by Spencer Kope
Marco starts digging.
41
Porterville is in Tulare County, which is way outside Ross’s jurisdiction. That wouldn’t be a problem if we were just checking an address or scoping out the vehicles parked in the driveway, but we’re not. There may be a hostage on Old Stage Road, an important hostage, and that changes everything. We’re going to need help.
That means Ross has some calls to make.
The first will be to Detective Sergeant Alcott at the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office. Ross scrolls through his contact list as we walk. “I’m going to ask that they have some guys on standby just in case we need them. I’d feel better, though, if we also had one of their guys with us when we contact the house.”
Jimmy nods. “I think I know a guy.”
* * *
The canary-yellow Mustang convertible is parked next to Ross’s unmarked. As we approach, all three of us hesitate, unsure whether we should veer left to the Mustang or right to the police interceptor. Ross points at the phone, which is now ringing, and then at the Mustang, making it clear that he’s going to be too busy to drive.
Jimmy, it seems, has a call of his own to make.
Uncharacteristically—unfathomably—he tosses me the keys to the smoking-hot muscle car. I stand like an idiot looking at the fob in my hand as if I were Charlie Bucket staring in disbelief at the golden ticket that will buy me access to Mr. Wonka’s wondrous chocolate factory.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I goose the engine. The immediate result of this—and I do mean immediate—is that the tires squeal and spin in place, curling off smoke and, much to my consternation, causing the rear of the car to walk sideways in the road.
Jimmy gives me a glaring, concerned look—but at that moment his call connects. Thank God for small miracles.
“Can I speak with Sergeant Joe Mingo?” he asks briskly.
Mingo.
I suddenly understand.
He and Jimmy had seemed to hit it off, so it makes sense. I don’t doubt that Ross will have a lot of talented connections from Tulare County to bring to the party, but Mingo’s the only local we know—tenuous as that connection is.
Besides, he has a Humvee.
42
On the way out of Bakersfield, we swing by and pick up Kip, who retrieves a rifle case and a bag from the gun vault in the back of his Expedition and stows them in the trunk of the Mustang. As we head north, we fill him in on the details. When we finish, he just pushes back in his seat, shakes his head, and mutters, “Abel Moya,” as if it were a profanity.
* * *
We meet Joe and his decked-out Hummer in the gravel parking lot of a steepled church about two miles down the road from the questionable house on Old Stage Road. By this time, the sergeant has had ample time to surveil the old homestead. With most of the orchard cut down and hauled off years ago, he accomplished this with nothing more than a pair of binoculars and by parking in three or four discreet spots scattered along the surrounding roads.
There’s no movement at the house, nor on the rest of the twenty-three-acre property.
“I saw a couple of vehicles up near the house,” Joe explains. “Most look inoperable, but the blue sedan parked closest to the front door looks newer and is in decent shape. Couldn’t get a good look at the outbuildings at the back of the property. Must be eight or ten of them, plus a barn or stable, though I didn’t see any livestock.”
We’re still discussing strategy when Jimmy’s phone rings: The Pink Panther.
Connecting the call on speaker, he says, “Hi, Diane—”
“I found the link. The property owner, Barbara Mills, is Dorothy Smit’s sister—Angus’s aunt.” She explains that she found it in one of his many juvenile records. A case where the boy’s mother, Dorothy, was too busy or disgusted or angry to retrieve her lawless son and asked her sister to do it instead.
“Nice work, Diane.”
“Mm-hmm. Where are you?”
“Two miles from the orchard. Trying to figure out our next move.”
An audible sigh issues from the speaker, as if from relief.
“Well, best get back to figuring,” she says a moment later, and without waiting for a response ends the call.
“I hate when she does that,” Jimmy mutters, pocketing his phone.
“So … what’s our play?” Ross asks, glancing from face to face.
“It’s your show,” Joe replies, “but I say we make contact at the house. See what’s what.”
“Works for me,” the detective says with an approving shrug.
* * *
As we pull into the driveway off Old Stage Road, home of Barbara and Otis Mills, we pass under an arched metal sign like those you sometimes see on ranches. This one looks like it was dragged out of a scrapyard and propped up with baling wire.
It’s a place from a bygone era, from better days long since passed.
All that remains of the once-noble sign are the uprights, which seem barely capable of holding the arch aloft, and the scant letters needed to spell out FOOT CHARDS—a considerably less noble proclamation.
It sounds like something you might get after walking on broken glass.
My initial reaction to the farm is a sense of nostalgic melancholy, a sense of sadness at what once had been and is no more. This is punctuated by the sign’s inability to remember its own name, as if the farm had fallen into dementia.
Soon, there’ll be nothing left to remember.
Time and technology are never ceasing, never retreating.
They leave in their wake a littered landscape of corpses—the husks of businesses, ideas, and systems that have outlived their relevance. With the growth of industrialized farming, this includes many of the mom-and-pop farms that once filled the land.
A few survive.
