Stray Narrow

by Jerusha Jones

  She laughed softly, but the acidic edge he’d come to expect was missing from her words. “I’m a woman of a certain age, with an attitude. I’m sure you noticed. I’ll be fine.”

  This whole scouting trip had always been a long shot, even from the very beginning—especially from the very beginning. He dialed Sheriff Marge’s number. She deserved to know that she might’ve, by proxy through him, made an ambitious enemy of the Franklin County sheriff. And she could get on the two scientists’ names quicker than he could while he was still on the road.

  “What’s happening?” he asked as soon as she answered.

  “Nothing. Zilch. Nada,” Sheriff Marge grumbled. “We’re all going stir-crazy, Meredith and Burke most of all. Pete’s about to pop an artery, trying to protect them without seeming to protect them. No one’s sleeping. Tell me you found something.”

  So he did.

  “Let’s hope you and your source are right,” Sheriff Marge replied. “There’ve been fourteen road-licensed vehicles stolen in Franklin, Benton, Yakima, Klickitat, Umatilla, Morrow, Gilliam, Sherman, Wasco, and Hood River counties since those two men put in an appearance at the Sills’ place on Monday night. I’m sending you an email with the list right now. I suspect they’re in one of those vehicles, since that’s their MO.”

  Owen noticed she hadn’t included Sockeye County in the list, which meant no vehicles had been reported stolen in his home county in the intervening days—not unusual. But she’d included all the bordering Oregon counties between Pasco and Platts Landing, meaning she thought the murderers might hop across state lines if it suited them. They’d done it before, presumably, when they’d strapped Del Mason to his office chair over in Arlington. They definitely knew the lay of the land.

  “Got it,” Owen confirmed. “You’re watching the bridges?” There were only five along that nearly 200-mile stretch of river, serving as man-made choke points for vehicle traffic.

  “The Oregon counties’ sheriffs’ departments are covering them on their side,” she said.

  Again, he drew a breath of relief. That meant the Franklin County sheriff wouldn’t be involved in that part of the operation. It’s not great to have a potential antagonist covering your rear. Depending on the personality of a sheriff, those elected officials could come to view their counties as big, sprawling fiefdoms. He was lucky to work for one who didn’t have an inflated ego.

  Sheriff Marge seemed to have read his mind, because she kept talking, “Don’t worry about old Ronnie. I know his wife pretty well. He’s not running for reelection next time around, so he’s not going to do something stupid and risk having a big mistake become his legacy. He’ll play by the rules, even if he doesn’t like it much.”

  “Would he warn off previous big campaign donors? Out of loyalty?” Owen queried.

  “What loyalty?” Sheriff Marge might’ve cackled a bit. “I’ll give Pearl a call, just in case. She wears the pants in that household, no matter who has the badge. Now get back here as quick as you can.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I was becoming complacent. I knew it, and that worried me almost more than the original threat. Because nothing was happening. Either the two men who had chased us out of our house had saintly amounts of patience (how would that even be possible?), or they’d taken off for parts unknown. I detested the ambiguity of our situation.

  I was just about out of publicly visible but not-very-approachable tasks to do around the museum, too. It was January, after all. The time when all reasonable people are at least semi-hibernating, leaving their houses only to do the necessary shopping and runs to take their kids somewhere or go to work. Only the most die-hard outdoor recreational enthusiasts and out-of-season hunters were traipsing about the countryside. People like Cassidy, I realized with a sickening knot in my stomach—the ones who owned cold-temperature mummy bags and Gore-Tex everything else.

  So it was with some reluctance that I’d mentioned to Burke at breakfast that our next project would be cleaning out the Imogene’s former kitchen garden and marking off new plots to plant in the spring. I’d been dreaming of doing this for some time. The problem was that the Big Slush had turned into the Big Muck as far as the garden was concerned. But it made sense to knock down the rotting gazebo while we were at it.

