Shadows of Death Read online

  Linda tried again. “Looking for gold’s an obsession, isn’t it, especially the lost mines?” She pulled her arms in close to her body, trying to stay warm. “Hey, mister, Linda speak to Flynnman.”

  “Yup. Everyone’s looking for the pot at the end of the rainbow.” Frank nodded ever so slightly. “And out here, everyone has a story about a lost mine.” He leaned against the iron railing, absently tugging at the end of his nose. “Did I tell you Tucker rescued a foal?”

  “No. When did you see Tucker?”

  “Tuesday. When I took the metal detector up to the plateau.”

  “No, you didn’t mention seeing the fearsome Tucker.”

  “Well, I saw him on Tuesday.”

  “And?”

  “And he rescued a burro foal.” Frank looked away from Linda, out over the desert. “The one I had to finish had a foal. I tried to catch it, but I had to leave it there. Anyhow, Tucker saved it. Gave it over to a nursing nanny goat.”

  “He sounds like a good man.”

  “Umm-hmm. There used to be people like Jack Longstreet.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He was a desert rat and gunman. No one knows for sure how many people he killed, but he put a few under.”

  “You think your desert rat Tucker killed those poachers?” She sipped her coffee and studied him over the rim. “I’d like to meet the infamous Tucker sometime.”

  “Not likely. He doesn’t like people.” Linda opened her mouth to speak, but Frank held up his forefinger. “You hear about Sand Canyon, the so-called game reserve?” He looked out over the valley. “This is where I grew up, and I’m watching it start to die. You know what that’s like? People come up here, tear up the land, dump trash, go home, and water their lawns—with our water.” He turned to Linda. “They bring their guns and act like the valley’s a shooting gallery. Shoot at anything that moves. Now they’re building a home base. It makes me sick.”

  The air was still, the sun bright above the rim of the Inyos. Yesterday’s afternoon wind had swept the valley clear of the smog that rolled some two hundred miles up from the Los Angeles Basin. Linda had come to see the valley as Frank saw it, and her sense of protecting it was fierce. God, if she moved back to L.A., she’d be one of them, part of the problem.

  He sighed. “You’re right, though. I am thinking about Tucker. He might not have anything to do with the killings, but I wouldn’t want to be the person who crosses him.”

  Linda raised dark eyebrows. “Why’s that?”

  Frank swung around. “He’s big.” Then he added, “You know what he says to me? ‘Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations to drive me from my sanctuary?’ It’s from the Book of Ezekiel. I looked it up. That’s his name, Zeke. There’s more, too, stuff about executing judgments, setting blood upon the rock, unsheathed swords, the fury of the Lord, violent stuff.”

  Linda laughed. “He seems to fit right in. The land of loners: Seldom Seen Slim, Shorty Harris, the Montgomery Brothers.”

  “Forget it, Linda.” Frank recognized the beginning of a campaign. “Tucker doesn’t give interviews. He talks to me because he thinks has to.”

  “Come on, Frank. He talks to you because in some ways you’re just like him.”

  “Another damned loner, huh?”

  It was Linda’s turn to raise a finger. “Loners living in the past.” She sipped her coffee, her dark eyes catching the light.

  In his mind’s eye he was standing in the goat shed with Zeke Tucker watching the nanny suckling the burro foal, the sunlight filtering in through the cracks. A congregation of two.

  “Maybe so.”

  “You’re worried that it’s all pointing to him, aren’t you?”

  Frank nodded. “It seems to fit a pattern.”

  “Why? Outside of the fact that both Tucker and the shooter are tall, where’s the connection?”

  “Well, the shooter used a .270. Tucker has a .270. The shooter knows the land, how long it takes to walk from point A to point B. Tucker knows the desert about as well as anyone. He lives in it. The shooter must’ve hated poachers. Tucker hates poachers—take my word for it. You should have seen his eyes. They’re different colors, one a muddy hazel, the other bright blue. The blue one glittered like broken glass.”

