Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) Read online

  CANTINA VALLEY

  A Ben Adler Mystery

  by

  Trevor Scott

  United States of America

  Also by Trevor Scott

  Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller Series

  Fatal Network (#1)

  Extreme Faction (#2)

  The Dolomite Solution (#3)

  Vital Force (#4)

  Rise of the Order (#5)

  The Cold Edge (#6)

  Without Options (#7)

  The Stone of Archimedes (#8)

  Lethal Force (#9)

  Rising Tiger (#10)

  Counter Caliphate (#11)

  Gates of Dawn (#12)

  The Jake Adams Cold War Espionage Short Story Series

  Reykjavik Sanction (Mission #1)

  Napoli Intercept (Mission #2)

  Wueschheim Imperative (Mission #3)

  The Tony Caruso Mystery Series

  Boom Town (#1)

  Burst of Sound (#2)

  Running Game (#3)

  The Chad Hunter Espionage Thriller Series

  Hypershot (#1)

  Global Shot (#2)

  Cyber Shot (#3)

  The Keenan Fitzpatrick Mystery Series

  Isolated (#1)

  Burning Down the House (#2)

  Witness to Murder (#3)

  Stand Alone Mysteries and Thrillers

  Edge of Delirium

  Strong Conviction

  Fractured State (A Novella)

  The Nature of Man

  Discernment

  Way of the Sword

  Drifting Back

  The Dawn of Midnight

  The Hobgoblin of the Redwoods

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and not intended to represent real people or places. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author.

  CANTINA VALLEY

  Copyright © 2016 by Trevor Scott

  United States of America

  trevorscott.com

  Cover image of Bigfoot Xing Sign by JLFCapture

  Background cover image by author

  1

  Cantina Valley, Western Oregon

  Deputy Sheriff Lester Dawson sat in his patrol truck trying his best to forget his personal problems. He was at least twenty pounds overweight, and would need to buy new uniforms soon if he didn’t cut back on beer and barbeque. He wasn’t sure which one would be easier to kick—probably the barbeque, since the beer at least made his problems go away temporarily. If he had any real plans for himself by the time he reached fifty, he would have to make a move soon or be relegated to small city law enforcement until he either retired or ate his gun.

  He picked up his empty Coke can and spit some tobacco juice into the drink hole, wondering now if this nasty habit had somehow made his wife leave him for another man. No, she was a smoker herself. But she had quit. And damn it, he had never quit at anything in his life. Losers quit. His internal organs were there to be punished.

  This night was what Lester called an asshole night. It was as dark as the inside of an asshole, and you had to be an asshole to be out in the torrential rain.

  When Lane County built a sheriff’s department annex to cover the northern part of the county about halfway between Eugene and Corvallis, Lester had been chosen to run the annex. Part of that, he knew, had to do with his house being located in the area. The department liked to position its deputies in familiar communities. And, since Lester had grown up in the area and knew the residents, he was the logical choice. Truthfully, Lester guessed the department was saving on gas. Oregonians loved to save the damn environment for the animals, so humans could live in misery.

  Suddenly his radio came to life. “Lester, you’ve got a ten fifty-four at Cantina Creek, at the north bridge crossing.”

  That was a possible dead body. “Is the person dead or not?”

  “Not sure,” dispatch said. “The nine-one-one just relayed the witness report.”

  Lester started the engine on his truck. “All right. I’m on my way. ETA in five. Who’s on scene?

  “Meet a Jim Erickson.”

  “Roger that. I know Jim. He owns the land on both sides of the creek.”

  Lester hit the lights and the gas simultaneously. Rain pelted his windshield harder as his speed increased. Soon he slowed for a ninety degree corner and his headlights picked up the tail end of a tractor just behind the small bridge over the creek. He parked his patrol rig just behind the tractor and shut down the engine, but left the flashing red and blue lights on. He knew this road ended just a little past Jim’s ranch house at the old Adler homestead. So it wasn’t likely to have a lot of traffic.

  He got out and put his Resistol Peacemaker cowboy hat on, thankful he had covered the tan felt with a plastic cover. Lester spit out the glob of tobacco and ground it into the road with his boots. Then he walked toward the bridge where Jim Erickson stood with a flashlight.

  Jim was a tall, slim man who had been a great athlete in his youth—an all-star basketball player who had gotten a scholarship to the University of Oregon in the 60s. But Jim blew out a knee before he played one game, losing his scholarship, and making him eligible for the Army draft. Lester guessed the Army thought Jim’s knee had healed enough to fight in Vietnam.

  “What the hell brought you out on a night like this, Jim?” Lester asked.

  Jim shook his head and said, “My daughter was driving home from dinner at our place and saw one of my cattle out on the road. She gave me a call once she got cell service. Some yahoo left one of my gates open.”

  “Dispatch says you found a possible dead body,” Lester said. “My guess, based on your service, you know the difference between dead or not.”

  “You got that right,” Jim said. “But I didn’t get any closer than this. Didn’t want to disturb the scene. I guess I watched too many TV cop shows.”

