Nineteen

All You Need to Know About That

Intimacies, what happens between two people in private (or one person and a Sea Beast in a pasture), are not the business of anyone but the parties involved. Still, for the sake of the voyeur in us all, a tidbit or two to satisfy curiosity...

Molly tried, made a valiant effort in fact, but even for a woman of such fine physical conditioning, the task was too great. She did, however, manage to locate near the shed a gas-powered weed-whacker (which the late drug chefs used to clear flammables from the area) and with firm but gentle application of that rude machine, and a little coaxing, was able to bring Steve to that state the French inscrutably call "the little death."

And soon after, what at first seemed an insurmountable obstacle, the size difference, was turned to advantage, allowing Molly to join Steve in that place of peace and pleasure. How? Imagine a slow slide down a long, slippery bannister of a tongue, each taste bud a tease and tingle in just the right place, and you can understand how Molly ended up a satisfied puddle snuggled in that spot between his neck and shoulder that women so love. (Except in Steve's case, it didn't make his arm go to sleep.)

Yes, there was a bit of the awkwardness that comes with the unfamiliarity and exploration of new lovers, and

Theo's Volvo was soundly smashed before Steve realized that rolling around on the ground was an inappropriate way to display his enthusiasm, but a boxy Swedish automobile is a small price to pay for passion in the great scheme of things.

And that is all you need to know about that.

Twenty

Theo

Over the years, Theo had learned to forgive himself for having inappropriate thoughts at inappropriate times (imagining the widow naked at the funeral, rooting for a high death toll in Third World earthquakes, wondering whether white slavers provided in-house financing), but it worried him more than somewhat that, while hand-cuffed to a chair, waiting for his executioner, he was thinking about getting laid instead of escaping or making amends with his creator. Sure, he'd tried to get away, managing to do little more than tip the chair over and give himself a bug's-eye view of the dirt floor, but shortly after that, when the voices outside had stopped, he was overtaken with thoughts of women he'd had and women he hadn't, including an erotic mental montage of the erstwhile actress and resident Crazy Lady, Molly Michon.

So it was embarrassment as much as relief that he felt when, after the sound of a weed-whacker and the crashing of metal, Molly popped her head into the shed.

"Hi, Theo," she said.

"Molly, what are you doing here?"

"Out for a walk." She didn't come in, just craned her head around the corner.

"You've got to get away from here, Molly. There's some very dangerous guys around here."

"Not a problem. You don't want any help then?"

"Yes, go get help. But get away from here. There's guys with guns."

"I mean, you don't want me to uncuff you or anything?"

"There's no time."

"There's plenty of time. Where are the keys?"

"On my key ring. In the ignition of my car."

"Okay. Be right back."

And she was gone. Theo heard some pounding and what sounded like safety glass being shattered. In a second Molly was back in the doorway. She tossed the keys on the floor near his head. "Can you get to those?"

"Can you unlock me?"

"Uh, I'd rather not right now. But you'll be able to get to those eventually, won't you?"

"Molly!"

"Yes or no?"

"Sure, but..."

"Okay. See ya, Theo. Sorry about your car."

And again she was gone.

As he scrambled in the dirt to get to the keys, he was still troubled about the unwarranted wave of horniness that had overtaken him. Could it have been set off by the handcuffs? Maybe he'd been into bondage all these years and never even knew it. Although when he'd been arrested right before Sheriff Burton had blackmailed him into becoming constable, he'd spent almost two hours in handcuffs and he didn't remember it being an espe-cially erotic experience. Maybe it was the death threat. Was he turned on by the thought of being shot? Man, I am a sick individual, he thought.

In ten minutes he was free of both the handcuffs and the dogging thoughts of sex and death. Molly, Joseph Leander, and the house trailer were gone, and he stood before the ruins of his Volvo with an entirely new set of questions nagging him. The roof of the station wagon was now mashed down to level with the hood, three of the four tires were blown, and on the ground, all around the car, were the tracks of what had to be a very, very large animal.

There were two trails that had matted down the grass leading away from the shed and over the hill. One, obviously, was the track of a person. The other was wider than the dirt road that led into the ranch.

Theo dug into the Volvo for his gun and cell phone, having no idea what to do with either of them. There was no one to call - and certainly no one he wanted to shoot. Except maybe Sheriff John Burton. He searched the area, found Joseph Leander's gun, and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. The keys were still in the red four-wheeler, and after a minute of measuring the ethics of "borrowing" the truck against having been kid-napped, handcuffed, and almost killed, he climbed into the truck and took off across the pasture, following the double trail.

Gabe

Gabe and the rancher stood over the pulverized remains of the Holstein, waving flies away from their faces, while Skinner crouched a few yards away, his ears back, growling at the mess.

The rancher pushed his Stetson back on his head and shuddered. "My people have been running dairy and beef cattle on this land for sixty years, and I ain't never heard or seen anything like it, Gabe."

