Goat-Ripper, chapter one

Baa, baa, milk sheep,
Have you any cheese?
Yes, Jake, yes, Jake,
Three wheels full.
One for my master Marco.
One for your sweet Tanya.
One for the governor
who lives down the lane.

* * * * *

A sexy romantic crime thriller set in the heart of wine country. A fast, fun foray into making artisan cheese, adulterated wine and murder. Afghan vet and bronze Star Jake Knight comes home with a bullet hole. He needs to heal, save his farm, fall in love … and stop a puffed-up wine merchant with a taste for murder. Not yet a licensed P.I., Jake races to catch another bullet hole.

* * * * *
Dedicated to my brothers and sisters,
Warriors all, pushing up marble by the yard.


SONOMA KNIGHT: THE GOAT-RIPPER CASE

Late one autumn night Wild Bill Nastor sat at the edge of the fire pit. He used it to get rid of trash and tonight for another thing. Doc said no more roadside dumping. Bill did what Doc said. It was the best job he’d ever had, regular with fringes and no inspections. His motto: Pay me and leave me alone.
He chugged from the red-wine bottle and felt his headache step aside. Sparks swirled above, lifting a spirit into the night sky.
Smoke annoyed his eyes from the fat burning off the body below. The guy’s plastic eye-glasses melted. His lab jacket and pants curled to carbon; his shoes bubbled. His face cooked off and his skull emerged.
Wild Bill longed for red lips. He wanted to eat his road-kill raccoon, finish his wine and get some shut-eye. This burning was taking too long. He decided to go and let the fire do its work.
Tomorrow he’d climb down and crush the bones. As if in agreement, the scorched skull rolled to the edge of the fire pit and sank into ashes.


CHAPTER ONE

Jake heard a sad goat cry as he woke from his last nap in Redwoods hospital.
This was no holiday. He preferred the scent of jasmine wafting through open patio doors in a bungalow on Maui to the odor of bleach, stale bandage and the artificial cheeriness of a wounded veteran’s ward.
After patching him with two surgeries post-Afghanistan, Uncle Sam shipped him as close to home as it could: Redwoods hospital in Santa Rosa, California. Today he was due for discharge.

