C Box - Blue Heaven

JIM HEARNE thought, It feels good to sit a horse again.

He had slowed Chile to a walk once they entered the timber on the other side of the meadow. He wanted both to conserve her energy and give her the opportunity to pick her way through the gnarled undergrowth. She could see much better than he could in the dark beneath the closed kettle lid of the tree branches, so he gave her her head and let her go. She picked through the downed timber, placing each front step carefully, her back feet knowing instinctively how to mirror the movement to keep them going forward. He also slowed her down because he knew there was a barbed-wire fence ahead somewhere, the fence that separated the Rawlins place from forest service land. She would likely see it before he would.

She was purposeful, he liked that. He could see why Jess liked this horse. She was the kind of horse that was best if she had a job: cutting cattle, herding, or, in this case, delivering him to Kootenai Bay. He was glad he had a purpose, too, that he was doing something that might save the lives of the Taylors, Villatoro, and Jess. It was the least he could do. He was glad it involved doing something physical. He didn’t want to have the time to think about how his own actions had incubated the whole situation, how he was culpable. He was finally doing something good, doing something right, for Monica and Annie. This ride was his ride of redemption. When he thought about those words, he smiled. Man…

The rain had stopped, and the sounds of the forest returned: chattering squirrels warning of his arrival, the crunch of pine needles beneath the hooves of the horse, the panicked scuttling of creatures he never saw getting out of his way. Sitting the horse connected him to the ground, made him part of it. He could feel the softness or hardness of the ground transmitted up her legs through the saddle. It was as if sinews had reached up through the dirt and reattached themselves to him. He had forgotten about the feeling of being connected. It wasn’t something he felt in his car.

Could he convince the sheriff? He thought he could. Simply the fact that he was riding into town on a horse should tell Carey something.

HE COULD feel Chile hesitate, feel her muscles bunch beneath his thighs, and in a moment he could see the four thin ribbons of barbed wire coursing down through the trees ahead of him. At the fence he turned her to the right, uphill, parallel to the fence, and walked her up a slope looking for a gate. If he couldn’t find one, Hearne would need to do the old cowboy trick of detaching the wire from the posts to stand on while leading the horse over. It was a tricky maneuver that sometimes spooked horses because they thought the wire was water and felt a need to bolt or jump.

The trees cleared into a grassy mountain park washed blue with starlight. The sky opened. He could see better, but he couldn’t see a gate.

Hearne was studying the fence line with such intensity that he almost didn’t realize that the forest sounds had stopped and left only the soft footfalls of his horse and the creak of the leather saddle. Something had silenced the sounds. He saw that Chile was looking ahead, her ears alert, her eyes wide, her nostrils flared as if to woof.

Above, in the black timber on the other side of the meadow, a twig snapped.

Hearne signaled Chile to stop with a tug on her reins, and he sat the saddle, trying to make his eyes pierce the darkness of the stand of trees. He thought, The fence line goes all the way up to the road. If someone were to walk the perimeter of the ranch, they would likely use the fence line as their guide.

The voice came from the trees. “You need some help, mister?”

It was deep and had a Mexican inflection. Hearne froze.

The shotgun was deep in the saddle scabbard under his right leg, the butt poking out from the sleeve of leather. Hearne leaned back in the saddle, letting his right hand drop to his side. He felt the metal butt plate and slid his fingers around the stock.

Chile crow-hopped as a form emerged from the dark trees. The movement caught Hearne off guard, and he scrambled in the saddle for balance, but a light from a flashlight blinded him. There was a metallic click, and he never heard the shot.

AS THE CLOUDS parted to reveal a cream wash of hard, white stars, Newkirk felt a hangover of epic proportions forming in the back of his brain. His mouth was dry and tasted of whiskey and Gonzalez’s thumb, and his eyes burned for sleep. He looked at his wristwatch. Gonzalez had been gone for hours.

Newkirk and Singer were in the white Escalade, backed up into a stand of trees, pointed at the locked gate to the Rawlins Ranch. Their lights were off and the windows open, and they were far enough off the highway that they wouldn’t be seen by anyone on the road. Before leaving to scout the ranch house below, Gonzalez had parked his vehicle beside them. Swann was in Gonzalez’s pickup, slumped against the door. His sudden appearance at his home had surprised them all. Swann smelled of antiseptic, blood, and panic. Cuts on his face were stitched closed, and dark bruises were forming under his eyes. Newkirk thought Swann should have stayed in the hospital because the sight of him was sickening. But Singer welcomed the display of loyalty and had clapped Swann on the back. Now, though, Swann was sleeping and, Newkirk thought, useless.

Before joining Singer in his Escalade, Newkirk had parked the UPS truck deep into the trees down a logging road ten minutes from the ranch gate.

Gonzalez had taken the handheld radio and his scoped.308 Winchester rifle. Above them, resting on pine branches and swinging in the slight northern breeze, were the power and telephone lines Gonzalez had cut away from the utility pole hours earlier. Both Singer and Newkirk thought they had heard a muffled gunshot in the distance, and had waited for a second shot to confirm it that never came. Singer had tried to raise Gonzalez on his handheld, but there was no response. Singer assumed Gonzo had squelched the receiver, and they had no choice but to simply sit and wait.

Newkirk shifted in the seat and moaned involuntarily, his head pounding like the drumbeat of a marching band. Singer looked over at him, and he saw a slight curl of disdain on the lieutenant’s lips, knew the man despised weakness.

“You gonna make it?” Singer asked.

“I’m fine.”

“You need to hang in there. Drink some water.”

“Water’d be good,” Newkirk said, reaching for a canteen. He fought a crazy urge to confess he’d not killed Villatoro, that he’d let the rancher take him. Just to see the rage and confusion on Singer’s sanctimonious face. But he stanched it, like he did his thirst.

Singer had a police scanner and radio mounted under his dashboard. It had been silent for most of the night. There was nothing going on in town other than town cops calling in the ends of their shifts, and a license check of an abandoned car left in a bar parking lot. Singer told Newkirk he had been concerned the sheriff would call his men together to form a team for an early-morning meeting, but it hadn’t happened. Apparently, Carey was simply going to wait for the Feds to arrive, brief them on the situation concerning Monica Taylor and the missing children, and turn the whole case over to them. That Singer had been able to persuade the sheriff to put that off this long was a major victory for them.

On the bench seat between Singer and Newkirk was a detailed topo map of the area that included the Rawlins Ranch. On the map was a handheld, the volume down and the squelch minimized. Gonzalez had its twin out there somewhere in the dark. Singer’s cell phone was on but silent next to the handheld.