We ran the stock down the loading chute, and I popped open a bale of hay and spread it in the mangers along the corral fence. The saddle horses left out in the meadow ran up to get a share. We pulled the saddles and packs from Dave’s pickup and stowed them in the shed.
“Don’t suppose anyone’s called Lester’s folks.”
“Mitch had a deputy from up there tell them Lester was killed, no more’n that,” Harvey said. “May was going to call, but she hadn’t stopped crying. I can if you’d rather.”
“No. I’ll drive over to Grass Valley tomorrow.”
“They’d like that,” Sarah said, “I’ll go with you if you want.” Her nose and eyes were red, and she sounded stuffed up.
“You wouldn’t want to piss off Mitch.”
“Old Mitch looked like he’d been weaned on a pickle back there at the campground,” her dad said.
“Mitch and Tommy have a history,” Sarah said. “A real unfortunate history.”
“We was just like brothers till he pulled me over one night out by the reservoir when I was sixteen and slammed me face-down on the hood of my mom’s Camaro. Anybody want a beer?”
“Hell yes,” Harvey said.
“Let’s see if those damn Cubans left us any Coors.” I got up and walked to the trailer. I wanted to do this while the sun was up and folks were around. Inside, it was the same beechwood veneer on the walls and the bench seat under the front window where I always bunked, the same fishing rods hanging on the rack behind the door, the same Forest Service poster—a Charley Russell painting of a horse bucking through a cookfire—with the big letters along the top saying Prevent Range Fires. The same sink and fridge and the oven door–glass all brown from smoke and grease, and the narrow hall heading back to the shower and toilet and bedroom, and the same kerosene lamps on the table. And Lester’s crap just about everywhere, even the bag of chocolate chip cookies he’d left on the counter.
I brought the beer out and we all sat on the pack platforms under the aspens, but I couldn’t sit still.
“Come on, Dave. Let’s take a look at your colt.”
He got up and followed me down to the corral. The colt looked up as I walked over to where he was munching hay at the manger between a couple of the mules. I slipped a hackamore on him and led him out.
“He’s coming along real nice.” I hobbled the colt in the shade, talking to him and rubbing him down.
“I can see that,” he said. “I’m surprised you had any time for him.”
“I wanted to get him going for you.”
“He let you trim his feet?” he asked.
“After I roped a foot or two. Messed with ’em.”
“You got on him yet?”
“Yeap. But I put in a lot of groundwork first so’s he’ll be rock solid. You know, for an older gentleman such as yourself.”
He laughed at that. “Oh, he’s not for me.” He looked over at Sarah. She was walking up the trailer step to go inside. “You putting a start on him will be icing on the cake for her. But don’t say anything. It’s a surprise.”
“You got it.”
I saddled him up and led him around, and he was as good as could be. I had used my dad’s rig once I unbuckled the rifle scabbard. I knew Dave would recognize it. Then I hobbled him again so he could just stand quiet for a while.
Sarah came out of the trailer ten minutes later with a towel around her neck. She was dressed, but her hair was wet and she was wearing one of my shirts.
“You mind?” she asked. “I just had to shower.”
I sort of shrugged.
“Dad,” she said, “we better get going.”
“Okay, doll,” he said.
“Are you coming, Tommy?”
“I thought I’d clean up first.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait for you in town. We’ll see Mitch together if you want.”
“Yeah.”
“That is sure a nice colt, Dad.”
I said so long to Dave and Harvey and unsaddled the colt and turned him back into the corral as they drove off. I picked up my jacket and Lester’s chinks, slid my rifle out of the scabbard and went into the trailer. I got myself a glass of water and sat at the table. I pulled Nora’s satellite phone out of the jacket pocket and called Grass Valley. When I was done talking to Lester’s dad, I drank the rest of the water and left the phone on the table and stood at the sink for a minute. Then I hung the chinks on a wall hook, stood the rifle in the closet, and went into the back to shower. The stall was warm and steamy from Sarah just using it, and the soap was still wet.
I took my time straightening up the place. Finally I sat down again with a yellow pad and wrote out a time line of everything that happened since that morning I first saw the wreck, checking my tallybook now and again. It was harder to write than I thought. When I tore it out of the pad I had four pages. I folded them up and put them in one of Lester’s old finance company envelopes.
I picked up the satellite phone again and punched Nora’s cell number. I kind of jumped when I heard a female voice say yes.
“Damn it, woman, where have you been? Are you alright?”
I heard a kind of gasp.
“Nora?”
“No, Tommy,” she said. It was Sarah.
I didn’t say anything for a minute.
“She’s dead, isn’t she.”
“How did you know?” Sarah asked.
