CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The next morning, I watched a shiny, maroon-colored Buick pulling an Airstream travel trailer come up my driveway. I put down Jordan Powell’s crime scene report which I had just finished reading for the third time, and stepped onto the porch. A lithe, attractive brunette climbed out of the Buick and followed a tall man with straw-colored hair and a ruddy complexion up the front steps of my house. He wore an expensive pair of Clubmaster dark glasses, the sleeves of his button-collared shirt rolled up on his forearms, and he was carrying a small wooden crate piled high with fresh-picked fruit.

“Picked these up at a roadside stand a few miles back,” he said. “Couldn’t resist.”

Since most of the work Bill Kiefer and I conducted involved livestock operations and related property matters, most of our dealings were handled by phone. It was unusual for me to see him face to face more than once or twice a year.

“Looking good, Ty,” he smiled.

“Lawyers aren’t supposed to lie, are they?”

“I was referring to the ranch.”

“That makes more sense,” I said.

“Sorry to barge in unannounced,” his wife, Kristen, said. “We spent a long weekend at the lake, and we thought it would be fun to stop in on our way home.”

I relieved Bill of the crate and welcomed them inside, removed the fruit, and placed it in a basket on the kitchen counter.

“What is that wonderful smell?” Kristen asked.

“You don’t have to say that,” I said. “Cricket has become enamored with the nuts and seeds and greenery she buys at the health food store. She brings it to a boil on the stove and calls it oatmeal.”

“Dad,” she said, and leaned into a hug from Kristen Kiefer. “He’s going to die from all the processed corporate poison he eats.”

Jesse was gathering the coffee cups and saucers she reserved for guests, and Kiefer stepped up beside me and inclined his head in the direction of the gallery.

“May I have a word?” he asked.

I took a seat in one of the willow chairs at the far end of the porch, where the dogwoods cast their shade. Kiefer leaned his weight against the railing and focused beyond my shoulder where Taj Caldwell and Tom Jenkins had just begun to break another colt to saddle.

“What’s on your mind, Bill?”

“I brought the file you were asking about. I tried to call you at the station, but kept missing you.”

“Things have gotten a little rugged around here,” I said.

“I heard,” he said. “You know, I drove past that parcel you asked about on the way here.”

“That’s a fair piece out of your way.”

“I figured it might help to see it.”

He slid off his sunglasses, hooking an earpiece onto the pocket of his shirt. His attention remained locked on the two cowboys at the snubbing post, but his brow was furrowed and his eyes squeezed into slits.

“Did it?” I asked.

“Did it what?”

“Did it help to get a look at the property?”

He turned away from the corral and looked at me.

“Not particularly. It’s dry as hell down there.”

“It gets that way in that part of the county,” I said. “You mention Oregon and everybody thinks that all it does is rain.”

“Looks like a pincushion, all the water wells.”

“It’s rough country. Most of ’em are dry.”

“Maybe that explains it then,” he said.

“Explains what?”

“You asked about the chain of title,” he said. “I’ve got the file in my car—I’ll leave it with you—but the current owner is Ambervalia Corporation. They operate agricultural properties, hold water and mineral stakes all over the west.”

“Okay,” I said.

“That piece down south used to comprise a full section. Six hundred forty acres. They leased half of it to Harper Emory some time ago.”

“Any idea what the terms are?”

“Fifty-five-year land lease, including underground appurtenances.”

“And what about the other half?”

“There’s nothing in the public record about the other half.”

Taj Caldwell let out a whoop from down below. Inside a cloud of red dirt, the colt had started hopping, cat-backed, and kicking his heels. Caldwell threw a loop around its neck and calmed it into a corner while Tom Jenkins gingerly picked himself out of the dirt and dusted off his chaps.

“You think the kids out at the commune might be squatters?” I asked.

Kiefer shrugged.

