by Rod Collins
Bud nodded and said, “I’ll wait.”
“I love you, Bud Blair.”
He could hardly speak past the lump in his throat, and despite his best resolve to remain indifferent to Nancy, he whispered into the phone, “I love you, too.”
Chapter 11
Homeward
BUD KILLED THE CALL and took another deep breath. Pride be damned. I’m not going to fight it. I want her back. Besides, it isn’t like she left me for another man. That makes a difference … at least to me.
He opened the pickup door and suddenly felt better than he had in a long time. Not even the shadow of Molly dying could totally eclipse his sense that maybe life was worth something after all.
He pushed through the entrance to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, took note of the red roses perched on the booking counter, and grinned – knowing he was forgiven.
“Karen, locate Lonnie and Bea and find out when they’ll be back. I need coverage. And I’m bringing Sonny home.”
“Home?”
“Yes. Back here as our undersheriff. He and Carol Connor are getting married. Roger says Sonny wants his old job back.”
“Wonderful! Now if you can just get Michelle back…”
“Not in the cards. But the thought of having Sonny here sure brightens my day,” he said over his shoulder as he hurried to his office.
Bud’s office door slammed shut and Karen said quietly to herself, “That’s the most energy I’ve seen in months.” She knew she and Bud were not destined to be more than good friends, but she still felt protective of her sheriff.
Bud picked up his office phone, punched in the number, and waited until he heard Sonny say, “Officer Sixkiller.”
“Hey, you old rattlesnake. How’s life in Bend?”
“Is that you, Boss?”
“One and the same. The sagebrush telegraph says you and Carol are getting married.”
“Well, we finally worked it out … I mean a cop married to a reporter. At least I hope so.”
“Congratulations. I also hear you plan to live in Lakeview.”
Sonny laughed. “You’ve been talking to Roger, haven’t you?”
“You need to know I was planning to bring Roger back to town as my undersheriff. Now he says he doesn’t want the job. Lonnie Beltram has been filling in, but it’s makeshift at best.”
“Boss, are you offering me a job?”
“Want to work for me again?”
Sonny said, “Well, I’d have to take a cut in pay…” And then he laughed. “You bet! I’ll need to give notice. I’ll try to talk Sheriff Reynolds into letting me go in two weeks, but it’s likely to be more like a month.”
But offered, “I’ll call Reynolds and see what I can do.”
“I like it up here in the big city of Bend. But it’s just not as personal. Too many people live in Deschutes County to get acquainted with anyone outside of the sheriff’s department. By the way, how’s old man Peale doing?”
“Still alive as far as I know. Still lives all by himself. Officer Beatrice Tusk stops and checks on him about once a week, takes him his mail, makes sure he has something in the fridge to eat … sort of like you did when you were here.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that. How is Bea working out?”
“I think she’s a good hand. But, hell Sonny, I don’t know that for sure. I’ve been a bit … distracted.”
“Don’t worry about it, Boss. You can make it up to her.”
“Okay then. I’ll call Sheriff Reynolds and see what he says.”
“Looking forward to working for you again, Boss.”
“Me, too.”
The knock on his door was followed my Karen Highsmith, who was holding a folder against her breast. “Well?” she said.
Bud nodded. “He’s coming back. Now, I want you to work with HR and make this a formal offer.”
She stepped to his desk, opened the folder, and handed it to him. “Sign and date at the bottom of the form.”
Bud looked surprised, then said, “I should’ve known…”
“Yes. Now, you go talk to the judge, touch base, let him know you’re bringing Sonny back, and I’ll do the rest.”
Chapter 12
Miranda Wright
BUD LEANED AGAINST the side of his pickup and watched the aircraft, a bright blue twin-engine, propeller-driven plane of some sort, circle to the north and then line up on the runway.
His conversation with Judge Lynch had been enlightening and brief. The tall, silver-haired rancher … turned county judge and chief county administrator said, “Yes. By all means, bring Sonny back.”
Lynch also gave Bud a hard look and asked, “Where have you been spending your time? You do know the new owner of the Z-BAR is talking about running his foreman for sheriff?”
Bud nodded. “I did hear that, just this morning.”
“I’m going to suggest you start circulating again. Go visit with people. Have coffee in the Homestead Restaurant in Paisley. Buy gas at the Summer Lake Store. Give talks to the schools, meet with the Chamber of Commerce, join the Lions … hell, I don’t know, but you need people to see that you are on the job.”
