Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1)

by Trevor Scott

“Their asses,” Marlon said.

  She put her hand on Ben’s hand and said, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, of course,” Ben said. “It wasn’t the first time I was shot at.” Finally, things were starting to click in his mind.

  Ben’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he stood up to see who was calling. But, since he had no contacts built into the phone, he had to simply recognize the number. He drifted toward the front door to take the call.

  “Yeah,” Ben said.

  “This is Maggi. Thank God you’re finally somewhere I can reach you.”

  “I’ve been with Marlon contacting everyone in the valley to see if Vlad Grankin has made offers for their property.”

  “And?”

  “And the only people who have gotten offers are those along the western edge of Cantina Valley,” Ben said. “Besides me, that includes Marlon, Jim Erickson, and maybe those at the Compound. Is there any way you could go visit with Kevin Engel in custody to see if he was made an offer?”

  Hesitation on the other end. Finally, Maggi sighed and said, “That’s why I’m calling, Ben. There’s been an incident at the holding facility.”

  “What kind of incident?”

  “They found Kevin Engel unresponsive in his cell this morning,” she said with considerable angst.

  “How? I thought your brother was in the same cell.”

  “He was. But he was transferred yesterday afternoon after a hearing. Della managed to get Tavis off, but Kevin was a bigger problem, based on his correspondence on the short wave.”

  “Is Tavis out?”

  “Not yet. They put him in with a couple of other guys who are scheduled to be released later today. According to Della, they didn’t want Kevin communicating with the others. I don’t know why.”

  Ben had an idea. “Will Kevin be all right?”

  “They don’t know. He’s in intensive care now. Della is all over it.”

  “Good. Kevin’s sister lives in Baker on a ranch. Can you make sure she’s notified?”

  “Sure.” Maggi paused and seemed to be occupied with something. Then she said, “What are your plans?”

  Ben felt the thick plastic business card in his left front pocket. He pulled out the card that simply said ‘Vlad Grankin, Entrepreneur.’ “We have a theory about Grankin,” Ben said. “We’re running that down now.”

  “Be careful,” Maggi said.

  “I will. Get your brother out of custody.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Ben flipped his phone shut and shoved it, along with the business card, into his front left pocket.

  Just then the front door opened and Sheriff’s Deputy Lester Dawson came in, surprised to see Ben.

  “I saw the SUV out there and thought it might be Marlon’s,” Lester said. “What are you boys up to?”

  Glancing back to Marlon and Sonya at the table, Ben simply shrugged. “Learning about soil.”

  The deputy wandered to the table, his eyes focused on Sonya, and said, “I went out to the vineyard to find your foreman, but he’s not there.”

  Ben said, “We met a truck from Springdale on our way here. The foreman was driving.”

  Sonya shook her head. “He’s supposed to be running a small crew pruning back vines on the south side. Why do you need him?”

  The deputy said, “I have a few questions for him.”

  She got up and said, “I can call him on the radio.”

  “That would be great,” Lester said. “Tell him I have a few questions I need answered.”

  She nodded and walked off to the back offices. Every man in the room checked out her departure.

  “I thought you were married?” Ben said to the deputy.

  “Separated, but not dead,” Lester said.

  “What do you need from the foreman?” Marlon asked.

  The deputy didn’t answer.

  Ben did, though. “He wants to ask the foreman about his life in El Salvador.”

  “How in the hell. . .”

  “Because I don’t believe in coincidences,” Ben said. “Marco Alvarez was a clean-cut American. But his father had a suspect past in the Salvadoran Army before he came to America.”

  “How did you find out that?” Lester asked.

  “Don’t ask. But you also know this. Does the foreman know that you know?”

  “I don’t know. I came out and Sonya said where I could find him. I hiked out to the vineyard, but his men were less than helpful.”

  Ben guessed the foreman saw the sheriff’s truck pull up and he decided to take off. “Have you found a tie between the foreman and Marco’s father?”