“You wouldn’t have answered her phone otherwise.”
“Oh god, Tommy.”
“Where are you?”
“The Ponderosa Motel,” she said. “It’s pretty bad. Gerald Q is here, too.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Are you coming down? You sound awful.”
“Yeah. I’ll be down. What else do I have to do.” I took the rifle from the closet and drove to town.
I turned on to Main Street from the Summers Lake road. Before I even got to the courthouse I could see sheriff ’s cruisers and an ambulance and a few people standing on the left side of the street at the far end of town. I parked in front of the Mark Twain Café across from the Ponderosa Motel and didn’t get out of the truck right off. The door to the motel room was open and there were two ambulances in the lot. An EMT slammed the rear door of one of them and pulled out his phone and checked his messages. I saw Sarah come out of the room with Mitch and the lady from the motel. Sarah was still wearing my shirt. I waited for a semi to roll by then crossed over to the motel parking lot. The motel lady stood with Mitch watching me cross the street. She looked up at him and nodded. The two of them hustled back into the office before I got across. Sarah waited for me outside the room.
“Mitch says it looks like murder-suicide,” she said. “Like they had sex, then he beat her to death and shot himself. A single pistol shot to the mouth.”
“Yeah, right.”
“The medical examiner did a once-over before they took her out. Found evidence of recent sexual activity,” she said. We stepped inside the door. A Do Not Disturb card still hung on the knob. “But with all the blood it sure could have been rape. You have a better scenario?”
I got a whiff of the same nightclub smell of rank cologne that I first smelled up in our trailer the night we found the body had been swiped from the plane. Then there was that other smell of blood and shit and death. GQ’s stupid cowboy hat was lying on the rug with blood seeping onto the brim.
“Yeah. I got a better scenario.”
He was on his back sort of twisted and looking real surprised. His mouth was smashed and there was a big bruise over one eye and the top of his head was gone. I could see that from halfway across the room. And I could see how scared he’d been, like he knew that nothing he’d schemed on was ever going to work out either. Somebody had taken off his gold Rolex, the one just like his dad’s. In the same fist he was holding the diabetic alert medallion I’d seen on the old man’s corpse. So maybe he was finally thinking about his dad in the instant he died. Or maybe it was just butchers with a sense of humor. A Sig-Sauer lay on the carpet near his other hand and one of those little gram cocaine bottles lay half-spilled where you couldn’t miss it. I could see where Nora had died too, but I didn’t really want to look. I scooted out of there and waited for Sarah. She came outside about two minutes later.
“You check his DNA or bloodtype or whatever, it won’t match what’s on Nora. You want a match, check every damn Cuban alive or dead, especially Teófilo if you ever catch him, which I doubt.”
“Teófilo?” she said.
“He’s the one writing that phony narrative now.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“The owner said it was you who rented the room three nights ago,” she said.
“You want to check my blood too?”
“Tommy, it’s okay,” she said.
“If she’s beat to death, how is it okay? If everyone’s dead, how is any of this okay?” I handed her the envelope with the sheets from the yellow pad.
“What’s this?”
“For Mitch so he can follow along. I’ll have to write him a new chapter now.”
She took the envelope and stuffed it in the back pocket of her Wranglers.
“Do you want to see anything else?” She asked.
“I seen enough.”
Mitch had walked out of the office and was standing by one of the ambulances talking to a guy. Sarah pinched my sleeve so I didn’t head straight for my truck. The ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, going slow with no lights flashing.
“You two look bushed,” Mitch said. “Come on over to the Sierra Peaks. I’ll buy you a late lunch, and we can compare notes on all this. Just let me finish up here.” He studied my face where I’d taken the blast of wood splinters the day before. “You oughtta get that looked at, Tom.”
He headed back into the motel office.
“He can be a dick,” Sarah said, “but he knows when he’s being a dick.” She reached up and put her hand on my neck. “I’m sure sorry,” she said.
“Yeah? ”
“Yeah.”
“I told her to leave.”
We waited for him over coffee in a booth at the Sierra Peaks. Judy looked bleary-eyed and stayed away from us, sneaking looks our way like we were on fire. Mitch came by about ten minutes later and we ordered some burgers from Al, but Al never said a word either.
“I brought in Francisco, that irrigator from Dominion’s,” Mitch said. “We got the Cuban kid to talk to him in Spanish. He’s just seventeen, but it sounds like he’s already left some bodies behind in Florida. Dang, what a crowd. He said that there’s two more guys who flew into Reno all on separate flights. So now we got one in jail, one in the hospital, and maybe three on the loose.”
“I guess,” Sarah said.
“And all because of a fight over an estate?” he asked.
