Savages nd-32 Read online

  3

  JAKE RUNYON

  It started out as just another routine assignment.

  Some operatives would consider it dull routine-deliver a subpoena to a reluctant witness in a robbery-assault case-but it was the kind he liked because it entailed a road trip. He felt better when he was on the move. Didn’t matter where he went or why. Driving, moving, energized him, gave him a measure of peace that he seldom found when he was caught between four walls.

  The road trip in this case would be manageable in one long day if the timing were right, but he had other agency business to take care of that Friday and he couldn’t get out of the city until early afternoon. The subpoena could have waited until Monday for delivery, but he never felt right about putting off a job when he had the opportunity to do it immediately-the more so when there was a static weekend to be gotten through. As it was, he’d stay over in a motel somewhere around Gray’s Landing. The four-hour run back to San Francisco would use up most of Saturday morning and he could stretch the day out with a detour or two.

  This Saturday was the first in weeks he hadn’t been able to fill up with work. Busy summer, lots of overtime-also just the way he liked it. What he didn’t like was the reason behind the heavy workload. He didn’t know Bill or his wife very well, Kerry hardly at all, but the news of her breast cancer had slammed him a little because of Colleen. Ugly damn coincidence. He knew what they were going through, both of them. Breast tumor, surgery, radiation-that was bad, but at least it was the curable kind of cancer with a high survival rate. Ovarian cancer, the kind Colleen had had, was a death sentence. Six months of pain and fading hopes and not-so-quiet desperation before she was finally, mercifully gone. But it would never be over for him. He would continue to live with the suffering, hers and his both, every day and every night until he drew his last breath. He hoped to God, if there was a God, that Bill wouldn’t have to do the same.

  During those terrible months of watching Colleen die, Runyon had developed the ability to shut himself down inside without losing awareness-a kind of catlike patience that kept external forces beyond his control from touching him, kept the pain and the memories more or less at bay. He did that now, as he crept across the Bay Bridge. Friday traffic was already at a crawl, and pretty much stayed that way up Highway 80 and across the Carquinez Bridge. More than an hour before it cleared enough for him to run at the speed limit; it could have been ten hours and it wouldn’t have affected him any differently.

  He drove at a steady sixty-five up 80 to the 505 connector and then due north on Highway 5. Fifteen degrees hotter by the time he passed Willows, even though it was well after five o’clock by then. Late September heat, dry and dusty, shimmering on the asphalt and across the flat brown farm country that stretched all the way to Red Bluff.

  Gray’s Landing was some twelve miles south of Red Bluff. Agricultural area: olives, almonds, walnuts, peaches. Cattle and sheep ranching. That was all he knew about it. When he’d first moved down from Seattle two years ago, he’d spent a lot of time familiarizing himself with San Francisco and the other Bay Area cities, traveling some of the main arteries and back roads that threaded the rural areas of northern California. The theory being that the better a man knew the area he was working in, the better he could do his job. He’d been to Red Bluff and Redding and some of the other towns in Tehama and Glenn and Butte counties, but he’d missed Gray’s Landing. You couldn’t cover every bit of ground within a couple of thousand square miles. Eventually, maybe, but not in only two years.

  He took the first exit, drove a half mile or so through orchards and a big new sprawl of a shopping center. Turned into the first service station he saw for gas and information. He got the gas all right, but the big red-haired attendant couldn’t tell him where Old Stage Road was. No surprise; the kid looked as if he might have to check his driver’s license if somebody asked him his name. One stoplight beyond the station was a no-frills motel with an attached coffee shop. Runyon got everything he needed there. The clerk gave him a room key and easy-to-follow directions to Old Stage Road. He stayed in the room long enough to deposit his overnight bag, wash up, and change his shirt. Stayed in the coffee shop long enough to drink a sweaty glass of iced tea. Then he got back into the overheated Ford and followed the road through the center of Gray’s Landing.

