Shades of Mercy, page 5
Sev’s fingers danced on the keyboard again. He was in his element. He had a German wife, Lina, and twin girls who were getting ready to start kindergarten in the fall, girls who would never have to join any gang except the Lincoln County Girl Scouts. “Okay, checking further.”
“And not for public consumption, guys,” Beck added, “but the drone was hacked. The OSI is looking for the hacker.”
Sev looked up from the screen. “That doesn’t sound right. Hackers maybe. Would be tough for one person. These things are normally flown with a pilot and a sensor or payload operator.”
Beck shrugged. “Regardless, we can expect the whole alphabet to be on the ground here shortly.”
“What’s the alphabet?” Tuffy asked.
“CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS,” Sev responded with another wink.
“Wink at me one more time, Velasco,” she snarled and turned to Beck. “Where do we fit in? Since it’s a fed case, I mean.”
Beck pulled out his cell phone and showed them both the photos he took of Jesse Roy and the man named César. “Jesse and I go back. We were pretty close through high school, and I spent some of my summers working cows with him and his dad. I heard he was doing well, but what he’s done with that ranch would blow your mind. Let’s start there.”
“You think someone is targeting him?” Sev asked. “A vendetta, some kind of business feud?”
Beck chewed on one side of his cheek for a second. “Not sure. All I can tell you is that when I knew him, the last thing he ever wanted to be was a cattleman. Now here he is running what is probably the biggest cattle operation in the state and someone appears to be sending him a very strong message.”
“I don’t like the looks of this guy,” Tuffy said, pointing to the other man in the photos and winking at Sev. “The Latino.”
The new deputy rolled his dark eyes. “Blatant racial insensitivity. Where’s HR when you need them?”
Tuffy stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Sandra Scruggs, head of HR.”
“Yeah, the other guy is a fish out of water,” Beck said. “I wonder what he’s doing on a ranch in Lincoln County. Could be Jesse’s into something he shouldn’t be. He was always looking for the easy score, the get-rich-quick kind of thing. Quite the scammer back in the day.”
“Juvenile record?” Sev asked.
Beck shook his head. “I think he got popped for shoplifting beer once, but that’s about it. Charges got dropped as I recall but his old man kicked his ass for it. I’ll check with Pop to see if he remembers anything else.”
“I’ll see if the FBI in Vegas can run our Latino friend through facial rec. We’ll put it together for you.”
It was a Hail Mary. There were no shortcuts in police investigations, nothing like you might see on television where the cops or FBI could instantly identify a suspect by his photo, track his movements by a million traffic cameras, or access his phone number to determine his location in seconds. Especially out here. Police work was grunt work, much like the military, and it took people with initiative and patience to see it through. Tuffy had both qualities. She didn’t have to be told what to do. It was the chief reason she would be his first choice to run the department when he left. That time, he knew, was coming. His declining sight would see to that.
Sev exited, leaving Tuffy behind in Beck’s office. “How’s everything else?” he asked her.
Tuffy sighed. “The Jolly Greens are running from fire to fire doing traffic and helping with evacuations if needed. The rest are taking their shifts here or down south. Other than a bar fight last night and a stolen tractor, it’s pretty quiet all over the county. I think everybody’s getting nervous about another wildfire starting up. Gotta hope that doesn’t happen. We’re going to need all hands next weekend.”
Johnny and Jimmy Green, mostly known as the Jolly Greens but sometimes referred to as the Twin Peaks, were towering twin brothers in their midtwenties who were so identical Beck was still getting them mixed up. Tuffy, Arshal, and now Sev rounded out his contingent of real police officers while the rest were primarily paper filers and such. And Columbo.
Beck looked up. “What’s next weekend?”
Tuffy raised both hands in disbelief. “Alien Independence Day. That event all the UFO nuts are coming in for.”
