The Conviction

by Robert Dugoni

  “It ain’t hard evidence until we find a grow,” Barnes countered, keeping his temper out of his voice, though not his complexion, which was as red as the crescent moon on the map. “Even then we have to tie the grow to Dillon,” Barnes continued, “and you yourself said that if the grow is on public land it’s unlikely we’ll be able to do that.”

  “So we go to one of Dillon’s warehouses and see if hops is all he’s distributing.” Molia said.

  Barnes shook his head. “They harvest end of August, early September. So its unlikely we’d find anything this time of year. I suspect, if what you say is true, that the pot doesn’t stay in the warehouse long. Besides, do you think Judge Earl is going to sign a warrant for me to storm Dillon’s warehouse?”

  The more time Sloane spent with Barnes the more he viewed him as one of those types who was like a simmering kettle on the stove, always on the verge of blowing if someone turned up the fire under him. Sloane had done just that with the evidence of the routing numbers.

  “So we find a grow and cross that bridge of proving it’s Dillon’s when we come to it,” Molia said, becoming animated. “We get the evidence. We let the lawyers fight over what it all means, but it starts with the evidence.” He jabbed a finger at the colored map.

  Sloane stepped back from the table. The heat was getting to all of them. He pulled cold drinks from the cooler and handed one to Barnes and one to Molia.

  “If we’re right, if Dillon is using Fresh Start as a home base for his grows, then he’s running the supplies through it and using the kids as labor to prepare the sites.” Sloane ran a pencil on the map. “That means he’s likely growing his plants on the lands he’s purchased or on land close to it. Even on horses there’s a limited distance they could trek to carry in those supplies from the accessible roads. It significantly reduces the acreage.”

  Barnes rolled his eyes. “Do you know how many marked and unmarked trails there are up there?”

  Sloane knew Barnes was playing devil’s advocate and didn’t mind. The questions were helping to focus their thinking, and that would help to centralize the most likely grow areas. “But they have to trailer the horses.” Sloane paused to allow that thought to sink in. “They have to start someplace where they can drive a trailer and unload the horses. That should narrow it further, shouldn’t it?” Sloane said. “The grows also need a ready water source. We can talk to Fish and Wildlife.”

  Barnes sat down on the bench. “Hell, Mr. Sloane, there’s as many streams and creeks and rivers up there as there are trails. Look, I’m not trying to throw cold water on your fire, but there could be thousands of potential locations.”

  “We just need to find one, Sheriff,” Sloane said. “Just one.”

  Barnes ran a hand over a tired face and shut his eyes, grimacing. Most people would have gone on talking, trying to convince him of the validity of their position. Sloane saw young attorneys do it to judges but he knew better. So did Tom Molia. They’d made their best pitch. Saying it twice wasn’t going to make it any better. So they waited, listening to the buzz of insects and smelling the charred remains of the outhouse on what little breeze blew through the open door.

  “All right,” Barnes said, eyeing them both. Sloane knew the sheriff wasn’t completely convinced but he was throwing them a bone. “A full-scale operation with Fish and Wildlife and ATF, DEA would take a lot of time to pull together, even if we could convince them. Given your predicament I don’t suggest we wait to do that. This is a small town, as you two are finding out quick. Word travels fast. I don’t suggest you mention what we’re about to do to anyone. Not even Bennett. After the stunt you pulled at the Sutter Building last night, you may have already scared off the prey. Dillon may have pulled up stakes—if he ever planted any to begin with.”

  Sloane shook his head. “I don’t think so, Sheriff. They haven’t harvested yet. Like you said, Dillon’s not going to leave hundreds of millions on the table and he likely has orders to fill or find himself in real trouble. That’s a month, maybe two away. It’s cheaper to kill us, which is why they’ve been trying so hard to do just that.”

  “And nearly succeeding, I might add.”

  “We’re not trying to be heroes here, Sheriff.” Sloane nodded to Molia. “We both know this is a double-edged sword. We both know that pushing this might put our boys in greater jeopardy, but my son let me know he was in peril the first day he called. So I have just one more request.”

