Nightzone (26 page)

“Do you think Curt would have wanted it this way?”

“What way is that?” He gazed at me, eyes expressionless.

“Tell me what they accomplished, Johnny. New electric poles up by next week, higher rates for customers to pay for them, two men dead…you think that's a tally Curt would have been proud of?”

I could see the color spread up under the weathered skin of his neck. He stood slowly, giving each joint time to think about it. “My son did what he thought he had to do,” he said slowly. “And that's as far as it goes with me. That's what I'll remember.”

“Daniel is a wanted man now, Johnny. He left your son on the prairie, and then he killed a cop in cold blood. Didn't give the young man a chance. And now he's got nothing to lose. He's a dangerous man, Johnny.”

“I guess he'll do what he thinks is right, then. It ain't my affair. There was a time I might have thought different, but not now.” He snapped the cigarette butt into the fireplace ashes and jammed his hands into his jeans. Miles shifted on the sofa, unsure what to say. He chose silence.

“You was in on it, years ago,” Boyd said. “When Sheriff Holman's plane crashed. We had every cop in the country swarmin' around here. You, the state cops, the feds, even the damn Fish and Game Department. That just proved to me that there's no where a man can live where folks will leave him alone.”

He took a long, deep breath, then limped over to the door, standing by it with his hand on the knob.

“You two need anything else?”

I rose and settled my hat. “Sorry for the late night intrusion, Johnny. I just had things nagging at me, is all.”

“Well, you've been down this road before. Miles, good to see you again.”

“One more thing?” I said.

“What?”

“When you went into town this morning, did you come back on the highway, or take the rough ride around the mesa?”

“Didn't go to town today.” I knew his wife would never take the rough mesa route.

I regarded him for a moment, and then nodded goodnight. “My best to Maxine, Johnny.” We made our way across the dark yard to the truck, and Miles Waddell stood for a moment with his hand on the car door handle, craning his neck to survey the heavens.

“You know, that's all I want,” he muttered. He shook his head and got in, and I settled back and jotted a note in my log.

“What's all you wanted?”

“I'm a stargazer. That's all. Did you notice you can see some detail of the Pleiades tonight? A lot of times, it's easier to see 'em if you don't look straight at 'em. Tonight, there they are. Plain as can be.”

“Just off Orion,” I said, and Waddell looked at me quickly.

“That's right.”

“I look up once in a while.”

“And now, just because of that, we have what, two killed? Power lines ruined? A crazy nutcase running around in a stolen truck, about to do who knows what?”

“That's about it.”

“All because I like to look at stars.”

I slipped the log back in the center console. “It's not because you look at stars, Miles. It's because there are folks who don't
understand
that's all you want. They can't imagine doing what you're doing. It's the money, the grandiose plans…they can't imagine it's all just to get a better view of the Pleiades. Their shortsightedness is not your fault.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Miles Waddell hadn't said ten words at the Boyd ranch, and I knew it had been unsettling for him. I was apprehensive that he was going to cave in—throw up his hands and give up his dreams. For some folks, it's uncomfortable to be around people like Johnny Boyd, who mope through life. That might sound unfair, since the man had just lost his son, but I'd known Johnny for decades, and he hadn't changed much.

Waddell crossed his arms over his chest and watched the night pass by. For a few minutes, he didn't say anything, and I didn't chatter. Finally he asked, “So where the hell are we going?”

We hadn't headed back to the highway. Instead we continued south on the dirt two-track leading away from the Boyds'.

“Nice night for a drive,” I said. “Seems a waste to go back the way we came.”

“Where lies a warm bed and a good night's sleep.”

I laughed. “As long as we've come this far. You know, I thought it was interesting.”

“What was?”

“Boyd's mention of the plane crash that killed Sheriff Marty Holman. I don't recall if you were here then or not.”

“Hell yes, I was here. Crazy guy south of here, right? Finnegan.”

“That's it. Richard Finnegan. He takes a wild shot at a low-flying airplane, and by dumb luck the bullet punches through the bottom of the fuselage and then the seat, and ends up blasting a hole in the pilot's aorta. Sheriff Holman was a passenger, and didn't know beans about flying. Anyway…” I shrugged. “It was a hell of a mess, and we lost two good men.”

Waddell shifted in his seat, bracing for the unending bumps. “Dick Finnegan. Johnny Boyd's brother Edwin killed him later in a bar fight. That's the part I remember.”

“Saved us the trouble of prosecuting Finnegan, that's for sure. And then Edwin died shortly afterward of cancer. But like Johnny just said…we had enough feds around here investigating the air crash to repopulate the county. And because
Curt
Boyd had a houseful of machine guns, the feds put the spotlight on him. Neil Costace had a grand old time with that.”

“So what's on your mind, Bill? Why are you kidnapping me in the middle of the night, bouncing my kidneys to death in his little rattletrap?”