  Frank could count on Linda not to gloss things over. She had an analytical mind, used to solving human puzzles, discovering the pattern in the chaos of things. “So what’s your take on it?”

  “I can see why Tucker looks good for it, but think about this. If you didn’t know Tucker, what he hates and what he doesn’t hate, and—this is a big if—and if you didn’t think he might be dangerous when provoked, would you still consider him a suspect?”

  “I never said he was a suspect.”

  “Okay, a person of interest.”

  Frank groaned. “I hate that crap.”

  Linda chuckled. “I know. Just the same, you think the killer might very well be Tucker, and you hate it because you like him. The fact that you hate it makes you bend over backward not to give him a free pass. What’s there to go on, though, other than his size and the fact that most people think he’s strange?”

  “I wish that were it. I ran a quick check on him. He was arrested twice in protests against the Vietnam War. He was part of a group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Many of them had multiple arrests, some for assault. They weren’t into passive demonstrations.” He turned to look at Linda, his oval face sad and subdued. “He had an infantry MOS, which means he knows how to use a rifle.”

  “Oh.” Her face lapsed into seriousness.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “You mind if I do some checking around?” Linda rested her hand on his shoulder.

  “Of course not. Anything you come up with might help.” He sighed. “Although so far, the more I know, the more it points to Tucker.”

  Linda changed the subject. “Speaking of interesting characters, I’m going to do a spec piece on our very own female treasure hunter, Cecelia Flowers, and her faithful Native American guide, Eddie Laguna.”

  Frank smiled. “Eddie breaks into print. He’ll love that.” He chuckled. “Be sure to get a picture of his smile. Can’t miss an opportunity to catch those teeth for posterity.’

  “That’s mean, Flynnman. Eddie’s proud of his new teeth. Besides, the article isn’t about Eddie, it’s about a female prospector out here in the Owens Valley. It’s about history and lost mines, gold and treasure. People love that stuff.”

  “Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s a looker.”

  “Oh, you think so, huh?”

  “Objectively speaking, she’s sort of attractive.”

  “Just what objects are you speaking of?”

  “Come on, give me a break here. She’s cute. Besides, she’s Eddie’s squeeze, and”—he grinned—“I’ve got a cuter squeeze.”

  “You’re so romantic, Ranger Frank. ‘A cuter squeeze.’ Gee, that makes my heart flutter.”

  “I hope so.” He leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth.

  “Mmm. That makes my heart flutter—and other stuff, too.”

  8

  •

  They sat at opposite ends of the couch, watching John Gilman’s fifty-two-inch TV. For the time being, Gilman’s home was the MDG’s base of operations. There was absolutely nothing tying Seth Parker, a.k.a. the Sandman, to John Gilman or Gilman’s KwikMart, so it was a safe haven, for a while. The KwikMarts were the source of Gilman’s considerable income and provided the financial underpinning for their operations. Gilman employed immigrants from India and Pakistan. He called them ragheads, but, by and large, they didn’t steal and would put in long hours for short wages. Their efforts had propelled Gilman into the category of the idle rich. Although he’d graduated from college with a degree in business, Gilman had little education. If it didn’t pertain to making money, he considered it useless. Thus, he suffered from boredom, the disease of a vacant mind.

 
When John encountered Seth Parker, whose mind was anything but vacant, his hero worship of the sophisticated soldier of fortune was instant. Gilman found himself rubbing shoulders with someone dangerous and famous—the Sandman. He couldn’t believe his good luck. The talking heads on his big-screen TV were calling the MDG a vast terrorist organization and the Sandman a clever mastermind. John Gilman smiled. They had part of it right. The pundits theorized about a resurgence of the Weather Underground. What was that? Survivalists, ELF—thanks to Seth Parker, he knew what that was—even Al Qaeda. Parker had explained that news organizations liked to tie everything to Al Qaeda. He’d explained that just saying “Al Qaeda” scared the shit out of people.

