- Hard Fall (2 page)
Authors: James Buchanan
"Any particular reason you're concerned? You okay with him there?" That little vision of the rattlesnake came back, shaking all the warning bells.
"Ah, we're fine. Kabe's a good kid. He went to prison for a prank." Free-climbing a federally-owned dam with enough E
in your pack to fly a football team ranked slightly higher than 12
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a prank in my book ... possession with intent to distribute. It also qualified as damn stupid. She minimized, like family tends to, "It was a mistake. And he's doing good here. But, there's a few of the good ol' boys around who think, well, that they can get some shine on their buckle..."
"Getting hassled is he?"
"Some. Not big." More minimizing. My guess, any loser who thought they needed a bit of bank in taking on an ex-con was pushing his buttons to see if Kabe'd bite. "Most of them won't press it 'cause T's around. But you know these guys.
We were thinking that maybe if they heard Joe Peterson was looking out after him, they might think twice before starting something."
I didn't owe the Hardings anything ... and I owed 'em everything. That's the way life works up here. "I could manage it."
"We owe you."
"No you don't." Please don't tell me I'm doing something special. All I wanted was an excuse to drive by the Harding Ranch and take a gander at lean, brown and sexy. "Heck, keeping the peace is what I do."
"You're a good kid, Joe. How come some nice girl hasn't just snatched you up yet?" She teased. "I hear Jessie Dane thinks highly of you."
"She's a sweet girl." I tried damn hard not to gag on that statement. "Don't think she'd really be able to fit in my kinda life."
"You keep thinking like that, you're going to find yourself a lonely old man."
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"Someday. Just haven't found the right person yet."
That was a few days back, and it hadn't been any skin off my teeth to make it 'round like I promised—near every day.
So that's why I was leaning against the grill of my patrol car, watching lean and sexy screw up feeding the stock. Long way
'round to get back to here, but I got to start it somewhere.
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Now I'd like to say that I was there because I realized he was the one and only for me, or I'd overcome my inhibitions and was gonna hit him up for a date at the local Ward's annual pancake breakfast, or even just I was hoping for a blow job. Nope, it was day three of my unofficial babysitting gig.
The call had come in.
A German tourist and his wife went off for a bit of free climbing on private land. One Kabe Varghese, closest thing to an owner of the Harding place, told them they could camp.
Pretty in line with what T would do. He and Sandy, well, you seem decent and promise to pack your trash, they'd give you a few days' privileges.
There's some pretty impressive walls on the Harding property. Some vertical faces that'd make a boulderer cream his jeans. 'Cause T knows me, well, the volunteer canyon rescue squad has access to some of the hairier spots. Once a month we meet up—a rag-tag group of volunteer firefighters, off-duty law enforcement, some National Parks staffers, plus a few adrenaline junkies. Breakfast at T's then we spend the rest of the day taking controlled nose-dives off cliffs while attached to ropes.
This pair, they'd come to camp and climb. Kabe, who I was beginning to think of as my personal piece of eye-candy, had ridden up partway with them. From what Jessup, T's main hand, said, Kabe wanted some time off by himself without 15
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everyone looking over his shoulder, or one big country cop nosing around. A tent on the back forty ... I guess you take what you can get when you need to get away. The Good Lord knows I often just take what I can get.
The couple showed as Kabe was loading up the ATV for an anticipated two days of roughing it. All kitted out and with high-tech mountain bikes, they'd followed his four-wheeler along the trail to a parting point. Nice and quiet, they'd bunked down miles apart from each other for a night on the mountain. Morning, like it does darn near every day 'round here, broke fresh and full of God's smile.
And that's where everyone's stories started going to hell.
Little before nine, the call'd come in from the Harding Ranch. Kabe Varghese, according to dispatch, reported that someone had fallen and Noreen put out the word. I'd had barely enough time running out of the house to grab my climbing gear and make it to Old Man Harding's by ten. Fred from the NPS, another one of the canyon rescue squad, was headed over. He couldn't climb though ... messed up his hand a week back.
