Edge of Black (22 page)

Chapter 42

Dillon, Colorado
Dr. Samantha Owens

Carly Skinner barely looked strong enough to lift a piece of paper, much less handle horses and cows. But Sam knew strength was easily disguised. And she figured Skinner’s small hands might come in handy when it came time for birthing. Animals, like human children, sometimes didn’t want to come into the world headfirst, and needed turning in the womb. It was a delicate process, and not one for arms like tree trunks.

No, her size wasn’t the problem. The problem was, Xander and Carly clearly had some history.

When they’d been reminiscing like a couple of school kids at their first reunion, Sam was annoyed to feel her blood begin to boil, because for a moment, she felt utterly invisible.

Her internal radar was singing, and she fought hard against it. She had no claim on Xander. She especially had no claim on the years before she’d met him. She was acting like a child. She knew it, and yet something in her just wouldn’t quite let go.

When Carly had cried, “Tag,” and taken off at a jog, Sam swore she saw Xander tense, as if he was about to sprint after her but then remembered that he had an anchor that would hold him back.

Sam began to gather her things with exaggerated slowness. He grabbed his bag and said, “All right. Let’s go nail this down.”

“You feel free to go on ahead. I’ll catch up. I wouldn’t want to hold you back or anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You look about ready to murder someone.”

Sam hastily rearranged her features.
Great, why don’t you just announce it to the world? Grow up, Sam. You don’t own him. You’ve never even officially defined your relationship.

She was pouting. She could feel the waves of disapproval oozing off her body, and tried to pull it back in.
Stop being silly, Sam.

Xander took a step back and watched her carefully. Then a grin split his face, and he started to laugh.

“You’re jealous, Owens.”

How dare he laugh, like this was all a good joke? She turned her back and picked up her bag, then started to walk past him.

“I’m not. I have no claim on you. You can talk to whomever you please.”

Xander shook his head. “Oh, my dear, darling Sam.” He grabbed her wrist and turned her around so swiftly she felt dizzy, then pulled her close and kissed her, hard, right in front of everyone in the restaurant. It went on and on, and she was vaguely aware of a few good-natured snickers, but she didn’t care, it just felt so good to be in his arms, to have all of his considerable personal sunlight pouring down on her. She
was
jealous, damn it. The thought of him with another woman tore her into pieces.

Damn. She cared for him even more than she thought.

When he let her loose, he had a smug smile on his face. She wanted to hit him, to smack that grin right off, but part of her smiled back. He’d just laid claim to her in public, with a bunch of witnesses. Old girlfriend aside, it was clear who he wanted to be with.

He touched the back of her neck, then rubbed the pad of his thumb in circles on the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist.

“Okay?” he asked, clearly needing to be forgiven.

“Okay,” she answered.

“I’m glad you care,” he whispered.

“I care more than you know,” she answered softly, and he kissed her again, very briefly.

“Let’s go deal with the bovine attack, so we can get on the track to finding this yahoo. Because once this case is put to rest, you and I have some things to talk about.”

* * *

They walked to the police station hand in hand, and Xander told her all about his relationship with the mercurial teenage Carly, who would be interested in him one day and not remember his name the next. She’d always wanted to be an actress, felt drama was her future. But she’d also been deep into science and managed to conquer acting school and a B.A. in molecular biology, then realized she missed Colorado, her life and her friends too much.

“She’s a nice girl, but way too flighty for me. I like a woman with her head on her shoulders. We went on one date, when we were sixteen, and she spent the whole night talking about Reed. She’s always been in love with him. And he’s always had it bad for her. They are perfect together.”

Sam was feeling much comforted, and they finished the quarter-mile walk from the restaurant to the station in companionable silence.

By the time they arrived Carly had already spread her unique brand of pixie dust all over the station. Every man in the place was smiling, and Carly had her back to the door, pinning up rather grotesque pictures of cows in various stages of dissection on a wall-mounted corkboard.

Xander leaned his head in close. “See? It’s not just me. She’s like this with everyone.”

“What’s the divorce rate among your cohort?” she whispered back, and he started to laugh.