  Barnes nodded.

  “If we go up there and we do find a grow, or evidence of a grow, you have to assure me our next stop is Fresh Start, that you’ll take custody of Jake and T.J. I don’t care if you lock them in your jail until we get them a new trial. You just make sure you get them out of that place.”

  ELDORADO NATIONAL FOREST

  SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS

  Jake had made sure to lie down beside T.J. before the guards applied their leg irons. He was dog tired after working all day but fought to stay awake, keeping his mind occupied until he heard one of the guards snoring, likely the cook, who had drunk a lot of tequila during the night.

  When he was satisfied both guards were asleep he rolled to his left, whispering, “T.J.?”

  When T.J. did not answer Jake poked his shoulder. “T.J.?”

  T.J. startled. “Huh? What?”

  Jake clasped a hand over his mouth to prevent him from waking the guards. “It’s me.”

  An owl hooted, and the wind caused the branches overhead to creak and moan, and rustled the plastic tarp over their heads.

  “What’s the matter, what’s wrong?”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About what you said, about how we can’t go back to Fresh Start.”

  Jake had not been able to shake the vision of Big Baby, the hatred in his eyes when he pulled back his fist to decapitate him in the bathhouse. Big Baby would kill them when they got back to Fresh Start. Jake didn’t doubt it.

  A pan rattled and clanged. Jake lay back, holding his breath, heart racing. He heard rustling near the camp stove. In the pitch-black, he couldn’t see but decided it was likely the gray squirrel they’d seen scurrying around the camp earlier that evening. When he heard the rhythm of the guards’ breathing return to normal he rolled over again.

  “T.J.?”

  “What are we going to do?” he asked, fear in his voice.

  “We have to get away; we have to run.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Our dads are still here. If we can get to a town and use a phone we can call them.”

  “How? We don’t even know where we are; Atkins blindfolded us.”

  “I’ve been keeping track. We’re not that far from Fresh Start, so we’re not that far from the towns below it. We have to follow the streams. Water runs downhill. That’s where the towns will be. They set them up that way for the gold. We find a town, we find a phone.”

  For a while T.J. didn’t speak. Jake knew he was likely doubting him, thinking about what had happened the last time he’d followed one of Jake’s plans. T.J. might have also been weighing their chances of actually succeeding and getting away, which Jake had already decided on his own to not be very good, but didn’t want to say out loud.

  “If Atkins catches us, he’ll kill us and bury us up here.”

  Jake knew Atkins was a sadistic bastard, but up until the moment he pointed the rifle at T.J.’s head and nearly pulled the trigger, he’d never thought he’d actually kill any of them. He’d thought the threats were just another way to scare them, make them think twice about escaping or breaking a rule. But he’d looked into the man’s eyes that night when he tried to intervene, and he’d seen more than a sadist. He’d seen something much darker. It was the same thing he’d seen in the eyes of Anthony Stenopolis the night Stenopolis killed his mother then pointed the gun at Jake’s face. The same thing he’d seen in Big Baby’s eyes. Atkins was a killer, and there was no amount of logic or reason that would keep hi
m from killing. What to do with the body? What to do with the other three witnesses? How to explain to a parent their child was missing? Atkins wasn’t considering any of those questions. A killer didn’t think that way. That’s what Bee Dee meant about Big Baby being a psychopath, acting without any governor. People like that, like Stenopolis and Atkins, would kill and worry about the consequences later. Maybe Atkins already had killed and gotten away with it. Maybe there were bodies decomposing in shallow graves all over the mountains.

  “No, he won’t,” he said, and it wasn’t a complete lie. “He can’t. He doesn’t want anyone snooping around up here. Think about it, why would he cover our faces with masks? Why did he pack out the garbage? Why are they so careful at night with the camp light? They don’t want anyone to find this place. That means they’re doing something illegal. They’re growing pot, T.J. I know it. I’ve seen it done. If Atkins shoots us and buries us, our dads will have these mountains crawling with people. Atkins can’t risk that.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He can’t. But if Big Baby does it for him, kills us, then Big Baby goes off to prison, and he’s going there anyway. Atkins gets rid of us.”

