CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Tank Trap”
Tuesday.
Wiped on oxy and wine Crystal slept long and deep. Stella was up at seven. The Porsche was gone. Stella hoped Blaine had survived the drive.
Fixing herself breakfast from muffins, cream cheese and fruit, Stella spread her Colorado Atlas and Gazetteer on the dining room table. Her finger traced the serpentine path of the Poudre northwest to Walden. Otto’s place was southwest of Kinikinik, the trailhead little more than two ruts following the jagged contours of the land.
Stella transferred her things from the Mustang to Sam’s old Cherokee. Trying to reach Otto’s place in a flatlander vehicle was futile. Only the most rugged four-wheel drives could make it. Or she could hike in. She used a tire gauge and a hand pump to bring tire pressure up to 35 psi. Samism #57: “Proper tire inflation is the key to good fuel economy and handling.” A bumper sticker said, “SAVE THE POUDRE--STORE IT IN THE GLADE!”
Sam’s positions had made life difficult for Stella in middle and high school. Her classmates had been taught in the womb that you can’t hug a child with nuclear arms. And that we all must coexist. And that hate is not a family value. That corporations weren’t people until Texas executes one. It was a mystery to Stella how Sam ever got elected. Not that he was any of those things, but the press hated him.
It was no mystery. He was good with people. He had genuinely liked people. He kissed babies with gusto and petted dogs.
The bumper sticker was an invitation to vandalism. She used a putty knife to scrape it off. She found an old knapsack in the garage into which she stuffed bottled water, jerky and trail mix. She made herself a ham sandwich with deli fixings from the fridge and left Crystal a note thanking her for her hospitality and promising to get in touch soon.
By inviting Blaine Crystal had instinctively avoided any intimate conversation about Sam or his death. Crystal wasn’t fooled by the bullshit cover story, nor was she interested in what really happened. Crystal was interested in how it affected Crystal. Fine with Stella. She put the hand pump in the back with her knapsack and suitcase. She stopped in town to gas up. Gas was at an all-time high. It cost her sixty-five bucks to top off the Cherokee.
Up 287 to Ted’s place where she turned west onto 14. Poudre Canyon wound up and through Cameron Pass, 10,276 feet above sea level. Radio reception was mostly nonexistent in the narrow canyon and the old Jeep lacked a CD player. The Poudre was unusually fast for this time of year due to the heavy snowfall of the previous winter. The narrow, serpentine blacktop clung to the canyon walls occasionally opening up for the odd homestead. She passed vacationers in Winnebagos, bikers towing trailers with teddy bears bungeed to the sissy bars, huge trucks hauling wood and hay, pick-up trucks and bicyclists tricked out in primary colored spandex and teardrop-shaped helmets, all streaming up and down the mountain. The bicyclists rode with their heads down and their rumps in the air.
Mishiwaka, the notorious music bar that loomed over the rushing water, was still shuttered at this hour of the morning. Stella had been to the Mish often while attending UC Boulder. She’d dropped Ecstasy and grooved to Phish, Drag the River, Leftover Salmon. She smiled ruefully at the memory and a Samism popped into her head.
“Stella, you think about what you do now if you ever plan to run for public office. You don’t want your opponent telling people you dealt grass or banged the Rams’ starting line-up.”
Her minor experimentation with drugs had ended long ago and she would’ have rather pulled her own teeth out with pliers than run for office. Even before he sought office, Sam hadn’t been around much to which he attributed the demands of his job as CSU fundraiser but which Stella later realized were due to his relentless hound-dogging.
Sam was great when he was there. He never bitched that God hadn’t dealt him a son. He taught Stella how to ride horse, shoot a rifle, ride a bike and field-dress a deer. Martha appreciated none of these things so father and daughter had time to themselves. Sam hadn’t had the greatest taste in women. Stella loved Martha but Stella wasn’t blind.
Like Crystal, Martha was a drunk and a pill popper. Stella had been made aware of various other poopsies and one-night stands through friends, gossip, the occasional tabloid, but Sam was beloved by his constituents and could do no ill. Sally Crandall, Pendragon’s girl in D.C., had been the best of the bunch. Stella had met Sally at some soiree six months ago and liked her immediately. She instinctively knew that Sally was Sam’s latest squeeze.
Well who could blame him, with Crystal’s wild mood-swings and days in bed for fibromyalgia. Stella was glad Sam had Sally. He should have married her in the first place. Oh well. Hindsight was 20/20, as Sam endlessly told her.
Samisms #1 and #2 were: Attitude is everything. Character is destiny.
“Yes, Sam,” she said to the gray rock. Out of the city it was cooler and she had the windows open, noting the subtle change in the air itself with the first hint of pine sneaking in. On this sunny Tuesday in late June, the river was a rolling party, blue helmeted rafters battling rapids with yellow paddles, kayaks rushing by. Most of the riverside picnic grounds, Ouzel, Dutch George, had already begun to fill with fugitives from the city setting up their barbecue. Anglers stood knee deep in the furious water, casting flies.
Stella found the turn-off to Otto’s place just past Pingree Park. A plank bridge lay over the river. On the other side was a line-up of seventeen mailboxes affixed to a stand made of two-by-fours, and a chain suspended between two steel poles sunk in concrete deep into the ground, held shut with a padlock.
Stella turned the engine off. She got out, took a drink of water, and looked at the mailboxes. Twelve of them had names. None said White. She looked around. The mountains rose steeply to the southwest, covered with a mottled mantle of Kelly green and bark beetle brown. The land retained enough moisture so that the fire level was moderate. Overhead an eagle circled pursued by several ravens. Otherwise not a soul.
