A Nose for Justice (5 page)

Power stayed on. A godsend.

Stock came first. Throwing hay, checking water troughs, and chopping ice consumed the dark day. Low, dark clouds made it feel like six o’clock in the evening. Winter made every moment of light precious, each day another minute lost until the solstice in two weeks.

He walked into the property’s original barn, snow still falling. A huge gas tank fueled a heat unit that looked like an open-ended torpedo. The open end flickered red, blue, and white with the gas flame. The flame roared—you couldn’t hear yourself think—but it warmed a large area.

“Shit!” Enrique exclaimed as he pushed open the doors so he could get in the ATV.

One of the workers on Jeep’s barn restoration had left the heat unit on. Its gas tank was enormous so it kept going. The other farmhands, all trapped in their houses off Wings Ranch, probably wouldn’t get to work for a good two days. Enrique figured it would be at least that long before Red Rock Road, then Dry Valley Road, and finally Dixie Lane would be plowed.

Still cursing, he walked over to cut off the unit, stopped, and looked down at his feet. The ground was unfrozen around the heater. That part of the aisle and the back end of a former stall near the gas looked relatively workable. He and the boys had been digging out the stalls and center aisle. They wanted to go down three feet to lay eight-inch-diameter ceramic drainage pipes. Jeep’s intent was to restore the exterior of the stable to its pristine form, as well as re-create the interior as it would have looked in the
1880s, with beautiful brass fittings. However, the barn would still be modern and functional in terms of drainage, plumbing, electricity, and footing. Drainage pipes would run under each stall. Each stall would have a pipe on a downward grade to the center aisle. Two large drains in the aisle and a large underground ceramic pipe running the length of the barn would carry waste to a septic tank. The manure would be handled as it had been since before Xenophon, by picking out the stalls.

He plucked a spade hanging on a hook on the wall. Tools hung neatly in a row. This would be changed later when they’d hang in a small storage room off the aisle. People or horses could back into tools not tucked safely away. At this stage of construction there was only the metal sheet exterior covering the original clapboard, which were planks hauled by rail from California, off-loaded at Reno Junction, then carried here by mule wagons. To have a clapboard barn screamed filthy rich. The Ford brothers put their money in the front window. Jeep, rich herself, proved more circumspect. Her argument was that Wings Ranch should be what it was in the beginning. Nevada was owed its heritage.

Enrique nudged the soil with the spade tip. The stall had already been dug down two feet. The soil gave way easily. He pulled off his old blanket-lined jacket and started digging. There wasn’t much else he could do. The stock would come in the other barns at nightfall. In these conditions, animals could tell better than the humans when it truly was night. He’d have to run over the paths with the ATV again but that was it. Like Jeep, Enrique couldn’t tolerate being idle. He also hated being indoors, regardless of the weather.

“Might as well get one stall down to three feet,”
he thought, tapping the unfrozen part of the center aisle.

If he dug out this stall, he’d have a better idea of how difficult it would be to lay the pipe. These things always sounded easy in conversation or drawn on paper, but then you got into it.

In ten minutes he’d worked up a good sweat. Thirty more and he’d reached a foot down into what would be the front end of the stall. He moved carefully, piling up the sand and small stones mixed in with orovado soil. He turned around to make sure he wasn’t too close to the blazing heater. Its loud whoosh and roar irritated him.

As he finished the next section, he started to jam down into the dirt with the spade point, but stopped midair. Laying down the spade he knelt to look closer at something in the hole. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing. A tiny LED light hung on the ATV key chain. He ran to the other end of the barn to get it.

The subzero fluorescent overhead lights had allowed him to work, but now he needed something brighter. Plucking the key out, he ran back, knelt down, his face close to the sandy loam. He pressed the button—the breast of buxom woman—on the key fob Carlotta had bought him. The tiny white light shone on a piece of bone.

Enrique had seen plenty of cattle, sheep, horse, and coyote bones. This was human, he was certain. Slipping the fob in his pocket, he dug some more, very carefully. An arm revealed itself, then part of a rib cage, and finally, a hand wearing a tarnished silver ring, which was black against the bony white third digit, and gave an eerie contrast.

