by C. J. Box
But he had the nagging feeling that he was covering the same ground that Sheriff Neal and DCI Agent Williams had already trod.
Except for his missing file and the glimpse he’d had of the photo on Sophie’s phone, it seemed like he was getting nowhere fast.
At the same time, he couldn’t get rid of the thought that he was missing something in plain sight. If only he could figure out what it was.
16
FOR NATE ROMANOWSKI, THE TEUBNER FISH HATCHERY WAS THE SECOND strange sight he’d taken in after leaving Saratoga that morning. And as odd and incongruous as it was—a fish hatchery located in the middle of nowhere—it didn’t even compare to the first.
After driving north from Saratoga that morning after breakfast with Joe, he’d left the ice-covered state highway for the more familiar feel of an improved gravel road that ran straight and true east through a vast sagebrush-covered plain directly toward the Snowy Range in the distance.
Although Nate drove his four-wheel-drive GMC Yukon XL, he found that the drifts across the road had been plowed that morning and it was clean and clear. Someone—not the county, for sure—had spent a lot of money constructing such a wide and heavy-duty road, he thought.
But it wasn’t the mountains that dominated the horizon. It was hundreds of white wind turbines, their blades rotating against the deep blue sky as if propelling the scudding clouds along and out of their way.
The turbines were so high and massive that it took twice as long as he thought it would to arrive at the Buckbrush Wind Energy Project. As he got closer, Nate was stunned by the scale of it. Towers in different stages of construction stretched as far as he could see, with improved roads connecting each concrete base. He was reminded of an epic prairie dog town, but upside down.
Many of the turbines were already operational and he’d never seen so many in one place. But it wasn’t the number of functional turbines that stunned him. It was the fact that the project looked only about ten percent complete.
Vehicles and machinery moved over the network of roads taking parts of the wind turbines from one place to another for assembly. A single blade on the trailer of a flatbed tractor trailer dwarfed the vehicle itself.
He’d read about the project, but it had been hard to comprehend without seeing it with his own eyes:
—The largest wind energy facility in the world.
—One thousand 250-foot turbines placed within the largest footprint of land—two thousand acres—ever designated for a wind farm.
—Situated on land with consistent Class 6 and 7 winds.
—Each turbine is designed to produce three megawatts of electricity.
—The electricity produced is a result not of market forces but a combination of federal tax incentives and mandates imposed by state and local governments; the mandates were that a significant portion of their power come from renewable sources including solar and wind even though it is more expensive than traditional methods of electricity generation.
—Once complete, the project will power one million homes in California via transmission lines.
—Also on the plus side are the hundreds of high-paying construction jobs the facility produced in a county where the coal mines have been shuttered.
NATE STAYED ON THE ROAD and saw that a half mile ahead it was blocked by a high chain-link gate. He noticed how the air pressure within the Yukon changed the closer he got to the working turbines. It seemed to push down on his head and shoulders. There was also a steady low hum from the spinning blades that replaced the sound of the wind through the sagebrush. It was a kind of subsonic whooshing that made Nate’s stomach clench.
He braked to a stop at the gate in front of a sign directing him to do so. On the other side of the fence was a single-wide trailer, and a figure emerged from it zipping up a heavy parka and pulling a hood up and over his head. He moved in a jerky way that conveyed he was annoyed by the intrusion.
The man swiped a key card across a unit mounted on the fence and a walkway gate opened. Nate couldn’t see the man’s face because his head was covered by the hood. Embroidered on the breast of the parka was Buckbrush Security. The security guard circled the Yukon and noted Nate’s license plate number on a clipboard before coming up to the driver’s-side window. He stood there until Nate powered it down.
“This is private property and you’re not on my vendor list. Do you have business here?” the man asked. The hood was long and conical and all Nate could see of his face were yellow teeth framed by dark rubbery lips. “And what the hell is Yarak, Inc.?”
“I run a commercial falconry operation,” Nate said.
“Where are your falcons?”
“At my headquarters. I don’t drive around with them inside.”
“Falcons, huh?”
“Yeah. The kind these turbines chop up.”
The security guard said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Right.”
“If you’ve got a grievance, you can file it with the bosses.”
“I don’t have a grievance, but I’m sure I could find one,” Nate said.
“Then what are you doing here?”
Nate peered down the length of the high fence to his right and then his left. It was so long it literally vanished from sight in both directions.
“I’m trying to get to the Teubner Fish Hatchery. My map said it’s dead ahead. But...”
“So you’re a falconer without falcons looking for a fish hatchery in the middle of the winter,” the guard said with sarcasm.
“Exactly.”
“This used to be the road to get there, but this is as far as you can go now. You’ve got an old map,” the security guard said.
He vaguely gestured to the north. “You’ll have to go around.”
“How far is that?” Nate asked.
Although the parka was bulky, it didn’t hide the shrug.
“Not my problem,” the guard said, starting to turn back to his trailer.
“Thanks for all your help,” Nate called after him. “Those people in California should feel good that a man with your social skills is helping them keep their lights on and their air conditioners running so they don’t even have to think about where their power comes from.”