  “Not yet,” the deputy admitted. “I was coming here to ask the question. Information about the senior Alvarez and his time in the Salvadoran Army is almost impossible to discover.”

  But not entirely impossible.

  Sonya came back into the room and said, “He’s not answering.”

  “Did you try his phone?” the deputy asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “His cell and his home phone, just in case he went there. His wife said she hasn’t seen him since he left that morning.”

  Ben said, “Could you get me information on the truck he took?”

  “I don’t know,” Sonya said. “Why?”

  “It’s a company truck,” Ben said. “You must have insurance information.”

  Sonya nodded. “I have that.”

  Deputy Dawson smiled at his old high school friend. “VIN search?”

  Something like that.

  In a couple of minutes, Sonya came out with the insurance information on their vehicle, handing it to Ben.

  “Could you write down the foreman’s cell phone number?” Ben asked.

  Sonya scribbled the number on the back of the insurance paperwork.

  Ben drifted to a corner of the room and made a quick phone call, giving his contact the information. Then he came back to the others as if nothing had happened. He got intrigued stares from them.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  Deputy Lester Dawson, his hands on his hips, said, “I don’t want to know.”

  “This might take a while,” Ben said. “Anyone hungry?”

  33

  They didn’t make it to the restaurant. On the way there, Ben got a call from his old friends in the military. To be precise, the NSA.

  Marlon was driving down the road toward the north end of Cantina Valley. The Bigfoot hunter kept complaining that he was hungry. He asked, “Do you have a location?”

  “Yeah. But he’s still on the move.”

  “Point me in the right direction.”

  “Hang on.” Ben called Deputy Lester Dawson, who was trailing them in his sheriff’s rig.

  “You got Lester,” the deputy said.

  “I’ve got a location,” Ben said. “But we’ll run out of cell service soon.”

  “Head up to Marlon’s place,” Lester said.

  Ben instructed Marlon go to his place and he did so, shutting down his big SUV next to Ben’s truck.

  Lester walked up to the passenger side of Marlon’s SUV. “Are you sure the foreman, Carlos Sala, went up into the Siuslaw?”

  “That’s right,” Ben said. “He’s still on the move.”

  Smiling, Lester showed Ben a phone with a long antenna. “SAT phone,” the deputy said. “Give your guy the number and they can direct us right to the foreman’s location.” He handed the phone to Ben. “Give me a second.”

  The deputy hurried back to his sheriff’s vehicle while Ben got on the phone with his friend, giving him the SAT phone number. Ben glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the deputy coming back with a tactical shotgun and a go bag. Lester got into the back seat of Marlon’s SUV.

  “Is there a reason you’re not following us?” Ben asked.

  “Two reasons,” Lester said. “First, I’m supposed to be on vacation. And second, I’m not supposed to be working this murder case. Besides, the foreman took off when he saw by sheriff’s rig coming.”
r />   “That’s three reasons,” Ben said.

  “You went to high school with me,” Lester said. “Math wasn’t my best subject. Let’s move.”

  “Hang on,” Ben said. He got out and hurried to his truck, grabbing his AR-15 and a small bag with extra magazines. Then he got back into the front seat of Marlon’s SUV.

  Marlon started the engine and put his SUV in gear. “Which way? Are you sure we don’t have time to eat. My stomach is growling.”

  “Head up into the Siuslaw,” Ben said. “Once we get a final location, we’ll punch that into the GPS.”

  Lester leaned forward and said, “I see you brought your AR-15. Nice.”

  “Just in case,” Ben said.

  About fifteen minutes later, Ben got a call on the SAT phone with word that the foreman had stopped recently. Ben got the GPS coordinates and punched that into Marlon’s unit built into the console. Seconds later, satellites acquired, a woman’s voice directed them toward the foreman, Carlos Sala.

  “That area looks familiar,” Marlon said.

  “It should,” Ben said. “That’s really close to the truffle camp the men shot up.”

