Deep in the Valley (25 page)

At midnight, they stepped outside. The air was cool, the sky clear and there was the sound of approaching helicopters. It wasn’t exactly a rare sound; the DEA made regular passes over the hills in search of drug farms and camps. What was unusual was the number of helicopters—four or five, maybe more—and the flashing of Tom’s emergency lights as he came speeding toward the clinic. He squealed to a stop at the back door and addressed the cleanup crew.

“I think you better keep the clinic open awhile. There’s a major bust going down in the Alps right now, and I think this is the closest medical facility we have.”

“Okay,” June said. “Let’s get some emergency vehicles on their way.”

“You got it,” Tom said, picking up his radio. “And we’ll get some sheriff’s department people here to provide security.”

“And some ice from the café,” she said to her dad.

“I’ll go,” Charlotte offered. “Come on, Jessie.”

Muttering, maybe grumbling, everyone went back in the clinic to get ready for a possible emergency. Everyone except June. She stood on the back step and looked off into the starlit sky as the sound of choppers faded away. She said a prayer. “Please, God, let him be all right.”

G
race Valley saw an event unlike anything it’d witnessed before, and hoped never to see again. Dawn found Main Street resembling a bivouac, an outpost. There were army helicopters, the Forestry Service, a SWAT team, sheriff’s deputies, federal agents of every stripe, and a variety of law enforcement personnel from surrounding towns and counties. George opened up the café and hauled his three sons and wife out of bed to help.

June, John and Elmer tended only minor injuries from a raid deep in the Trinity Alps that netted the law over forty criminals and ten thousand plants. According to one officer, these criminals had erected a small town in the forest, inside of which there were actually civilian residents who had come along as support industry. There was a bar, a convenience store, a hardware store. All the money in these businesses carried the skunklike stench of green marijuana.

The growing was done indoors and out, and it was still early in the season. One way to find illegal growers
was to find their equipment—PVC tubing, generators, solar panels. It wasn’t unusual to see what appeared to be a miner’s shack built out of logs with a solar panel in the roof, and out back a gas-powered generator large enough to run a hospital.

The DEA came in to take away and dispose of the plants, ATF was there to take inventory and possession of firearms, and Forestry was there to reclaim the land. Along these gloriously beautiful mountain roads, there had been grave danger. Heavily armed men had guarded their own little pot plots, and marijuana thieves, also heavily armed, had stalked them in an effort to take over their plots. The gunshot wound that brought Jim into June’s life had been the result of a minor struggle for land and plants.

While they’d made forty arrests, twice that many growers had made it into the woods and away. If they tried to come back they’d find their equipment and supplies had been seized, including vehicles, appliances and personal possessions, and the Forestry Service had replaced the little pot-growing town with an outpost of armed law enforcement officials. And dogs.

The dogs nearly drove Sadie crazy. She finally had to be put in June’s office with the door closed; she couldn’t stay at the café anymore. There were so many cops and dogs and uniforms, she was a nervous wreck. Being put in the office didn’t help either. She whined at the door and scraped her heavy paw against it whenever someone walked by.

Once, when June was called into the street in front of the clinic to look at a suspect’s arm, she saw there
were easily a hundred armed men in the street, parking lots, café and clinic area. It was chaos. There was no way to tell how close they were to clearing out. The raided camp was twenty miles up the road into the mountains, but took an hour to reach by car. Soon the residents of Grace Valley who had business or appointments in town would be straggling in, and this was what they’d see. An army had landed and was taking prisoners.

There was one prisoner June didn’t see, however. She craned her neck and studied the faces of those officers and suspects on Main Street, but he wasn’t there. Tom’s Range Rover was parked across the street in front of the café and he leaned against the passenger door, hat pulled down, his arms crossed over his chest. She could just barely see the glitter of his dark eyes under the brim of his hat. She made a gesture with a tilt of her head, a question. He responded with an elaborate shrug, lifting his palms upward.
Haven’t seen him.

By late in the morning, the street became crowded with locals who wanted to see what was going on. Law enforcement held them back, wouldn’t let their trucks through and denied them entrance to the café, but word had reached the populace that the hills had been cleaned out of growers. Residents watched the circus-like atmosphere in quiet awe. If it hadn’t been summer, school might have been canceled, June thought.

She called her friend and doctor, Blake Norton, from Rockport, and Dr. Lowe from Fort Seward to help man the clinic. The Red Cross sent out a couple of nursing volunteers to assist. The feds promised army medical
officers and supplies would be forthcoming by early evening. The arrested had been taken away, but the clinic had to be kept open and staffed in case injured stragglers came in or law enforcement officers got hurt in the cleanup. And, of course, there were the regular patients.

