Cowboy Justice

by Melissa Cutler

  Capturing a moment like that with a picture was like grabbing hold of a flash of lightning. Only after you froze the image could you pick out all the intricacies that made the moment beautiful. The complicated threads of energy curving and breaking, the play of light and shadow, the incomparable power. Photography was the only way she knew how to harness the world’s power, to understand time and all the forces of the universe beyond her control.

  No force was more beyond her control than the love she felt for Vaughn.

  He didn’t say anything about the photographs, but silently shook the extra water from the bowls and replaced them in the saddlebag.

  She stole a quick peek at the shots she’d taken. They looked good, but she’d have to develop them before she knew for sure. She packed the camera in its case and dug for a bag of horse treats.

  “Ready to ride again?” Vaughn asked from across Growly’s rump before swinging onto the saddle.

  “Sounds good.” She gave the nibblies to Growly and Disco, then followed suit. Anxious to keep their fledgling camaraderie alive, she nodded her chin in the direction of the derricks. “Race you the rest of the way?”

  “You’re on, cowgirl.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Sorentinos’ string of four beige oil derricks sat in a valley near an old, dry irrigation canal, each pumping at the same rate, but out of sync with each other. Vaughn’s first thought on seeing them was that it was a good thing he hadn’t brought Deputy Reyes along. The lingering symptoms of his post-traumatic stress disorder wouldn’t have handled the lack of synchronicity well. He would’ve managed, but his blood pressure would’ve shot through the roof.

  A crude road ran parallel to the canal and the derricks. Nathan Binderman stood behind the squad truck, his evidence kit spread across the open tailgate along with copies of photographs Rachel had taken of the graffiti.

  He handed Disco off to Rachel to tend and sidled up to Binderman. “Find anything of interest yet? Prints, I hope?”

  “The graffiti was painted over, so there weren’t any prints to get.”

  Annoyed, he kept his focus on Binderman when Rachel offered a sheepish “Sorry.”

  “But I did find some older tire tracks preserved in dried mud, smaller than a vehicle or ATV tires. Looks like dirt bikes.”

  Odd. He opened his mouth to ask Rachel about the tracks, when she volunteered, “The morning I found the graffiti, the ground was covered with dirt bike tracks, but we don’t keep dirt bikes.”

  “Damn it, Rachel. I wish to God you would’ve called me when you found those. We’ll be lucky if we end up with a single piece of valid evidence out of this day.”

  She bristled. “Not fair, Sheriff. This is rural country. We don’t go crying to the police every time someone trespasses on our property any more than we report every case of missing livestock on the chance that someone’s stealing from us. That’s not our code, and you know it.”

  She was right, but it still ticked him off something fierce how she’d handled it. “I’ll give you a pass on the first couple, but when you decided to start carrying a firearm around to scare the vandals away, that should’ve been your first clue to get my department involved.”

  “I can’t change my past mistakes any more than you can, Sheriff.”

  That shut him up. Well, that along with the searing glare she drilled him with.

  “Did you find similar tire tracks at the other vandalism sites?” Binderman asked.

  She squinted, thinking. “Not the one on the backside of the barn, but the rest, yes. Not only around the vandalism areas, but all over this west end. I figured illegal immigrants were making use of the land as a trail north.”

  Binderman shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s a reasonable assessment, with all due respect. On illegal immigrant trails, there’s a lot more debris. Food wrappers, water bottles, dirty socks, smashed-up prepaid cell phones, used diapers. Nasty stuff. In Chaves County, where I worked before I transferred to Quay, we called them Trash Trails. You could pick them out in a helicopter.”

  Binderman was right. Vaughn had dealt with a lot of scuffles between immigrants and the ranchers whose land they crossed through, and the trash stuck in most property owners’ craws more than anything else. “Immigrants on the move don’t usually use dirt bikes, either,” Vaughn added. Drug runners did, but he wasn’t prepared to open the idea up to Rachel until his department had more evidence to back up that theory.

