The Dynameos Conspiracy - Chapter One

The Dynameos Conspiracy


By


Dave Folsom




This book is a work of fiction.  Names, places, or incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictionally.  Any resemblance to actual events, localities, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.








This book is dedicated to my wife, Sandy, who spent many hours editing, commenting, and suggesting changes that always made the story better.


© Dave Folsom 2010  All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be copied or reproduced in any form without the express permission of the author.


Chapter One


Adrenalin fueled fear pushed him up the creek bank crawling on hands and knees through foot-deep snow.  At the crest of the road he could see a distant light shining faintly through the wind-driven blizzard.  He left the Toyota nose first in icy water, remembering vaguely sliding off the road.  Throbbing pain tore through his chest in radiating waves and he forced himself to concentrate on one thing; he had to make it to the house.
He rested a moment at the edge of the road feeling heavy, wet flakes plaster his face.  Shivering as the wind swirled around his thin coat, he remembered the day, years before, when greed, and a desire for power started him down the path that eventually landed him on this lonely road, dying.
Visions flashed through his mind surrounded by fog.  Surely, it wasn’t him, staring into the barrel of a suppressor-equipped pistol, turning, trying to run, slipping just as he reached for the car door, staggered by the hurt exploding in his chest.  He had hit the ground hard but the snow cushioned the blow and he lost consciousness for a few seconds.  He saw himself laying very still trying to make the hurt go away, yet terrified that the shooter would walk closer to make certain of the kill.  The grinding of an engine starting came to his ears and the sound of a vehicle driving, crunching the cold snow.  He had waited, unmoving until he was sure he was alone, before he got his knees under him, grabbed the door handle and pulled himself up.  It took strained effort to open the door and slide in, start the car and begin driving.
He remembered the persistent guilt that convinced him to contact the Justice Department, seeking escape from the cavernous hole he’d made for himself.  Brokering a deal, he covertly fed information to his handler at irregular intervals.  Now, the piper had come to collect his tithing.
Gathering strength to stand, he began walking, a shuffling, stumbling gait.  Gulping air in shallow breaths, the snow tugged at his shoes, and he imagined the feel of quicksand.  His legs numbed until he could no longer sense his feet nor the merciless cold.  A chill penetrated his bones, sapping his rapidly failing strength..  Just as he feared he wouldn’t make it, the door suddenly appeared.  He groped for the doorbell and pushed the button, once, twice, as consciousness faded away.