“It's not kidnapping if you're a willing accomplice, Miles. Look at it this way. Why would Johnny Boyd be hesitant to tell us what he knows about Elliot Daniel? The guy drove away leaving Curt Boyd broken and bleeding. There was probably nothing Daniel could have done to save him, but still…just to leave him? I'm wondering if Boyd is finding a quiet way to tell us something.”

“For one thing, Johnny would end up in court, testifying,” Waddell mused. “Guys like him will go to some lengths to avoid that, I would think. And like he said, he just wants to be left alone.”

“That's how I see it.” I slowed as the two-track took a dive down into an arroyo and we kicked gravel all the way up and out. “We have two ways to get back to town, so what the hell. Like I said, why retrace our steps? We might see something.”

Waddell chuckled in resignation. “You have an extra pillow in back?”

“As a matter of fact. You're welcome to use it. There's an old army blanket there with it.”

“What are you looking for out here?”

“As the kids say these days, ‘just stuff.'”

“Finnegans used to live down that way.”

“Yep. In point of fact, it's the
only
other place other than Boyd's in this part of the county.”

“She died, didn't she? The missus?”

“Charlotte Finnegan? She did. And it wasn't too long after Edwin Boyd killed her husband. She was at least half nuts anyway. And then Alzheimer's finished the job.”

“Who bought their place? I never heard.”

“Nobody, as far as I know. Somebody found out that among other things, Richard Finnegan had never filed taxes. So there's that snarl. I don't know if their estate was ever figured out. On top of that, their trailer burned when Charlotte was in the hospital for her final stay. I tell you, if it weren't for bad luck, that family wouldn't have had any luck at all.”

A long silence followed as we both tried to keep our butts on the seat as the prairie jounced us hard.

“This Daniel guy wouldn't know about the Finnegans' place, if that's what you're thinking,” Waddell said. “Hell, I would have been lost ten times already. Especially at night.”

“Two things,” I said. “Number one, bad as it is, this is the only road from the Boyds' to the Finnegans', if you don't count one or two little shortcuts. So it's not hard to find. Or you can come in from the south, right up County Road 43. That cuts over to this one, County 91. But see, if Daniel didn't know where it was, Curt Boyd did.”

“So you're thinking he's gone to ground out here.”

I shrugged. “I don't expect anything, Miles. It's just a little puzzle piece, that's all. I don't know what to do, so I roam. And this is a spot I haven't visited in a long time.” I didn't explain to him the little nagging curiosity. Johnny Boyd hadn't driven into town, but I sure as hell had looked north from my vantage in Lynn Browning's chopper, and seen a vehicle northbound on 91. Just a little burr under the saddle.

“And roaming in the middle of the night is as good as any time,” he said wryly.

“Patience. Patience.”

We arrived at an intersection of sorts, a spot where a faint trace of lane came in from the west and joined our two-track.

“You remember over there? By the water tank?”

“Where they found the dead hunters.”

“That's it. Finnegan's perfect crime. Not so perfect, it turns out.”

The two-track tackled the flank of one of the scattering of small mesas, the path worn just enough to silhouette the tire tracks in the headlights. As we drew near the crest, I slowed to a stop, and then punched out the lights. There remained a veritable swath of tiny lights inside the truck, illuminating the electric window switches, the clock, the this and that. I reached down and snapped a switch mounted low by the steering column, and we went pitch dark…not a single glow. That handy switch had cost me nearly two hundred bucks to have installed, along with all kinds of dire warnings that it would void my warranty.

“There's Waddell's sky for you,” I said. The arc of stars domed from horizon to horizon, with just enough moon to fuzz them a little. I took off my glasses so I wouldn't have the confusion of the bi- and tri-focals. Waddell saw me do that and laughed.

“When we end up top-side-down in an arroyo, who do I call?”

I reached down and pulled the mike off the under-dash radio and rested it in one of the center console's cup holders. “Just find that, push the button, and holler to PCS. In fact…” and I turned the volume up a little, but instead of keying the mike, hauled out my cell phone. Its digital face was painfully bright. I tapped the auto-dialer for the sheriff's department.

Dispatch was in the middle of something, because the phone buzzed half a dozen times before Ernie picked up.

“Posadas County Sheriff's Department. Wheeler.”

“Ernie, this is Gastner. Miles Waddell and I are about two miles north of Finnegan's out on 91. Just wanted to check in.”

“Ten four. Are you on the way to Finnegan's?”

I grinned. “Maybe so.” Wheeler's passion was fishing, not geography, but he'd been dispatcher long enough to know all of the county's little nooks and crannies. “While we're at it, is the sheriff out?”

“You know, I don't know where he is. I really don't. He hasn't called in since he went over to your place for the reception.”

“Ah. I missed him.” That Bobby Torrez had gone to any sort of reception was news enough. Or perhaps he was looking for me. Who knew. But if he wanted to talk with me, he knew my number. And he knew I had a department radio. “Thanks, Ernie. Have a quiet night.”

“Those are boring, sir.”

I laughed. “I'll take boredom any time.”

