Page 53 of Smoke Season

“I’m worried there may be some seasonal workers stranded at Fallows’s place,” she said, pointing, as Lewis made a noise of protest. “You know how he can be.”

She looked at Mel, as if still trying to glean the information she needed from her. Mel shook her head, trying to convey that there was no longer any point in trying to connect with Fallows or anyone on hispayroll. Now that she’d found True, all she wanted was to get back to Carbon to her family.

But Lewis knew how the Fallowses could be, too; everyone associated with emergency services in Carbon did. “One last sweep,” he decided with a low curse before Mel could argue.

They bumped down the dirt drive to the Fallows property, a drive Mel had never taken. She knew True had been warned away as well. It narrowed rapidly, the overgrown branches of pines and madrones brushing against the truck’s windows as they drove. Brittle leaves made a whooshing noise against the glass. Clearly, the inhabited part of Fallows’s place lay elsewhere on his acreage. She was about to instruct Lewis to execute an awkward three-point-turn just past a dilapidated barn when a flash of metal caught her eye through the grime of the windshield.

Sweat beaded and dripped under the N95 mask she’d yanked on about five miles back as she strained to look closer. It flashed again, and her eye followed the movement to a loose line of barbed wire lifting in the wind. A tangle of blackberry bushes mostly obscured it, and Mel would have dismissed the fence line as abandoned if it wasn’t for the roll of green camouflage netting—the type sold at an Army Navy surplus store—half covering the wire, half in a heap on the ground at its base, clearly blown off by the gusts of hot wind.

“See that?” She pointed, and Lewis nodded.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

They all knew what that camo netting meant: concealment. And concealment could only mean one thing this deep in the Oregon woods: an illegal grow. They’d found the heart of Fallows’s operation.

True hopped out of the truck, so Mel followed her, peering over the half-obscured fence to make out the row of hoop-style greenhouses behind it. Had the smell of smoke not been nearly permanently embedded in her nostrils, she knew that this close to harvest time, the telltale skunky scent of weed would have led her here, if nothing else.

They both paused, surveying the property as thunder continued to rumble in the background of their consciousness. A sagging double-wide trailer sat at the far end of the acreage, at least a couple hundred yards away. Closer, cheap plastic sheeting billowed in the hot wind, and the tromped grass path between them and a dilapidated toolshed suggested frequent use.

“Doubt anyone’s around though,” Lewis said, eyeing the trailer skeptically. He hit the sirens anyway. Grabbing the bullhorn mounted on the passenger side, he bellowed, “Helllooo! Carbon Rural Fire Department! We have evac orders for this residence!”

Nothing.

“Helllooo!” Lewis called again. “Anyone need assistance?”

Only the rush of wind and the routine pop and snap of fire, still just over the ridge, answered his call. “Should we hit the road, then?” he asked.

“I’m just going to check the outbuildings,” True said, already ducking gingerly through the barbed wire, never one to wait for group consensus.

“Hold up!” Mel called. Because what if the property line was booby-trapped? The characters who worked these grows were known for it.

But True was already making her way to the shed, and Lewis still waited by the rig, and so Mel followed with a small wail of frustration, picking each step with care. The outbuilding was closed tight, but one swift kick from Mel’s boot pulled the simple hook-and-eye lock loose from the aging boards of the door with a sharp crack.

“Impressive,” True muttered, blinking into the gloom of the interior.

Mel smelled weed first, the potency in the closed-in space practically knocking her on her ass. It hung from the rafters, out to dry, in large clumps, not yet trimmed. Her first thought:This is a shit ton of dope.Even more than she’d suspected Fallows grew here.

Her second: no one would leave this stash voluntarily.

“Hello?” she called out, as loudly as she could in the smoky air.

True echoed her. “Anyone still here?”

Silence greeted them. Hopefully, whoever had been tasked with guarding this grow had decided their life was worth more than the thousands of cannabis plants the rows of greenhouses must contain, in addition to the endless rows drying in this shed.

Mel turned to leave, only to practically fall on her face as her boot came down hard on a loose floorboard.

True reached for her immediately. “You all right?”

“Yeah, the floor’s just seen better days.” She crouched down, investigating further. “Actually, this board’s not loose. It’s completely unattached.” She tugged.

There was a space below about the size of a manhole. What if someone was hiding down here, afraid to be caught on this acreage? Mel remembered a case just last year when an undocumented immigrant suffocated in a trimming shed not unlike this one when a gas leak brought the fire department to a grow site in the next county over.

True returned to her side, fumbling with her flashlight and pointing it into the darkness below. “Hello!” she called out again.

Silence. But something else, too. A metallic glint in the darkness, revealing the steely gray of a gun shaft. Double shit. Mel sank to her knees, pulling out a 12-gauge, a .22, and a Smith & Wesson rifle ... she wasn’t sure what caliber. Sweeping the light across the dirt below the floor, she checked for anything else and, easing to her belly to reach the floor of the hole, yanked an REI duffel out next. Its navy-blue canvas looked almost new.

“Isn’t that just like the duffel Kim described? That her nephew Zack got caught with by that state trooper?” True’s breath tickled the back of Mel’s neck, shallow and a bit panicked, raising goose bumps on Mel’s sweaty skin.

---