Those who’ve adapted to the new normal and found new ways of packaging, modifying, marketing, or otherwise making their product special. Some went the other direction, gobbling up land and farms and joining the steady march toward ever-larger farms and ever-expanding farming corporations.
It’s not all that bad, I suppose.
If not for more efficient farming, billions of people around the world would die of starvation in short order. The amount of food we now coax from the soil, and the relative ease with which we do so, would stagger our forebears.
This fact, sobering as it is, does nothing for my melancholy.
I remember seeing A Walk in the Clouds when I was younger—perhaps ten or twelve years ago, though the movie came out long before I saw it. It’s a Keanu Reeves film that’s set in a vineyard in California in the mid-1940s.
Oh, the romance.
The promise—the hope—of such a life was compelling beyond measure as if someone had enchanted that younger version of me with visions of an idyllic life among the vines and vats, a Spanish villa for a home. The movie doesn’t necessarily depict the hard work that goes into such a venture, but that mattered little at the time. It was the possibility of living such a life that pulled at me. That was the fantasy, the hope of hopes.
Foot Chards, I imagine, is the reality.
Reality, it seems, is a brutal mistress when compared to her pleasing cousin, Hope.
* * *
Jimmy and Joe approach the front door cautiously, scanning the windows, the vehicles, and the outbuildings as they go—anyplace, that is, that might conceal a gunman. Kip and Ross take cover positions at opposite corners of the house so they can observe all four sides of the house. I remain near the Humvee.
Well, behind the Humvee, if truth be told, basically using the monstrous vehicle as a shield between me and any lead that might fly from the general direction of the house. The former military vehicle is pulled into the driveway far enough that I have a sideways view of both the front and the back.
There’s real danger here; I feel it in my bones.
Upon our arrival, even before stepping from the Mustang, I had slipped off my glasses and cast my eyes along the dr
iveway, the yard, the path to the house. It didn’t take much of an effort to realize that Angus has been coming and going from the orchard for decades. Most of the shine is old, probably from his youth. With a silent glance and a single nod, I conveyed this to Jimmy, who visibly tensed but otherwise maintained his composure.
It’s the recent shine that concerns me, some of it so fresh that, even now, I find myself glancing about, half expecting to see Angus step from behind a tree.
I shiver at the prospect.
Diane was right.
She’s always right; it’s maddening.
* * *
At the front door, Joe raps several times and loudly announces, “Tulare County Sheriff’s Office.” He gets no answer.
Jimmy takes a go at the door, using the bottom of his fist to give it a good pounding while announcing, “FBI! Barbara! Otis! We just need to ask you some questions. It’s important.”
After several minutes of pointless knocking and pounding, Joe moves to a nearby picture window and presses his face to the glass, hands on either side blocking out the light. Finding nothing, he moves to another window, while Jimmy does the same going in the other direction. They work their way along the front of the house in this manner, then down both sides, with no sign of the occupants.
As Jimmy disappears behind the far side of the house, the only place I can’t see, I feel the anxiety run up my legs and settle in my chest, but he soon emerges unscathed at the back of the house. I’d like to say that was the last of my anxiety on this day of days, but I’d be lying.
At the back door, Jimmy is just moving up to the glass when he freezes. His right hand finds the grip of his Glock, but he doesn’t pull. As Joe approaches from the other direction, Jimmy halts him with a gesture, then directs his attention through the glass with a jut of his jaw. Joe moves quietly to the side of the glass and does a quick scan inside. By this time, Ross and Kip are also collapsing on the house.
I remain with the Humvee, unarmed and feeling wholly inadequate. My Walther P22 is tucked safely away at the bottom of my travel bag back at the motel.
I have no idea what Jimmy sees, so I do the only thing I’m qualified and equipped to do: I watch. I watch the rear of the house, I watch the front of the house, I watch the one side of the house facing me. I look for runners, faces in windows, shifting shadows that might threaten or harm.
I don’t like guns.
That said, I’ve been shot at more than once and can say with absolute certainty that there’s nothing worse than needing a gun and not having one. It kind of feels like … now.
Damn.
* * *
Jimmy tries the door handle and finds it unlocked. Cautiously, the three men move into the house. I see their flitting shapes and hear their commanding voices as they move through, clearing room after room, ordering occupants to show themselves.
But there are no occupants.
None living, anyway.
When Jimmy steps out onto the back porch and waves me forward, I see the truth of it spilled out on the kitchen floor. An elderly woman—Barbara, I’m assuming—is sprawled out on the tile, a dozen large knife wounds in her stomach and chest.
There’s also damage to her head and face; damage that’s … indescribable.
More disturbing, the lack of blood around the head suggests this damage was postmortem, unlike the stomach and chest wounds. It’s as if someone stood over her corpse and rained hell down upon her face. The instrument that carried this wrath to the skull and visage of Barbara Mills was no knife, however. This was blunt-force trauma, something heavy that was lifted and dropped a dozen, maybe two dozen, times.
The bloody culprit lies beside the body.
An urn.
A small brass plaque at the bottom of the urn, smeared with gore, suggests it holds the ashes of one Otis Mills, who died in 2001.
