Seth leaned back from the large mahogany barn door that served as his desk. He glanced at the chair he’d set out for his best friend Mitch and turned to face the whiteboard hanging on the wall next to the door. He had spent the better part of the last hour posting police images of poor mutilated beasts onto the large whiteboard. The photos were gruesome.
Most of the images showed cattle, sheep, and horses missing reproductive organs, anus, bodily fluids, and at least one eye. A few had their lips and ears removed with what looked, to Seth and almost everyone else, like surgical precision. Tongues were cut in a straight line behind the animals’ clenched jaws. He didn’t have to look at the veterinary reports to know that the animals were alive when most of the cutting had been done.
There were no human footprints to or from the carcasses. No animal prints either. A few of the animals looked as if they had been dropped from a great height, and others appeared to have been set down with great care. Some had oval or circular incisions on their bodies that were only hide deep, while others had the hide stripped from their jaws. He got up to look at each picture in turn.
The animals had been drained of blood, and no blood was found under or around the scenes. In a couple of rare cases, a rancher found an area a few hundred feet away where it looked like the animal had been bled. Seth rubbed his chin and stood up.
The photos were organized chronologically. He took a picture of the board with his phone and started to reorganize the photos by injury. The animals missing strips of hide from their jaw were posted on the left. The animals with hide-deep oval cutouts went on the bottom right. Ones that appeared to have been dropped from a great height went on the top right. He continued for a few minutes and stepped back.
When nothing shook loose in his head, he took a picture of the board with his phone and started reorganizing the photos by the location where the animal was mutilated. He had organized about twenty photographs by their location in the San Luis Valley when he recognized the pasture where a few of the cattle had been mutilated. He set the stack of photos on his desk and went to find his housekeeper, Maresol Tafoya.
He was halfway down the staircase when he noticed that she was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his chocolate Labrador Clara’s leash in her hand. Clara was sitting next to Maresol.
“Ready to go?” Maresol asked in her thick Hispanic accent.
“Go?” Seth raised his eyebrows and trotted down the rest of the stairs. “What have I forgotten?”
“You came downstairs to ask me about Luis’s mutes,” Maresol said.
“Mutes?” Seth squinted to pretend he had no idea what she was talking about. “Does Luis have cattle mutilations?”
Maresol laughed.
“I’ll drive,” Maresol said.
“We’re going . . .?” Seth asked.
“To Luis’s ranch,” Maresol said. “It’s been a long time since I visited, and you want to talk to him about the mutilations.”
“What about . . .?” Seth started to ask.
“Ava called,” Maresol said. “They’ve got a big case. She’s working late. She said she tried to tell you, but your phone was off. Again.”
“I just took a picture with it.”
Seth looked down at his new smartphone and scowled. Ava had bought him this phone before they’d left for England. Maresol jerked the phone from his hands. She fiddled with it and put it back in his hand.
“Turned the ringer off,” Maresol said, before she walked through the den and into the backyard.
Grinning, he followed her out the back. Maresol was his first big expense after selling his second symphony. He’d hired her to help his mother with the house more than four decades ago. She’d supported him through the depths of addiction, heartbreak, desperate grief, and the joy of babies, weddings, and real happiness. Never lovers, they had shared every up and down this life had dished out. He waited for Clara to finish her business before following Maresol to the driveway.
“I’ll drive.” Maresol pointed to her new silver Mercedes Sedan. “You drive like an old man.”
He chuckled and helped Clara into the back seat. He got into the passenger seat. This was the first time he’d ridden in the car since he’d bought it for her for her birthday last month. He’d just managed to click his seatbelt in place when she backed up out of the driveway into the street. A car honked, and she waved.
“He had two last summer,” Maresol said.
“Mutilations?” Seth asked.
“Si,” Maresol said, and turned right on Montview. “You remember last year’s drought?”
“Sure,” Seth said.
“He and the neighbor, they use the same high pasture,” Maresol said. “Luis’s cattle were mixed in with that Abram Miller’s cattle.”
Maresol sniffed at the Amish cattle farmer’s name. Her family had lived in Colorado for nearly five hundred years. Like many native Coloradans, she wasn’t comfortable with the large Amish communities quietly buying up Colorado’s farmland. Seth nodded.
“Only Luis’s were . . .” Maresol pointed up and gestured as if the cattle had been sucked up into the sky.
“What do you mean?” Seth asked.
