The Bitter Past, page 8
“Job’s not finished,” she says. “There’s still a Russian here somewhere. The one Atterbury was looking for. We just have to find him.”
CHAPTER 7
By late morning, we’re all running on fumes. Sana in my office trying to ID the dead man, my staff at work completing all the paperwork that’s required whenever you whack a Russian out at Big Rocks, and me trying to re-create Atterbury’s hidden room inside one of the empty jail cells in my detention center, the photos previously on the FBI man’s walls now on mine. Atterbury’s files have a methodology I can relate to, well-ordered, chronological accounts of each person’s life and career, but there is a mountain of them. He was a good cop.
Just as I’m having that thought, Sana walks in with two cups of coffee. “Impressive reconstruction.”
I take a big whiff of coffee smell into my nostrils while I stare at a group of the photographs on the wall, mostly of young men, a few women. All have names printed at the bottom. They are predominately black-and-white and look like headshots from employment records. Some are blowups of driver’s licenses or other government-issued ID. Then there are the Polaroids, which probably means the 1970s, and still others are much more recent, digital snaps of people taken from a distance. Surveillance photographs, most of them not very clear. “Yeah, I figured if we kept everything pretty much the same, we might be able to get into his head a little bit. Any luck on a name for our dead Russian?”
She yawns and hands me a coffee. “Not yet. Facial reconstruction is a bit challenging, seeing as we blew up that part of his body.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Anything else that might help you?”
Sana takes a seat on the floor and rests her back up against the bars. “Well, very quietly we’re reaching out to our asset in Moscow to see what he can find out, but we have to be extremely careful. You know what I mean?”
I do know. Once upon a time I had my own asset in Moscow, and I know what happens if you’re not careful. “Right, because you still don’t know who leaked the information about Atterbury’s illegal still being alive.”
“Possibly alive. Yes.”
Tuffy wheels in a dolly with several more boxes of Atterbury’s files. “Where do you want them?”
I point to an open spot on the floor. “I’m afraid we have another problem, Sana.”
She looks up at me. “Will it require me staying awake any longer?”
“It might. The guy we killed this morning is not the person who killed Atterbury.”
That’s enough to get her to her feet. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
I can’t seem to drag my tired eyes away from some of the pictures I tacked to the walls. “Our shooter yesterday was left-handed.”
“How do you know that?”
“Little things.”
“Like?”
“He was using his left hand when he shot at us.”
“You remember that?”
“Like it was yesterday.”
“It was yesterday, you dope.”
“Oh, yeah. Anyway, he was definitely shooting at us with his left hand.”
“So?”
“So, the coroner said the guy who killed Atterbury was right-handed.”
“I believe his exact words were likely right-handed.”
“No,” I say, recalling Otto’s words in my head like the lyrics to a favorite song. “His exact words were ‘likely male and right-handed.’” I remove some of the more recent pictures and some of the government ID enlargements. All of them are of old men. I tack them to a different wall. “Which we will assume is the gospel truth until proven otherwise.”
Tuffy looks at me. “Which means this isn’t over.”
Sana kicks the wall. “Shit.”
I nod. “Which means this isn’t over. Whoever killed Atterbury still hasn’t found his agent.”
Sana runs a hand through her hair. “His traitor, at least in his mind. Why are you moving those, Beck?”
I finish my reassembly. “Okay, look here on the right. These are the ones I think Atterbury took. They’re relatively recent, and I recognize some of the men in them and some of the names.” I pull Tuffy closer to the wall. “Look, Tuff, these are from Lincoln County. Atterbury was surveilling these men.”
Tuffy examines them one by one. “Definitely from around here, but he wasn’t very good with a camera. A lot of side shots, and his focus wasn’t very good.”
“Right, he snapped them quickly, probably on the move. Problem with surveilling someone here is there’s nowhere to hide while you’re doing it. We know that from our own experience.”
“And these?” Sana asks, pointing to the driver’s license photos.