“Oh, Sam, Xander Moon, there you are. You guys took forever getting here. Stop off for a quickie on the way?”

McReynolds was lounging against the wall of the conference room, arms crossed on his chest and one cowboy-booted heel flat against the wall. He looked like a very tall, very tan crane. “Lord, Carly. They’re going to think you don’t know your stuff you keep after him like that. Hush and let’s talk about cow innards.”

She blew her husband a kiss and stood in front of the board while Sam and Xander took seats at the table.

Satisfied she had everyone’s attention, she addressed Sam directly.

“Have you ever necropsied a cow?”

Sam shook her head. “I’ve never had the pleasure, no.”

“Damn hard work. Cows have a lot inside of them. The rumen itself takes forever to get through. You have to pick them up out of the fields with a crane. I was in luck, when Gerhardt’s stock went down, the NTSB had their portable crane they call Godzilla here in the mountains dealing with a plane crash. They came and helped us. We were able to use it to move the cows up the hill so we could do the necropsies behind Gerhardt’s barn. Level ground there, a nice wide concrete slab.”

She pointed at the first of the pictures. Sam saw the pasture running downhill, and the dead cows dotting the green grass like gigantic black-and-white spotted mushrooms. It wouldn’t have been an easy feat to move them. She imagined herself, grimly prepared to necropsy the cows, marching off down the hill with purpose, and her respect for Carly upped a notch.

“How many died?” Sam asked.

“Five. Four cows with new calves and a newly weaned winter calf.”

“And your findings were consistent with grass tetany?”

“Honestly, that was the only thing that made sense.” She started moving down the line of photographs. Sam got up to see better. The first was of a cow on its side, then wide open, on its back, its legs splayed wide as if the cow had spun out on some ice and landed upside down.

Carly continued a painstakingly detailed recitation on the dissection, walking Sam through every step with her on the photos. She was a good teacher, though once you got past the rumen, things were pretty self-explanatory. Hearts were hearts and lungs were lungs and guts were guts on mammals.

“See this? The rules on an animal this size are easy—if it’s hollow you lay it open, if it’s solid you cut through it. Once I got into the rumen, I started opening things up, and found there were lesions in the abdominal track, as well as blood in the lungs and more lesions on the snout and tongue. It stood to reason it was something they ate, and their magnesium levels came back as low. We gave the herd supplements in some fresh grain and that seemed to fix the problem. We didn’t lose any more.”

“Are the samples you took still available?”

“I seriously doubt it. We sent it all to the lab at Colorado State, and since it wasn’t a herd disease, something communicable that could spread across the stock, there was no reason to keep it on hand once we made the diagnosis. Tetany is dangerous, but only to the cows that aren’t getting the right nutrients. I take it you think I’m wrong?”

“I do. But damn if I know how to prove it.”

“So what do you think caused their deaths?”

“Abrin. Most likely in their grain. Cows are four to eight times the weight of an average man. The killer would want to be sure the dosage was enough to kill. If it would take down a cow, it would take down a human, without a problem. Personally, I’d have tested on pigs, they’re closer to humans point for point. Cows seem overkill, honestly.”

“Not a lot of pig farms up here, though.”

“Maybe he had a vendetta against Gerhardt,” Xander offered. “Reed, did the old man have any threats against him, or problems with people?”

“You know Gerhardt, Xander Moon. He had problems with everyone. But no one wanted him dead as far as I knew.”

Carly was walking along her line of photographs, thinking aloud. “Gerhardt could have just been a wrong place, wrong time casualty. If the poison was in the grain, anyone who fed those cows could have gotten sick. The dust that comes up when you pour it out of the carrier is bad. Jeez, I fed the stock myself when he was laid up—it could have been me just as easily. Assuming the killer was testing things.” Her hand went to her throat and her china-blue eyes grew wide, and Sam remembered,
drama lessons
.

“What about poachers?” Sam asked.

“You’re thinking about how they could get on his land unseen?” Xander asked.

“Yeah.”

Reed shrugged. “They’re out there, but we don’t have too many problems in this area. We mostly have fools who are fishing without licenses and taking a buck out of season rather than people trying to get at the mountain lions and brown bears without a care. It’s been known to happen, but it’s rare.”

