felt like it had been wrapped in a strand of range wire, so I reached into my drawer for an aspirin.

I folded the Xerox that Sam handed me, tucked it into my shirt as I went to close up for the night. I had just thrown the bolt on the door lock when Nolan Brody appeared on the other side of the glass door. He was wearing a navy sports jacket, club tie, and a starched button-collared shirt. I unlocked the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“This end of the county is getting out of hand,” he said, throwing a casual glance toward the scene of the fire. “How long are you going to allow this to go on, Sheriff?”

“Who is this client you keep driving all the way down here to meet with?”

“That’s privileged information.”

“Actually, it’s not,” I said. “But I don’t really care. I was engaging in polite conversation.”

“I dropped by to remind you about the special council meeting this coming Tuesday.”

He slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks and rocked back on the heels of his loafers, expecting some kind of reaction from me.

“Are you familiar with the story of Henry II and Thomas Becket?” I asked.

“I saw the movie,” he said. “Are you comparing me to Richard Burton or Peter O’Toole?”

“I’m suggesting that it’s wise to be cautious as to what you say, and to whom. Words can sometimes be misconstrued.”

“I don’t take your meaning,” he said. “I think you’re mumbling again.”

“I was just locking up the office for the night,” I said. “Is there anything else?”

“I want you to be aware that I’m putting forward a motion for a recall election regarding your position as sheriff.”

“Have a pleasant weekend.”

“I’ll see you on Tuesday.”

“You know, Nolan, we cowboys have a saying: When you’re riding ahead of the herd, it’s best to take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still behind you.”

I went back inside and punched in Harper Emory’s number on the phone.

“What the hell do you want now?” Emory asked after he recognized my voice.

“I don’t ever want to hear about you having raised a hand to your wife again. If I do, Harper, you have my word that we will handle it the old-fashioned way. I want you to be crystal clear about that.”

The light over the transom was flickering again and I made a note to myself to bring a ladder out on Monday so I could climb up and replace it. I made one last pass through the substation, turned out the lights, and left through the back door. There was one more stop I needed to make before I could go home and put this goddamned day behind me.

I left my truck parked in the back lot and walked through the elongated shadows and night noises of grackles and finches settling inside the limbs of alder trees that lined the empty street, testing the door locks on the darkened shops as I went along. I pushed through the door of the Cottonwood Blossom, and took my place at one of the stools along the bar. A thin layer of smoke floated beneath the rafters, and Dolly Parton was singing “Jolene” on the jukebox. It was still a bit early for the Friday night crowd, only a handful of tourists eating burgers and fries in a booth at the corner, and a swing band setting up on the stage beside the dance floor.

Lankard Downing looked as choleric and consumptive as he always did, wearing his usual unironed cotton shirt and black trousers with a white apron tied around his waist. He was reading the newspaper and smoking a cigarette, leaning on one elbow along the back bar.

“You on the clock?” Lankard asked as he stubbed out his smoke. “You still got your badge and your gun on.”

I don’t wear a uniform, but I do keep my badge clipped to a tooled leather gun belt with brass cartridges tucked into the loops. My three-quarter jacket had snagged on the butt of my Colt Trooper, exposing the whole rig, and I saw Downing’s gaze slide over the room.

“Ain’t great for business,” he said. “You saddling up at the bar with your weaponry hanging there in front of God and everybody.”

I unclipped the badge from my belt and adjusted the hang of my coat to conceal my revolver.

“Oly draft?” Downing asked without waiting for my answer.

The mug he handed me smelled like a goldfish bowl, but I sipped at the cold beer anyway.

“I hear they’re gonna try and recall you,” he said.

“That made it into the paper already?”

“Oh, hell no. I only read that rag for the classified ads.”

“I want to talk to you about last night.”

I pulled the Xerox copy of the mugshots from my pocket and slid it across the bar top toward Downing.

“You seen these guys in here, Lankard?”

He glanced at it and slid it right back.

“Yesterday. They were sitting over there at the Pong table making a racket,” he said. “Giggling like little girls.”

“What time was this?”

“Early. Ten, or ten thirty, probably. They left not too long afterward.”

“Did you hear what they were talking about?”

He shook his head.

“No, but they sure as hell weren’t working out quantum equations.”

“When did you close for the night?”

“I called you a little bit after two A.M.,” he said. He ran a hand along the hollows of his cheeks as he thought about it, stared at the oscillating fan bolted to the scantling. “That was right after I phoned the fire department … I guess I was outside the door, there, about five minutes before that. I could see the fire burning already. It hadn’t got too big yet, but it was fixin’ to start roarin’. You could smell it all the way up the block.”

“You didn’t see anybody outside? Nobody at all?”

“Not a soul.”

I picked up my mug from the bar and swiveled in my seat. I noticed Leon Quinn slumped in a chair in the corner, his chin resting on his chest, fast asleep.

“How about Leon? Was he in here last night?”

“Probably,” Downing said.

“You don’t remember?”

Lankard Downing made a dismissive gesture and began wiping the bar top with a towel.

“Leon don’t make much of an impression on me no more, Dawson. Unless he’s trying to bust up my furniture.”

“You have any idea what time he left the bar?”

“I don’t keep track. Quinn and I have a new arrangement: He hands me a ten-dollar bill when he walks in, and I tell him when it’s all used up. Sometimes, when he’s feeling flush, he hands me another fin. Sometimes he just leaves. Keeps things a lot simpler for both of us.”

I turned and studied Leon again.

