I kept going because I had nothing better to do. I listened to the Rolling Stones complain about getting no satisfaction. I took another turn onto what seemed to be a gravel road, though under a cover of snow, you couldn’t tell. Then I figured out it wasn’t a road at all, but a private drive. I hit the brakes and slid to a stop in front of a black, wrought-iron fence. A cemetery. How appropriate.
I got out of the car, tromped through the snow, opened a gate and walked in. The headstones were topped with snow and weathered from the years, but the vertical ones could be read. Many dated from the mining days. Beneath a marble figure of a child asleep on a pedestal, the inscription: “Mabel Garnett Asbell, December 12, 1888, one year and four days.”
I thought about the winter of 1888 and the girl’s parents, burying their child, and it made me think of Kip and suddenly I was filled with sorrow. If I was sent away, what would become of him? What a strange thought. A year ago, I didn’t know of his existence. Now, my first thought about my future, or lack of it, was of him. So that’s what love is all about.
Other questions plagued me. How long will Granny be around? Who will take care of her?
A statue of a lamb guarded the grave of another child. “Our darling Mallory.” A white marble headstone, July 28, 1898, for “Little Dale, ten months and fifteen days.” Nearby, the headless statue of a woman in the Greek style stood guard over a grave surrounded by a rusty iron fence. The woman wore a flowing gown, and her right hand held a garland of granite flowers.
I stood there, bareheaded in the falling snow, overcome with a sadness such as I’ve never known. Tears flowed down my cheeks. I turned and started to run, slipping in the snow and falling, legs splayed. I got to my feet and hurried to the car in a crablike crouch, a foolish figure of a man frozen to the core, not with cold, but with fear.
The Jack Daniel’s warmed me, comforted me. The bottle sat between my legs under the steering wheel, and I’d already put a good dent in it. From the liquor store, I headed west out of town for the same reason I earlier had headed east: none.
When I got to the turnoff to Red Butte, I swung right, fishtailing in the snow. I missed the road to Woody Creek, did a U-turn, barely avoiding a ditch concealed by snowdrifts, and slowly began climbing the hill past fenced fields covered with virgin snow. I knew the way, though I had been here only once before.
The front gate was chained and padlocked, and the county sheriff had posted a no trespassing sign. Not enough to stop a man overcome with lust and greed, a man with a thirst for violence, or whatever McBain would say in closing argument.
I was wearing my trial suit and a wool overcoat and felt out of place in the broad expanse of the frozen ranch. I climbed over the gate, my wing tips crunching into the snow of the driveway. I sunk to my knees with each step. It was a laborious walk, and I began sweating. Cold on the outside, steaming inside. Halfway up the road, I turned back to look at my tracks. I thought of an animal, chased across the fields by hunters.
The house was quiet and dark, no cars outside. Wherever Josefina was staying, it wasn’t here. That was smart. She might have figured I’d come looking for her.
But that wasn’t why I had come to the Red Canyon Ranch.
I hadn’t known it while driving here, but I knew it now. I came because it was time to act more like a lawyer and less like a client. As a lawyer, I always visited the site, whether it was an auto accident or a murder scene. Sure, I used investigators, and in discovery, I’d get the state’s evidence. But there is no substitute for being there, even if you’ve been there before. After I hired H. T. Patterson, we came here under the watchful eyes of a police escort. I had walked him through it, but now, cold and alone, I would do it again. Instead of a briefcase, I carried a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
The barn door was unlocked. I flipped on the lights. The horses were still in their stalls, oats freshly poured. Muddy footprints led to the feed bags and back to the stalls. A neighboring rancher must have been helping out. I said hello to the horses, and one of them said something back, his breath visible in the cold.
I retraced my steps of that night. The night in question, as lawyers like to say.
Up the ladder to the loft. I remembered Jo Jo flicking on a lantern, the shadows creeping up the wall. What had she said?
Oh, Jake, you shouldn’t have come. How true. What else? Think now. How did she look? Remember that face. She had seemed surprised Kip was with me. And upset about it.
The boy shouldn’t be here.
Why not?
Because she didn’t want him, or anyone else to witness what would happen. Right, but how did she know what would happen? What was her plan? That I kill Cimarron? That he kill me? And why?
Motive, motive, motive.
I walked the circumference of the loft, making a trail in the straw. Snowflakes drifted through the wall where the plank had been removed. I looked around, but I didn’t know for what. I saw the railing, or what was left of it, where I had broken through before landing in a stall.
I went down to the first floor, but this time took the slow route of the ladder. Accurately re-creating the scene has its limits. I opened the Appaloosa’s stall, walked inside, and my shoes squished in a steaming pile of what had been oats only a day before. The horse seemed to smile at me.
I left the stall, straw sticking to my shoes. For a while, I fiddled around, tinkering with this and that, touching the rough wood planks, trying to divine some message that had to be there. I went into the corn crib, still overflowing with ears that had tumbled down the silo. I stepped out of the crib and wandered in a circle, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. I kicked at bales of hay and feed bags.
What was missing? A saddle with an embedded nail, a plank from the wall with Cimarron’s hair embedded in it. The bridle and bit I had used to get Cimarron off me. The nail gun. Now all tagged and marked as state’s exhibits.
I took a hit of the bourbon to fend off the chill and kept looking. There were no surprises. No revelations. No clues, at least none I could see. Just the crisp air and sweet smells of horse feed mixed with the musky tang of manure. Just a nondescript barn where a man had died a gruesome death.
I pulled two blankets from a railing and put them around my shoulders. I sat down in the straw and made myself comfortable. I sneezed, maybe from the dust, or maybe from the cold. For medicinal purposes, I guzzled some more bourbon, liquid aurum to warm the throat. I leaned back and tried to concentrate on words like “evidence” and “proof’ and “reasonable doubt,” but my mind was a battery running out of juice. I couldn’t concentrate and after a while, I didn’t even try. I listened to the snorts of the horses and the shuffling of their hooves. Outside, an owl hooted. I hummed a song to myself and dug deeper into the straw, a babe in the manger, finally closing my eyes and burying myself under the warm velvet blanket of sleep.
I don’t know if it was the morning sun or the cold that woke me. The sun slanted through the open slat in the wall and struck me squarely in the eyes. Dust motes floated in the light, and the cold bit through me to the bone. I tried to stand, but every joint was locked into place. I felt like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. It took several moments to work out the knots and kinks in my back. I felt an urgent need to pee and a secondary need to brush my teeth. A cup of coffee and a Danish wouldn’t have hurt anything, either.
I needed to get back to my apartment, shower and change for court. I started walking out when something caught my eye. The shaft of sunlight crossed the barn floor and ended barely two feet from where I had slept. There, in a depression I had made in the straw, the sunlight caught the reflection of a wedge of glass that twinkled back at me. I followed the sunlight four paces, bent down and dug into the straw. Up came Kip’s video camera, lens pointed to the sun.