Turkey Ranch Road Rage (34 page)

“We can’t automatically assume,” he said, “that the samples came from the Little Ranch.”

“They did.”

“Maybe. But they also could have come from your mother’s.”

Well, he had a point there. “Remember, Mother was complaining about people out behind her house drilling and doing all kinds of things. We assumed that to be the Little Ranch, but we now know it’s actually her property.”

“Right,” Jerry said, “and since that land is hers, why didn’t she stop them from doing something if she didn’t want it?”

“She just said that she let Bob take care of all that. But again, why?”

Jerry tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “I know that some of the chemicals Perez listed are related to the oil industry,” Jerry said. “So if the samples came from the Little property, or your mother’s, they could be typical of a recent spill, which is not that uncommon. Even small spills could have high concentrations in one area, so until we know where he sampled we’re just speculating.”

“Chemicals breakdown at different rates and change composition depending on a lot of factors. Tiger knew what he was looking for and if we had those lab results, we would too.”

Jerry raised an eyebrow. “College chemistry class kicking in?”

“Actually, my formal training in chemistry occurred in the seventh grade when Coach Eastman made us use beakers and Bunsen burners for something or other.” The look on his face told me I hadn’t cleared up anything at all. “I read a lot, Jerry,” I said, shrugging. “Environmental stuff is big in Colorado.”

“Well, then how are you on microbiology?”

“There’s been some real success with using specialized microbes for bioremediation of petroleum products and other hazardous wastes. It’s expensive but good for the environment. But I’m guessing you really want to know about toxicology.” I grinned. “I’ve dabbled, but Doctor-Doctor-Doctor Travis would be able to look at those lab results and tell us immediately what Tiger suspected and if it could have had anything to do with his cancer.”

He turned and looked at me as if I’d just recited the Preamble to the Constitution in Chinese.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. The information is there for anyone who wants to take the time to read it, which I generally don’t. I just happen to have a knack for remembering the highlights as I skim through. ”

“I had no idea, Jolene,” he said, glancing over at me again to be sure who was sitting in the car seat beside him. “No idea.”

“Well, geez, Jerry, how much time do we ever have to talk about normal topics of conversation? We don’t even discuss the weather. We talk about my mother and the dramas and mayhem she’s stirred up, and, most importantly, how to keep us all from getting killed because of it.”

“And that, my dear, is going to change.”

I wanted to believe him, I really did. I saw no hope of it, however. Not even a glimmer. I glanced over at him and smiled. “But for now…”

“Right. It doesn’t much matter what the temperature is or what oil is trading at.” He paused for a minute then said, “Or maybe it does. If the property is contaminated, the question becomes whether it’s related to the oil and gas activities or something else.”

“Either way, we need to know when it happened. Were they out there digging to bury more or trying to find out how bad whatever’s already there is?”

“If we could just look for bare dirt where they’d dug the holes that would be easy,” Jerry said. “But around here, there’s not a lot of good vegetation to begin with.”

I thought about that and tried to correlate it with what I’d read about the topic. “If it wasn’t related to an onsite spill, whatever is there was probably buried.

“Steel drums,” Jerry said, nodding.

“The contamination might not have shown up right away. Nothing much would have looked different for a while.”

Jerry nodded, thumping his fingers on the steering wheel. “How corrosive the soil is would determine how long it would take before the barrel rusted and leaked—if they were sealed well initially. If they weren’t, they could have contaminated the soils immediately.”

“If they didn’t leak for years,” I said, playing out the possible scenarios, “the land would look normal on the surface. But when they did leak, depending on how deep they were buried, the contamination would soak through the ground and the vegetation would die.”

“Right. Anything that got a root in it would die. Soil and water conditions would be factors as well though,” he said. “If the leak went down and not up then it could still look normal on the surface and be contaminating water below.”