I raise a hand to my now three-day-stubbled chin. “Now these are interesting. A lot of them are from other states, and most have the red X on them.”
“He ruled them out,” says Sana.
“Yep, I agree. But we’re going to look at them all anyway. I’m hoping we’ll find a file for each of them in those file cabinets or these boxes.”
“Or,” Tuffy adds, “the X means they’re dead already.”
“Extremely likely,” I say. “Either way, Atterbury hadn’t been here long. He didn’t know the people here like we do, so he might have ruled some out prematurely. Now, figure a Soviet spy comes here in, say, ’54 or ’55. He’s probably in his mid-twenties, minimum. Add sixty-two years to that. If he’s still around, he is one old goober.”
“Can’t be too many of those left,” Sana says, moving back to the other wall where most of the photos remain. “So, do you recognize some of these faces?”
“Not from the old batch. But people change a lot over sixty years. Plus, most of these folks probably settled elsewhere. Big cities, other states. Our first order of business, then, is matching the photos to the files Atterbury compiled on them and determining who they are and where they currently reside.”
Tuffy takes notes. “Copy. Including final resting places.”
“Including final resting places.” I turn to Sana. “I wonder why Atterbury never came to us for assistance. We might have been able to help him narrow his search.”
She looks at me in disbelief. “Someone needs a nap. See this stuff, Beck? These photos, these files? It was illegal for him to have this. He couldn’t ask anyone for help.”
I can feel it in my shoulders and back especially, the need to hit the rack. All of us have been up for about thirty hours or more. But in my brain, I know the grains of sand are trickling through the hourglass. Time is literally running out. “I suppose that’s another reason why he had the secret room. Didn’t want to get caught with any of it. Might screw up his pension.”
Sana says, “It definitely would have.”
Tuffy tells us there are more files she still has to bring in and excuses herself. When it’s just the two of us again, Sana says, “Maybe he did locate the illegal.”
“No, he didn’t,” I reply.
“How can you be sure?”
“When you finish a jigsaw puzzle, what do you do?”
She scans the jail cell again, all the pictures, all the files. “You put the pieces back in the box.”
“Yep, and Atterbury didn’t do that. He was still working the problem.”
Sana pulls a photo off the wall, one that has the big X across the face. “I’m not sure any of this will help us. As soon as the Bureau found out about the illegal, as soon as he contacted us—I think this was 1962 or ’63, our agents went back through every single employee at the test site and revetted them. Interviewed them exhaustively. Dug into their personal lives, their pasts. Polygraphed them all. The illegal we’re after wasn’t an employee.”
I take the picture from her and look at it. “Maybe he had reason to disagree with that conclusion, or maybe the illegal was just someone who had contact with people working at the site. Maybe that’s how he got his intelligence.”
A quick head bob. “That’s been our working theory ever since.”
“Right, we look at everyone who was in the area at that time, regardless of whether they were test site employees, and we focus on people who still live here.”
“And are still alive,” Sana adds.
I laugh. “Yes, people who still live here who are not dead.”
“Sorry, I’m punchy.”
I hand her my coffee. “Keep the caffeine going.” I look at the photos on the wall again. “Our problem is one of geography. The county is big but only has about six thousand residents. It’s a lot of ground, a lot of little nooks and crannies and people living off the grid. People like ex-agent Atterbury. Some of them are hiding from something, escaping from something, so while we know most people here, we don’t know them all. Especially me, I’ve been back a few years but was gone for almost twenty-five.”
An older man enters the cell. A few inches over six feet, even taller with the yellow straw Stetson that appears molded to his angular head, he is slender, with silver hair and a mustache that trails over the sides of his mouth to his rugged jawline. He is not in uniform but has a star on his blue denim shirt and a .45 strapped to his belt. His arms are folded, and if looks could kill …
I hold up my hands in self-defense. “Don’t be pissed at me, Arshal.”
“What the hell, Beck?” The man’s voice sounds like a scratchy vinyl. “You go hunting a man in my area and you don’t call me?”
