Astride a Pink Horse (10 page)

A rusty no-trespassing sign swung lazily from the top wire of the fence that represented the western boundary of Buford Kane’s thirty acres. Staring at the sign, Cozy briefly stopped the dually before continuing across a cattle guard that marked the property entry. A hundred or so yards later he stopped again and slipped his binoculars out of the glove compartment to take a better look at the house at the end of the winding gravel lane. When he spotted the frustrated-looking man Bernadette Cameron had taken out of commission the previous evening holding a shotgun on her, he whispered, “Oh, shit!”

Slipping a baseball bat from beneath his front seat, he stepped out of the truck and took off in a sprint through knee-high timothy grass toward the house. Halfway there his left leg began to throb. Forced to jog, he suddenly found himself thinking,
Pick off
. He slowed to a walk and finally slipped out of the tall grass and behind a line of cottonwoods that bordered a dry creek bed just west of the house. With the cottonwoods obstructing any view that the man with the shotgun might have of him, he worked his way toward the house. Realizing that he wasn’t simply sweating but huffing and puffing, he told himself he’d be spending a little more time in the gym.

Stepping from behind the last of the cottonwoods, he headed for the porch in a half crouch. His leg had started to tingle, a sure sign that any second it might give out on him. Wondering why he hadn’t simply driven up to the house, he reminded himself that if he had, the shotgun-toting man might have opened fire on the major. As he duck-walked his way along the length of the house’s three-foot-high cinder-block foundation toward the front porch, he thought,
Hope the major’s as quick on her feet as she was last night
. Huddled safely below the top of the foundation, he glanced up toward the porch’s safety railing, took a deep breath, popped his head just above the porch floor, and slipped his bat between two railing support struts. Leveraging the bat firmly against one of the two-by-two struts with enough force to pop it with a loud crack, he yelled, “Pick off!” and dove for the ground, leaving the bat behind on the porch.

The shotgun blast that followed took out two more support struts. Then Cozy heard a thud, followed by the telltale gasping sound of someone who had had the wind knocked out of him.

He rose to his knees to see Bernadette, up on the porch, standing over the shotgun-wielding man’s outstretched body. She was holding Cozy’s baseball bat, the fat end of which she’d shoved into Buford Kane’s belly, in her right hand and watching Kane roll around on the porch clutching his midsection and sucking air. The intense look on Bernadette’s face shouted anything but
air force–friendly
.

Staring at the bat and then at Bernadette, knowing full well what it was like to have the business end of a thirty-five-ounce piece of hickory jammed into your stomach, Cozy said, “Looks like you’re two for two with your friend there.”

Nudging the shotgun out of Buford Kane’s reach with the toe of her shoe and tossing the bat aside, Bernadette said, “And I hope that ends it.” It was only when she knelt to check on Kane’s breathing that Cozy realized her hands were trembling.

Sarah Goldbeck arrived ten minutes later to find Buford strapped to a straight-backed chair on the porch and Cozy and Bernadette sitting in rocking chairs on either side of him. Buford’s forearms were free, and he was awkwardly sipping water, but with Cozy’s belt tightly looped around the subdued-looking redheaded ex-biker’s torso, Buford was still having trouble breathing.

In response to Sarah’s “What on earth!” as she bounded up the porch steps, Buford wheezed, “I’m not sayin’ nothin’ till the sheriff gets here.”

Glancing at the shotgun lying beside Cozy’s rocker, then at the damaged porch railing, Sarah looked disappointedly at Buford and said, “Well, somebody better explain what happened—and right now!”

Bernadette’s description of what had occurred was punctuated by wheezes and intermittent apologetic looks from Buford. Bernadette also introduced Cozy as a reporter from Digital Registry News who was there to do a follow-up on the Tango-11 break-in.

Teary-eyed and doing her best to come to grips with what she’d just been told, Sarah looked pleadingly at Bernadette. “Please don’t file charges, Major Cameron; please. Buford’s been in trouble with the law before. Serious trouble. I didn’t mention that to you this morning down at Warren. I figured if I did, it would surely buy us more trouble. He was a biker before we met, and he’s got a
criminal record. Please don’t call the sheriff. If you do, his past will catch up with him, and I’ll lose him for sure. He’s been such a decent man for so many years.”