  Small farm town, the kind that still exists in backwater sections of California-the kind that makes you think you’ve passed through a time warp and come out fifty years in the past. Old buildings, their age-worn surfaces softened by the mellow gold evening light-some of Spanish-style adobe brick, others of wood with false fronts, the tallest an art deco movie theater whose marquee proclaimed that it was now the home of the First Pentecostal Church of Gray’s Landing. Several storefronts were empty, victims of the new shopping center and America’s fixation with big-box consumerism. There wasn’t much traffic at this time of evening; the streets and sidewalks had an air of desertion, like a backlot film set that was no longer used.

  There’d been a big fire in the town recently. At the far end of Main, beyond a heat-seared park with droopy shade trees and a central bandstand, he passed the blackened remains of a school. Big blaze that had gutted most of the buildings and left the entire block-square lot looking like a bombed-out battlefield.

  Baseball and soccer fields, small complex of medicaldental offices, and then he was in open country again. After half a mile he came to an intersection; he turned right, drove another half mile, and when he turned right again he was on Old Stage Road. More orchards interspersed with hay fields and dry brown grassland, spotted with humps of bare rock and oak and madrone trees. Farm roads and farm buildings scattered here and there. Slat and barbed-wire fences. Cattle, sheep, horses, a couple of grazing donkeys. All of it bore the parched look of a hot, dry summer.

  The sun was low on the horizon to the west, spilling the beginnings of a fiery sunset into the sky, when he found the place he was looking for. Black letters on a weathered sign above the entrance to a paved access road read: Belsize Farm. He turned in, followed the road through groves of walnut trees, over a rise, down into a long hollow. The farm buildings were spread out there, along the willow-shaded bank of a creek-farmhouse, large barn, smaller barn, two other outbuildings, chicken coop, vegetable garden. The scorch of summer lay over the farm, too; it all had the same wilted aspect as the stalks in the garden, the climbing roses along the house porch.

  A dust-streaked pickup truck was parked in the farmyard, the only vehicle other than a tractor in sight. Runyon pulled up next to it, got out into a sticky silence. No dogs barking, no people sounds. Even the chickens in the coop were quiet. Seemed a little odd that nobody had come out by now. In the near-dusk stillness, a car approaching could be heard a long way off.

  He waited a few seconds longer, then climbed the porch steps. There was an old-fashioned bell push on the jamb next to the door; he thumbed it, listened to a hollow ringing inside. It didn’t bring anybody.

  He tried the bell again. Then he called out, loud, “Hello the house! Anybody home?”

  The stillness remained unbroken.

  The pickup indicated somebody was here-if not Jerry Belsize, then one or both of his parents. Runyon went around the house to the rear. A light burned palely in one window, but there didn’t seem to be much point in looking in. When he passed the wire-enclosed chicken run, one of the hens began squawking and disappeared inside the henhouse. There should’ve been farm-animal sounds, too-cows, horses-but he couldn’t hear any. It was so quiet his steps made sharp little crunching sounds on the dry grass.

  Too quiet. It felt strange to him now, as if the entire farm were holding its collective breath.

  He crossed toward the smaller of the barns. Much of the daylight had gone; the sunset colors were pale fast-fading streaks, like squiggle marks made with invisible ink. Shadows lay long around the outbuildings, heavy among the trees that drooped over the stream. Nothing moved anywhere within the range of his vision.
/>   The tractor stood near the closed barn doors. He stepped past it, tugged one door half-open, looked in at stacks of baled hay shrouded in gloom, and called out again. All that got him was a faint echo of his own voice. He closed the door, moved on to the larger barn. The doors there stood partially open. He widened the gap and leaned in. Another hail brought a stirring somewhere at the rear, then the faint nicker of a horse. That was all.

  There was nobody at any of the other outbuildings, nobody over by the creek. Runyon was on cold alert by then. Something wrong here. He could feel it, like an electrical charge that acted on his nerve endings. Didn’t like it because he had no idea of its cause or effect. He went to the Ford, unlocked the glove compartment, took out a flashlight and his. 357 Magnum in its carry holster. He clipped the holster to his belt under the left tail of his jacket. While he was doing that he scanned the property, listening. Nothing had changed anywhere. The tableau remained breathlessly still.

