Shadows of Death

by David Sundstrand

  In less than four weeks, the Sand Canyon Game Reserve would be open for business. No matter what happened to him, he would have made his mark. They would know of his work, and if all went well, John and the others would be his legacy.

  4

  •

  Rangers and agents filed back into the conference room, the damp sweat of their clothes making them shiver in the chill of an overactive air conditioner. Novak had manfully polished off one of Ralph’s Super Burritos with salsa verde, apparently with no ill effect. Ellis clearly wasn’t so fortunate. His handsome face was grim with dyspepsia. Frank was feeling a bit mean for having assured the pilgrim agents that Ralph’s sauce was a tasty aphrodisiac.

  “For men only!” Frank winked at Ralph’s smiling face, tombstone teeth set in a field of blackened stubble.

  Ellis had gone for the challenge. Macho is as macho does. Now pride was paying the price. Petty revenge was better than no revenge at all.

  Dave Meecham cleared his throat. “So here’s where we are. The killer took out two victims, both males in their thirties. Apparently they were shooting burros, just for the fun of it. No help from the autopsy report, but pretty obviously they died from gunshot wounds. The spent casing indicates a .270. Evidently the killer figured that someone would find the shell casing, because he left a note. Finally, Frank thinks he was tall, well over six feet.”

  “And that he just walked away from the scene,” Ellis added.

  “It’s a working theory,” Meecham responded.

  Silence settled over the group. Meecham looked at the inert bodies, dulled and lethargic from lunch. They should have just stayed until they finished up. He knew better than to take a lunch break, but he’d been striving to be hospitable, especially after Frank’s coyote mouth.

  Novak shuffled his papers in preparation to leave.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Meecham said.

  Novak spread his hands in inquiry. Ellis glanced out the window.

  “Quid pro quo.” Frank addressed Novak.

  “What?” Ellis’s head snapped around.

  “Favor for favor. We showed you ours,” Meecham replied.

  Novak shrugged and settled back in his chair. “So what do you want to know?”

  “What makes you think the killings are tied to these MDG animal rights terrorists?” Meecham queried.

  Frank shook his head and mumbled something about an oxymoron.

  “Pardon?” Ellis squinted at Frank.

  “ ‘Animal rights terrorists’ sounds like a contradiction in terms, that’s all.”

  Ellis looked over at Meecham. “You’re hooked up to the Web, right?”

  “All the modern conveniences.”

  They wedged themselves around Meecham’s desk.

  “Punch up Google and type in MDG,” Novak said.

  Meecham watched the screen. “Take a look at this.”

  Frank leaned forward to get a better view of the screen. MDG in large bold script headed the page. Under the heading, a banner read WE HUNT THE SCUM OF THE EARTH, GENERAL ZAROV. The rest of the Web site contained various tabs and photos (click to enlarge) that clarified beyond a doubt that members of the MDG were not only being encouraged to hunt human beings but were, in fact, successful in this endeavor, if the photographs were to be believed.

  “My God.” Meecham whistled under his breath. “Looks like they’re killing folks all over the country.” He looked up. “How come we haven’t heard anything about this?”

  “The lipless corpse in Long Beach and the men killed here in the Mojave are the only confirmed victims firmly linked to the MDG organization with notes specifically left by the killer or killers. We haven’t been able to track down all the photos, but we know two were definitely hunting accidents. Some were reported as accidents, but we’re not so sure. Your victims are our first direct link since the killing in Long Beach.”

  Meecham scrolled down. Under the heading IMPROVING THE GENE POOL, there were newspaper clippings devoted to hunting accidents, followed by editorial comment. A deer hunter in South Carolina had dropped his rifle from a hunting blind in a tree. The rifle had discharged and struck the hunter in the buttocks. A brief commentary under the caption ASSHOLE SHOOTS ASSHOLE added an explanatory note that the Gutless Wonder (the term reserved for hunters who shot at domesticated game) was taking an original step to bringing about an end to prostate problems. Another accident the site editor found particularly amusing occurred when a wife managed to remove most of her husband’s penis with a twelve-gauge shotgun while hunting pheasant on a “private preserve” in Nebraska. The caption here read POST-INFANT CIRCUMCISION PROVES PAINFUL.

