Bill Pronzini: Camouflage

The GPS gadget took us to the general vicinity of the number we were looking for, 8790, but neither Chavez nor I spotted it on the first pass. I had to turn around at the next address to the north, drive back at a reduced speed. No wonder we’d missed it: rusted tubular metal gate closed across a barely discernible dirt track, the number hand-painted on a drunken-leaning square of wood wired to the gate and so faded you couldn’t read it clearly from more than a few feet away. The track snaked around a small tangled copse of oak, madrone, and pepper trees and disappeared through a declivity where a pair of hillsides folded down close together. According to the property records Tamara had checked, there were three buildings on Rose O’Day’s thirty acres, but none of them was visible from anywhere on Chileno Valley Road.

Chavez said, “What now?”

“We’ll have to go in, at least far enough to get a look at the place.”

“On foot?”

“On foot.”

“Okay with me.” He flashed one of his infectious grins. “Be the first time I’ve trespassed on private property since I left the Imperial sheriff’s department.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

I pulled ahead a hundred yards or so, to where the road curved to the left and there was a wide spot next to a small creek. Safe enough place to leave the car; there was little traffic on the road this morning and nobody passing by was likely to wonder why it was parked there.

Before we got out I reached into the backseat for the pair of Zeiss field glasses I’d moved in from the trunk earlier. Then I unclipped the emergency. 38 Colt Bodyguard I keep under the dash, flipped the gate open to check the loads, put a cartridge under the hammer, and slid the piece into my jacket pocket. Chavez was armed as well; I’d asked him to bring his weapon. Technically we had no right to take handguns onto private property, but there was no way either of us was going into unfamiliar territory on business like this without protection. McManus and Carson were reason enough, if they were here and if we were right about them, but it was that yellow-eyed Rottweiler that worried me the most.

We walked back along the road to the gate. The morning was cold, windless, but there were breaks in the cloud cover that indicated a partial clearing later on. It was as if we had this part of the valley to ourselves-quiet except for birdsong, no cars passing, not even a cow in sight. A rusted chain and padlock held the gate fastened to a stanchion. I lifted the lock to peer at the key slot on its bottom.

“Scratches,” I said. “Fairly fresh.”

“So they’re here.”

“Or been and gone. We’ll take it slow and careful.”

A sagging barbed-wire fence stretched away on both sides of the gate, so we had to climb over. Chavez is short and stocky and looks plodding, but he moves with a smooth muscular agility when he needs to; he went up on one of the rails and over and down all in one motion. It took a little more effort for me to get up astride the top bar, but I scrambled down quick when I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. We ducked in among the spicy-scented pepper trees before it came into sight. Pickup towing a horse trailer. The driver didn’t even glance in our direction as he clattered by.

I led the way along the track, around the section of trees and underbrush to where we could see ahead to where it staggered in between the two hill folds. Still no buildings in sight. As much of the terrain as was visible beyond the declivity was open meadowland, the only ground cover at a distance. The track appeared to veer off to the right behind the bigger of the two hillsides; that must be where the buildings were.

Chavez figured it the same way. He said, “No telling how close the buildings are behind that hill. Want to risk staying on the road?”

“Not if we can help it. It’s pretty open up there; I don’t like the idea of walking in blind.”

He gestured at the hillside on our left. “Might be able to get a view of the layout from up there.”

I gave the hill a quick scan. It rose in a series of wrinkled creases to a height of a couple of hundred feet. Scrub oak and live oak and mossy juts of rock spotted it, a few of the lower trees little more than gray skeletons-victims of Sudden Oak Death. The ascent looked to be gradual; it ought to be easy enough to climb if we were careful and didn’t rush it.

“Might as well give it a shot.”

We backtracked a short ways until we found a place to start the climb. I let Chavez take the lead; he had twenty years on me, was in better condition, and had more stamina. Better trailblazing instincts, too, as it turned out. He picked the shortest and safest, if not always the most direct, route around the outcroppings and through the trees. And set a steady, not-too-rapid pace so that I didn’t have much trouble keeping up.

At first chunks of Chileno Valley Road were visible behind and below us; only one car passed while we were moving and we ducked behind one of the oaks. The grassy turf was still slick with morning dew that made the footing uncertain in the steeper places; twice I had to drop to all fours and scurry sideways like a crab onto more solid ground. The oaks grew in a thick, packed belt for the last third of the climb. We zigzagged through and around them, and as we neared the top I had glimpses of the terrain below and to the north. Then they thinned out into an open area along the crown.

Chavez veered left, to a spot where a cluster of granite outcroppings rose out of the grassy earth. When I came up to him, panting and wheezing a little from the exertion, he asked if I was okay.

“Yeah. Just need a minute to rest. Getting old, slowing down.”

“Not so slow,” Chavez said. “When I’m your age I’ll be lucky if I can make a climb like this.”

“When you’re my age, I hope I’m still aboveground.”

He grinned, then shifted position and pointed. “There they are.”

The view from next to the rocks was unobstructed and I could see all three farm buildings below. Four, if you counted what appeared to be a small well house near a gaunt, leaning windmill. The three main structures were set in a sheltered semicircle close to the backside of the larger hill-house, barn, a dilapidated outbuilding that had once been a stable, judging from the remains of a pole-fenced section along one side. A line of willows and shrubs ran at an angle behind the house and barn, indicating the presence of a creek.

When I had my wind back I uncased the Zeiss glasses, leaned against the outcropping for support, and fiddled with the lenses until the tableau down there came into sharp focus. The buildings were all at least half a century old and appeared to be suffering from neglect and slow decay. Long abandoned and forgotten. Nobody had lived there or worked the surrounding acreage in decades.

The first thing I scanned for was some sign of current occupancy. Nobody in sight anywhere. No sign of the Ford Explorer. And no barking or any other sounds drifted up on the still morning air.

“Anything?” Chavez asked.

“Doesn’t seem to be.”

I focused on the farmhouse. From its outward appearance, nobody had been there in years. Weathered gray boards with here and there strips and patches of old white paint like flaking skin. One corner of the roofline over the sagging remains of a porch bowed inward and was near collapse. Spiderwebbed hole in one of the front windows, the glass completely broken out of another. The front door intact and shut. A tangled climbing vine of some kind covered most of the visible side wall. On the other side was what had probably been a vegetable garden; most of the chicken-wire fencing that had enclosed it lay trampled down and rusting in the grass.