CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“I thought I heard voices out here,” Caleb said. “Little early in the day, ain’t it?”

He was standing in the open doorway of the barn, a steaming stoneware mug of coffee in one hand, watching me run the curry comb across Drambui’s withers.

“Just talking to my horse,” I said without looking up.

“That must be mighty boresome for him. I’m surprised he ain’t kicked your teeth out yet.”

I heard Caleb amble across the sawdust and sand and sit down on an upturned water bucket beside Drambuie’s open stall. He leaned his back against the slats, stretched out his legs, and crossed them at the ankle. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him stroking his mustache and staring out the barn door into the dark.

“You can prob’ly guess what I’m gonna say to you right now,” Caleb said.

I set the curry comb on the tack box and grabbed a wood-handled brush. I pressed my hat down tighter on my head and began to work the knots out of Drambuie’s tail.

“You’re going to say: ‘You don’t need to know everything. You only need to know where to find someone who does.’ I’m working on it, Caleb.”

“You think your horse might have some insights for you?”

“He’s got more answers than I do at the moment.”

Caleb squinted at me, and I saw a hint of melancholy creep into his eyes.

“Things have gone a little OK Corral out there, ain’t they?” he said.

“I can’t tell who’s the Clantons and who’s the Earps, Hard to know which way to aim.”

Caleb sipped gingerly from his mug, reeled his long legs in, and leaned forward on the bucket. He rested his elbows on his knees and looked up into the rafters.

“There ain’t always a difference,” he said.

“That may be true,” I said. “But I’m still left with the same two choices: Engage in the fight or surrender. I’m not willing to surrender.”

Drambuie shifted his weight and nickered, low and guttural. He turned his head sideways as much as the chain and halter would allow, and looked at me with one unblinking eye. Caleb stood and scratched my horse behind his ear.

“Take a shade for a little while, Ty,” Caleb said. “Join me for a mug. I’ll grind up some beans.”

“Up on your roof?”

“In my kitchen, wiseass.”

“Maybe later. I gotta muck out Boo’s stall.”

“We pay hands to do that kinda work.”

“I got two hands right here.”

“Have it your way,” Caleb said and dumped the last few drops out of his cup onto the barn floor. He halted in the doorway for a moment and turned to me.

“One thing though,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Make sure you keep drinking upstream from the herd.”

A couple hours later, I saw Cricket collecting eggs and throwing feed inside the chicken run as I pulled out of the driveway. When she saw me looking at her in my rearview mirror, she smiled, blew a kiss in my direction, and waved a peace sign at me. I threw one back at her and drove away, lowering the visor against the glare of the approaching sunrise.

The IDs on the two shotgun victims at the Cayuse had been run through the system during the night. I picked up several pages of flimsy thermal paper off the tray of the Magnafax machine in the file room, sat down at my desk, and leafed through them.

The man I referred to as Bullet Head was actually named Magnus “Mo” Guidry. As I had correctly thought, he was a recent parolee from Lompoc where he had just completed a two-year bit for poaching bobcats, coyotes, and gray wolves. There had been a couple additional codefendants in that case, a two-time loser named Cort Scheer—a man I also knew, and had come to know as Ducktail—and a man named Carl Spinell. At the time the three of them had been arrested, they had been in the employ of a sheep rancher who had no tolerance for predators, whether federally protected or not, and showed even less concern about the methods Spinell and his men implemented in their eradication. The rancher, together with Spinell and Ducktail, got off with a fine, while Bullet Head had been left to take one for the team.

I was about to turn the page and read more about the late Cort “Ducktail” Scheer, when I saw a panel van pull up to the curb outside and park. I paper clipped the flimsy sheets and dropped them into a manila file folder as I watched Deva Ravi and one of his girls step out of the van and glide across the sidewalk and through my office door.

He came in barefooted, wearing bell-bottom trousers and a chambray shirt he’d left unbuttoned to his navel, a necklace of multicolored ceramic beads looped around his neck. The girl followed three steps behind him and took up a militant stance in front of my desk, arms folded across her chest, head tilted to one side.

“I can feel your damage, man,” Deva Ravi said. “I can help you fix that.”

“Knock that shit off,” I said. “Remove your shades and have a seat.”

Deva did as I asked and dropped his sunglasses on my desk as he sat down.

“Your life would be a great deal simpler if you had a phone,” I said.

“Not a chance, man. I’ve got no interest in communicating with anyone but the universe and my people.”

The girl nodded knowingly and moved toward the other chair.

“Not you,” I said to her. “This is a private conversation.”

“Deva Ravi wants me here,” she said.

I cut my eyes to Deva Ravi. He was running his palm across the stubble of growth along the shaved sides of his scalp.

“Tell this girl to wait outside,” I said.

“My name’s Aurora,” she spat. “You harassed us at the sandwich shop yesterday. Dawn was mindfucked for the rest of the day.”

“That was a conversation between adults, Aurora, not harassment,” I said. “Now I need you to step outside.”