  “When would we go?” T.J. sounded scared, which meant Jake had to be brave for both of them, confident.

  “Remember when Atkins dropped us off? He said three days. That means he’s coming back tomorrow, probably in the afternoon, so they can get a full day’s work out of us and bring us back to Fresh Start at night. We have to go before that.”

  “How?”

  “I have a plan. I saw it in a movie.”

  “What!”

  “Shhh! We need to get a roll of that string. In the morning I’ll create a distraction to get the guards’ attention. You drop it down your coveralls. It’s over by the shovels. We need to take it with us when they take us to work. You follow my lead.” T.J. did not speak. Jake persisted. “Can you do it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can do it.”

  “So then, tomorrow. We go tomorrow. First we escape. Then we find our dads.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  KNOCK-ME-STIFF RANCH

  GOLD CREEK, CALIFORNIA

  Sheriff Barnes returned before dawn and brought with him three men from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They wore camouflage pants and shirts and floppy hats and brought extra sets for Sloane and Molia. After introductions, the men waited outside on the porch while Barnes gave Sloane and Molia the lay of the land.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “This isn’t an official investigation. So they’re not in uniform, and neither am I. This is their day off and I called in sick so we’re not on official business. As far as we’re all concerned we’re going hunting, looking to tag a deer or two, and we’re bringing you two along out of the goodness of our hearts. Capiche?”

  Sloane nodded as he buttoned the shirt. “Understood.”

  “For the same reason, if we do happen to find something, we aren’t going in guns-a-blazing. We mark it on the map, slip out quiet, and report what we’ve found. Then we come back with the cavalry. I’ve known these guys a long time and I’m not looking to get any of them shot. They’ll tell you the people guarding these grows can set up sophisticated booby traps and be heavily armed. They’ll tell you about a joint ATF and Fish and Wildlife raid in Washington State where the camp residents opened up with grenade launchers.” Barnes punctuated the remark with a furrowed brow.

  “We understand,” Sloane said. “We’re not looking to get ourselves or anyone else killed.”

  Barnes seemed to soften. “They’re good men, dedicated. Greg’s a marine, so he can be a bit of a cowboy when the adrenaline starts pumping, but he’s steady. Dean and Leonard are more subdued but just as passionate about what they do. We’re in good hands, gentlemen. If something were to kick-start, I’d go to battle with these guys.”

  Barnes turned to the door and called for the three to enter. He unrolled the map across the table. He’d already gone over it with Dean, the shortest of the three and likely the oldest, at least from the amount of gray in his hair. Sloane noticed new pencil marks and notations on the map.

  “Dean knows this area as well as anyone,” Barnes said. “I’m going to let him handle this.”

  Dean set down a lidded cup of coffee and picked up a pencil, which looked small in his meaty hand. “There’s a forest service road here.” He pointed with the lead pencil tip at an area not far from Fresh Start. “It would be easily accessible from the facility and maintained well enough to drive a truck with an attached horse rig to about here. That’s where the road ends.” Again he indicated with the pencil. “There’s a trailhead, but it isn’t open to the public. Some hikers still use it, but it isn’t well defined or traveled. If someone wanted to get up around the back of the facility, it would be a good way to travel.” He shook his head. “From there it’s anybody’s guess, but there are a couple of streams that run through this area and feed the lakes. Growers like to set up their grows within a quarter mile of the water source and run irrigation lines downstream to the site, again to minimize the chances of a hiker or fisherman stumbling onto it.”

  “Seems well reasoned to me,” Sloane said. “It’s as good a place as any to start.”

  Dean laughed. “You’re an optimist. That’s rugged country up there, even for us. We have our work cut out for us today. The two of you sure you’re up for it?” He asked the question while looking at the cast on Sloane’s wrist. Sloane also still had the bandage on his head, and as the emergency room doctor predicted, he’d awakened even more sore than when he’d finally crashed for a fitful few hours of sleep. His lower back ached.