But June, John, Elmer, Charlotte and Jessica had been up all night and most of the day. They were knee-walking tired. Charlotte, in addition to being tired, was in a state about the condition of the clinic, which had been tromped through by soldier-type clods. “Come on, Charlotte,” Jessica said in an affectionate tone. “Let’s just not worry about it now, and when they clear out, I’ll help you get things back in order if it takes all month.”

Charlotte was shocked and amazed by Jessica’s gesture, but June just smiled.

“Thank you, Jessie,” Charlotte said. “And I like that you’re growing your hair again.”

June was so tired that she wasn’t sure she could fit in a shower before bed. As she entered her little house, all she could think about was getting out of the scrubs she’d been wearing for almost twenty-four hours. Cool sheets beckoned.

But that would have to wait, it seemed.

“I hope you brought your bag,” said Jim.

He looked terrible, but his injuries were not—one gunshot flesh wound that only required a butterfly. But in his great escape, he’d taken a wild fall down a hillside, hitting every rock and stump in his path. He was bruised, scratched, scraped and cut. He wore only
his stained and torn T-shirt, underwear and socks, and was wrapped in a bath towel from June’s linen closet. His clothes and boots were on the back stoop, under an overturned wheelbarrow so no one would see. “I was pretty careful not to get mud or blood on anything,” he said.

One whole side of his face was red and raw and would form a terrible-looking scab. “Tree bark is the worst,” he said. And there was a contusion on his thigh that was frightening in its size. “Stump,” he said. Both palms were scraped. “Never try to stop yourself on asphalt.”

“You know, you’re not going to like this, but the best thing for you, before I treat any of these cuts and abrasions, is a shower.”

He winced visibly.

“I know. It’s gonna sting. But really…”

“Do you have any liquor?”

“No. How about a Darvon?”

“I don’t know. Think that’ll help?”

“It’s gonna sting,” she said. She leaned back and looked him up and down. “I’ll give you a couple of Darvon. But it’s, well—”

“Gonna sting,” he said, then drew himself up bravely, though bent like an old man, and hobbled off in the direction of the shower. When they got to the bathroom, she shook out a couple of pills for him and ran the water, just barely warm.

“Use soap where you can bear it, but just stand under the spray where you can’t. And when you’re done, put on my robe. This terry one.”

“June, I’ll never get into that robe.”

“Or wrap up in this bath sheet,” she said.

“You happen to have any men’s underwear around here?” he asked.

“What size?” she asked, then smiled and left him alone in the shower.

He came to me,
she thought. There must have been plenty of places he could have sought refuge, but he’d come here.

When he exited the bathroom, she was waiting in the bedroom, a towel spread on the bed and her medical bag open on the floor. She patted the bed where she wanted him to sit.

“You should see the town,” she said. “It’s a zoo. I didn’t know there were so many different police departments. And the army is there—”

“The Guard,” he corrected. “Out of Oakland, I think.”

“Now that it’s over, are you going to tell me about it?” She knelt on the floor, her hands gloved, and examined the cuts on his calves. He must have shredded his jeans.

“I knew approximately when it would happen…within a few days anyway,” he said. “When the first shots were fired, I hit the ground and waited. If I had to fire at law enforcement to protect my cover, it was going to be straight to the torso where a vest would stop the bullet.”

“
You
weren’t wearing a vest, however,” she said, rising to sit on the bed beside him. She turned his face away so she could look at his facial wounds.

“No, but as it turned out, I never had to fire on officers. I got out clean.”

“Clean?” she asked, applying a medicated salve to a face scraped so badly he looked like he’d been burned.

“Well, I got out. Fell all over myself down several hills to the road.”

“You look like you were dragged behind a truck.”

“Thank you. Those ballet lessons didn’t help, I guess,” he said.

“What are you going to do next?”

“After my vacation?”

“You get a vacation?” she asked.

“Let me back up,” he said. “First, I debrief. I’ll leave here in a day or so, go to Eureka for some meetings, back to the East Coast to check in, and then vacation. Unless something comes up and they need me somewhere else.”

She was very quiet, thinking about one thing he’d said.
A day or so.
“Does anyone know where you are?” she asked.

He turned his face to meet her eyes, which left the hand that had supplied the medicated salve suspended in midair. “Not yet,” he said. “But…I should call in.”

