Authors: Andrew Gross
There was a big new football field with fancy bleachers and a state-of-the-art scoreboard. Large enough for everyone who lived in this godforsaken town, and half the county, too. A big
GO MUSTANGS!
sign at the top of the scoreboard. Maybe in Texas, Hauck was thinking, where Friday night football was king. Or one of those showcase high schools in Denver or Boulder. But what was it doing here?
My boy’s captain of the team. They’ve won the league championship twice. He’s heading off to play at CSU.
“
What?
” Dani asked, turning to see what he was referring to.
“Nothing.” He looked at it again in the rearview mirror as they drove on.
The second time through, the town didn’t get any less run-down. The main street looked as rickety as if a loud clap of thunder would bring it down. Which wouldn’t necessarily have been a terrible thing, Hauck thought. Templeton was a town of ranchers and farmers, and there clearly wasn’t a whole lot of ranching or farming happening. Ten years from now it might not even be on the map.
Except for the damn football field.
As they went through town, they noticed something else, too. A beautiful park. It was clearly new, with pretty plantings, sloping down to the river. Almost like a town green. There was a large gazebo and an outdoor public stage, maybe for concerts. A cool-looking playground for the kids, with a skateboard park. More green than there was in the rest of the town all together. In fact, it was about the only thing of beauty in it.
“I bet it’s the place to be during the Potato Festival,” Dani joked as they went by.
“Yeah. Hard to figure why, though.” Something just wasn’t making full sense to Hauck. As Allie said, most of the town looked like it was the place time forgot.
“Why do you have to try and figure out the reason, Uncle Ty?” Dani turned to him. “It’s just pretty. That’s all.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “You’re right.”
They stopped and had coffee. And a freshly baked apple crisp. Then they got back in the car and continued past a couple of motels. These both looked really run-down. They kept driving, toward Greeley, another sixteen miles, following the low-lying river.
“So where are we going now?”
“To look for a place to stay,” Hauck said.
Her eyes lit up. “You’re going to check out Adrian?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “One night. Long as we drove all this way … That’s all. After the funeral we head back. Understand? After
you
go to the funeral. Watkins made it fairly clear, he doesn’t want
me
there.”
Dani nestled back in her seat, pleased. “Thank you, Uncle Ty.”
“Just so you know the rules.”
There was a slowdown up ahead on the road, some large rigs coming to a crawl, backing up traffic.
“There’s a university in Greeley. There has to be somewhere decent to stay.”
“The U of Northern Colorado,” Dani confirmed. “I have some friends who went there. They specialize in—”
“Dani, hold on!” Hauck hit the brakes, throwing his arm out to restrain her. A large, eighteen-wheel tanker pulled out in front of them from a road coming up from the river, almost cutting them off.
“What the hell was that
?
” he said. As they passed the road, Hauck could see two more rigs, identical to the one that almost hit them, pulling up to the intersection about to turn. Each, a long, metal cylindrical tanker. The ones he had seen up ahead slowing traffic looked the same.
Hauck turned and looked down toward the river. “What do you think they’re bringing up from down there?”
“Has to be oil.” Dani shrugged. “Or natural gas, maybe. There must be a well.”
Hauck sped up and passed the one that had pulled out in front of him. They all had the same large logo on the sides.
RMM.
“One helluva well,” Hauck said. “Those things are all over the place here.”
In fact, they’d passed several wells on the ride so far, some dug right in the middle of people’s crop fields. Dani said they were called
pumpjacks
. A steel trestle and a large, bobbing drill head that resembled a
Tyrannosaurus rex,
but was actually called a horse head. Churning up and down. It operated by hydraulic power to pump the oil or natural gas back up from underground.
“How do you know all that?” Hauck asked her.
“I told you, I was a geology major in school.”
The crops couldn’t grow, so the farmers leased the land out to the exploration companies in hopes of something far more profitable. He knew new drilling advances had made exploration out here a lot more feasible.
Ahead of them, the convoy of big trucks picked up speed. Gleaming in the late-day sun.
