Chapter 18
The wind changed on Wednesday.
Gray was walking from the bunkhouse to the calving barn at six in the morning, coffee in hand, when the air hit his face differently. It was warm. Not Montana-in-March warm, which meant slightly above freezing. This breeze was genuinely warm. Soft and dry and smelling of dust instead of snow.
A chinook.
The warm wind poured off the Rockies like water over a dam, falling down the east slopes and heating as it dropped.
It could raise temperatures thirty degrees in a few hours.
It turned snowpack to melt water, melt water to mud, and mud to cracked, dry ground faster than seemed meteorologically reasonable.
It was known for leaving behind miles of dead, brown grass on the hillsides—brittle, cured, and dry as paper. A fire hazard, even at this time of year.
All it needed was a spark.
He walked into the calving barn and filed the threat away. Right now, he had cattle to check.
The last of the first batch of calves had been delivered two days ago, both by C-section.
Dillon grumbled that of course Jenna’s calving fiasco had to go out with a bang.
But both mothers and calves were doing well.
Thanks to Dillon’s skill and hard work the past few weeks, every single cow so far had survived.
There was one cow that Dillon didn’t recommend breeding again because of complications after her birth, and one calf that still had to be bottle fed several times a day because her mama’s milk didn’t come in fully.
But relative to how things could have gone, Gray counted this calving season a resounding success so far.
There were still a handful of cows who hadn’t gotten pregnant the first time around, and who Jenna had inseminated on their next heat cycle.
They were due to give birth in April, and Dillon would come back around the first of April to start inducing labors a bit early and stand by to perform C-sections as needed.
The cows who’d already given birth had mostly recovered from their difficult deliveries. And the calves were, in a word, thriving.
The Charolais-cross calves were enormous, healthy, and extremely visible.
A pasture full of black Angus cows with cream-colored calves the size of small ponies at their sides was a sight you couldn’t miss from the county road, and people stopped by Jenna’s fences every day to gawk at the giant babies.
Gray walked the pens checking the young ones. A heifer calf butted her head against his hip demanding attention. He rubbed her ears absently while he consulted the spreadsheet on his phone.
The numbers told a story that had shifted from disaster to unexpected windfall. Charolais-cross steers grew faster and heavier than Angus or Hereford stock. These calves would be worth significantly more at market than the Hereford-cross calves Jenna had originally planned on.
Furthermore, these calves were growing faster than Gray had forecasted.
They were going to be even bigger and heavier in six months than anyone at the ranch had initially guessed.
Sully redid the math over breakfast just yesterday, scribbling on a napkin while Jenna read over his shoulder.
His eyebrows had shot up at the final number. Jenna’s had gone higher.
“That can’t be right,” she exclaimed.
Sully pushed the napkin across the table to Gray, who checked the math quickly.
“It’s right,” Gray confirmed.
Jenna sat back in her chair and just stared at the napkin.
Sully commented dead-pan, “I think you owe the sperm company a thank-you note.”
Jenna balled up the napkin and threw it at his head.
Gray leaned forward. “You should still demand compensation for all of Dillon’s expenses.”
“I sent the bill yesterday,” she told him. “The company’s been very apologetic and hasn’t balked at paying for their mix-up.”
There were still a half-dozen cows left to calve, but the crisis that had begun with a panicked phone call to Dillon back in early March was resolving into something that looked, against all odds, like good fortune.
Gray patted the heifer calf one more time and walked out of the barn into the Chinook wind.
It had gotten warmer just in the time he’d spent in the barn. The snow on the lower slopes of the mountains was visibly retreating, dark wet patches spreading where the white had been. By tomorrow, the hillsides would be bare and brown.
He didn’t like it.
Welcome to thinking like a firefighter.
He drove into town to meet Cooper.
They sat in Cooper’s truck outside the diner because Cooper’s apartment above it was small and because his oldest brother preferred to have important conversations in a vehicle. Gray attributed the habit to years of law enforcement work where the front seat of a vehicle was the office.
Cooper had the evidence package in a brown accordion folder on the seat between them. It was several inches thick. When Gray looked at it, he saw months of work compressed into paper.