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could make out the two-track clearly enough to avoid the huge clumps of cacti or the occasional errant boulder that had abandoned its repose and tumbled down from one of the mesas. “Are you warm enough?” I asked.

“Plenty.”

I lowered my window, the fragrant chill welcome. This unmaintained lane would ramble east for another mile or so and then join the northern tail of County Road 43, the one lane capillary up the eastern end of Cat Mesa, then on down into Posadas, its last eight miles macadam.

The old Finnegan ranch moldered in a copse of dead elms and a single spindly cottonwood, the grove once fed by a spring and Charlotte Finnegan's ministrations. She died and the spring gave up as the water table sank. The whole goddamn Southwest was withering, a depressing thought that I tried to fend off with little success
.

Why, when I first came to this country forty years ago…
I barked a short scoff as I chased that line of reminiscence away. Dick Finnegan had ranched and scammed in Posadas County for forty years, and never made a significant dime. His last big deal, selling illegal antelope hunts to Texans with too much money, hadn't worked out so well for him, or anyone around him.

Johnny Boyd hung on. Maybe he loved his life, loved that the whisper of dried prairie grass was the loudest voice around him on a night like this. And maybe he hated it, but was just too stubborn to give in. I couldn't imagine the game old rancher living in a retirement community in the city. But now, faced with the
NightZone
complex as neighbors thirty miles to his south—with the train, the tram, buses, traffic, strangers who dressed funny—maybe he had reason not to relish giving Elliot Daniel up to the law.

“Just over there,” I said, and pointed to the southwest. The Finnegans' burned out mobile home had taken a handful of trees with it when the electrical short set the thing on fire. Burning on a still November night, the flames had shot straight up, and even the propane tank thirty feet away had been spared. Finnegan had been long dead when it happened, his wife soon to be. The fire chief figured a pack rat had nibbled on the wrong thing.

I suppose archeologists would have a field day with this site in a hundred years, because Dick Finnegan had beaten Josiah Bennett all hollow in the artifact department. For one thing, Finnegan apparently had belonged to the Shed-of-the-Month club. Outbuildings dotted the ranch, storage for all the stuff that made up his wealth. One of them had been big enough to include a single-car garage, now empty.

A few bales of worthless hay sank earthward from what might have been a neat pile beside the barn, the weather and wind battering it down and mixing dust and hay. The barn itself might have been Finnegan's pride and joy. A steel Quonset hut, not too badly rusted but dented as if he'd used it for target practice with his pickup truck, featured a large stock pen off the back, every one of the juniper uprights still standing gray and tough.

I stopped the SUV on the road. “I'd like to take a look around.”

Waddell stiffled a yawn. “Of course you would.”

“I just think it's interesting that Johnny Boyd brought up ancient history, that's all. On the surface, his mention of Finnegan seems apropos of nothing.”

“But…” my long-suffering passenger muttered.

“Yep, but.” I dug out my best flashlight and shut off the SUV. “Beautiful night for a stroll and a snoop. We probably won't even need the flashlight, but just in case.”

“The inside of that Quonset will be dark as a tomb.”

“That would be unauthorized entry, and I would never do that.”

Waddell laugh was just a whisper. “Oh, sure. Or maybe just simple trespass.”

The fresh tracks in the driveway could have been anyone's—hunters, teens looking for a party spot, run-of-the-mill vandals like the jerk who had spray-painted something incomprehensible on the big rolling door of the Quonset. Tracks stayed fresh for a long time with our stable weather, but these were
fresh.
Even the wind hadn't had a chance to play with the sharp edges where tread cut dust.

Snapping on the flashlight, I bent down for a closer look, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. In a spot that shouldn't have had
any
tracks, this was a smorgasbord. Generic truck tires, running heavy. And cutting here and there, motorcycle tracks—the paw prints of a big street bike. Added to the mix was a narrow gauge set of car tracks, the treads characteristic of those new hi-tech radials.

The old Finnegan place had a new life, apparently.

I turned to Miles and held up a finger to my lips. He nodded and lifted a hand, pointing his thumb over his shoulder, and mouthed, “Let's go.” Good advice. I should have followed it. Instead, I gazed at the bulk of darkness that was the Quonset.

The metal structure had no windows, at least on the front and the side facing the house. For a long moment, I stood perfectly still, listening. There wasn't enough breeze to moan around the metal edges of the building, and no coyotes had succumbed to the musical urge. If the moon made noise as it rumbled through the heavens, we would have heard it. Although I had approached with my lights off, there's no way to muzzle the exhaust burble of the SUV, or worse, the crunch of tires. If there was anyone inside, they might well know we were outside, unless theirs was the sleep of the dead. I scanned the ground ahead of me, and then turned off the flashlight.

A whisper that would have been inaudible were it not immediately at my ear said, “Isn't this where we either call for back-up or
leave?”

I sympathized with Miles. I couldn't imagine for sure what it must feel like, standing out in the strange darkness of the prairie, with a third of a billion dollars in the bank and not a penny of it able to offer, in this particular instance, either safety or assistance.