Hotshots (19 page)

O
N MY WAY
home I thought about Tom Hogue clicking his remote, raising and lowering his hearing level. An amplifier could be a useful device. A hearing-aid store would sell the one Hogue wore, but I thought I was more likely to find what I wanted in I Spy, a store on Menaul that sells surveillance equipment, stun guns, pepper spray, and all the self-defense paraphernalia that's on the fringe of paranoia and legality. I Spy was in a strip mall. No attempt had been made to paint and shape the burglar bars to pretend they were decoration. I Spy was a hardcore, hard-edged, functional kind of place. One of those places where a woman is suspect, even a hard-edged, functional woman.

The guy behind the counter had hair clipped close to his skull and rifle-scope eyes.

“I want something that can pick up a conversation from a distance,” I said.

******

I stopped at the Kid's shop to try my eavesdropping device out. Los Lobos was blaring and he didn't hear me pull into the parking lot. He was working on a Dodge truck up on the lift and he didn't notice me walk by the open doorway. Mimo did and squawked “Hello,” but the Kid didn't pay any attention. “Hello” was one of the few words Mimo knew and he (or she) repeated it often. I walked past the shop and across the field behind it, measuring my paces, casting a long-legged shadow that reached halfway across the field and turned my strides into giant steps. I thought fifty yards would be far enough for my purposes, but I reached the ditch before I got that far. The water was a steady brown flow. The ditches that bring irrigation water into the valley wash garbage and sometimes even bodies out. A plastic container bobbed in the brown stream. Weeds grew tall on the banks. Sunflowers were blooming and dancing in the wind.

I pointed my listening device at the Kid's shop, plugged in the earphones, and clicked it on. First I heard Los Lobos singing “Volver” in the style I call
ranchera grande,
but I didn't consider hearing that a major eavesdropping event. Los Lobos could be heard all over the valley. I fiddled with the controls, turned up the volume, then heard Mimo squawk “Hello” again, which was an accomplishment. Mimo couldn't be heard without help from where I stood. Then the Kid said, “‘Adios,' Mimo, say ‘adios.'”

“Hello,” repeated the bird. The Kid was trying to expand the parrot's vocabulary, possibly even make it bilingual, but Mimo was stubborn. “Hello,” it squawked again.

“Pendejo,”
swore the Kid.

“
Pendejo,”
swore the bird.

I turned the listening device off, crossed the field, and walked into the shop.

“Hola,
Chiquita,” he said.
“Qué tal?”

“Okay,” I said. “And you?”

“Good.” he replied.

“You taught Mimo how to swear?”

He was startled. “How did you know that?”

“I could hear you talking from the ditch.”

“How could you hear that from all the way back there?”

“Pendejo,”
the bird cackled again.

“Càllate,”
said the Kid. Be quiet.

“I bought this listening device on my way home. I was trying it out.” Like many people who work with tools, the Kid is fascinated by them in all shapes and sizes. He took the listening device from me and studied it.

“What do you need this for?” he asked.

“It's a long story.”

“Dígame.”

“Ramona is going back to Colorado tomorrow to see Jake Sorrell. I think he's the guy I talked to in Oro.”

“The guy in McDonald's?”

“Right. If he is Jake Sorrell, he's the crew boss who hired her and she stayed at his place after the fire. I want to hear what they have to say to each other.”

“Why?”

“I think he may have started the fire I was in. He was wounded on another fire in Lone Ridge, Colorado, and three of his crew members died. He'd made recommendations that could have prevented the South Canyon disaster, but the Forest Service never listened to him. The truck that was seen near the fire is probably his.”

“Ramona was on the mountain then, too, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you think they were working together?”

“I don't know, but I intend to find out.”

“Why? It's her business, no?”

“No. Sooner or later the arson investigators are bound to get to Jake Sorrell. Suppose he implicates Ramona then? If she won't help herself she needs somebody to help her. I owe her that; she
saved
my life.”

Mimo, whose bright eyes had been bouncing back and forth from me to the Kid, screamed
“Pendejo”
again.

“Quiet, Mimo,” I said.

“Why not let the investigator talk to this guy Jake? Why do you have to do it?” I had considered asking the Kid to come with me, but was rapidly changing my mind.