The guard stopped and turned, the tube of his hood pointed at Nate like a gun muzzle.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked.
Nate powered his window up and backed away. He’d seen what he wanted to see, and it confirmed his worst fears. Anger coursed through him and he found himself gripping the wheel so tightly he couldn’t feel his fingers.
The security guard, and Joe for that matter, didn’t have any idea that an important piece of Nate’s conspiracy theory had just snapped into place.
*
IT TOOK TWO HOURS to circumnavigate the Buckbrush Project on a service road that paralleled the chain-link fence, in order to find a road that took him east again. As he drove, he glanced out the side window to get different perspectives on Buckbrush. The westbound transmission lines were strung from structure to structure until they merged with the horizon and vanished out of sight. The afternoon winter sun reflected on the lines and they looked like frozen steel ocean waves lapping toward California.
He couldn’t recall ever seeing such a sprawling man-made facility and it made him feel small.
Nate relished feeling small in nature. He despised feeling small next to a thousand windmills. If he were king, he thought, he would require every California politician who mandated “green” energy as well as every resident who would be the recipient of the electricity produced at Buckbrush to come see the massive complex where their power actually came from. He’d make them walk the steel perimeter and look inside the fence at what they’d built on top of a wild game migration corridor. And he wouldn’t allow them earplugs to protect them from the punishing whoosh.
It was a good thing, he decided, that he wasn’t king.
*
; THE TEUBNER FISH HATCHERY was located in a most unlikely location, Nate thought. Rather than being situated near a river or stream, the cluster of long metal ramshackle structures rose out of a sagebrush-and-snow-choked bench fourteen miles from the nearest paved road. There wasn’t even a tree on the property.
The cluster of buildings looked as if they’d been assembled over several decades. In addition to the long metal buildings was a two-story home, a huge metal barn filled with vehicles, and what looked like an outhouse. He slowed to a stop on the two-track road and consulted the topo map on the passenger seat to confirm it was the correct location after all. Having to go around Buckbrush to get to the hatchery had thrown off his bearings.
Snow-capped Elk Mountain rose from the plains in the background and dominated the eastern skyline. High-altitude wind picked up loose snow on top and carried it away so it looked like there was a thin flag unfurling from the summit. The ever-present wind had also cleared much of the snow from the two-track roads on the bench that led to the hatchery, although he’d had to gun his four-wheel-drive GMC Yukon through several drifts that blocked the road. Fish hatchery owners didn’t take care of their roads like Buckbrush did.
As he neared the hatchery, he saw a man exit one of the buildings and stride toward another. The man leaned against the wind and walked quickly to get out of it. He froze when he saw Nate’s Yukon coming up the road. Then he broke into a run and disappeared into the longest metal building, as if Nate’s arrival had spooked him.
It was the behavior of someone guilty of something. Which was odd.
Nate felt a rush of adrenaline. His senses sharpened and he locked in on the five ramshackle buildings like a falcon at two thousand feet locking in on an earthbound rabbit.
Was Kate confined in one of them?
He kept in mind Joe’s admonition not to bust any heads, and to back off if things got hinky.
Nate thought, The hell with that.
*
HE CRUISED SLOWLY into the hatchery yard toward the house. He noted that the barn was filled with trucks mounted with round plastic tanks behind the cabs. He assumed the tanks were filled with water and hatchery fish to be delivered to private ponds and lakes. It was obvious none of the vehicles had been used for a while, though, because there was a knifelike snowdrift across the front of the open building that had not been breached.
A hand-painted sign on the side of the front door of the house read:
TEUBNER FISH HATCHERY
OFFICE
RING BELL
Nate climbed out of the Yukon and zipped up his heavy coat against the wind and to conceal his weapon. The wind blew hard and it was filled with tiny ice crystals that stung his face. This location, he thought, made more sense for a wind farm than a fish hatchery.
He pushed on the bell, waited, and pushed it again. When there was no response, he reached down and found the door unlocked.
Inside was a large room cluttered with plastic tubs and coffin-sized concrete tanks. Water burbled and the smell was dank and earthy: fish food.
“Hello?”
His voice echoed through the room.
Nate walked among the tanks and looked down inside. Thousands of tiny slivers moved away from him as if they were a single organism.
“Can I help you?”
Nate turned and involuntarily reached up for the tab of his zipper in case he needed to get to his gun. A squat man in his late fifties or early sixties stood up from a desk in a small office in the back corner of the room. He wore stained coveralls and knee-high rubber boots. His head was large and he had jowls that trembled when he talked.
“I rang the bell,” Nate said.
“It don’t work.”
“I figured that.”
“You the fish inspector?” the man asked. He eyed him suspiciously.
Nate paused. Fish inspector?
“You’re not the fish inspector, are you?” the man said.
“Do I look like a fish inspector?”
“I don’t know what you look like. Are you a fish buyer?”
“Let’s say I was. What would you tell me?”
The man took a deep breath. “I’m Jack Teubner. This is my place. We supply catchable trout to nearly a hundred ponds and lakes across five states. Rainbows, browns, cutthroats, cutbows, and tigers. This is the incubation room.