I bob and weave like Muhammad Ali over to Sana. “Special Agent Sana Locke, this crusty old bird is Sergeant Arshal Jessup. Arshal was here when the dinosaurs roamed the earth.”
“Piss on you, Beck. The old man would never have done that to me.”
Sana hesitantly extends her hand. “Sergeant. I recognize the voice.”
Arshal takes it. “Ma’am.”
“I was with the sheriff when you radioed in about those graves being dug up.”
Arshal nods politely but turns to me, red-faced with a nice vein bulging in his neck. “How could you do that to me?”
I treasure the man but will never admit it. Instead, I raise a finger in the air. “First, it was late, and I figured you were probably asleep.” Another finger joins the first. “Second, I promised LaThella I would keep you out of harm’s way when I could, Arshal, and I’m more scared of her than I am of you.” I shift my attention to Sana. “That’s Arshal’s daughter. And third, Pop has told me the same. ‘You can’t afford to lose Arshal.’”
Arshal removes his hat and bangs it against the cell door. “That is such horseshit, Beck. Please excuse my language, ma’am.”
“Certainly, Sergeant.”
His feathers still ruffled, I say, “I’m glad you’re here, Arshal. We can use your help.” I motion them both out of the cell but turn back to the man I first met when I was a kid. “Why are you here, anyway? Did you dig something up on that grave situation?”
Arshal sighs heavily. “Oh good, we’re having puns for breakfast.”
“Seriously. Is there something going on, or did you come up here just to kick my ass?”
The older man looks down at his boots. “Got a call from Amon.”
“Uh-oh.” Arshal and his brother generally despise each other and hardly ever speak. Whatever comes next won’t be good.
Arshal nods, fiddling nervously with his mustache. “Girl ran off apparently.”
“Ran off? How old?”
“I don’t know. I was trying very hard not to listen. Amon swears she’s been kidnapped.”
“What did you say to that?”
Arshal looks away, clearly frustrated. “What the hell do you think I said?”
I shouldn’t have asked. “So now Amon wants to talk to me.”
“Ayup.”
“Okay, Agent Locke and I will go see Amon if you’ll stick around here and help Tuffy sort through all of this.”
“We will?” asks Sana.
Arshal looks around the cell. “Oh, wonderful. Paperwork.”
I clap him on the shoulder. “Or you could go see Amon.”
“Fine,” Arshal says, crossing his arms again.
* * *
As we drive north out of Pioche, Sana asks, “Why am I going with you? More to the point, why are you going? Last time I looked we were hunting a killer and looking for a spy.”
I crank the heater up another notch or two. “Well, you’ve pretty much seen my department. I don’t have a bunch of officers I can dispatch to these kinds of calls. And we don’t get a lot of people who go missing here, so I can use the help.”
“But shouldn’t I have stayed back to go through those files? After all, they kind of belong to me.”
I shake my head. “Technically, they’re evidence in a murder investigation. So, they belong to me now.”
Sana reclines in the seat. “You know I can change that with a phone call, right?”
I wonder who might pick up on the other end of that call. “Yeah, but then you would risk alerting your mole. Plus, you’re sort of impressed with my instincts and abilities, so you’d rather let this play out a little longer.”
She thinks about that for a few seconds. “In truth, I’m sort of impressed with your instincts and abilities, so I think I would like to see this play out a bit longer.”
I flash my momma’s smile. “Good choice.”
Sana’s dark eyes stay locked on me. “What’s the story with Arshal and this Amon guy, and before you answer, does everyone up here have weird names?”
“I’m sorry, weird names?”
“Arshal, Wardell, Tuffy, Amon, Porter. It’s like the Bible meets Zane Grey.”
Wow, I think. She knows who Zane Grey was. We should definitely start planning our wedding. I muster my best backwoods accent. “These are the names we was given, ma’am.”
She laughs. “Arshal doesn’t seem to care for this Amon fellow.”
