Woman on Top [McQueen Was My Valley 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (14 page)

“It’s true,” agreed Julian, taking a miniature carrot out of a bowl and chomping on it. The closest grocery was a forty-five-minute drive to Bird in Hand, and that store was mostly only good for sodas, hamburger meat—probably from Triple Play cattle—vanilla ice cream, and chips. One had to drive an hour to Blanding for chocolate ice cream, cheese that wasn’t individually wrapped in slices, or a real vegetable not in the shape of a TV dinner. In Moab, where Julian had a trailer Gabriel had been using lately, there was a much wider array of choices. Gabriel had a feeling that once their Bait and Switch chalet was built down the canyon rim, Julian wouldn’t be returning to the Moab trailer at all. “I’m surprised they let you have a partner in the Southern Region. This is probably the worst-funded department in the state. Oh, and Janellen”—their dispatcher—“gave me word that also living at that Petroglyph Drive address is one Wade Rivers, asshole extraordinaire. I was trying to get that skinhead for poaching for months, a year maybe. Never could pin him to anything. But he’s on parole for selling meth and—you know, why don’t I just come along? I’d like to handcuff that bastard myself.”

Gabriel shook Julian’s hand. “Good plan.”

Oddly, it was Brooke who interrupted the moment of camaraderie. Frowning, she stepped up to the two rangers. “By any chance, does this Wade Rivers have a tattoo of an ‘88’ on the side of his face?”

Julian frowned, too. “Yes. How did you know that?”

“And a red lightning bolt on his neck?”

“Yes,” agreed Julian. “And the usual swastika on the forehead, along with a one-inch-tall tat going across his forehead that lets us know he’s ‘The Property of—’”

“Brittany,” Adrian broke in with wonder. He looked at Brooke, then at Gabriel.

They must have all been thinking the same thing.

“It’s the same guy,” intoned Adrian.

“Thor Biswell
is
Wade Rivers,” added Gabriel.

“Not only that,” Brooke pointed out, “but that animal psychic was right. We don’t need to wade through any river. Not to get to Wade Rivers’s house.”

* * * *

The realization that the animal psychic was right about Wade Rivers led Gabriel to give more credence to her instructions about the guitar case in the shed. Thor—or, rather, Wade—had received a gun permit under his new assumed identity. Since convicted felons weren’t allowed to own guns, that right there was reason enough to arrest him, and they had every probable cause to do a sweep of the Petroglyph Drive house.

“You know, it’s pathetic,” said Julian as their truck rounded another mesa neared the meth house, “but these run down houses out here in this superb wonderland really get me down. They’re living in the most amazing Garden of Eden known to man, and they have to pile up rotting couches on the side of their house.”

Gabriel couldn’t agree more. If he was ever fortunate enough to own his own house, he certainly wouldn’t load up the backyard with empty bottles or furniture that was supposed to be on the inside of the house, like so many lowlifes did. He had seen Julian’s plans for his Bait and Switch chalet, and he was eaten up with envy. Julian had come from humble beginnings on the Navajo res, which was nearly as bad as the hardscrabble Texas neighborhood where Gabriel had grown up. People had definitely been barbecuing in their garages in Gabriel’s childhood neighborhood.

And if Julian could rise out of the squalor, Gabriel believed he could, too. Just not on a conservation officer’s salary.

Gabriel said, “I picked up a cigarette butt, some rounds, and a couple of fawn fetuses at one scene.” He was talking to Adrian, since Julian would already know this stuff. “So if you see any of those, bag them, too.”

“Bag the fetuses?” goofed Adrian, but they had rounded the last mesa before the house.

As Julian had predicted, the one-story ranch house was in a state of gross disrepair. A couple of rusted stoves were shoved up against the front of the house, as though someone would come along and plug one in to cook someday soon. What appeared to be sheets were tacked in front of the windows to prevent seeing in. A dilapidated swing set with two out of three swing chains broken was not a good sign. Rags or pieces of discarded clothing were strewn everywhere in areas where snow had melted or under trees.