“It’s a tad more complicated than that.”
“No doubt about it,” he said. “I like the meth angle. These guys you shot were soldiers in a drug gang. Just look at their weapons. Then take the meth lab evidence and what we found on Callie?” He looked around the room at Al and Judy. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but that girl was dirty, I guarantee it. Word from DEA is these Mexicans are pushing meth from Argentina. Can you believe that crapola? We can’t seem to make squat in this country anymore.” His radio squawked and he stopped chewing to listen.
“What about the two in the Ponderosa Motel?” Sarah asked.
“What about them?” he said. “You saw the drugs. It’s like a bomb went off up here this week.” He kind of grinned at me like we were friends. “The guys you killed are one thing. But this rich guy and his girlfriend. Dang. I already got emails from the Flying W aviation club, L.A. lawyers, Bloomberg Financial, and Reno Action News. We’re going to have media up the ying-yang.”
I had Al bring me a 7 and 7 with my burger. I wasn’t on duty. I just watched Sarah get steamed.
“The dead woman was the lawyer for the dead man’s stepmother,” she said. “The one he was trying to scam.”
Mitch just sat there for a minute. “Okay, makes sense. After yesterday no wonder he was ticked off.”
“At what?” she asked.
“You two were up at Boundary Lake,” he said. “You wouldn’t have known.”
“Known what?”
“The wife went to L.A. Superior Court again yesterday morning,” he said. “The probate judge wouldn’t postpone it anymore. It was on CNN last night. He declared the billionaire legally dead.”
His radio squawked again.
“I gotta take this,” he said. He slid out of the booth. “I guarantee you that guy’s plane will never get found. There’s just too much country to get lost in.”
He walked to the door to the side street. We could see him talking on his radio with his free hand over his ear.
Sarah rocked to one side and pulled out the finance company envelope with the yellow sheets from her back pocket. She tore it in half and handed it to me.
Mitch wouldn’t give Sarah the next day off or the day after that either. After a rough night in the chair on the tin shack porch, I left the stock out in the meadow and drove off early for Grass Valley. On the way to town I pulled into the Bonner and Tyree place and caught Dan Tyree in the screened porch of his mom’s old Victorian entering calving records on his computer. We talked for a few minutes, then I drove off to see Harvey. Town was a zoo. There was a news van with a satellite dish on the roof in front of the courthouse and a couple more in the Ponderosa Motel parking lot. The lot was crammed with our own sheriffs’ cars plus a couple from two different Nevada counties and a whole army of people besides. Some millionaire pal of GQ’s dad was getting interviewed in front of the open motel room door as I whizzed by.
Harvey was working by the corrals when I parked under the pines at Power Line Creek. May’s Honda was gone, but I waved at Harv and took off my hat and went in the cabin to look for her just in case. The place smelled like breakfast, but she wasn’t around. I walked back out to the corrals.
“May took Darryl down to the dentist in Mammoth,” he said.
“Tell her I stopped by.”
“Are you quittin’?” He wasn’t looking at me when he said it.
“Hell no. I just wanted to tell her hi, is all.”
“I lost two-thirds of my help in one week,” he said. “I got to take those goddamn Boy Scouts to Hornberg Lake in three days. Life don’t just stop.”
“I got Dan Tyree to help us.”
“Damn.” Harvey lit a Winston. “That’ll be good. Dan looks like an old piss-head Piute hippie, but he’s a hand. I thought for sure you’d come up here to quit.”
“I got to go to Grass Valley today. I’ll be back by tomorrow noon. Maybe even tonight.”
“Better you than me. Tell ’em hi. Tell ’em—”
“Yeah. I got Lester’s three-fifty-seven to give to his dad.”
Harvey sort of snorted. “The cheap bastard will sell that in a week.” He studied his Winston. “I’ll let May know you came by. It’ll mean a lot.”
“I’m glad she was gone, you want to know the truth. I never know what the hell to say.”
“Me neither,” he said. “It’s good for her to keep her mind off it.”
“Hard to do with the circus in town.”
“A rich prick dies, it’s news,” Harvey said. “The bastards didn’t say a damn thing when Albert got killed, and he was a disabled vet.”
“Well, I better get going. I’m going to steal some bacon and coffee for the road.”
“Help yourself,” he said.
“I’ll bring the pack rigs up tomorrow.”
“See if you got any extra lashropes.”
“Okay.”