  He felt exposed now, even though nearly all the daylight had evaporated and dusk lay gray-black over everything in sight. His shoulders hunched as he moved around the side of the house, tension building in him as it always did when he found himself in a potentially dangerous situation. This time he lifted up on his toes to look through the lighted window. Big old-fashioned kitchen. Empty. He walked around to the back entrance. The screen door was partially ajar, the wood door behind it wide open. He eased the screen open, called out, waited through ten seconds of nothing, and stepped cautiously inside.

  Cooking smells assailed him. Two pots sat on the stove top, the burners under them turned off. In an alcove beyond the window, two places had been set at a Formica-topped table; there was food on the plates, utensils and napkins awry beside them as if they had been hurriedly tossed down. The two chairs there were pulled out at angles from the tables. Runyon went to the stove. One of the pots contained a meat stew, the other water in which something had been boiled; both were still warm.

  He took a quick turn through the other rooms. A couple of windows were open to let air in and the day’s heat out, but there was no sign of the Belsizes or of any disturbance. Back to the kitchen. Two people interrupted while they were eating, suddenly or urgently enough to send them rushing out into a second vehicle and away from the farm. Not long before his arrival; he must have just missed them. In which case he was trespassing and the smart thing to do was get the hell out of here. None of his business. He could always come back in the morning with the subpoena.

  But the feeling of wrongness persisted as he stepped outside again. Cop’s instincts, seldom wrong in twenty-plus years. Instead of going to the car, he retraced his earlier path along the chicken run to the henhouse. A quick look inside with the flashlight revealed a bunch of hens and nothing else. The startled noises they made followed him across to the hay barn. He spent half a minute in there, shining the light over the dirt floor and the stacked bales.

  The larger barn’s cavernous interior was spotted with farm equipment, a stack of lumber, odds and ends. At the far end were a pair of doors, one open and the other closed. The closed one would lead to the stable where he’d heard the horse earlier. The open one.. tack room, probably. He moved in that direction, playing the light in front of him, his right hand on the butt of his weapon.

  When he neared the door he pulled up short, listening. Faint sound from somewhere close by. It took him a few seconds to identify it: a kind of slow, rhythmic creaking. The tack room? He went ahead again, heel and toe until he reached the tack room door. It opened inward; he shoved it wide, at the same time swinging the flash beam inside. What it picked out of the darkness froze him, made him blink and stare.

  In the middle of the room a man hung suspended from a rope looped over a thick crossbeam.

  Runyon had seen a lot of death in his time, all kinds, but none quite like this. The unexpectedness, the incongruity, threw him off balance. The hanged man was Latino, slight, fortyish, wearing Levi’s and a khaki workshirt. His lined face was the color of blackened liver, tongue showing at one mouth corner, eyes popped and reflecting the glare like rounds of glass. Wound on the side of his head, black with drying blood. The rope, a thick hemp stretched taut and tied off around a ring in the wall, bit so deeply into his flesh that it was only partially visible below the chin. A vagrant breeze through an open sidewall window stirred the body just enough to cause the creaking.

  He swept the light off the dead man, around the narrow room, down across the floor. No signs of a struggle, nothing disturbed. But it wasn’t a suicide; there was nothing in the vicinity that the man could have stepped or jumped off of. He’d been strung up. Murdered.

  Runyon entered the room long enough to touch the back of one dangling hand. Still warm. Not dead long. Then he backed out of the doorway, fanning the beam back through the barn until it picked out the open entrance doors. He held it there and followed the long lighted path, getting his cell phone out to call 911 as he went.

  As he neared the doors, his ears picked up a rumbling motor noise. Car coming on the farm road. He quickened his pace. The sidespill from the oncoming headlights brightened the darkness out there; he switched off the torch as he came into the opening.