  As Parker had explained it to him, they really were terrorists, but terrorists on the right side of history. “History ultimately decides who’s remembered as terrorists. Losers wind up as terrorists, winners as patriots. Winners write the history, John. Right now the MDG is a terrorist organization because we’re so badly outnumbered. If we grow, if we prevail, history will redefine us. We’ll be remembered with respect—as heroes.

  “Our organization fights in a righteous cause. When there are enough people who think the way we do, we’ll be remembered as soldiers in a just cause.” Parker laid his hand on John’s shoulder. “Numbers are the essential difference between a cult and a religious movement, between rebels and founding fathers. To the Romans, Christians were a cult. To the English, the colonists were rebels taking potshots from behind trees—wouldn’t stand up and fight. Then the tables turned. That’s our mission, to turn the tables.” John Gilman found Parker’s arguments compelling, especially about their role in changing history.

  Now the television people were speculating about what kind of person would kill two people for no reason. Parker scoffed. “See, they don’t get it.”

  The pretty-boy anchorman kept frowning and shaking his head in mock incredulity. The woman being interviewed, a former profiler from the FBI, was better—very serious, nice legs. Too bad she spouted the usual drivel: The Sandman was a person who was basically an insecure loner, probably the victim of violence in his childhood. The part that particularly irritated Parker was that this smart-ass woman was blabbing on as if she really knew who he was.

  She crossed shapely legs. “The murder of the men in the Mojave Desert was a transference of violence, a means of taking revenge on those who had made him feel impotent.”

  “Sexually impotent?” The anchorhead raised his eyebrows, creating a small vertical crease in the smooth expanse of unblemished forehead. John Gilman imagined the appearance of a dark spot between the anchorman’s surprised eyes. Not having actually witnessed a shooting, he omitted the bone fragments, blood, hair, and brain matter erupting from the exit wound.

  “Not necessarily,” the profiler woman responded, recrossing her legs, “although sexual dysfunction frequently accompanies feelings of helplessness and low self-esteem. Snipers often feel empowered by playing God, giving themselves the power of life and death, deciding who lives and who dies.” You got that right, Gilman thought.

  “Certainly, social impotence played a part in the motivations of the D.C. snipers.” She sipped some water. The anchorhead paused in levitated anticipation. “Each death temporarily validates the individual, who is unable to find validation in normal behavior. The power to reach out and take life temporarily pushes back the feelings of impotence and worthlessness. Of course, these feelings return with increasing frequency and strength. The subject has to purge these feelings by repeating the behavior that provided relief, destroying the other, who has become a representation of the forces that threaten the subject.”

  “Hasn’t the MDG been identified as a terrorist organization and the Sandman an instrument of terrorism? Isn’t that political rather than psychological?” Handsome Head wanted to know.

  “All terrorists suffer incomplete personality development. It’s what makes the irrationality of their acts plausible. Their willingness to destroy others, and frequently themselves, is a manifestation of a need to fill the void, become complete. Of course, any analysis is an attempt to offer a rational explanation of irrational behavior. How else to explain why a person would take the lives of two unknown strangers?”

  “Unknown strangers!” Parker laughed out loud. “Redundant.” He looked at his companion. “The great expert analyst doesn’t have sufficient command of the English language to avoid an obvious redundancy.”

  “What a stupid bitch!” Gilman said. He wasn’t sure what a redundancy was. The Sandman knew about so many things. “Why do people listen to this crap? Why are they on TV?”

  “Why don’t they just look at the Web site?” Parker shook his head, frowning in thought. “We’ll have to refocus their attention.” He continued his lesson. “If people want to be big game hunters, they should go hunt lions with a spear, or a grizzly bear with a Bowie knife, each other with hand grenades.” He shook his head. “Not domesticated birds tossed from cages.” He rose and went over to the computer station.

  Gilman joined him, peering over Parker’s shoulder at the computer screen. He was careful not to invade Parker’s space.

  “It appears somebody is trying to attract our attention,” Parker said. “Someone has left a message on our site.”

