State of Confusion (State of Arizona Book 4)

by Doug Ball

  The tall man looked down at the wounded coyote and ordered, “Stake him out naked on that ant bed,” he pointed. “Cut him a few times to draw the predators. Kick up the ants around him. Cut open every bundle of dope, scatter it, and toss the packs back on the other side with their past owners. Do not take anything from this site.”

  Between Williams and Grand Canyon Village

  Drinks served, each of the VIPs sat back chatting, looking, or just plain bored as the steam engine spewed coal dust and smoke so dense the windows had to be closed to keep the chinks out of the eyes of the passengers. The instigator of this particular train ride was smoozing up and down the train trying with his best smile to promote the train and the country it passed through to the wealthy passengers. His goal was funding for a massive resort complex with time shares, summer homes, rental cabins, horses, cows, a dude ranch environment, and high dollar fees in the countryside they were passing through.

  This train ride had drained his bankroll and desperation was setting in. All he needed was a few of these folks to buy in, and he was off and running. He had always thought big and this was the biggest.

  Paymaster Spring

  The bloody work done, eight men went back to their vehicles by a different route wiping out tracks as they went. Two of the men followed the tracks coming to the site, wiping out those tracks as much as possible. The wounded man was helped along by a man on each side carrying most of his weight. By the time they reached the trucks his bandage was red with blood and he was visibly weakening.

  South of Grand Canyon Village

  Light snacks were offered, few of the passengers took of the hors d’oeuvres, but the drinks were accepted readily even at this early hour.

  Paymaster Spring

  The tall man changed the bandage after looking the wound over. “You’ll make it without a doctor. The slug went all the way through. It’s a clean wound. We’ll get you some antibiotics and you’ll be okay.”

  “How’s about a couple of pain killers. That would make me happy.”

  The tall man got real, real serious. “This is not all about you and your scratch, it’s far bigger. You will not get any pain drugs. If you were caught under the influence, you’d be likely to spill your guts. I’d kill ya before that would happen.” He put his hand on his sidearm without even thinking of it, but it made the wounded man back down.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking with all this pain.”

  “We get you home and you’ll get what you need.”

  The trucks separated at the turnoff, taking different routes out of the area. The tall man’s route was long and over some roads that were roads in name only.

  A Border Patrol eye-in-the-sky heard and saw the entire episode. Three pairs of officers rolled from various points within 10 miles of the killings to merge and enter the area together.

  9

  Grand Canyon Village

  The train pulled into Grand Canyon Village on the south rim. The passengers disembarked, most moving toward the edge of the canyon for the view. The organizer tried in vain to keep them all together and herd them into the meeting room at the Kachina Lodge, six of the VIPs allowed themselves to be herded.

  An hour later the train pulled out. Twelve of the VIPs didn’t make the train; they caught a tour bus for Williams by way of Flagstaff. The rest of the riders sat back and waited for the drinks. All of them waited for the phony train robbery to be over so the train would make speed into the station at Williams where they started. This wasn’t the excitement they had thought it might be. Most were cussing themselves for falling for the invite.

  As the train rolled around the final curve of the track through the shallow canyons not five miles out of Grand Canyon Village, the engineer was shaking his head trying to keep his eyes open after the party where he’d overindulged the night before, when a strange sight came into view. The track was covered with old ties piled six feet high. After a two second time span the engineer finally woke up enough to pull the emergency brake handle and jerk back on the throttle.

  The stoker was thrown into the boiler wall and cracked the glass on a gauge with his head. Drinks flew over, under, on, and around the passengers as waiters and conductor were thrown down long aisles of seats into whatever got in their way, usually the door at the end of the car.

  Motion triggered the turning of the engineer’s head to see a man jump from a rock beside the track on to the platform between the engine and coal car. The jumper almost lost it when his feet landed on the coal crumbles, but his collision with the rebounding stoker stopped him from sliding all the way across the platform and onto the track bed on the other side. The man laughed as he pulled a gun and said, “This is a for real hold up,” through the bandana over the lower half of his face. The six shooter he from a low slung holster put emphasis on the words.

  The stoker tried to swing his shovel into play. The six shooter’s .45 slug sent him flying off the platform into the dirt beyond the track bed. The gun swiveled to cover the engineer. “You want some of this.”

  The engineer raised his hands. As he did, he noticed men with bandanas, all the same, running to or climbing into the cars with drawn guns. What the engineer couldn’t see was men doing the same thing on the other side of the train.

  The other men slowly impressed the folks in the cars to empty their pockets, rings, watches, and other geegaws into bags they offered like ushers in a church. Each outlaw patted down the men when they said they had made offerings of everything they had on them, but left the women at their word. After all, a purse and jewelry that was in plain sight was about all they could carry.

  The train was plainly posted as a no gun zone, but that didn’t stop the outlaws. It didn’t stop one of the men on car 3 either. He pulled his 9mm and got off two rounds before a .44 slug from an antique Colt changed his mind about shooting by ruining his day. His hasty shots hit no one.