“Maybe,” he said. “But it would be odd. Squatters’ rights are squirrelly, and an outfit like Ambervalia is sophisticated. They wouldn’t allow a bunch of hippies to waltz in and lay claim to their property.”

“Have you got a phone number for the owner?”

“It’s in the file. I can follow up with them if you need me to.”

“I’d rather do it.”

Kiefer stood and stretched the muscles in his arms, took a few steps into the filtered light beneath the trees, and swept his gaze across the pastures and outbuildings.

“I meant what I said earlier,” he said. “The place looks good. New barn?”

“The other one burned to the ground.”

“Jesus. You never mentioned it.”

“Long story.”

He slipped his hands into his khaki slacks and heaved a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Ty. I wish I could have been more help.”

“Let’s go inside and get you a cup of coffee and a bite to eat,” I said. “You’ve got a long drive ahead of you yet.”

I was delayed at the intersection where Founders Street meets the state road by a caravan of teenage kids in pickup trucks, project ragtops, and customized hot rods that gleamed like penny candy, following a line of eighteen-wheelers headed toward the fairgrounds. The truck beds and cargo bays were stacked up with temporary stock pens and fencing for the rodeo, and garishly decorated wooden panels that were soon to be assembled into food booths, rides, and game attractions on the carnival midway.

All weekend long, people will come from as far away as Portland and Salem, most of them blue-collar families and tough-looking kids who drank malt liquor skinned in paper bags. By and large, they meant no harm, just blowing off some summer steam, or making out in back seats, spending Eisenhower silver dollars that had been squirreled away in jelly jars and cigar boxes all year long. This weekend they would pretend that the future was the same for them as for everyone else, and would make believe they were content, like the world that existed for them outside the fairgrounds was not a place that inflicted hardship onto the victims of its low expectations.

“Captain Rose at CID identified two .38 slugs buried in Doc Brawley’s wall,” Sam Griffin announced when I finally stepped into the substation. “The stab wounds were inflicted as he lay bleeding out on the floor. The damage to his face was postmortem.”

“Did they locate the shell casings?” I asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then the killer either picked up after himself, or used a revolver.”

“Appears that way.”

I sat down in my chair and bucked my hat off my forehead with a knuckle. I picked up a pencil and bounced the eraser off my desk while I stared out the front window.

“Where’s Powell?” I asked.

“Out on patrol.”

An old Chevrolet pickup hauling a tandem horse trailer threw a shadow across the glass as it drove by. The circuit riders were beginning to arrive.

“Deva Ravi told me that all the men from the commune are out roaming around the wilderness on some kind of ‘sojourn,’” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hell if I know. But I want to talk with every one of them that you can find. Assuming you can find them at all. That goes double for Carl Spinell and the two jackoffs he’s got working with him.”

“You want us to arrest them? For what?”

I shook my head and banged the pencil on my desk so hard it broke.

“No,” I said. “Don’t cuff anybody unless he’s brandishing a firearm or staggering around in blood-spattered clothes, you hear? Especially Spinell and the idiots. Just bring ’em in so we can have a chat. If we arrest them without cause, my guess is they’ll bring in a whole clown car full of lawyers and we’ll never get another word out of ’em. Deva Ravi might look like a crazy man, but he’s not a fool. That also goes double for Carl Spinell.”

“Roger that,” Griffin said.

“See if you can raise Powell on the radio,” I said and swiveled my chair around to look Griffin in the face. “Pass along what I just told you, then saddle up, too, and get out there.”

I thumbed through the file Bill Kiefer had dropped off with me, and located the page that listed the contact information for Ambervalia Corporation. The only phone number listed was for their agent for service of process, a number with a central California area code. A man picked up after the third ring.

“Tanner,” was all he said.

“I’m calling with regard to Ambervalia Corporation.”

“And you are?”

I told him who I was, and the reason for my call. When I was finished, the silence on the other end was so complete I thought he had hung up.

“Y’all have been misinformed with respect to my official duties,” he said.

