Olympus Device 2: The Olympus Device Book Two (9 page)

A minute
later, they were pulling out of the lot, headed into downtown Laredo. The driver decided to confide in her passenger. “My husband and I own a small poultry farm not far from here. He was arrested last week and is still in jail. Something has been killing our birds, and he is convinced it’s the new factory that’s not far from our place. He confronted the management and got himself arrested.”

Dusty grunted,
a small sense of relief over not being the only criminal in the area. “Did he assault someone? Threaten to burn the plant down?”

She shook her head, “No, nothing like that. He threatened to call
the EPA and local papers. The sheriff showed up and handcuffed him. They set the bail at $50,000 dollars, which might as well be a million to us. I’ve been trying to keep up with the farm, but it’s more than I can handle by myself.”

The old truck rambled into the parking lot of another seedy looking strip mall. “
Thank you for coming along and successfully resisting the urge to cleaver chop me into tiny pieces. As you can see, this isn’t the best part of town, and I wouldn’t normally frequent such places.”

“No problem,” the Texan replied
easily. “I really didn’t have anything critical to do, and it’s good to see the town.”

They entered the pawnshop, finding a similar collection of items
populating the shelves. Dusty presented the pistol, and immediately let the man behind the counter know he was fully aware of the gun’s value.

In West Texas,
horse-trading was considered an art, and this wasn’t Dusty’s first rodeo. On the other hand, the pawnbroker earned his keep via buying low and selling high. The negotiations ebbed and flowed, both men secretly enjoying the contest.

“These aren’t as collectable as they were just a year ago. Your information is outdated,” the buyer
opened.

“My information is current, and if you had any idea of what you’re looking at, you’d know that Colt didn’t make very many of the snub versions in nickel. That makes this piece even more valuable. You could sell this item on the internet for at least $3800.”

“Maybe,” he replied. “I also might have to hang onto it for months before the right buyer comes along.”

Back and forth they angled, each trying to convince the other of the item’s value,
greater or less. Twenty minutes later, Penny walked out of the shop with $3100 cash and a huge smile on her face. “I can pay the electric bill and buy groceries! I can even catch up our account at the feed store.”

“Is your husband going to be upset that you sold his pistol?”

“It was my father’s weapon, and no, Mike’s not into guns so much.” she answered. She glanced at her watch and announced, “I’ll be happy to run you back to wherever, but I’ve got to stop at the utility company office first. I’m almost out of time.”

“No problem,” Dusty
replied, “I’ll just hang out and guard the truck until you’re finished.”

She chuckled, glancing over at the beat-up, rattletrap old Chevy. “It is a classic,” she played along.

When she returned from the utility office, it was clear that a great burden had been removed from her shoulders. “Electricity is always a good thing,” she said as she got behind the old truck’s wheel. “Did you have to fight off any carjackers?”

“
It
is
a classic,” Dusty smiled, pretending he had contributed in some small way.

As she
maneuvered through Laredo, she suddenly brightened. “Since you know so much about guns, why don’t you come back out to the ranch with me and see if Papa had anything else of value? I know he used to work on older firearms in his shop. Maybe there’s something there that would raise enough money to get my husband out of jail.”

Dusty shrugged, intrigued at the prospect of actually doing something productive. “I don’t have anything more pressing,” he responded.

The Royce place was just over 10 miles outside of town. “My father started this operation before I was born. Mike and I were high school sweethearts, and when daddy passed away, we just took over. About five years ago, free-range birds became all the rage, so we went that route. Now, our chickens aren’t laying, and we’re losing about 15 animals a day. The vet has no idea why… thinks it’s some sort of virus. Mike’s been convinced that something about that new factory is killing our poultry.”

Dusty noted the small, but neat operation a
s they rolled up the driveway. A modest, ranch-style house surrounded by several outbuildings greeted them at the end of the lane. Two young girls sat on the front porch, both hopping up as the truck neared the house.

“What made your husband so sure it’s the
factory?” Dusty inquired.

“The timing of the whole thing. Our animals were just fine until the week after that damn
place began operations. We started noticing egg production dropping rapidly. Then a few days later, he found five dead birds. The next day, the death toll was eight. According to the county co-op agent, we’re the only ones having an issue right now.”

Penny
parked the truck, exiting the cab and immediately embracing her daughters. After hugs had been exchanged, she turned to Dusty and introduced both girls, “Mr. Booker, these are my daughters, Amy and Gina.”

“
Nice to meet both of you. Please, call me Dusty.”