  I wondered when Burke had last gotten a tetanus shot. He hadn’t come with much verifiable provenance and definitely without an instruction manual. But he was keeping up a cheerfulness and a work ethic that endeared him to me and broke my heart at the same time. As though maybe he felt he needed to earn a spot in our family.

  Apparently sledgehammers and crowbars provide a delightful level of novelty for young boys. Burke’s face was flushed with exertion, and his eyes shone with enthusiasm. The support posts for the gazebo splintered easily under our thudding swings, and the roof lurched sideways before keeling over in what looked like a dead faint—an undramatic climax that was more about wormhole-riddled pith than proper deconstructive engineering on our part.

  In an hour, we had a nice pile of fragmented wood that would be useful only as kindling. But after the close call with an arson fire the past autumn, there was no way I would allow a bonfire. I’d hire Jim Carter to come out with his little front-loader and shift the gazebo’s remains into a dumpster—when the ground was firm enough to support the weight of his machinery.

  In the meantime, Burke and I could get a head start on those raised beds for vegetables, herbs and flowers. “Supply run,” I announced. “You’ll like this place. They have a pretty good candy aisle.”

  oOo

  There was something bugging him. Well, something bigger than all the other pressing problems racing through his mind. It had taken thirty miles for him to scratch through that mental cacophony and identify the irritant.

  Fourteen stolen cars in four days. Fourteen reported stolen cars in four days. But there were more—there had to be. The farms in all these rural counties often had extra vehicles scattered on their land, specifically for field use. In winter, it might take weeks, or even months, before a truck that’d been parked behind a barn would be noticed as missing. Plus there were the parking lots at the little regional airports where a vehicle might’ve been intentionally left for a stretch of time. Hikers parked at trail heads and disappeared for days, fully expecting their cars to still be there when they returned.

  The murderers would have a lot of vehicles to choose from. Or they might even use their own personal vehicles—if they estimated they had a good chance of success for a second attempt on Burke.

  So, just pulling a number out of the air, Owen assumed the possible list of vehicles to be on the lookout for would be two, even three, times that original fourteen. Too many to be effective at watching for, especially when you didn’t know which ones they were. And if the killers were smart, they wouldn’t choose an Acura this time. He considered that to have been a major slip in their clever planning.

  He’d watch for the vehicles on the list—of course he would. It was the best he and his fellow deputies could do.

  But the truth was, those guys could be anywhere. He’d feel better if he could eliminate some places where they weren’t. He skidded into the parking lot at the base of Beacon Rock—he needed to use the facilities anyway, stretch his legs, place a call or two.

  Sheriff Marge hadn’t asked the Benton County sheriff to go out to Truitt BotoTechnologies and nose around. Because she couldn’t—not based on what little evidence they had. Reasonably, the connections Owen had winkled out of Charlotte couldn’t even be called evidence. They wouldn’t be able to get a search warrant for the property or an arrest warrant for Truitt or Herren based on one grainy photo and Charlotte’s speculative assumption, which was itself based on her impression of artist sketches. The chain linking the men and events wasn’t strong enough to persuade a judge.

  Which is where social engineering came into play. Maybe. He’d never done it before, but he’d taken a course on the few related laws and huge, currently un
legislated, gray areas surrounding it.

  Owen blew out a big breath and punched in the number for Truitt BotoTechnologies. Who knew—maybe Truitt himself would answer the phone and put the kibosh on all these wild assumptions.

  But no, it was the chirpy voice of a young female in a greeting she must repeat a hundred times a day. She mashed the name of the lab together so fast, he wouldn’t have recognized the rapid-fire words if he wasn’t already aware of the number he’d dialed.

  “Can I speak with Gordy?” Owen asked, keeping his tone light and hoping madly that Truitt’s friends used that nickname for him. In the back of his mind, he was quickly slinging together some ambiguous backstory that he could call upon and that also wouldn’t be an outright lie.

  But the perky receptionist made all his conniving unnecessary. “Nope, sorry. They’re gone again.”

  “They?” And Again? he wanted to ask, but thought it prudent to keep to one question at a time.