  Movement behind him. He sensed rather than heard it, and his reaction was instinctive and immediate. He started to turn, started to duck away, started to drop both the flash and the cell so he could defend himself. But there wasn’t enough time for any of it.

  Something whipped out of the darkness, exploded against the side of his head, and knocked him cockeyed.

  4

  JAKE RUNYON

  He was down on all fours, crawling around in the dirt, trying to get up. At first he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. Then he did, in a disjointed, urgent way, but he couldn’t do anything about it because he couldn’t stand up. His legs and arms felt like bloated things made of rubber. Pain pulsed and hammered through his skull. He couldn’t see straight, couldn’t make his thoughts connect. He kept on trying to stand up and each time he fell down again.

  His ears worked all right-they were the only part of him that seemed to be functioning. Sounds all around him, engulfing him. Footsteps running away, car engine, raised voices, footsteps running toward him. He fumbled for the Magnum, couldn’t find it. Tried to get up and fell down. He stayed down on all fours this time, shaking his head like a dog. His eyes were open, but all he could see was blurred images and flashes of light mixed with dark. Nausea boiled in his stomach. He never puked, he hated to puke-he leaned forward on his elbows and puked.

  More voices, or the same voices, close by. Sudden stabbing light in his eyes, blinding him. He twisted his head away from it, and the motion brought a new eruption of pain. He flopped over on his side. Wetness ran along his cheek, trickled into the corner of his mouth. Blood.

  “Who is he?”

  “Never saw him before.”

  “Oh, my Lord, look at his head!”

  “Somebody must’ve hit him… board there’s got blood on it.”

  “… Jerry?”

  “His car’s not here.”

  Words clogged in Runyon’s throat; he spit out some of them like gobs of phlegm. “… Dead man… police…”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Can’t understand him.”

  “John, look there, under his coat… he has a gun!”

  “Christ! Here, hold the flashlight.”

  Hands on him, fumbling at his waist. First rule of law enforcement: Never let anybody take your weapon. He fought the hands, or tried to. Too strong. His numb fingers scrabbled over the empty holster. Brains scrambled, unarmed, helpless.

  “What’s he doing here? What happened to him?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Don’t snap at me, John.”

  More words came out of Runyon’s throat. “… Dead man… hanging…”

  “Did you hear that? ‘Dead man’! Oh, my God-Jerry!”

  “Jerry’s not here. You didn’t
see his car, did you?”

  “… Tack room…”

  “John?”

  “I heard it. Listen, he needs a doctor. You go in the house, call nine-eleven, tell them to send deputies and an ambulance. I’ll check the tack room.”

  “You be careful.”

  “Go on, Dora; hurry.”

  The light went away. So did running steps in two directions. Runyon pulled one knee under him. The bloated, rubbery feeling was starting to go away. Tingling sensation in his hands now. He reached up to swab at the wetness on his cheek, probe along the side of his head. Soft spot on the temple, blood-wet. Puffed ear. All of that registered without meaning or implication.

  He lifted his head and shook it again. When the bright pain subsided this time, he could see a little more clearly. Shapes swam through his vision, settled, and he was looking at one of the open barn doors. He crawled toward it, got both hands on the edge, found the strength to lift himself along the door edge until he was upright. He clung there, blinking, looking into the barn, waiting for the light to come back.

  Whoever had blindsided him had been hiding near the doors, behind the stack of lumber. Long gone now. Whose voices? John and Dora-the Belsizes, Jerry’s parents, returned home. He could remember and reason that much. He tried to put more of it together. Nothing else would come. Pain pulsed up sharp again; his head felt like a firebox.

  The flash beam reappeared, came bobbing toward him. Picked him out and held on him from a short distance away. He shut his eyes tight against the glare.

  “You just stand there, mister. I still got that gun of yours.” Then, angrily, “Who did that to Manuel? You?”

  He tried to say no. All that came out was a grunt.

  “Who, then? Same one busted your head?”

  Another grunt. Affirmative.