By the time I got down through the sagebrush to the Reno Highway, it was past nine. I drove back through town and took an extra minute to swing by the post office and pick up our mail. It was another clear day, and warm. When I drove west toward Dominion’s headquarters I looked straight into the mouth of Aspen Canyon with the Sawtooths off to the left above the sagebrush ridge and Dominion cattle on either side of the road on the new grass and the ditches overflowing with snowmelt. In twenty minutes I was past the Sonora Road in West Frémont canyon in the shade of the pines with the creek on my right and the sun on the water where Callie had died. Twenty minutes north of that and I was topping off my tank up at State Line. I didn’t plan on passing any more dead people before I got to my mom’s new place in Jack’s Valley.
She heated up some biscuits and gravy for me, and we talked a bit. She gave me a big hug and looked at me the way she did when I was leaving for my second tour. Watching her and seeing her same old stuff in the strange kitchen made me feel almost like I was seventeen again when everything was safe and Dad was around and the most dangerous thing in the world was driving back from the hot springs in the dark with a case of beer or getting bucked off a bad horse.
Just up the road in Carson I turned on Highway 50 toward Tahoe, then circled the big lake and dropped down to I-80 at Truckee, really taking my time. I got to Lester’s folks in Grass Valley a while after lunch. They had a nice house on a couple of acres out there in the oak trees and madrone. It was pretty enough country, but it wasn’t my country. I stayed with them through supper and told them what I could. I let them think Lester was unconscious when the helicopter sunk. Anything else was just too awful. I gave Lester’s dad the Ruger, and he told me about the big draft horse show they’d had in the fall. They wanted me to stay the night in the guest room where Lester always slept when he visited, but I said Harvey and I had an early day the next morning. I drove home four hours through the trees, down Highway 49 all the way to Placerville then back into the mountains in the dark over Echo Summit, where I could see the lights of South Shore way off through the pines, then over Luther Pass, finally winding down Monitor Pass to the Reno Highway a few miles above Dave Cathcart’s under a last bit of moonrise. Then I turned south for home. I had those Indian-blanket seat covers on the Dodge with a rifle sleeve along the front edge of the bench so I could feel the stock of the Remington under my left leg. Past Piute Meadows I pulled over in Bonner and Tyree’s lane and slept in the truck. I didn’t figure there’d be any Cubans waiting at the pack station, but I still didn’t feel like pulling in by myself after midnight and lighting the kerosene lamps and unrolling my bed in that lonesome trailer. That could wait another night or two.
I drove up at first light, corralled the stock and fixed myself breakfast. Then I haltered every horse and mule we’d taken up to North Pass and checked their feet. I tacked on one lost shoe then set to work on the sawbucks, panniers, lashropes, and tarps, laying them out on the platforms like before. When I was finished, I hoisted each set into the bed of my pickup. Harvey would fetch some of the stock later that day for the Boy Scout trip. I treated myself to a nice long session on Dave’s colt before I left. It was past eleven when I finally drove down the canyon on my way to Power Line Creek.
I was just turning into town when I heard the Sikorsky. I pulled over at the Shell station and got out to look. That big Sea Stallion was thumping across the valley, flying low toward town with the Jet Ranger dangling underneath it. I knew Lester was still inside, strapped down exactly like I’d left him. Water must have just poured out of that thing when the Sea Stallion first lifted it out of the lake. It seemed half the town was standing on sidewalks or in the street, shading their eyes and looking up at those two helicopters. I saw a couple of folks holding up cell phones to take pictures. I guess it wasn’t something you saw every day.
I drove through town following the choppers and parked in the sagebrush out by the reservoir. I got out to watch them land but kept my distance. Three sheriff ’s units, the county coroner’s ambulance, a couple of Marine trucks, and civilian cars and Mike Mildenberg’s wife were waiting on the airstrip, but there was no news van for him or Lester. Major Tuggle set the Jet Ranger down on the asphalt just as gentle as could be and hovered as the Marine crew pulled off the rigging. When they were done, the cables reeled back up into the Sea Stallion, and Tuggle turned the chopper to face where I was standing. He dipped the nose of the helicopter like a tip of the hat, then rose straight up, turned and whop-whopped off toward Sonora Pass. I saw Sarah standing with Mitch as an EMT opened the Jet Ranger doors. I got back in the truck and turned around, heading south before they started taking out the bodies.
Two days later we packed the Boy Scouts up to Hornberg Lake. Dan Tyree, Harvey, and I led nine mules and honchoed six saddle horses carrying the dads and Scout leaders. We herded twenty-seven Boy Scouts from Walnut Creek on foot between the horses like a mess of noisy sheep, hollering at them to stay on the trail and out of the snow. I made them form up and sound off at every piss stop and food stop and generally treated them like crap, and they loved it. We dropped them and their gear at the lake and spent the night in their camp. We headed out with the stock in the morning and would come back for them in four days so the Scouts would be in Piute Meadows in time for the Fourth of July parade.