Dangerous Thing

by Lanyon, Josh

  As I stood there rocking back and forth on my heels I began to feel very much alone, miles from town, miles from the nearest neighboring ranch, miles from nowhere. The wind through the trees sounded like rushing water, a mournful sound. It was a quarter of a century since I’d been out of hailing distance of other people. City boy, I jeered at myself.

  After a time the sound of the engine died away with the lights. That was weird. Were they camping in the woods?

  Rustlers? Slim pickings for rustlers these days. Briefly, I thought about investigating. Perhaps here lay the answer to my missing corpse. But unlike my intrepid Jason — or even good old Grace Latham — I concluded that night reconnaissance was not a hot idea. Even more briefly I considered calling the sheriffs, but after our last encounter I hesitated to look like the nervous nellie I knew they had pegged me for.

  Going back inside, I threw a couple of logs on the fire and returned to my book. But shortly after, the lines began to run together. Worn out by more physical activity than I’d had in a month, I crawled into my sleeping bag and fell instantly asleep.

  * * * * *

  I woke to the hoot of an owl. For a moment I wondered where I was. The room was moonlit. The shadow of a tree swayed against the wall. I squinted at the red embers in the fireplace, listening intently.

  At last I heard it again, the crunch of footsteps on gravel. Rolling out of the sleeping bag, I went to the windows. The night looked like it had been shot through a blue filter for a cheap horror flick.

  All was silent. Still.

  Had I imagined those furtive footsteps?

  Pulling on a pair of jeans, I shoved my feet into shoes and grabbed my flashlight. The air was bitter as I stepped out onto the porch. The surrounding mountains prickled with gleaming arrowheads of pine. Soft-footing it across the porch, I froze as a wooden board cracked underfoot loudly as a bone break.

  Nothing moved.

  I continued on around the house.

  The outlying sheds and barn stood dark and motionless in the moonlight. Frost glittered the rooftops. Quietly I picked my way down the steps. Nothing stirred in the yard. I stayed in the shadows of the house and waited.

  Nothing.

  Hours seemed to pass while I watched. I was dozy. I was chilled. I told myself that if there had been a prowler he was long gone now. I reminded myself that I needed my rest. I was a writer, not a detective, amateur or otherwise, and this was just a waste of time and valuable sleep.

  Finally I convinced myself and headed back inside the house. I tossed another log on the dying embers in the fireplace and dived for the sofa, shivering into my sleeping bag.

  After a few minutes my body defrosted and I sank back into confused dreams of Grace Latham sweeping cobwebs out of Ted Harvey’s trailer.

  We’ve got to get to the bottom of it, she informed me in my dream state.

  The bottom of what?

  The floor, Grace replied simply.

  * * * * *

  I was up with the birds, a meadow lark providing pleasant substitute for my alarm clock. In the fresh first light I cruised past the empty corrals, the empty stable and the empty trailer of my missing handyman, then up into the hills.

  I roved out quite a way enjoying the warm kiss of sunlight on my face. Taking my time I climbed the hillside, which was really more of a small mountain. “Find the nearest mountain, climb it, and peace shall flow into you as the sun flows into the trees,” said John Muir. At the crest of the hill I paused and inhaled a lungful of mountain air. When I stopped coughing I looked around.

  That’s when I noticed the field I was standing in was not of wild flowers, nor wild grasses nor bracken, familiar though those ragged green leaves seemed.

  Running it through the old calculator I deduced that I was waist high in grass — the kind you smoke, not mow. For a moment or two I stood there quietly aghast, and then I tore down the hillside and into the house to the telephone; I knew there was a reason I continued paying for the service. Instinctively I called my old pal Detective Jake Riordan.

  Drumming my fingers on the scratched counter, I waited for the answering machine. After four rings Jake picked up and mumbled, “ ‘Lo?”

  “Jake,” I puffed, still out of breath from my sprint. “It’s me. I need hel — advice. When I got here there was a body — a dead man in the yard. He’d been shot. In the back. When the sheriffs got here he was gone. Vanished. Now I’ve just found grass — pot growing on my hill.”