Bud just stared at him, until the judge finally said, “It isn’t being political to let people know you like your job and that you’ve been there for them in the past. If you drop out of sight, the message is … you don’t care.”
Bud nodded. “The way a man does his job should count for something, but I guess I need to do more. Thanks. I guess.”
“Welcome. I’ll grease the skids for you to get Sonny Sixkiller back over here. And I’ll publicly endorse you for sheriff – if you get off your behind and start acting like a sheriff again.”
Judge Lynch stood up and held out his hand. “I like you. I think you’ve been good for this county, but there is no resting on your laurels.”
***
Bud listened for the chirp of the tires as the plane touched down, but couldn’t quite hear it over the noise of engines revving and propellers reversing as the plane quickly shed speed, then taxied in his direction. When the engines died and the props stopped turning, the cabin door opened and a set of steps dropped down.
He walked to the aircraft and waited until a tall, slender black woman wearing designer jeans, cowboy boots, and an unzipped USC sweat shirt protecting a white blouse stepped to the tarmac. She had a daypack in one hand and a briefcase in the other.
Bud wasn’t sure why he was surprised, but he’d just never connected the FBI with beautiful women. He stepped forward and held out his hand. “Agent Wright?”
She set the daypack down, gave him a dazzling smile and shook hands. “Yes, and you’ve got to be Sheriff Blair. I’ve read quite a bit about you. It’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh.”
“Can’t have been all good.”
She grinned and said, “Mostly. We in the FBI do think you could use some coaching when it comes to dealing with the press.”
“Maybe. I do know one reporter I like and trust.”
“Just one?”
Bud smiled and reached for her daypack. “Just one. Although there is a TV anchorwoman in Klamath Falls I might learn to trust.”
“Well, I didn’t say trust. I said, ‘deal with.’”
“Same thing for me. Why deal with them if you can’t trust them?”
Bud opened the passenger door to his truck, waited for Agent Wright to settle into the seat, and then closed the door. He put her daypack in the back seat of the Quad Cab Ram and then settled behind the steering wheel.
He started the rumbling diesel engine and drove across the parking lot to the main road. To be polite, he asked, “How was your flight?”
“Loved it. The peaks of the Cascades still have snow on them. Just beautiful. And the air was so calm that we didn’t bounce around much.”
He nodded and said, “There’s something I have to do in town before we head to Dog Lake.”
“Okay by me. You know, Lakeview surprises me. I mean,
you don’t think of the high desert as full of lakes, mountains, meadows, trees … or towns for that matter.” She pointed at the big peak a few miles southeast of the tree-shaded town tucked in against the west flanks of the Warner Range. “What’s the name of that mountain?”
“That’s Crane Mountain. Rugged looking, isn’t it, with all its fault scarps?”
“And that little peak in behind the town, that must be Black Cap. I read about Lake County as I was flying down. I guess hang gliders use it for take-offs?” She laughed and said, “I don’t think I’d have the nerve.”
Bud shook his head and chuckled, liking the sound of her voice. “I like my feet firmly on the ground.”
She laid her briefcase on her lap and opened her electronic notebook. “I did some research on my trip down here. It told me Lake County is big – really big – over eighty-three hundred square miles big.”
He slowed as a rooster pheasant skittered across the road and dove into the cattails lining the ditch. About fifty big geese, wings set, coasted into a field next to the highway, hungry for the tender green shoots of wheat carpeting the fertile soil.
Bud glanced at her and said, “Yep, and pretty empty. Less than one person per square mile. I always tell visitors we run long on timber, cattle, and high lonesome.”
“I took a nice shot from the airplane of Abert Lake and Abert Rim. Wow. I read the rim is at least thirty miles long, stands about twenty-five hundred feet above the valley, and the basalt rim is about eight hundred feet of sheer cliffs. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Bud nodded, pleased somehow that she had taken the time to be interested in one of his favorite places. “Hooked me, it did, on my first trip down here. I mean the whole country, not just Abert Rim.”
She smiled, her hazel eyes lighting up in amusement. “That was after you got the boot from the Portland Police Bureau. Right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a Portland Police Bureau detective who got himself shot by a punk with a pistol and then divorced because he dedicated more time to his job than his marriage. A little too much drinking was in order, until your captain suggested you stop drinking and maybe try a new job in Lakeview.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Let me see now. I must have read your file, but most of it I got from our SAC.”