When the doorbell rang, I barely heard it through a dinner induced slumber.  My overstuffed deep-brown leather recliner wrapped comfortably around my carcass, bathing me in friendly warmth.  I dozed, stomach full, muscles tired, listening to soft piano music and waiting for the hour to grow late enough to justify crawling into bed.  Across the room, built into the massive timber framing of my house, the stone fireplace spread flame shadows across the room with its warmth.  I grumbled at being disturbed.  The bell rang again, demandingly, until finally I moved, shuffling wearily to my front door wondering which of my neighbors would be crazy enough to be out in a snowstorm.  Mrs. Dixon, my surrogate grandmother, housekeeper, cook, secretary, and fairy-godmother, wasn’t likely, though not impossible, since she’d left less than an hour before.  What I didn’t expect was an unshaven ghost of a man dressed in a threadbare Carhartt jacket barely able to hold off the bitter cold and driving snow.  He stood bent-over in my open doorway, bareheaded, snow decorating his hair, and a thin face dominated by pain filled eyes  Cold-stiffened fingers clutched my doorjamb. His sunken eyes cried out silently and his lips moved when he saw me, but no sound came forth.
I grabbed at his shabby coat as he slipped down the edge of my door expelling air from a narrow mouth.  It sounded like an elephant had stepped on his chest.  We ended up on the floor with the upper part of his body draped over my threshold.  I groped for a pulse and the skin on his neck felt cold and clammy.  Whatever he had wanted to tell me was gone forever.  I dragged him inside and closed the door.
He looked familiar in a vague sort of way, older by years than I remembered.  He’d been heavier then, muscular, handsome and on top of the world.  In his hip pocket I found a folded leather mess that had once passed for a wallet.  Inside, an identification card confirmed the name.  I searched the rest of his mostly empty pockets and almost missed it.  Deep in the left front pants pocket I found something strange.  Inside a small kraft paper envelope rested a tiny, yet thick object, with fifteen prongs on each side.  It looked like a miniature computer chip.  Puzzled, I went to my desk, found a small Ziploc plastic bag, slipped the little chip and its brown bag in and dropped it into my top desk drawer.
Robert Martin, when I’d known him, excelled at everything.  He played football mostly, some basketball, and a little bit of everything else.  If he couldn’t play it, he looked good on the sidelines in his varsity sweater.  He dated the head cheerleader and they looked like the all-American couple, primed for two point three children and a house in the suburbs.  I hadn’t seen him since the night we graduated from college.
I called the Sheriff, who I knew wasn’t going to like a call-out on a snowy December night.  Homer Brenner served as Sheriff due to many friends in politics.  It bordered on a miracle that he was decently competent.  In the twenty years he’d held the position, he’d become very good at it.  I had to give him that, but with the caveat that sometimes he allowed his need to be re-elected to color his decision-making process.  Being a cop is hard enough these days, when the criminals have more rights than ordinary citizens.  Brenner could be pigheaded at times, but then he worked under a periphery of rules and regulations that made his job frustrating and difficult.  We weren’t exactly friends, but then I’d been partially responsible for that.  Brenner had yet to forgive me for interfering a couple of times in ways he couldn’t understand and I couldn’t explain.  As a result, I wasn’t on his favorites list.  I’d campaigned for him simply because none of the other choices were better.  That I’d called him out on a miserably cold and snowy night undoubtedly would make him grumpy, but would give me sadistic pleasure.  It took the sheriff twenty-seven minutes to speed the eleven miles to my place in a blinding snowstorm.
Sheriff Homer Brenner stormed through my door like a rouge elephant, waving his arms and shouting orders.  Two deputies, two volunteer firemen and two emergency medical techs followed him in.  Brenner looked the part of Sheriff.  Over six-foot, but a couple inches shorter than my six-four, Brenner stood slightly overweight, narrow faced, in his mid-forties and with just enough hardness in his eyes to convince most people he was tougher than owl-shit.  Surprisingly, he was street tough and I liked him, I just didn’t want him to know it.  He glowered at me and jerked a thumb at the body on my entryway floor.
“You move it?” he grunted.
“Of course, it’s ten below out.”  I wasn’t going to wait for the Sheriff with my door standing open to the freezing wind.  And I couldn’t shut the door without moving what remained of Robert Martin.
