Page 25 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

25.

Colter Shaw had with him his phone.

And his notebook.

And his three-hundred-dollar fountain pen.

One more thing.

His slim Glock 42, a six-shot (seven, with one in the chamber). The caliber was .380, a round that was like a stubby version of a nine-millimeter. Coming to Hinowah at Dorion’s request, he had believed his main mission—to find a missing SUV—would not require a weapon.

One shovel attack and an improvised explosive device later, he knew it was time to arm up.

The weapon sat high inside the waistband on his right hip.

Per Ashton:

Never cross-draw a weapon. It will sweep along unintended targets.

Going seventy miles per hour, he motored the Yamaha past the bridge where he’d had the run-in with Bear.

A glance to the west, wondering if he’d see the man.

No sign of him.

Again, the attack piqued his curiosity. What was the point? Bear didn’t seem like the sort to be a stranger to firearms, and if he had wanted Shaw dead it would not have been a difficult conclusion to arrange.

But a shovel—and risking a beating?

There had to be some reason other than shooing off a trespasser.

Maybe simple psychosis. Growing up with Ashton Shaw, Colter had learned that many words and actions that seem bizarre, and dangerous, to the normal world made perfect sense to those who lived with a turbulent, unstable mind.

Then the man and his issues were gone. He arrived in Fort Pleasant, which passed for a city in this part of the state, with about forty thousand souls. To his left the broad floodplain filled to the brim as the Never Summer River joined its cousin, the Little Silver. The water was flowing into some parts of the city and environs, yes, but it appeared that damage would be minimal. The defense included solid lines of sandbags, which were holding against a two- or three-foot swell.

Why divert all major resources to prevent minor damage here when Hinowah’s very existence was threatened?

The continuing mystery.

The GPS now sent him west, away from the water, and soon he came to the Windermere Development, about a hundred acres of single-family homes—big ones—and several luxury apartment buildings of ten stories, skyscrapers in this area.

A billboard in front of a large plain filled with sparse grass and ground cover proclaimed that this acreage would be a “Beautiful and Challenging” Eighteen-Hole Golf Course . He wondered if the promoters realized that the quotation marks might be taken as sardonic, suggesting that the course would be just the opposite. Presently it looked like one big sand trap, but then Shaw had once tackled a reward job in Palm Springs, which was even more desert than this and yet boasted a number of lush, verdant courses. The ground was waiting to blossom. It just needed one thing.

Water.

The substance of the hour today.

Some of the houses in Windermere had been sold, but most were still under construction, with crews nailing up Sheetrock, lifting prefabricated roofs onto frames with cranes, drilling wells and running utility lines, mostly underground. Shaw passed one house whose miniature front-yard billboard reported that it would feature 5,244 feet with seven bedrooms and thirteen baths. The garage could hold five full-size vehicles.

Spacious, certainly. But still claustrophobic for a Restless Man.

He circled the development twice, looking for signs that there’d been blasting to prepare the foundations. He saw no evidence of this, though if the developer, Theo Gabris, was behind a plot to flood Hinowah, he would surely have used explosives from a source different from his own project.

No problem with directions to his destination. Dozens of signs in bold white type read Sales Office , with helpful arrows acting as power-free GPS directions.

He slowed the Yamaha and drove carefully over the shiny rails of train tracks, before steering into the parking lot of the sales office.

Outside, under a porch roof, he brushed the rain off his jacket and slicker pants and shook his baseball hat. Stepping inside, he smiled at a young attractive receptionist. Her black hair was done up high on her head, the way a beauty pageant contestant’s might be—if there still were beauty pageants. Shaw had no idea.

“Morning. I’m Carter Stone. I called earlier.”

“Yessir, Mr. Stone. One minute.” She hit an intercom. “Sir?”

A gruff voice asked, “What is it?”

She told him his appointment had arrived. Now the tone softened. “Ah good. Show him in.”

She had been given permission to enter, but still she knocked on the double door in the back of the office, and stood still, with a posture that radiated uncertainty.

“Come in!”

The young woman opened the door and nodded for Shaw to precede her.

Theo Gabris was larger than life. The two hundred and thirty- or forty-pound man rose, setting down a cigar he’d been chomping on. There was no smell of smoke in the air, so Shaw guessed the pacifier was a compromise to the state’s smoking ban, which he would surely resent.

He wore a well-tailored suit that had to be expensive, and a Rolex watch. The cuffs of his starched white shirt were affixed with—most likely—real gold links. The office, though, was modest—functional and cluttered with scores of files and thousands of sheets of paper. Shaw recalled the man’s main office was in San Francisco on Nob Hill.

The most elite ’hood in the City by the Bay.

He was, Shaw guessed, a man who enjoyed nice things in life but when it came to work, he wanted to stay focused. He’d known salespeople like him; closing the Deal was a sacred quest.

The receptionist recited, “Would you like something to drink, sir? Coffee? Water?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

She retreated and Shaw walked into the office. “Carter Stone,” he said, extending his hand, which was wholly enveloped by the developer’s huge meaty digits. He was balding and had a ruddy complexion. Shaw wondered how he’d come by a tan; June was a bit early for such a deep tone in Northern California, but then again he was a real estate developer with three-thousand-dollar cuffs. Baja was not that far away, and California had the second highest level of private jet traffic in the country, after Florida. He could be sipping margaritas under a hot sun in two hours.

And—to keep in mind—Baja and nearby Sonora were home to the Sinaloa Cartel, which was always eager to launder money through legitimate operations like real estate.

