“It’s a long story, but I think I’ve got a very good chance of catching the poacher with the goods.” He smiled to himself. “A very good chance.”
He told Linda all about Eddie Laguna and Prowler. “He’s a funny guy.” He frowned to himself. “I’m not sure you’d like him much, but in his own way, he’s okay. I mean, here he is about to be arrested, and what does he worry about? His cat. I liked that.”
“Me, too. That’s what I’d worry about, Hobbes.” She sipped her whiskey and gave an involuntary shudder. “You going to put him in jail?”
“That’s not up to me, but I’m going to put in a good word for him. He’s not the one I want.”
“How come? Without him, the sheep would still be alive.”
Frank shook his head, the gesture all but lost in the darkness. “Maybe, for now, but sooner or later, the poacher would’ve come back. The man who hired Eddie would’ve hired someone else.” He shifted around to look at her. “I think the poacher, the man with the money, killed the first guide, Donnie Miller. Besides, the money’s too much for a guy like Eddie to turn down.” He nodded to himself. “He’s remarkable in his way. Makes it on his own, a damn good taxidermist, self-taught, like everything else he does. Guys like Eddie usually come to a sad end, but he’s got …” He paused, searching for the right word.
“Pluck?”
“Okay, it sounds corny, but yeah. Maybe grit is a better word.”
“Pluck’s for girls, huh?”
“Girls with ten-gauge shotguns.” He laughed. “Besides, he’s going to lead me to the man with the rifle.”
When he came to the part about Eddie setting up another meeting with the poacher, the anonymous Smith, he felt excitement welling up at the prospect of catching the guy who’d killed the sheep, the guy who he was sure had left Donnie Miller to die of exposure.
Somehow, Miller’s death didn’t seem as bad to him as killing the sheep. He’d felt compassion for the unnamed dead man, but now that he knew his identity, he didn’t care as much. Maybe it would be better if they were all dead.
These were not good thoughts. He thought about dying of thirst. Not a good way to go. He didn’t want to give in to evil thoughts, become ugly in his heart. “Evil thoughts lead to evil deeds,” his mother had reminded him many times.
“So tomorrow, I’ll take you into Ridgecrest, check in with my boss, then go on up to Bishop to feed Prowler.” I’ll be back for you at five. How’s that work out?”
“I’d like to get my car. I’m stuck without it. I can get a ride into Red Mountain, pick up my car, and then meet you back here.”
It caught him off guard. A sense of foreboding began to gather in the pit of his stomach. “To tell you the truth, I wish you wouldn’t. Right now, everything feels pretty safe.” He could feel himself becoming too earnest, but she had to understand the danger she was in. “But if you pick up your car, it would be easy to follow you, find out where you’re staying.” He spoke into the night, not looking in her direction. Linda didn’t say anything. “They think you might know more than what the paper said. That’s why they wanted to talk to you. They think this Smith left their brother in the desert to die. I think they’re right, and I think it’s the same man I’m trying to catch for poaching. And to tell you the truth, I think Mr. Smith will be very lucky if I find him before they do.”
“That’s it, isn’t it, the North Star?” Linda extended her arm upward at about a forty-five-degree angle, pointing north.
“Yes, that’s it. The Owens Valley runs north-south. You’re pointing up the valley at the North Star.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “It makes sense to wait awhile, but I hate to feel …” Her voice trailed off.
“Dependent. But you’re not. We’re just sharing resources.”
“Oh, a wordsmith. Maybe you should think about changing careers, get into PR. You’re wasting your talent.” She paused, letting the silence take up the space between them. “Frank, it’s got nothing to do with you. I’m just used to taking care of myself. You don’t have to convince me that these are evil people.” She turned and spoke to him directly. “But you’re right. It would be too easy to follow someone out here—especially in the daytime. So pick me up. I’ll call and get Dad to take care of Hobbes. He’ll probably take him to the bar. Hobbes loves that. He is very social.”
She thrust her arm at him, poking him in the side. “Only don’t be late picking me up. I hate waiting around, especially in the afternoon with the heat bouncing off the pavement.”
