“The hell I do say,” I shoot back. Jimmy’s giving me a confused look and hustles off the porch and over to my side. “What are you doing?” he hisses.
“She has a grow-op upstairs,” I say flatly. “The windows are covered with newspaper and she’s got a pretty good ventilation system going. Plus, she’s making eight to ten trips to the shed in the backyard every day. Nobody makes that many trips to their shed every day and still has a yard that looks this crappy.”
Jimmy’s impressed. He steals a glance at the second-floor windows to confirm the newspaper and sees that every single window is covered.
“How’s that help us check for Sad Face’s shine?”
“Watch.”
Turning, I make my way back to the ass-monkey expert and lean on the bottom porch rail. She’s just glowering at me, not sure what to think or say. “Here’s the way I see it,” I tell her. “You let us walk around the edge of the property, let us check the outside of the doors and windows to see if they’ve been tampered with, and we won’t need to get a warrant to search the inside of the house … particularly the upstairs.”
She catches my meaning immediately and the corner of her left eye gives an involuntary twitch. She stands there a moment—fuming mad; she knows I have her cornered. “Fine!” She spits the word at me, thrusting her head to add force. “But you better be gone next time I look out.” Without waiting for a response, she turns and lets the screen door slam behind her.
It takes less than five minutes to give the place a thorough walkabout. There’s no sign of Sad Face. Not on the ground, at the windows, on the cellar door—we even check the mailbox.
Nothing.
Still, she’s on the target list, so Walt assigns a deputy to park discreetly on a parallel street that offers a good view of the entire property. It’ll be that way with the other targets as well: a twenty-four-hour protection detail, seven days a week, until Sad Face is caught. It’s not going to be cheap, but it’s better than the alternative.
The next stop is the Dearborn Farm just outside of Anderson, California. After following I-5 south from Redding for about twelve miles, we exit onto Riverside Drive and make our way to Dersch Road. Three or four miles down the road we cross over Cow Creek and soon turn into the driveway on the left. A black metal arch stretches over the gravel entry announcing DEARBORN RANCH in large white letters.
It’s not really a ranch. I know this because ranches have longhorn cattle and horses and five hundred acres of grazing land and a ranch house with a metal triangle that you ring when it’s time to come in for lunch or dinner.
All I see is goats, hundreds of them.
It should be called Dearborn Goat Farm.
The sign at the road points to a small nine-hundred-square-foot store where they sell goat milk and goat cheese and goat ice cream, none of which sounds appealing. They also have a wide range of other goat products I didn’t know existed, like lip balm and body lotion and soap, just to name a few. Much of it they produce at the farm, but some items are purchased elsewhere for resale … which means there are other goat farms masquerading as ranches.
Jimmy’s already decided we need to get a goat-cheese pizza and make an early dinner of it. When I curl my nose, he starts extolling the many health benefits and the excellent flavor of goat cheese; personally, I think he’s just making this stuff up as he goes. It doesn’t matter. He can spout off all he wants; I’m not eating goat cheese.
The Dearborns are salt-of-the-earth people, and after we assure them they’re not in any trouble, they immediately invite us up to the house for some lemonade, leaving the store in the hands of their only employee. As we make our way to the house, I give Jimmy a silent nod, letting him know that Sad Face has been here.
His shine was in the store, and it was recent. Apparently he was interested in the goat-based shampoo, because he picked up a bottle and handled it extensively, though this was probably a ruse so that he could watch Nikki while pretending to read the label. The intensity of the shine suggests he was here within the last week or so. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any surveillance cameras in the store.
I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of shoplifters targeting goat products.
Inside the house Tyson introduces us to Hannah, their two-year-old brindle boxer. While I’m not much for dogs, Hannah is under the misguided belief that I’m her biggest fan and shames me into scratching her behind the ears. She’s a pushy little thing because whenever I stop, she sticks her nose under my hand and lifts it up, prompting more scratching and petting.
“So what’s this all about?” Tyson says with a nervous laugh.
Jimmy takes a deep breath and then explains the situation in the most direct and thorough manner he can without compromising the investigation. Walt and I sit silently by. We watch the faces of Nikki and Tyson go from shock, to concern, to abject terror. By the time Jimmy finishes, Nikki’s nearly in tears … and that was the sugarcoated version.
It’s going to get worse.
After a well-timed and subtle suggestion, Walt stays with the Dearborns as Jimmy and I walk the property and check the exterior of the house. In a low voice I tell Jimmy about the store, but as we work our way around the property, I see Sad Face everywhere. He’s been in the barn and around the house; I even find his handprint on several windows and a couple doors. The prints are flat and lack any dermal ridge detail, indicating he wore gloves, probably latex. That’s unfortunate.
The only good news is he never made it inside the house. It looks like he tried but failed, for some reason. My guess is Hannah scared him off.