Page 49 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

49.

Colter Shaw cycled up to the Coyne Farm sign.

The Yamaha’s bright beam caught the trencher. It sat idle. Shaw could see why.

Annie Coyne had dug dozens of channels as deep as the machine was capable of and the troughs now covered the entire front area of the land. It was like a diorama of the First World War, the Germans and the Allies facing each other across no-man’s-land, in their protective burrows.

Which reminded him of the rivalry between the Coynes and the Reddings.

A conflict that fate—in the form of high explosives—had just resolved.

He rode over the plank drawbridge at the front gate and on to the farmhouse, parked and walked toward the doorway.

Annie Coyne had heard him coming and opened the door just as he got to it.

“Colter. The levee?” Her face was wary, though she was also likely thinking that if disaster was imminent, a phone call would have been more appropriate.

“No. Hasn’t collapsed. Still at risk, though.”

They stood on the front porch—the level plane of old wood that sat on the west side of the house, from which you could see marvelous sunsets, Shaw was sure, though it was hard to imagine any sun whatsoever on a day like this.

“Come in.”

They walked inside the scented, frilly living room.

Bordello…

“Gerard Redding is dead.”

She spun around, brow furrowed.

“He was murdered. A bomb in his workshop.”

“Bomb?”

“And something I didn’t tell you before. The levee didn’t collapse on its own. It was sabotaged. Also with explosives. The same kind, or very similar.”

She took the news with a mixture of shock and confusion.

“And Gerard was behind it?”

“Yes. It’s not public knowledge about the levee.”

“I won’t say anything…But why on earth?” She swiveled her gaze. toward the window and her eyes narrowed. “My farm. He wanted me out of business and wanted my property! He was going to flood me out.”

“No. Nothing to do with you. There are lithium deposits under Hinowah. For batteries. He wanted to flood people out and was then going to buy up the land, turn the town into a pit mine. But if there’s lithium under your property, then he’d want that too.”

“But who murdered him? Why?”

“We don’t know. Maybe competitors. Rival lithium mines.”

“Why isn’t the levee safe, if he’s dead…Oh, wait…” Her eyes widened slightly in understanding. “Somebody else wants to take over what he had planned?”

“It’s likely. There’s a lead I want to follow up on. We have the bomber on video getting away from the mine into your property.”

“ My property?” Her sun-brushed, freckled face grew troubled. “Where?”

“There’s a post-and-rail fence along Route Fifty-eight, near the entrance to the mine. Is there a place where somebody could park and not be seen from the road or the mine?”

“Probably. I think there’s an old tractor trail. Do you want to go look for it?”

He nodded again, noting that she was looking out the window at his bike, maybe wondering if he had in mind they ride together. But few dirt bikes were meant for two passengers, and the Yamaha was no exception. Especially on a windy, dark evening.

“Your Jeep?”

A faint smile. “Sure.”

She grabbed a navy windbreaker from a hook near the door and tugged on a baseball cap with UC Davis on the crest.

Outside they walked to the vehicle. He glanced to the barn. “How’s your second-story cow?”

“Confused. But that’s pretty much the waiting state for bovines.”

Making their way as best they could through the yard, skirting around puddles and patches of mud, they got to her Jeep. The vehicle was an old model, roofless, though today, with the storm, she had snapped into place sheets of yellowing plastic for a roof and side panels.

She fired up the engine and clicked on the headlights and powerful spots mounted on the top frame. She snapped on her seatbelt. A glance at his. “You better.”

He strapped in and she sped off.

Under her urgent hand, the vehicle bounded along, sometimes on paths, sometimes off-road. Mud flew in their wake and raindrops appeared like coldly iridescent fireflies in the fierce beams from the lights.

He tugged out his phone and, as best he could with the turbulent ride, consulted a map of the area.

“That way,” he said and pointed, directing her toward one of the spots where Bear might have parked.

In five minutes he said, “Here’s good.”

Coyne skidded to a stop and they climbed out. They were in a weedy clearing and ahead of them was a thick band of trees. Through them he could make out the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle at the mine entrance. The Olechu County Sheriff’s Office had finally arrived. They were probably a perfectly competent law enforcement agency but Shaw sensed they would move methodically—read slowly—and that wasn’t good enough for Shaw. He wanted Bear. And he wanted him now.

Coyne asked, “What’re we looking for?”

He pointed to the fence with his tactical flashlight. He handed his spare to her and she turned it on. “The bomber disappeared into this part of the woods. We want footprints, tire prints.”

Eyes on the ground, sweeping the beam, Shaw walked toward the road, looking for a muddy patch. There was a lot of ground cover here and he could find no tire treads. Coyne joined him. “And who is this guy?”

“We know he’s professional. Mercenary probably. I thought he was working for Redding—I saw him at the mine. But now we’re thinking he’s on somebody else’s payroll. Whoever writes his checks writes big ones. He uses high-end aftershave.”

She turned his way but he offered nothing further on the subject.

“There.” Shaw had found treads of a parked vehicle. And shoe or boot prints leading from the driver’s door to the rear, where presumably, the IED had been stored.

He examined the tire treads and measured them, jotting the results in his notebook. You couldn’t narrow down the make and model, but Shaw deduced he was in a pickup truck. He took a picture of the tread marks but there probably wasn’t enough detail to nail the brand.

He then retraced the steps from the tread marks to the highway, staring down at the bright disk of halogen.

“Looking for anything in particular?”

“If he dropped something. Doesn’t happen often but after perps commit the crime they’re more careless. They want to get away fast. I’ve found business cards and hotel room keys. But Bear—what I’m calling him—apparently not.”

“You are like a cop. I mean, I guess you have to be, in the reward business, looking for escapees and fugitives.”

So. She’d looked him up.