  “Was the canal shut off from water because of the derrick placement?” Binderman asked Rachel.

  Vaughn cringed. The drying up of the fields due to her father’s mismanagement was a prickly topic for her.

  “No,” she said, frowning. “That one was already dry. It’s the same canal the second graffiti message was written on, about a mile south. This whole part of our alfalfa operation was the first to go. The flow vents between the canal sections broke and we didn’t have the money to fix them. We do now, and we hired a foreman this week, so this’ll be the first field we plant come fall. I know this whole area is a crime scene, but the foreman, Ben, and I were planning on coming out this way tomorrow morning, to assess the plumbing and take inventory of what we need to fix.”

  “I don’t see a problem with that. We’ll be done gathering evidence today,” Vaughn said as his phone rang. It was Stratis. “What’d you find?”

  “Henigin stayed overnight at the property two months ago, March 15th through the 17th, under an alias, paid cash. Jenna Sorentino recognized him in the photograph. Looks like the girlfriend used an alias too. No DMV records. Jenna had a picture of the two of them for the inn’s photo album, so I put out an APB on the girl, then dusted the room they’d stayed in for prints. Got a few. The biggest surprise came when I searched the rest of the house. The lock to the storage under the house’s raised foundation had been jimmied open. The storage had been tossed up pretty good, like someone was in a big hurry to find something. The ground’s dug up in a half-dozen places. I’m down there now, dusting for prints. I’ll upload the photos to your phone.”

  Times like these, Vaughn wished he could clone himself. “Good work.”

  “I’m checking the rest of the property now, with an eye for broken locks or hasty searches.”

  “Keep me posted.” He replaced the phone on his utility belt. “Rachel, what do you and your sisters keep in storage under the house?”

  She blinked, surprised. “Nothing but old, broken farm equipment and Christmas decorations. Why?”

  “Stratis found proof that Henigin was on your land, and it looks like he searched your storage area. When was the last time any one of you were down there?”

  Covering her mouth, she stumbled back and braced her hand on the squad truck. “He was going through our stuff?”

  His arms twitched with the need to hold her. He hitched his thumbs on his belt, fighting the feeling. “I can imagine how violated you must feel right now, but you and your sisters were lucky. Obviously he wasn’t there to harm you, and we can all be thankful for that.”

  Hugging herself, she looked into the distance as if gathering strength from the land. “January. Me and Jenna were down there in January putting away the holiday decorations. What was he looking for?”

  “We don’t know yet. But we’re going to keep looking until we have the answers.” He directed his attention to Binderman. “On that note, we need to get on down to that second site. Do you need anything else from either Rachel or me?”

  “I’ve got this, boss. Go ahead.”

  “Check in with me when you’re done. We’ll leave markers at the canal so you can find the graffiti locations easily. I’ll process the boulder, then work my way back to you.”

  * * *

  Scared the shit out of Rachel that a man had been in her home, digging through their things. Scared her so bad that she felt herself shutting down, which wouldn’t do at all, not with her family’s safety at stake. Vaughn and his men were working to capture the criminals who were terr
orizing them, so she didn’t have the luxury to fall apart.

  She dissolved an antacid on her tongue, working to dig out from the panic and fear by looking on the land she loved, visualizing neatly plowed rows and fields full of green. Soon, she vowed. Every day she was taking small steps toward a brighter future. For her farm, and—she glanced Vaughn’s way—for herself.

  They rode south from the derricks. Vaughn set small yellow flags at the two spots in the dry canals where the graffiti had been written, before they crossed through a canyon en route to the west side of Sidewinder Mesa, where the final graffiti incident had taken place.

  Once they reached the bottom of the canyon, the trail opened up into one of the dry tributaries of Catcher Creek, dipping deep into a canyon that was one of Rachel’s favorite spots on her farm to photograph. The canyon walls, smoothed by wind, rippled to the sky in a series of rust red and brown ribbons, each a marker of the passing of time—the history of Earth captured in the ground like a layer cake, reminding her of how temporary her efforts as a farmer were. She nudged Growly close to the wall and ran her finger along a dry layer of sand that crumbled at her touch.