His name was Jim Beer. He was fifty-five, going on seventy, leathery from too much sun and stress, and there was a note of the sad lonely under everything he said. He was tall and thin, but stood with the broken-backed slouch of a beaten man. His wife had left him years ago, driving off in her Mercedes to live in San Francisco and taking with her a note worth half the value of Jim Beer's thousand acres. His only son, who was to have taken the ranch over, was twenty-eight now and was busy getting thrown out of colleges and into rehabs all over the country. He lived alone in a fourteen-room house that rattled with emptiness and seemed to suck up the laughter of the ranch hands, who Jim fed in his enormous kitchen every morning. Jim was the last of his breed, and he would forever trace the beginning of his downfall to an affair he'd had with the witch who once lived in Theo's cabin at the edge of the ranch. Cursed he was, or so he believed. If the witch hadn't run off ten years ago with the owner of the general store, he would have been sure the mutilated cattle was her doing.

Gabe shook his head. "I have no idea, Jim. I can take some samples and have some test run, but I don't even know what we are looking at here."

"You think it was kids? Vandals?"

"Kids tip cows over, Jim. These look like they've been dropped from thirty thousand feet." Gabe knew what appeared to have happened, but he wasn't willing to admit it. There wasn't a creature alive that could have done this. There had to be another explanation.

"So you're saying aliens?"

"No, I am definitely not saying aliens. I'm not saying aliens."

"Something was here. Look at the tracks. Satanic cult?"

"Damn it, Jim, unless you want to be on the cover of Crackpot Weekly, don't talk that way. I can't tell you what did this, but I can tell you what didn't. This was not aliens, or Satanists, or Bigfoot on a binge. I can take some samples and run some tests and then maybe, maybe, I can tell you what did this, but in the meantime, you should call the state ag guys and get them out here."

"I can't do that, Gabe."

"Why not?"

"I can't have strangers running around on my land. I don't want this gettin' out. That's why I called you."

"What's that?" Gabe held up a finger to hold his place in the conversation, then looked to the hills: the sound of an engine. In a second a red four-wheel-drive pickup appeared on the hill headed toward them.

"You'd better go," Jim Beer said.

"Why?"

"You'd just better. Nobody's supposed to be on this side of the ranch but me. You need to go."

"This is your land?"

"Let's jump in your truck, son. We need to go."

Gabe squinted to get a better look at the truck, then waved. "That's Theo Crowe," he said. "What's he doing in that thing?"

"Oh shit," Jim Beer said.

Theo pulled the truck up next to Gabe's, skidded to a stop, and crawled out. To Gabe, the constable looked pissed off, but he couldn't be sure, having never seen the expression on Theo before. "Afternoon, Gabe, Jim."

Jim Beer looked at his boots. "Constable."

Gabe noticed that Theo had two pistols stuck in his jeans and was half-covered with dust. "Hi, Theo. Nice truck. Jim called me out to take a look..."

"I know what that is," Theo said, tossing his head toward the mashed cow. "At least I think I do." He strode up to Jim Beer, who seemed to be trying to sink into a hole in his own chest.

"Jim, you got a crank lab back there turning out enough product to hype all of Los Angeles. You wanna tell me about it?"

The life seemed to drain out of Jim Beer and he fell to the ground in a splay-legged sit. Gabe caught his arm to keep him from cracking his tailbone. Beer didn't look up. "My wife took a note for half the ranch when she left. She called it in. Where else was I going to get three million dollars?"

Gabe looked from Jim to Theo as if to say, "What the hell?"

"I'll explain later, Gabe. I have something I have to show you anyway." Theo pushed Jim Beer's Stetson back so he could see the rancher's face. "So Burton gave you the money so he could use your land for the lab."

"Sheriff Burton?" Gabe asked, totally confused now.

"Shut up, Gabe," Theo snapped.

"Not all of the money. Payments. Hell, what could I do? My grandfather started this ranch. I couldn't sell off half of it."

"So you went into drug dealing?"

"I ain't never even seen this lab you're talking about. Neither have my hands. That part of the ranch is off-limits. Burton said he had you in the cabin to keep anyone from coming in the back gate. I just run my cattle and mind my own business. I never even asked Burton what he was doing out there."

"There million dollars! What the hell did you think he was doing? Raising rabbits?"

Jim Beer didn't answer, he just stared at the ground between his legs. Gabe held his shoulder to steady him and looked to Theo. "Maybe finish this later, Theo?"

Theo turned and walked in a tight circle, waving his hands in the air as if chasing away annoying spirits.

"You okay?" Gabe asked.

"What the fuck do I do now? What do I do? What am I supposed to do?"

"Calm down?" Gabe ventured.

"Fuck that! I got murders, drug manufacturing, some fucking giant animal of some kind, a whole town that's gone nuts, my car is mashed, and I have a crush on a crazy woman - I don't have the training for this! No one has the fucking training for this!"