  In another fifteen minutes they were down a back road that dead ended ahead. But instead of finding the foreman sitting in his vehicle, there were three vehicles—the foreman’s and two others, including what appeared to be the same vehicle that had cruised by them and shot over the top of their SUV the other day.

  Ben picked up his AR-15 and positioned it between his legs. “Crap.” Unfortunately, his suspicions had possibly been correct.

  “What the hell is this?” Lester said from the back seat. “Stop back here and block the road.”

  Marlon did as he was told. There were thick trees on the right side and a tall embankment on the left. He was able to wedge his SUV at an angle so the three vehicles would be stuck.

  Ben jumped out, his AR-15 aimed toward the trucks ahead. “Stay here,” he said to Marlon.

  Deputy Dawson was right at Ben’s side with his shotgun leading his way toward the vehicles. It took the two of them just a few seconds to clear the two SUVs.

  Looking back at the first vehicle they had cleared, Ben suddenly remembered seeing this one also. It was Vlad Grankin’s rig. Now he aimed his rifle back toward the foreman’s vehicle and he moved in, Lester right on his hip.

  Besides checking out the foreman’s vehicle, his eyes also concentrated on footprints in the muddy road. There was just one set of tracks leaving the foreman’s vehicle, but there had to be at least four sets of tracks leading from the two other vehicles.

  Lester cleared the foreman’s vehicle while Ben kept an eye on the perimeter.

  “Clear,” Lester said, lowering his shotgun. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  Ben quickly told Lester about Vlad Grankin and how the Russian was trying to buy up much of the land in Cantina Valley.

  “What does that have to do with the foreman?” Lester asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Ben said. “But maybe everything. I had my people look into the background of Grankin. It wasn’t easy, but they found out he was formerly with the old KGB.”

  “Seriously? That’s fucked up.”

  “It gets better,” Ben said. “Turns out the guy was stationed in Central America during the same time as the El Salvador Civil War. I’m only guessing here, but I think the man was working with the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas, providing arms for their war against the Salvadoran government.”

  “What?” Marlon asked. The Bigfoot enthusiast had wandered up to them with a plastic bag of shriveled brown objects, which he was munching on.

  “I told you to stay in the vehicle,” Ben said.

  “I know. But you two looked cool.”

  “What are you eating?” Lester asked.

  “I found a bag of mushrooms in the console,” Marlon said. “I don’t even remember putting them there. Taste like dirt. But shrooms are good for you.”

  Ben turned to Lester and said, “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Lester said. “If I call in for backup, they’ll ask me what the hell I’m doing up in the Siuslaw. What do you think is going on here?”

  Shrugging, Ben said, “If I had to guess, I’d say the foreman, Carlos Sala, recognized Grankin when he came around trying to buy up properties. Either the foreman had been on the side backed by the Soviets, or he had been fighting them. Either way, that’s not good for Grankin’s business.”

  “Maybe that’s what got Marco Alvarez killed as well,” Lester said.

  That same thing had crossed Ben’s mind. “What if Marco had done some research and found out his father had been associated with Carlos Sala?”

  “The problem is,” Lester said, “we don’t know which side the foreman was on in El Salvador. He could have been working with this Russian.”

  “Or, he could have been part of a government Death Squad,” Ben surmised.

  “The only way to find out for sure is to track him down and ask the question,” Lester said. “How many are we up against?”

  “At least four,” Ben said. “Maybe as many as six.”

  “Shit,” Marlon said loudly.

  Ben glanced at Marlon and said, “What?”

  “I know where these mushrooms came from,” Marlon said. “One of my former grad students from the U of O must have left them behind during our last Bigfoot hunt.” He closed the plastic bag and shoved it into his jacket pocket. “These are magic mushrooms.”

  34

  Marlon was tripping hard within a short while. Ben and Lester had decided not to leave the former professor behind, deciding it wouldn’t be safe, considering how many mushrooms the man had eaten and the fact that Grankin and his men could come back at any time.