  “Male or female?” Lester asked.

  “Looks like a man.”

  Lester turned on his flashlight and aimed the beam down to the west side of the small creek. The body lay in short grass a few feet from the creek, and was fully clothed in pants and a rain resistant jacket, face down. “All right. I’ll take a closer look.”

  Climbing the barbed wire fence, Lester jumped to the other side and nearly fell down the bank toward the creek. Not that it would have been a huge problem, since the creek was one of those feeder streams that came down from the Coast Range and ran into the Willamette River. It was perhaps two or three feet at this stretch of the creek. The ground here from November to May was always saturated with water to the point of being spongy. Being November now, the saturation from the past week was not complete, but heading in that direction. Still, the rain had added considerably to the flow of Cantina Creek.

  He carefully made his way down to the bank of the river, staying out of the muddy trails used by Jim’s cattle in case there were tracks. But all he saw so far was bovine prints, pressed deep into the muck.

  When he got to the body he could tell that it was a man, or at least appeared to be so. He would need to check for a pulse and turn the body over, though, to be sure.

  Once he touched the wrist of the body, he saw all the black hair on the wrist. Definitely a man, he thought. Cold and dead. No pulse. The body was heading toward rigor.

  Lester stooped down and concentrated his light on the back of the man’s head. The short, black hair was matted with blood. It was either a blunt force trauma mark or a bullet entry. Probably the later. Which made his next task even more difficult. Depending on caliber, whe
n a bullet enters a man’s skull it had just two possible outcomes. With a smaller caliber like a .22, the bullet entered and bounced around, scrambling the brains. Anything like a 9mm and larger cut through the gray matter and exploded out the other side, leaving a much larger exit than the entry. It was also a damn mess. Lester had experienced that first hand, being first on the scene of a number of self inflicted gunshot wounds. But those always came from front to back, leaving a wall looking like a Jackson Pollock painting.

  After putting on latex gloves, he gently grasped the body and rolled it far enough to see that much of the man’s face was missing. Then he slowly set the body back in its original position. His nostrils tweaked with the odor coming off the man.

  Lester got on his radio and pushed to talk. “We have an eleven forty-four, likely one eighty-seven.”

  Now he checked the man’s pockets for identification. Nothing. That would have been too damn easy. He moved back up the bank toward the road, and then climbed back over the fence.

  “Dead guy, right Lester?” Jim asked.

  “Definitely dead.” Lester glanced about and said, “Did you round up your cow?”

  “Just before I found the body. It was a heifer. I put her back into the pasture.”

  “She was probably coming to the road to dry out her feet.”

  “Naw. They can move up the hills in the back to get away from the water.”

  “Okay. Well, unless you have something else to add, I’ll include your comments in my report. I know where to find you if I need more. Get the hell outta this rain.”

  Jim didn’t wait another second. He climbed up into his tractor, cranked over the engine, and drove off toward his ranch.

  Lester took off his latex gloves and got back into his rig. He considered calling in what he found, but decided not to put that info over the radio. He never knew who might be listening. Instead, he pulled out his cell phone and punched the green button next to the picture of his boss, the sheriff.

  “What do you have out there?” the sheriff asked.

  “Dead guy. Perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties. Looks like he might be an illegal.”

  “Mexican?”

  “Hell if I know. Could be Guatemalan or Honduran.”

  “Why do you think he’s illegal?”

  “No ID. Clothes look like thrift store seconds. The guy looks and smells homeless.” Lester had worked for years in Eugene, where the homeless smelled like wet dogs.

  “Do I need to remind you that not many illegals are homeless,” the sheriff said.

  The man had a good point. The illegal aliens all seemed to find shelter with friends or family. “No, sir. I know the homeless here are usually drug addicts, psych jobs or former military. I’m just going by smell alone. But that could be simply bowel and bladder release upon death.”

  “What’s the disposition of the body?” his boss asked.

  “Dead. Face down in a cow pasture along Cantina Creek. Bullet appeared to enter the back of the man’s skull and blew half his face off.”

  “So, then not suicide?” The sheriff was holding back a snicker.

  “No, sir. Unless the man was an extortionists.”

  “Contortionist.”

  “Right.”

  A long pause of silence made Lester think his boss had hung up. But from time to time Lester could hear breathing and lips smacking.

  Then the sheriff said, “All right. We have a homicide. Wait there for the forensics team and the ME. How would you like to take led on the investigation?”

  “Sir? The detectives handle that.”

  “I can assign any swingin’ dick I want to investigate. Besides, those folks are busy with the triple they caught last month.”

  The detectives normally handled robberies and homicides, but since the county usually only got a couple of homicides a year, most of their time dealt with robberies and grand theft. But there was a triple homicide in North Eugene in early October, and the media was on their ass to clear it. The Eugene area was unusually sedate considering the large drug use. Legal marijuana had actually reduced crime even more. But Lester thought that might be only a temporary blip. He was sure that pot led to an eventual increase in harder drugs. Time would tell if he was correct.