He looked at the rig again. An arrow, circling through the letters
RMM.
It was like the farmland had just been handed over to the oil and mining companies out here.
They found a place to stay at a Fairfield Inn on the main road leading into Greeley.
The next morning, Hauck drove Dani back to Templeton and dropped her off at the church just before ten o’clock. People were already filing in. He told her he’d be back to pick her up in a couple of hours.
“What are you going to do?” she asked as she got out of the car.
“Sightsee.”
“Just watch out, Uncle Ty. I hear the sights can be a little dangerous here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The address on the car registration was 4110 Tuttle Road in Greeley, which turned out to be several miles from town in the flat, expansive backcountry. Every once in a while Hauck saw a farm, cattle grazing, fields penned in by wire fences. Ford F-150s were definitely the preferred mode of transportation out here.
Tuttle Road was at an intersection off the main road, CO 49.
The traffic out here was sparse. Every minute or two a pickup or a Bronco would speed by. The homes he saw were white or red farmhouses and most had barns. He finally pulled up to a mailbox marked 4110 with just a hand-scrawled number on it at the end of a long, dirt driveway. A white pickup whooshed by and Hauck waited until it was out of sight. He turned in and decided to drive down the rutted road, dense brush crowding on each side.
About a hundred yards down he came upon a dilapidated house.
More shack than house actually. The front porch was askew and the stairs rotted and falling apart. The front door hung unhinged and slapped against the walls in the wind. It seemed totally abandoned. Clearly, no one had actually lived here in years.
Hauck got out of his car, the wind whipping through the creaking shutters.
His antennae began to buzz. Colin Jerrod Adrian. Who the hell was he? From near the same town as Trey. But Trey hadn’t lived there in years. With no bank accounts, no taxes paid. No present at all. Only a murky, ill-fated past.
Staff Sergeant Colin Adrian was killed in Fallujah in 2006.
Hauck kicked around the deserted shack for a while, stepping onto the creaky steps, finding nothing there, just a dried-up well. Frustrated, he got back in his car and drove back out to the main road.
He considered going to one of Adrian’s neighbors and asking about him. The nearest house was probably a quarter mile away, and this was clearly the kind of place where people wouldn’t take to outsiders coming in and asking about their neighbors. It was quiet in all directions. The county road seemed to stretch endlessly into the hazy mountains miles and miles away.
A kid was dead. Five others, possibly connected. A police chief was withholding evidence. Why? To keep what quiet?
They’d have to have the means to carry it out,
he had said to Dani.
And the will.
Who
would possibly have the will?
Hauck looked around again and climbed out of his the car. The wind kicked up, carrying a few branches and dust in its path. He stepped up to the mailbox. It was a roomy, rectangular lockbox. A couple of unopened newspapers or phone books were on the ground, bundled in plastic. Hauck took out the Swiss Army knife that was attached to his keys. The road stretched empty in both directions. He inserted the tip of the pick blade into the keyhole and jiggled it around. He knew what to do. He could take a lawn mower apart and reassemble it with just a screwdriver. And this lockbox wasn’t exactly built to withstand much of a challenge.
After a minute or so he felt the lock click.
Another twist, and the tiny lock pin released. He swung the box open. There wasn’t much inside. A few envelopes. Local junk mail. A magazine or two. Mailers from Safeways supermarkets and Walmart. All were addressed simply to
Resident
. It didn’t tell him much. Only one thing.
The magazines were current. Which meant that someone came out here on a regular basis to pick them up.
Finding nothing else, Hauck stuffed the stack of mail back in the box, ready to close it back up.
An envelope fell out that had been folded inside one of the mailers.
It was the only thing in there that even bore a name.
And it wasn’t Adrian’s.
It was addressed to a John Robertson. From something called the Alpha Group. An address here in Greeley. Hauck jiggled it and held it up. This wasn’t junk mail. There was a piece of paper inside. It actually looked like a check.
