Destroying Angel (10 page)

“What the devil does he want?” Stephen Paul asked as he tugged the keys from the ignition.

“No idea, but don’t antagonize him,” Jacob said. “Let’s give him what he wants and get him out of here. Don’t volunteer information, either.”

“You can count on that.”

When they approached, the agent showed his badge, which bore the name Charles Malloy. “But call me Chip,” he said. He offered a hand of short, stubby fingers with a good grip. No calluses. He had a bushy mustache that completely covered his upper lip, and he wore cowboy boots and a bolo tie. The armed man was younger, dressed in neatly pressed khaki, and wore a cap with a DOA patch.

Malloy followed Jacob’s gaze to the armed guard, then rolled his eyes and gave the barest shrug. “I had trouble in Fillmore last week.”

“What kind of trouble?” Jacob asked, surprised.

“You know, that business with the pork bellies. You probably saw it on the news. The owner of one of those big hog operations had independent thoughts on the subject, thinks the government shouldn’t intervene in the markets.”

“Is that what this is about? Intervening?”

“No, Mr. Christianson. Just gathering inventory. Contingencies, that’s all.”

“I already e-mailed our estimates, bad as they are this year.”

“And I’m sure they’re accurate. They want an eyeball verification is all.”

“Why? Is it as bad as all that?”

Malloy didn’t answer but walked across the top of the sluice gate. “This pond feeds your irrigation for the corn crop?”

“No, the alfalfa. We haven’t needed much irrigation yet.”

“Have you given any thought to increasing your grains for next year? The market is strong.”

Jacob shrugged. “Probably not. We might tap storage if we can’t grow enough wheat, but I don’t like to chase the market. Anyway, we silage most of the alfalfa ourselves to overwinter the herds.”

“Plenty of grass this year, though, with the wet spring,” Malloy said. “You could probably get an extra haying.”

“Looks that way now. We’ll see.”

“And where do you keep your grain storage? Just those silos I saw south of town?”

He asked this in a casual, friendly way, but there was something unusually inquisitive in his voice. This was more than curiosity. Jacob caught a look from Stephen Paul.

“That’s the only place we store grain, yes.”

“Do you guard your grain?”

“Guard our grain?” Jacob asked. “Are people robbing silos?”

“Not yet. But I suggest you post a guard, just in case.”

Jacob knew some ranches lost livestock to rustlers who would show up with a cattle truck and make off with several cows, but that had never happened to Blister Creek. Too isolated, and too easy to recognize outsiders. But at least he could understand cattle. Grain? He tried to picture someone pulling a grain truck up to a silo and robbing it in the middle of the night.

Malloy took his stylus and made a note on his tablet. “Says here you’ve got four hundred acres in potatoes, is that right?”

“Four hundred is the Griggs farm, yes. The Potts family has another hundred. Some smaller plots of five or ten acres.”

“But it’s all sold through the co-op?”

“That is correct.”

“Good. We’ll take a look at that next. The two bigger farms will be enough. And then we’ll swing south and look at your corn crop. I want to see how it recovered from the frost.”

“Not as well as I’d like, I’m afraid.”

There was a reason, Jacob discovered, why Chip Malloy and his armed guard had come so early, even though they must have left St. George at four in the morning. Malloy wanted to see individual herds, measure fields with a laser surveyor to see if his numbers were accurate, and then inspect the grain silos. By the time the two DOA men left late that afternoon, Jacob and Stephen Paul were tired, hungry, and irritable.

“What was that all about?” Stephen Paul asked as Malloy pulled away. They’d finished their tour on the far eastern end of
the valley, miles from either man’s house and a good supper. The western horizon burned with the deepest red-and-purple sunset Jacob had ever seen. Ash from the volcano, he supposed.

“Sounds like the government is planning to regulate the production and sale of food. Maybe nationalize the whole industry.”

“Can they do that?”

“In a national emergency,” Jacob said. “Other countries have done it. Australia suspended wheat exports yesterday. The Chinese are throwing a fit.”