  “Lead the way,” Sloane said. “I’ll be all right.” In truth he hoped the six ibuprofren would kick in because he didn’t want to take the Vicodin.

  Dean didn’t look as convinced when he turned to Molia. “I might be big, but I’m slow,” Molia said, which got a laugh out of the group. “Don’t let the size fool you. I won’t slow you down.”

  “I’m not worried about the size; what about that cough?” Dean asked. “You start hacking you’re liable to give us away. We need to go in stealth.”

  The steroids had brought a marked improvement in Molia’s breathing and his coughing had been far less frequent, though it still persisted at times. Molia pulled his hand out of his pocket clutching a fistful of throat lozenges. “I’m loaded for bear,” he said. Then he got serious. “This isn’t my first rodeo, boys. I’m not about to do anything I thought might put any of us in jeopardy.”

  Just after six, the sun not yet up, they loaded into Greg’s SUV, an older model Suburban that looked to have been driven its fair share of hard miles, dinged and dented and rusted in patches, but also big enough with the third bench seat for the six men to ride comfortably and to store their rifles and supplies in the back.

  “It’s never failed me,” Greg said, spitting through the hole in the plastic lid of his cup. His bottom lip bulged with a pinch of chew. He smiled in the rearview mirror at Sloane, seated beside Dean in the middle seat. Molia and the third man, Leonard, sat in the back. Barnes sat in the passenger seat. “And I’ve taken it places I never should have,” which Sloane deduced to be the reason for the winch and cable mounted to the front bumper.

  After that, nobody spoke much. In their camouflage uniforms they looked like a military unit, and the gravity of what they were about to do weighed on them. They could pretend they were just six men out hunting for deer, but if they stumbled into the wrong area they might have a hard time convincing people stationed to guard the site of that, and might not even get the chance to explain before someone started shooting or one of them had a leg blown off stepping on one of those booby traps Barnes had mentioned.

  Greg turned off the county road onto dirt and gravel, the SUV continuing to ascend, its tires crunching and spitting up rocks with a ping beneath the chassis. Out the back window a cloud of dust spewed, and occasionally the car pitched and rocked when Greg failed to
avoid a pothole. They hadn’t seen another car on the county road, and Sloane didn’t expect they would now that they were on the dirt and gravel. The sun began to shine, but only on the peaks. They drove in the shadows.

  Almost two hours from the time they had packed into the car, Greg came to a stop. He didn’t have much choice since the road came to an end at a turnabout. Large boulders, which looked to have been strategically placed around the edge of the road, acted as a further impediment to a vehicle proceeding any further.

  “This is where the trailhead starts,” Dean said as they exited and stretched the ride from their muscles. “It’s a steep pitch out of the chute, but fifteen minutes or so into it, the grade levels out a bit.”

  Greg lowered the back window and started handing out rifles with shoulder straps as well as backpacks loaded with water, protein bars, and ammunition. Dean had walked off toward the trailhead. When he came back he held pieces of hay and straw. Barnes considered it before glancing in Sloane’s direction.

  “Horse manure also,” Dean said. “Someone cleaned it up, but not perfect. And hoofprints.” He looked to Sloane. “You may very well be on to something.”

  Greg continued handing out the supplies, distributing them equally in the backpacks. In between he spit a coffee-colored stream into the dirt. They slung the rifles over their shoulders and fashioned sidearms on their hips. Greg pulled an eight-inch serrated knife from a sheath.

  “What do you use a knife like that for?” he asked Dean.

  “Huntin’,” Dean answered, deepening the tone of his voice.

  “Hunting? What do you hunt with a knife like that?”

  “Name it,” all three said in unison, smiling.

  “First Blood.” Greg explained to Sloane and Molia they were quoting lines from the movie. Sloane had watched it with Jake. “Still Sylvester Stallone’s best movie,” Greg said fashioning the knife in its sheath against his thigh.

  “We have to carry our own personal weapons since this isn’t part of our official duties,” Barnes said. He handed Molia a rifle. “Detective, I assume you’re familiar with a Remington?”