“Or, it could be doing both, Jerry. That placed looked horrible in the aerial. And Tiger found contamination in water somewhere, we just don’t know where. Nothing about this is good. And we’re back to the same questions we started with ‘who’ and ‘why’.”

“As we’ve talked, different people are motivated by different things. Love, money and revenge come to mind.” Jerry propped an elbow on the door by the window and tapped a finger against his chin. “The seven deadly sins are always available too, you know. But don’t forget redemption and protection. And remember, people will defend imagined threats just as vehemently as they will real ones.”

“True. Our brains don’t know the difference between real and imagined experiences and we feel the emotion of it either way.”

“It’s why I can do certain things,” he said, reaching over and gently running his fingers along the back of my neck, “and you’ll have a reaction as if I’ve done something far more intense.”

Heat flushed through me, confirming his statement. “I think that’s a different thing,” I croaked.

He grinned and pulled his hand back. “It’s still your brain doing the work. You’ve learned that when I touch you on the back of the neck, more good feelings follow.”

No question about that. “So, Dr. Pavlov, since you’ve rung the bell do we still have to go to the courthouse?”

“Yes, Jolene, we do.”

“Well, then I would say that you have used your power unwisely and it will never work again.” I rolled the window down and stuck my head out, letting the cool night air crash against my face and hopefully un-trigger my brain.

“It’ll still work,” he said, chuckling. “You’ll just be anticipating it even more.”

I did not find the situation amusing at all. “Someday I’m going to figure out how to do that to you and then we’ll see how you like it.”

He leaned over and tickled my neck again. “You already do,” he said in that deep rumbling voice that makes shiver. “You just don’t realize it.”

I jerked my head back in and glared at him. “Well, that’s even worse.”

He laughed. “Yeah, it really is.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

The Bowman County Courthouse was a looming ancient structure, at least by western world standards. Built in 1882, the brick and stone building was constructed on the typical town square program and was still in pretty good shape. It had been remodeled a time or two through the years, the most recent being in the late seventies, or somewhere thereabouts, probably during the last big oil boom. The dark stained wood, yellow walls and old-style asbestos floor tiles still gave it that “old world charm.”

The sheriff’s offices were on the backside of the courthouse, so from the front you couldn’t tell that anyone was in the building. Other than our Expedition and an old Chevy Cavalier—our overtime clerk, no doubt—the place looked deserted. It also looked and felt creepy, like a place you would never ever want to be after dark. But here I was anyway. I didn’t bother asking Jerry if we really had to go in because I already knew the answer. And, we were only a few feet from the front door.

The entry was fairly well lit, which took down the creep factor slightly. That the doors were already unlocked as we walked in did not. Inside, a few fluorescent lights hummed overhead, but the hallway was still dimly lit. Jerry headed directly to the stairs in front of us. When we got to the lower level, he led us down a narrow hallway. Various markers perched out from the walls on each side like street signs. “License Plates,” “Property Taxes,” standard stuff. “We went in the door under “Records.”

A tall counter ran the length of the room, which was maybe twelve or fifteen feet with a swinging door on the left. The small open area in front of the counter had a couple of chairs and fake plants. Behind the counter, a couple of desks were set out in the open with panels forming cubicles behind and to the right. The left was mostly hidden from view, but it looked like it was storage of some kind. Probably the “records.”

“Be right there, Sheriff,” came a raspy female voice from a back cubicle.

In a few seconds, a thin, hard-looking woman in a low-cut silvery blouse and short black skirt came wobbling in on spiked heels. If she was going for a sexy strut, she missed by the proverbial mile. I put her age somewhere near fifty, but it was hard to tell. A malodorous mix of sickeningly sweet perfume and stale cigarettes wafted over me. Even without the nasal evidence, the thick lines and coarse skin of her face said she’d been a heavy smoker for a very long time. Glassy eyes indicated that alcohol, drugs or both were probably involved as well. Whatever her vices, none of them gave her a youthful glow. The cosmetic overkill didn’t help either, and neither did her frizzy shoulder-length hair, which varied in color from a light mottled brown to shoe-polish black. The woman needed to get a professional dye job or give it up entirely. (Yes, it takes one to know one, but we are criticizing someone else at the moment and there is still much to be done.)