“And all because of a volcano in Indonesia?” Stephen Paul looked thoughtful. “You know what I think is happening?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but don’t go spreading it around. I don’t want people worked up. It’s a natural disaster. They happen.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Stephen Paul said. “Maybe it’s the Last Days, maybe not. But it could still be a test.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a warning. That’s what your father would have said. The Lord is reminding us. Because if this isn’t the end, it’s awfully close.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Jacob said. He wondered if the doubt showed in his voice. “Either way, we have to look after our own people first. Spread the word. Nobody mentions the bishop’s storehouse.”

“You think it will come to that?”

“No, but I’m not taking chances. We lose our grain storage and we’ll survive. But we can’t let them find the food storage. We’ll spread most of it around, keep a few thousand pounds of
flour and beans in the storehouse. Give them something to find if they look, just enough that they don’t get suspicious.”

“Smart.”

Jacob looked across the ruined wheat field, which stretched for acres in every direction. It was fitting that they’d finished their tour on the most hard-hit corner of the valley. He turned back to Stephen Paul. “It’s what my father would have done. I don’t like it, but I might need his cunning if things get ugly.”

A look of satisfaction passed over Stephen Paul’s face. “You’re a good man. I miss Brother Abraham, but you’re the one I want by my side if the armies of Satan come.”

“Let’s hope they don’t.”

Krantz spread the map on one picnic table while Eliza put their lunch together on another. He tapped his pencil on the map while she worked, pausing occasionally to enter numbers into his GPS computer.

Warm weather had returned to the Blister Creek Valley, and the park by the creek was filled with women in prairie dresses fixing picnics and chatting while their children kicked balls or climbed the cottonwood trees that shaded the grass. A few of the women gave Eliza curious glances, but she couldn’t tell if they were studying her pants and button-down blouse with disapproval or envy. Or maybe a little of both.

A boy approached with a fence lizard squirming in his hands to ask Eliza if he could have her empty pickle jar. She rinsed it in the creek and punctured breathing holes in the lid.

“Need any help?” Krantz asked after she sent the boy on his way with the jar and lizard and returned to making sandwiches.

“Nope, almost done. You want tomatoes?”

“Sure, fine. Come look at this.”

“Just a sec.” She brought over the plates with ham-and-cheese sandwiches and chips. He took a couple of quick bites, then showed her the map while she ate.

“San Juan County?” she asked.

“Map came in the mail this morning. Fayer sent it.” He circled four spots marked with letter and number combinations: IU-34, NG-4, RI-2, and RI-12. “These are our boneyards.”

“And what do these letters and numbers mean?”

“I have notes.” He unfolded a printed sheet of paper. “This first one is an abandoned uranium mine. Contaminated with heavy metals and radioactive isotopes.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“It’s toxic, but not particularly dangerous if you don’t drink the water. But what surface pools there are have killed a lot of animals. They come in from the desert, drink the water, and then die. A lot of bones around. Then there’s this one.” He tapped the pencil near Indian Creek west of Canyonlands National Park. “This is the site of a cattle drive in the 1920s that went wrong. It was a drought year, and they couldn’t get the herd to water. Bones have been bleaching in the sun for almost a hundred years.”

“What about these two?” Eliza asked. “RI-2 and RI-12. What does that mean?”

“No idea. That’s not an FBI designation. Fayer says they’re old military facilities, abandoned since the end of the Cold War. Surrounded by dead animals. Don’t have much more than that.”
He pointed back to the site by Indian Creek. “What do you think about this one? It’s desolate, way off the road. And it’s the closest by foot to Dark Canyon. Look here and here. Anasazi ruins. Might be more they never discovered. Like that place Taylor Junior hid in, up the box canyon.”

She finished the first half of her sandwich and wiped her fingers on a napkin, then leaned in closer. “Better eat before the bread dries out.”

He picked up his sandwich and frowned. “Too late. It’s like toast.”

“Crispy on the outside, soggy on the inside. Welcome to the desert.”

He ate it anyway. Meanwhile, Eliza took the pencil and measured with the tip from the nearest road to the site of the failed cattle drive. Could be the place—the terrain was similar to that of Dark Canyon. Maybe too similar.

She turned back to the pair of military sites. “Can I see Fayer’s notes?”

He handed them over. She scanned down the page to the e-mail Krantz had pasted at the bottom.