“I don't know if I am going to talk to him,” I said. “Maybe I'll just observe.”

“You never just observe. And if you find out he started the fire, what do you do then?”

“Try to get him to turn himself in, and if that doesn't work, pass whatever I find on to the arson investigator.”

“And if Ramona was involved?”

“I'll see she gets a good lawyer.” Jeremy Toner was a public defender I knew who had brains, compassion, and a minimal interest in bucks. I'd have taken Ramona on for nothing myself if that had been possible.

“I don't think you should go,” the Kid said.

No shit, I thought, but what I said was “Why not?”

“It's not your business.”

“Well, I'm making it my business.”

“I didn't like that guy Jake's looks.”

Let a man put his clothes in your closet and before you know it he starts telling you who you can hang out with and where you can go.

The Kid turned back to the Dodge pickup, a truck that had seen a lot of hard driving, about two hundred thousand miles worth. “When this guy had his oil changed, somebody put in dirty brake fluid and it polluted the whole system. He was driving when the brakes came on and he couldn't release them. He was lucky. It could have been the other way. He could have stepped on the brakes and have nothing happen.” He shook his head. “That would have been a disaster.” Was he saying that disastrous accidents happen often enough without looking for them? “It's a big job. The system has to be cleaned out. I promised him I would finish tomorrow. When are you leaving for Colorado?”

“Very early in the morning. I want to get there before Ramona does.” He had a clock on his wall and it read eight-thirty. “I ought to go home and go to bed.”

“Okay. I stay here till I finish. Maybe I go to my place so you can get up early.”

I tried to remember the last night he'd spent at his place, but I couldn't. “All right,” I said.

“Pendejo,”
Mimo screamed, cackling at its little joke.

“Can't you teach that parrot another word?” I asked.

“
I'm trying,” the Kid said. “Adios?” he offered, but the parrot didn't bite. It liked the reaction it had been getting to
pendejo.

******

The Kid went back to work on the Dodge's polluted system. I went home and looked up Cloud on the map. It was a small town about fifteen miles south of Thunder Mountain as the bird (or helicopter) flies, and about ten miles from Oro. It was at the edge of the National Forest, quiet enough and close enough that a helicopter flying overhead wouldn't go unnoticed. I got into bed and made an offering to the sleep god that the god did not accept. I chased dreams around my bed for a few hours, then went outside to watch the moon, which was turning the field behind my house into a rippling estuary with a white horse running through the waves. I looked through the V between the trees and the horse came up and let me rub its nose.

“What do you think? Should I go to Cloud?” I asked. The horse neighed and ran away.

I went back inside and slept until the moon came round the bedroom wall of the house and beamed in the window. Then I got up, walked down the hall to the empty room, opened the door, and went in. I looked in the closet and saw nothing but a charred and crinkly reminder of death. A tree branch scratched at the skylight. The moon shone in, turning the room the color of ghosts. I couldn't exactly see them, but I knew they were there: the ghosts of the family that had once farmed this property, the ghost of Joni Barker, the ghost of Tom Hogue, Joe's ghost. One day mine would be hanging out here, too, unless the place got torn down or had occupants that were too busy to notice. The dead have their own language. One message they send is to look out for the living.

Even in a roomful of ghosts, Joe's stood out. “Why are you going?” it asked.

“I do this kind of stuff because you didn't,” I replied.

“That doesn't mean you have to pursue every suspect and face down every challenge,” the ghost replied.

“When you choose a path you have to follow that path until it ends, don't you?”

“Sometimes the path forks and you can take a different direction,” the ghost said.

“I haven't reached that point yet.”

“Then go for it,” said the ghost.

There was no use trying to sleep after that, so I loaded my thirty-eight, put my listening device in my backpack, got in the Nissan, and let the moon guide me to Colorado.