“I want a witness,” Deva said. There was a cold severity in his tone and aspect that had not been present a moment earlier.

I shook my head.

“You want a witness, go to a tent revival,” I said.

Something moved behind his eyes, and the coldness disappeared.

“Did you bring me down here to bust my balls about airplanes again?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You got something you want to tell me?”

“No.”

The crescent of a dimple dented Aurora’s cheek as she smiled at Deva Ravi.

“This is the last time I’m going to say this nicely,” I said. “Aurora, take it down the road.”

She looked from me to Deva, and he gave her a little nod. Her face was stamped with hurt and insult, surprised that her spiritual mentor had not stood up for her. He touched her cheek with his fingertips and she visibly relaxed. I slid my chair away from my desk and took a sip of coffee that had gone cold. I watched her push past the door and sit down on the curb outside. She wrapped her arms around her knees and tilted her face toward the morning sun.

When I returned my attention to Deva Ravi, he grinned and winked at me. I was struck anew by the man’s mercurial nature, unsure as to whether he was genuinely unbalanced or if he wore his various identities like costume props.

“I think we’ve reached a crossroads here, don’t you?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I wonder how many of your acolytes I’m going to end up having to bury.”

“You need to work on your communication skills, Sheriff.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, but I could see his eyeballs vibrating. “It might be at the root of all this hostility you’re carrying around.”

“You claim to be a spiritual man, but when two of your devoted followers die ugly, you do nothing at all. You speak of freedom, but you hide behind chained fences and barbed wire. One of those two believers committed suicide rather than confront you face to face.”

“You’re insulting my beliefs?”

“I don’t give a damn if you’re a Druid or Zoroastrian. But when you hurt people with whatever it is you teach, you earn the full and complete measure of my attention.”

He shifted in his seat and squinted at me.

“You got questions for me, or not?”

“What is your real name?” I asked.

Deva shook his head and smiled.

“Try again,” he said.

“Who owns the Rainbow Ranch?”

“I don’t understand how the answer to that holds any relevance.”

“Your understanding of my methodology is at the very bottom of a long list of things that I don’t give a shit about.”

“Nevertheless I decline to discuss that.”

“My questions aren’t going to get any easier.”

“Let’s give another one a try and see how it goes.”

“Who are the men your people call ‘Scary Larry’ and ‘Mac Nasty’?”

His facial muscles ticked ever so slightly, and his eyes glowed like the horns of Texas cattle in an electrical storm. I waited for the thunder, but it never came.

“Ask me what you really brought me here to ask me,” he said.

“You and Harper Emory appear to be engaged in a race to the bottom. I’m here to tell you that the one who gets there second wins.”

“That didn’t sound like a question.”

“Who killed Doc Brawley?”

“How the hell would I know something like that?”

“You knew the man,” I said.

He held his silence for a long moment before he looked at me and shrugged.

“He treated a few of my guys,” Deva said. “Doc Brawley was a friend.”

“A friend?”

“Turns out there actually are a handful of people over thirty who can be trusted.”

“Trusted with what?” I asked.

He leaned his head back and shifted his focus to the ceiling, whether considering the content of my question, or the consequences of its answer, I could not tell. The manic shifts of tension that had defined his behavior, since he came into my office dissipated momentarily.

“Are you familiar with the term ‘Four-F’?” he asked finally.

There was probably not an American alive who had not acquired a working knowledge of the present military draft system.

“Indefinite deferral from being called up for the draft,” I answered.

“If you have bad eyesight or flat feet or epilepsy or asthma or allergies …” he said.

I took a few seconds to digest what he was telling me.

“Doc Brawley would falsify diagnoses? In exchange for what?”

“Nothing,” Deva said. “Doc was a believer in justice, man. He didn’t dig Tricky Richard’s endless bullshit war.”

“He could have lost his license to practice medicine. He could have faced criminal charges.”

“So what are you going to do, throw him in jail? It’s a little late for that.”

“Is that why you killed him? Did he threaten to stop? Or turn your people in?”

Deva Ravi peeled his eyes off the ceiling and drilled me with them.

“I told you, Sheriff, the dude was a friend.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fuck you. You don’t believe anybody.”

“Here’s what I believe: I believe two of your businesses were vandalized by someone who wanted to drive you out of here, and one of your followers burned to death in the process. The next thing I know, one of Meridian’s favorite citizens is shot with a .38 revolver, then stabbed, and beaten to a bloody pulp in the wee hours of the morning inside his own office. And last night, two recidivist assholes who might or might not work for Harper Emory, wind up with their shit decorating the walls of a rundown motel; and to top it off, another one of your stardust brothers strangled himself in my jail cell—a cell he demanded to be locked up in. I’ve got bodies stacking up like cordwood in this county, and I’d like for you to explain your involvement.”

Deva turned and looked out the front window, where the shops along the street were just beginning to unlock their doors for business. Aurora had moved into the shade of a poplar tree, and was pulling the petals off a dandelion one by one.

