High Country Nocturne

Chapter Forty-one

The highway made one last upward leap and I entered the forest and then Payson. When I was a boy, this had been a trifling place with maybe a thousand residents. I remembered log trucks rumbling by. The town, with its storied cowboys and saloons, had only recently been opened to the outside world, the highway being paved in 1959.

Now logging was long gone, the population was fifteen times larger, and Phoenicians used it to flee the bludgeon of the summer heat. This had not made it better.

The forest looked sickly. Climate change and the bark beetle were slowly killing it. To the north was the largest virgin stand of Ponderosa pines in the world. How many times I had gone camping there with the Boy Scouts and later as an adult. Now I wondered if it would still exist in a couple of generations.

Mammoth wildfires were common now, another difference from when I was young. Land swaps in the National Forest had allowed subdivisions to be built in the pines. Almost every year, millions of dollars were spent to keep these tract houses from burning down.

A few years ago, the state’s worst fire up to that time erupted to the east. It began after a woman had a fight with her boss, or was he her boyfriend? She stalked off into the woods in shorts and flip-flops with only a towel, cigarettes, and a lighter. When she became lost, she used the lighter to set a signal fire, or so she said. By the time the fire was out, more than 730 square miles had been reduced to ashes.

The ground was also perfectly dry. January in the High Country used to mean snow. The mountain snowpack melted in the spring and filled the reservoirs for Phoenix’s water supply. But we were getting less snow, had been for several years. I could only lose friends in Arizona by starting a conversation about climate change. Even Peralta didn’t believe it was real.

Amid the grotesqueries, freak shows, and fears, however, the Mogollon Rim still kept watch.

Newcomers had to learn to pronounce it correctly, MUG-EE-on, like they learned Gila was HEE-la and the iconic cactus was a Sa-WAR-oh. Or they didn’t learn.

The escarpment dropped as much as four thousand feet straight down from the Colorado Plateau. From here, in the late afternoon light, the Kaibab limestone gleamed alabaster. Above it, clouds were moving in.

Seeing it again, inhaling the tart smell of the pines, reminded me of my Boy Scout days. Camp Geronimo was north of here, at the foot of the Rim. My troop, which met at the Luke-Greenway American Legion Post near downtown, went there every summer. After dinner by the campfire, the scoutmasters would tell us stories of the Mogollon Monster, Arizona’s version of Bigfoot. Then they would lead us on night hikes. Even with our flashlights, it was the blackest dark I had ever experienced.

All grown up now, I settled for an early dinner at Wendy’s and then pulled into a deserted section of the enormous lot of the Walmart Supercenter to consolidate my load. Far fewer people lived here through the winter.

Stepping out, I slid on my leather jacket. The temperature was at least thirty degrees cooler than in Phoenix. I used the key fob to pop the trunk of the Lexus. The inside was immaculate, but sure enough two white athletic socks sat in the spare tire compartment. I lifted them out with effort, holding the bottom to keep the contents from fraying the threads of the cuff ribbing. They were heavy as hell. Back in the car, I indulged in feeling though the fabric. The contents indeed felt rough. Then I unzipped the duffel and hefted them inside, careful not to let the contents scratch the guns.

Yesterday, I had driven to the Beatitudes on Glendale Avenue. It was a large assisted-living center not far from where Susan’s Diner once stood, one of our cop hangouts. Inside, it seemed clean and well kept. I showed my star and they led me to a room.

Mrs. Pennington’s room.

The woman inside was so frail it looked as if she might shatter from the slightest breeze. If old age was a shipwreck, as Charles de Gaulle said, then she was clinging to the last fragment of timber. And this was before I walked in.

Kate Vare was thorough, but no one had bothered to tell Matt Pennington’s mother that he was dead at age forty-five. I had done the next-of-kin notifications before but somehow this was harder. I thought about what Cartwright had said. I’m getting too old for this, too.

“He was a good boy, my Matt,” she said over and over. I agreed with her. Now that I knew the information Lindsey had hacked about his undercover work, I should have said it with more conviction. What a hell to outlive your only child.

I didn’t ask for much: only if she had a key to her cabin in Payson. She did. I took it and promised to return it. I already knew of the cabin’s existence and location from a helpful clerk at the Gila County courthouse.

Now I studied my map. I was a map nerd, had been since discovering Grandfather’s subscription to National Geographic, back when each issue contained one. So I could have entered the address into the advanced GPS device in the Lexus. But no, I would use the paper map. I was a dinosaur.

Before driving away, I rechecked the rounds in my Colt Python and slid a Ka-Bar combat knife on my belt. I loaded a carbine and shotgun from the duffle and made sure my Maglite batteries were good.

Be prepared.

With the little light left, I drove west-northwest out of town. The many cheaply built newer houses slowly fell away as the road turned to gravel and the pines enveloped me. Off to the left side, the east fork of the Verde River ran as a narrow stream.

The Pennington cabin emerged off to my right. Trees and underbrush nearly concealed the house and the nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile east. It was a modest A-frame, probably from the 1960s. The downstairs had a log facing and two simple windows on either side of a door with a porch in front. The windows were draped. Above, the beams and rafters looked hand-hewn.

No lights were visible. A junker car was parked in the dirt beside the house. Orville Grainer’s vehicle, I assumed. I drove on to an intersection with a dirt Forest Service road, turned around and waited fifteen minutes. I used the Steiner binoculars to study the road and forest. No one was behind me.

I crept back to the A-frame and pulled in behind the old car, very conscious of the breathing making my chest rise and fall.

Outside, the air was colder and clouds were overhead. It was nearly dark, a sensation exaggerated by the four-story-tall trees. I hefted out the heavy duffle and pulled out the Colt Python, then walked to the front door. Why not? My feet crunched over pine needles and pinecones, then went up to the porch reached by three steps.

The door was solid wood with a peephole. You never stand directly in front of a door. That’s a good way to get shot. So I stood beside it, remembering another time and another door. My great-grandmother had ESP. That was the family story, at least. When she dreamed of flowing water in a river, someone she loved was going to die.

I couldn’t claim such a gift, but when I was a young deputy I was the first officer to respond to an unknown trouble call. I had approached a darkened house with a peephole door and my Python drawn. The door had been opened three inches and beyond was only darkness. But something, some small voice inside me, had said, Don’t open that door. So I didn’t. It turned out a man with a shotgun had murdered his family and had been sitting on the sofa with the weapon pointed at the door.

And I heard that same voice this time.

But I ignored it, stood to the side, knelt down on my haunches to make myself less of a target, and knocked.

“It’s open!” Peralta’s voice.

No need for the key after all.

I turned the knob, hearing the rhythmic purr of water tumbling over slick rocks in the river across the road, and stepped inside.