* * *
Angus is no longer in the house and nothing can be done for Barbara, not even the dignity of a towel over her head because such a gesture would contaminate the crime scene. We back out of the house and retreat to the Humvee. The first patrol units should be here soon. It’ll take longer to mobilize CSI and the contingent of detectives needed to process such a scene.
The only saving grace is that we’re in Tulare County. Bakersfield PD and the Kern County Sheriff’s Office already have their hands full. The last thing they need is another heinous crime scene and the budget-killing overtime needed to process it.
As Joe coordinates the response and both Kip and Ross inform their superiors, I slip my glasses off and have a quick look around. The malachite shine inside the house is mostly old. The only exception seems to be the tracks and impressions that Angus left in the kitchen during the commission of his most recent crime.
With my glasses gripped hard in my right hand, I note that this new shine doesn’t enter or exit through the front door but through the back. As I step onto the rear porch, I note one more anomaly: the tracks don’t come from the driveway.
Instead, Angus appears to have strode directly across the orchard from the direction of the barn and outbuildings at the back of the acreage.
One path approaching, one path leaving.
A sliver of fear runs up my spine as the realization settles. For a moment, I imagine the killer watching me from around the corner of a building or peering out through the unwashed window of one of the old processing rooms, hidden in shadow.
What better place to hide hostages.
I’m suddenly aware of my heartbeat as it thump-thump-thumps in my ears, the result of a sudden adrenaline dump, no doubt. I’ve never had blood pressure issues, but if you ran a cuff around my arm right about now, I’d bet the pressure could kick-start an old steam engine. Fight or flight, that jittery sensation that comes with adrenaline, quivers its way through my system.
Every part of me wants to run—not toward the buildings, but away from them. There’s an ominous sense about the structures, buildings remarkably convenient if one is up to no good. And as Barbara Mills can attest, Angus is certainly up to no good.
Waving Jimmy over and trying not to look frantic about it, lest I draw unwanted attention, I quickly explain what I’m seeing.
Like me, his eyes dart to the distant buildings.
Without a word, he turns sharply and calls out to Ross, Kip, and Joe. “What about the outbuildings?”
The question needs no elaboration.
Ross and Kip look at each other, then at Joe, who gives a dismissive toss of his head and says, “Go ahead. I’ll wait here for patrol.”
We’re halfway to the barn when Jimmy points out a series of tire tracks coming and going through the field. On closer inspection, we can see the impressions of an old road, a whole series of roads that once connected the various buildings.
While the driveway is gravel and ends just beyond the house, the old farm paths were never graveled—why go to the expense? They remained dirt tracks during their useful life, and once abandoned, their compressed earth was easily reclaimed by nature—to an extent. The impressions remain, like a scar, but covered now by grass and weeds and underbrush. The ruts are an almost indistinguishable blemish on the otherwise level orchard.
Only someone familiar with the orchard would know the paths even exist.
That someone has, it seems, been making recent use of them.
Ahead, the flattened path of weeds turns to the left, disappearing between a weathered barn and a couple of the outbuildings. Even from here, I can see Angus’s shine on the ground, on the barn, on the buildings.
Most of it is old, but a scattering is more recent—days, maybe hours.
“The barn,” I whisper to Jimmy when Ross and Kip fall behind.
We pass a locked man-door at the rear of the classic farm building, with its two-story central structure and wings coming off both sides. At the center of the rear wall, two massive doors hang on metal sliders, one designed to pull open to the left, the other to the right. Traditionally, these would be use
d to let livestock in and out, but in this case, I’m guessing it was tractors and production equipment that passed through the massive doors.
The doors are secured to each other at the center with a length of heavy rusted chain and a padlock. From the looks of it, the doors haven’t been opened in a great while.
The chain is a momentary setback. Locking a barn against someone determined to make entry is about as effective as keeping water out of a leaky canoe by patching it with chicken wire.
After rattling the chain in his hand and testing the lock, Jimmy grabs both handles and tries to pull them apart. A black strip of midnight opens between the doors before they reach the end of the slack chain. It’s enough.
Pressing his face to the five-inch gap, Jimmy peers inside, cupping his eyes so they adjust to the shadowy gloom within. He holds his gaze for a full minute, silently perceiving what we cannot. You would expect him to cough from ancient dust or grunt from holding his position so tightly pressed to the wood, but he doesn’t. He may as well be dead and propped up against the door for all the life and movement he shows.
“I don’t see anything,” he finally whispers.
Pulling back, he squints at the brightness for a moment, then eyeballs me up and down, assessing my girth. “If I pull out the bottom”—he motions with his head toward the base of the left door—“do you think you can squeeze through?”
“What? No!”
“The man-door is right there.” He gestures behind us. “All you have to do is get inside and unlock it.”
“Why don’t I hold the door—”
“My chest is bigger than yours.”
“Since when?”
“His chest does look a bit bigger,” Ross chimes in. When I glare at him, he just shrugs.
“Why don’t you go?”
He just rubs his protruding stomach and raises an eyebrow.
