Cheatgrass

by Bart Paul

  I stood there like a kid.

  “Well?” she said.

  I started up the steps after her. I paused half a second when I saw one of the magpies lying dead in the dirt by a hops vine that was just leafing out over the porch. I took the last two steps and Sarah slipped her arm around my waist, leaned on me and walked me inside. She started to cry again. Telling her about the poisoned bird could wait until morning, but I’d have to keep my eye on the pup.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When I wake up in the middle of the night, I usually know within a few minutes what time it is. I don’t know how that works, but I just lie there a minute and then I know. Most nights I’m pretty close. That night was no different when I woke up a little before one. Sarah had taken me down the hallway to her room just like I pictured her doing when I was a teenager. And the way she looked and how she felt was just the way I remembered her when I’d wake up in some cave or sewer or barracks in a place like Jalalabad or Kandahar or even Columbus, Georgia. I’d try to conjure her image, then, or remember how she felt or her scent from those couple of months we’d had together. Of course, in Jalalabad, that was after I’d figured exactly what hour of the night it was, Zulu time.

  Now I slipped out without waking her and pulled on my jeans and went out to the living room. In her schoolgirl bed we hadn’t talked, but I still felt like I was taking advantage of her on the worst night of her life. After, she’d basically just cried herself to sleep, holding me hard.

  I found my jacket, then poked around in the half dark and located the bottle of Jim Beam in the kitchen and built myself another drink. The pup was outside in his run for the night and I didn’t want to stir him up, so I left the lights off. He was a pretty nice pup but didn’t seem real bonded to Sarah as he probably missed Dave. The yard light by the barn made it bright enough in the living room to see things pretty clear. I sat on the couch and thought that another reason to keep the lights off inside was to not make a target for Kip or his honyocker pals if they were out there in the dark, but I knew they wouldn’t be. Kip had made his first strike, then put his cards on the table, showing us what he had and what he had done, and was likely pretty proud of it. Now he’d be putting some distance between us, though not in that new Ram as it’d be too easy to spot. He’d hunker down somewhere to see how we’d react and probably be just as excited as hell, even though he’d need to plan his next play. If he shot us now, the chase would be over too soon and what fun would that be? Jim Beam wasn’t my usual, but I liked the glow.

  I sat in the half-light for a long time. I pulled my skinning knife, rolling it around in my fingers, feeling the hard sharpness of the blade, the nice roughness of the brass-riveted stag handle, finding comfort in it all and not really thinking about where it had been or who it had killed before it ever found its way to me. I thought about dinner here at the Cathcarts’ with Mom and Dad one time when I was twelve and Sarah was in high school. I told myself I’d be in love with her just about forever if only I was a few years older—or if I had a truck. Pretty soon she’d broke my heart dozens of times—every time she’d show up with some new ski instructor or college professor or pilot or mountain climbing guide. At least she never brought any of those bastards into that bedroom. Dave wouldn’t have stood for it. That’s what I told myself, anyway. When I got out of her bed tonight in the dark and looked down at her asleep, I made a promise that I’d never let myself be away from her again, but that was an idea fit for a twelve-year-old, too. I looked at the table where Dave’s breakfast had been set out a few mornings earlier, and where Dad’s rifle lay in the scabbard instead. She and I both had other worries now.

  I set down my drink, sheathed my knife, and took the rifle and walked outside barefoot, picking my footing in the yard light. At the barn I flipped off the switch and let the dark settle over the yard. I stood out there in the late spring cold, measuring the distances of the black shapes of the buildings, trees and fences, then walking back to the house over the rocky ground. I sat back in the living room and texted my Marine buddy at Pendleton again. Then I texted Captain Cruz that there’d been a family emergency and I might be gone longer than I’d figured, and might have to get my leave extended. She sent a WTF??? right back to me. It was 04:23 hours in Fort Benning, and Ofelia was still wide awake and ready to spit in your eye. What a wild woman. She sent another text right after the first. Be true, Lover. Even sending a text to her now made me feel like I was sneaking around behind Sarah’s back. I tossed off the last of my drink and slipped back into her bed.

