Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2) (8 page)

Goldstrike had its normal compliment of six patrol officers working overnight within the town limits.

Ron would work the state roads and backroads.

Looking for anyone who might have plans to destroy his town.

John Tall Wolf’s plan to explore Lake Adeline was to survey the shoreline, then use his borrowed boat to draw a nautical X across the middle of the lake. He began by cruising just above idle speed. The Sea Ray’s motor produced little more sound than a burble of bubbles. The dark blue finish of the boat made it disappear into the night. The shoreline was visible in the shielded soft green glow of a small multifunction navnet display. The system’s features included: GPS, chart plotter, radar, fish-finder, accident avoidance alarm, satellite compass, weather fax and Sirius radio.

John mused to himself, “We’ve come a long way from a lone brave paddling a canoe.”

Then he thought of what it must have been like for the first Native American, making his way across this lake, to spot the first white settler’s cabin. Human nature being what it was — comfortable with the familiar, fearful of change — he probably felt the way the Sutherlands would feel about having a high rise go up and block their view.

Ron Ketchum had told him about having that thought.

Tall Wolf had agreed that plenty of people in Goldstrike were certain to be angered by any drastic architectural change in the character of their community. They’d position themselves as conservationists. Few if any would think of themselves as the beneficiaries of the real estate developers of an earlier time.

Not that John Tall Wolf had any objections to modern amenities.

He was partial to room service, if the hotel kitchen was up to snuff.

John had been abandoned by his birth mother, left to perish from exposure on a crudely built scaffold, when he was a newborn. Mom’s parents wouldn’t have approved of either her pregnancy or John’s parentage. She was Northern Apache; Dad was, probably, Navajo. Mixed marriages were frowned on in those days, at least in Mom’s family.

A large coyote was sizing John up for breakfast when his adoptive parents happened along and drove the creature off. His father, Haden Wolf, was Caucasian, a pediatrician. His mother Serafina Wolf y Padilla, was
Latina y india
, a professor of cultural anthropology. Haden Wolf’s forebears included a number of conjurers. Serafina Padilla’s ancestors numbered both
curanderas
and
brujas,
healers and witches, among them.

John was raised in a Western rationalistic tradition.

But neither of the people who took him in thought their son’s suspicion that Marlene Flower Moon could be Coyote, with a capital C, was misplaced.

They’d quoted the Bard to him more than once, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shakespeare knew you had to keep an open mind. So did John Tall Wolf.

He kept his eyes on the video display and his other senses attuned to the infinite.

You did what you could to keep from being taken by surprise.

By Coyote, eco-terrorists or your random murderer.

Ron Ketchum waited on his end of the Tightrope for the driver of a semi-tractor trailer to clear the narrow strip of roadway. There was no guardrail on either side of the two narrow lanes. The drop-off on each side was more than a thousand feet. Tourists were advised to avoid the Tightrope at night and in difficult weather.

Most commercial drivers knew better than to risk the crossing in those conditions.

At night, the edges of the roadway weren’t easily visible and drivers tended to crowd the middle of the pavement and even enter the oncoming lane. If someone was approaching with the same idea an impasse was inevitable. Local custom said in such instances both drivers should back up, a nerve-wracking exercise in itself. Once they’d cleared the danger zone, they could work out who should cross the span first.

If someone insisted on pressing forward with only the other party backing up, and didn’t have a compelling reason for this breach of courtesy, no court in the county would convict the offended party of beating the hell out of the other guy.

It was, however, considered bad form to throw an offender over the side.

The face behind the semi’s steering wheel didn’t look like it was long out of high school, and the kid’s eyes were as big as the rising moon. When he cleared the point at which a strong gust of wind might have blown his vehicle off either side of the road, he flashed Ron a wide smile and gave his horn a celebratory toot.

The chief knew some people had schedules to keep, but he’d rather lose a job than spend his last moments alive in a state of free-fall and horrified regret.

He made sure that no one was approaching from the other end of the Tightrope, drove out to the middle of the span, his SUV occupying space in both lanes and put his flashing lights on. He took a pair of Zeiss binoculars onto the roadway with him. On one side of the road was a wilderness of evergreens. On the other was a stunning view of Lake Adeline. The moon, still nearly full, shone on the water.

