Ill Wind (7 page)

Anna followed the line of buildings till she ran out of shadow. Two junipers framed a picnic table where the hazardous-fuel-removal crew cleaned their saws. She slipped into the protective darkness. Closer now, she could see the gates to the yard. A chain hung loose, its padlock broken or unlocked.

Within the confines of the cyclone fence, equipment clustered like prehistoric creatures at a watering hole. Bones of metal linked with hydraulic cable in place of tendons thrust into the night: the skeletal neck of a crane, the scorpion’s claw of a backhoe, the rounded back of a water truck—one she’d never seen in use though dust from construction was a constant irritation. Easily a million dollars’ worth of machinery brought in to do the work needed for the waterline.

Again came the clank, softer this time and followed by a faint scraping sound. Moving quickly, Anna crossed the tarmac and slipped through the gates. Moonlight caught her, then she was again in shadow, her back against a wheel half again as tall as she.

When heart and breath quit clamoring in her ears, she listened. Concentration revealed sounds always present but seldom noted: the minute scratch of insect feet crossing sand, a whispered avian discussion high in the trees. Nothing unnatural, nothing human. Odd, Anna thought, that “man-made” and “natural” should be considered antithetical.

Time crawled by; the slight adrenaline rush brought on by the act of sneaking faded and she began feeling a bit silly crouched in the darkness chasing what was undoubtedly a wild goose—or at worst a chipmunk who’d decided to build her nest in one of Greeley’s engines.

Probably the last guy out had forgotten to lock the gate. Monday nights Stacy had late shift. He should have checked it but something may have distracted him.

Realizing she’d been taking shallow nervous breaths, Anna filled her lungs. Muscles she hadn’t known she was clenching relaxed and she felt her shoulders drop. Expelling a sigh to blow away the last of the chindi-borne cobwebs, she switched on her flashlight and stepped out of the shadows.

Weaving through the parked machines, she played the light over each piece of equipment. Nothing stirred, scuttled, or slithered. A backhoe at the end of the enclosure finished the group. Anna shone the light over the yellow paint, up an awkward angle, and into the mud-crusted bucket. Nothing.

The goose could consider itself chased. Anna was going back to bed. Turning to leave, her beam crawled along the oversized tires and across the toe of a boot, a cowboy boot, scuffed and brown like a hundred thousand others in the southwest.

Like a dog chasing cars, she thought. Now what? Indecision passed with a spurt of fear. She stepped into the shadows and moved the flashlight out from her body lest it become a target.

“Come on out and talk to me,” she said. “No sense hiding at this point.”

There was only one way out of the yard that didn’t involve scaling the fence, and Anna waited for the intruder to show himself or bolt for the gate.

The toe twitched. “Come on out,” Anna said reasonably. “You’re not in too much trouble yet.”

Slowly, with a feeble skritching sound, the toe pulled back into darkness. A peculiar shushing followed and Anna realized whoever it was was pulling off the boots.

Little hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle. “Enough’s enough, come out of there.” She walked toward the backhoe’s rear tire, unsnapping the keeper on her .357 as she went.

The intruder was quick. On silent sock feet, he’d retreated into the jungle of blades, tires, and engines. Anna had no intention of following. Backing slowly out of the alley between the metal monoliths, she ducked clear of the moonlight and took her King radio from her belt.

Frieda, bless her, was still monitoring. “We’ve got an intruder in the construction yard,” Anna said clearly. “Get me some backup.”

The radio call stirred the stockinged feet. Distinct rustling from a careless move riveted Anna’s attention on a ditcher parked one space nearer the open gate. Staying well back in the shadow, she waited. Silence grated on her nerves and she listened as much for the approach of help as she did for the movements of the person she tracked.

Scuffling: the tiny sound made her flinch as if a cannon had gone off near her ear. Behind her now, beyond the backhoe; loath to leave the dark for the glaring moonlight, Anna knelt and turned her light between the wheels. A flick of gray; a tail disappearing through the fence. She turned the flashlight off. Time to move. The rodent had tricked her into giving away her position.

Easing to her feet, she tried for quiet but knees and ankles popped like firecrackers in the stillness.