  “My boss wants to know when you’re gonna release that body,” Roger Parrott said. “That guy was killed in Douglas County.”

  “He was found in your jurisdiction,” Fuchs said. “Where he was killed, when and how he was killed—yet to be determined.”

  We were sitting around a table at the Frémont County Sheriff’s office. It was ten in the morning, and the fluorescent lights in the interview room were giving me a whiskey headache. Sarah and I had had a quick word with Fuchs before we’d gone inside. I’d let him read a text on my phone from the guy at Pendleton.

  “The identity of the deceased hasn’t been confirmed either,” Fuchs said. “We should be getting word later today.”

  “Jeeso,” Mitch said, “it’s pretty dang obvious it’s Dave.”

  I reached toward the middle of the table and picked up the note we found on Sarah’s bed. It was in an evidence bag, but they’d all read it and had an opinion.

  “Let’s get back to Isringhausen,” Fuchs said. I handed him the note and he held it up. “He obviously is a player in the disappearance of Dave Cathcart—or wants us to think he is. What do we know about him?”

  “He’s a real well-liked guy around here,” Mitch said. “Doing a lot of good for our vets.”

  “He didn’t mean that as a real question, boss,” Jack said.

  Fuchs opened a file on the table and started to read.

  “From fingerprints we know that his real name—or one of them—is Kevin Ingles. He went to school in Santa Barbara, California, not Kingsburg in Fresno County. I’m waiting for more specifics from Santa Barbara PD and Sheriffs on his criminal history, which apparently was substantial. As Kevin Ingles he got an Other Than Honorable discharge from the Marine Corps six years ago. He’d set his Camp Pendleton barracks on fire cooking meth in the head about two o’clock one morning. He was three months out of boot camp at the San Diego Recruit Depot, and both he and half the barracks suffered substantial burns.”

  I caught Sarah giving me a glance.

  “He’d been selling the stuff on base and in Oceanside bars,” Fuchs said. “He could have done some real time in the brig, but with psych evaluations all over the map from an abusive childhood and a history of violence going back to Santa Barbara High, the Corps just wanted him gone.”

  “I think we’re totally taking our eye off the pot farm and known actors like Jedediah Boone,” Mitch said.

  “That drug operation’s not even in your jurisdiction, Sheriff,” Roger said. “Just sayin’.”

  “Let’s stick with Dave Cathcart’s disappearance and Kevin Ingles’s possible role in it,” Fuchs said. He looked from Roger to Mitch to Jack. “Just think of me as a facilitator here.”

  “Like we got any choice,” Roger said.

  “As to his bank records,” Fuchs said. “As Isringhausen, he had an account for his five-oh-one-C-three. Jobs-for-vets. That account was cleaned out yesterday afternoon.”

  “How much we talking?” Mitch said.

  “Just under a hundred thousand,” Fuchs said.

  “Dang,” Mitch said. “That boy raised some coin.”

  “He didn’t raise anything,” Fuchs said. “We think there’s a chance he used that nonprofit to launder drug money.”

  “What about his trailer business?” Mitch said. “He made major bank selling that puppy. Guy’s a respectable businessman.”

  “Tule Lake Trailers has never been sold,” Fuchs said, “and the ow
ners never heard of Kip Isringhausen or Kevin Ingles.”

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Mitch said.

  “So, Sarah,” Fuchs said. “Why do you think he emptied that account and not his joint account with your father?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Too small to trifle with?”

  “Tommy?” Fuchs said.

  “He kept it open on the outside chance he could get that water money flowing.”

  “Oh, please,” Mitch said. “Why is this civilian even here?”

  “Because Deputy Cathcart values his input,” Fuchs said.

  Mitch started to say something crass, then didn’t.

  “I think this note is pretty clear that your husband felt betrayed by your father and reacted violently,” Fuchs said. He looked over at me. “Any thoughts on Kip’s next move, Tommy?”

  “Torment or rampage. He’ll either lay low and mess with Sarah in little ways without exposing himself, then move on so he don’t get caught. Or he’ll go balls out—show us what a sick badass he really is.”

  “What do you mean, little ways?” Mitch said.