Beck remembered now. It had been organized by some online groups who thought it was high time the American people found out what was going on inside Area 51. The plan was that, with enough people, they could storm the place. Beck laughed at the notion. Anyone who tried would be met by an army of highly trained, heavily armed security personnel. “Christ. I was hoping that was going to dissolve on its own.”
“Nope,” Tuffy said. “They’re coming. It’s not going to be anywhere as big as they hoped, but I’ve been keeping up online, and I’d bet we see a few thousand down at Rachel. Maybe more. People are already coming in. Arshal says there’s been a steady stream of camp trailers heading that way.”
Arshal Jessup was his oldest officer, one of the first cops Pop hired. “That’s all we need,” Beck said. “All those people camping out there in the desert. I see a huge brush fire in our future. Where’s Arshal anyway?”
“Fishing in Eagle Valley but on standby if we need him. He’s downshifting to three days a week now, but if anything heats up before he gets back, we can pull one of the Twin Peaks down there.”
“And how’s Sev doing?”
Tuffy took a quick look behind her to make sure Sev wasn’t standing there. “What can I say? The guy has two master’s degrees. Knows more than Google. I hate him.”
Beck laughed. “He’ll make a good number two for you someday, Tuff.”
Her face flushed with color, and she tried not to smile. “Why don’t you go home, Beck? Take the day.”
“Going to. Have to run down to Snow Canyon with Pop. Got a few things to zip up first.”
He grabbed some hot coffee and returned to his desk, signed some purchase orders Tuffy had left for him and lingered over some emails, anything he could find to avoid making the phone call he had been considering since leaving Jesse Roy’s place. The call to an intelligence officer named Sana Locke. She had helped him on a case last year and despite some challenges early on, they ended up getting along just fine, especially when they were twisted up like pretzels in the Kama Sutra. Professionally, Sana was one of those rare people with multiple skill sets, including the aforementioned physical dexterity, and Beck was thinking she might be able to help with the mystery of the exploding bull. He wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe because I want to hear her voice again.
It’s a bad idea, he told himself. We parted uncomfortably. She helped me out. I helped her out. Leave it at that. His finger was hovering above her number in his cell phone contacts when Sev walked in. “Something?”
“I think so. I sent the picture of Jesse Roy and his pal over to a friend of mine in the old neighborhood.”
“That was fast.”
“My guy has been around, did time for dealing when we were younger, but he made it out. Got a vocation. He’s a sociology professor now.”
“So, a communist?”
Sev laughed. “Pretty much.” He took Beck’s phone and found the photo. “My buddy says the guy on your right looks an awful lot like someone he knew from back in the day, a bandito from Mexico named Luís Trujillo.”
“Bandito. Sounds serious.”
“Gangs mostly. Very violent.”
Beck took a few sips of coffee. “Okay, so instead of using any number of national databases, the facial recognition software you employed is a guy you spent your misspent youth with?”
“Best software is the human brain,” Sev answered. “You and I both know that.”
“And your guy thinks the man in the picture next to Jesse Roy may be somebody named Luís who was a street thug. Do I have that right?”
The lines in Sev’s forehead were quite something to behold when he was annoyed. Beck had seen them many times over the years. They resembled the tributaries of a river coming together before a waterfall. “Would I bring you something that thin? I was about to hang up on my buddy because a guy named Luís doesn’t really help us. Then he says Luís was his name, but the guy went by another name, something he told other people to call him because he was going to be a king someday. An emperor.”
Beck’s eyes opened wide. “César.”
Sev took a bow. “César. Can’t be a coincidence, boss.”
It could be a coincidence but Beck’s shaking head said he doubted it. “Does your communist friend know what became of the man who would be king?”
Sev shook his head. “He does not. But he’s looking into it.”
Beck decided not to call Sana Locke. Right now, there was a movie he had to see.