  “If you think I’m ready, sir,” Lester said.

  “You got this.” Then the sheriff hung up.

  Not exactly a rousing endorsement, but when the sheriff said to do something, Lester followed that order.

  After what seemed like a long period, Lester could finally see a couple more sheriff’s vehicles approaching in his rearview mirror, their lights shining through the pounding rain and eerie fog.

  2

  A heavy fog lingered over the Coast Range, a constant drizzle hitting Ben Adler’s windshield as he drove his 1968 Ford pickup along a narrow muddy road, and forcing him to hit the wipers every few seconds.

  He stopped at a crossroad and turned on his right blinker. This road led to his eighty-acre hobby farm nestled into the hills with a nice view of the narrow Cantina Valley pockmarked with little ranches and farms and not yet taken over entirely by the large wine conglomerates that had converted much of the Willamette Valley into a Napa Valley on steroids. Oregon pinot noir had finally found worldwide approval, so every snobby weasel wanted a taste of the burgundy elixir.

  Ben tried his best to see if any vehicles were coming, but with the fog that was nearly impossible. The good news was that only one other farm sat between this intersection and his own place, which was the end of the road.

  As soon as he turned and shifted into second gear, the first of his warning signs loomed on the right side of the road, telling anyone who happened to come this way that this was private property. In reality, for the next quarter mile this was a county road, which ended at his gate. His neighbor Jim Erickson owned both sides of the road here and grazed angus cattle mostly.

  When Ben saw a flash of light ahead, he slowed his truck and pulled over behind his neighbor’s green tractor with attached front loader.

  Ben shut down his truck and stepped out into the drizzle. Although he was wearing a rain-proof jacket, his jeans were still rather soaked from his fishing adventure in a small trout stream that morning. He had caught his limit of rainbows and would now have enough to fire up the smoker.

  His neighbor sat up high in the cab and shut down the tractor when he saw Ben approach.

  Jim Erickson got out of the enclosed cab and climbed down the ladder to the muddy road. “You catch anything, Ben?”

  “Slayed a few small ones,” Ben said. “I’ll brine a batch tonight and get the smoker burning in the morning.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Jim was at least seventy, but he was still as strong as a power forward, with a tall sinewy frame like the former basketball player he had been in his youth.

  Ben had known the man most of his life, having grown up at the homestead before heading off to the military after high school. Forty years old might have been too early to retire for most, but Ben had taken his military retirement and moved home. His decision had been somewhat easy, since both of his parents were going through cancer treatments in Portland. That was less than a year ago. At forty Ben had become an orphan.

  “What you got on the front loader?” Ben asked, his head shifting to a black blob protruding from the front loader bucket.

  “Another heifer burned up,” Jim said.

  “Second one?”

  “Third. Two heifers and a steer.”

  “What the hell’s causing it?”

  “Shit if I know. I sent the last one to the state for analysis, but the bastards still haven’t gotten back with me.”

  Ben rounded the front of the massive machine to get a closer look at the heifer. But at this point the young angus looked more like a blob of charcoal. “I wouldn’t trust the state to come up with diddly squat,” Ben said. “Those morons couldn’t find their assholes if their heads twisted like an owl.”

  Jim smiled. “The
Air Force teach you that?”

  “My dad taught me that.”

  “Wise man.”

  Ben looked back down the road toward Cantina Creek. “Any word on the dead guy you found the other night?”

  “Not really. I gave my report to Lester Dawson. He followed up yesterday afternoon, saying the dead guy was more than likely an illegal alien. But he had no ID and his face was pretty messed up, so they can’t even pass around a photo of the guy to help identify him.”

  Dead bodies in this part of the county were rare, Ben knew. If someone went missing, word would get out fast. “My guess is someone will report a missing person soon enough.”

  “Maybe,” Jim agreed. “But I think most of the aliens are pretty tight-lipped.” Jim pointed up the road and said, “Were you expecting someone at your place?”

  “Hell no. Why?”

  “A shiny black BMW just drove up there about ten minutes ago,” Jim said. “I took down its plates just in case. Thought it might be your drug dealer.”

  “For an old man, you’re pretty funny.”

  “Age has nothin’ to do with hilarity, Ben.”

  He guessed his neighbor was right. “All right. Thanks for the info. Do you suppose they were dumb enough to go through my gate?” Ben felt the butt of his semi-automatic handgun on his right hip under his rain jacket.

  “Just holler if you need backup,” Jim said, slapped the gun on his own hip, and then climbed back up into the cab.

  In this tight-knit community, nobody relied on the sheriff to keep the peace. Ben knew that they were only called in to pick up the bodies.

  Getting back into his truck, Ben started his engine and waited until Jim waved him to pass. He wound his truck through the tight, narrow road until he reached his outer gate, which was wide open. He shook his head, went through, and closed the gate behind him. Then he drove up the hill toward his house. The black BMW stood out in front of his ranch house like a banjo at a state funeral.