A Nose for Justice (3 page)

Either Catherine stewed in Brentwood, a beautiful wealthy neighborhood of Los Angeles, or she was stewed. Ever the actress, she was always ready for another comeback. Catherine, being Catherine, was sure to turn up again sooner or later. She had a talent for picking the worst possible moments to reappear. What made it worse was that she was the spitting image of her mother, Glynnis, which always hit Jeep square in the heart.

Mags carried her mother’s high cheekbones, and had that same lithe body, but you could also see her late father in her: the coloring, the piercing green eyes. Mags was wonderful to look at, but Catherine was drop-dead gorgeous. Such striking looks are so often a curse. In Catherine’s case, it was a big one.

Jeep rarely mentioned her other great-niece. It wasn’t that her name was forbidden, only that the conversation inevitably grew somber. Sooner or later someone would say, “You know, Cath will wind up dead. Someone will wipe her off the face of the earth.”

Carlotta leaned over the sink and looked at the sky out the window. Then she walked to the long row of paned glass windows overlooking the wraparound porch. “More is coming.”

Jeep turned to look. “The weatherman said two days of snow, maybe a foot and a half or more should fall in the city. That means two or more here.”

“Where’s Enrique?” Mags asked once she’d eaten a bit. She hadn’t realized how lightheaded she’d become.

“The old barn,” Aunt Jeep answered. “I’ve said ever since I bought this place that I’d take it down to the beams and then build it back like the original. Well, it’s only taken me fifty-three years. Always one thing or another.”

“That will be beautiful. You’ve sent me the photographs. I was very impressed you used a computer.”

Jeep waved off the compliment. “People knew how to build back then. They built to last. For generations. Those hand-hewn beams get me every time I look at them. This ranch’s original owners did an incredible job. I can just imagine Ralph Ford and his brother, Michael, one in the pit, one on top, sawing through those huge tree trunks.”

“Where’d the Ford brothers ever get the trees?”

While various pines flourished in some spots in Nevada, not much else did.

“Brought ’em over from California by wagon.” She shifted in her seat. “In a way, it’s my duty to bring the barn back to its origins. I owe it to the Ford brothers. Too much Nevada history has been bulldozed, burned, or smashed to bits.” She paused. “Bad as we’ve been out here, nothing’s touched the day Penn Station was destroyed in Manhattan.”

“Oh, I bet if there had been a Penn Station around here someone would have said the land beneath it’s too valuable, let’s tear it down and put up a great big ugly box,” Mags critically commented.

“No. Not anymore. We’ve all awakened on that subject. At least, I hope we have.” After a spoonful of the thick porridge, Jeep turned to Carlotta. “Perfect for a wicked cold day.”

Carlotta smiled. “Thank you.”

“Nobody cooks as good as you.” Mags meant it, having tired of food considered as art.

Carlotta waved her be-ringed hand. “Poof.”

A rumble stopped their chat.

King barked.
“Trouble.”

Baxter lifted his head from his plate. He’d never before heard such a sound. He specialized in ambulance and fire sirens.

“If those damned kids blow up my mailbox again, I’m getting out the shotgun.” Jeep slammed her hand on the table, stood up, and rushed to the windows at the front of the house.

A brief gap in the snowfall revealed a black spiral of smoke, far from her mailbox, perhaps three miles to the northwest.

Then, just as fast, the snow closed over it.

Jeep scampered back to the kitchen in a rush, her footfalls reverberating on the old wooden floors. She preferred a landline to her cell since reception was spotty in Red Rock Valley. Wings Ranch sat in one of those spots.

From the kitchen’s wall phone, Jeep called the Sheriff’s Department.

“Lisa.”

“Yes, Miss Reed.”

“Get me Pete.” Everyone knew Jeep. Everyone would take her call.

Mags listened intently, transfixed by the abrupt change—Aunt Jeep was suddenly a WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilot.

Lisa patched her through. Pete’s deep voice came over the receiver.

