Ridley Pearson - Killer View

As prearranged, the daily radio call didn’t happen until midnight; that meant it would be a while before Gearbox could arrive with the insulin. He had no choice but to act, compounding his resentment.

The cows gathered on the other side of the fence, expecting a feeding. Pinky was smart enough to wait inside the pen. He hadn’t realized how difficult this would be. Like killing a house pet. He was willing to see Aker or others die for his cause but not one of his stock.

He considered Pinky first. He had no great rapport with the sow and considered her a dirty, though lovable, companion. But the size of the pancreas mattered, and that quickly took her out of consideration. It was either Bess or Tilda, and Bess’s condition demanded it be her.

He used a can of grain to lure her through the side door of the ramshackle shed at the corner of the paddock, the chickens making noise in the coop as if a fox were on the prowl. He wanted her as close to the block and tackle as possible, knowing he’d have to rig some kind of motor or winch to hoist all eight hundred pounds of her.

He got a harness on her head while she was still standing. Attached a length of chain to the front ring and secured it to a two-ton pickup truck that hadn’t run in years. She was chewing on the grain, the first she’d had in a long, long time, and he knew that for a cow this was as close to heaven as it got.

So he scratched her on the head between the eyes, feeling the hard bone beneath the tough skin. Dust rose from the black-and-white hair. It had formed a permanent layer on both animals.

“You’ve been a good girl all these years, Bess,” he said, his throat tightening. “Your being pregnant is your downfall. What can I say? No greater honor than to fall a martyr for a cause. I ought to know that. I expect I’ll be seeing you soon.”

He stabbed the knife in sharply at the jugular. Dragged and twisted its blade until she sprayed, her eyes pure white, as she reeled and cried out. Leaned his weight into it, pulling for her windpipe, wanting this over with.

Resentment filled that part of his heart emptied by grief. He would see the vet dead for this, after he’d written the report.

WALT STOPPED THE CHEROKEE BESIDE THE CLOSED FENCE gate. He could see the end of a double-wide trailer, some outbuildings, and curved mounds in the snow about a hundred yards past the gate.

“Looks like snowmobiles been running in and out,” Brandon said. The track started on the other side of the closed gate and had been beaten down by a good many trips.

“Roads are all snow floor,” Walt observed. “A snowmobile’s as good as a car.”

Walt leaned on the horn, and they waited for some sign of life from the ranch. When none was forthcoming, they left the Cherokee parked where it was and went in on foot. As they neared the cabin, they saw that the snowmobile track connected with others, forming a network of beaten-down paths leading to and from various outbuildings.

Walt shouted, “Sheriff’s Office!” It wouldn’t have surprised either man to be greeted by the wrong end of a shotgun, and Brandon walked with his good hand resting on the stock of his pistol. The cold dry snow squeaked beneath their boots.

When their knocks on the door went unanswered, they checked the neighboring outbuildings. One was a working garage, the other a storage shed overrun with junk.

A snowmobile track continued past a granary, leading toward the fence line.

“I know you think she’s using me to get at you, but that’s not the way it is,” Brandon said, as they trudged through the snow.

Walt stopped and turned to make sure Brandon heard him. “You’re my best deputy. You think that’s coincidence?” He turned and walked on.

“You two were separated.”

“She convinced herself she was a lousy mother. She envied how easily the parenting came to me. It isn’t about you. It’s about the kids. She’s having second thoughts now. She’s going to fight for them. Are you ready for that?”

Brandon stopped short, and the distance between them grew. He had to hurry to catch back up.

“I want to work for you. This is where I belong.”

“Grow up.”

The rancher was a pack rat. The mushrooms of snow seen from a distance turned out to be junk: dishwashers, farm implements, tires, car parts, tractor parts, furniture. It surrounded every building, looming mysteriously out of the snow.

“Damn,” Brandon said.

“You notice what’s missing?” Walt asked.

“Human beings?”

“Listen.”

The two men stopped. Absolute silence.

“It’s quiet enough,” Brandon admitted.

“And then some.” Walt led Brandon along one of the snowmobile paths to a fence line. The snow out in the pasture was rippled and dented by interconnecting seams, not flat and pristine. It reminded Walt of a brain. But there was no recent activity. All of the wandering seams connected into a single point down the fence line near yet another outbuilding.

“Those lines mark where the snow was trod down by livestock,” Walt said, pointing toward the shed. “Then a fresh snow covered them up.”

“So where’s the livestock?”

“That’s the point, Deputy. Moved ’em off the place.” Walt pointed to where all the paths connected. His eyes couldn’t make out a gate there, but he expected to find one. “I’d say it was probably to another field, but we’re not hearing them.”

“Who moves their livestock in winter?”

“It’s a pain,” Walt agreed. “Unless a water line froze or the snow got too dry. They might move them to make feeding easier.”

Walt started down the fence line through the knee-deep snow.

“What the hell?” Brandon called out, hesitating to join him.

“Check the trailer again. Another reason the livestock would be moved is if someone died.”

Brandon mulled that over. Walt kept on walking, trudging with difficulty through the snow.

“Are you mad at me, Sheriff? For what I said?” Brandon called out.

“Shut up and check the trailer.”

“Yes, sir.”

The farther down the fence line he went, the tougher it got for Walt, his legs growing weary from the deep snow. Sweat ran down his rib cage, despite the harsh cold that whipped his face, but there was something else he felt: an unease brought on by the utter stillness of the place, and the growing sensation he and Brandon were being watched.

As he drew closer to the shed, he picked out the outline of a feed trough, a double-hung gate, and a pair of automatic waterers. He arrived to the feed trough and saw it was filled with snow, suggesting the animals had been moved sometime between the two most recent snowstorms-in the last five to six days. He studied the sweep of the gate, the way it had pushed the prior snowfall ahead of it as it had been opened. This too confirmed his time line. Mark Aker had made a two-day trip to his cabin a few days earlier, just before the search and rescue that took his brother’s life. Had this ranch been a stop for him during those two days? What had he found? Why had the livestock been moved?

Fighting the deep snow, he wrestled open the shed’s large door far enough to squeeze through. It was dark inside, shafts of sunlight appearing as Walt kicked up dust from the dirt floor. A milking station and some stalls. A squeeze chute, used to isolate an animal for doctoring or branding.

He slipped back through the door to the outside. He might have missed it had he not visited the shed, for only now did he get a good look at the automatic waterers.

The waterers were clear of snow but dry. Warmed by a thermostat in winter months, with a float valve to control the water level, the devices were used to save the rancher from fighting ice and trying to keep his cows drinking. Walt studied the jerry rigging: on each device, baling wire had been twisted to hold the float valve up so the bowl wouldn’t refill.