Killer Summer

23

As Walt left the hangar, he heard a radio code spoken over his handset and decided to respond himself. Another day, another weekend, he would have left the call for others-he tried hard to avoid micromanagement-but with his patience worn thin awaiting word from the patrol he’d sent out to Democrat Gulch, he knew the short drive down to Bellevue would keep his mind on other things. Besides, he’d known Bob Parker, the owner of Sun Valley Log Homes, for years.

A round-faced man, with clear blue eyes and hard hands, Bob had taken a small lumberyard and turned it into a company that manufactured homes of all sizes and budgets. He dressed like a lumberjack, disguising a six-figure income.

He shook his head at Walt from the summer porch. Beatrice, who’d been heeling nicely, broke away to investigate an empty dog bowl by the porch steps.

“Damnedest thing,” Bob said.

“What’s that?” Walt asked, one eye on Beatrice. He didn’t begrudge her the pursuit of food, but it was incorrect to break heel without permission. Like everything else around him, Beatrice needed his time.

“The only way I can get five minutes with you is to have my place busted into,” Bob said.

“I thought you were probably still sore over the whooping you took in the tournament,” Walt said.

“A different third-base umpire and you would be the one that’s sore.”

“So you’re still sore?”

“A game should be decided by the players, not the umps.”

“So let’s have a rematch,” Walt proposed.

“For the trophy?”

“I didn’t say that. But bragging rights should be good enough for a losing team.”

“Losing team? You think?”

“Why don’t we find out?”

“Oh, we’ll find out,” Bob said. “Or, more likely, you will.”

Walt called Beatrice away from the bowl. She’d licked it any harder, the glaze would’ve come off.

“Such claims are better settled on the diamond.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Bob.

Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Tuttle was to Walt’s left, consulting two paramedics and overseeing their care of one of Bob’s employees, sitting on the bumper of the ambulance, a blood-pressure sleeve around his left arm.

“So why am I here?” Walt said.

“It’s not exactly like we guard this place at night,” Bob said. “You know me, Walt: throw a chain around the gate out front, make sure the keys are out of the equipment, and pack it up home. What’s to steal? A few hand-drawn logs? I don’t think so. Cash? Never a penny on the property. I suppose you might roll a John Deere mower into the bed of your half-ton, but it’s never happened.”

“Isn’t that the Dodge kid?”

“Morgan? Yeah. Looking to get a jump on his college loan.”

“How’s that?” Walt asked.

“College loan,” Bob repeated, as if Walt hadn’t heard. “He’s been working nights for the past month. Starts over in Moscow middle of August. Wanted to get a nut under him, and I said fine. Why not? If he wants to spend his evenings sharpening mower blades and swapping out air filters, who am I to stop him? I didn’t know that that would mean working ’til one in the morning. Good God, talk about initiative. Walt, the kid’s got a battery in him that won’t die.”

“So Morgan was here late last night?” Walt said, hoping that might encourage the Cliffs Notes version.

“He was. Wishes he hadn’t been now, I want to tell you.”

“Kids?” Walt asked. “Vandals?”

“Who the heck knows?” Bob said. “Whoever it was fried his ass with a cattle prod or Taser or something. Knocked him flat on his ass, I’ll tell you that.”

Walt looked around the yard: five acres of piled logs, mountains of split wood, and stacks of scrap. There were a half dozen badly worn-out Caterpillar tractors and forklifts.

“Damned near stopped his ticker, from what the ambulance boys are saying,” said Bob.

Walt didn’t like the sound of it. The break-in itself wasn’t all that unusual. The Wood River Valley had seen a sharp increase in vandalism and burglaries over the past few years. But a cattle prod didn’t knock a person unconscious, and a Taser wasn’t exactly a common weapon in the valley. His department had two-the only two he knew of up here.

“Anything missing or messed with?” Walt asked.

“Not as if I’ve kicked every tire or anything,” Bob said, “but nothing sticks out.”

“I’m going to ask him a few questions before they get him out of here.”

Bob didn’t object.

Morgan Dodge had an intense face, with brooding dark brown eyes peering through floppy hair. He was trying to grow a mustache, which wasn’t going to work out. He looked like a hundred hungover kids Walt had interviewed the morning after a DUI.

“You okay?” Walt asked.

“It’s kind of like a migraine,” Morgan said, “only worse.”

“Tell me what happened,” Walt said.

“Not much to tell.” The boy-he couldn’t have been over nineteen-averted his eyes. “Other than I was in the shop, minding my own business, and some asshole zaps me and drags me outside and leaves me there.”

“You see him? Get a look at him?”

“No, sir.” Head down, boots swinging forward and back, reminding Walt of his girls on a swing set in the backyard.

Walt took a second to look around, specifically over at the back door of the shop where presumably Morgan Dodge had been dragged.

“You didn’t see who did this to you?” Walt repeated.

“I said I didn’t.” Defensive, a little too adamant.

The boy’s reaction fed Walt the way a biscuit rewarded Beatrice, who currently was sniffing Morgan’s right ankle.

“Give us a minute,” Walt told the paramedic.

Morgan’s head came up, worry in his eyes.

Walt sat down beside him on the ambulance’s bumper. He allowed a good deal of silence to settle between them, waiting to fill it.

“Let me guess,” he finally said to Morgan, “it was beer.”

Morgan looked over at him, puzzled. “What was beer?”

“No one dragged you anywhere, Morgan.”

Another long silence, not strictly for effect. He wanted to give the boy a chance to rethink the situation.

Walt lowered his voice. “A girl? You have a girl here keeping you company? Afraid of what Bob might have to say about that?”

“No, sir, no girl. What do you mean, I wasn’t dragged? Was too.”

