There were two trails that had matted down the grass leading away from the shed and over the hill. One, obviously, was the track of a person. The other was wider than the dirt road that led into the ranch.
Theo dug into the Volvo for his gun and cell phone, having no idea what to do with either of them. There was no one to call—and certainly no one he wanted to shoot. Except maybe Sheriff John Burton. He searched the area, found Joseph Leander’s gun, and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. The keys were still in the red four-wheeler, and after a minute of measuring the ethics of “borrowing” the truck against having been kid-napped, handcuffed, and almost killed, he climbed into the truck and took off across the pasture, following the double trail.
Gabe
Gabe and the rancher stood over the pulverized remains of the Holstein, waving flies away from their faces, while Skinner crouched a few yards away, his ears back, growling at the mess.
The rancher pushed his Stetson back on his head and shuddered. “My people have been running dairy and beef cattle on this land for sixty years, and I ain’t never heard or seen anything like it, Gabe.”
His name was Jim Beer. He was fifty-five, going on seventy, leathery from too much sun and stress, and there was a note of the sad lonely under everything he said. He was tall and thin, but stood with the broken-backed slouch of a beaten man. His wife had left him years ago, driving off in her Mercedes to live in San Francisco and taking with her a note worth half the value of Jim Beer’s thousand acres. His only son, who was to have taken the ranch over, was twenty-eight now and was busy getting thrown out of colleges and into rehabs all over the country. He lived alone in a fourteen-room house that rattled with emptiness and seemed to suck up the laughter of the ranch hands, who Jim fed in his enormous kitchen every morning. Jim was the last of his breed, and he would forever trace the beginning of his downfall to an affair he’d had with the witch who once lived in Theo’s cabin at the edge of the ranch. Cursed he was, or so he believed. If the witch hadn’t run off ten years ago with the owner of the general store, he would have been sure the mutilated cattle was her doing.
Gabe shook his head. “I have no idea, Jim. I can take some samples and have some test run, but I don’t even know what we are looking at here.”
“You think it was kids? Vandals?”
“Kids tip cows over, Jim. These look like they’ve been dropped from thirty thousand feet.” Gabe knew what appeared to have happened, but he wasn’t willing to admit it. There wasn’t a creature alive that could have done this. There had to be another explanation.
“So you’re saying aliens?”
“No, I am definitely not saying aliens. I’m not saying aliens.”
“Something was here. Look at the tracks. Satanic cult?”
“Damn it, Jim, unless you want to be on the cover of Crackpot Weekly, don’t talk that way. I can’t tell you what did this, but I can tell you what didn’t. This was not aliens, or Satanists, or Bigfoot on a binge. I can take some samples and run some tests and then maybe, maybe, I can tell you what did this, but in the meantime, you should call the state ag guys and get them out here.“
“I can’t do that, Gabe.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t have strangers running around on my land. I don’t want this gettin‘ out. That’s why I called you.”
“What’s that?” Gabe held up a finger to hold his place in the conversation, then looked to the hills: the sound of an engine. In a second a red four-wheel-drive pickup appeared on the hill headed toward them.
“You’d better go,” Jim Beer said.
“Why?”
“You’d just better. Nobody’s supposed to be on this side of the ranch but me. You need to go.”
“This is your land?”
“Let’s jump in your truck, son. We need to go.”
Gabe squinted to get a better look at the truck, then waved. “That’s Theo Crowe,” he said. “What’s he doing in that thing?”
“Oh shit,” Jim Beer said.
Theo pulled the truck up next to Gabe’s, skidded to a stop, and crawled out. To Gabe, the constable looked pissed off, but he couldn’t be sure, having never seen the expression on Theo before. “Afternoon, Gabe, Jim.”
Jim Beer looked at his boots. “Constable.”
Gabe noticed that Theo had two pistols stuck in his jeans and was half-covered with dust. “Hi, Theo. Nice truck. Jim called me out to take a look…”
“I know what that is,” Theo said, tossing his head toward the mashed cow. “At least I think I do.” He strode up to Jim Beer, who seemed to be trying to sink into a hole in his own chest.