Ron held up the binoculars and looked for any sign of a boat on the lake.

If he saw one, he’d call Tall Wolf, see if it was him he’d spotted.

If it wasn’t, he’d give the special agent as accurate a fix on the other vessel’s position as he could. Track its movement for Tall Wolf. Call out the police department’s patrol vessels if Tall Wolf needed help.

All very dramatic, Ron thought, but he didn’t see anything on the lake.

Not even Tall Wolf.

He couldn’t keep the Tightrope tied up indefinitely so he went back to his SUV. As he approached the vehicle, he smiled, remembering the fear that Oliver Gosden had always felt whenever he had to cross the heart-in-throat strip of asphalt.

Until Oliver had a close encounter with a mountain lion, that was.

After that, Ron’s deputy chief had become a fatalist. If your time was up, it didn’t matter where you were. Given his new frame of mind, Oliver had become blasé about driving the Tightrope.

Ron’s phone rang the moment he got behind the wheel.

Oliver, just as if he’d known Ron was thinking of him.

“What the hell is all this about a bomb?” the deputy chief asked.

So word had reach Arizona. Could the rest of the world be far behind?

Ron told him, “See what happens? You go away, you miss all the fun.”

Ron Ketchum and John Tall Wolf ate breakfast at the conference table in the chief’s office. Sergeant Stanley had called for takeout from the Head in the Clouds Diner. There was just no getting away from altitude jokes, but HCD, as it was known locally, served the best breakfast in town. Tall Wolf had a deluxe portion of scrambled eggs, wheat toast and orange juice. Ron had the eggs with bacon, rye toast and coffee. The restaurant packaged its takeout in plastic. Sergeant Stanley had served the meals on china with gleaming flatware and linen napkins.

“You do all right for yourselves up here,” Tall Wolf told Ron.

“We have an image to maintain.”

The special agent grinned.

The chief added, “We also have property taxes that’d make Bill Gates overdraw his checking account.”

That one was worth a laugh. Then Tall Wolf said, “So the idea of someone running for mayor on a platform of tax relief …”

“Did have its appeal,” Ron admitted. “For some.”

“Not for you?”

“No. I like things the way they are. I make a good salary. If I have to kick back a chunk of it in taxes, so be it. That’s part of the deal.”

“How many people feel the way you do?” Tall Wolf asked.

“A few years ago, I’d have three out of four shared my opinion. The past couple of years, the economic pinch has reached Goldstrike. I’d say the ratio is probably down to two to one for holding the line.”

“So Hale Tibbot would have had to change the minds of a bit more than seventeen percent of the voters to get elected. Not easy, but not impossible.”

“Your point being?” Ron asked.

“That I wouldn’t want to be in your position,” Tall Wolf said.

Before that thread of conversation could be pursued, there was a knock at the door. Sergeant Stanley leaned in and said, “Detective Keely Powell —”

“
Retired
detective,” a female voice called out.

“
Ms.
Powell is here to see you, Chief.”

“Stand aside, Caz, before she shoots her way in.”

“In your dreams, Ketchum,” the voice told the chief.

Keely Powell glided into the office, grinning.

Her expression changed upon seeing John Tall Wolf. He’d gotten to his feet to greet her. Looking up at him, Keely was more intrigued than abashed.

“Well, you cut an imposing figure, don’t you?” she said.

“I try to mask it with modesty,” he said.

She laughed, crossed to Ron and gave him a kiss so bold it caught both the chief and Tall Wolf off guard. Sergeant Stanley thought it best to withdraw.

While Ron was still dazed, Keely asked, “So who’s your big friend with the sunglasses?”

Keely made do with a cup of coffee, sitting at the head of the table between the two men. Ron brought her up to speed on both the bomb threat and the death of Hale Tibbot. John Tall Wolf explained how he came to be present.

That story tickled Keely.

“The EPA with firepower? I like it.”

Tall Wolf told her, “Some people think it should have armored divisions and air support.”

“I’d
love
to see that proposed in Congress,” Keely said. “Republicans wouldn’t know whether to shit or go blind, having to decide between protecting big polluters or denying the military a new mission.”