“Know him?”  Brenner always asked questions in two or three word sentences while fumbling with the Glock on his hip.  It made his black leather holster squeak, a move designed to be intimidating, but I’d seen him do it too many times.
“His name’s Robert Martin.  I knew him years ago, in college.  I haven’t seen him since.  He rang the doorbell and died.  I don’t know what he wanted.”
“Don’t bullshit me Trainer, goddamn it,” Brenner snorted. “Nobody just happens at your door by accident.  What the hell did he want?”
I know I’m in trouble when Homer calls me by my last name, Trainer.  That’s me, Lee Trainer, ordinary citizen, innocent farmer, minding my own business, having a quiet evening at home on a winter night.
“Sheriff,” I replied, not trying to be civil, “the man dropped dead on my doorstep.  I didn’t invite him.  I haven’t seen him in years.  I don’t even know what killed him.  Give me a break, will you?”
“You better hope it was natural, ‘cause if it isn’t, I’m going to be all over you.”
By the time the Coroner came, located a single, small caliber gunshot wound, the EMT’s removed the body, and Brenner stomped out followed by his armed entourage, it was after midnight.  I went to bed mildly speculating over what had been on Robert Martin’s mind after all these years.  It surely hadn’t been to hash over old times because there weren’t any.  He’d been one of the anointed, with effortless good grades, natural athletic prowess and rugged good looks.  He floated through his college years with little effort and even less accomplishment.  That I knew Martin at all was a statistical aberration, a chance of fate that assigned us to the same dorm room the fall of our freshman year.  We shared a fourteen by fourteen space and little else for three months until the jock frat called him like wolves in the wild.  I saw him infrequently after that, except passing between classes and not at all after graduation.  I had no idea where life had taken him.  Apparently, it had been in stark contrast to his academic successes.
I rose early the next morning, as is my habit, and moved to the kitchen, poured myself hot coffee and added enough cream to turn it the color of caramel.  Martha Dixon sat at my kitchen counter watching me with disapproving eyes, drinking coffee black.  There wasn’t much I did that gained her approval.  The Dixon’s live a quarter-mile down the road and her husband Jake, after working at the sawmill, helps me with the stock.  Behind the house is a fifty by one hundred hen house which is the permanent residence for two thousand cackling, curious, busy, multi-colored laying hens, working their little feathered hearts out trying to fill Jake Dixon-designed and Trainer-built homemade roll-away egg trays.  I like chickens.  They are surprisingly like people, intelligent and easily trained.  They establish a rigid cast system, a pecking order if you will, that guides everything they do.  The more aggressive hens eat first, lay claim to the top roost, and generally bully the weaker ones.  Spend some time in a chicken coop and you’ll better understand why society works like it does.
Martha Dixon is a sawed off, white-haired wisp of a woman who has become my friend, confidant and surrogate, though self-appointed, grandmother.  She worries about me, especially the way I make my living.  Her fear is that someone who does not get up every morning and work from eight to five at a regular job must be doing something illegal.  I’m constantly having to answer her inquires as to what I’m doing.  She knows that though the chickens do well, gathering eggs and a small herd of white-face cattle alone wouldn’t support the place.  Things like Robert Martin are always happening and it’s that which makes her constantly suspicious.  I took a sip of coffee, burnt my tongue and told her about the night before.
“It never ceases to amaze me that you seem to attract trouble.  One of these days you’re going to get your fingers burnt.”  She said it with resigned disgust in her voice. 
“I don’t have an answer for that.  It just happens, I guess.”
“How did he get here?”  Bless her, Martha dove right to the obvious.  It was a question I hadn’t yet considered.  It was too far to walk, especially in his condition and in the dead of winter.  My little chicken and beef ranch is at the end of the county road, eleven miles south of Lander, Montana.  The Rocky Mountains surround the valley and air is clean most of the time unless a winter inversion holds down the wood smoke.  Lately, we’ve been invaded by self-styled country folks grasping for a piece of the good Montana life.  As a result, our winter air is worse than Los Angeles at times.  I’ve never been able to understand people who insist on burning wood for their sole source of heat, claiming loudly that they are getting the best of the local utility.