  The outlaw in the engine watched until he could see four men plainly on his side of the train, all waving an arm up and down. He reached up and grabbed the whistle lever. Steam and noise filled the air. His next move surprised the engineer as the man reached down and tripped the steam dump and opened the water drain. With a doff of his hat, the man jumped down and ran through a gap between two boulders and disappeared.

  The engineer grabbed the drain and closed it, and then pulled the dump valve back to closed. Checking his gauges, he slumped. There was water. There was steam. But the train wasn’t moving until the pressure was back to operating levels. They were stuck for at least thirty minutes. He started shoveling.

  Moments after his first shovel full hit the fire bed, the conductor ran up yelling and screaming, “Get this train moving. We have an injured man in car three.” He looked around as the engineer tossed another shovel full through the fire door and let the door slam shut. “Where’s your stoker?”

  “Over there.” He motioned with the shovel.

  The conductor ran around the engine and checked him out. There was no doubt he was dead. Half of his head was missing.

  “Ain’t purdy is it?” the engineer said, tossing another shovel full.

  The conductor heaved his lunch and started for the cars, “I’ll get you some help, Lars.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Shawn.” he replied as he checked the pressure gauge. “It’s gonna take at least a half hour to get up steam. I don’t know if we have enough water to make it, but we’ll try. One short whistle and we’re off. I won’t waste steam on more whistles.”

  “Got it.”

  Lars bent his back to the stoking, but it had been a long time since he’d done the heavy work. As he stopped to catch his breath and stretch his spine, a voice said, “This fella’s dead over here.”

  Lars jumped, turning as fast as he could to see a man in well-worn clothes looking up at him. “I know that. You any good at shoveling?”

  “Nah. Looks like a real train robbery you folks put on a great show this time.”

  “It w
asn’t a show. We were robbed. I need to get those ties off the tracks, build up steam, and head for Williams to report this to the cops.”

  “That’s gonna take a spell. Them ties is heavy. I know, I bought a dozen of them things in Williams and liked to broke the springs in my truck and my back unloading them at my place.”

  “You got your truck here.”

  “Yeah. Road’s right ahead there, not a hundert yards.”

  “Can you take a man to town for me? That’d be a big help.”

  “I could if that man helped me change my tire. A masked man ran passed me heading south and cut my right rear tire till she’s flat on the bottom.”

  “I’ll get that help.”

  Two more shovels full, he jumped down, ran to the first car where two men were standing. “You two go with that man, change his tire, take off for the highway. Tell the first authority you find what happened and where we are.”

  They just stood there like bumps on a log.

  “I said get and I mean get.”

  The two trotted to the old man and moved with him past the pile of ties and out of sight.

  Four more men were directed to the front of the train and started removing the ties under the conductor’s supervision.

  The engineer got back to shoveling.

  Phoenix

  Tan was in his backyard coaxing the smoker and basting the ribs on his grill/smoker. A handful of apple branches were spread over the coals and the warm sauce flowed evenly across the thick ribs as the juices sizzled when they dripped into the red coals below. His phone buzzed on the sideboard in the house.

  “Tan,” his wife yelled. “Your phone’s going crazy.”

  “Let it.”

  “This is the third cycle of rings. You have two messages on here.” She held it out for him.

  “I don’t want it. Tomorrow I’m a cop again. Today I am a daddy and husband, and king of my domain.”

  She answered the phone, “This is Tan’s phone.”

  “Tell Tan I need him, this is Chuck.”

  “He says he isn’t a cop until tomorrow.”

  “He’s a cop right now. If I have to come out there, the governor will give me his job.”

  Joan Brown yelled, “Tan, the governor wants you right now. Chuck is here and says he’ll have your job if you make him come out here.”

  “Tell him there are plenty of ribs on this fire. Bring the whole gang.”

  “I think it’s important, Les Brown.” She stood with hands on hips, glaring. It was THAT look.

  He walked to her and took the phone. After giving her a kiss on the cheek he lifted the phone, “Yeah.”

  “We got dead bodies in the south and in the north. Two groups of them in the south, one train robbery up north. You wanna come in or should I take charge of this operation like the Governor told me to do if you aren’t here in thirty minutes.”

  “Get me forty and I’m on my way.”

  “Don’t bother getting cleaned up, these are both dirty jobs.”

  “Tell ya what, you take the one up north with Bruce. I’ll come in, meet with Lenny and Leon, and go south.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll tell the gov. He’s tearing out his few remaining hairs.”

  “Tell him I really need a shower. Be careful, be thorough, and be professional. Be wise.”

  Tan hit end on his way to the shower. From the shower he called, “Watch the ribs.”

  Sonoita

  The eye in the sky lost the two vehicles heading north due to its being tethered on the far side of the scene. The trucks were last seen on a dirt pair of dirt ruts heading west. Within five miles the trucks took to the pavement for three miles and again headed west on dirt driving slowly which stopped the telltale dust plume.

  10

  Kingman

  “Okay, spread the loot out on the two beds,” Jacob said.

  “Archer, you and the hillbilly sort this all out, value it, and split the pile in half by value. Try to put the most expensive things all in one pile and the easily dividable stuff in the other. Boss gets half, we get half.”