  Into my pause for oxygen Jake growled, “How the hell much coffee have you had this morning?”

  In the background I heard a voice murmuring inquiry. A feminine voice.

  I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me until then that Jake was still seeing other people. Female people. I figured he was still doing the leatherscene; I accepted that as a normal part of his screwed-up psyche. But dating women? Sleeping with women?

  Where exactly did I fit in his life? Apparently he could sleep with everyone but me. Friends? I was the friend he didn’t want to be seen with. So if we weren’t friends and we sure as hell weren’t lovers, why was I placing hysterical phone calls to him on a Saturday morning before breakfast?

  “Never mind,” I said. “Wrong number.”

  “Adrien, where —”

  I replaced the receiver quietly and carefully, not slamming it down because I was an adult after all, and whatever I was feeling now was my problem, not Jake’s. But the unrequited gig was getting old fast.

  I tottered into the front room and dropped down on the nearest chair. After a minute or so my breathing returned to normal and I noticed how quiet it was. Way too quiet. I got up, punched Play on the CD player and stared out the window.

  There’s a phrase in Titus Andronicus: “the heart’s deep languor.” For the record it wasn’t that I didn’t understand. And it’s not that I don’t like women. Some of my best friends are women. Women intrigue me with their fragile little bones and Amazon loyalty. I dig their Jr. Scientist makeup kits, their Machiavellian reasoning, their extraordinary notions of nutrition and geography. I just wouldn’t want my son to marry one. Okay, maybe my son, but not my boyfriend.

  Spooky footfalls in the night are not nearly as frightening as the prospect of being alone and lonely.

  One of life’s ironic moments occurred then, as the next CD dropped on the player. “Con Te Partiro.” Time to Say Goodbye.

  Chapter Three

  My first instinct had been to yell for help. As that was a scrub, I swung my sights toward a more realistic solution for my mounting problems.

  No doubt your standard issue solid citizen would have promptly summoned Sheriff Billingsly and his tobacco-spewing sidekick. But experiences with the local law had impressed upon me the awe-inspiring dearth of imagination there. I started remembering search and seizure horror stories where innocent landowners had their property confiscated by the state because of dope-dealing tenants and guests.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I had hashish growing on the North Forty. Not the easiest thing in the world to conceal either. I considered a controlled burn and briefly dwelt on the mental picture of my stoned woodland friends falling out of trees and sky. Uh-uh, as my erstwhile pal Riordan would have said.

  What I needed was some legal advice, so I placed a long distance call to dear old Mr. Gracen, the last surviving partner of the illustrious firm of Hitchcock & Gracen. It being Saturday my legal advisor was not in. The answering service asked if this was an emergency? I said I wasn’t sure, left my number, and resumed my restless pacing.

  After a couple of miles up and down the oak floors I realized I was as aggravated over what I was not letting myself think about — Jake — as I was over the marijuana. Since I couldn’t do anything about either at the moment it seemed pointless to go on worrying. I told myself this several times.

  Impelled by the kind of horrible fascination that draws people to the scenes of accidents, I scaled the hill once more and studied my former caret
aker’s vision of God’s Little Acre. If Ted Harvey had planted this cash crop I didn’t believe he would willingly walk away. So either he was due back shortly or he was indeed my now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t dead man. Vaguely I considered drug deals gone wrong. Surely that kind of thing happened after the harvest?

  As I stood there fretting and fuming I noticed a wisp of white smoke drifting from the valley on the other side of the mountain. Spaniard’s Hollow. I’d forgotten the local legend if I ever knew it, but I remembered that on the steep vertical rocks above the glen were petroglyphs, Indian symbols carved into stone. Way back in the days before the stage stop had been built, even before the gold miners had arrived, the Kuksu, a secret Indian society, used to hold religious ceremonies in these hills. Deep in the hills, in the dark caves hidden in the ridges and crevices.