“Now, Mr. Stone, what can I do for you? Change your life, make you happy in a million ways, find a nest for you and—you’re of a particular age—you and your bride. Children too? I have six. Three boys and three girls. Ask me which I prefer? The ones that are under thirteen.”

“A wife, no children.” A smile. “Yet.”

“Ah, now don’t wait too long,” the man scolded. Then a glint in his eye. “But maybe she’s younger, maybe you robbed the cradle, did you? My wife is a younger woman.” He nodded gravely. “We were born in the same year and the same month…only she is one day younger than I am!” A braying laugh. “All right, to be serious…Let me do what I can to put you in your dream house.”

Colter found himself amused; Debi Starr had said much the same, about a dream house, though with a porcine companion.

“You just cruising by on that mini Harley of yours and were impressed by my properties.”

So he’d been observed.

He was glad he had intentionally parked with the plate unseen by the front door’s camera. A habit of his.

“Nope. I was at a party in San Francisco and someone recommended you. They had bought property in Silicon Valley.”

“Evershire. Named after The Hobbit . The Shire. You know the books?”

Shaw had read all the Tolkien Middle-earth books. He said, “I’ve heard of them.” A sentence that invariably means no. “I looked you up and found this.” He nodded out the window. “Windermere. Maddie and I are in a condo in Mountain View…” He closed his eyes, mindful not to overact. “The mortgage, the HOA fees, and the cost of living there? Forget it! So we decided, like taking a deep breath and cutting the cable cord, we’d get out of the Bay Area. Maybe come here.”

“A wise move, sir. You’ll get ten times the value for your money. You’ll be king of your own domain.”

Shaw beamed at the validation. “We saw one on your website. The Byron model. We can customize it, right?”

“Interior? Yes, to your heart’s content. Exteriors I’ve designed myself.”

“Seriously? So you’re an architect.”

“No, no. But I will say I have imagination. Then I hand the nitty-gritty over to the experts.”

“Do you have a model I could look at?”

“Not the Byron. They won’t be ready for another two months or so. Can I interest you in a Shelley or Coleridge? They’re similar. But smaller.”

“No, our heart’s set.”

“Well, here’s this.” He pushed a brochure Shaw’s way.

“Nice,” Shaw said slowly, flipping the pages. “Oh, the kitchen. To die for. Maddie’ll love it. She was going to meet me here, but did you hear? The levee collapsed in Hinowah and took Route Thirteen out.”

“No! I didn’t! Anyone get hurt?”

“I don’t think so. But my wife’s stuck in Nevada. Was there on business.”

Was the surprise in Gabris’s face genuine? The developer’s reaction seemed authentic but in his years of rewards-seeking he had learned that depending on their level of skill, sociopaths can lie without detection.

Gabris scoffed. “That levee…I always said they should reinforce it.”

So he was aware of how fragile the earthwork was.

“But all the county ever said was quote, ‘We’ll look into it.’ And they never did. Of course, in fairness, in recent memory, the Never Summer’s always been about two feet deep, tops.”

“Let me ask you a question,” Shaw began, a hint of conspiracy in his voice. “When they ran the news story about the levee, I saw some footage of the town.”

“Hinowah?”

Shaw nodded. “It looked pretty nice. Quaint, you know. You have any houses there, by any chance? Or any plans to build? I frankly like trees a bit more than the desert.”

Gabris blew out air and his cheeks puffed up. “No, sir, Mr. Stone, and word of warning: steer the hell away from property in Hinowah.”

Shaw shot him a frown. “Why’s that?”

“I looked into acquiring some land there. I thought there might be some people who’d like a more rustic home—like I’m hearing from you. You know, tucked away in an old mining town. A certain appeal. But I found out that the land is shit. Pardon my language.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s not a declared Superfund site, but there’re problems with the soil. You’ll buy a home there at your own risk.”

“But there are hundreds of houses there, it looked like.”

“Nothing new. Mostly grandfathered in.”

“What’s the issue?”

Gabris chewed briefly on the cigar. “Runoff from the mines. A hundred fifty years ago, they had no concept of the environment. There’s lead, arsenic, sulfuric acid. Bunch of other crap.”

Shaw method-acted a frown. “Is there a problem here ?”

“My God, no. I’ve had the soil analyzed from every single lot. Cost me a fortune. I’ll get the report to you and your inspector. He can take samples of his own. But no, we’re ten miles from the closest mine.”

Gabris might have very well been a vulture, but Hinowah wasn’t his prey.

“And that’s not the only problem. Southwest of town there’s an oil and gas fracking field. They pollute too. They say they don’t but don’t believe that bullshit…” A grimace. “Ha, you got me going today. I’ll have to put two quarters in the swear jar tonight. So forget Hinowah, Mr. Stone. You want to live in Windermere! You play golf.” Not a question. Of course, every man on the face of the earth owned a set of clubs.

“My handicap isn’t what I’d like,” Shaw told him, with only a vague idea of what a handicap was.

“Well, our course’ll be just the place to work on it!”

Shaw shook the man’s big hand, and walked to the door, stowing the brochure in his backpack.

He fired up the cycle and backed away from the sales office, then sped off, keeping the license tag out of view. As he navigated back to Route 13 and passed through the Road Closed—Detour barricade, he was thinking: A helpful trip.

For one thing, he had eliminated a suspect.

But more important, the boisterous man had pointed him to another one.

Someone who had possibly blown up the levee to steal not land but something else altogether.

Something definitely worth killing for.