  Archer said, “Got it.”

  Jacob said, “Let’s go across the street and have a couple of beers. Only two. No more. No talking of any part of today. Got it?”

  The remaining men said, “Got it,” in unison.

  They left the pair to the counting.

  Paymaster Spring

  Two and a half hours later, Tan was on the scene of the twin ambushes and hungry for ribs. His unmarked state car had not liked the roads he had covered. The windshield had a crack from a thrown rock and one tire was slowly going flat. “Never did like that car.”

  With his own handheld radio he called the governor and updated Josie because the boss was in a meeting, which made the investigator extremely happy. He had some breathing time.

  The Border Patrol had called in the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s department getting the Sheriff and a deputy on the scene. Tim and his outfit arrived on the scene before Tan got there. Tim walked over the rise between the two sites just as Tan put the radio away.

  Tim’s initial report to Tan was, “Both sites are a blood bath. This one is marginally worse due to our friend there in the ant bed. Somebody in that shooting group hates coyotes. I can’t argue with that. Once again we have the tracks of one person headed south on top of the whole group coming to this place. The site over the hill has no sign of a survivor. The powders you see on the ground are various illegal drugs, the largest quantity is heroin from what testing we’ve done. A little coke, and then there’s the weed. Not much weed but enough to make things mellow for a lot of people. Another strange thing in my mind is that the men over the hill were armed and their weapons are still there. Only one got off a shot. Somebody got hit on the shooter’s side. The shooters took off in three different paths with their tracks ending a short walk away. Time to go searching for the place they parked their vehicles.”

  “Thanks, Tim. I’ll get a man working on that right shortly. As usual, I want a copy of all your reports as soon as possible.”

  “You’ll get them.” Tim turned and returned to the collecting of evidence on the scenes.

  Tan called Joan through a radio patch, “Freeze the ribs. I won’t be home for supper.”

  “No border jumping, Marine.”

  “You danged sailors always taking the fun out of life.”

  “Love ya, Marine.”

  “Love you, too. Out.”

  Williams

  Chuck had done interviews with over twenty people while the Coconino County Sheriff’s Deputies finished with the rest. His findings were not very conducive to finding perpetrators. Every witness had the same story and descriptions except for the engineer. He knew the man that was in the cab had blond hair, blue eyes, stood 6 foot one, and had the well-built body of a man who spends a lot of time working out somewhere. The man’s hands were soft; his build wasn’t from hard, manual labor.

  “He didn’t even try to stop Eli, my stoker. He just shot him. I knew Eli was dead when I saw the slug hit him. Never realized that a man didn’t just drop from being shot. He tumbled backward clean off the train. That other man shouldn’t have been carrying on the train. There are signs all over.”

  Chuck looked him in the eye and said, “If more had been carrying, there would have been dead outlaws and the robbery probably wouldn’t have been attempted. Gun free areas, plainly marked, just offer a shooting range for killers. Think on the school shootings in the past few years. Ever since Columbine, they have been designated shooting galleries. ”

  “Yeah, I’d guess you are right. But, if this fella hadn’t had a gun, he’d still be alive.” The engineer wasn’t going to drop it. “He’d be alive today if he hadn’t tried to be a hero.”

  “What our country needs is a lot more heroes, sir. We act like sheeple most of the time and let the bad guys win. Bull! Kill a few trying to harm or steal from honest folks and the bad guys will think two or three times next time around.”

&nb
sp; The engineer had no response for the adamant cop before him. He just nodded and asked, “Or, they’d come much better armed, shooting before saying a word. You done with me?”

  “Yeah, I’m done with you and your thinking.” Chuck turned to call Bruce at the scene of the robbery without so much as a ‘Thanks’ to the engineer who backed away.

  Bruce had spent hours working out the crime scene. Tracks all over the place of city shoes and combat style tread. He tracked three of the combat treads to a place where the tracks of three vehicles had been. Two ruts left that place and entered a graded dirt road leading west away from highway 180 and pavement. His best guess was that the dirt road they took out of this place wandered and came out somewhere west of Williams on I-40. There were no casings lying around. With both kill weapons being old style wheel guns, he hadn’t expected any.

  The old man that had brought the word out to the pavement and then to Tusayan said, “Them boys knew this area pretty danged good to know just where the ties were and that cramped spot on the tracks. They ain’t another spot that’d work as well as that one on the entire run. Man oh man, them boys was smart.”

  A deputy reported one of the passengers also stated, “There was 9 of them men with masks. One in the cab. Four on each car.”

  Bruce found ten sets of tracks leaving the vehicles and returning. ‘Someone sat back and watched the entire episode to make sure it all went well,’ he thought and then wrote it down in his note pad.

  Bruce left the rest to the county mounties.

  7 PM Patagonia

  The Stage Stop Inn

  Tan, Lenny, Tim, Sara, and Marty Higgins all shoved in together made for a crowded room even in the upstairs reading room of the Stage Stop Inn. Abdul and Tank were next door getting something to eat. They had hashed out all the info they had and were out of steam. The ‘what ifs’ and ‘how about’ comments had even ended.