Frank sighed audibly. “Good. I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel.” He stopped himself. Time for a change of subject. “You know, if we catch this guy—and it looks like we might—you’ve got an exclusive with the cop and/or cops on the job. Should make a good story.”
“That’s for sure. Probably good enough to be picked up by the Los Angeles Times—that is, if we catch him.”
“What do you mean, ‘we,’ white woman?” He was smiling broadly.
She laughed, letting the tension out. “Hey, you better quit flashing your teeth in the dark. They catch the light. Somebody might see us. Besides, all that grinning makes you look like a bandito.” She really could see his teeth, the smile shining out of the dark. “You know, you’re a lucky man, Mr. Flynn. Every great detective needs a Watson. I’m your Watson, Franklock. Your brave deeds and steel-trap mind will go down in history.”
“Sounds right to me. Guess I am a lucky man.”
“Luckier than you know, Mr. Flynn.” She leaned over and kissed him ever so softly on the mouth.
He felt his face flush and heard a humming in his ears. For a moment, he wondered if he was going to be able to make it inside.
20
Linda awoke in the soft gray of false dawn to Frank’s humming. She didn’t hum in the mornings. She showered, drank coffee, spoke to no one until she hit work. She pulled the covers over her shoulders against the morning chill. He was stirring about near the stove. Linda could smell coffee. She made an exception. “Mmm. Smells good. How about some of that coffee?”
“Ask the Flynn and the Flynn delivers.” He poured coffee into a thick brown china mug and took it over to her. As she sat up to take the coffee, the blankets fell away, reminding them both of her nakedness. She reached for the covers with one hand and the coffee with the other.
“Hungry?”
She was. In fact, she was ravenous. “Yeah, you bet.”
“How about a breakfast burrito? Beans, eggs, and cheese, and some of Flynn’s special store-bought salsa, or, if you’ve got the stomach for it, some Swab’s High Sierra Chileno Indian-style peppers?”
“You’re kidding, Swab’s Indian-style peppers?”
“Nope, I’m not kidding, and yup, you can have some. They’re really good, too. Made right here in the valley. They’re not really that hot, just a bit of a bite.”
“Why not. Let’s have ’em.”
Frank turned back to the stove. Linda watched him as he went about warming the tortillas and beans, scrambling up the eggs and then deftly folding eggs, cheese, beans, peppers, and salsa into perfect burritos, ends tucked nicely in, no drips or leaks. Definitely a morning person. He was still humming.
“Hey, you’re good. You could give old Ralph a run for his money.”
Frank smiled. “Nope. I’m an amateur; Ralph’s a pro. Twenty minutes a burrito doesn’t cut it. It’s still fun for me. Besides, I could never match that black scowl.” He handed her a burrito on a warm plate. Wisps of vapor rose from the food into the cool air of the morning, filling the caboose with a spicy fragrance.
“It gets cold up here next to the mountain, doesn’t it?” Linda took a bite of burrito. The flavor of the Chileno peppers was delicious, like no other pepper she’d ever eaten, warm and not too hot. It tasted of the desert air after a rain, pungent and just short of sweet. “Mmmm. These peppers are really great.”
“Grown on the slopes of the Sierras, right here in the Owens Valley,” he int
oned in a radio voice. “They are good, aren’t they? And yeah, it gets cold here. We’re at almost at forty-five hundred feet.”
“Mm, mm, mmmm,” she replied, her mouth full of burrito. Her morning mood was softening. Breakfast in bed. A breakfast of real food.
Frank sat on one of the cloth camping chairs he’d brought inside. They ate in silence as the valley filled with light. Though they had shared the same bed and passion in the dark, Linda felt awkwardly modest about her nakedness, especially in the intimate closeness of the caboose. Reyes had been the last man with whom she had shared a bed. That was just over a year now. Reyes. She wondered how much baggage Frank was lugging around.
Frank interrupted the domestic stillness. “Listen, I have to get an early start.” The seriousness in his voice pulled Linda abruptly away from her thoughts and into the affairs of the day.