  I got up and went out to the squad room. I’d left a trash bag on an empty desk to give to Fuchs. I took it back to the interview room and pulled the dog dish out of the bag and set it in front of Mitch. It smelled pretty rank.

  “Torment—like poisoning Dave’s dog. I brought this in so it could get tested.”

  “God, that stinks,” Mitch said.

  “What if it’s torment and rampage?” Fuchs said.

  “Then he’ll let us know.”

  When we’d beat every lead to death, I drove Dan’s rig out to his ranch with Sarah following in her truck. I’d left the trash bag on the table. Mitch could lick that dog dish for all I cared.

  Word about the burned body had spread all over. Becky Tyree was red-eyed but didn’t talk much. She and Sarah just hugged and cried like there was nothing left to say and nothing to do but be strong and carry on, so we got on out of there after promising to come back for dinner in a day or two.

  Back up at Rickey Junction, I helped Sarah make spaghetti for an early supper. When we’d cleaned up the dishes she dragged me off to bed.

  “I had to think Dad was still alive,” she said. “I tried to hang on to that.”

  We were lying there together in the dark and her skin was hot as a stove lid, but right then all she wanted to do was talk.

  “What’ll he do next, you think?” she said.

  “If it’s just a game to him, he’ll tease us with clues and taunts to keep you scared. If it’s a full-on rampage, he’ll pull something big.”

  “It’s that second one that I’m afraid of,” she said.

  “I’m semi-afraid it’s probably both.”

  She rolled up on an elbow and stared down at my face just grim as death.

  “I still love you, you bastard,” she said. “I wish I didn’t, but there you have it.”

  It was another long while before we fell off to sleep.

  I was lying awake under her about five thirty the next morning when we got our answer. The big explosion sounded like it was right in the barnyard and it knocked Sarah clean off me and almost out of bed. We were both up grabbing for our clothes within seconds and out the door in a couple of seconds more with that huge boom ringing in our ears. Off to the west by the Reno Highway we could see a mess of black smoke with orange flame through the trees. Sarah floored her pickup as I yanked the .270 from the scabbard and checked the magazine. She turned off the lane and flew up the highway toward the explosion. It was pretty clear it was at the Marine housing unit. When we got within a couple hundred feet of the drive, we could see folks running and vehicles backing and turning, then hear the shouts and screams. I saw a secondary blast as a truck caught fire and the gas tank went. Sarah turned up the drive into that mess, and we could see the smoke and flame coming from behind Burt and Mom’s apartment, and from where the big propane tank for that part of the complex had sat. There was no trace of that tank now. Other apartments south of Burt’s were on fire as well. The truck that had just blown was a Tundra, and I could see messed up bodies on the ground as Sarah hit the brakes and we jumped out. One of the bodies was Eddie, the young Marine packer, and he wasn’t moving. Sarah buckled on her service belt and jerked her pistol. Other people on the drive staggered around or just lay there shocked. One was a woman in a bathrobe next to a burning BMW. It was Mom. She was on the pavement in front of her place, trying to raise herself up with one arm mangled and blood pouring into her eyes. Then from out of the smoke an old gray-primered Pontiac GTO came blasting down the hill heading for a highway getaway, and I saw Burt pop up out of nowhere. He was standing over Mom with one lens of his glasses shattered. He was shouting like some hellhound and blasting away at the GTO with an AR-15. Burt’s rounds just peppered that car as it headed right for us with the driver shooting back at Burt out the window with a pistol. Since Burt had found his target, I wasn’t going to second-guess him. The old feeling came back fast and I didn’t think about it. I locked eyes with Jedediah through the windshield and steadied the Remington. Instead of putting one in his brain, I took out a front tire on the GTO and watched it swerve. Sarah braced herself against her truck and got off a couple of rounds, then we both jumped back and watched that GTO zip by us sideways and smash into a Subaru parked in front of the Marine Mart. Jedediah half-stumbled out of the Pontiac with automatics in both fists, close enough for me to read the tattoo on his neck. Burt took a knee and cut Jed down like he was still nineteen and back at the Kuwait City airport with one of Saddam’s Republican Guards in his sights.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sarah and I ran up to Mom. Burt had already dragged her away from the flames and was holding her, crying and calling her his baby girl. Sarah put pressure on Mom’s scalp wound to slow down the bleeding, and I squeezed her hand, scared as hell even though I knew she’d be okay. Scalp wounds are just like that. Mom was crying as she watched an MP twenty feet away cover Eddie’s body.

