Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

At least he’d managed to throw it in park.

Reaching across the dash, he opened the glove compartment. After a few attempts to peel open the cellophane wrapper from the cigarette box with his unsteady fingers, he ripped it off with his teeth and hung a cigarette from his lips. Even before lighting it, he felt steadier, more able to cope with the horror and fury coursing through him. The lighter took him a minute of rummaging to find, but find it he did, and clicked a flame into being.

He drew deeply on the cigarette until he felt it settling into his bones and brain. His radio squawked at him, so he snapped it off. He didn’t want to talk to anyone in his department. Not until he had a handle on the situation. Another flick of his fingers turned his sirens on.

Exhaling, he watched the smoke swirl and dissipate in the closed confines of his car, making his eyes water. Fuck it. He wasn’t even going to bother opening a window. It wasn’t as if he had anything more to lose in his life.

With another slow, deep inhale, he pulled away from the curb and tried not to think about the sight of his mother’s face when she’d seen him, nor the look of the metal cuffs on her wrists. Instead, he concentrated on the image in his head of Wallace Meyer’s sneering, walrus face, and imagined all the ways he’d make the bastard pay for his sins.

Rachel paced on the ground adjacent to the canal, her cell phone to her ear.

Restless and curious, Ben had left the notifying to her while he examined the flow mechanism on the far end of the canal section. There’d been two vents in the underground room, so that was most likely the second swamp cooler.

She didn’t want to talk to Vaughn, but couldn’t see a way around it. Even if she requested to speak to Deputy Binderman, Vaughn had made it clear that he wasn’t going to hand the case over to anyone else. So, as seemed to be their eternal fate, they couldn’t escape each other no matter how hard they tried. Life kept pulling them together in painful, impossible ways.

When his home phone went to the message machine, she pressed end and drew a fortifying breath. He hadn’t answered his cell phone either, so her only remaining option was to phone his office. Irene picked up.

“Hello, Irene. Is Sheriff Cooper in?” Her heart was pounding out of her ribs, but there was no getting around this call, no matter how it would hurt her to hear his voice.

Irene was silent for a beat, then, “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Nothing, dear. It’s not my place. The officer on duty is Deputy Binderman, but he’s on the other line. Would you like me to leave him a message to call you?”

“It’s urgent. I’ll wait.”

“If there’s an emergency, you’d best explain it to me so I can dispatch someone right away, get you the help you need.”

If only it was that easy. But there was no way to save her from the shattered illusions of her past. What could she say?

My father isn’t the man I thought he was. He wasn’t a lazy dreamer and a cheat. He was far, far worse. Everything I thought I knew about my life was wrong.

“Urgent, but not an emergency.”

“Of course, dear. Bless your heart. I’m going to put you on hold.”

Ben was farther away now, walking through the next section of canal.

She kicked a clump of wild alfalfa and felt the first cracks in her composure. Deputy Binderman had better not dally because she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep it together. The horrible truth about her father had been stewing in her mind too long as it was. Rage simmered inside her, close to boiling. She wanted to scream at the heavens or beat her fists against her truck.

She wanted to find her sisters and tell them, “You were right. He did ruin our lives. I’m sorry I ever defended him.”

She kicked another clump of weeds. Damn him.

Damn him to hell for his lies. He’d known full well Rachel had staked her life on this farm, on the alfalfa crop. She hadn’t gone to college; she didn’t have a backup plan. All she had was this farm and her dream to keep it running. He knew that, yet he’d sabotaged the irrigation and ruined her chance on purpose. He’d brought drugs and criminals onto their property. He’d bankrupted Rachel and her sisters’ future. And for what? If he’d been running a meth lab, where was the money from it? He certainly hadn’t shared it with his children or wife. Where did the oil drilling fit in with his illicit schemes and drug trade? Where did Wallace Meyer Jr. and his buddies fit in?

She wasn’t sure she wanted the answers to those questions. Wasn’t sure she cared anymore. She reached down, into the dry dust, and ripped the weeds up by their roots, growling with the effort.

She’d believed in her father, despite his many faults. She’d convinced herself she felt lost because she’d lost him—first, to his shortcomings and addictions, and then to an untimely, accidental death. But now she knew the truth.

She ground the heel of her boot into another wild patch, releasing the cut grass scent she used to love. Her father hadn’t been the man who rescued her when she was lost, but the one who set her adrift. All this time she’d thought their alfalfa business died because she’d failed as a farmer, as a daughter. But that wasn’t it at all. It was he who failed her. In every possible way a father could.

“Ms. Sorentino? It’s Deputy Binderman. What can I do for you?”

Her mind was caught in a flurry of noise and hate too toxic to speak. “Yes,” she said, her breathing labored. “Yes.”

“Ms. Sorentino, are you hurt?”

Yes, I am. “No. Out of breath.” Resting her hand over her forehead, she fought to get a grip. “My foreman and I found something this morning at our irrigation canal.” She took another pained breath, so enraged that her lungs felt like they were collapsing in on themselves. “Near where the graffiti had been written. We don’t know much about these things, but we think it might be a . . .” Another breath. Goddamn you for doing this to me, you son of a bitch. “A meth lab.”

“Oh.” Binderman paused, like her words were still sinking in. “Oh. Get away from it. Far away. Meth labs are unstable. You said it’s by the graffiti sites?”