“Weekends, we rotate duties when we can. I’ve got a ‘walk and talk’ over at the charcoal kilns near the dry lake this afternoon.” He leaned forward, an earnest expression on his face. She recognized the look from the classroom lecture, serious and intent. “Did you know that there used to be steamships on Owens Lake? Before Los Angeles took the water. And there’s a story about a steamer sinking with a cargo of silver bars.”
Her thoughts drifted back to the previous night. Their lovemaking had been both tender and passionate. She had let herself be naked with this man, exposed, vulnerable, and yet perfectly safe. It was something new to her.
He saw that she was smiling at him and changed course. “Anyhow, Meecham will probably have a few things for my plate besides burritos, and I have to get up to Bishop and look in on Eddie Laguna’s cat. I’ll pick up a BLM vehicle on the way back, so don’t look for my truck.”
She caught Frank’s hand. “I want to know all about the steamships and the lost silver. You’re a treasure of information. That’s what you are, my treasure chest of information.” She pulled him toward her and kissed him on the mouth. He set his plate on the bed, and she could tell that affection had shifted into desire.
She put her hands against his shoulders. “Me, too.” She nodded, smiling up at him. “But I have to be at work. The story’s coming out today, with the pictures of the poacher and Eddie. Be sure and buy a paper. You and the BLM show up as heroes, not to mention this intrepid reporter.” She was still thinking about having to get out of bed naked. Being with Frank was still so new, and there was stuff to get done.
“Thanks. The boss loves good publicity, and the truth is, we need it.” He noticed her hand clutching at the bedclothes. “I hung your clothes up in the bathroom; here’s my ratty bathrobe.” He reached behind the door and laid it on the end of the bed. “I’m going to put a few scraps out for my other foxy girlfriend. Back in a minute.”
She watched him go out the door, her heart swelling inside her. It was good that he liked cats. She shifted gears. So let’s get on with it, she thought. She wolfed down the rest of her burrito, put her plate on the table, and dashed into the bathroom, taking the robe with her.
The desert stretched before them in the morning light, but Linda’s mind was already at the paper. She had several projects going besides bighorn sheep. There was the story on the railroad museum at Laws. Frank had given her the idea. She had found a man in Bishop who used to be an engineer on the old narrow-gauge railroad. He was full of stories; some of them might even be true. Then there was the ghost town of Beverage, so hard to get to that it hadn’t been looted, or so one old boy had told her. She’d have to ask Frank if he’d ever been there.
But the project on the front burner was the research she was doing on the new open-pit gold mining operation near Ballarat. The Indians were very unhappy, and they had reason to be, but they were only a scattering of brown voices in the wilderness. They might just as well be coyotes howling in the night, she thought. Maybe she could focus some attention on it. Too late to do anything about this one, but perhaps public awareness might serve in the future. She tried not to get discouraged. Policy and politics seemed such a quagmire. Her job was to write about it—“just the facts, ma’am.” She envied Frank, actually doing something out there in the desert, protecting the land. But then again, she knew he chafed under the BLM’s policies, which shifted with changes in politics.
“It’s not easy, is it?”
He lifted his eyebrows and shot her an inquiring look.
“Sorry, just voicing my own thoughts. I was thinking it must be hard for you. Taking care of the Winnebago crowd, I mean.”
“Sometimes, but not as much as you might think. They come out here because they’re drawn to the desert. Maybe it’s just about getting away from the city, the sense of freedom. Do what you want in the wide-open spaces. Howl around on ATVs, have barbecues and drink too much beer. Some of them even come for the beauty of it. They might not put it that way, but that’s what it gets down to. Whatever it is, they come. So it’s our job to make it safe for them and the land safe from them. Dropping by the campgrounds, making sure everything is okay, gives me and the BLM a chance to do a little educating. I really like doing the campfire talks and leading people on nature walks.” He glanced over at her, grinning. “Rangers don’t have to give talks. I’m a volunteer. Besides, I used to give a lot of them before I shifted to the enforcement side of things. Sometimes people just open up. When you hear things like ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ or ‘Hey, that’s neat,’ and see people talking about the things they’ve just heard, you know you’ve made a difference, helped take care of the land, because these people go home with a different outlook.”