As I continued my assessment, she morphed from semi-sober off-duty records clerk into lust-crazed tramp on mission right before my very eyes. She put her hands on her breasts and thrust her chest forward, growling and panting. Thank God for the counter or she’d have been humping Jerry’s leg like a scraggly poodle in heat.

Apparently she didn’t see me lurking in the corner by the fake ficus tree, or maybe it just didn’t matter. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the first time this nut job had done this.

She licked her lips and cooed, in a gravely sort of way, and ran her hands down over her waist and hips. “I’m glad you called. I knew you would, sooner or later.” She lowered her lids into what she apparently thought was a seductive look. “Whatever you want, Sheriff, it’s yours.”

Oh, please. The only thing anyone could want from that was to throw up.

“What I want,” Jerry said matter-of-factly, ignoring her overt and disgusting, display, “are the specific records I mentioned on the phone. Jolene and I would like to get finished with this as soon as possible.”

“Jolene?” Cindy muttered, turning from lustful and languid to embarrassed and furious. “What!”

“Come on, honey,” Jerry said, motioning me forward. “Cindy has the files pulled for us.”

I stepped out from the corner, realizing that he’d just called me honey. And in an oh-so-subtle way put Cindy-slut in her place without a scene of any kind. Smooth. Really smooth and classy. I just loved that man.

Turning back to Cindy, he said, “Are those in the main room?”

Flaming tramp eyes were locked onto me and venom was sputtering from between her teeth. “Who are you?”

Sheriff Parker didn’t miss a beat, just kept speaking as if Cindy were a sane and normal person, which clearly she was not. “Cindy, you remember Jolene Jackson, from high school. She’s helping me tonight.”

“Jolene,” the tramp spat. “Jolene Jackson.”

Why do people have to say it like that? Jolene. Jolene Jackson. With sputtering even. It’s like my mere presence unleashes some primordial internal storm that requires a theatrical re-stating of my name before I even open my mouth. I just don’t get it. And while I seemed to have struck an instant discord with her from twenty-five years ago, I didn’t have the first clue about who she was.

I stepped up beside Jerry and gave her a fake little smile. “Hello.”

Jerry put his arm around me affectionately and moved me in front of him, keeping his hand on my shoulder as he spoke to Cindy. Apparently this was something that Cindy did not like at all because flaming arrows were now shooting from her bloodshot eyeballs and spittle was foaming at the sides of her mouth.

“Is there a computer back there with access to the Internet?”

“The one on the desk,” she growled. “Just like any other computer around here.”

“We’ll probably be about an hour,” he said evenly, guiding me through the little swinging door.

With a vindictive huff, she added, “I don’t care. I’m on time and a half.” She flung herself around and clickety-clacked her spiked heels toward a back office, mumbling something that I am reasonably sure was not very nice at all.

Jerry chuckled and guided me down the office hallway toward the media rooms. I glanced at the various desks and divided cubbyholes lining two walls of the room. Ledgers, boxes, and folders were piled on a table behind where Jerry sat at the computer and little white boxes of microfilm and stacks of microfiche were scattered at various stations. The electronic age was being acknowledged, but all the records were apparently not in digital form just yet. However, Cindy had apparently written out explicit notes on what could be found where.

Jerry walked over to the computer in the center of the room, pulled out the chair and motioned me over. “If you’ll get us an aerial view, I’ll sort through what we have to work with over here.” He then moved to the stacks of films and fiches. “By the way, that was Cynthia Ann Riley,” he said, rummaging through the files. “Murphy now, although she’s been divorced for a few years this last time. She was a grade behind us in school. And I’m smarter than that, Jolene, so don’t even think about it.”