  Now, after hiking for the past half hour, the three men paused for a breather. Luckily, Lester had brought some bottles of water that he kept in his go bag in his sheriff’s rig. They all sipped on the water now.

  “The tracks split off here,” Ben said. “Not sure why.”

  They had not been able to determine the total number of men, since many of the tracks seemed to blend together in the mud. By now they had left the private land held by the Mammoth Paper Company, and had entered the Siuslaw National Forest. Ben knew that if they continued heading west they would eventually hit the Pacific Ocean, but that would be about twenty miles of rough going through some of the most inhospitable brambles and tangled forest imaginable. He was having a hard time trying to figure out why the foreman would have entered this forest. Most hunters even avoided this area, since there were far easier places to find deer and elk. Here, it was impossible to see more than twenty yards. They could be walking right into a trap.

  “We should split up,” Lester said. “I can head up the north trail and you two can stick to the west trail.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” Ben said. “When your backup finally makes it up to our vehicles, they’ll have a rough time finding us.”

  As Ben said this, the rain finally started to fall in a heavy deluge. They had been lucky the rain held off as long as it had, or they probably wouldn’t have been able to follow the tracks this far. At least they seemed to be on a game trail of some sort—perhaps something used by both deer and elk. But it was really hard to tell, because the human tracks had wiped out any sign of animal tracks.

  Lester pulled out his SAT phone, punched in a number, and waited for an answer. “I’ll let my boss know where we went.”

  Ben found his handheld GPS and set a waypoint, which also pulled up elevation and their current location. They were one point two miles from their vehicles.

  The deputy told his men their GPS coordinates and their disposition, explaining they would be splitting up and continue their tracking. Especially in light of the recent rainy conditions. Then Lester dug into his backpack and found a radio, which he handed to Ben.

  Checking the battery level, Ben saw the radio was fully charged. They set their channel and backu
p channels, before Lester gave a thumbs up and drifted slowly into the misty rain toward the north.

  Ben glanced to Marlon, who was sitting on a pile of moss under a large fir tree, his head cocked to one side as he observed something interesting.

  “What is it?” Ben asked Marlon.

  The Bigfoot hunter’s eyes drifted up to Ben. “Wow. I haven’t done mushrooms in years. I’ve forgotten how freeing psychedelic mushrooms are. They’re filled with psilocybin and psilocin.” Then Marlon laughed. “Man, why’d I ever stop?”

  “Are you all right to continue on?” Ben asked.

  “I’d rather just sit here and watch the needles drop, man.”

  Needles? He must have meant the rain. Damn it! He couldn’t babysit this guy and still move in to find these people. Maybe he should just sit here with Marlon until backup arrived.

  “You know there are more than twenty species of psychedelic mushrooms in America alone?” Marlon said. “More than a hundred worldwide. I should have known better. What was I thinking?”

  “It was a mistake,” Ben said. “How many did you eat?”

  “More than five grams,” Marlon said, his eyes seeming to swirl in circles. “That’s a heavy dose. Even for me. I smoke a lot of pot, but this is a whole other trip.”

  Jesus, what could Ben do? He didn’t want to take Marlon with him. But could he actually leave the man behind?

  When the first shot fired, it startled the both of them, even though it was off in the distance, the sound attenuated by the rain and the thick forest.

  “That was one helluva a fart, Ben,” Marlon said, and then giggled.

  All right, now Ben had no choice. “I’m going to leave you right here. Go up that hill a little ways and hide in the thick trees. If anyone comes down these trails and it’s not me or Lester, you hold tight. If it’s the sheriff and his men coming from the vehicles, call out to him so you don’t get shot. Can you do that?”

  “Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Leave me.”

  Reluctantly, Ben left Marlon behind. Now he hurried up the narrow trail. He picked up his pace when the second shot broke the silence.

  •

  Marlon suddenly swiveled his head around, trying his best to discern where he was and what he was doing there. Wasn’t he just talking with someone? Yes. It was Ben. What happened to Ben?