His tone reflected the unctuous accent and cadence of a small-time card cheat who dealt badugi out of the back room of a west Texas blind pig. He was breathing heavily, through his mouth, in the manner of a man for whom walking from the parking lot to his office door would represent a busy day. Speaking to him put me in mind of the depraved and licentious gun bulls or prison wardens from the Jim Crow south.

“Can you repeat that?” I said.

“Let me put this a different way,” he said. “I don’t answer questions about my client’s business. If you need to serve a summons or have some other legal document to deliver, I can provide you with a post office box address. I don’t believe that I can make it any clearer. Y all have a pleasant afternoon.”

The town of Lewiston was nestled into a tapered stretch of river flats between two ranges of sheer, rugged stone peaks. When the wind blew just right in the winter, it would whip through the narrows at velocities that could knock a grown man off his feet and drive rain and hailstones with a force that felt as though he’d been fired upon with a shotgun. In the summer, however, the prevailing breezes were impeded by the mountains and on certain days, by the time early evening came down, the stillness and humidity seemed enough to deny a man his breath.

This was one of those evenings.

I turned into the pea-gravel parking lot at the Grange Hall and took a spot as near the exit as possible, since it was not my intention to stay a moment longer than necessary. A pair of young children played on the swing set in the grass field where the mud puddles and dandelions of spring had withered and dried and turned back into hardpan. One of the children waved at me as I walked up the stairs, so I tipped the brim of my Stetson as I pulled open the door to the hall.

The atmosphere inside was stagnant and cramped, and didn’t seem to have a temperature so much as a viscosity. I didn’t have to stop off to pay homage to the family photo this time either; I could feel the eyes of my dad and grandfather following me from the moment I opened the door.

The conversational clatter resonated like the twitter of high-country bats as I moved from the foyer into the main hall, where several dozen men and women had taken their seats in the rows of the gallery and fanned themselves with hats or folded sheets of paper. I felt Nolan Brody staring as I shook hands with the other members of the council, acknowledging him with a brief nod as I took my appointed position at the far end of the table.

Before Brody could gavel the meeting to order, I raised my arms and called out for the crowd to be quiet.

“As you know, we lost a fine man and a fine friend of the community yesterday,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anyone here who did not have a great fondness for Doc Brawley, and I’m no exception.”

In my peripheral vision, I could see Brody thumbing the plunger of the retractable pen he had clenched inside his fist, his lips stitched into a thin line.

“I wanted to let you know that I won’t be staying for the meeting tonight,” I continued. “I merely came here to ask for your patience and your help while we set about finding whomever is responsible for his death.”

A smattering of applause was cut short by Nolan Brody’s interruption.

“You going to finally get after those hippies, Sheriff?” he asked.

He smiled as though he was recalling a private joke.

“Your fixation on those young people is both bothersome and unhealthy, Nolan,” I said.

“And your inattention to the threat that they pose has proven to be dangerous to everyone in this county.”

The room went silent, but for the rattle of the ceiling fan paddles rotating high overhead, which only seemed to recirculate the cloying heat and the body odor and tobacco smoke trapped inside.

“Doc Brawley was a friend to every soul in this room,” I said. “And I aim to get to the bottom of all this. You people gave me this job, and I take it damned seriously. But this man seated here—Nolan Brody—intends to seek your approval tonight so he can circulate a petition to have me recalled as your sheriff. If enough of this county’s voters sign it, then I guess we’ll go ahead and have that recall vote.”

A muted rumble passed through the crowd. Brody glared at me over the rims of his tortoiseshell reading glasses, making it clear that his objective had not been as widely and publicly known as he had given me cause to believe.

“I didn’t come here to defend myself,” I continued. “You all put me in this job, and you’ve got the right to choose somebody else to do it if you want to. I simply urge you to be cautious. Mr. Brody has ginned up a lot of agitation about what’s going on around here lately. He’s probably going to tell you that the agents of change are among us and they have to be stopped. But those hippie kids aren’t Vikings hellbent on pillage and rape. And they probably aren’t Jonas Salk or Mother Teresa either.”