Carly was watching her husband. “What about the bandit, Reed?”

“What bandit?” Xander asked.

Reed stepped himself off the wall. “You haven’t heard about this? Been going on for a couple of years now. Summit, Jefferson counties, pretty widespread. Someone’s been breaking into the cabins and barns and helping themselves to some very nice stuff. Everything from weapons to axes to food. Even a cell phone here and there. We thought it was kids for the longest time, but last month, one of the camp owners got smart and rigged an outdoor camera. We caught the bastard on tape, dressed head to toe in BDUs, sporting a rifle on one shoulder, a coonskin cap and snowshoes. Got him dead to rights coming into the camp, breaking into the cabin and walking out with groceries. Owners were at some kind of party, came home to find they’d been burgled. They called me and since the trail was so fresh, we tried to go after him, but we got nowhere fast. Trail ended at Ridge Road. He must have taken off the snowshoes and hiked along the asphalt for a good ways, because we went up and down the ridge and never got another whiff of him. He hasn’t been spotted since, and we’ve had no new reports.”

“What exactly was he stealing?”

“Tools, supplies, food, you name it.”

“Did he ever hit Gerhardt’s place?”

“You know, come to think of it, he did. Last year. Around the time Gerhardt got sick the first time.”

Sam chewed on her lip. She didn’t believe in coincidences.

“You still have the video, right?”

“Sure. It’s an open case.”

“What are you thinking?” Xander asked.

Sam smiled. “Depends on what he stole. Are we talking tuna fish, or are we talking real supplies?”

Reed went to his desk and pulled out a wide file from the cabinet.

“Let’s see here—it’s mostly food, but when he does take things, it’s always really odd stuff, things that don’t match. The first one was fertilizer, potting soil, metal pipes, gardening supplies. The second was all kinds of food and vitamins. Kids’ vitamins. The third was weapons, the fourth he took the mufflers from the cars, and a whole wad of stuff from the garage—nails and tacks and PVC. The list goes on and on and on. He’s like our very own barefoot bandit. We haven’t decided if he’s harmless or not.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Xander. “I’m going to vote for not. None of those things sound random to me. That’s all the makings to cultivate a crop of rosary peas, and build some delivery vehicles.”

Xander nodded. “Among other things.”

Reed’s phone began to squawk. He apologized and went to answer it. Carly followed him.

Sam and Xander sat down together at the table.

“I can just see Carly, marching off down that hill to necropsy the cow.”

“She’s very determined,” Xander said carefully, unsure of whether Sam was being serious or flip.

“Takes a special woman to treat animals,” she offered. Olive branch. Carly may have looked like a piece of fluff, but she was obviously smart, and obviously in love with her husband. Sam stowed her animosity and thought aloud about the bandit.

“I bet he has a greenhouse. That’s how he’s been growing the rosary peas. They need warmth. A hothouse would work just fine for that, especially up here with all the sun. Could be solar, or on a geothermal area—you’ve got lots of those pockets this high in the mountains.”

“How do you know that?”

She smiled at him. “Ledbetter’s book. It was one of the tricks they used for keeping themselves warm without having to use fire, since the smoke is a dead giveaway if you’re trying to stay invisible. They build their camps near a natural geothermal and pipe the hot water in.”

“Whoever is doing this was in the Mountain Blue and Gray when she was.”

“I agree. And growing rosary peas is hardly illegal, so anyone who happened upon it thinking it might be a marijuana operation would be sadly surprised. If he’s stealing the materials, he’s trying to stay off the radar. So there will be no records of him buying the makings.”

“You’re right. He’s totally off grid.”

“So it’s time to visit your friend and see if he can identify the people in the picture.”

Xander nodded. “Let’s go then.”

Reed and Carly came out of his office. “Man, I’m sorry, I gotta run. Accident up in Breckenridge, I’m gonna take Carly up there. They want someone from ski patrol. You have what you need?”

“We do. We’re heading up to Crawfords’ Ranch. Will is in town. When we push him with this new information, he might share more about what’s going down. He didn’t give me the whole story last time we talked.”