CHAPTER 7
Jesse Roy’s eyes followed the gooseneck livestock trailer as it pulled through the entrance to his ranch at the same time Porter Beck and the government agent lifted off in the helicopter. Dark gray snouts pressed into air holes on the sides of the double-decker, snouts that were connected to some of the best black Angus heifers anywhere in the world. The truck crawled east of the main house, passing a number of outbuildings. The first held a big front-end loader, a smaller Cat 259D, some spare cattle pens, and other essential ranch equipment. The second was a long red and white calving barn, and the third was a rectangular garage with automatic doors on both ends. As one of the doors rose, six Mexican cowboys walked out into the sunlight.
“What do you think?” César asked in his thick Sonoran accent as he and Jesse Roy followed the trailer.
Jesse removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow on the sleeve of his white shirt. “I think I’ve got a shitload of breeding heifers here and no good pizzles to put in them. That’s what I think.”
César’s brow knitted. “Cómo? Pizzles?”
Jesse looked at the man and laughed. “Dicks. I lost my best bull, César.”
César shook his head. “I mean what do you think about this man, Maddox?”
“Well, he cut me a check for twenty-five thousand without blinking, so I’m inclined to think the government would like us to carry on as if nothing ever happened.”
César lit up a cancer stick and blew a long trail of blue smoke into the hot air. “I’m not sure Mr. Cordero would agree. Which is why I am still here and not on my way back to Mexico with Marta and my children.”
From the back of his trousers, Jesse removed a can of Red Man and rolled it like a big poker chip between his long fingers. If Cordero was concerned enough about last night’s incident to leave César behind, it would be wise to take this morning’s visit by the American military more seriously. He opened the lid and set a pinch of the black dip into the right side of his mouth. “Yeah, I don’t really believe in accidents either. Maybe someone is sending us a message.”
“Who? The government? Does that happen here?”
Jesse shrugged. “Not that I’ve ever seen.”
“And the sheriff?” asked César.
“Well, he’s a do-gooder, that one,” Jesse answered, rubbing his thumb over his lower lip. “Has a bleeding heart. But in this case, he seems to be playing tour guide for the Air Force.”
“He made a point of taking our photo.”
“Yeah … that was as phony as your wife’s jewelry, and he wanted me to know it. But it won’t lead him anywhere.”
They watched as the driver expertly maneuvered the rig, backing it up to a long system of metal fencing and rails that ran mazelike through the dirt and ended in a cattle cage that would clamp its metal sides around the first heifer in line and every one thereafter, where the animals would be branded, vaccinated, and ear-tagged. There were a dozen in this shipment, all about eighteen months old and close to 75 percent of their mature weight, perfect for breeding. Once the cattle pot’s rear doors opened, the ranch hands began feeding them into the queue.
“Any problems?” Jesse asked as the driver stepped down from the truck.
He was Caucasian, in his forties, and with his thick blond beard, the classic picture of a long-haul trucker. “Not a one, boss. Smooth sailing the whole way.”
Nodding, Jesse said, “All right, let’s see what we got.”
As the first heifer was clamped into the cage, one man stood nearby with his hand twirling a branding iron in a long propane heater that roared with the infusion of gas and yellow and blue flame. When the cowboy determined it had reached the optimal temperature, he pulled it from the heater, and the JJ wrapped in a circle glowed cherry red. He pushed it into the animal’s flank and rocked it firmly against the hide for about five seconds. The heifer tried to move but couldn’t, trapped as it was in the cage, but it did voice its concerns until the cowboy withdrew the iron.
“He doesn’t like that,” César said with a laugh. “Can you imagine what that would do to your skin?”
Jesse glared at him and spat a dark stream of tobacco on the ground that splashed on César’s expensive alligator boots. “First of all, César, that’s a female. And second, you need to get yourself a pair of real working boots, ’cause you look like you’re heading to a dude ranch in that outfit.”
César reached down and carefully wiped the dark droplets from his boots with a black handkerchief. “That is very rude, my friend.”
Jesse’s eyes had already moved back to the branding cage and the next heifer inside it. “Uh-huh.”
