CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cricket was already awake when I came into the kitchen for coffee. She was wearing blue-and-black checked men’s flannel pajamas and a pair of old sheepskin-lined moccasins, and looked like she had been up for a while.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked and gave her a kiss on the crown of her head.

“I saw it on the news last night. Peter and Sly were murdered by the side of some road.”

“I’m sorry, Cricket. I couldn’t find the right time to tell you.”

Her lips tightened into a line, but there was neither anger nor bitterness in her expression.

“There is no right time,” she said softly.

Cricket stepped past me and poured coffee from the percolator and studied the cream that she swirled into the cup. She held it tight in the palms of both hands and blew at the steam as it rose.

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “They were good kids.”

“Yeah, they were. I’m sorry too. Seems like there’s plenty to be sorry about these days.”

The sky was deep blue outside the window, and I heard the birds light in the willow and the wet gargle of redwings hunting for food.

“Give me a minute to get dressed,” she said. “I’ll come out and help you saddle the horse.”

She padded out of the kitchen and I thought I heard the sound of a car pull up into the driveway. Wyatt straggled out from his bed in the mudroom, wagged his tail, and followed me out to the porch.

A man stepped out of a familiar dark-colored Dodge Coronet and stood at the base of the stairs. He took off the Madison hat he’d been wearing and tossed it on the seat.

“I thought you’d want to know that the four suspects—the ones who survived their confrontation with you—have been transferred to the hospital ward at the state pen up in Salem.”

“Good morning, Conrad,” I said. “Coffee?”

“They’re being held without bail while we sort out jurisdiction and charges. A couple of them have warrants out in several separate states.”

“Oregon has the death penalty,” I said. “Make sure they stay here to stand trial.”

“We followed up on your lead, and the Idaho State Troopers located the fugitive from the Skadden killings,” he said. He buttoned his suit jacket and took his eyes off me to stare at the shine on his shoes.

“They found him in a twelve-room motel about 400 miles from here, just over the border near Potlatch,” he said. “The guy had shaved off his hair and his beard in an attempt to alter his appearance, but it obviously hadn’t been enough.”

“Enough for what?” I said and took a sip of my coffee. Wyatt rubbed up against the shank of my boots to scratch an itch under the gauze.

“He took three shots to the back of his head from a 22-caliber handgun, execution style. The pistol had been wiped down and left on the dresser at the scene.”

“And the saddlebags? The money?”

“What money?”

“Are you sure you don’t want some coffee?”

Averill Conrad cocked his head and looked first at the dog, then at me.

“They didn’t find anything but the guy’s bike and his clothes. Repeat what you said about money.”

“I didn’t say anything. Forget it.”

Conrad stepped back and placed one hand on the door latch of his car and looked like he was about to get in. He stopped himself and looked into my face.

“I’m not a huge admirer of yours, or of this situation, Mr. Dawson.”

“Remind me about that the next time I see you,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I give a goddamn by then. Thanks just the same for dropping by.”

A blanket of late-morning ground fog lay over the floor of the valley, obscuring all but the tallest of trees, and put me in mind of a vast silver lake as I rode my horse up the trail to the North Pasture. I topped the last rise and reined to a stop in a circle of sunbreak that passed between dew-laden branches and felt its warmth spread on the back of my coat. I studied the deep purple creases etched into the mountains and the narrow striations of snow that remained at the high elevations. Somewhere inside the cedars, a scrub jay mimicked the cry of a circling hawk.

I had arrived early, and no one was there when I finally broke out of the old growth and onto the flat of the meadow. The horses that Caleb had earlier herded here from the barn were lazily grazing in new grass that had grown well past their ankles. I watered the one that I had been riding at the steel tank near the base of the eclipse windmill, then loosened the cinch and removed the saddle and blanket and bridle and leaned them against the trunk of a tree. I turned him loose to graze with the others while I spoke with Blackwood, intending to round up Drambuie and ride him back home when this meeting was concluded.

I lit up a smoke and unhooked my pistol belt from the pommel and buckled it on as I watched a cloud pass between me and the sun. As one, the herd raised their heads from the grass and turned their attention skyward, their ears cocked forward in alarm. I reached for the rifle tucked in its scabbard and scanned the edge of the meadow for coyotes or whatever had put a spook in the animals. Seconds later, I heard the dull thrum of an aircraft engine dopplering closer and the silhouette of a helicopter drifted toward me from over the tops of the trees. The wash from the rotors flattened the grass near the pond where I had found Dub Naylor’s body, several hundred yards away. I pressed the butt of my cigarette into the wet soil and walked toward the descending chopper with my rifle held close against my chest.

The engine flared as the skids touched the ground and a door disengaged on the copilot’s side. It was a Bell UH-1, the type that had come to be known as a Huey, but this one had been painted a deep matte gray, nearly black, and bore no identifying marks of any kind whatsoever, not even numbers on the tail. I saw a man step down from the cockpit, hunch underneath the decelerating whirl of the blades, and jog toward where I stood with my back pressed against the rough bark of a conifer.

Rex Blackwood slid off the mirrored sunglasses he wore and grinned at me from under the brim of a faded ball cap with an STP logo patch stitched to the crown. The engines idled down to a dull throb and he reached into the pocket of a military field jacket and pulled out a handful of hard candy mints wrapped in cellophane and offered one to me.

“Want one?” he asked. “I woke up this morning and my mouth tasted like I ate a skunks ass.”

“Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with you?” I asked, and declined the candy.

“Every goddamn day.”

“Want to tell me what we’re doing out here?” I said. “And who that thing belongs to.”

“The bird?”

“Yes, the bird.”

“It belongs to the company I work for,” he said. “And the truth is, I’m not really supposed to be here, but there’s a few things I think you deserve to know.”

“The company you work for?”

“Small ‘c.’ I’m not with the Agency.”

I searched his face with renewed interest; Blackwood had slid into and out of my field of focus over the past several days, his behavior and dress like that of some kind of chameleon. Though I had no reason to trust what he’d just told me, his eyes held no trace of the moral vacuity I had come to associate with Company men.

“Here’s the deal, Dawson,” he said, gauging the doubt he had seen in my expression. “I work for a private organization that investigates anomalies.”

“Anomalies,” I repeated.

“Weird shit that crops up out of the blue. Some call them ‘Black Swan Events.’”

“I know what an anomaly is.”

His eyes squinted past me and he watched the horses graze in the meadow. “Thing is, you’ve been smack in the center of one. You were set up to fail, but you didn’t.”

“I am aware of that now,” I said. “Who set me up?”

“You already know the answer.”

“Say the name.”

“The late Sheriff Lloyd Skadden.”

“And what do you know about a fugitive biker with a face that looks like a pockmarked rabbit? He acquired three holes in the back of his head in a shitbag motel room in Idaho.”

“I heard about that.”

“And the cash he was carrying?”

“I don’t involve myself in that sort of work,” Blackwood said, taking his eyes off the horses and turning them back on me. “Let’s take a ride.”

I had heard stories of Vietcong prisoners of war being interrogated at high altitudes and shoved out the cargo doors of choppers that looked much like the one that was now parked in my pasture.

“I can see the wheels turning in your head, Mr. Dawson. I don’t participate in the kinds of things you’re considering right now. Not anymore.”

“Odin gave an eye for the acquisition of knowledge.”

Blackwood smiled again, rocked back on his heels, and looked down at the toes of his boots.

“I like that you have an appreciation of mythology,” he said. “But I’m not asking the payment of any kind of toll. Bring your sidearm with you if it makes you feel any better. And you can sit in the backseat so there’s nobody behind you.”

He started to walk toward the chopper, but I remained planted where I stood. After a few steps he looked at me over his shoulder.

“I don’t have much time, Dawson,” he said. “Like I told you before, I’m not supposed to be here at all.”

Blackwood strapped himself into the copilot’s seat, and I took the one directly behind the pilot, diagonal to Blackwood so I could keep an eye on him. Like its exterior, the interior of the chopper had been modified for paramilitary use, and had been outfitted with two rows of plush leather passenger seats. The cargo bay, however, was arrayed with electronic equipment and drop-down net seating and gear hooks that could easily accommodate a tactical team and mission materiel.

“Put those cans on your ears,” Blackwood said as he slipped a pair of headphones over the crown of his ball cap. He pulled down a small L-shaped arm from one of the earpieces and positioned a small microphone in front of his lips.

“Speak into the mic there on the side,” he added. “It can get pretty noisy in here.”

The pilot spun up the rotors and we rose from the ground and peeled off at a sickening angle. I looked down through the plexiglass window and watched as we passed over the fence line that had so recently been ploughed over and repaired at least twice that I knew of. A few minutes later I recognized the blackened circle of ash where I had stumbled upon the remains of one my strays when riding out here with Peter and Sly.

The pilot swung a wide half-circle over the sheer canyon walls and dipped down low over the alluvial rock fan that I had previously only seen from ground level. He slowed as we turned toward the narrow mouth of the crevasse and hovered momentarily before we moved into the shadows.

“Do you know this place?” Blackwood asked. His voice sounded tinny and distant inside my headphones.

“I’ve only been here once before.”

“What did you see?”

“I can’t really say for sure,” I said. “It looked like a building. A fairly large metal building.”

Blackwood nodded and gestured up into the gorge. The pilot swung sideways so I could get a better view out my window.

“What do you see now?”

I placed a hand across my brow as a shield from the glare and squinted into the deep shade.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

“Take a look down below us,” Blackwood said.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Not even one scrap of rubbish or animal sign. No tire tracks. No sign of habitation at all. For a place where you claim a building once stood, that’s kind of strange, wouldn’t you say?”

The pilot gained altitude and swung southward, in the direction of my house and my ranch. He moved swiftly and high enough so the noise of the engine would be minimized at ground level. The pilot traced a circle over the Corcoran place and we followed the fence that marked off the border between the BLM land and the Diamond D. We flew more slowly as we headed in a generally northern direction and Blackwood swiveled to face me again.

“I want you to look down and make a mental note as to where you found the remains of your cattle,” he said. “Tell me if you notice a pattern.”

About ten minutes later, we returned to the North Camp where the pilot set the chopper down in the grass. Blackwood made a circling gesture with his index finger, removed his headphones, opened his door, and got out. I did the same on my side, ducked low under the rotors, and we both jogged back to the tree line.

“Every one of the carcasses was within twenty or so feet of my fence.”

Blackwood nodded.

“I would suspect that if you marked their positions on a map,” he said. “You’d find that they run in a line, straight up the same longitude.”

I wasn’t grasping his point, but the message was clear. This was obviously neither a rustling nor a random occurrence.

“I don’t take your meaning,” I admitted.

“I need to tell you a story,” he said.