“Was he this drunk yesterday?”

A dour expression split Downing’s face.

“Leon ain’t drunk yet, Sheriff. He’s just studying the insides of his eyelids. If he was drunk, he’d be dancing or singing or raising up some kind of hell.”

“But you didn’t see him leave the bar last night?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

I stood and withdrew two singles from my wallet, placed them on the bar beside my empty beer mug.

“Do me a favor and call me if either of those two men come back in here again, will you, Lankard?”

“You’re still talking about Elvis and the bald-headed refrigerator?”

Something by Hank Snow came up on the box. I nodded and turned for the door.

“Sheriff Dawson,” Downing called out as I was walking away. “Are those kids going to be okay, do you think?”

“What kids are you referring to?”

“The ones who used to play music out there on the street. Ain’t seen them in days.”

“I honestly don’t know, Lankard. Don’t know too much at all right at the moment.”

“I kinda miss ’em,” he said. “Funny what you get used to.”

Loud strains of country music were drifting out of the bunkhouse by the time I got back to the ranch. I could hear the men laughing and whooping it up, readying themselves for a Friday night on the town. The smell of a wood fire permeated the stillness of the evening, silver smoke and orange embers floating into the sky between the main house and the horse barn. I broke into a jog and circled back around the house to investigate.

I couldn’t hear the words, but Snoose Corcoran was gesticulating wildly and hollering something at Caleb Wheeler. I stopped running and watched as Snoose slammed the door of his flatbed and fishtailed out of the drive and onto the dirt service road that led to his place. Caleb watched Corcoran’s dust cloud paint a stripe on the sky for a few seconds, then returned his attention to the glow inside the burn barrel.

“What’s the matter with Snoose?” I asked as I came up beside Caleb.

“Aw, he was just showin’ off his jawboning talents.”

Caleb’s face looked flush in the heat of the firelight. The wind had tailed off to nothing and the day’s heat was rising from the soil.

“Seemed to me like there might be more to it than that.”

“Snoose ought not to be talking to folks after he’s been spending the afternoon with a bottle.”

“Has he got something on his mind?”

Caleb poked at the fire with the broken end of a rake handle.

“Snoose wants us to keep our bull out of the judging at the show. He’s of the opinion that we’ll win—which we probably will—and that’ll drive down the auction price of his stock.”

“He’s in a bad way, Caleb.”

He tossed the rake handle aside and threw a broken tree limb onto the embers. He wiped his nose with the cuff of his shirt and looked at me.

“Him and everybody else,” he said. “Take a look around. We don’t get no more rain than the next man, and the next man ain’t seen a drizzle since last April. The pastures are dryin’ up everywhere, Ty.”

The fire took hold of the limb and reflected in the whites of his eyes.

“The hell of it is,” Caleb continued, “Snoose said it was the least we could do.”

I slid the flats of my hands into my pockets and watched the pulse of the cinders in the barrel.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Caleb said.

“I heard you.”

“The ungrateful sonofabitch.”

“How’s the kid working out?” I asked, to change the subject. I didn’t have the heart for the argument Caleb was spoiling for.

“Genetics aside, that youngster might actually make a decent cowboy one day.”

A bullfrog croaked somewhere in the darkness and sounded like a rusted door hinge. I heard a truck engine turn over on the far side of the bunkhouse and listened as it faded away.

“Sounds like the fellas are winding up for a big night,” I said.

“There’s a dance of some kind down at Lankard’s place.”

“You going with ’em, Caleb?”

He answered by throwing a splintered board into the fire.

I left Caleb to stew by himself, and walked in the direction of the music that still twanged inside the bunkhouse. Taj Caldwell, Tom Jenkins, Griffin, and Powell were the only ones left, the others having already departed. Caldwell was combing his hair in front of a mirror he’d hung from a string on the wall, and Sam Griffin was showing Tom Jenkins how to tie some kind of knot in a length of hemp rope. Jordan Powell was dressed in a shiny red snap-button shirt with white piping, white roses embroidered on the yoke. He was sitting on the edge of his bed and shining his boots with a rag.

“You’re all spraddled out,” I said.

Powell looked up from his work and grinned.

“I was just dudin’ up to put in a good hop at the Blossom,” he said. “Don’t want to disappoint my fan club.”

“Sorry to spoil your plans.”

He stopped his work mid-shine, and the smile fell away from his face.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Captain?”

“I need you to set up on the Rainbow Ranch.”

“What? Like a stakeout?”

“Exactly like a stakeout.”

Jordan’s boot slipped from his hand and onto the floor. He threw a look toward Sam and Tom Jenkins.

“Why not send Griffin,” he said.

Sam lifted his eyes from the knot he was tying, and smiled at Powell.

“I swear, the man takes a bullet just one little time, and he gets special treatment?” Powell persisted. “He ain’t been shot this year, so far.”

“Neither have you,” I said. “Not yet. Besides, Griffin’s been on shift all day long. Step lively, deputy. I need you in position out there before it gets full dark.”

I drew a rough map on the back of an envelope and showed him what I thought to be the best vantage point.

“There’s only one road in and out,” I said. “So position yourself here, and keep track of anyone coming or going from either the commune or Harper Emory’s place.”

“All weekend long?”

I nodded.

“And keep a special eye out for aircraft, you read me?”

“What kind of aircraft?”

“C’mon, Powell,” I said. “How many kinds of aircraft are there?”

“I was just asking.”

“Feigning ineptitude won’t make this assignment disappear.”