  “Why do you think this killer has anything to do with MDG? Where’s the connection?” Frank asked, his voice subdued.

  “Click on the Zarov Awards button,” Ellis directed.

  Three small photos filled the left-hand portion of the screen with text on the right. Each segment, photo plus text, was under the name of a state.

  “Hit California.”

  A photograph of a red Jeep Wrangler filled a third of the screen. A man leaned out of the driver’s side at an unnatural angle. A large portion of his head appeared to be missing. A second man lay against the right front wheel. The text was concise:

  A DOUBLE ZAROV AWARD TO THE SANDMAN! THIS

  IS A FIRST! These Gutless Wonders were taken at 300

  yards with a .270 using a factory load with 130-grain silver

  tip. Good shooting, Sandman!

  “These your dead guys?” Novak asked.

  Frank nodded. “Looks like it, at least from what the Inyo sheriff’s people said.”

  “This organization sponsors terror,” Ellis said, staring at Frank.

  “Can’t you trace the site, the photos?” Meecham inquired.

  Ellis thumbed through his notes. “According to our tech people, the terrorists are computer smart.” He looked up from his notebook. “They borrow wireless signals and IP addresses. They drive around until they find a hot spot, and then they have access to the Net without leaving a trace.”

  Frank was thinking about deer season. An increase in hunting accidents seemed more than likely. Some of them might not be accidents. The killers would be dressed like deer hunters and pack high-powered rifles like deer hunters. Licensed to hunt, only they wouldn’t be hunting deer.

  “Anything you can do to help us catch these folks will save lives.” Novak looked from Meecham to Frank. “We’ve been checking military records trying to track down this General Zarov. So far, no leads. We think he might be a Russian expatriate who’s building an organization, but we need eyes and ears in the field, experienced eyes and ears. That’s where the BLM comes in.”

  “It will be a top priority with this office. You can count on it,” Meecham said.

  Frank nodded and directed his next remark to Ellis. “You’re right about General Zarov being an expatriate.”

  Ellis smirked. “What makes you think so?”

  “General Zarov is a character in a short story by Richard Connell.”

  “What?”

  “Only it’s spelled Z-A-R-O-F-F, not with an O-V. In the story, he’s a Russian expatriate who retires to an island because he’s bored with hunting animals, too easy. So he decides to hunt human beings—because they can think.”

  They were all staring at Frank.

  “Animals that can think are the most dangerous game. That’s the name of the story.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Novak continued to stare at Frank.

  “I think MDG stands for ‘Most Dangerous Game.’ ” Frank looked at Ellis. “Think about it. The MDG gave their shooter a double Zarov Award for two dead Gutless Wonders. I think they’ve read the story.” Frank looked from Novak to Ellis. “I think they’ve been playing with you.” Then he added as an afterthought, “If you guys know any deer hunters, I’d tell ’em to skip the fall season.”

  •

  “How come you know about General Zaroff and ‘
The Most Dangerous Game’?” Meecham leaned back from his desk, looking at Frank.

  “I majored in American studies, remember. All that time wasted reading history and literature.” Frank grinned. “Anyway, Connell’s story is pretty well known. They keep making bad movies of it set in different locales and time periods, but it always turns on someone or something hunting human beings. So college wasn’t a complete waste of time after all.”

  “Un-huh.” Meecham looked at Frank from under sandy eyebrows. “All right. I’ll start on War and Peace tomorrow.” He sat forward in his chair and grinned. “This time we looked a bit better—but no more coyote stuff.”

  5

  •

  Frank topped the rise at the head of Grapevine Canyon. He was on duty, so he was driving an official BLM vehicle, a lumbering Ford Expedition, not his favorite, but Dave Meecham had been very specific about not using private vehicles on duty. Frank was the principal offender because he preferred driving his restored ’53 five-window Chevy pickup truck. Even Spartans had their vanities.