So someone did receive mail here. Adrian or Robertson, or whoever it was who had taken Adrian’s ID.
The Alpha Group.
Hauck jotted down the address, 2150 Turner Street. Then he put the envelope back in the pile and closed it back up. The owner would know the minute he came back out here that someone was on to him.
But an hour or so from now that wouldn’t matter anyway.
An hour or so from now he was pretty sure John Robertson would know exactly who had been here to find him.
He drove back into Greeley and followed the GPS to the location for the Alpha Group in a small office park outside town.
He parked outside the modern, redbrick building and stepped through the glass doors. The reception area was small, but upscale. A receptionist sat behind the front desk, a large logo behind her of an oil well trestle with lightning bolt running through it. Three words on a banner underneath it:
INFORM. CHANGE. INFLUENCE
. Hauck stepped up to her and she put some work aside and said cheerily, “Can I help you?”
“I’m trying to find a John Robertson,” Hauck said. “Is he here?”
“Mr. Robertson …” The receptionist’s reaction seemed to have multiple things going on in it: The first was surprise. Clearly, she knew the name, but it was obvious people didn’t just come in off the street asking for him. But Hauck also detected some uncertainty, too. Uncertainty as to what to do. “Mr. Robertson isn’t in the office right now. But I’ll be happy to take your name.”
“Does he work here?” Hauck inquired.
“He doesn’t exactly work
here …”
she replied after a bit more hesitation. “I mean, out of this particular office.”
“So how can I reach him? It’s just on a personal matter.” He could see he was making her a bit uncomfortable. However she’d been taught to respond to this particular question, it was getting beyond her training.
“How about I ask our administrative VP, Mr. McKay …? I’ll see if he’s busy. What did you say your name was?”
“Hauck.” He gave her a business card.
“Please hold on a moment Mr. Hauck …”
She got on the line and said something in a low tone to what sounded like the manager’s assistant. “He’ll be right with you.” She came back with a smile. “He’s just finishing up a call.” She pointed toward a couch with some magazines on the table.
“Feel free to take a seat over there.”
“Thanks.” Hauck went over. The periodicals were all energy related. Oil. Natural gas. There was a stack of company brochures there as well. Hauck picked one up. It showed the same logo as on the wall. The same slogan too:
INFORM. CHANGE. INFLUENCE
.
Influence what?
The brochure described Alpha as a company based out of Denver specializing in the energy field. It talked about “technical and crisis management solutions for today’s critical energy and environmental issues.” It showed a series of corporate executives, both in hard hats and business suits. Out in the field and in company boardrooms. There were photos of oil and gas rigs, rig workers at work, some fancy office buildings, a pretty park, reminding Hauck of the one they’d seen in Templeton. Even an upscale residential community with a golf course, as if all were examples of the happy world Alpha’s efforts were achieving.
Hauck folded the brochure in his pocket.
A man stepped out from the back. He was average height, trim, fit-looking under his white dress shirt, like he lifted weights; mid-thirties, though he had lost most of his reddish hair to a high forehead. “Randy McKay …” he said amiably, reaching out his hand. His grip was firm, businesslike; out of some sales training regimen. Military.
“Ty Hauck,” Hauck replied.
“Janet tells me you’re looking for Mr. Robertson …?”
“Yes. Is he here?”
“I guess she told you John doesn’t always work out of this office. Alpha has dozens of operational sites throughout Weld Country and the Wattenberg field …”
“The Wattenberg field …?”
“That’s where we are now. Right smack in the middle of it. One hundred thousand barrels of oil a day and seven hundred and forty million cubic feet of natural gas from around twenty-two thousand active wells. Not all
our
clients, of course, but we have multiple projects going on, where John spends most of his time.”
“I see. So what exactly does Mr. Robertson actually do for Alpha, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t mind at all.” The manger smiled. “Though we don’t normally give out that kind of information on our employees. Why don’t we step in here … Janet, we’re going to be in Conference Room A for a couple of minutes if anyone’s needing me. Shouldn’t be too long.”