“Are you looking to buy some?”
“Maybe,” Nate said. “But these are too small.”
“They’re fry,” Teubner said. “They’ll be two to three inches long by this summer and then we’ll move them out to the raceways. In a year they’ll be big enough to stock. Meanwhile, we’ll start the whole incubation process in here again. You can see it takes a while, so if you want to make an order, you need to do it soon. Like now. Otherwise, you’ll be shit out of luck.”
Nate nodded. Jack Teubner seemed oddly stiff and discouraging for a fish salesman.
“Where do you get your water?” Nate asked.
Teubner tapped his foot on the concrete floor. “You’re standing on top of a natural spring. We built the hatchery right on top of it. The spring produces twenty-five hundred gallons of water per minute. It’s pure, too, not like the water that comes from lakes or the river. No particulates or bacteria. That’s why our fish are so healthy.”
“Is this a two-man operation?” Nate asked. “I saw someone outside when I drove up.”
“My son, Joshua,” Jack said.
“He ran like he was scared of me.”
“He don’t like fish inspectors any more than I do,” Jack said. “Either the state guys or the federal guys. Those idiots could shut me down in a minute if they thought they found something wrong, and I don’t trust their methods. They take samples of our water and our fry and I worry they’ll get cross-contaminated with fish from some other place but blame me.”
“I’m not a fish inspector,” Nate said.
“Didn’t think so. Are you a buyer?”
Before Nate could come up with a good answer, a door opened and the man he’d seen earlier—presumably Joshua—strode in. Joshua looked from his father to Nate and back to his father again.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We’re talking fish,” Nate said.
“Fish?” Joshua said with a smirk. “Just fish?”
Joshua was thin and gaunt with sharp hawk-like features and unkind narrow eyes. Even from across the room and despite the pungent fish food, Nate could smell the reek of marijuana from his clothing.
“Looking for something to help get you through the winter?” Joshua asked Nate. “I figure that’s why you’re here.”
Nate nodded his head slightly. Now he got it: the reason for Jack’s strange reticence and Joshua’s behavior when he saw him on the road.
“I want to see what I’m buying first,” Nate said.
“Before you go out there,” Jack said, indicating to Nate the door Joshua had used, “I’ve got to ask you something. Are you law enforcement?”
Nate turned back to him. “No.”
“Are you affiliated with any state or federal agency?”
“No.”
“Prove it.”
In his peripheral vision, Joshua moved so that an unused concrete fish tank was between them. What was in the tank? A gun?
“How do I prove it?” Nate asked. He’d never been mistaken for a cop before and he thought Jack probably surmised that.
“I’m going to pat you down,” Jack said.
“No, you’re not.”
Nate unzipped his coat and opened it so Jack could see the butt of his .454 Casull. “Jack, if you put hands on me, this will turn out to be a really bad day for you.”
He turned his head toward Joshua. “You too.”
Rather than reach inside the tank or get angry, Joshua grinned.
“I don’t think we need to worry about him, Dad. I’ve been expecting him.”
Jack nodded his agreement.
Nate thought, You have?
*
“HE GETS PARANOID EASY,” Joshua said to Nate as they crossed the yard toward the nearest long metal building. “He don’t trust nobody.”
“I don’t blame him,” Nate said. He noted that the right side of Joshua’s heavy Carhartt parka sagged more than the left. Gun in there, Nate thought.
“He mentioned a raceway,” Nate said.
“That’s what we call where we raise the mature fish. You’ll see.”
Nate followed Joshua through a metal doorway into the building. It was one long open area with six separate lanes where water coursed through. Trout were stacked in each lane with their noses aimed at the inflow. Some rose and kissed the surface with their dorsal fins.
It was colder in the raceway building and the fish smell was much stronger than in the incubator room.
“I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up,” Joshua said as he dug a stubby pipe and a baggie of marijuana from his pocket. He lit the pipe, inhaled deeply, then handed it to Nate.
Nate wiped off the mouthpiece and took a deep drag. It was a test, he knew, to ensure he wasn’t a cop.
Joshua obviously thought he was someone else, though. Nate decided to play along.
He could feel it immediately.
“Good shit, isn’t it?” Joshua said.
Nate agreed.
“I used to grow it, but the market dried up. Fish shit is great fertilizer. But when Colorado legalized weed just across the border, my customers went south.”
Nate nodded to the raceways and slowly expelled the smoke from his lungs. “I would have thought it would freeze in the winter,” Nate said.
“Naw. The water from the spring stays at forty-five degrees summer and winter. It’s the perfect temp to keep them healthy and feeding. Lower than that, they don’t grow fast enough; hotter than that, they get sluggish.”
“So why cover it?” Nate asked, indicating the roof.
“To keep out the critters that like to eat fish,” Joshua said. “Mink, raccoons, blue herons, osprey. People.”
“People?”
“You’d be surprised how many idiots have come out here with their fishing poles. We lock the buildings at night so they can’t get in, but they still try.”
