Hallowed Ground (25 page)

Mrs. Babbitt scampered over. “Oh, thank you!”

“No problem.” I twirled the hat on my finger before passing it back.

For most of my neighbors money was tight. The Babbitt household was no exception, but Eleanor always looked neat as a pin, whether in worn gardening togs or Sunday-goin’-to-meetin’

clothes.

Today she seemed frayed around the edges.

Her gardening gloves were caked with dirt, as were her navy polyester pants, pilled in places, patched in others. The long, loose-sleeved blouse, dotted with blue cabbage roses, hung past her ample hips.

No chi-chi neon-colored rubber gardening clogs for her. She wore plain white canvas lace-up tennis shoes, covered with grass stains that matched the gloves.

“Beautiful morning,” I said.

“Yes, yes, it is.” She made a big show of securing the hat, tying the ribbons, avoiding my gaze.

Normally I steered clear of her. Instead of counting myself lucky, I perversely dug in my heels for a long overdue neighborly chat.

“Your petunias have really taken off in the last week.” I pointed to the pale lilac blooms she’d called
Sugar Daddy
, that were cascading from the whiskey barrels lining the sidewalk.

“They love this heat much more than I do.” She fidgeted with her gloves, eyes fixed on my spotty lawn. “I’d better get back at it before it gets too hot.”

“Is everything all right?” I placed a tentative hand on her shoulder.

She flinched and glanced up at me.

And I saw it. The wide brim of her hat couldn’t quite shade the purple bruising around her right eye.

“Jesus. What happened to you?”

Her gloved fingers automatically touched the mark, leaving a dirt smudge on her pallid cheek.

“Oh, that.” She laughed feebly and jerked off the gloves. “I jabbed myself with the shovel handle separating iris in the backyard. Sometimes I’m so clumsy.”

At least she’d come up with an original lie, not the old standby she’d “run into a door.”

My first impulse was to demand to know why she stayed with a man who hit her. Didn’t she have an ounce of self-worth? But I bit my tongue. She probably would’ve left if she’d had the choice. Making her feel like an idiot for staying wouldn’t help. It’d just make her feel small. I figured Mr. Babbitt had done that enough.

A hollow feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Eleanor Babbitt was another person I couldn’t help. I’d try, I’d worry, but in the end it wouldn’t matter. Seemed to be the story of my life. No wonder I drank so much. No wonder I ended up spending so much time alone. I was a magnet for broken souls.

On impulse I said, “I was just about to make a pot of coffee. Would you like to come in and have a cup?”

Her fingers stopped making nervous knots with her gloves. “You’re inviting me in?”

“Uh, yeah. Unless you’ve got other plans.”

“No, no,” she assured me quickly, “its just . . . unexpected.”

Unexpected that I could act sociable? Hey, I
chose
not to hang with my neighbors. My aloofness was totally justified; they’d shunned me first when I worked for the sheriff.

After the turmoil I’d suffered with Kiyah, I didn’t think I’d had the guts to go through that again.

Yet, here I was, opening myself up to it. Would I ever learn?

The front door banged on the Babbitt house. Mr. Babbitt bustled out—reminding me more of a Weebol than a man—and blocked the sun with his hand as he peered over the railing. “Eleanor?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t today. But maybe another time?” Her brown eyes pleaded, clearly fearful I’d rescind the invitation. “I could bring a zucchini cake?”

“Sure.” I smiled, because I knew that’s what she wanted. But for me, the moment had passed.

Nothing was splashed across the front page of the Rapid City Journal about a triple homicide.

Calling Martinez to see how Harvey had taken the news about Rondelle made my head hurt worse.

I needed a way to release this pent-up energy. An escape, if only for a few hours.

I wandered into the spare bedroom. From under the bed I pulled out my new bow, nestled in its soft-sided case. My hands brushed the camouflage cover. Like my gun, I’d kept my bow out of sight, at Kell’s insistence.

Why had I ever agreed? For being of the “make love-not war” mentality, Kell had redefined passive/aggressive behavior.