“You’ll do what you have to do,” she said. She turned his face away and resumed medicating.

Again he turned back and looked at her. “We’ll find a way, June. Yes, we will.”

She took a deep breath. “For right now, you have to go to bed,” she said. “Give this embattled body of yours a rest. Could you eat a little soup first, if I fixed some?”

“I don’t know,” he said, wearily leaning back against the pillows of her bed, his eyelids noticeably heavy.

“I’ll make you some soup and you’ll sleep. Then
you can explain how you’re going to give me a day and then how we’ll find a way.”

It might have taken only five minutes to microwave a bowl of chicken noodle soup and put it on a tray with a few crackers, but when she returned to the bedroom, he was under the covers and sound asleep. The towel was on the floor.

She sat in the overstuffed chair in the corner of her bedroom, tray on her lap, and slowly ate the soup, watching him breathe in slumber. His feet, probably size twelves, had ripped the top sheet from its mooring and hung over the end of the bed. His hair, curly and moist and dark, left a damp blot on the pillow. The reddish-brown hair on his muscled chest seemed to ripple like waves with each breath. He was lost in deep slumber and she was lost in him.

She finished her soup and showered, then dried her hair and pulled on soft knit pajamas—boxer shorts and a sleeveless top. She stood in indecision beside the bed, looking down at Jim. He was naked under there. Finally, she picked up the pillow from her side and headed for the couch. But in a second she was back beside the bed. She lifted the sheet tentatively, then slipped in.

In a moment her soft short jammies lay in a heap on the floor.

The last of the raiders and their arrested growers had pulled out of town and were gone in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Tom Toopeek went home to his family, but not before posting Deputy Lee Stafford in front of the clinic in his truck. Should anyone try to get
help in the clinic, Lee was to radio first Tom, then John Stone. Tom did not want June to be disturbed, he said.

By seven in the morning, the street was deserted except for a couple of familiar cars at the café and Lee’s truck at the clinic entrance. Elmer, Sam, Burt and George sat at the counter with coffee.

“Here he comes,” Burt said, and they all turned as one to see Pastor Wickham walking across the parking lot from the parsonage to the church, his Bible tucked into one hand.

“Right on the dot,” said Elmer, looking at his watch. “George, you feel up to scrambling some eggs?”

“Sure thing, Doc. Sam? Burt?”

“Over easy, bacon,” said Sam.

“Pancakes on the side,” said Burt.

“How you think this is going to go?” George asked Elmer.

“Wouldn’t dare hazard a guess,” he said. “But we’ve been through a lot just lately, this old town, and—” He stopped when he saw his sister’s car come slowly up the street. “Now what in the world is she—?” He didn’t finish. They watched Myrna park the old yellow Cadillac.

“You gotta wonder how she can drive with that hat. The brim is damn near big as the steering wheel,” Sam observed.

Myrna backed herself out of the driver’s door, butt first, purse looped over her arm, wide-brimmed hat last. She wore her favorite lace gloves and had applied her bleeding-red lips. When she entered the café and saw them, she broke into a grin. “I thought I’d find you here, watching.”

“Watching what, Myrna?” Elmer said.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Elmer. I know you’re at the top of this scheme.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Fine, fine, deny it to the grave for all I care. I brought a deck of cards, if any of you old goats can remember how to play.”

By nine-thirty Myrna was up fourteen dollars and fifty cents, Burt threw the party, Sam was even and Pastor Wickham was standing out on the front step, checking his watch. The street was empty; not a soul was out.

The pastor went inside, and momentarily the bells began to summon a congregation, but no one drove down Valley Drive. He didn’t usually play his own bells, so they weren’t very well done.

At ten, thirty minutes past the first service, which no one attended, Pastor Wickham walked in the door of the café. He approached the table where Myrna and the old boys played poker, looked directly at Sam and asked. “Are you responsible for this?”

“For what, Pastor?”

“There’s no one in church. No one. It’s a conspiracy!”

“Nonsense,” Myrna said. “See your twenty-five and call you. Jonathan, care to sit in for a hand, since you don’t seem to have any other…ah…engagements?”

“Mrs. Claypool, how can you sit there, on the Lord’s day, and gamble, while our church is in crisis?”

“The church will be fine, Jonathan,” she said. “But there is a crisis, and I think it’s yours. You must have a lot of people angry with you. Maybe you need to ask
some humble forgiveness for being such a womanizing pain in the ass. Full house,” she said, laying down her cards, raking in her quarters and looking up at Jonathan in all innocence.