  “Dr. Truitt and Dr. Herren.” Her tone had deepened, become a bit wary.

  “Rats. Are they at the conference out in Omaha?” Owen snatched a major Midwestern city out of a handful of choices. He’d never been there, but he hoped it sounded realistic.

  “No,” she said slowly. “Backpacking. They left yesterday around four.”

  Not the answer he’d really wanted to hear, but it was the one he’d been fearing. “You’re sure? That’s a lot of playing hooky.” He took another chance with the offhand, casual remark, trying to build some common ground with the receptionist.

  “Of course I’m sure.” She’d turned slightly snippy. “I saw them leave, didn’t I? Besides, I would’ve made their travel arrangements if they were flying anyplace or needed hotel rooms booked. No, they’ve gotten this sudden urge to test out their cold-weather gear in preparation for some trip they’re planning to Alaska. Crazy, if you ask me. But it gives them the excuse to take long weekends just when the rest of our technicians are working overtime to meet the second phase trial deadline for—” She caught herself in the nick of time and swerved into the generic, “well, for one of our clients.”

  Ah, employee dissatisfaction. He’d been the beneficiary of that sentiment twice now in the past twenty-four hours. In his gut, he knew now that Truitt and Herren’s out-of-office time would match up with their extracurricular activities related to Cassidy and hunting down Burke. Sheriff Marge could get a search warrant for their work calendar when the time came.

  His immediate concern was to get out of the call gracefully, without piquing the receptionist’s curiosity. He’d used his personal phone—it could be traced. “Some guys have all the fun,” he said, commiserating.

  “Well, all that time off doesn’t make them any more cheerful, that’s for sure,” she huffed. “They’ve been impossible to work with the past few months. Demanding and sullen, and really, really suspicious, like they think everybody’s out to get them. I’m thinking of quitting.”

  “Maybe you should,” Owen offered. “Change of pace, change of scenery.” How much more bland could he get? Did she want platitudes, or advice? He needed to hang up, but not memorably. “Look, I gotta go,” he blurted just as she started to respond with another complaint. “I’ll catch up with the guys later.”

  “You wanna leave a message?” she asked hopefully.

  “Not this time, sweetheart.” He clicked off.

  He did, indeed, have a lot of catching up to do.

  CHAPTER 28

  Driving to the hardware/household goods/craft supply/drugstore in Lupine was an adventure in normalcy. The loose security net Sheriff Marge and her deputies had formed around us was always there, but I couldn’t always spot them, since they’d been swapping out their personal vehicles for others of unknown—to me, at any rate—origins. Good tactics, and that probably kept me from giving away their presence by staring around for them too much. Relying on them too much.

  But constant vigilance was wearing me down. Pete, too, although he’d never complain. And Burke as well, although it was hard to tell just how much the stress was getting to him, except in the food consumption department—that had waned a bit. Maybe I’d finally filled him up.

  But candy is candy is candy and seems to have its own separate gastronomical compartment. The kid’s eyes were alight as we slowly worked our way down that particular aisle. Cracker Jack boxes, clove-flavored chewing gum, Necco Wafers, Idaho Spud candy bars, Charleston Chews, Life Savers in flavors I hadn’t seen in decades. It was a walk down memory lane, and a real effort for me to refrain from tossing one of each into my cart.

  “You can pick out three things you want when we come back through,” I said, more for myself than for Burke. “But let’s get the bulky stuff first.”

  The store was bustling with shoppers. There was an air of mild exuberance at being released from the previous constraints of snow and ice and a general level of optimism and do-it-yourselfism, judging by the contents of the carts we passed. They were brimming with everything from toilet paper to gaudy fake flowers to hand saws to gallons of paint to toasters to duck hunting decoys. And one giant stuffed panda bear with its proud new owner-to-be twirling along in her mother’s wake, dressed in a sparkly pink tutu over thick leggings and cute rubber boots that were colored to look like green frogs. Something for everybody, clearly.