  The so-called Sandman is a Bambi lover. Bushwhacking AMERICAN citizens is back shooting. Doesn’t he have the guts to go one on one? We’re eliminating the bunny huggers along with the burros and other invasive species crossing our borders.

  NOTICE: Next time you come out to the Inyo Mountains, we’ll have to meet up. Then we can leave your useless carcass rotting with the rest of the jackasses.

  THE BROTHERHOOD OF AMERICAN SPORTSMEN

  “It would be nice to accommodate them,” Parker muttered under his breath. He would welcome the chance to introduce them to the fundamentals of sniper skills. Who could do it better? Top score in his training company. Second highest score ever at Fort Ord, trained by the best, handpicked by Sergeant Flynn, the small arms instructor at Hunter Liggett.

  “We’ll see how tough they are when a .50 caliber takes off the top of someone’s head.” John Gilman bobbed up and down, agreeing with himself.

  “Shooting personnel with a .50 caliber round is overkill, John. Not to worry. Your .50 will be very useful at Sand Canyon.”

  They stared at the screen trying to imagine the person who had written the taunt.

  “Who would send us this bullshit?” Gilman leaned forward as if to challenge the screen.

  Parker stared at the message without seeing it, his mind probing the words. “Perhaps some hunting group angry about the killings in the Mojave, but it could be from law enforcement.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The challenge is meant to provoke a response.”

  “Let’s take ’em out. They won’t stand a chance,” John said, fishing for approval.

  Parker looked at John Gilman, assessing him. “Everyone stands a chance until the kill shot. There are always surprises, the unexpected. Strategy gives way to tactics, tactics to training.”

  “I know. That’s why we can take them. They’re amateurs.”

  “Not if they’re law enforcement.”

  Gilman remained silent while Parker reread the message.

  “If the message actually came from a hunting group of some sort, it’s an opportunity. If the message came from law enforcement, we’ll have to be careful. We are not going to walk into an obvious trap,” Parker said.

  “This message is a public insult,” Gilman said. “We can’t let it stand.”

  “I agree,” Parker responded and began typing up a response.

  Brotherhood of American Sportsmen? I think not. Shoot a speeding tortoise. Shoot eagles off the power poles and animals in cages. Hunting is a contest that requires an opponent. Now you have one. Say, next weekend. I’ll be seeing you—through a scope.

  THE SANDMAN

  “Now let’s go find a signal so we ca
n send our reply.” He cuffed Gilman on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s see what we stir up. This might work out. I wonder if they know about the turkey vultures?”

  Gilman looked puzzled.

  “Come on, I’ll tell you in the van.”

  9

  •

  “Wait a minute.” Linda reached for the binoculars as Frank brought the truck to a stop. They were on the Saline Valley Road where it hugged the edge of the mountain before it dropped into Grapevine Canyon. It was not a place to gawk without coming to a stop. A jiggle to the right and a person would take a four-thousand-foot shortcut down to the valley floor.

  The Panamint Valley stretched away to the south as far as the eye could see. The Panamint Mountains rose up in a steep wall, forming the barrier between Death Valley and Panamint Valley, the last home of Seldom Seen Slim and Shorty Harris. The snowcap on Telescope Peak glistened bright white in the morning sun. Frank thought of all the lost souls that had looked up at the snow, parched with thirst, and cursed the day they had ventured into this forbidden land.

  “God, this is a breathtaking spot.” Linda put the binoculars up to her face. “Wait, there’s a jackalope down there crossing the sand dunes.”

  “Don’t start with the jackalope stuff.” A while back, Jack Collins, Ben Shaw, and Bill Jerome had decided they were going to clear Jawbone Canyon of the all-terrain vehicles that were ripping up the landscape. They had designated Jawbone Canyon a jackalope preserve and proceeded to scatter caltrops, four-pronged spikes, along the ruts being carved into the desert by the machines. The septuagenarian eco-vandals—he thought of them as the Grumpy Wrench Gang—had caused Frank a problem or two.