I thought back to the night before and whether Brenner had mentioned a car and decided he hadn’t.  “You didn’t see another car in the driveway when you came in did you?”
“No.  What have you got yourself into this time?”  Martha Dixon gave me her best disapproving look and busied herself with breakfast.  She didn’t want an answer and I didn’t give her one.  I didn’t have one to give.
The phone rang and Martha answered it still berating me with her piercing gray eyes and stabbing out her filter cigarette.  I get back at her by nagging her about her smoking.  Her sharp face is mapped with smoker lines and I hide the ashtrays and matches every chance I get. 
“Deputy Randall,” she said, scowling, with the phone pointed at me.
Jeb Randall is the closest thing to a friend I have that wears a law enforcement uniform.  Sometimes we work together, trading notes like a couple of teenagers with a new copy of Playboy.  Since he likes chickens, I overlook that he works for Brenner.
“What’s up, Jeb,” I asked.
“You interested in what killed your friend last night, Lee?”
“Wasn’t my friend, Jeb.  I’m trying not to be interested.  I’ve got five hundred day-old chicks coming this week.  Busy, busy, busy.  No time for dead people on my doorstep.”
“Go ahead and joke.  You’ll be crying another tune when Brenner has you down here under the lights.”
“All right, all right, so maybe I’m interested.”
“Small caliber bullet, probably a .22, in the back, a little too high to be instantly fatal.  Very slow external bleeding.  Coroner says cause of death was probably internal blood loss.  May have been shot as early as a hour or more before he showed up at your place.  Lee, it would look professional if it hadn’t been so sloppy.  We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Two questions,” I said.  “Why would a pro snuff a regular guy and why, if Martin was shot that early, didn’t he seek help?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.  By the way, he was an ex-con.  Illinois State Prison, served eight years of a fifteen year term for bank fraud and embezzlement.  Paroled two months ago.  Disappeared a week later.  Currently wanted for parole violation, failure to report.”  Jeb sounded as if he was reading off a wants and warrants sheet.  The more he talked, the less I liked it.
“That doesn’t sound like the Robert Martin I knew.” I said.  “There must be a mistake.”
“Fingerprints don’t lie.”
“Something is wrong,  I can’t see my Robert Martin as a career criminal.  There wasn’t enough time.  I’m going to have to check it out.  Thanks, Jeb.  What does Brenner want?”
“That’s what I’m really calling about.  He wants to see you down here.  ASAP.  When can I tell him to expect you?  Remember, he won’t be happy if we have to come and get you.”
“The Sheriff’s happiness is the least of my worries, Jeb.  But I will come in this afternoon, after we finish chores.”
I rang off and Martha fed me breakfast of cracked wheat and oat bran, hot with skim milk and no sugar.  Her motive is to cure a creeping cholesterol problem that worries me not at all, but is her crusade.  Cracked wheat isn’t bad if you boil it long enough to make it tender.  Martha apparently thought if I had to masticate it like a feeder steer that alone would help my fatty blood. On weekends, when I’m alone, I nuke it long enough to tenderize it and cover it with cream and enough sugar to make a thousand pound bovine hyperglycemic.
The business about no car bothered me, so, full of unsweetened boiled grain, I bundled up in Carhartt bibs, a faded Carhartt jacket, ski mask and wool cap, since the temperature still hovered at ten below.  I figured Martin couldn’t have made it far in his condition, and I decided to trudge through the twelve-inch deep snow on foot.  The county road ends in a sometimes dusty cul-de-sac less than three hundred yards from my front door.  The lane out to my front gate is a narrow path through the corner of an alfalfa field which allows me to bale my driveway.  As I walked shuffling through the new fallen snow, I could see holes that could have been footprints made during the storm.  I looked around the end of the county road and found nothing.  About a hundred yards down the road, where Thirteen Mile Creek bends in and eats away at the road edge during spring floods I found a ten-year old Toyota nose-first in the creek.  It lay over the bank, below a sight line if you were driving, covered with last night’s snow.  Even Martin’s crawling path up to the road’s edge was mostly obliterated.  I skidded on my Carhartts down to the car and looked in.  I found nothing except enough blood to confirm it had been Martin’s.  I climbed back to the road and looked across the field to my timber frame house in the distance, reflecting on the determination that had gotten him that far.
