The hair prickled at the nape of my neck. Staring into the windswept darkness I became convinced someone was out there watching me. I looked to the surrounding hills, the sentinel trees. I jerked my head up and stared at the silent house. Reaching out to touch his wrist, a shock rippled through me like I had not been properly grounded. I had never seen him before, or if I had I didn’t recognize him. He wore faded jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and cowboy boots. He was grizzled, his fingernails were dirty. His hair was thin, plastered to his head. The dead man looked to be in his sixties maybe. It was like one of those party games where you have thirty seconds to memorize a dozen objects inevitably you see details instead of the big picture. This wasn’t my first contact with murder, but I still got that sensation of watching from a separate solar system - which usually precedes passing out cold.
There was a neat hole the size of a quarter between his shoulder blades. His breath didn’t cloud the raw air, his shoulders didn’t rise and fall. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t alive. I could see in the headlights that his face was turned to the side. From across the yard I could hear a broken shutter banging. I circled him, my footsteps unnaturally loud in the clear night. It was no trick of light, no play of shadows. Too tired to be cautious, I climbed out of the Bronco. I was so wired I was willing to believe my eyes were playing tricks, but as I waited there, the Bronco’s engine idling, the thing on the ground showed no sign of disappearing. I slowed the Bronco’s high beams picked out a number of forms in the darkness: the ramshackle barn behind the house, a tilting windmill, a fractured swing dangling from one of the trees - and something on the ground. Wood-burned letters had once spelled out, Pine Shadow Ranch.
Despite the dark windows and empty corrals I could almost convince myself that I was coming home, that someone waited to welcome me.ĭrawing closer, I discerned the sign mounted on wooden posts above the open gate. Ahead, the ranch lay motionless in the bright moonlight from a distance it seemed untouched by time.
The Bronco rattled across a cattle guard. The next ten miles were a challenge to the Bronco’s shocks as well as my own, but at last I recognized the landmark of Saddleback Mountain and knew the Pine Shadow Ranch lay right around the next bend. Fast approaching the stage of exhaustion where I wasn’t sure if I was still driving or if I was only dreaming I was still driving, I nearly missed the turn off.
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