Her arm started shaking, so she cupped the phone with both hands. “Yes.”

“That’s far enough away from the house that we don’t need to worry about evacuating. I’ll meet you in your driveway in twenty minutes, and I’m calling for backup and a fire truck.”

“Whatever you need to do is fine.”

Binderman clicked off the line.

Ben was far enough away that it made more sense to call his phone than holler at him. “We’ve got to get to the house to meet the police.”

“On my way.”

She closed her eyes and let her ulcer flare, sizzling her body from the inside out. How was she going to explain this to her sisters? She was so damn tired of giving them bad news. All she wanted was peace. All she wanted was not to feel lost or hurt anymore. But the hits kept on coming.

Screwing her mouth up, she bit back a fresh scream of rage and pivoted, hurtling her phone into the canal. It shattered into pieces. Good riddance.

Ben backed up, his eyes wide.

She sniffed, swiping a hand across her dripping nose. “I’m riding in the back. Fresh air.” Head down, she stalked to the truck, grinding every blade of alfalfa with her heel along the way, and climbed into the bed.

At least Ben was smart enough not to say anything. He settled in the driver’s seat and set off toward the house.

She stood with an arm hooked around the bar strung across the cab, holding her hat. She released her hair from its band and let the wind whip it around her face as the truck bounced down the road, her gaze settling over the terrain. The browns and oranges of the burnt ground, the deep greens and yellows of the trees and shrubs that were as much survivors of the harsh, unforgiving high desert landscape as she was. Scrappers who defied the odds, even with all the forces of nature and man working to destroy them.

When they pulled around the side of the stable into the yard between the stable and the main house, they weren’t greeted by squad cars and fire trucks, but by Amy, Jenna, and Sloane, along with Mr. Dixon, Tina, the farmhands, and both of the inn’s guest families. Everyone was hugging and laughing and snapping pictures with Tulip, who’d been dressed to the nines with a funny little red hat and a wreath of flowers.

Rachel’s heart sank to her knees. She’d forgotten about the big group send-off.

When they noticed Ben’s truck pulling into the yard, everyone clapped and cheered. Rachel cursed under her breath and replaced her hat on her head.

“There’s our cowgirl,” Jenna said in a perky voice.

“Here I am.” She forced a smile as she leapt over the side of the truck bed. “I need to have a word with you, Jenna, Amy.”

Amy looked at her like she’d lost her marbles. “Now?”

“Right now.”

She stalked toward the stable, her sisters in tow, then slid the door closed behind them.

“Now’s not the best time, Rach,” Amy said. “We’ve got a yard full of people.”

“I know that. Which is why we need them to leave. Now! Is Mr. Dixon driving them to the airport?”

Jenna waved her arms. “Hold on. What are you talking about?”

Rachel opened her mouth, but the sound of sirens approaching cut through the air.

“Ben and I had no choice but to call the cops. We found something bad out on the west end field. Another one of Dad’s secrets.”

Jenna and Amy nodded, getting enough of the point to spur them to action. They pushed past Rachel and threw the door open as a fire engine and three squad cars barreled into the yard. Rachel had trouble getting her legs to work. Her eyes turned up to look at the space above the door.

Her lucky horseshoe.

Another illusion she’d held on to for too long.

She couldn’t stand the thought of leaving it there one moment longer to gloat at her. She banged the stable’s tool closet door open and found a tire iron. Maybe she’d take the shoe to her father’s grave and bury it right alongside her false memories of the man she’d idolized. Then again, that would be too much effort expended on the man who obviously hadn’t loved her all that much.

Three pries with the tire iron and the nails gave way. The shoe flipped from the wall and sailed over Rachel’s head to fall into the scoop she used to muck out the stalls. A fitting end for a rotten lie of a story.

Cursing loudly, she tossed the tire iron aside. It clattered to the ground as she marched from the stable, ready to face her new reality.

* * *

It took the sheriff deputies and firefighters a solid eight hours to assess and process the new crime scene on Rachel’s farm. Ben had been right—what they’d found was indeed a meth lab. Undersheriff Stratis and Deputy Binderman estimated it’d been used as recently as the previous winter. Right about the time the oil derricks were installed.

The timing baffled Rachel as much as it seemed to baffle the sheriff deputies. She would’ve figured it’d gone out of use at the time of her dad’s car crash, which the sheriff’s department was no longer calling an accident. When she pressed for details, all they would tell her was that the case had been reopened due to new evidence.

As if Rachel and her sisters could handle any more tough news.

Then again, if her dad had gotten himself killed, she’d bet the house it had something to do with the drugs. There wasn’t a drug dealer or cooker on the planet who ever died of natural causes, that was for sure.

The whole day long, she kept her eyes open for a sign of Vaughn, but he never showed up. Not to her farm, and not to the station house, where she’d followed Stratis’s squad car for a more formal interview in the late afternoon. She’d been certain he’d at least want to make sure she was okay, but his silence broke her heart all over again.

Her interview with Stratis at the station house was free of the unpleasant tension and innuendos of wrongdoing that had plagued their first interview. Probably because Rachel was too far mired in her pain to care, but also because Stratis was all business. His features and words were wooden, his demeanor stoic. All the questions he’d asked her earlier, he asked again, along with a dozen more. Questions mostly about her dad’s last few years of life. She answered the best she could, but nothing about her memories of her dad seemed real anymore.