The graying, stringy-haired, owl-eyed woman’s pleas reminded Bernadette of those she’d once heard uttered by her own mother, a woman who’d spent most of her married life trying to get her hard-drinking husband, whom she dearly loved, to stop drinking.

“I’m not here to press charges against your husband, Ms. Goldbeck,” Bernadette said. “As I told you this morning, my responsibility is to investigate the Tango-11 security breach. I can’t, however, speak for Mr. Coseia.”

“I’m just here to report the news,” Cozy said, surprising everyone.

Looking relieved and nodding excitedly at her common-law husband, Sarah said, “We can help you with both those things, can’t we, Buford?”

Buford aimed a reluctant “Yes” in the direction of the approaching twilight.

“Good,” said Bernadette, as she tried to gauge exactly how upset Colonel DeWitt was going to be at having an air force vehicle disabled by a shotgun blast, not to mention the minor issue of Cozy being on the scene. Locking eyes with Sarah, she said, “Now that we’re all on the same page, what more can you tell me about those protesting friends of yours from last night? Something you may have forgotten to mention when we talked this morning, perhaps? Anything about the real size of your group?”

“Nothing more. And that’s the truth,” Sarah said adamantly. “Most of those other people who were yelling and chanting were
simply high school or college kids out for a night of excitement. Wilson Jackson, that preacher I told you about this morning, paid them twenty dollars each to come to the press conference and disrupt it.” Looking over at Buford, who was still wheezing, she said, “Can’t you unstrap him from that chair?”

“If he agrees to sit still and be cooperative.”

“He will.” Sarah shot the deflated-looking former biker a look that said,
Sit still, and don’t you dare move a muscle
.

“Might as well unstrap him,” Bernadette said to Cozy.

Rubbing the circulation back into his arms, the burly redhead let out a grunt of relief and said to Sarah, “Why don’t you tell the major about Kimiko not showin’ up last night?”

“Why drag her into this?”

“Because she and that ivory-towered nutcase of a nephew of hers said they were comin’, and they didn’t. Left you holdin’ the bag, as usual. I never have understood the connection between the three of you anyway.”

When Cozy pulled a stubby pencil and a small spiral-bound notebook out of his back pocket and began writing, Buford said, “That’s K-i-m-i-k-o. It’s Japanese. And her nephew, the nerd’s name is Rikia. Their last name’s Takata.”

“So who exactly are they, and why would either of them have had any reason to break into Tango-11 or kill Sergeant Giles?” asked Bernadette as Cozy hastily took notes.

“They’re friends of ours, and they wouldn’t have had a reason,” Sarah snapped.

Bernadette entered both names into the BlackBerry she’d slipped out of her pocket without offering a response.

Sounding eager to finger-point, Buford said, “They live in Laramie. Rikia’s an egghead math professor with a card or two missing from the deck, over at the University of Wyoming, and just so you know, they’re both first-tier nuke haters, even more so than Sarah.” Looking Sarah’s way, he said, “The cat’s out of the bag. Might as well give ’em the whole nine yards.”

“I’m afraid Buford’s always been a little uncomfortable with Kimiko and Rikia,” Sarah said. “I can assure you, they’re both very decent people. And for the record, Kimiko’s not Rikia’s aunt. They’re actually second cousins. As for her hatred of nuclear weapons, she has every reason to hate them. Her father was at Hiroshima when we A-bombed the place. He’d sent Kimiko from Japan to live with relatives in San Francisco less than a month before the war began. She might have actually fared better in Japan because within six months of her arrival here, our hypocritical government rounded up Kimiko and her American-born relatives, packed them off to Wyoming, and imprisoned them at Heart Mountain. That place was nothing more than America’s own Rocky Mountain version of Auschwitz, as far as I’m concerned.” Sarah shook her head in disgust.