He called Debi Starr.

“Hey, Colter.”

“I found where Bear parked.” He sent the picture to her. “Here’s a tread mark. Not very detailed.”

A pause. “No. Can’t make the brand. The track? A pickup, right?”

“I’m guessing.”

“My, that narrows it down to…Let me think. Oh, right…One hundred and twelve percent of the county. Anything else?”

“No.”

She thanked him and they disconnected. Coyne and he returned to the Jeep.

Coyne was saying, “I was thinking of you being a cop. I remember my dad and I used to watch the old detective shows, like Matlock , Hill Street Blues , Law and Order .” A sad laugh. “Nice times.”

They climbed in and drove back at a less frantic pace.

Coyne seemed thoughtful, and Shaw supposed she was reflecting on her history with Redding. Maybe thinking of the poker game where Redding’s father took advantage of hers. Losing that four hundred acres probably changed the entire nature of the farm, shifting it from comfortably profitable to a challenge to stay afloat every season.

And what would happen now that her rival was no more?

They returned in silence to the house and she drove over the drawbridge, parking beside the Yamaha.

She swung out and stood for a moment, hands on her hips, looking up at the sky. Then her gaze dropped to the trenches. Now that she’d learned that there was a real possibility that the levee would still blow, she was assessing.

She seemed confident they would save the farm from disaster. And turned to him with a smile. “That beer now?”

“Sure.”

As they walked to the house, Shaw noticed that they were the only ones on the property. “Your workers? They’ll be all right?”

“None of them live in the area. It’s way cheaper outside of Olechu County. Doesn’t seem like it would be, but those big companies in Fort Pleasant? They bring in employees from Silicon Valley, the Bay, L.A. And up go the property values.”

“A representative from one of them, a computer chipmaker, said he has a lot of residents of Hinowah on the payroll.”

“Well, he’s lying. I know the company. They brought in their own employees. Some locals have middling jobs, low-pay, while the property values and taxes keep climbing. It’s gotten so crazy, my people have to live thirty, forty miles away. Sometimes farther.”

Shaw thought of the developer, Theo Gabris, the huge houses he was building.

Inside Coyne’s home, with the interior lit in warm yellow and rosy shades, they took off their jackets, hung them and wandered into the kitchen, which was outfitted with scores of appliances and utensils, a number of which Shaw couldn’t begin to identify. Dominating the room was an old, unevenly planed farm table, which had hosted many, many meals, he sensed. Had she ever been married? The mantel pictures were inconclusive.

As she got the beers, he called Fiona Lavelle, in her escapee cave. She was fine, was getting a lot of work and was actually enjoying her time in “Nerworld,” which, she explained was a massive network of cities and roads and even lakes and rivers under the surface of the earth in her novel. He decided that his nieces, Rebecca and Mary, would enjoy the story.

When she brought the beers, Shaw asked a question that had been nagging. “Big companies in Fort Pleasant, you said. Plural? I only know about the chipmaker.”

Coyne handed him an Anchor Steam. “The other big one is a bottled water operation. The second or third largest in the country. Even more controversial than computer chips.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“They don’t use the Never Summer water—under the Law of the River, they have no rights. But what they do is just as bad. They pump up groundwater from the aquifers. It’s basically theft, even though there’s no law to stop them. They purify it, mark it up a thousand times and say fuck you to the people of the county…and farmers like me. I don’t use just Never Summer water. I need groundwater too. The aquifers around here aren’t going to last forever. My wells? Six hundred and seven hundred feet. The way it’s going, I’ll be tapping into the lava in the earth’s core pretty soon.”

She took two large swigs of beer and walked to a large window looking over plowed fields, lit by bright spotlights on the roof of the house. Shaw joined her. The two of them were standing close, their shoulders brushing briefly. “You know, Colter, I can run this spread pretty much by myself. A thousand acres? A lot of work, but I can manage it. I’ve got the suppliers, the equipment, the chemistry. But it’s useless without the one magic ingredient.”

“Water.”

“Water’s to farming what light is to photography. It’s not the main thing but the main thing wouldn’t exist without it.”

“Why did the Coynes settle here, and not San Joaquin Valley or Sacramento?”

“Why does anybody settle anywhere? Maybe my great-great-greats were tired of pushin’ west. And back then the Never Summer was a real river. Plenty of water for a copper mine and a two-thousand-acre farm.

“Ah, it’s getting worse and worse everywhere. All the rivers in the U.S. are drying up. The Colorado you hear about mostly. But also the Arkansas, Red River, Rio Grande, the South Canadian. Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking…Hey, Colter, this reward business of yours doesn’t work out you can make a mint as a C-fifty-seven. A licensed driller in California.”

She fell silent.

Shaw was aware their biceps now pressed together. Firmly.

He thought of the glance they had shared earlier.

You’re funny, Colter…

Simultaneously they set their bottles on the table, each noticing and each smiling at the sort-of coincidence.

Then they were in the other’s arms, kissing fiercely, hands finding buttons. Hands finding flesh. And zippers.

The rarest of moments, these. When, miraculously, all the elements come together. The time, place, the sensibilities, the desires—that indefinable but certain and perfect alignment like the pins in a tumbler lock and the teeth of the key.

Click…

Clothing dropped as they made their way to the bedroom.

Then they were inside the spacious room, which continued the theme of rococo as if some settler from the East Coast had carted with them this warm and gaudy Victoriana as a foil against grim, dusty and muddy pioneer life.

Though this reflection lasted less than one second.

Colter Shaw had in his mind only one thought.

How to get the towering array of satin pillows from the bed as fast as possible without flinging them to the floor.

He needn’t have worried.

Annie Coyne swept them off the comforter with one hand and pulled Colter Shaw after her with the other.