“Pete, there’s been an explosion, saw black smoke. I think it’s the pump just north of here off Red Rock Road.”

He inhaled sharply. “Smart of them. This storm will cost us time. Too much time.”

“Bastards!”

“J
esus Christ.” Lonnie Parrish grabbed the handle above the passenger door of the SUV squad car.

“You’d rather have Him driving the car?” Deputy Peter Meadows quipped to his partner.

“Well, I’ve seen you do some incredible things, but you ain’t yet walked on water.”

“Yet.”

Red Rock Road bore evidence of the sudden fury of the blizzard. The hard surface was slick as a cue ball—same color, too. A number of two-wheel-drive cars had slid off the road while the four-wheel ones crept along. Seeing the cops’ flashing lights behind them, drivers did their best to get over to the side. Sometimes a shoulder gave them room. No one particularly wanted to drop a wheel off the paved road, but the siren’s squeal would send any driver’s heartbeat skyward.

Fortunately, traffic was light. The only times Red Rock Road jammed was when those folks who worked in Reno commuted the eleven miles back and forth. The eleven miles began at the southern tip of Red Rock Valley where the road connected with the Interstate. As it was two-thirty in the afternoon, Pete hoped people had paid attention to the Weather Channel and left work early or had the sense to stay in town. Born and bred in Red Rock and a graduate of Hug High School in 1993, he’d attended the University of Nevada at Reno. His alma mater had provided him with a good education. Sports media tend to focus on UNLV, but as far as Pete was concerned, Las Vegas wasn’t really Nevada so his school was the best in the state.

He figured they’d be working all day and probably through the night, too. Law enforcement jobs should have regular hours, but anyone in it knows better. When the snow hits the fan, you stay on duty whether it’s your shift or not, if for no other reason than that your replacement may not be able to get in to work.

Many of the officers in the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department had grown up here. They cared. Women, Hispanics, Basques, and gays wore the uniform. In the beginning, this was a jolt to the locals. Pete was too young to have been part of the fights to hire minorities. Sure, he’d grown up with prejudices, but not enough to impede his work. When you crouched behind your squad car and a meth-crazed lunatic was firing your way with an Uzi, any minor reservations you might harbor about the man or woman working next to you vanished. That didn’t mean a politically incorrect epithet wouldn’t now and then fall from his chiseled lips.

A tight curve around a frozen pond caused the SUV to skid slightly. Huddled below, backs to the wind, some heavy-coated Angus looked as comfortable as could be under the circumstances.

Pete checked his speedometer and took his foot off the accelerator. The long red needle dropped back to twenty.

Passing ranch driveways through the snow, he glimpsed bundled-up folks firing up tractors or duallys with plow blades. First they’d work their driveway, then they’d help neighbors or folks who had skidded off the road. None of this was formally organized. With cellphones, anyone severely injured had a chance to get help as fast as possible given conditions. The flipped vehicles were the ones to worry about.

Lonnie noticed the dipping right turn onto Dry Valley Road. “Four more miles.”

“With all this snow, won’t be any tracks,” Pete complained.

Upon receiving Jeep Reed’s call, Pete phoned Silver State Resource Management. If the explosion had damaged their equipment, they’d have a hell of a time doing repair work in these conditions. Pete said he’d call them back if this was the case.

Twenty minutes later they turned left onto the snow-slick road to the pumping station. Up the grade, Pete kept a steady speed, ten miles per hour. A burst of speed would send them skidding down a sharp grade on
either side. At the top of the service road, they pulled into an area large enough for service trucks. Pete turned the vehicle around to nose out.

Both officers pulled on their gloves and flipped up their jacket collars.

Smoke from the blown-up Pump 19 rose slightly, then dropped back down, pushed by the low pressure. The pump resembled a metal flower, petals outstretched and sharp. The pipe itself, twelve inches in diameter, hadn’t been damaged. Bits of light blue metal could still be seen in the nearby snow. Potable water went out in blue pipes. Reclaimed water flowed through purple pipes.