“I don’t know what you are doing with a file on me, but Dutch talks too much.”
“Yes, he does, but he admires you nonetheless. Said he’s going to recruit you if you ever decide to leave this little corner of paradise.”
I would, too, she suddenly thought.
Bud eased up to the stop sign on the Klamath Falls highway, put the gearshift in neutral, and then turned to look at her. “I’m doing this as a favor to Dell BeBe, not to hear an analysis of my past mistakes.”
A bright red Ford F-250 pulled up behind Bud and honked. Bud glanced in the rearview mirror and waved, put the pickup back in gear and pulled out on the highway, heading east into town.
“One of the Arnold brothers,” he said nodding at the pickup behind him. “They have a nice cattle and hay ranch on the north end of Goose Lake.”
Changing the subject, she thought.
He turned left just past the railroad tracks and pulled into the veterinary office parking lot. “I’ll be right back,” he said, “so don’t go away.”
She watched him walk through the front door, nodded, and thought, I wasn’t prepared for this. The photos and the reports don’t do him justice. He’s not pretty-boy handsome, but he has rugged good looks. I even like that little scar over his left eyebrow. And he has charisma. I’ll bet he stirs the heart of every single woman in Lake County. I know he stirs mine.
She opened her laptop and scrolled to the video she’d watched of an angry Bud Blair giving the television media the “What for” after the run in with the terrorists who blew themselves up someplace near Fort Rock.
Bud carried a waxed cardboard box that looked heavy. He opened the rear passenger door on the driver’s side, wedged the box through the opening, and then slammed the door.
Miranda looked at him quizzically, but Bud just shook his head and backed the pickup around to head for Five Corners.
Miranda had the good sense to say nothing.
Chapter 13
Safe Harbor?
SPECIAL AGENT WILCOX expertly pushed the big SUV up a winding, narrow West Hills street through the sun-dappled tunnels of fir, alder, and maple trees, past houses perched on piling driven into tree-covered hillsides that might, or might not, be stable.
Every few years, the news shared pictures of a house riding a mudslide downslope into someone’s back yard. The hillsides might not be stable, but the view of the city and the green expanse of fir-covered hills to the east, with Mount Hood in the background, was enough to encourage the risk.
After two hours of looking at the FBI’s file of digital mugshots of black men known to have radical Muslim connections, Cletus managed to ID two who might have been the shooter. “The problem I see,” he said, “is the dude who shot at me had a beard, and most of these pitchers show men with beards.”
He pointed to one photo and said, “This dude sort of looks right, and he’s about the right age and height, while this other dude looks like the guy who shot at me, but you say he’s only five-feet-seven. Too short. You got more pitchers?”
Wilcox shook his head. “No. That’s all we have.
Brandt looked over the top of Cletus’ head and shrugged. He said, “I guess we better take you to the safe house. If you think of anything else, like a scar maybe – anything that would help us identify this man – have the agent at the house put you in touch with us.”
***
The safe house wasn’t really an ordinary house. It was a late nineteenth-century mansion built by an early Oregon entrepreneur grown wealthy from interests in shipping, lumber, land, and politics. Century-old fir trees cloaked the view and hid all but the turret tower.
Wilcox turned down a narrow lane, followed its winding path through the trees, and stopped in front of an iron gate flanked by red brick gate posts about twelve feet tall. Just beyond the gate sat a nasty row of big, ugly, steel teeth … just waiting to eat unwelcome tires.
Here we go again, Cletus thought.
Wilcox leaned out the window of the SUV and entered a series of numbers into a keypad. The steel teeth sank back into the pavement, and the big metal gate quietly swung inward. Brandt followed a circle drive and stopped just beyond the front entrance, under a tall breezeway protected by a narrow, brick walk. A side door opened and a tall, gaunt, forty-something man in a dark blue suit stepped through and waited.
Wilcox jumped out and opened the rear passenger door for Cletus. “There’s your guardian angel, Cletus.” He handed Cletus a business card and said, “If you need me, call me.” Cletus nodded and Wilcox held out his hand. “We’ll keep an eye on your mama’s house, catch any boogers that come by.”
Cletus watched the big SUV complete the circle and leave by the same tall gate. He looked up at the turret tower and wondered why the FBI spent so much money on a mansion. What he didn’t know was the FBI purchased the property from the last heirs of the timber baron for use as a safe house, a communications center, and a training park for undercover agents. As terrorism grew, so did the FBI’s budget.