“Luis’s cow.” Maresol raised the fingers of her left hand from the top of the steering wheel. She pulled to a stop at the corner of Montview and Colorado Boulevard. “Miller’s cow.”
She gestured with her right hand at the top of the steering wheel.
“Luis’s cow was a mute,” Maresol said. “The Amish cow was not taken. Same pasture.”
As if that should mean something, Maresol nodded.
“And that means?” Seth asked.
Maresol turned left onto Colorado Boulevard.
“That means the alienígena don’t like Amish cows,” Maresol said.
“But they like Luis’s cattle,” Seth said.
“Exactly,” Maresol said. “Not only Luis’s, others in the valley. But not the Amish.”
Maresol shook her head.
“No Amish cows,” Maresol said. “Not anywhere throughout the whole valley.”
“That is odd,” Seth said.
“Odd,” Maresol nodded.
“Any idea why?” Seth asked. Maresol shook her head.
“Is Ava going to help us?” Maresol asked.
“Us?”
“This is a family matter,” Maresol sniffed. “The few of us from Colorado need to help each other to solve our own Colorado problems. The government will just lie. You need to give the people of the San Luis Valley an honest answer.”
“The Amish, too?”
“Don’t start,” Maresol sniffed. “I’m not prejudiced. I just don’t like them.”
“Fair enough,” Seth said.
“Ava’s going to help?
“Ferg, too,” Seth said. “If we find one, we get CBI help with crime-scene analysis. All guaranteed by our new State Attorney.”
Maresol’s face soured.
“What?” Seth asked.
“You heard he treated Éowyn like a common whore,” Maresol said in Spanish. She spoke Spanish when she was angry.
“Which time?” Seth asked in Spanish.
“Very funny,” Maresol said. “Switch is furious.”
“Switch is in love,” Seth said in English.
“That is true,” Maresol said in English. She smiled and turned right on Eighth Avenue.
“You think it’s aliens?” Seth asked.
“I think it’s the military, but I know we will only argue if I say that,” Maresol said.
Seth smiled.
“You know how I hate to argue,” Maresol said.
Seth laughed, and Maresol smirked at her own joke. They drove down Eighth Avenue until they got on the Sixth Avenue Highway. Maresol sped around a truck, and Seth started counting the vehicle’s safety features.
“Why would the military want to mutilate cattle?” Seth asked.
“How should I know?” Maresol asked. “You’re the one with all the connections. Have you asked them?”
“I haven’t,” Seth said.
“We can stop to see Everest on our way home,” Maresol smiled. “Everest would know.”
“How did you know I needed to talk to Everest?” Seth asked.
“Ava,” Maresol said. “We are very close, you know.”
Seth shuddered at the idea of his new wife joining forces with Maresol to run his life. She glanced at him and laughed.
“Why do you think it’s the military?” Maresol asked.
Seth turned to look at her. She shrugged her shoulders, and he looked away.
“Eyewitness reports, mostly,” Seth said. “Black helicopters, loud mechanical sound that lasts for hours, vibrations that rock houses, low lightning storms—it sounds military to me. Plus . . .”
Seth swallowed hard and stopped talking. Maresol glanced at him. She knew him too well to force him to speak. Whatever he had to say, he would get around to it eventually. He didn’t speak again for miles. He cleared his throat.
“Let’s just say that I’ve seen something like this before,” Seth said.
“Mutes?” Maresol asked.
“Sort of,” Seth said. “Mitch and I were in . . . Vietnam; there was a guy—or, I should say, we thought it was one guy. He would work his way through a battalion of sleeping soldiers.”
Seth snapped his fingers.
“They looked . . .” Seth said.
“Like mutes?” Maresol asked.
“Yes,” Seth said. “It’s not an uncommon story. There are reports of the mutilation of soldiers in parts of Africa, the Chechen war . . . Almost any war where you pit neighbor against neighbor, this kind of crap shows up.”
Maresol nodded. They drove the 285 for more than an hour before Maresol felt compelled to ask about the man Seth and Mitch had seen in Vietnam.
“The guy?” Maresol asked. “Who mutilated those soldiers? Was he from the US?”
“No. I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t know. Really, I do not know,” Seth said. “Officially, it’s a team of Viet Cong. That’s what the file says, but . . .”
Seth fell silent again. They drove for another hour before Maresol glanced at him.
“You ready to tell me?” Maresol asked.