An impromptu fountain shot upward from the bottom of the pump, ice already forming at the edges of the water on the ground. A sheet of ice would soon surround the pump.

Standing at the edge of the growing puddle, Lonnie looked down. “Shit.”

Neither man was a demolition expert but each had a basic knowledge of homemade bombs, starting with a Molotov cocktail and working up to more sophisticated devices.

Because of the small gusher, Pete couldn’t see down into the remains of the machinery.

“Call Silver State and tell ’em it’s Pump Nineteen. Find out how far away the nearest repair crew is and when they think they’ll get here. If it’s within the hour, we’ll wait. I’d like to see if we can figure out the explosive device used.”

“Silver State will hire its own investigators.” Lonnie spoke as he headed back to the SUV.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Make the damned call.”

Within minutes, Lonnie was back at the fountain. “Half hour. Big rig. New pump. Looks like Silver State was prepared.”

Pete grunted and directed Lonnie to circle to the right of the damage. He’d go around to the left. Both men knew enough not to lose sight of the other. In storms like this, people could get disoriented, even lost, six feet away from a barn door and safety. That meant freezing to death.

Every few paces, Pete scuffed the snow with his right shoe. A scrap of wet paper caught his eye. Kneeling, he nudged it with his gloved forefinger, then picked it up. The ink—ballpoint—was running. He could make out “mil” then below it “butt.”

He glanced up and spotted Lonnie through shifting veils of snow. Lonnie looked his way and waved.

Pete smiled. The kid was twenty-five. He showed natural ability for police work, but was still naïve about how the world really works.

Pete walked another ten paces and saw a red bit of cloth against the snow. He picked it up from the frozen ground. Just a red piece of cloth, ripstop.

“Hey, let’s go back,” Pete called out.

The two met back at the pump. Pete motioned toward the car. They gratefully crawled in, unzipped their heavy coats, and pulled off their gloves. Pete laid his two tiny finds on the center console.

Lonnie added a piece of paper he’d found. It matched Pete’s fragment. This ragged bit, fuzzed-up blue ink like Pete’s, bore the printed letters, “br.”

“A shopping list?” The young man shrugged.

“Looks like it. Might be nothing. Then again.”

Hearing a deep diesel roar, they both looked up simultaneously into the rearview mirror.

“They must have been close by. Let me talk to these guys.”

“Always do.”

“Yeah, but while I’m talking you study them. Pay special attention when we go over to the pump.”

“Okay.”

It took the huge truck pulling a short flatbed trailer another five minutes to make it up the hill. Chained on top of the flatbed was a replacement pump.

Behind the rig lumbered a bulldozer, Jake Tanner at the controls, no warm cab to help him, either. The rotund Jake owned a nice spread two miles north of the pumpsite.

Gloves back on, jacket zipped up, Pete stepped out of the car. The rig driver knew his business, swinging the trailer around so the new pump was close to the damaged one.

Goggles on, Jake chugged up behind him, the big bulldozer tracks caked with snow, leaving compressed shards of it in his wake. He left the
dozer running as he climbed down, freeing his long beard from his coat collar. “Officer Pete, Christ on a crutch.”

“Well, it’s not good.” Pete smiled.

You couldn’t help but like the ebullient, ever-curious Jake, even if he did go three months between haircuts and beard trims.

Two men stepped down from the high trailer rig as yet another SUV climbed the hill. When the Silver State employees spied their boss’s Chevy Blazer, the company’s silver wave graphic on the side, neither smiled.

Twinkie Bosun, plastic straw clenched between his teeth, was the rig driver. He and Bunny Matthews, his sidekick, lived just outside Reno. While they weren’t Red Rock residents, because they serviced and repaired Silver State pumps hither and yon many people recognized them.

Many also knew Oliver Hitchens, earmuffs on, “Silver State” embroidered parka, big boots, as he stepped from the Tahoe—a company vehicle and a good choice for the off-roading he sometimes had to do.

“Prick.” Twinkie whispered with a smile.