23

S
INCE A GUN
in a glove compartment or a backpack is a concealed weapon and illegal in New Mexico, I put the thirty-eight on the floor. There were few cars on the highway; I went at my own speed. No trucks to pass, no motorcycles to pass me, no junkers without turn signals to get in the way. I settled into the rhythm of the road and the four hours went by like a trip to the grocery. The sun was rising as I got to Cloud. A misty film filled the valley. On top of that was a green layer of trees, then dark, hulking mountains and an orange sky shading to a pale green glow. A red
K
inside a red circle lit a convenience store with a surreal light. I pulled in for doughnuts and coffee. The coffee was brewed and black, although it had the taste of instant from the tap. The doughnut I picked had a dark chocolate glaze. The lone clerk seemed relieved that the night shift was just about over and I didn't look like a person who'd be packing a piece.

There was a risk involved in the question I was about to ask. The phone on the counter could be used to call the person I was inquiring about, but most likely the answer would be a message about the line being disconnected. And I wasn't going to locate Jake Sorrell without asking somebody.

“I'm looking for a guy named Jake Sorrell,” I said. “Do you know where he lives?”

The clerk took my money and counted out the change. “Don't know him,” the clerk answered. “I'm new in town.”

I went outside, sat on a milk crate, ate my doughnut, drank my coffee. The morning was cool enough that I could see steam rising from the Styrofoam cup. The air had that early morning freshness that'll lead you to believe you can leave your mark on the day. It was damper than I'm used to and it wasn't just the dew. A front was moving in. Clouds already shadowed the horizon. It was the hour when some go off to work and some go out to hunt. Several trucks passed by with rifles balanced like levels across their rear windows. I threw my cup in the trash, got back in the Nissan, and continued searching for Jake Sorrell.

A few miles further down the road I came across another convenience store, a Diamond Shamrock. This time the clerk was a sleepy woman. I got another cup of muddy coffee and asked again about Jake Sorrell.

“Jake.” She yawned. “Where does he live? On Sagebrush Ridge, I think. Turn left, go down the road a ways. You'll see the sign.”

“Any idea how far ‘a ways' is?”

“
Couple of miles, I think.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I drove ten long miles before I came to the Sagebrush Ridge sign. The letters had been carved into the wood and the lots would probably sell for a hundred grand. It didn't strike me as the place Jake Sorrell called home, but I drove around the winding roads anyway, looking for a brown truck. All I saw were trophy four-by-fours and cedar-shake roofs. Maybe the convenience clerk had been confused, maybe she'd been trying to confuse me. In any case the sun was up, time was passing, Ramona would be on the road, and it was important to get to Jake's before she did.

I figured the people at Forest Sentinels would know where Jake lived, but coaxing that information out of wolf woman might require more powers of persuasion than I possessed. Still, I'd run out of convenience stores and Forest Sentinels seemed like my best bet, so I drove into Oro. The office happened to be open and the person sitting at the desk was a man in his twenties wearing khakis and a cotton shirt. Blond bangs flopped across his forehead.

“I'm a friend of Jake Sorrell's,” I said. “I thought he lived in Sagebrush Ridge, but I drove all around there and it doesn't look like his kind of place.”

“No,” the man smiled, “it's not. Jake lives off Sagebrush Trail. It's a very different neck of the woods. Go back to the highway, go north six miles, and you'll see a small sign on the right that says Sagebrush Trail. There'll be a couple of miles of paved road before it turns to dirt. Keep going and when you get to the big rock, turn left. You can't miss it; Jake's cabin is the only one on the left fork.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Glad to help,” he said.

Finding Sagebrush Trail with his directions was a piece of cake, although the trip into Oro had wasted precious time. The paved road headed west across a green valley where horses grazed. There were a couple of trailers beside the road, some A-frames, and a log cabin. This was the working-class side of the mountain, a pocket of rural poverty in an area of distant beauty that reminded me of my own neighborhood. I had a big city breathing down my neck. These people had big money. The paved road continued for a couple of miles, then entered the foothills, where it became dirt. This, I figured, would be where the plowing stopped in the winter and the mud started in spring. Anyone who lived beyond here would have to make his own arrangements to get in or out in winter. Whatever color Jake's truck was, it would need a large plow. I drove the dirt road trailing a dust parachute behind me, looking for the large rock and wondering what the difference is between a rock and a boulder. A boulder is a detached entity, I decided. You can have a rock face, but not a boulder face. There were several of either (or both) beside the road and in the field, but no roads that led left.