  Naturally I was curious. Mainly because Spaniard’s Hollow is still part of Pine Shadow property, not a campground.

  I started down the uneven hillside, cutting a path through the trees. It was quite a climb for a guy whose extent of daily physical activity consists of running up and down a flight of stairs. As I chose my way down the slope I spied the tops of pitched tents and the topaz gleam of Lake Senex. I could see a couple of Land Rovers and a green pickup truck at the edge of the camp. A number of people moved between the tents. No one seemed concerned with concealment.

  A branch cracked behind me and I turned.

  “Stop right there!” a female voice commanded.

  Halting mid-turn, I slid a few inches in the pine needles and loose soil.

  “Hold it!” she shrilled.

  I had an impression of dark hair, spectacles and a purple Icelandic sweater. She was a small girl but she was holding a big gun.

  I retorted, “I’m trying.”

  “Put your hands up.”

  I put my hands up, slid again and grabbed for the low hanging branch of a pine tree.

  There was a loud explosion and something tore through the branches over my head sending splinters and bits of pine everywhere.

  “Whoops!” squealed the girl.

  “Jesus!” I yelled, cowering behind the all too skinny tree trunk. “Are you crazy?”

  “It just went off.”

  From the camp below us resounded sounds of alarm, and several flannel-shirted people swarmed up the hillside toward us, voices echoing in the hollow hills.

  “Amy? Amy? Where are you?” Their voices drifted up to us.

  “Here!” cried Amy. The gun wavered wildly in my direction.

  We were reached first by a tall, gaunt middle-aged man wearing glasses, and a young, capable-looking guy in jeans and a camouflage vest.

  I stepped from behind the tree. “What the hell is —?”

  I barely had time to get the words out before the young guy grabbed and planted me face down in the dried pine needles with a speed and efficiency that left me speechless.

  “Okay, Amy?” he demanded over my belated objections.

  The older man was questioning, “What happened?” Trying to make himself heard over the general confusion.

  “I found him trespassing,” Amy informed them excitedly. “The gun just went off.”

  “Gun? What gun?” exclaimed the older man. The owner of the knee in my spine echoed that dismay. He relaxed his arm lock for a moment.

  I wriggled free, rolled over and sat up, spitting out moldering tree bark and swear words.

  “Trespassing? This is my property. Who the hell are you maniacs?”

  The older man made ineffectual shushing motions. Amy pointed the gun at me again; it was snatched from her by the younger man who vaguely reminded me of Riordan with his blond, built-for-action look.

  “Hey!” protested Amy.

  “Hey yourself,” he shot back. “You know you’re not supposed to be packing.”

  Be packing? Was that the way college kids talk nowadays? Were weapons that common on campus?

  Oh yeah, I had them pegged for academics despite the hardware; the possible exception was the young tough who had manhandled me so efficiently.

  His eyes met mine. They were green and apologetic. I don’t subscribe to the gaydar theory but as our gazes locked, a flash of recognition went through me like a light turning on.

  The older man was asking who I was as we were joined by two more field trip escapees: a middle-aged woman wearing a red bandanna, and a handsome silver-haired man who appeared to have just set off on safari.

  “My name is English,” I bit out. “I own this land. Who are you?”

  “Dr. Philip Marquez. This is Amy —”

  “Dr. Lawrence Shoup,” the chap in the safari hat interrupted in one of those imperious English accents.

  Neither of us offered to shake hands as we looked each other up and down; granted he had the advantage since I was still on my ass.

  When the Snub Direct had reached a stalemate, the woman in the bandanna said, “But if you’re Mr. English, you gave us permission to dig here.”

  “I gave you permission to dig? Dig what? Who are you people?” I made to stand and the blond guy gave me a hand up. We hurriedly disengaged.

  “Dr. Philip Marquez,” Marquez began again patiently. He was stopped short by Stewart Granger.

  “I am in charge of this expedition,” Dr. Shoup announced, “in the absence of Dr. Livingston. Dr. Livingston, the site supervisor, is the one who wrote you.”