  The ground on the canyon floor was wide and even, not requiring a great deal of horse-handling skill, so Rachel decided it was time to broach the topic with Vaughn she’d been wondering about for a few days. “Amy told me you don’t eat any fruits or vegetables. What’s up with that?”

  “What?” She could see his brain doing a one-eighty to catch up with the direction of the conversation. “Oh, no. I don’t. Plants are disgusting.”

  “That’s really unhealthy of you.”

  He shrugged. “I take a multivitamin.”

  “How did that get started? I mean, most kids aren’t into vegetables—Tommy’s sure not—but fruit? What’s wrong with fruit?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like it. The texture, the taste—bleh.”

  “What about fruit pies? Everybody loves apple pie.”

  He shook his head. “Not me.”

  “Not even Catcher Creek Cafe’s triple berry cream pie? I dream about that pie.”

  “Disgusting.”

  Rachel gasped at his blasphemous remark. “If I were dying, I’d eat that pie for my last meal, no question about it.”

  He scratched his chin. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Didn’t your mom make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when you were a kid?”

  With his index finger, he pushed the brim of his hat higher and gave her a lopsided grin that made her heart tighten. “Peanut butter and honey.”

  “Well, damn.”

  “It’s not such a big deal. Isn’t there a food you hate?”

  Rachel didn’t give much thought to food in general, so long as it was hot and she didn’t have to make it. There was one food she couldn’t stand, but she’d never breathed a word of her distaste to anyone. “All right, I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to keep my secret. You can’t let it slip to Amy because it would break her heart.”

  “Your secret is my secret.”

  “Okay.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I don’t like pasta. The texture makes me want to barf.”

  He slapped a hand on his thigh. “What? No way. How can you not like pasta?”

  “Shhh! Don’t say it so loud.”

  He rewarded her confession with a belly laugh. “That’s criminal.”

  She scoffed. “No more than your warped opinion of triple berry cream pie.”

  “Amy doesn’t know? When she fixes pasta, you eat it anyway?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said with a cringe. “I don’t have the heart to tell her. She’s so proud that she makes it from scratch.”

  He laughed again and this time she joined in. “You’re a better person than me because there ain’t no way, no how, I’m letting a plant cross my lips.” He twisted his fingers in front of his lips like he was locking them closed with a key.

  “I didn’t know that about you until Amy told me the raisins in her scones were the only fruit you’ll eat.”

  “Yeah, I guess raisins are okay in sweets.” He scratched his neck. “You don’t like pasta. I would’ve never guessed. Tell me something else I don’t know about you.”

  Fiddling with the rein, she considered the request. “I think you know everything about me, actually.”

  “That’s a cop-out answer. Put your mind to it and you’ll think of something.”

  They ascended from the canyon floor onto the western slope of Sidewinder Mesa, within a mile of the graffiti boulder. She wracked her brain for something to tell Vaughn about herself. Her life was so simple, so straightforward. She got up every morning, worked the farm until sundown, sometimes later, and got ready to do it again the next day. Her only hobby was photography. She didn’t watch much television, or keep up with the latest in music, but . . . “I like to whistle.”

  “Really?” He seemed genuinely charmed by the discovery. “What do you whistle?”

  “When I’m out riding by myself, sometimes I whistle old Glen Campbell songs, the ones my dad played when I was a kid. Back then, we had a tractor with a tape deck—we thought we were living like kings with accessories like that—and he’d play Glen Campbell while we worked.”

  “Let me hear you whistle some Glen Campbell right now,” he said. “How about ‘Southern Nights’?”

  She should’ve guessed he’d lobby for a performance. “I can’t do it with someone else around. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Okay, I’ll start. You join in.”

  He puckered his lips, but stopped short of whistling, a stumped look on his face. “I can’t remember how it goes.”

  She gave him a chastising look. “You’re trying to bait me into whistling first. It’s not going to work.”