“Why do we get so many of these low-budget motherfuckers around here?” Gabriel asked rhetorically.

Julian said, “They think they can hide in the desert. They think no one can see them because there are fewer people.”

“I think they stand out more,” Adrian breathed as Gabriel turned off the ignition. “There’s his truck. I’ll search that while you guys cuff him.”

“Let’s look around the back of the house first,” Julian suggested. “I don’t want to be surprised. I’d rather surprise them.” Aside from Wade’s truck, there were two other vehicles, a truck and one four-door sedan, parked randomly in front of the house.

Adrian went off to Wade’s truck while Gabriel and Julian, clad in their best camo cargo pants, snuck off around the side of the house, state-issued Glocks at the ready. Gabriel allowed Julian to run point as senior officer and as the guy who had been gunning for this douche bag for awhile now.

When Julian waved his palm in the “come on” gesture to Gabriel, the men burst out around the corner of the house. A gaunt, pizza-faced meth head looked up from a chest freezer, his face the perfect picture of stunned surprise. “State Wildlife Resources!” Gabriel yelled. Both officers pointed their weapons at the loser as he froze in shock.

But when Julian advanced, yelling, “Keep your hands where I can see them!” the meth head bolted down the sandstone slope, darting in between some cottonwoods. With not a split second hesitation, Julian practically dove after the poacher, but Gabriel heard shouts coming from the front yard.

He spun around just in time to see Wade blazing around the same corner of the house Gabriel had just turned. He was a veritable streak being pursued by the flame-haired marine. Gabriel admired Adrian’s vigorous strength as he seemed to cover two of Wade’s steps in only one of his long-legged strides. It didn’t take much effort for Gabriel to holster his weapon and sidestep from his position, colliding directly with the fleeing poacher.

Gabriel caught the guy with his arms wrapped around Wade’s thighs, and Wade kept running, even when he was hopelessly pinned to the ground. Gabriel was stuck. He couldn’t let go of even one arm to cuff the idiot, and the more the Aryan brother insisted on running horizontally, the lower his disgusting pants rode.

Adrian compressed the little remaining air from Wade’s lungs when he fell with a knee in the small of Wade’s back. Adrian easily cuffed him now.

“Search warrant,” grumbled Gabriel. With relief, he stood to see Julian escorting the other white supremacist back up the hill, cuffed. Now they could add resisting arrest to the charges.

The new prisoner said with disgust, “Dig, Wade. I get the Injun wannabe cop.”

Adrian yanked Wade to his feet with more than necessary force. “He
is
a cop, you dickwad. State police. He has all the rights and authorities of a beat cop, so I’d step carefully if I was you.”

“Bit too dark for me. Right, Dave?” said Wade, who also seemed more zitted out than he’d appeared a few days ago. One of the hallmarks of the meth head. Wade looked Adrian up and down. “You’re the officer who accused me of poaching. You’re awful white. Does your carpet match your draperies?”

Adrian was the one charged with watching these two greaseballs while the officers searched the house, so he kneed Wade in the nuts. Adrian had to practically drag Wade to his truck while reminding his friends, “Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife have a ten grand reward for whoever catches these assholes.”

“And a limited edition rifle,” Julian added.

“Limited edition?” gasped Dave. “Which make?”

“I can see you’re a real gun collector,” Gabriel remarked.

Wade was still doubled over as they shoved the prisoners into the Wildlife Resource truck’s back seat. Perhaps Adrian had some top secret mercenary way of ball-kneeing insurgents that was particularly effective. They left Adrian there to read the men their rights and search the truck. Before they were even in the front door of the house, Adrian had found a meth pipe in Wade’s jacket.

“I’ve never seen that before in my life!” cried Wade. “It must’ve been in the pocket when I put the jacket on this morning!”

Gabriel and Julian chuckled almost fondly as they entered the foyer. “You know,” Julian reminisced, “I’d feel sort of lonely and melancholic if I ever frisked a guy and he instantly took responsibility for a meth pipe.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel agreed passionately. “I’d really long for the old days if I ever met a perp who immediately said, ‘yes, officer, that’s my illegally poached deer that is missing its eight-point rack.”