Content that their mot
her was home, both girls scampered away after being reminded of their chores. Penny turned to Dusty and suggested, “Come on; I’ll show you papa’s workshop.”

She led the way to
the largest building, a medium-sized barn that had once sported a dark red paint job. Grey, weathered wood now peeked through the faded pigment, evidence of the harsh Texas sun and a lack of maintenance. Pushing open one of the double doors, Penny motioned for Dusty to enter. Inside, he encountered a scene typical of most any agricultural storehouse, the interior filled with an assortment of farm equipment, pallets of feed and bales of straw. To the gunsmith from West Texas, it smelled like home.

One area of the barn was at
ypical, housing a workbench constructed of heavy planks. An interesting collection of tools adorned the pegboard backstop. Dusty smiled when his eye took in the Monarch lathe, the unit a slightly older model than the one he used at home. Leading the way to the bench, Penny pointed and reminisced, “Papa used to spend hours and hours out here in the evenings. Sometimes neighbors and friends would bring over their shotguns for him to work on, other times he would find a broken rifle for sale at the right price and fix it up. He loved spending time out here.”

“I can understand,” Dusty said, feeling a tug of homesickness pulling at his insides. “I have… had a similar setup at home. It’s a good place for a man to spend his time.”

“My father’s guns are stored over here. Come on; I’ll show you.”

She walked behind an old Ford tractor, leading Dusty to the barn’s second surprise. One corner had been finished off as a small apartment, complete with
foldout couch, sink, microwave, and bathroom. Seeing her guest’s eyebrows rise, she laughed and said, “Our house is pretty small, and Dad came from a big family. He built this spare room for his brothers, so they would be comfortable and have a little privacy when they visited. He even equipped this space with air conditioning.”

“Nice,” Dusty observed, thinking the smell
of hay would be a wonderful greeting in the morning. He was sold the second he spotted the coffeemaker.

His hostess moved to a heavy
, metal door and inserted a key. Rather than the expected closet, she opened the fireproof portal and revealed what was essentially a homemade gun safe. Inside were several long guns as well as a handful of pistols. Dusty’s practiced eye swept the collection quickly, noting a few rifles of interest. “I’ll have to inspect each one individually and judge its condition,” he announced after a few moments. “Some of these might have value, but I don’t know about enough to raise bail money.”

She seemed disappointed. Sighing, she admitted, “I didn’t think there was a winning lottery ticket in here… but you can’t blame a girl for wishful thinking.”

“Mom?” a young voice interrupted from the front of the barn. “Mom, are you out here?”

Penny
yelled back at the same time making for the door, “We’re back in the gun room, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

“Mr. Roberson just called and said some of our chickens were in his yard. He threatened to eat one of them if we didn’t come get them.”

“Damn it,” Penny grumbled, her shoulders slumping. “Two of the fence posts on that side were getting pretty rotten. I guess they finally gave way. I’ve been meaning to get out there and mend that line, but just haven’t had the time or energy.”

The woman was clearly distraught, and it pained Dusty to see it. He followed her out of the apartment, having to step quickly to keep up. A minute
later, they were in another of the farm’s outbuildings, this one containing chicken-wire fencing and a small supply of posts.

“Why don’t
you take the girls and go shoo the birds back onto your land while I go fix the fence?” he offered.

She hesitated, not wanting to involve her guest any more than he alrea
dy was, but yet needing his assistance badly. “I can’t pay you anything,” she admitted. “But I sure could use the help.”

“That hotel is
going to cost me $70 per night,” Dusty countered. “I’ll do some work around here and inventory the guns in exchange for room and board. How’s that sound?”

Again,
Penny was suspicious. She was also desperate. She finally went with her instincts. “Okay, but again, if you’re that axe murderer, please make it quick.”

Dusty laughed and then nodded toward the fencing supplies. “How do I get to the downed line?”

“Follow me,” she said, briskly walking to another nearby shed. Inside was an ATV, complete with muddy tires and a small wagon attached to the back. “Mike bought this a few years ago. It runs pretty well. Should be full of gasoline.”

She then pointed to the northeast and continued, “If you drive about half a mile stra
ight that direction, you’ll run into the weak section of the partition where I suspect the repairs are needed. I’ll load up the girls and go chase birds.”

“Got it,” Dusty replied. “See you later.”

And with that, he began loading tools and supplies into the small wagon, actually looking forward to the physical labor. As he drove the small vehicle across the bumpy south Texas turf, he thought signing up to work on the farm had been a very good idea. Aside from Penny’s need for help, the remote property provided an excellent hiding place. He could save money, stay out of sight, and even work on some of those guns. It was a fugitive’s paradise.