RI-2 & RI-12—This is the place I flew over in the Blackhawk. They’re a pair of Cold War military facilities. Army won’t tell me what it’s about. Maybe classified, maybe they don’t remember and can’t be bothered to look. I didn’t see much, just a bunch of dead animals at the first one and a couple of shacks and a few more dead animals at the second. Might be worth a look. You can follow Hans Flat Road as far as Mount Teancum, but the road to the base seems to have washed out. You’ll need another way to cross those last few miles.

IMPORTANT—site may be contaminated. If you check it out, call me FIRST.

“So she flew over looking for Taylor Junior?” Eliza asked.

“Someone spotted a campfire, and it got back to the FBI. She made a couple of passes, saw the bones. Not much else. That was only a few days ago.”

“A campfire?” She was disappointed. “Not much of a refuge if he’s camping in the open. And what about his followers? Probably not our guy.”

“No, it’s not much of a lead,” Krantz said around a bite of the sandwich. “I’m guessing that’s why they didn’t land the chopper or follow up on foot.”

“On the other hand, I don’t like these other places either. A toxic uranium mine might have buildings enough for all those people, but if the groundwater is poisoned…”

“I think the FBI checked the mine early on, anyway. Not that Kimball’s cult might not have moved in later.” He finished the last of his chips, and she caught him eying the second half of her sandwich.

“Go ahead. I’ve had enough.”

He crunched down. “It
was
toast. Now it’s more like a crouton sandwich.” He wasn’t really complaining, though. Two more bites and the thing was gone. “And you don’t like the Anasazi-ruin idea?”

“No, I don’t.” She traced Indian Creek with her finger. “I’ve been there before. Remote, but not wilderness. Smaller than Dark Canyon, with more hikers. If there are ruins big enough to house thirty people, someone discovered them a hundred years ago.”

“Then we’re stuck. Again.” He took a swig from his water bottle.

“Can Fayer do some digging, maybe give us something more to work with?”

“I’ll try her, but I doubt it. There’s something weird going on with the FBI. She said they’re mothballing the Blanding field office.”

“What does that mean for the investigation?”

“It means they’re packing it in.”

Eliza stared at him. “Forty-seven dead not enough to hold their interest? I don’t believe it.”

“I know. I’m baffled. It’s not totally shut down, but it’s on life support. Fayer still has the case file. She and some guy named Perez are holding down the fort.”

“Perez?” Eliza asked. She felt a twinge. “His first name is Eduardo?”

“That’s right. You know the guy?”

“Not really, no. I met him once or twice. He was Manuel Cardoza’s partner, right?”

“Oh, right. Perez and Cardoza arrested Kimball the first time around. Cardoza is back in Washington. Perez is a decent guy, though.”

Krantz filled her in on what he knew. With the weather crisis, the Bureau was reassigning most of its field agents. There was a major grain-theft and smuggling operation in the Midwest that had sprung from seemingly nowhere. Other agents focused on an antifederal militia movement in the Dakotas. Once the crisis passed, they would restaff Fayer’s anticult task team.

Eliza barely listened. She was thinking about Eduardo Perez. Six years since the two FBI agents infiltrated Blister Creek, posing as casual laborers. He’d be, what, thirty by now? No doubt as handsome as ever. She wondered if he remembered their flirtation.

She didn’t regret what she’d done. A few kisses, that’s all. A professional lapse for Eduardo, but let him worry about that. Eliza may have been seventeen and sexually inexperienced, but she’d known what she was doing that night she came to Eduardo’s trailer.

So what had changed in six years? Here she was, twenty-three, and hadn’t kissed another man since. Krantz bent over the map, and Eliza studied his strong jaw and intense eyes. What was taking him so long? She
thought
he liked her but had no real idea how a man showed interest in the real world. In Blister Creek an interested man stampeded his herd through your vegetable garden or bragged about the size of his compound. Maybe if he was really keen, he’d tell a girl she had a nice pelvis for pushing out babies.

“Question is,” Krantz said, “do we go after him? That didn’t work out so well last time.”

“Neither did sitting around waiting for Taylor Junior to come to us.”

“No.”

“You want to go, don’t you?” Eliza asked.

“I didn’t join the FBI so I could sit around waiting for the bad guys to show up.” He sighed. “But I’m a small-town cop now. Maybe we’re better off with cameras and surveillance. Wait for the FBI to get back in the fight.” He folded the map. “And I don’t have a vehicle that can make it over that terrain, anyway.”