Rodrigo and Jessup had been called in to California on a wildfire detail. Jack's wife was in Salt Lake on a retreat, so he had their seven kids. I told him to sit on it. If we needed him, he wasn't a far piece up the road and we could call. The rest hadn't been reached yet. Noreen kept working on it for me.
I'd set it up so Kabe'd meet whoever I could round up at the ranch and lead us back to the scene.
Rickland, who had a chopper and a permit for those aerial tours through Bryce Canyon, took his bird up and sighted off 16
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the scene. In between Noreen's updates from Kabe, Rickland's daughter fed me the details of terrain, weather and layout over the radio as I drove up the mountain. A female victim lay a good seventy plus feet down from the rim where a ledge jutted along the canyon wall. No movement when the helicopter did its passes. Head, from what Rickland could see, twisted at an angle, and the flattening of the chest and skull, wide staring eyes, didn't look good. The whole bowed back and folded over on herself added another layer of confirmation.
From what it sounded like, this was a body recovery, not a rescue. With that kinda damage, if she'd survived the fall, the wait while we were notified probably finished her off. I didn't want to think it was hopeless. There's always a little voice saying
maybe
in the back of my mind and whispering
rush
,
'cause it's amazing what the human body can tolerate. Still, I didn't bust any speed limits getting out there.
So far I was the only sworn officer to show. Everyone else was on their way to our little party, mine and Kabe's. Suited me enough to have a little time just to be near him, in another twenty minutes or less we'd be overrun. I waited, mentally sorted through the things that needed sorting, and watched Kabe fight with a hay bale, trying to break it for the horses, and I smiled.
On days like this, take your humor where you find it. Any good hand knew that you flaked a sheaf off, shook out the dust and then tossed it in the feeder. And a little was always better than a lot at one go. Yeah, you had to feed more often, 17
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but a working animal foundering on too much food—not something any ranch needed to deal with.
"You might want to break that into a couple flakes." For that I got a dirty look. Carlos, T's other full-time hand, just watched like he thought Kabe might shoot all the horses and blame it on him. I shrugged. "Just saying." At least Kabe worked. Couldn't fault him there. Didn't need to be told, just jumped in when he saw Carlos dragging over the hay.
"'Cause you know all about horses?" Boy, that tone was snide. "Or you just like hassling me, just because?"
Attitude rolled off him like the delicious smell of his skin under the sun. I couldn't blame him much. "Maybe." What it had to look like: big, beefy cop coming 'round every day, checking up. The con in him likely figured I was fishing for an excuse to bust him back. Not like there weren't guys who'd do that.
Me, I just wanted to bust him, bareback, tied to a pipe fence with his rear in the air and those expensive jeans around his ankles. Hey, if I'm going for fantasy, might as well go whole hog.
Carlos copped a gap tooth grin and spit his chaw. Nasty habit, but the man was older than dirt, so you couldn't tell him nothing. Worked for T's pa before he worked for T. Carlos drawled out, "Joe knows a bit about horses."
Kabe snorted and tossed another solid quarter bale into the feeder. It landed with a ringing chung of hollow pipe and lodged in the slot. "Shit!" The curse grated with anger and humiliation. No one wanted someone else to be right ... least of all a cop.
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God saved me from a pissing contest with the crunch of rocks on the dirt road. Small miracles are how He shows us He loves us. I looked over my shoulder and down the way.
Two four-wheel drives headed up the drive. One vehicle, well if you washed it it'd be white with a bright green stripe along the side ... that'd be Fred with the law enforcement ranger he said he'd bring; Smokey the Bear hats and all. The second vehicle, an old Toyota Land Cruiser, didn't look like anything special, but I knew it. Belonged to Ramon Piestewa, the local Bureau of Land Management contact. I had to give myself grief over the fact that I can pronounce a Hopi surname and not figure out Kabe's. Guess it's just a function of where I grew up.