  Ralph Moses was at his usual station behind the pharmacy counter, and I wondered if he’d made any progress in his wooing of Betty Jenkins due to Frankie’s and my propitious seating arrangements at the wedding reception. I made a mental note to ask for an update and lifted my hand to wave to him before Burke and I pushed through a side door into the store’s roofed outdoor enclosure that doubled as a garden center in the summer.

  The exterior metal gates were locked for the season, restricting access to the single doorway from the store as a shoplifting prevention method. The laissez-faire attitude of most retailers in Sockeye County had sharpened with the latest spate of vandalism, and reasonably so. Compared to the usual security measures at stores in urban areas, they’d been remarkably lax in the past. No longer.

  Burke and I, each pushing our own squeaky-wheeled cart across the lumpy pavement, headed straight for the pallets of mulch, compost and fertilizer at the far end. They were leftovers from the previous planting season, but they’d suit my purposes.

  “What about this?” Burke slid a pitchfork-shaped implement off a nearby rack and held it up for me to see.

  I nodded. “Looks effective. And one of those hoes, too,” I added, pointing. “We already have shovels and rakes, but we’re going to need stakes and a big ball of twine, and that pH soil tester thingy,” I said, pointing again, the novice directing the utterly inexperienced. I was grateful we had the enclosure to ourselves, and there wasn’t an audience for my green-thumb uncertainty. Nobody else seemed tempted to browse garden supplies in January.

  Burke was quickly filling his cart while I manhandled ten bags of organic steer manure into mine—and, eventually, onto the bottom rack of his cart as well.

  It seemed crazy to be paying for gourmet cow poop, but I did want the thoroughly sanitized stuff. I’d heard the horror stories about fly infestations stemming from improperly sourced fertilizers. I couldn’t think of much worse than having swarms of insect hatchlings buzzing museum visitors in the spring should they choose to picnic on the grounds near the lush garden I had envisioned. But the old garden plot had been dormant and neglected for a long time, and it needed all the help it could get in the form of soil amendments.

  We wrangled our overloaded, balky carts into a mini train and began the slow procession toward the door, the obstinate wheels objecting vociferously every inch of the way. I was in the middle, pushing my cart and helping to pull Burke’s, while he constituted the caboose, also pushing for all he was worth, when I noticed a large, lurking form next to the wheelbarrow display.

  He rose out of a crouch and grabbed me, clamping a hard hand over my mouth before I could yell out.

 
But Burke did. “Help!” he immediately shrilled in a voice that belied the size of his body. “Help!”

  “Shut up,” the man growled. “Or she gets it.” He flashed a blade in front of my face, so close I couldn’t focus well enough to see what type it was.

  His short beard was grating on my cheek like sandpaper, and he squeezed his arms around me like a python. He swung me up off the ground and redeposited me hard after a half-turn, cinching my back up tight against his chest so that we were both facing Burke and all three of us could see the knife—a nasty serrated number that was longer than my hand.

  I was staring at Burke, my eyes nearly popping with the effort to will him to continue yelling, but he’d snapped his mouth shut at the man’s instruction, so tightly that his lips were white.

  The Taser was in my pocket, but I couldn’t reach it with my arms pinned. So this was what Cassidy’s final minutes had felt like.

  I wasn’t going down without a fight, knife or no knife. Burke would need just a moment to get away, to start yelling his head off again.

  I couldn’t open my mouth far enough to get my teeth around one of the guy’s fingers, so I poked my tongue out and wiggled it on his salty skin.

  He was not one to be easily grossed out. He grunted and shifted my weight, pressing his thigh up under my bottom and almost lifting my toes off the ground. “Cut it out,” he said. “Take it easy and you won’t be hurt.”

  There was no way I could believe him. Especially since I knew they really wanted Burke instead. I’d just been easier to grab. And so far, I seemed to be a good bargaining chip for controlling the boy’s actions.

  Sheriff Marge was close, very close—I knew she was. Plus one or more of her deputies. Ralph had seen us, along with a lot of other shoppers who weren’t necessarily paying attention. But maybe someone had heard Burke’s first shouts?