"So calming down isn't an option right now?" Gabe said. "I understand." Theo interrupted his anxiety Tilt-A-Whirl and wheeled on Gabe. "And I haven't smoked any pot in a week, Gabe."

"Congratulations."

"It's made me insane. It's ruined my life."

"Come on, Theo, you never had a life." Gabe immediately realized that perhaps he had chosen the wrong tack in consoling his friend.

"Yeah, there's that." Theo strode to the red truck and punched the fender. "Ouch! Goddamn it!" He turned to Gabe again. "And I think I just broke my hand."

"Mad cow disease worries me," Jim Beer said from his stupor of defeat.

"Shut up, Jim," Gabe said. "Theo has a gun."

"Guns!" Theo shouted.

"I stand corrected," said Gabe. "You mentioned a giant animal?"

Theo massaged his temples as if trying to squeeze out a coherent thought.

After a few minutes, he walked to where Jim Beer was sitting and kneeled down in front of him. "Jim, I need you to pull it together for a second." The rancher looked at Theo. Tears had traced the creases in his cheeks. "Jim, this never happened, okay? You haven't seen me and you haven't heard anything from this side of the ranch, okay? If Burton calls you, everything is standard operating procedure. You know nothing, you understand?"

"No, I don't understand. Am I going to jail?"

"I don't know that, Jim, but I do know that Burton finding out about this will only make it worse for every one. I need some time to figure some things out. If you help, I'll do my best to protect you, I promise."

"Okay." Beer nodded. "I'll do what you say."

"Good, take Gabe's truck home. We'll pick it up in an hour or so."

Skinner watched all this with heightened interest, tentatively wagging his tail between Theo's tirades, hoping in his heart of hearts that he would get a ride in that big red truck. Even dogs harbor secret agendas.

"Theo, these can't be real," Gabe said, running his hand over a footprint nearly three feet across. "This is some sort of hoax. Although the depth of the claw impressions and the scuffing would indicate that whoever did this really knows something about how animals move."

Theo was fairly calm now, as if he had settled into the whole unreality of the situation. "And they know something about crushing a Volvo too. They're real, Gabe. I've seen a track like this before."

"Where?"

"By the creek, the night the fuel truck blew up. I didn't want to believe it then either."

Gabe looked up from the track. "That's the night I had the mass exodus with my rats."

"Yep."

"There's no way, Theo. That couldn't be what happened. A creature that could leave tracks like this would dwarf a T. Rex. There hasn't been anything this size on the planet for sixty million years."

"Not anything we know about. Look, Gabe, I followed the trail through the grass to the mutilated cows. I thought that was where they went, but evidently that's where they just came from."

"They? You think there's more than one?"

"So you accept that this thing is real?"

"No, Theo. I'm just asking what you think."

"I think that this thing was with Molly Michon."

Gabe laughed. "Theo, I think the withdrawal has you addled."

"I'm not joking. Molly was here right after I heard my car getting crunched. She gave me the keys to the handcuffs. When I came out, she was gone, and so were Joseph Leander and whoever he came here to see."

"So what do you think happened to them?"

"The same thing that happened to those cows. Or something like it. The same thing that I think happened to the Plotznik kid. The last time anyone saw him was at the Fly Rod Trailer Court. That's where Molly lives."

Gabe stood and looked around at the pattern of tracks. "You haven't been into town today, have you, Theo?"

"No, I've been busy."

"Les from the hardware store is missing. They found his truck behind the Head of the Slug, but there's no sign of him."

"We've got to go to Molly's, Gabe."

"We? Theo, I'm a biologist, not a cop. I say we try and track whatever this is. Skinner's a pretty good tracker. I'd bet we find an explanation that doesn't involve some sort of giant creature."

"I'm not a cop anymore either. And what if we track this thing and you're wrong, Gabe? Do you want to meet up with whatever did that to my car? Those cows?"

"Well, yes, I do."

"We can do that later. It shouldn't be too hard. Whatever it is, it's pulling a house trailer."

"What?"

"There was a trailer here when Leander took me into the shed. When I came out, it was gone."

Gabe checked his watch. "Have you eaten today? I'm not questioning you, but maybe you're having a hypoglycemic reaction or something. Let's go get some dinner and when your head clears, we can go by Molly Michon's."

"Right, I'm hallucinating from a bad case of the munchies."

Gabe grabbed his shoulder. "Theo, please. I have a date."

Theo nodded. "Molly's first. Then I'll go to dinner."

"Deal," Gabe said, still staring at the tracks. "I want to come back here with some casting materials. Even if this is a hoax, I want a record of it."

Theo started for the truck and pulled up when he heard the sound of a cell phone ringing inside the shed. He walked into the shed, located the cell phone, and looked at the display for the number that was ringing in. It was Burton's private number. He drew his .357 Magnum and blew the phone into a thousand pieces. He walked out of the shed to find Gabe hiding behind the fender of the red truck and Skinner cowering in the bed.

"What in the hell do you mean, you have a date?"