The anger I’d suppressed yesterday bloomed full force. As for Kell’s claim he hadn’t known the
real
me? How was that my fault? It was at
his
request that I’d kept those parts of myself that he didn’t like hidden away like some dirty little secret.

Was I so desperate for affection I’d take any man who paid attention to me? Even if he was so obviously wrong for me?

Tony Martinez popped up in my mind’s eye.

Talk about wrong for me.

Yet, he’d seen me at my worst: angry, violent, and heartsick. He’d accepted those parts of me without question. Without judging. Was that the pull between us? We’d shown our true, our
real
selves to each other?

How much more would things change between us before we wrapped up this case? How much more were we willing to reveal?

Pointless to think about now. Whatever happened, happened. I’d deal with it when and if it did, not before.

I snagged the bow case with one hand and my gun case with the other.

Usually I double-checked everything before I left the house, but I knew Jimmer had made sure the case was fully loaded with all the supplies I’d ever need. Including a new ball cap embroidered with the phrase:

YOU GONNA COWBOY UP OR YOU GONNA LAY THERE AND BLEED?

Jimmer had known I’d cowboy up eventually.

Yee hah. I sent him a silent thanks and made tracks for the ranch.

I didn’t stop at the house. Dad would be out in the field. Practicing shooting my bow was a solitary pursuit, anyway. I hated an audience, especially a critical one.

My mother hadn’t been critical. In fact, she was the one who’d urged me to try the sport through the city’s “Summer Enrichment Program” the year I’d turned twelve. I don’t know if I fell in love with bows and arrows because I (childishly) believed it might be an activity I could share with my brother. Even after Ben had laughed at me for falling prey to Indian stereotypes, I hadn’t cared.

I’d spent hours in my backyard practicing with that first beloved bow, a cheap, recurve model Mom had bought at a sporting goods store.

My dad had never said a word.

Mom, however, had cheered me on. She’d decided with my natural aptitude, we had to be descended from the Valkryies.

I smiled. Been a long time since I’d dredged up a memory of my mother. My father had been determined to erase all traces of her. Sad thing was, he’d mostly succeeded.

About a mile from the turnoff to the ranch, I hung a right through a break in the fence line that allowed access to the south pasture. The dust from the gravel road was thick as fog. When I could see again, I swerved around rotted tree stumps, boulders, and sinkholes.

Even the weeds—buck brush and leafy spurge, were half-dead and suffering the effects from the excessive dirt. I couldn’t imagine how the grazing areas looked. No wonder Dad and the other ranchers were distressed.

I found a relatively flat spot and parked. Placed the hat on my head and tucked my hair inside. I hauled my beanbag practice target from the pickup bed. It’d been a while since I’d shot so I opted for short range—twenty yards. Gauging the correct distance, I marked off my spot and then retrieved my case from the truck.

I slipped on my chest protector and adjusted the plastic shield over my left breast and the straps under my shoulder blade. Next came the arm guard, which protected my left forearm and wrist from string burns and string slaps after the arrow is released.

My fingers traced the aluminum arrows loaded with blunt rubber tips. With screaming orange urethane vanes, these suckers wouldn’t be hard to find if I shot wide or high and missed the beanbag entirely. I hooked the quiver around my hip, removed one arrow and picked up my bow.

It was lighter than my last one, a bit smaller, same camouflage color with two cams and a reflexed riser. I’d opted to forgo the stabilizer, since I didn’t shoot game, strictly targets.

I’d missed the fresh air, sun on my face, long-forgotten muscles primed and ready. No distractions, no demands besides my own. Just the challenge of consistently hitting the bulls-eye.

After I got the arrow settled in the pass-through rest, I had to twist the nock so the fletching would clear the rest cleanly. When I’d figured out the best adjustment, I clipped the caliper to the string.

I turned my hips sideways. Raised the bow. Leveled my breathing. Relaxed my shoulders. Pulled back, curled my hand around the index finger release as the rubber tubing of the peep site stretched tight. I eyed the targets, allowing them to fade into the background as I focused on the top pin site and let go.