  “No, really, I can’t remember.”

  Rachel hummed the opening bars.

  He nodded. “Okay, I got it now.” Even though she’d hummed the melody for him, it took him a few tries to get the first note right, but then he dove straight into a decent rendering.

  Rachel was smiling so big, it was tough to pucker her lips enough to whistle, but she managed it halfway through the first line of the chorus.

  They hit most of the notes correctly, and even managed a bit of accidental harmony during some of the verses. The horses plodded up the trail toward the top of the mesa, side by side, undisturbed by their riders’ music. Rachel couldn’t take her eyes offVaughn, who was staring right back at her. What a crazy thing to do—whistling an old country tune on the trail like two fool cowpokes without a care in the world.

  It felt sublime.

  Not even a photograph could bottle lightning as powerful as the way she felt, making music with the man she loved. Two years. Yeah, she could handle waiting to be together, as long as she kept this memory of whistling with him fresh in her mind. A carrot to look forward to again when they reunited. In two years, she’d be on the cusp of thirty-five, still young enough to have a couple kids if they were quick about it. Then again, she didn’t know how he felt about kids. But she certainly wasn’t going to break the mood by asking him about it.

  Vaughn forgot the coda at the end, and his expression was so panicky, Rachel stopped whistling to let her laughter escape before she plunged into the final chorus. Vaughn caught up with her by the final notes.

  She held the last note for as long as she could, watching a rabbit dash across the valley to take refuge in a creosote bush. Smiling so wide she thought her lips might crack, she looked Vaughn’s way, expecting him to feel as bubbly good as she did.

  But the look he pinned her with cut straight through her heart like a knife.

  Pain like grief dragged his features down. His whole body, from his tense shoulders to the blue eyes that had turned glossy with wetness and the down-turned mouth that was the window to his thoughts, radiated the same kind of implacable longing Rachel knew all too well. If she’d ever doubted whether he felt about her the same aching love she harbored for him, she didn’
t any longer.

  She winced and tore her gaze away to stare at her saddle horn. Her heart—no, her whole chest—hurt. Her throat tightened. “We can do it. We can wait. We’ve been apart for this long, right? Two more years is a flash in the pan.”

  Vaughn’s hand reached across to grab hold of her horse’s reins, commanding it to stop along with his own horse.

  “Look at me, Rachel.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, praying for the strength to hold his gaze without breaking down. Reopening them, she met his gaze.

  The grief had diminished, replaced by an unreadable mask. He took her left hand in his. “The day I quit smoking, the day you broke things off with me, I left a pack of cigarettes in the glove compartments of both my vehicles so that every time I got in a car, I had to make the choice not to light up. It was torture at first. It almost killed me to say no to my addiction a dozen times a day, every single day. But little by little I got stronger, and denying myself got easier. I’d stopped thinking about lighting up on a daily basis, which was a major milestone for me. That is, until you were shot on Monday. I’ve been dying for a cigarette ever since, but that’s a different issue. My point is, it’s not like that for me with you.”

  He swallowed, and Rachel’s heart plunged. She tried to pull her hand away, a futile act of self-protection.

  “It doesn’t get easier to say no the more I’m around you,” he said. “It gets harder. It’s getting damn near impossible.”

  It sounded like a breakup. His tone, his expression, and his body language mirrored the breakup she issued him seventeen months ago in the hospital parking garage. She shook her head. This can’t be happening. Not now, after I’ve found peace with my feelings for you. “Vaughn, please don’t—”

  He cut short her plea. “You’ve got to let me get this all out, Rachel, before I lose my nerve. Because one minute we’re whistling Glen Campbell. and the next, all I can think about is ripping your clothes off and making love to you right there on the ground. Doesn’t matter that I’m working a case and my employees could drive up any minute and see us, because I’m sitting here in the saddle, watching you, and running arguments through my brain trying to justify it, like I did in the stable. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m helpless to fight my need to be with you when you’re nearby.”