He crested a slight rise and immediately spotted the downed
line. The birds, randomly roaming the pasture, were evidently familiar with the ATV and scattered to keep out of its path. He pulled up and realized Penny had been right – two of the posts appeared to have rotted and fallen apart. Pulling on a pair of work gloves and unloading the post-hole digger from the back, Dusty ventured closer to investigate.

Bending to examine the broken, exposed wood, he didn’t see any rot at all. Looking closer, he spied an
odd-looking indentation a several inches above what would have been ground level. “That’s strange,” he whispered to the re-gathering chickens. “What would have pushed these over?”

He scanned the area, seeing nothing but south Texas grassland interrupted by the occasion tree. Shrugging his shoulder
s, he began digging.

Fredrick closed the laptop’s cover, shaking his head at the Dow Jones
’ closing numbers. It had been a volatile market all week, the varied assortment of funds he monitored again showing losses at the closing bell.
It wasn’t Black Friday bad
, he mused,
but it wasn’t good either
.

While the
destruction of the Houston Medical Center hadn’t been uplifting news for the markets, the event had raised a mere speed bump on the American financial highway. The destruction of a large swath of the Houston Ship Channel was a completely different story.

A significant percentage of the nation’s petroleum was refined,
stored, and distributed from the now-damaged port. Law enforcement wasn’t commenting regarding the source of either incident, and that left a big, fat unknown in everyone’s mind. Financial markets hated the unknown. 

Pushing his c
hair away from the desk, he ambled to the window and gazed out at his BMW parked three stories below. The neighborhood wasn’t terrible, at least not nearly as bad as the residential areas most of his clients called “Home.” Still, he liked to keep an eye on the gleaming machine.
If there are many more days like today
, he thought,
it won’t be car thieves I’ll need to worry about. It’ll be the bank coming to repossess my ride.

He’d started his financial services business with a wholesome heart and noble intent. The south side of Houston was full of Lati
no families that had no idea how to leash the power of the stock market, mutual funds, and investment pools to grow their meager savings. While many were undocumented and struggling to stay under the radar, even the people here legally knew little about how the Anglos made money. He’d worked four years at a local bank while he put himself through college to earn a business degree. Eventually it came to him that he could kill two birds with one stone by opening a new, small business. He’d help his community while making good money himself.

Three months after signing a lease and opening his business, Fredrick realized he’d completely misjudged his friends and neighbors. Between a deeply seated distrust of the unknown and a general acceptance of the poverty cycle, the fledgling firm suffered from a lack of customers. Cooks, dishwashers
, and yard crews didn’t care about making 8% on the few hundred dollars they had stuffed inside their mattresses. They were worried about tomorrow or next week, not 20 years in the future. He could talk until he was blue in the face, and they would just politely nod, smile, and then do nothing. It was financially and morally devastating.

He had burned through his sa
vings in less than three months and was updating his resume to seek his old job back. He was down to the final week in his office before eviction, when a middle-aged Latino man appeared in his modest reception area. The fellow was not extreme or flashy, but well dressed and extremely polite. He introduced himself as Mr. Vega.

Later, as Fredrick replayed the meeting
in his mind, he realized Mr. Vega hadn’t revealed anything about himself. Each well-rehearsed line of inquiry designed to give a sense of a client’s net worth and seriousness had been deftly fended off. It had been the customer who had grilled and pumped the salesman.

Nothing happened for two days
after the interview. Fredrick’s pipe dream of landing a big, wealthy client and keeping his business open was beginning to evaporate. And then, without warning, Mr. Vega again appeared at the office.

“My business is a cash trade,”
the older man opened. “Any business generating large amounts of paper money draws an unwarranted scrutiny from the U.S. Federal government. And while my firm is prepared to pay a reasonable level of taxes, we wish to keep as much as possible of our enterprise under the radar. Can you help me manage, transfer, and conceal these funds from prying government eyes?”

Fredrick’s initial reaction was revulsion. What did this man think he was? A common criminal?
The last thing I want to do is soil my good name by associating with some local drug dealer
, he thought, preparing to escort the fellow from the premises. But before he could act, Mr. Vega continued, “I know what you’re thinking. You believe my firm is associated with some sort of illegal activity, but that is not the case. Any funds we invest with you will be earned by entirely legal businesses. We are really no different than any other corporation – we want to reduce our tax burden as much as legally possible.”

“Why don’t you want the IRS to know about the cash then?”