“Careful, son. It’s dangerous territory, okay? I’m the sheriff. There are actually laws against lying to me. Serious laws. You can get yourself into some big trouble. So I’m going to start again and pretend your headache got the best of you and that you weren’t yourself, okay? You understand?”

Walt dreaded the day he would need to have a similar conversation with one of his daughters. “I’m your father. You don’t lie to your father.” He wished his girls could stay young forever and not grow up only to make the same stupid mistakes everyone else makes. He missed his girls. The freedom that summer camp had promised turned out to be much harder on him than he’d imagined. The house was too quiet, and all he did was think about what they were doing. The not knowing drove him nuts.

“Look down there,” Walt said. “Right there, in the dirt. What do you see?”

“Wood chips?” the boy asked.

“Don’t ask me,” Walt said, “tell me. What do you see?”

“Wood chips… sawdust… dirt…”

“Very good. Now, what about them?”

“I don’t get it,” the kid said.

“See how scuffed up things are? That’s because this yard is about six inches deep in wood chips and sawdust. Everywhere you go, you disturb it. Like walking through a light snowfall or something.”

“So?”

“So look over at the back door of the shop.”

Morgan turned his head.

“You see any disturbance?”

“No,” the boy said, a little too quickly.

Walt toed the ground in front of the ambulance’s bumper, drawing a perfect line.

“If someone had been dragged out that door, son, we’d be able to see it.”

Morgan did his best imitation of a bobblehead doll. “But I-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Walt said, “it’s what I do. What you don’t want to do is lie to me anymore. Don’t try telling me why there’re no lines in the dirt because I know why there’re no lines in the dirt and so do you. No one needs to know anything about this, no one but me, understand? There’s no public record here. You’re not under oath, and I’m not taking notes. But you lie to me again and I’ll punish you for it, son. The state of Idaho will punish you. Now, listen. You’ve got a heck of a year ahead of you. The first year of college is something special, believe me. You’re working hard to make it happen. I respect that. Bob respects that. Don’t screw it up.”

The boy was breathing hard and fast. Walt thought he might start to cry.

“Not beer, not a girl… then, what?”

Morgan Dodge spoke so softly that Walt had to lean down to hear him. The boy’s chin was flat against his chest.

“N… smok… in,” he mumbled.

“Didn’t catch that.”

“No… smoking,” he said deliberately. “It’s a lumberyard.”

There were NO SMOKING signs mounted everywhere.

“Bad for your health,” Walt said.

“Tell me about it.”

“Tobacco or something else?” Walt asked. “And remember, don’t lie to me.”

“A cigarette, yes. I’m not a hempie.”

“And if you tell Bob…” Walt said, leaving it hanging there.

“I need this job.”

“So you were outside.”

His head bobbed, chin still close to the chest.

“And you saw someone,” Walt said.

“A guy jumped the fence over there.” He pointed without looking up.

“Dressed how?”

“Hard to see. It was dark, man. I don’t know. All black, maybe. He was dark, that’s for sure.”

“He see you? Or did you call out, or what?”

“You kidding me? I freakin’ panicked. The cigarette and all. I’m like GI’ing the thing and trying to stamp out all the sparks and shit. I was so… stupid, GI’ing it right into the chips. I couldn’t tell if it was smoke or dust, but the more I stamped, the more of it there was. I could see myself setting the place on fire and trying to explain it to Bob. And then there’s, like, this noise behind me. I mean, this guy was one fast dude.”

Or there were two of them, Walt was thinking.

“Coming up behind me like that. I turned. He had a balaclava over his head. Like a ski mask, you know?”

“I know what a balaclava is,” Walt said. Inside, he was churning. This was sounding worse and worse. The Taser. The balaclava. A professional. Again.

“Guy does this Zorro move, and I’m, like, gone, fried. No idea what hit me. I woke up, lying there. No frickin’ clue how long I’d been there. God…” He rubbed his eyes. Walt had been right: he’d been crying. “I mean, I’m not out here, I never would have known anyone was messing around. Probably could have gone right on with my work and nothing would have happened. There are houses behind here, right? Nice homes. I figured that’s what he was after. Not this place. He was just cutting through, trying to rip off one of those houses. But, I swear to God, Bob hears this and I’m gone.”

“Doesn’t have to hear it from me.”

“Seriously?”

“You get a look at his face?”

“Nah. Nothing. It was the balaclava, you know? It was just so out of place. That was all I saw. And then he nailed me. It nailed me, whatever it was…”

“They’ll want to run some tests,” Walt said. “Just procedure. Nothing to worry about.”

“And the… you know…”

Bob was approaching.

Walt patted the kid on the thigh. “I’ve got what I need. How you deal with it, that’s your choice. But you’re asking the wrong guy if you want me to tell you to lie. Rule of thumb: it never helps anything. My call: it’s better to man up and deal with reality. Lies tend to self-propagate. You know what that is?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Walt hopped off the ambulance and took a long look around the yard. The kid’s theory about the houses down along the river was an interesting one, but he wasn’t buying it. One of the Caterpillars? One of the two tractor trailers? He tried to see a use for the split wood or any of the hundreds of stacked, limbless trees. There were several splitters that ran off diesel-powered hydraulics. How did stealing wine involve hydraulics?

For the first time, there was a tingle at the back of his skull. What if it isn’t about stealing wine?

Across the yard, he heard Bob blowing a gasket at the kid. Morgan caught Walt’s eye from a distance, clearly blaming him for him being on the wrong end of a rant. Bob steamed off toward the office.

Beatrice came to a heel and sat down obediently, as if Bob was angry at her.

Walt was going to have to try to make things right.