“Are you about finished?” Brody interrupted. He wore an expression like a stray thought had just drifted into his sightline and suddenly disappeared.

“I’ve said it before, but it merits repeating: The sheriff’s office doesn’t exist to do one side’s bidding,” I said. “I work for everyone. We all lost a good friend in Doc Brawley, and you have my word that I will find the sonofabitch who killed him.”

I plucked my hat off the table.

“Have yourselves a fine meeting,” I said.

The sunset burned red behind the haze along the western skyline as I drove home. A lightning strike had touched off a grass fire two counties away, and the smoke that it had propagated unrolled across the troposphere like a dirty bandage.

I cranked up the air-conditioning inside the truck and watched my headlights illuminate the lines separating the lanes. The drive tonight seemed much longer than it ever had before, the monotony interrupted only when I passed through a mile-long cloud of winged insects that spattered against my windshield like blood blisters.

The truck’s lights raked across the broad side of the horse barn as I pulled in and parked behind my house. I stepped out of the cab and focused my eyes in the dusk and noticed Tom Jenkins pushing a wheelbarrow full of manure between the barn doors. I passed through the mud room, hung my jacket and holster on the rack, then went to the refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of Hires Root Beer and popped them open with a church key from the drawer.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Jesse.

I pushed my way out through the screen door and headed toward the barn. I took a seat on a low rock wall that was just beyond the pale rectangle of incandescent light that spilled from inside and checked my watch. Tom’s shadow stretched out before him as he stepped into the dark to haul another load.

“It’s nearly nine o’clock,” I said.

I could see that I had startled him, and he was trying to make out my face as his eyes adjusted to the unaccustomed dark.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Mr. Wheeler ask you to do that?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he said. “It just looked like it needed doing.”

“Why don’t you let loose of that pushcart and take a load off for a minute.”

I handed one of the bottles to him and I watched him drink down half of it in one grateful pull. His hat was hanging on a fencepost, the sides of his soggy hair still misshapen and indented by its crown. Patches of sweat soaked his shirt, and his shirttails billowed where they had worked loose from his faded jeans.

“Where’d the earring go?” I asked.

The corners of his mouth curled up into what might have been a grin, then he shook his head and looked off toward the bunkhouse.

“I don’t wear that thing no more.”

I heard Wyatt’s paws galloping fast along the path from the house toward me. He skidded to a stop, wagging his tail, dancing and shuffling between my boots until I finally gave in and scratched him behind his ears. He chuffed a low bark deep in his throat and rolled onto his side in the dirt.

“You doing all right, Tom?”

“I’m okay, I guess.”

“You entered in any of the events at the rodeo this weekend?”

“I like team roping, but all the fellas are paired-up already.”

“How about calf roping? That’s a one-man deal.”

He scuffed his boot soles in the dust and stared at the little rows he’d carved there, then he hooked a thumb inside a belt loop and squinted at the barn lights.

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. Rufe Zachary over on the Lazy Y Cross has been braggin’ that he’s won that thing three years in a row.”

“I operate on the assumption that the people who boast the loudest tend to be the least competent. If I was you, I’d give it a run.”

“I’ll study on it,” he said.

“Well, don’t study too long or you’ll miss your chance.”

He upended the root beer bottle, emptied it, and ran a shirt sleeve across his mouth.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “If everything goes right, I expect I’ll sign up for something.”

He stood up and placed the root beer bottle on the flat rock he’d been sitting on.

“Listen,” I said. “When you’re born, you don’t always get the family you want; you get the one you’ve got. When it’s your turn to raise up a family, you get to make it what you dreamed of. It’s up to you.”

I gave him a quick pat on the shoulder, picked up his empty bottle, and started back toward the house.

“By the way,” I said.

“Sir?”

“Everything never goes right.”