“Am I under arrest, Sheriff?” he asked when he turned back around.

“Not yet.”

He unfolded himself from his chair, picked up his sunglasses from my desk, and slipped them on.

“It’s too bad about the old man,” he said.

Later I would revisit that remark in my mind from time to time, the strangeness of his tone as he said those words. It was as though he was speaking the languages of regret and loss, but had no understanding of them, an accidental traveler through a place where he held no currency or passport, nor a ticket home.

I was locking up the office so I could grab some lunch when the phone rang.

“You were right,” Bill Kiefer said. “There’s a ground lease on the Rainbow Ranch property.”

“Leased to whom?”

“Ambervalia Corporation is leasing to a company called Galanis United.”

“Who the hell is that?”

A siren wailed somewhere outside his office window and spun across the line at me.

“I’m lucky to have found this thing at all,” he said. “It’s a one-page Lease Recital. Names of the lessor and lessee, legal description of the property, and the lease term. It’s all I’ve got.”

I thanked him and decided to skip lunch. If I wanted to birddog information on Galanis United, I could either make the two-plus-hour drive to the public library up in Lewiston on a Friday afternoon, or take my chances at the local high school on the last day before summer vacation. I opted for the latter.

As before, I checked in at the front office, and was given directions to the library. I passed through halls lined with metal lockers and littered with discarded notebook paper and the scraps of printed posters that had been stripped from the walls. I stepped outdoors into the breezeway that led to the library, and the smells of cut grass, barberry, and heather floating on the dry breeze struck me with a vertiginous sense of déjà vu. I wondered which of the lives belonging to the voices I now heard behind the doors and open classroom windows would be stilled, or scarred, or giving birth, or moving away, or billeted to some distant foreign outpost by this same time next year.

A car horn blasted from the parking lot and startled me back into the present. I shook off my morose distraction and continued along the concrete walkway.

Ten minutes later, I was squeezed into a study carrel along the back wall of the research section of the Meridian High School library being instructed on the use of the microfiche machine. My eyes burned from whatever spray the librarian had used to cement her hair in place.

It took more than an hour of parsing through microfilm copies of the local papers to find mention of Galanis United, the publication of a legal notice. I was about to rewind the reel when I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder.

“I saw you through the window,” Molly Meadows said. She spoke softly, though we were the only people in the room.

“I beg your pardon?”

A flush of pink showed in the hollow of her throat and she glanced away.

“I saw you walking down the hallway,” she said. “Past my classroom. They said I’d probably find you here.”

“I didn’t want to drive all the way to Lewiston to use the county library if I didn’t have to.”

“I had a nice time at dinner with you and your wife at Mr. Brody’s the other night.”

“You must be thinking of a different occasion than the one that I attended.”

“Your wife, Jesse, is wonderful.”

“She’s my most popular attribute. She’ll be at the rodeo this weekend.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’ll be going.”

“Mandatory,” I said. “Social event of the year in Meriwether County.”

She didn’t even attempt to fake a smile and I watched her, as she fidgeted with the pendant on the chain around her neck, wondering why she had come to seek me out. I waited through a few protracted seconds before I gave up.

“I’d better get back to it,” I said.

“Oh, of course,” she said. “I’m sorry to have interrupted you.”

“It was nice to see you again, Miss Meadows.”

The expression she showed me struck me as vaguely sad, and she hesitated for a moment before she moved toward the door.

“I know that Mr. Brody’s pushing that recall petition.”

“Politics,” I said, but we both knew that was only part of the truth.

“He sent some people here to encourage the staff to sign it. I don’t know if anybody did. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “I’ll tell Jesse that you asked after her.”

It was well after three o’clock by the time I threw in the towel. The school buses had all departed for their final rounds, and the last of the students had emptied out their lockers and headed off to celebrate. All I had to show for three hours of research was a headache that threatened to split my skull and the knowledge that Galanis United was a Nevada corporation that owned a couple of automobile dealerships, a string of drag speedways in California and Nevada, and an unspecified interest in Oregon timber. I was able to uncover nothing with regard to corporate shareholders, but the chairman of the board was a man named Minas Galanis who, I learned, was both kindly regarded for his involvement with several local Nevada charities, and pitied for the tragic loss of his son in combat overseas.

I walked back to the main administration office to use their phone, holding on to the hope that I could find a listing somewhere in Nevada for Galanis United, and that their company switchboard might still be operational on a Friday afternoon approaching happy hour. I struck out.

My eyelids felt like they had been scraped with sandpaper and I was about to climb into my truck when I felt the skin tighten on my scalp, and the sensation of a thousand pinpricks moving up my spine. I turned and jogged back to the school office and called Chris Rose’s office at CID in Salem. He picked up on the second ring.

“Any word on those fingerprints I gave you?” I asked.

“From the Polaroid snapshot? It hasn’t even been two weeks yet, Ty.”

“I just thought of something, and I need you to give it a try for me.”