He jammed the spade into the dirt right outside the stall. He opened the wide old doors enough to get the ATV out. Firing up the bright red Honda, he sped to the main house.

“Mom!”

In the cozy living room with Jeep, Mags, and the dogs, Carlotta looked up quickly.

Jeep, too.

They heard the urgency in his voice.

“Living room,” Jeep called.

He knocked the snow off his feet in the kitchen, leaving two white clumps incised with his boot tread.

Carlotta rose. “What is it?”

But Enrique was looking at Jeep. He said, “Mom, can you get your gear on? I’ll drive you to the barn.”

She didn’t question him. Jeep rarely wasted time like that. She’d find out when she got there. Perhaps this as much as anything else distinguished her from those under fifty who existed in a constant information/conversation swirl, whose continual observations on whatever it was they were seeing or hearing were not necessarily based on reality.

“Honey, you stay here,” Enrique ordered his wife. He looked at Mags. “Walk behind us. Take your mind off Wall Street.”

Mags, who regarded Enrique as an uncle, took her cue from her great-aunt and kept her mouth shut. The two women quickly bundled up as Enrique grabbed a large nine-volt flashlight from the pantry. Carlotta followed, her eyes full of questions.

“I’ll tell you later. It’s nothing to worry about.” He hoped this was true.

Once outside, the cold hit Jeep and Mags in their faces. Bitter, bitter cold. Whoever said dry cold wasn’t as bad as moist cold, East Coast cold, was a barefaced liar.

On the ATV, Jeep wrapped her arms around Enrique’s waist as he put it in gear. In a pair of old mukluks Carlotta had unearthed, Mags trotted down the path behind them. King followed her and Baxter followed King, not at all happy with the view.

Given how slick the packed-down snow was, Enrique kept the ATV in second gear.

King stopped a moment to relieve himself along the side of the path.

Baxter observed, then drily said,
“Where’s the hydrant?”

While that made King chortle, it didn’t mean he was going to like the fuzzy sausage.

Once at the barn, Enrique dismounted, but Mags reached the double doors first, and with effort, swung one out. He rolled the ATV in and cut its motor. After the dogs scooted inside, Mags closed the door behind them.

Jeep followed.

“Look. Look at this!”

The two dogs sniffed first.

“Nothing worth chewing.”
King pronounced his judgment.

“I’ve never smelled bones this old,”
Baxter said.

“You’ve never smelled real bones. Bet all you’ve chewed on is moccasins and Milk-Bones,”
King sarcastically replied.

“Pissant,”
Baxter half snarled.

King stood over him, his ruff raised.

Jeep sharply cut through their bull. “Enough!” She knelt down herself and ordered Mags. “Hand me the torch.”

Mags did as she was told.

Enrique knelt down next to Jeep. She carefully shined the yellowish light over the exposed part of the skeleton.

“It’s human all right. We won’t know if it’s a man or a woman until we get to the pelvis.” Jeep half whispered.

“Shouldn’t you call the sheriff?” Mags wondered, standing at the end of the stall.

“In this weather? No. Furthermore, this person has been here a long, long time.”

“Maybe the barn was built over a small burial ground.” Mags thought out loud.

“Not a chance.” Jeep shook her head, deep in thought.

“What about Paiutes?” Mags said. “I mean, we aren’t far from an old Indian site and maybe where Fort Sage once was.”

Enrique, realizing Jeep’s tolerance was fading as her fascination increased, gently said, “Mags, no one has ever found Fort Sage. It’s supposed to be west of here. And I don’t think the Paiute laid out their dead like this.”

She was only trying to be helpful, but it reminded Mags that her great-aunt didn’t welcome interruption or personal opinion when riveted by a problem or political exchange.

The blackened ring caught Jeep’s eye as it had drawn Enrique’s. She handed the flashlight to her son. He held it steady. Mags and the dogs watched intently. Jeep slid off the ring—the distal and middle phalanxes came off with it, but did not disintegrate. She replaced the finger bones.