They watched until the others had been marked, and then they walked inside the large garage where the cattle hauler had been moved. Jesse hit the button on the near wall, lowering the rolling garage door and sealing them in from any prying eyes. Inside the trailer, the driver and his man each took a long metal pole with a hook on the end and began lifting up the metal floorboards, revealing a hidden compartment approximately ten inches deep.
“God bless the Second Amendment,” Jesse said, peering down at the semiautomatic rifles, more than twenty of them lining the center of the trailer’s real floor. Bordering those were a wide assortment of revolvers and semiautomatic pistols. Enough to start a war somewhere. Or feed a current one.
“Ammunition?” Jesse asked.
“You’re standing on it,” the driver said. “Let me show you.”
Jesse moved off the metal floorboard and watched as the driver lifted it away. Tucked neatly into one side of the truck’s bottom were many boxes of ammunition. Jesse dropped into a crouch to better see the manufacturer names along with various caliber indicators. He looked up at his associate from Sonora. “Legal commerce, César. Nothing wrong with legal commerce.”
César didn’t respond. Instead, he informed the men they would be hauling a load of steers and guns back to Mexico this afternoon.
“I think we’ll wait on that,” Jesse said, rubbing his chin.
“The boss is waiting, Jesse. Our men in Caborca need these weapons.”
Jesse motioned César to follow him, and the two men returned to the floor of the garage and out of earshot of the driver and his man. “I’m not crazy about moving anything until we know who blew up my bull last night and why my old friend Porter Beck suspects something. Let’s take a day or two.”
César glared at him. “I thought you said the sheriff was a tour guide.”
Jesse’s face screwed tight and grew red. “Who’s calling the fucking shots here, César?”
Sweating through all his western finery, César lowered his gaze respectfully. “Until such a time as it becomes a problem for us, you are.”
“Goddamned right,” Jesse said. “We wait.”
CHAPTER 8
Snow Canyon was not named after the white stuff that occasionally drapes its higher climes but rather the two Mormon brothers who were among the first to settle that part of the territory. Pop and Columbo were excited passengers, both of them hanging their heads out the truck’s windows and looking at the massive farms with their circular pivots of grass hay and alfalfa, and the mountains that gradually changed from forest to rock and sandstone. The farther south they drove, the hotter it got, and when they finally reached the state park around 4:00 P.M., the temperature gauge inside Beck’s truck said it was 108 degrees outside.
There was no movie theater in Snow Canyon but there was a movie being made, and none other than Brinley Cummings was acting as the weapons master on the shoot. His adopted sister knew more about guns and shooting than anyone Beck had ever met, and that included ex-hoodlum and current deputy Severo Velasco. Guns were how she made her living, teaching people, mostly Hollywood celebrities and other rich people, how to use them without killing themselves. She had her own website, her own merchandise line. And she made a lot of money. A lot more than Beck made.
Beck had served with soldiers all over the world, only a small portion of whom he would want covering his six in a dark alley or a midnight recon mission. He would pick Brin before any of them. She was a survivor of an unimaginable upbringing, her father an abusive lunatic who lived in the mountains and sometimes chained her to the nearest tree. She was almost feral when Pop rescued her, and when he formally adopted her, so did Beck. Their relationship was not sibling-typical. It was stronger than that.
It was a quarter-mile walk from the parking area to the set, a sci-fi western type of thing by the looks of it, and Beck and his dad took it slowly over the uneven ground. More and more, Pop was becoming unsteady on his feet, and he hated when Beck would take his arm, which his son tried to do now.
“I’ve been walking since FDR’s first term, thanks very much,” he barked.
The movie people had erected a number of buildings, mostly log cabins, a livery stable, and a saloon, and on one end of the make-believe town was a shiny silver metal thing that looked similar to the spinning tops kids used to play with, only it was about two stories tall and was made to look as if it were partially embedded in the red clay rock of Snow Canyon, crashed and crumpled against the mountain.
Makes no sense, Beck thought. You’re from an advanced civilization. You’ve traveled light-years to get here. But you can’t manage a simple landing?