Stella wondered what to do. She could leave the Jeep and hike in, but it was about six miles and none of it was easy. She wasn’t certain she was up to that kind of challenge despite her daily rigorous workouts at Gold’s in Silver Spring. She heard the sound of a transmission grinding gears and seconds later a blue Ford 150 with some kind of lab mix in the bed pulled around the curve up to the chain and stopped.
The gnarled homunculus who stepped out looked like a stick figure on whom someone had draped coveralls and a John Deere cap. The old dude went up to the padlock and looked at Stella.
“Mornin’. Help you?”
“I’m looking for Otto White. I’m Stella Darling.”
The man proffered a hand that seemed to belong to a larger man. “Wayne Winslett. White. White. I know just about everybody on the mountain but our mystery man, drives some sort of Transformers truck, got a German shepherd. That him?”
“That’s Otto.”
“Never said word one to me. Friendly enough, but like many people up this way, they live up here for a reason. However, you don’t look like a Fed or a lawyer.”
Stella blushed and smiled. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me in, Mr. Winslett. We’re old friends. I would have contacted him if there were any way, but Otto doesn’t have a phone. He doesn’t have a computer. I don’t think he even has electricity.”
Winslett unlocked the padlock and let the chain fall to the ground with a clank. “Go on ahead. I’ll lock up.”
Stella gave Winslett her jury-winning smile. “Thank you.”
She got in the Jeep and drove through the steel poles following the rutted rocky trail as it wound upwards. She shifted to lower case four-wheel drive, grateful for the seatbelt that prevented her slamming her head into the headliner as she clambered
over gully-wumpers and hassock-sized rocks. It was slow going. The trail switch-backed up the mountain and now the scent of pine was everywhere.
“You smell that, honey?” Sam asked her on one of their hikes. “That’s the smell of money. That’s what a rich neighborhood smells like.”
It was true. In the water-starved west only the wealthy or original settlers got the land with the trees. Uphill. The richer you were the further uphill you moved. By those standards Otto was a millionaire. She remembered when he’d showed her around the place two years ago. His land was mostly flat rock snugged up against a red rock shelf, low ground cover of juniper, prickly pear, mountain rose, yucca, a stream, if you could call it that, winding through the rocks, several clumps of aspen. The remains of an old cabin with a stone foundation lay in shadow beneath the rock.
That was where he planned to build the main house, tucked under the shelf like an Anasazi dwelling. Where he’d put the rain basins and holding tanks, and where he planned to build a tank trap for anybody foolish enough to drive in uninvited.
Stella assumed the tank trap was hyperbole. Otto said a lot of things in an inflectionless voice that might lead people to think he was insane.
She was climbing now through ponderosa, stalks of brown kindling where the bark beetle had done its work. She came around a bend and a wall of meat filled the narrow space between the trees. The moose regarded her with disinterest and ambled off into the forest. Even from within the Jeep she could feel the animal’s bulk and power and it had made her afraid. This was not the park and concrete jungle she routinely roamed.
This was the wild. And as Sam always said, the wild could rear up and bite you in the ass when you least expected it.
Pikas scolded her from boulder tops. A coyote slinked across the trail. Through the trees she could hear the burble of the creek as it tumbled down the mountain. The air was rich now with the scent of pine. You could bottle that air and sell it by the quart, she thought. She checked the odometer. Coming up on six miles. Any second now. The entrance to Otto’s land was unmistakably marked by a red pole gate swung shut and latched. There was no lock. There were no casual visitors up here.
She wallowed around a tight bend and there it was jammed between two granite formations that looked like the aftermath of a giant baby’s building block tantrum. She stopped the Jeep and got out. It was at least fifteen degrees cooler up here than back in the city. There were two signs affixed to the gate: “PRIVATE PROPERTY--STAY OUT” and “PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON.” Although the gate was unlocked Stella decided to leave the Cherokee there. She opened the tailgate and hoisted the backpack over her shoulders, cinching the belt tight around her waist. A water bottle hung from a carabiner affixed to her belt. She found a Water Valley ball cap in the rear seat and put it on over wrap-around shades, threading her hair into a ponytail through the back of the cap. She put a piece of jerky in her pocket. In her multi-pocketed khaki shorts, Adidas hiking boots and scout shirt she was indistinguishable from the Standard Issue Colorado Woman.
Stella climbed over the gate and followed the cratered trail which curved out of sight around another granite outcropping. Stella looked up. A few fluffy white clouds scudded overhead. The wind whistled through the pine. It felt good to be out here on the mountain, far removed from the pressure of her job and the tension from living in a pressure cooker with millions of others. She could feel her shoulder muscles relaxing.
Stella walked around the bend and paused to enjoy the view. Spreading her arms she inhaled deeply. Pure ambrosia. City stress exited with each exhalation. One minute she was looking at a red rock outcropping over a peculiar stone wall, the next she realized she was looking at Otto’s house. True to his word he had built it out of stone and tucked it under the red rock shelf. It looked deserted.
Stella took a step and stumbled. The rock she stepped on rolled a few inches and disappeared. Disappeared into a hole in the ground.
Stella got down on her hands and knees and discovered the edge of a tarp stretched tightly across an excavation. “What the hell?” she said. In a rush of fury and disgust she realized what it was. Crouching, she found the corner, untied the concealed anchor rope, and bent it back enough to reveal an SUV-sized excavation with a series of metal spikes mounted at the bottom.
***