Lots of agencies for our little party, but the general locale where the fall occurred could have been anywhere near three jurisdictions. Part of the Harding Ranch was private land, some of it leased from BLM, and many of the bluffs overlooked the National Park Service territory. No matter who eventually got the case, I would play nice since my patrol car wouldn't ever make it back where we need to go. I needed a ride out ... and, more important, one back.
Fred clambered out of the NPS pickup, hand still in a brace, and pushed the broad brim of his hat up. A wry smile flashed as he raised the black-wrapped wrist in mock salute.
"Hey, Joe." He ambled over, waving at the other park service employee. "This here's Nadia Slokum, one of our law enforcement rangers."
"Howdy." Nadia reminded me of a polecat. Small, sleek and ornery as all get out. The kind of woman who would smile 19
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sweetly as she ripped your arm out of your socket and beat ya with it. "Joe Peterson, Garfield County Sheriff." I held out my hand, prepared to yank it back if she seemed about to bite it off. "Don't reckon we've met before."
"Naw." The grip that took mine was rock solid and full of work calluses. Up close, enough gray streaked her hair to put her probably well past forty. Hard to tell though with people who lived their life outdoors; sun made them older, fresh air kept them younger than most city folk. "Transferred in from Everglades, worked the Trace, Alcatraz and Andersonville before that." NPS people always prefaced who they were by where in the system they'd been. "Certainly, not as flat as I'm used to." She snorted as she dropped the shake. It came off efficient, not rushed. "Spent the first few days feeling like I was walking on a slant. Since I hadn't tied one on and didn't run a fever, figured it must have been altitude sickness.
Didn't realize how high it is up here."
I always liked people who copped to being human. "Yeah, elevation'll get to you if you ain't prepared." I smiled and pushed the dust around with my heel. "Doesn't usually last more than a couple days."
The whiny protest of a misused door screeched across the morning. All of us, even the stock, swung our heads to stare as Ramon clambered out of his truck. Folding the bill of his BLM cap in his hand like a taco shell, he adjusted the angle to shade his eyes. I swear he'd been wearing the same damn cap since I'd met him years back. "So who gets to claim it?"
Trust ol' Ramon to bring it up in that halting, rolling take on English he had.
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"Little early to be arguing about jurisdiction," Fred scratched under the edge of his brace, "don't you think?"
"Never too early to establish what protocol governs."
Ramon acted like it meant nothing to him. All of us, even the new gal, could spot what utter hooey that act was. BLM had the most acreage and the fewest personnel 'round these parts. They always wanted to land on top of the pile. Ramon cottoned to the top of the top, and sometimes didn't much care how he got there.
Politics ... get more than two people together and it becomes a problem.
"Well, I can cut it short." There's problems and then there's problems. I was never much for messing in ol'
Ramon's head. "I figure there's three of you and only one of me ... we'll let the Fed control until we know for sure. Plus one of y'all has to give me a ride in, so I figure I'm the beggar here."
That earned me snorts all around. "Okay then." Nadia's drawl held a flavor real similar but not at all like any of those around her. "Well, then you're riding with BLM." It took me a hair to realize she didn't know Ramon's name. "I don't think we could squeeze you in between the two of us." That once up and down I got was of someone who appreciates what she sees but didn't have any compunctions to go play with it.
"How many people you got in those shoulders, boy?" Suited me fine. After all, I worked out to be noticed. Had to take what came under those circumstances ... so long as she didn't try and get my phone number.
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Ramon sniffed like an old woman. "Guess that means I got to clean out my seats. Who's this Kabe character who brought the news out? He coming too?"
"Lest you want to be driving in circles." I jerked my chin toward where Kabe fought with breaking that wayward feed out of the chute not a few feet away. He'd crawled up on the back to try and get at it. "Kabe, you gotta take us back. You figure you can find it?"
His grunt called me stupid, though his words were polite enough. "Pretty sure I can." Hopping off the lip of the feeder, he jammed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. Little trickles of sweat, visible through his open shirt front, etched the line of his collar and ran along his jaw.