“Jim, you got a crank lab back there turning out enough product to hype all of Los Angeles. You wanna tell me about it?”
The life seemed to drain out of Jim Beer and he fell to the ground in a splay-legged sit. Gabe caught his arm to keep him from cracking his tailbone. Beer didn’t look up. “My wife took a note for half the ranch when she left. She called it in. Where else was I going to get three million dollars?”
Gabe looked from Jim to Theo as if to say, “What the hell?”
“I’ll explain later, Gabe. I have something I have to show you anyway.” Theo pushed Jim Beer’s Stetson back so he could see the rancher’s face. “So Burton gave you the money so he could use your land for the lab.”
“Sheriff Burton?” Gabe asked, totally confused now.
“Shut up, Gabe,” Theo snapped.
“Not all of the money. Payments. Hell, what could I do? My grandfather started this ranch. I couldn’t sell off half of it.”
“So you went into drug dealing?”
“I ain’t never even seen this lab you’re talking about. Neither have my hands. That part of the ranch is off-limits. Burton said he had you in the cabin to keep anyone from coming in the back gate. I just run my cattle and mind my own business. I never even asked Burton what he was doing out there.”
“There million dollars! What the hell did you think he was doing? Raising rabbits?”
Jim Beer didn’t answer, he just stared at the ground between his legs. Gabe held his shoulder to steady him and looked to Theo. “Maybe finish this later, Theo?”
Theo turned and walked in a tight circle, waving his hands in the air as if chasing away annoying spirits.
“You okay?” Gabe asked.
“What the fuck do I do now? What do I do? What am I supposed to do?”
“Calm down?” Gabe ventured.
“Fuck that! I got murders, drug manufacturing, some fucking giant animal of some kind, a whole town that’s gone nuts, my car is mashed, and I have a crush on a crazy woman—I don’t have the training for this! No one has the fucking training for this!”
“So calming down isn’t an option right now?” Gabe said. “I understand.” Theo interrupted his anxiety Tilt-A-Whirl and wheeled on Gabe. “And I haven’t smoked any pot in a week, Gabe.“
“Congratulations.”
“It’s made me insane. It’s ruined my life.”
“Come on, Theo, you never had a life.” Gabe immediately realized that perhaps he had chosen the wrong tack in consoling his friend.
“Yeah, there’s that.” Theo strode to the red truck and punched the fender. “Ouch! Goddamn it!” He turned to Gabe again. “And I think I just broke my hand.”
“Mad cow disease worries me,” Jim Beer said from his stupor of defeat.
“Shut up, Jim,” Gabe said. “Theo has a gun.”
“Guns!” Theo shouted.
“I stand corrected,” said Gabe. “You mentioned a giant animal?”
Theo massaged his temples as if trying to squeeze out a coherent thought.
After a few minutes, he walked to where Jim Beer was sitting and kneeled down in front of him. “Jim, I need you to pull it together for a second.” The rancher looked at Theo. Tears had traced the creases in his cheeks. “Jim, this never happened, okay? You haven’t seen me and you haven’t heard anything from this side of the ranch, okay? If Burton calls you, everything is standard operating procedure. You know nothing, you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand. Am I going to jail?”
“I don’t know that, Jim, but I do know that Burton finding out about this will only make it worse for every one. I need some time to figure some things out. If you help, I’ll do my best to protect you, I promise.”
“Okay.” Beer nodded. “I’ll do what you say.”
“Good, take Gabe’s truck home. We’ll pick it up in an hour or so.”
Skinner watched all this with heightened interest, tentatively wagging his tail between Theo’s tirades, hoping in his heart of hearts that he would get a ride in that big red truck. Even dogs harbor secret agendas.
“Theo, these can’t be real,” Gabe said, running his hand over a footprint nearly three feet across. “This is some sort of hoax. Although the depth of the claw impressions and the scuffing would indicate that whoever did this really knows something about how animals move.”
Theo was fairly calm now, as if he had settled into the whole unreality of the situation. “And they know something about crushing a Volvo too. They’re real, Gabe. I’ve seen a track like this before.”