Vaguely aware that the Heart Mountain Relocation Center east of Yellowstone had been a World War II–era internment camp for Japanese Americans, Cozy looked quizzically at Bernadette. Realizing from the look on her face that she knew the place as well, he continued taking notes as Bernadette entered “Heart Mountain survivor” next to Kimiko Takata’s name in her BlackBerry.

“That place is a permanent black eye on this country, just like nuclear weapons are,” Sarah said, her voice rising.

Tugging at Sarah’s shirtsleeve and hoping to stop her before she
launched into one of her antinuclear tirades, Buford said, “None of us were even born then, Sarah.”

“Doesn’t matter. God never intended for us to be beasts.”

“There was a war goin’ on, Sarah.”

“Let’s not start down that road, Buford, please.”

“Yes, let’s not,” Bernadette said. “Do you have phone numbers and addresses for the Takatas?”

When Sarah didn’t immediately answer, Buford said, “Yes.”

“I’d appreciate having them.”

“I have that information inside the house,” Sarah said, heading for the front door.

“I’ll go in with you,” Bernadette said, rising from her chair, intent on making certain that the common-law wife of the man who’d earlier tried to shoot her wasn’t going for another weapon.

Bernadette glanced back at Cozy before stepping through the front door and nodded toward the shotgun lying next to his chair. As the door closed behind Bernadette, Cozy picked up the shotgun and activated the pump action. A live shell ejected and thumped down onto the porch deck. “Always seems to be one left in the chamber with these pumps,” Cozy said, looking at Buford.

“Always does,” Buford said, grinning and staring out toward the orange glow of sunset.

Carlos Alvarez, the OSI officer whom Joel DeWitt had assigned to keep tabs on Bernadette, was having trouble hearing the colonel on his cell phone. “We’ve got a bad connection, Colonel. I can hardly hear you. Just a sec.” Alvarez moved the phone to his opposite ear.

“How about now?” DeWitt asked impatiently.

“Better,” said Alvarez.

“Want to finish bringing me up to speed now, Captain?”

Alvarez, who’d had his binoculars trained on Sarah Goldbeck’s front porch for the last fifteen minutes, said, “Major Cameron just went inside the house with the Goldbeck woman. Kane’s still outside on the porch with the guy who’s been taking notes.”

“Describe your note-taker for me.”

“Tall, six-two or six-three, and sort of Hispanic- or Indian-looking. He’s got curly black hair and an oval-shaped face, he’s clean-shaven, and I’d say he’s got a bum leg.”

“He’s one of those reporters from last night, no question. Name’s Coseia. Anything else?”

“Not much, except that it’s one real strange situation here. When I first drew a good clean bead on the front porch through my binocs, that reporter was unstrapping the big redheaded guy we interrogated at Warren this morning from a chair.”

“Sounds like old Buford Kane must’ve been a bad boy. I’ll be sure and ask Major Cameron what the old motorcycle rider did to deserve such treatment once she’s back here.”

“It won’t be long, sir. She’s out of the house now and back out on the porch, and it looks like she and that reporter are leaving together. Yep. They’re headed down the porch steps.” Following a lengthy silence, he said, “The major’s getting into a truck with him. She’s leaving her vehicle here, sir.”

“Odd that she’d leave her vehicle there. Tail them.”

“Yes, sir,” said Alvarez, who’d been unsuccessfully trying to bed the statuesque African American major since the day she’d arrived at Warren.

“And Alvarez, I said tail them, not jump on her tail, if you get my drift.”

“Sir, I’m afraid …”

“Can it, Captain. Just stay off their radar. I don’t want Bernadette to know I’ve got somebody following her around. We’ll compare notes once you’re back here at Warren.”

“Yes, sir,” said Alvarez, snapping his cell phone closed. As the dually headed slowly back down the winding gravel lane toward him, he cranked his engine, made a U-turn, and moved slowly down the lane to keep from kicking up any telltale dust. Two miles up the highway, he pulled off at the entryway to a ranch and swung in behind the dually after it passed him. Envious of the man behind the wheel of the truck because the driver was going to have a full hour alone with Bernadette Cameron, Alvarez settled in glum-faced for the drive back to Cheyenne.