A foot scrape on concrete and a singing of air: a black line with a hook windmilled out from the rear of the ditcher. Moonbeams were sliced, air whistled through the iron. Someone was swinging a heavy chain with an eight-inch tow hook attached to the end.

Reflexively Anna dropped to her belly and rolled under the backhoe as the weighted chain cut through the air, striking the tire where she’d been standing. Iron links whipped around the hard rubber and struck the back of her neck, the links cracking against her temple. Shock registered but not pain.

Wriggling on elbows and knees, Anna worked her way deeper under the belly of the machine.

Footsteps, soft and running, followed the cacophony of chain falling. Whoever it was ran for the gate. Courage returned and Anna scrambled into the open. She was on her feet in time to hear the gate clang shut. Sprinting the twisted path across the pavement, she caught a glimpse of a figure flitting through the shadows of the utility buildings beyond.

When she reached the gate she stopped. The chain had been strung back through and the lock snapped shut.

“Damn it!” Greeley had his own locks and the rangers had not been given access keys. With a jump she reached halfway up the fence and hung there. A double line of barbed wire slanted away from the fence top. She could probably thread her way through with only a modicum of damage but not in time to catch whoever had locked her in.

Smothering an obscenity, she dropped back to earth and unsheathed her radio. Not even Frieda heard her call this time. Leaning against the wire, she caught her breath and let the nervous energy drain away. Fatigue welled up in its place and her legs began to shake. Where the chain had lashed ached and her head felt full of hot sand.

She crossed the asphalt and rested her back against the tread of a D-14 Cat. Her insides shook and her breath was uneven. What scared her wasn’t so much the attack but her lack of readiness to meet it. Like a rookie—or a complacent old-timer—she’d wandered happily into the middle of a crime in progress. And nearly been killed for her stupidity. She’d gotten sloppy, let down her guard.

Mesa Verde was old and slow and visited by the old and slow. Situated on a mesa in the remote southwestern corner of Colorado, approachable only by twenty miles of winding two-lane mountain road, it didn’t get the through traffic of a park on a major highway. No accidental tourists on their way from Soledad to Sing Sing.

Mesa Verde’s dangers had struck Anna more akin to the pitfalls of Peyton Place. Societies, like other living organisms, sometimes fell ill. But she hadn’t expected violence. She had let herself be lulled into a false sense of security.

Scrapes from the chain throbbed and she brought her mind back to the machinery yard. What had the intruder been after? The stuff was too obvious to fence, too big to steal. Something important enough to risk imprisonment. Assault on a federal officer was a felony offense.

The fog in her head was clearing and only a dull ache behind her eyes remained. Anna pushed herself to her feet. Somewhere beneath the backhoe was her flashlight. Before morning’s business stomped over the whole place, she would use it to see if Mr. Brown Boots had left anything behind.

Cigarette butts were scattered beneath the ditcher. Sherlock Holmes might have made hay with such an abundance of clues but Anna didn’t bother. Half the construction workers smoked and, near as she could tell, all of the maintenance men. Marlboro, Camel Lights, Winston, she noted the brands for the sake of feeling useful but they were too common to draw any conclusions.

In the cab of the Caterpillar she found some battered hand tools. Behind the seat of the water truck were a pair of welding gloves and what looked like a gas mask left over from World War II. Unless they were some brand of rare antiques they didn’t look worth stealing.

The D-14 Cat yielded up the answers. Beneath the iron tread Anna found a plastic bag with a trace of white powder in it. She didn’t taste it. She didn’t have to. It was sugar.

Monkeywrenching was the only thing that made any sense. Someone waging guerrilla warfare against the new waterline. There was no telling how much time the intruder had had before Anna interrupted, how much damage had been done. As soon as she was let out of her pen she’d have to call Greeley. The contractor would not be pleased.

Monkeywrenching—sabotage—was an ancient form of combat. Anna respected it in its purest form: David Environmentalist against Goliath Industries. Whether or not this was the case with the waterline, she’d not decided.

Rogelio, her lover in Texas, had thrived on such night action. She’d met many of the ecotage experts he ran with. They didn’t tend to violence against persons. No swinging of chains, crushing of skulls. Brown Boots had a good deal to lose, it would seem. Or a good deal to gain.

Al Stinson cared enough to throw a wrench in the works, a sabot in the machine, but it seemed absurd to risk a twenty-year career when she had legal avenues at her disposal.