Jeep looked down before studying the ring. “Good heavy bones, whoever this is—was.” She rolled the ring around between her thumb and forefinger. “Silver, a silver horseshoe with the Star of Guard on it. Enrique, got a hankie, anything?”

He reached into his breast coat pocket and pulled out a sullied handkerchief. She spit on it and vigorously rubbed the inside of the ring. A faint glow of interior gold rewarded her. She put the ring almost to her eyeball.

“Yes!”

Mags, driven to distraction, asked, “Yes, what?”

Jeep stood up and Mags helped her out of the three-foot-deep area.
“Let’s go back to the house and I’ll show you. When the storm’s over I’ll get Pete out here. In the meantime, we’ve got work to do.”

“What kind of work?” Mags’s green eyes questioned her great-aunt.

“Tomorrow after the chores, the three of us are going to free what remains of this body from its prison. Now come on.”

Back in the house’s kitchen, Jeep handed Carlotta the ring and asked her to shine it up. By the time Jeep and Mags had peeled off their layers, Carlotta had already restored the ring, quite a unique one.

Enrique, coat off, gloves off, boots off, dropped to a chair at the big table. All that digging was fatiguing.

Jeep sat at the head, her son on the right, her great-niece on the left of the table. “This is from the Nicholas School of Cavalry, an elite school in Czarist Russia founded by Czar Nicholas I in 1823. It was quartered in St. Petersburg, a fabulous place to be as a young fellow.”

“Mom, how do you know this?” Enrique asked.

Sitting next to her husband, Carlotta leaned forward, as eager for the report as the other two.

“I’ve seen this distinctive ring twice before. The first time was during the war when I found myself with an old, beautifully mannered Soviet colonel. I’d flown a plane to our base in Montana. He always kept on his gloves except once, inside the base’s makeshift bar, he took them off. That’s when I noticed his ring.” She paused. “Sometimes the Russians would come to Montana to pick up planes. They were our allies. Given that he was a colonel, I knew he was here for more than a plane. You knew never to ask.”

Mags, a good student of history, held out her palm. Jeep dropped the ring into it. “But Aunt Jeep, if this is the ring of an elite Russian school, wouldn’t the Soviet colonel have hidden it? I mean, the royals and aristocrats were killed after the Russian Revolution.”

“Most were, but a few threw in their lot with the Reds or possessed such critical skills even Lenin and his bizarre henchman, Trotsky, didn’t dare wipe them out.”

“I thought Trotsky was a good guy.” Mags, who’d read Isaac Deutscher, frowned.

“None of them were good guys. You don’t kill millions and come out as good guys no matter how well you write.”

“Point taken.” Mags hadn’t thought of it that way. “The ring is lined with gold.”

“Yes. That, too, reflects the ethos of the aristocrats at their best: Hide what is most dear. And to a graduate of this rigorous school, the gold represents one’s heart. Nobility, not of birth, but of spirit. Inscribed in Russian is ‘Soldier, coronet, and general were eternal friends. 1887.’ I can read a little Russian. The colonel I met was Timofev Nilov. Like all the graduates, he was proud of the Nicholas School. It was an even stronger pride than West Pointers have, I think.”

Enrique studied the ring. “It’s a very simple design.”

“So, it was a man?” Carlotta chimed in.

“Couldn’t he have given it to a lover, his wife, a daughter?” Mags inquired.

“Highly unlikely.” Jeep drummed her fingertips on the table. “Many graduates were buried with their ring or it was kept as a family treasure, but you only wore it if you earned it. The last czar himself could not wear this ring since he had not graduated from the school. Some grand dukes had. And, of course, there were other elite cavalry schools, but the Nicholas School was the oldest—divided into those who would become Cossack units and those who would become light cavalry, like Hussars. I can tell you two things about our skeleton. One, he was likely one hell of a horseman. Two, he had courage, possibly great courage.”