She looked skeptical. “The new and improved citizen, huh?”
“Hardly that. God knows, some of them would make a maggot puke.” A frown passed over his face like a cloud shadow on the landscape. “But that’s the exception, a nasty exception. Most people are okay. It’s important to remember that. And attitudes change over time. Hell, even the pillage and grab crowd pays lip service to the environment. In my dad’s time, people thought of the desert as a big wasteland, except for a few characters like Joseph Wood Krutch and Mary Austin. They were the start.”
“How about Edward Abbey?”
“Your dad and his pals, huh? The Grumpy Wrench Gang.”
“Are you pissed off about that?”
“Getting a flat, naw. At least not anymore. But at the time, I had a few choice things to say.” He rested his hand on hers. “My priorities kinda shifted when I saw the cop cars at your dad’s place.”
She considered this man, a quiet, thoughtful optimist. An optimist, an endangered species. It gave her heart a lift. “So what about Abbey?”
“How can you not love his work, especially Desert Solitaire? I remember when I first read it. I thought, I know this guy. He’s me. I’m him, even the anger, especially the anger. It was like I had someone to share it with. It wasn’t just me, so I could let some of it out. I was just a kid, maybe twenty, twenty-one. But at the time, all I could see was the place where I lived being trashed by a bunch of rich white people from the city. I had some ugly fantasies.”
“So you became a cop?”
“Just about perfect, isn’t it? I’m being paid to protect my home. How can you beat that?” He grinned into the morning sun.
Linda stood by the truck, resting her hands on the window. She raised her voice over the sound of the traffic. “Five o’clock, right here, okay? Remember that I hate to be kept waiting when it’s hot. You never met moi when I’m pissed off. So be on time. I don’t want to ruin a good thing.”
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me twice. You left that ten-gauge job at home, right?” He grinned. “Not to worry. I’ll be here, or if I’m late, I’ll just keep on rolling as a matter of survival.”
She waved as he pulled out, then watched as the truck was swallowed up in the traffic, his arm waving back out the window. She felt a pang at his departure. How could she start missing him already? It was ridiculous, but then again, it wasn’t. Obviously, she was in love. She la
ughed to herself. In love, in love with love. No, in love with this strange, enigmatic man, who laughed at things, especially himself. She felt her heart quicken. Get a grip on yourself, Linda, she thought.
“The Kern County Sheriff’s Department has something going on near some mine in Randsburg. The radio chat sounds like arson, maybe ecovandals.” Marston pulled at his splashy purple tie; its swirling white blossoms intertwining with the stylized Art Deco vines complemented his brown-and-white basket-weave shoes. It must have cost him fifty dollars, she figured.
“Reyes?”
“Um-hm. I’m listening.” She hoped it wasn’t ecovandals. It would be bad timing, and she hoped especially that it wasn’t the Grumpy Wrench Gang. Dad and Co. could get out of hand. The hijinks with the caltrops was serious business, and the last thing she wanted was a confrontation between her dad and the BLM, especially Frank. That could really gum things up.
George Marston, the retro dweeb, squinted at her through nonexistent cigarette smoke. “Say there, Reyes, why don’t you call your buddy over in Tehachapi and see what’s up.” With him, it was always “Reyes.” He’d seen Bogart in Deadline—U.S.A. and taken it to heart. He thought of himself as a tough, street-smart city editor. She thought of him as a bright Clark Kent, except for the pocket protector. How could he try and sound like a cynical, world-weary newspaper man and wear a pocket protector?
“What buddy?”
“The one who’s always calling here. ‘Is Ms. Reyes there?’” he mimicked in a deep baritone. “Voice all aquiver when he says ‘Ms. Reyes.’ The tall, blond, muscular, oh-my-what-cute-buns Kern County deputy sheriff, Officer Eugene Bohannon. That buddy.”
Damn, Linda thought, sorry she’d asked. The dweeb kept his finger on the pulse of gossip, which was just local news, wasn’t it? God, how often did the goofy kid call up? She hated to call him, but a source was a source.
Shadow of the Raven Page 20