  Four thousand feet below him, the floor of the Saline Valley stretched to the north, white and windswept. The descent into the valley followed a washboard road from the pinyon pines at the higher elevations to the mud-caked floor of the ancient lakebed. It would have been one of nature’s tourist spots had it not been in such close proximity to Death Valley. To everyone except the hardy few, the Saline was just a hot hole in the ground. Fame had passed it by and saved it from paved roads and busloads of gaping tourists.

  The SUV jounced over the bumps, jolting Frank’s anger into flashes of rage. Ordinarily he would have stopped to look at the view over the valley below, but not today. Gore caked his arms and hands, despite his best efforts to sponge it off with his ruined shirt. The metal detector had been a good idea, but digging the spent bullets out of the dead burro carcasses had been all but impossible. After rooting around in decaying flesh and organs, all he’d managed to do was cover himself with rot. He stank of death. More important, he didn’t have a bullet to send to the federal forensics lab in Ashland, Oregon. The FBI wanted their killer. He wanted the poachers. It was something he could do something about.

  The heavy SUV was barely under control as it lurched down the washboard road. He’d either have to slow down or risk damaging government property. He backed off, letting the vehicle jounce to a stop where a small spring crossed the road and disappeared into the canyon below. He switched off the ignition and listened to the ticking of the hot engine. Pinyon jays slipped silently from tree to tree. A file of chukar scurried along the side of the hill into the brush.

  He was on his way to talk to Zeke Tucker, the man who scared people. Tucker lived in the heart of the Saline Valley in a corrugated iron single-wide. His tin home was perched on a shelf above the wash coming from Hunter Canyon. The Hunter Canyon spring was year-round, fed by snowmelt from the Inyo Mountains, a desert surprise that not many people saw. They had to get past Tucker.

  Zeke Tucker was anything but friendly. He’d fashioned a miniature billboard from a four-by-eight piece of plywood that bore two words, KEEP OUT, and set it up at the edge of his property where the dirt track led to his dwelling. It was the only thing on his property that received fresh paint. From time to time, one of the rangers, usually Frank, paid Tucker a visit to caution him about brandishing his shotgun at weekenders.

  Tucker came into town every couple of months for supplies—and some serious drinking. His visits to the Lone Pine Inn sent ripples through the drinking community. He ambled into town from the desert like an Old Testament prophet. His hair and beard, an uncut tangle of brown and gray, bushed away from a huge head set atop a six-foot-five-inch frame, but it was the mismatched eyes, one glittering blue, the other a muddy hazel, that caused most people to avert their gaze. In the summer, he wore a sleeveless Levi’s jacket, minus the buttons, exposing expanses of hairy flesh. In the winter, he covered the jacket with a down parka. Jacket, parka, and jeans seemed to adhere to his body like a second skin rather than clothing.

  In the wintertime, he smelled. You would think it would be the other way around, that he would stink in the summer, but the parka and the cold seemed to keep the odor in until he entered the confines of a warm space, where it oozed into the air, a rich stench of sweat, body oils, and dung. Then you could tell that he lived his life around animals and that he lived alone.

  On his occasional trips to town, it was Tucker’s habit to fling open the door of the Lone Pine Inn just at noon as the tavern opened. Then he and his canine companion, Jack-the-dog, claimed their place at the corner of the bar closest to the door. Here he sat drinking beer after beer until last call at two in the morning. He offered no word of greeting nor response to inquiries into the state of his health.

  Now and then, some passerby, unfamiliar with Tucker’s rules, or emboldened by Dutch courage, would try to engage him in conversation. “How’re you doing there, big fella?” This caused Tucker to let his gaze fall full on the hapless stranger, the blue eye brighter than the hazel one, until the speaker faltered into silence.

  The bartender, Dotty Hollander, had been assuring people for years that “Zeke’s okay, just a loner. That’s all. Leave him alone, he’ll leave you alone.” In fact, she wasn’t quite sure herself. Her “Zeke’s okay” routine was as much to reassure herself as the others. Tucker was definitely a bit strange—and very big. There was an aura of unpredictability about him. It made people nervous; it made Dotty nervous, so she bent the rules. Zeke’s dog, Jack, came with Zeke.