  “That poor boy,” she said. She said it over and over until some EMTs from the volunteer fire station piled out of their ambulance and tended to her. A second ambulance pulled up, then a California Highway Patrol cruiser, then a fire truck.

  Sarah and I stood with Burt as they worked on Mom.

  “Well,” Sarah said, “I guess we got our answer.” She was teary and breathing hard. She knew what all this meant.

  Burt looked down the drive to the guy he’d shot. An EMT checked the body with the dark blood-blossoms on the bright white tee shirt, then moved on to someone who wasn’t past help.

  “Who was that bastard?” Burt said. Other than the broken lens on his glasses, he didn’t have a mark on him.

  “Jedediah Boone,” Sarah said. “I think he was in the pot business with my husband.”

  “Well, Jesus H. Christ,” Burt said.

  We stayed with Mom until the Care Flight chopper landed and they loaded her up for the trip to Reno. Burt told us he’d meet us at the hospital after he’d gone to the base up by Sonora Pass to check in and give a report. I talked my way past volunteer firefighters and located my travel bag in Burt’s half-burned apartment. Sarah and I started back to the ranch as the housing unit was getting locked down by base MPs. The first FBI personnel drove in as we drove out. They had their vests and ballcaps on and were armed to the nuts, but I didn’t see Fuchs among them. A mess like this at government personnel housing might have looked like a foreign terror deal if they didn’t know about Kip, but for us his plan was terror just the same.

  We drove down to the ranch, showered up, fed the dog, and walked out to Sarah’s truck. I looked up at the lone cottonwood streaked with buzzard shit. The black vultures had vanished, gone to wherever black vultures go. I got into the Silverado without a word and we headed to Reno.

  At the hospital, Mom was already out of the ER and checked into a room on the second floor off intensive care. Her head was wrapped and her arm was in a sling.
She’d seen me in a lot of hospitals in the past few years but never the other way around.

  “I’m so glad Burt wasn’t hurt,” she said. “I don’t think I could have stood it.”

  “He’s a good man, Ma.”

  She reached out with her good arm and squeezed my hand.

  “Remind me never to sass you in front of him, though. That old boy can shoot.”

  Mom was drugged up and starting to fret about Dave, then about Eddie, then about her BMW. If my Mustang had been in California, I’d have signed it over to her right then and there.

  I was easing Sarah toward the door when we heard spurs out in the hall. It was Becky Tyree and Harvey’s wife, May. They’d been gathering some cows and calves with Harvey and Dan down in Piute Meadows for a branding that morning when they heard about the explosion. Sarah and I waited a bit in the hall so they could be with Mom a while. Becky came out in a few minutes.

  “My god,” she said, “I’ve seen a lot of terrible things over the years, but this is worse than anything I could have imagined.” She put her arm around Sarah. “You can stay with us anytime, you know, darlin’. Both of you. Just say the word.”

  “I’ll just stay at Dad’s,” Sarah said. “With Tommy.”

  She got a text from Fuchs, who said he was in the cafeteria. We said good-bye to Becky and walked out to the elevator. Fuchs was waiting for us with a coffee in his hand.

  “You two had breakfast?” he said.

  We got trays, and the three of us loaded them up and sat at a table in orange plastic chairs.

  “We’ve got some autopsy results,” he said. “The body in your dad’s truck wasn’t his. It was Hoyt Berglund.”

  Sarah took a breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  “He was probably killed night before last. As there wasn’t much left of him, our team estimated time of death from the burn rate of the truck and tires, how long it takes things to melt, what shape they were in, that sort of thing. There were indicators in the cab that Berglund was alive when the fire started and that he was shot later—maybe as it burned. His face had been smashed in pretty bad before the fire or the gunshot. Jack Harney told me of a similar facial injury to that drug associate of Boone’s named Ragazino.”