“It’s ready,” Cooper said. “I’m driving it to Helena tomorrow.”
“Who will you take it to?”
“It goes to the State fire marshal’s office. I have a contact there, a woman I worked with on a case years ago. She’s a straight arrow. She’ll make sure it gets to the right people.”
“And you’re sure the state fire marshal’s office wasn’t in on the cover up? They won’t bury this evidence and kill a new investigation?” He added, “A whole lot of critical evidence from their report did go missing, after all.”
A dozen key photographs and upwards of twenty pages of text were missing from the final report from the State that had been given to the widows in the aftermath of the fire.
When Cooper had asked the state fire marshal’s office for a complete copy of the official report, the fire marshal who’d been named a few years ago was embarrassed to report that his office’s copy of the final report had also been altered and evidence removed.
Whatever had been in those photos and pages of documentation was lost forever. And someone inside the State fire marshal’s office had to have removed the evidence.
Cooper’s money was on the state fire inspector, Lex Jansick. He’d taken money from Lucas to say the fire was an accident. There was every reason to believe he’d altered and removed evidence to support his false claim.
Cooper said grimly, “I’ve made a dozen copies of everything in this folder, and I’m prepared to go over the State Fire marshal’s head if he does anything other than promptly re-open the investigation.”
“Good.”
Cooper confessed, “I may be paranoid, but I even put a copy of this whole thing in a safe deposit box in a bank over in Apple Pie Creek. Nobody’s going to tamper with our investigation. Not this time around.”
He and Cooper traded looks of grim satisfaction.
They shouldn’t have had to rebuild the investigation from scratch, years after the fact.
The widows should have gotten honest and complete answers four years ago.
Whoever had set the fire and killed eight firefighters and forty horses should have been prosecuted for their crimes and put in jail long ago.
The arsonist thought he or she gotten away with murder, but that person was in for a rude surprise one day very soon. He and Cooper were going to see justice served at long last.
Gray asked, “What will happen after the fire marshal’s office gets the file, assuming the new fire marshal isn’t in on the cover up?”
“They’ll review it and open a formal investigation.
Sheriff Wheeler will be pulled into it, along with the Montana Department of Justice and possibly the FBI.
The Feds have extensive resources for assisting local law enforcement agencies with arson investigations.
It’ll be slow. Months, probably. But the evidence is strong.
The strongest thing in there is the combination of facts.
The electrical analysis proving no accidental ignition source plus the missing sprinklers plus the payoffs.
Any one piece could be explained away. Together, they tell a story that’s very hard to dispute. ”
Cooper was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “How’s Bonnie?”
“She’s holding up. She goes to work every day for a man she knows is at least partially, if not wholly, responsible for her husband’s death, and she smiles, answers his phone, and runs the town. She’s the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
Cooper looked at him. A faint smile crossed his brother’s face. “Ruth Sanger called Rose this morning. Apparently, you and Bonnie were seen holding hands yesterday.”
“Sixty seconds,” Gray said. “I told Bonnie it would take Ruth sixty seconds to see us and tell everyone in town.”
“Ruth claims it looked ‘romantic.’ Walter says you were probably ‘just standing there.’ The pinochle group has been debating the details all morning.”
“Great,” he groaned. “The last thing we need is Lucas Shoemacher finding out his secretary has gotten friendly with someone studying fire science and his crime investigator brother.”
Cooper’s smile faded. He tapped the folder.
“Once this is in Helena, our part is done. The investigation belongs to the state. We don’t interfere, we don’t push, we don’t tip off Shoemacher.
Bonnie keeps going to work and acting normal.
You keep studying and backing up the engine without destroying public property. ”
“I haven’t hit a cone in two weeks.”
“Cassidy told Rose you hit a trash can on Thursday.”
“A man just can’t have a secret in this town, can he?” Gray grumbled.
“Welcome to small-town living. Everyone knows everything about everyone. How bad was the trash can hurt? You flattened some of those cones pretty good.”
“It’ll make a full recovery,” he retorted sarcastically. He paused for a moment and then burst out, “It was in the wrong place. The garbage man didn’t put it back where it belongs.”
“Fire engine’s rear view mirrors quit working?” Cooper asked dryly.