  Jack, an Australian shepherd, had mismatched eyes like his owner, one blue, the other hazel. Jack’s hazel eye had a white spot, which some said, not in Tucker’s hearing, made it possible to distinguish dog from master. He followed Tucker into the bar, taking his place at his master’s feet with a contented sigh.

  Jack was considerably more responsive to conversation than his human companion and thumped his tail when words came his way. Occasionally Tucker would accommodate Jack’s urge to be social, especially when someone offered the dog a bite of leftover sandwich. Tucker would nod his dusty mane at the dog. “Okay, Jack.” Then Jack would rise and take the food gently in his mouth, slowly wagging his tail in appreciation. People found Jack reassuring.

  “Hey, Mr. Tucker.” Frank hailed the trailer from the sign that marked the limit of Tucker’s territory. He knew that the owner had seen his dust plume for the last twenty minutes, watching Frank’s truck make its way up the steep ruts that led to the cluster of shacks, outbuildings, and fences that made up Tucker’s place. He waited.

  “It’s mighty thirsty out here, Mr. Tucker.” It was a matter of desert etiquette to share water with the thirsty. Plastic jugs of water were spaced along the Saline Valley Road where it crossed the playa, put there by the people who lived up the faint tracks leading back into the hills. Water was life.

  Frank watched Tucker’s angular mass stoop through a low door in a shed next to a pen of goats. Tucker stood glaring over at the truck, and then, as if having made up his mind, he began taking giant strides to the trailer, moving at a clip that would require an ordinary person to break into a trot. He stretched out a long arm, finger pointed in the direction of the shade porch he’d constructed of scrap lumber and canvas next to the single-wide. Frank got out of the truck and headed for the porch. He was careful to close the inner and outer gates behind him. That, too, was a matter of etiquette.

  “Did you see the dead burros up the head of Grapevine Canyon, Mr. Tucker?” With Tucker, small talk was a waste of time. Jack-the-dog rose in greeting, tongue lolling in the heat.

  Tucker nodded his head and fixed Frank with an intent look. The blue eye gleamed with an inner light.

  “See anyone around?” Frank persisted.

  Tucker turned away from Frank and spat a brown stream into the dirt, where it rolled across the dust like a legless bug. He shook his head.

  “This makes four, Mr. Tucker, four that I know of. All within five miles of Gra
pevine Canyon. Somebody’s still going up there and killing burros. Your place is a long way off, but it’s the closest.” Frank waited, hoping in vain the hermit would offer something. The bleating of the goats filled the silence. “You see anything at all?”

  Tucker squinted one eye shut and tilted his head in thought. He turned abruptly and headed toward the goat pens. He whipped his head back. “Porch, Jack.”

  Frank hurried after him, feeling foolish at having to half run to keep up. Tucker stooped his frame through the door to the shed. Frank followed, bent forward, too close to Tucker’s back to see much in the dim light. The goats clustered around Tucker, pushing at him, bleating for food. He pushed them aside and waved Frank forward, pointing at a stall fashioned of plywood and scrap. Frank leaned over the low plywood side and peered into the gloom. A fuzzy gray shape lay in the dirty straw where it nuzzled against an ancient nanny goat. Frank felt his throat constrict with a rush of emotions: relief, sorrow, anger.

  He watched as the burro nursed, its head rhythmically moving with the effort, the nanny’s eyes glazed with timeless patience. In here, Tucker didn’t smell. Frank looked over at the angular giant, hairy arms resting atop the side of the stall.

  The man was an enigma. People were full of surprises: secret dreams, fears, and mysteries. It made him wonder what Tucker’s mystery was. The hermit moved in the world with solitary ease. What made him angry? Tucker made people afraid just by his presence, but he hadn’t hurt anyone, or threatened anyone, if you didn’t count the weekenders, and Frank didn’t. It was display, not anger. Tucker didn’t want visitors. Didn’t like people? Maybe that was it. He was a misanthrope. That was something Frank could understand.