Julian had already found an illegal twelve-gauge shotgun with a homemade silencer. It was propped next to a chair positioned to face a double door where the screen had been removed. Gabriel peeked out that door and saw a bait pile in the snow—a mound of broccoli and cornflakes to attract starving deer. It was evident the perps sat in that chair smoking their drugs and waiting for deer to come by so they could blast them.

“Got to admit it feels even better getting these white power guys,” said Gabriel, picking up a .22 and noting it’d been fired recently by the smell of powder. He added a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson to the pile of illegal firearms, and they went downstairs.

Here was a treasure trove of evidence. A recently butchered rack of antlers from a three-by-three buck sat on a bloodied table next to a pair of night vision goggles, and Gabriel recovered a few cigarette butts and arrows that had passed through animals with blood on the fletchings. At least a dozen deer hides were hung to dry next to a cougar pelt. It wasn’t new enough to be the one they had released from the trap the other night, but a creeping feeling came over Gabriel.

“There was a shed out back,” Gabriel remembered. “I’m going to go check it.”

“I’ll come with you. This is plenty here to nail their asses to the wall.”

On the way to the shed they found venison freshly wrapped and labeled—the dickheads had even handily written dates on each package, about half of them after the deer season had ended. Gabriel became even more irate when they discovered a doe under a two-foot pile of snow up against the side of the house. They had obviously dug this hole to preserve the carcass until they got around to butchering it.

Gabriel broke the lock off the rotting shed door. He had to shine his flashlight to see anything in the windowless room. He wasn’t surprised to find more deer racks in piles, but the guitar case threw him for a loop.
That psychic was right. Again.
As he kneeled to open the case, a most unexpected sound made him freeze.

Tiny mewling came from the case. Tiny peeps, like songbird chicks. Gabriel lifted the cover even more gently now. His breath caught in his throat when his flashlight shined on three slit-eyed cougar kittens. They were so weak they were near death, but they had enough spunk to run in place in protest of the bright light.

“Bastards,” whispered Gabriel.

“It’s a deer graveyard out here,” Julian called from the backyard.

Adrian and Gabriel leaned against the horse stables, enjoying the feel of the sun on their faces. Brooke was trying out a recently broken mustang, a spirited mare she thought she might choose for her own, and she was riding it in circles around the corral. The ranch manager Cody rode alongside her, giving her tips and discussing shop. She was the picture of the buckle bunny now in her jeans, cowboy boots, and plaid shirt. Her glossy dark hair bounced in squiggles over the shoulders of her sheepskin jacket.

“I’m glad Brooke made a decision about her future job,” said Gabriel, adjusting the tan Stetson he’d found somewhere. Maybe he’d had it for awhile—it didn’t look new. He usually had to wear his baseball cap with his departmental patch displayed.

“Yes, but what is she going to
do
for the ranch? I’m not sure if I want her actually roping and herding cattle. I’ve seen that John Wayne movie with the little kids taking the herd on a cattle drive. At least one of those poor kids got trampled to death. And it wasn’t even snowing where they were.” Adrian was worried.

Gabriel grinned. He was only thirty, but his three-day-old beard was sprinkled with gray, a look that made him more attractive, if such a thing was possible. On this rare sunny day in early February, the light reflecting off the snow was blinding in its clarity, and the men had to wear their darkest shades to watch Brooke. “I doubt she’ll herd. Cody’s got guys for that. But you’ve got to admit—she’ll be a welcome sight for sore eyes out here. Cody said he hopes she can take over bookkeeping tasks, running the office, things he doesn’t want to do when he’s out in the field.”

Adrian had to nod. “Yeah. That office is…”

“Smelly.”

“I was going to say ‘that office is something else,’ but ‘smelly’ works, too.”

That’s why they were standing outside, mainly. Cody’s office was piled to the rafters with file folders and newspapers that created a fire hazard, uneaten and mummified food, and more than one dead rat. The smell of leather and horseshit permeated the air as the room led directly into the stables, even though a sliding door closed it off from the horses and the tack room.