I take a deep breath and release it slowly. “Arshal and Amon are brothers. Amon is a year older, I think, and he’s the head of the FLDS up here.”
Sana sits up straight. “The polygamist sect? That FLDS?”
I turn on the wipers as the snow starts to fall and reach in the back seat, grabbing my down jacket, handing it to Sana. “One and the same. They’re not crazy, at least not as much as the ones you’ve heard about down in Colorado City or other places. They operate some farms a few miles north of here, and they’re very good at it.”
“Polygamist farmers.”
“Correct. Hey, do you know what the penalty is for polygamy?” Before she can answer, I do. “Two mothers-in-law.”
Sana snickers. “Okay, that’s a little bit funny. But why the tension between the brothers?”
“When they were teenagers, they left the church and the farm. Just walked out. After about a year, Amon returned to the compound. Arshal didn’t. Eventually Amon rose to the top position, and Arshal never forgave him for going back to that.”
“To that?”
“To a place where young girls are … persuaded to marry much older men.”
Sana looks like her skin is crawling. “And older men persuade themselves it’s okay.”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Can’t you shut the place down? I mean, we did that in Texas and sent that lunatic to prison.”
“Not the same thing here. They’re good neighbors, run a productive business. They don’t force anyone to stay. They don’t force anyone to marry.”
“Says who? The horny old lechers?”
I turn off the highway onto a back road. “You’ll see.”
Sana massages the back of her neck. “Okay,” she says just before the light switch in her head goes out. She needs the sleep.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, I pull into the Mill Valley farming community. In the warmer months, there would be as many as forty large circular pivots, those waterwheel circular irrigation tracts, clearly visible from the road, growing everything from potatoes to melons to beans and a whole lot of hay. Green everywhere for miles. In February, everything up to the horizon is largely covered in white. I drive into the Mill Valley Produce parking lot, where the snow is falling slightly heavier, swirled about in the wind blender that is eastern Nevada, and where I know Amon Jessup will be waiting inside. I leave Sana in the truck, closing the door lightly to avoid waking her. She startles awake anyway and motions for me to wait.
“Sorry, you looked like you were crashing pretty hard.”
“I’m okay. It’s this coat,” she says, patting the puffy arms. “It’s like a cozy sleeping bag.”
Just in front of us, a number of FLDS women exit the main building, their puffed-sleeved pastel dresses and long hair swept up or held in long braids down the back. None of them are wearing jackets, so we feel pretty wimpy.
Sana isn’t prepared for the visual. “Like stepping back into the nineteenth century,” she whispers to me as we enter.
“They don’t cut their hair, because they believe they will use it to wash Christ’s feet during the Second Coming.”
“Get the fuck out,” she says instinctively, the words catching everyone’s ears in the huge warehouse.
“Language please, Sana,” I say, smiling at her obvious discomfort and nodding toward a group of men in dark suits approaching from the back of the building, which contains a full grocery store and a warehouse stacked high with pallets of produce. Sana picks out Amon Jessup immediately. He looks just like his brother, only heavier and clean-shaven. The men around him are mostly younger, all clean-shaven as well.
I extend my hand. “Amon.”
“Sheriff, thank you for coming. How is your father?”
We shake for a long time, Amon’s way of trying to transfer some small portion of his God into me. “Right as rain, Amon. I’ll tell him you asked about him. This is Special Agent Sana Locke of the FBI.”
Sana produces her badge. “Very nice to meet you, sir. I’m not here in any official capacity.”
Amon looks questioningly at me. “She’s here on another matter, but Arshal said you feared one of your members had been kidnapped, so I thought I would bring Agent Locke along.”
The old man is clearly uncomfortable with a woman in authority unless it’s over a chicken in a pot. “You’ll have to forgive us, Sheriff. We’re on our way to services.” Most of the men exit the building, and Amon instructs all but one man to continue without them. “This is Clem Edwards, Sheriff. He is the husband of Michaela Edwards, the missing woman.”