  “Wrote me? Wrote me about what?” I paused in brushing down my clothes. Pine needles in my boots. Pine sap in my hair. I hated these people whoever they were.

  Dr. Shoup frowned. “Regarding the excavation. The site. We are attempting to reconstruct the original site of the Red Rover mining camp.”

  At my incredulous look he said testily, “Perhaps you’ve forgotten? I assure you the proper forms have been filled out and documented with the Department of Parks and Recreation.”

  “This is private property, not state land.”

  “Well ... that is, well ....” I could see he wasn’t used to being contradicted.

  “Can I see these consent forms or whatever they are?”

  “They are at the university.”

  “What university?”

  “He means the local JC,” the blond said dryly. “Tuolumne College.”

  “Yes, quite right,” Shoup said as though this were a point for his side.

  “They might be in Dr. Livingston’s papers,” put in Amy, teacher’s trigger happy pet.

  “Dr. Livingston took his briefcase with him,” the middle-aged woman said.

  “Not all his papers were in the briefcase, Bernice.”

  “Let’s discuss this at base camp, shall we?” Dr. Shoup suggested.

  * * * * *

  At base camp I was issued a folding stool, a cup of chicory coffee and an explanation of sorts from Kevin, the blond grad student, while Bernice, Marquez, and Amy searched the site supervisor’s papers for proof that I had granted permission to dig the test pits now pockmarking the face of the hillside.

  “I guess we’re all jumpy,” Kevin apologized. “Some weird things have happened lately.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Let’s not bore Mr. English with our problems, O’Reilly,” Dr. Shoup put in.

  Naturally this made me curious. “What kinds of weird things have happened?”

  Kevin and Dr. Shoup exchanged one of those sliding glances people share when they aren’t sure their stories will match.

  Kevin said, “Noises and stuff.”

  “Coyotes,” Dr. Shoup said.

  The things coyotes took the rap for in these parts were quite extraordinary.

  “Practical jokes in all probability,” Dr. Shoup added.

  “My dog was killed,” Kevin said.

  “That was certainly coyotes, O’Reilly.”

  Kevin looked unconvinced.

  “What kind of dog?” I asked. Not that it was pertinent; I just wondered.

  “Border collie. He was young and healthy and he
’d been in fights before. I’ve never seen coyotes do that to a dog.”

  “Do what?”

  “Tore him to pieces.”

  Shoup made an impatient movement. Kevin said, “Okay, what about the chanting?”

  “Chanting?”

  “Local yokels,” opined Dr. Shoup. With that attitude he must be a real hit here in Hicksville.

  About this time Dr. Marquez and his cohorts returned triumphantly waving a sheet of paper.

  “I knew I’d seen it,” Bernice announced.

  Taking the letter, I studied it. There on a Xeroxed copy of my letterhead, someone had typed in effect that, for the sum of $50.00 a week, the Archeology Department of Tuolumne Junior College had permission to dig for the Red Rover mining camp. There were no conditions and no restrictions.

  “I never wrote this. That’s not my signature.” It was not my signature but it looked like a rough tracing of it. I scrutinized the date.

  “This is p-preposterous,” Dr. Shoup stuttered into the silence that followed my words.

  “I agree.”

  “It’s got your name on it,” Amy informed me.

  “I see that.”

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Dr. Marquez said, slowly scratching what appeared to be an impressive hickey on his throat. “Lawrence?”

  “Lawrence” appeared to be Dr. Shoup, who lost no time launching his offensive. “What exactly are you trying to pull here young man?” he said to me.

  “What is your precious Dr. Livingston trying to pull?” I retorted nastily. I’d had a bitch of a day, and getting shot at and thrown down a hillside had not improved my mindset. There were horrified gasps from the womenfolk as though I’d accused Louis Leakey of salting the fossil beds.

  “Do you realize what you’re suggesting, sir?”

  “There’s probably a simple explanation,” Kevin interjected.