I called the Sheriff’s office and sometime during the day the county wrecker picked up the Toyota.  Jake and I did the chores, ground feed, hauled oyster shell and gathered eggs.  We have the egg gathering down to an non-mechanized science.  The nests back into a central hallway and the eggs roll away to the rear.  Egg gathering is a snap and one person can do it if necessary, which is likely when I’m gone.  Jake designed the system.  He’s as handy that way as his wife is nosy.
The Lander County Courthouse and Jail rose out of a grassy hillside in August of 1901, two blocks off Main Street with a clock tower easily viewed from most of town.  Its local limestone construction makes it look massive and formidable and a century of freezing rain, gale force winds, driving snow and earthquakes have done little to improve its drab castle-like exterior.  The door into the Sheriff’s offices and the jail area consists of two thicknesses of steel plate with little steel pyramids pointing out at you.  It looks like something out of a dungeon-keeper’s daydream.  And it’s heavy.  It takes genuine effort to open it, even when it’s unlocked.  I decided outlaws must have been tougher in the old days.
Sheriff Homer Brenner wasn’t happy when I finally reached the office and I wasn’t that late.  There’s no pleasing some people.  Homer occupied a worn wooden desk in the middle of dense clutter that is the badge of honor for overworked public servants.  Jeb Randall sat across the room in a barren side chair.  I said hello to Jeb and ignored Brenner.
He couldn’t ignore me.  “Trainer, it’s about time you showed up.” the Sheriff thundered, his belief being that intimidation was somehow synonymous with loud.
“Nice to see you, Homer,” I said sweetly, trying on my best behavior.  I assumed he knew from past experience that yelling at me was a waste of time.
“Trainer,” he sputtered, trying to control his voice, “I want you to understand something.  I don’t like unexplained murders in my jurisdiction, and I especially don’t like them on your doorstep.  Explain to me why I shouldn’t throw you to the wolves.” 
“Sheriff Brenner,” I said formally, “you know as much as I do.  Am I supposed to do your job for you?”
Jeb jumped in before Brenner could answer.  “Lee, why don’t you brief the Sheriff on your connection with the deceased and maybe we can proceed from there.  Okay?”  Always the diplomat, Jeb stroked the Sheriff’s ruffled feathers and looked at me with eyes that told me to tread lightly.  My friend is always disgustingly practical.  He saves coupons and buys his clothes at K-Mart.  But he’s a good cop.  I wish I could make him Sheriff.
I told my story, skimpy though it was.  Homer didn’t like it, but he couldn’t find a reason to hold me.  I left him fuming behind a pile of unread paper.  Something told me I hadn’t heard the last of Robert Martin.  I felt mildly curious about why he wanted to see me, but not enough to lose sleep.
I drove west out of town, following Highway 43 to the county road turn off.  I noticed the car behind me right away, not because I’m particularly perceptive, but a crimson red Escalade in Lander is hard to miss.  He followed me close at first, then dropped back and held a dozen car lengths between us.  It had been so long that, at first, I wasn’t even alarmed.  I cinched down my seatbelt, an unconscious old habit.  Just before the turn onto the two-lane gravel road leading to the ranch, he started up on me fast.  I couldn’t see his face in the rear view mirror, but by then I knew what was coming.  I tried to cut him off while reaching for the .357 I keep under the seat.  I almost succeeded.  My little Chevy bounced off the heavier SUV and skidded sideways into the ditch, rolled once and landed right-slide up before sliding to a stop.  I could see the Lincoln backing up at high speed through the blood running between my eyes.  Somehow, I still had a hold on the .357.
The Escalade stopped and I played dead.  The sound of a door opening reached me and I tried to imagine him walking around the vehicle, cautious, wanting to make sure.  I heard the crunch of leather and gravel.  Counting to five, I estimated where the SUV sat and fired the .357 twice through my broken side window.
I heard him swear and race back to the car.  A sharp crack put a neat little hole in my windshield and a car door slammed.  I rose up in time to see the vehicle jump ahead and I emptied the revolver before it disappeared.  I wiped the blood out of my eyes and reloaded my gun from a cartridge box in the glove compartment.  As I dropped each load into the cylinder, I developed a burning desire to know more about Robert Martin.


This book is available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com in paperback, on Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nookbooks, and Smashwords in several ebook formats.