Thunk.

The arrow hit the target, but not the spot I’d been aiming for. I adjusted the pin site slightly to the left and tried again. And again. And kept trying until all eight arrows were spent and I had a better feel for the limits.

By the second round of arrows, I’d fallen completely in love with the bow’s performance. Giddy, I kept shooting, my mind cleared of all thoughts except nailing that little blue dot.

I’d shot so many times my arms sang from the strain. Rocks crunching and the sound of an engine gunning broke my concentration. Dust eddied around me. I blinked the grit from my eyes and coughed.

An old Chevy truck bumped into the pasture like a prairie fire was licking at its tires. I lowered my bow to my side, wishing I had time to grab the Browning.

I squinted against the sun’s blinding rays and hacked again.

Three men hopped out. Didn’t have to squint to see the metal glare of three rifle barrels pointed at my head.

“Drop the bow or we’ll shoot,” a harsh voice said.

“But—”

“Do it and don’t argue. You’re trespassin’ on private property.”

“I think my father would disagree.”

Silence.

“Julie Collins? That you girl, underneath that smartaleck cap?”

I recognized the raspy voice on the right. “Don Anderson?”

“Yeah.”

Relief washed through me. I liked Don. Mostly for the reason he’d never seemed too crazy about my dad.

Apparently finding me no threat, they closed in so I could see who they were.

The stocky man on the left with the beer gut was Dad’s crony, Maurice Ashcroft.

When he kept the gun aimed at me, I said, “Mind putting that thing away, Maurice?”

He did so, reluctantly. “Doug didn’t say nothin’ to me about you being out here today.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know.”

They moved together as one unit. Maybe there
was
a Bear Butte County militia.

“Not the smartest thing in the world, for a woman to be out in these parts alone with all the stuff’s that’s been happenin’ round here.”

The third man, Dale Pendergrast, a short, bow-legged, scrappy, former rodeo clown in his late sixties, dropped his rifle to his side and spit out a brown wad of tobacco.

Yuck. And people complained about smoking being gross.

“What things?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

Dale pulled out a can of Copenhagen and took another dip before saying, “TV stations ain’t got wind of it yet, neither have the papers, but when they do—”

“You-know-what’s gonna hit the fan,” Don finished.

Martinez had been right. It hadn’t taken long.

Maurice said, “We heard ’bout it on the scanner. Appears they found three dead bodies in that old settler’s cabin on Bill Tompkin’s property.”

“
Three
dead bodies?” I aped. “Who found them?”

“Sheriff’s department.”

I didn’t envy Sheriff Richards. Talk about having a bad week. “The bodies been identified yet?”

“Prolly. But ain’t nobody sayin’ nothin’ ’bout who it is.”

“’Course, we all got our own theories,” Don said.

He didn’t freely expound on those theories, which was odd for him.

The air stayed silent as a grave. “You think they’re locals? Kids in trouble? Drug related?”

Dale snorted. “No. Plenty ’o other places them hooligans like the Baker boys can get inta trouble. I’m bettin’ that’s
why
whoever done this picked the Tompkin’s place.”

His rheumy-blue eyes caught mine. “You see what’s happenin’, don’t you?”

Hello, conspiracy theories. “What, Dale?”

“They’re tryin’ to force us to change. Look around.” His hand swept in an arc. “With this construction, all them cars and trucks kickin’ up dust, dust that’s killin’ our grazin’ land. Where are them environmentalists now? Stayin’ mighty quiet. Makin’ matters worse, the officials
we
elected ain’t listenin’ to us. Nobody cares that the people who’ve lived in this county don’t got no say in nothin’.”

The dust issue did need to be addressed, preferably not by a bunch of vigilante ranchers.

“Ain’t nobody happy ’bout that. Stepped in fast enough when we wanted to put up a shootin’

range, but it’s okay for
them
to put up a damn Indian casino? How’s that fair?”