Ron told Tall Wolf, “Retired Detective Powell was that rare copper, the militant liberal. She overlooks the fact that the mayor of our fair town, a Republican, has approved the money to have her help me out.”

“Really?” Keely asked. “How much did you squeeze out of the old bastard? A lot, I hope, if you want my best effort.”

Ron said, “I thought you never gave less than your best.”

“That’s true, but for the big bucks, I flash a little cleavage.”

The way Ron blushed, John Tall Wolf thought maybe he should follow Sergeant Stanley out the door. Keely dialed it back and put a hand out to each of them, gave a brief squeeze.

“Okay,” she said, “game time is over.” Looking at the chief, she said, “You know what you have to do here, Ron, and don’t tell me you don’t.”

“Turn the homicide investigation over to you,” he said.

“Well, me and the special agent. He has the power of arrest. I don’t.”

“You’re not going to —”

“Pin on a local badge? Subordinate myself to my old partner? No.”

“Then why’d you come?” Ron asked.

“To lend a hand … and you said something about asking me out on a date.”

“I did,” Ron said, “and I’ll be happy to have your help on your terms.”

Keely Powell smiled.

Tall Wolf saw warmth replace wiseass in Keely’s expression.

These two had a history. He took a step back in his mind as to how he might deal with this woman. At least until the situations in Goldstrike were resolved.

Satisfied with Ron’s enlightened attitude, Keely turned to Tall Wolf.

“You see the conflict of interest Ron has?” she asked.

“Sure. I raised the idea just before you arrived.”

“Good.”

“There’s more,” Ron said.

He told them about his father getting into a tussle with Hale Tibbot, and the reason it had gotten started.

“Your dad’s still alive?” Keely said. “Still up to his old tricks?”

“Not quite so many these days.”

“Still. A father protecting his son’s reputation, maybe his job, possibly provoking some rich chump into throwing the first punch. He’s going to need a close look, too. Right after Clay Steadman, who you’ve just told me admitted he could see doing in this Tibbot jerk if worse came to worse.”

Ron said, “I could see my father putting two into Tibbot’s head. I don’t see him sticking the guy and not leaving a drop of blood behind.” A thought crossed Ron’s mind. “You know, I don’t see Clay doing things that way, either. A bloodless death isn’t what you’d call cinematic.”

Keely wasn’t having it. She said, “We were back in L.A., what would you call investigating your dad and your boss?”

“A big mistake, and a conflict of interest.”

“Right. Same applies way up here.” She turned to John Tall Wolf. “You have any homicide investigations in your background?”

“I do.”

“Would you mind working with me? You may have noticed, though no longer on the job, I’m not the shy and retiring type.”

Tall Wolf replied, “How are you at respecting other people’s ideas?”

“Real good,” Keely said with a smile. “The more great thinkers working on a problem, the easier it is for everybody.”

“We should get along, but I have to keep a hand in on the bombing case, too. What I’m thinking about that now, there’s a really big inconsistency at play here.”

Both former L.A. cops looked like they knew just where the special agent was heading.

Both had the manners not to interrupt.

Tall Wolf said, “I’ve never heard or read of an eco-terrorist doing ecological damage or even threatening to do it. Hitting a natural resource is what a political terrorist would do.”

Seeing his new colleagues nod, he gestured to them to pick up the thread of his logic.

Ron deferred to Keely.

She said to the chief, “Maybe it wasn’t just luck that timer got stuck on three.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Ron said.

John added, “Sure would be nice to recover that thing.”

John Tall Wolf told his new colleagues he needed to catch a few hours sleep before he got back to work. He’d check in with Sergeant Stanley when he woke up to see if they were available. If not, he’d see what he might do on his own.

The chief and his friend, the retired detective, found that reasonable.

Tall Wolf’s sleep had to be postponed, though. The housekeeping staff at his hotel, with the roar of their heavy-duty vacuum cleaners and their intermittent gossip about the affair the staff electrician was having with the hostess of the breakfast seating at the hotel restaurant, made the possibility of getting any rest unlikely.