Jamie maybe. She had nothing to lose materially and might still be naive enough to believe she wouldn’t be thrown in jail if she were caught.

Somehow Anna couldn’t see either Al or Jamie swinging a tow chain, but then she’d been wrong about people before. Brown boots: Tom Silva was the consummate drugstore cowboy. He probably had a whole closet full of boots. It wasn’t too hard to picture him with a chain. Did he have a grudge against his employer, access to a key?

Again she tried Frieda.

This time there was an answer. “Sorry. I’ve been trying to raise somebody for you,” the dispatcher apologized unnecessarily. “I finally went over to Stacy’s. He’ll be there shortly.”

“Thanks.” Anna called 316, Stacy’s number. “Wake up Maintenance,” she told him. “Find somebody entrusted with Greeley’s master key.”

Minutes ticked by. Anna didn’t mind the wait. The night was dry and not too cold. A slight breeze whispered through the pine trees and she wasn’t lonely. Closing her eyes she tried to recall everything she could about the intruder. One boot toe, brown, and a retreating form in dark clothing. She couldn’t even say for sure if it was male or female, tall or short.

Outfoxed, outmaneuvered, and left penned up for everyone to see, Anna was beginning to get testy about the whole affair.

Boots ringing on pavement brought her head around. Stacy, in uniform, defensive gear, and flat hat, ran across the maintenance yard following the beam of a flashlight.

“Got the key?” she called.

“Got it.”

Anna pushed herself to her feet and waited impatiently while he fumbled with the lock. “Whoever it was had a key,” she remarked.

Stacy didn’t say anything.

“Did you check it before you went off shift?”

“I honestly can’t remember.” Stacy was sullen, it was unlike him. The “honestly” bothered Anna.

The lock came open and he pulled the chain from the gates. Once freed, Anna demanded: “Why didn’t you answer the six-nine line?”

Stacy turned his back to her and locked the gate. “The phone plug got knocked out somehow,” he said flatly.

Rose. Anna didn’t pursue it.

Stacy declined a ride home but Anna swung through the housing loop anyway. As she’d hoped, Frieda’s light was on.

“Dropped by to say thanks,” Anna said when the dispatcher answered the door.

“Likely story. Piedmont thinks you’re here to see him.”

It gladdened Anna’s heart to see the yellow streak that ran to the screen at the sound of her voice. Scooping him up she kissed him between the ears. “Coming home sucks without a cat to meet you at the food dish.”

Because all good dispatchers are mind readers, Frieda brought Anna a glass of wine. Out of deference to regulations, Anna removed her gun before taking the first draught. Piedmont spread himself down the length of her lap, his orange-and-white chin draped over her knees.

Anna related the night’s tale to the dispatcher. Frieda was genuinely interested and Anna too keyed up to shut up and go home.

“Greeley hasn’t made a lot of friends up here,” Frieda said. “The interps are making quite a stink about the disturbance of the mesa. Al eggs them on—not on purpose, but most of them are of an age when passion’s contagious.”

“I’d like to think she’d draw the line at offing a ranger,” Anna grumbled.

Frieda laughed. “Hard to picture. Maybe it’s not ecotage at all. Just pure meanness. Greeley’s own guys aren’t that crazy about him either. He’s a little on the oily side.”

Anna took a long drink of wine and tried to call the construction workers to mind. They all ran together: big men in hard hats. The ache at the base of her skull suggested she pay a little more attention in the future.

“Sorry about the backup screwup. I’m glad you’re not dead. Would I ever have felt a fool,” Frieda said.

“Did you have trouble prying Stacy out of bed?”

“He was up watching television. I tried everyone else before it dawned on me he might have turned his phone off.”

“Got ‘accidentally’ unplugged,” Anna said cattily.

Frieda nodded. This was clearly not a surprise.

It crossed Anna’s mind that had Stacy been the saboteur, he would have had time to run from Maintenance to the housing loop in the ten minutes it had taken Frieda to come knocking on his door. Meyers had the right temperament for a monkeywrencher—passion and a sense of his own importance in the scheme of things. Had he found the lock open when he made his last rounds and felt an opportunist urge to strike a blow for conservation?