Free Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2) by Joseph Flynn Page B

other hourly. Tall Wolf took the odd numbers, Ron the even ones.
    Goldstrike had its normal compliment of six patrol officers working overnight within the town limits.
    Ron would work the state roads and backroads.
    Looking for anyone who might have plans to destroy his town.
     
    John Tall Wolf’s plan to explore Lake Adeline was to survey the shoreline, then use his borrowed boat to draw a nautical X across the middle of the lake. He began by cruising just above idle speed. The Sea Ray’s motor produced little more sound than a burble of bubbles. The dark blue finish of the boat made it disappear into the night. The shoreline was visible in the shielded soft green glow of a small multifunction navnet display. The system’s features included: GPS, chart plotter, radar, fish-finder, accident avoidance alarm, satellite compass, weather fax and Sirius radio.
    John mused to himself, “We’ve come a long way from a lone brave paddling a canoe.”
    Then he thought of what it must have been like for the first Native American, making his way across this lake, to spot the first white settler’s cabin. Human nature being what it was — comfortable with the familiar, fearful of change — he probably felt the way the Sutherlands would feel about having a high rise go up and block their view.
    Ron Ketchum had told him about having that thought.
    Tall Wolf had agreed that plenty of people in Goldstrike were certain to be angered by any drastic architectural change in the character of their community. They’d position themselves as conservationists. Few if any would think of themselves as the beneficiaries of the real estate developers of an earlier time.
    Not that John Tall Wolf had any objections to modern amenities.
    He was partial to room service, if the hotel kitchen was up to snuff.
    John had been abandoned by his birth mother, left to perish from exposure on a crudely built scaffold, when he was a newborn. Mom’s parents wouldn’t have approved of either her pregnancy or John’s parentage. She was Northern Apache; Dad was, probably, Navajo. Mixed marriages were frowned on in those days, at least in Mom’s family.
    A large coyote was sizing John up for breakfast when his adoptive parents happened along and drove the creature off. His father, Haden Wolf, was Caucasian, a pediatrician. His mother Serafina Wolf y Padilla, was Latina y india , a professor of cultural anthropology. Haden Wolf’s forebears included a number of conjurers. Serafina Padilla’s ancestors numbered both curanderas and brujas, healers and witches, among them.
    John was raised in a Western rationalistic tradition.
    But neither of the people who took him in thought their son’s suspicion that Marlene Flower Moon could be Coyote, with a capital C, was misplaced.
    They’d quoted the Bard to him more than once, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shakespeare knew you had to keep an open mind. So did John Tall Wolf.
    He kept his eyes on the video display and his other senses attuned to the infinite.
    You did what you could to keep from being taken by surprise.
    By Coyote, eco-terrorists or your random murderer.
     
    Ron Ketchum waited on his end of the Tightrope for the driver of a semi-tractor trailer to clear the narrow strip of roadway. There was no guardrail on either side of the two narrow lanes. The drop-off on each side was more than a thousand feet. Tourists were advised to avoid the Tightrope at night and in difficult weather.
    Most commercial drivers knew better than to risk the crossing in those conditions.
    At night, the edges of the roadway weren’t easily visible and drivers tended to crowd the middle of the pavement and even enter the oncoming lane. If someone was approaching with the same idea an impasse was inevitable. Local custom said in such instances both drivers should back up, a nerve-wracking exercise in itself. Once they’d cleared the danger zone, they could work