The housekeepers seemed to think the fact that they were speaking Spanish made it unnecessary for them to keep their voices down. John had learned Spanish from his mother at home and French in school. But most of the guests at the hotel must have been monolingual Anglos, judging by the uninhibited narrative of illicit romance. Both parties were married to other people, of course.

It was only a matter of time, one housekeeper said, before the husband of the hostess showed up at the hotel with his gun. John sighed. Called Sergeant Stanley and told him what he’d overheard. Would have been dereliction of duty not to.

While waiting for the din outside his room to subside, John thought it might be productive to do a bit of research. He’d checked out Ron Ketchum’s background. Clay Steadman had been a public figure for decades. His status as a movie icon, mayor, mega-millionaire and recovering drug addict was well known around the world.

What the special agent didn’t know anything about was the history of the town of Goldstrike. Google enlightened him. Michael Walsh and his wife, Adeline, and their children, Wilhelmine, Rory and Erik, had set off from Chicago in 1849 for the gold fields of California. Michael, a brewer, knew that finding precious metal was an uncertain prospect at best. What he felt was a sure thing, the thousands of other men rushing westward, searching high and low for their fortunes, were bound to need a drink now and then, and probably more often than not.

He would grow prosperous slaking their thirst.

The Walshes never made it to Sutter’s Mill. After a harsh journey west, and an exhausting climb up the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, Adeline Walsh took one look at the lake that captured her heart, and would soon bear her name, and decided she had found Eden on High. She and her children would go no farther.

Michael Walsh was smart enough not to leave his wife and children behind. With the help of the party with which they’d traveled from Saint Louis, they built a cabin and a trading post on the southern shore of Lake Adeline, on the site where the town’s current Municipal Complex sat.

“So you’re the ones that lone brave saw from his canoe,” Tall Wolf murmured.

One other member of the party who’d traveled with the Walshes also stayed behind. A prospector named Timothy Johnson had a canny thought. Why go where all the other sourdoughs were looking for gold? Why not take the chance of searching new territory? Finding gold was a fool’s mission either way. If you had no competitors nearby, however, anything you might find was less likely to be stolen from you.

The Walshes settled in that first winter with enough food, water, beer and firewood that they didn’t need to set foot outside for months. A good thing with all the blizzards that roared through that winter. It was in the midst of one such storm that everyone in the cabin was startled to hear someone bang on their door.

With Michael holding the new Winchester rifle he’d carried west from Chicago and the children huddled in a corner, Adeline threw open the door and jumped aside. Michael almost shot the figure standing in his doorway. It was so covered with snow, he wasn’t certain if it was a large man or a small bear.

Then the visitor shouted, “Don’t shoot! It’s me, Tim Johnson.”

The prospector who’d stayed behind.

Michael allowed him to enter. He’d brought with him a small Indian woman with a solemn face. Adeline slammed the door behind them. The Walshes provided the wayfarers with food, water and warmth. Johnson and his companion slept in front of the fireplace for three nights. Except when eating, drinking — great quantities of Michael’s beer — and sleeping, Johnson could not stop talking of his gratitude to the family.

“We’d have died for certain, had we not seen your cabin,” he told the Walshes.

The Indian woman ate sparingly and said not a word to anyone.

On the fourth day, with their strength and spirits recovered, generously provisioned by the Walshes, and the storm having blown itself out, the visitors were ready to be on their way. Before they left, though, Johnson’s appreciation took tangible form. He left the Walshes a dozen nuggets of gold, ranging in size from a pea to a pear.

The prospector’s last words to the Walshes as he departed were, “The next time you see me I’ll be a rich man.” With a nod to his companion, he whispered. “She’s going to lead me straight to the motherlode.”

But that was the last anyone — who wasn’t Native American — ever saw of Timothy Johnson. Nonetheless, his legend lived on, despite the fact that no other prospector ever struck it rich in the vicinity of Goldstrike.

Out in the hotel hallway, the last sounds of vacuums and scandalized housekeepers died away. John Tall Wolf closed his laptop and lay down to sleep.

Just as he was drifting off, he mumbled to himself, “Wonder if anyone thought to ask the Indians where the gold is.”