His cell phone rang, with the opening bars of “Tied to the Whipping Post” by the Allman Brothers.
It was his dad, Jerry’s, favorite song. Jerry lived as a fourth-generation dairyman tied to his land. He held 50 acres of rolling meadows that backed up to Sonoma Mountain. This was long-grass cow country and Jerry drank too much and lost his herd before he departed earth.
It fell on Jake’s younger brother, Wally, to clean up the mess. Jake was half a world away, third in command of a Ranger patrol in Afghanistan.
A clerk from the Sonoma County Tax Assessor’s office had visited Jake at Redwoods two days earlier. The tax man waved some papers. Jake ignored him. The tax man swore he’d carried the dairy as a patriotic duty for four years. Jake replied, “My country leaned on me, now you want to do the same?”
Jake and Wally faced a tax bill with penalties. The debt had soured like bad milk. The County threatened a forced land sale with no credit given for a bullet hole. Wally mentioned he had a plan, so Jake waited until he was upright and walking to hear it. Today was that day.
***
In Jake’s 90-day tour of military hospitals, an Army shrink had labeled him angry and rebellious toward authority. “No shit. A sniper’s bullet can do that to you.”
The shrink prodded. In response to another inane ping, Jake summed his personal philosophy: “Remember to wipe your boots at the door and don’t be late for supper.”
Pushed further, he blurted his favorite line from a class in western civilization: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Jake couldn’t remember who’d said it or if it was true. He added, “When death drops by, run the other way.”
The female therapist who observed the session giggled. Later, Jake learned she smiled from sheer nervousness and cried when she thought no one could see her. In another private session, she asked him to discuss his feelings toward his mother. Did he feel abandoned? Jake had no answer. She said he’d be incapable of a stable emotional relationship until he forgave his mother.
Jake gave her a wry smile. “Instead of forgiving her, I decided to readjust my expectations and settle for three hots and a cot.” The therapist shook her head and studied him with sympathetic brown eyes. He saw heartbreak in them.
“Jake. You know what I mean. Work with me here, please.”
“So you think it’s a trust issue I have with women?”
“Yep, text book.”
“Ma left fifteen years ago. I was ten. My brother got it worse. He was seven.”
“Let’s just work on healing you.”
The therapist looked better than Ellen, Oprah or Doctor Phil.
Jake continued. “My last memory was when she wrapped a red scarf over her hair and lit out in a convertible next to this new guy who wore too much cologne. I hate Brut for Men. She said she’d be back with pizza. That was it. After midnight, Jerry came home crying-drunk.”
“So, you do remember?” She seemed pleased. She asked Jake to write a letter to his mother, explaining his pain. Pumping from a well he never knew he had, Jake filled an entire notebook. On all the left-hand pages he doodled black-ink cow paddies.
“My own ink blots.”
This excited the therapist. She called it a breakthrough. He was healing. They cried together, burned the notebook and limped out for take-home Chinese.
They ended up on the floor of her apartment and in her bed. She returned his incoming fire with passion and cried between her orgasms.
Jake came to understand that she had soaked up the pain, anguish and confusion of dozens of returning vets, the hobbled and the gimp. He by comparison had escaped with a single bullet hole, thigh-high, through and through.
How do you heal the healers? Jake had no prescription. He sensed that it helped to dilute bad memories with good ones, and to wake up sticky and wet with love.
It helps to forgive the snipers in life, even the snide ones who steal your parking place, cut you off without using a turn signal, and bark at your eleven items in the ten-item line.
As to his Ma, Jake decided to forgive her and wish her well, honestly. As a consequence, her memory faded to black. He imagined her wearing a red scarf in a place where old ghosts go to stand in line to try, try again.
So where did that leave him on the state of his own psyche? He had no QuickClot for the soul. He was twenty-five, a decorated vet due some Uncle Sam-thank-you money with a divot of white scar on his thigh, a reminder that life is not always grand and that most people miss.
As for the hole in his heart? A good-looking woman demonstrated that with tender care she could fix it in record time. Like most guys his age, getting naked was the best band-aid. He was not racked with guilt or a cratered sense of self-worth. He was a specialist in staying alive, with a dinged leg.
The doctor said he needed daily exercise. He planned a regime of running, good nutrition and farm chores—assuming Wally had a plan to save the dairy. Three months of fallow green pasture would set him right. It was time to hobble home.
***
As his cell phone rang, Jake began a mental search for a new ring tone. “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” might do. Ee-i-ee-i-oh. Was there an Etta James version of that? He fumbled for the phone lost in his sheets.
“Hey, Jake. I’ll be outside in twenty minutes. Just leaving now.” It was Wally. Jake hadn’t been back to the dairy since a shouting match with Jerry a week after he graduated from Cardinal High. Jake saw greener pastures down south. He had a full-ride football ticket to San Diego State and the promise of a summer job.
By spring he’d flunked out of San Diego State and learned to surf. He bounced around two junior colleges and completed an AA degree in criminal justice, fueled by a vision of being a G-man. He survived five years in the Army, his last two in the troop build-up in Afghanistan. After basic training, he completed courses in investigative procedure, surveillance and electronics. On track for the military police, he washed out after a run-in with an instructor.
Jake’s unrepentant streak of standing up to bullies got the best of him. He hated hazing. The slightly-built kid in the bunk next to him, Martinez from Merced, was sometimes slow and always late. A newly-minted sergeant doused Martinez and his sheets with lighter fluid and pulled a Zippo lighter out of his pocket.
Jake zipped him instead, with three swift punches to the Adam’s apple, temple and jaw. His psych assessment reported he had an ‘uncontrolled reaction to people who smoke inside buildings.’ Jake might have said that. It was a simple decision for the all-volunteer Army, the sergeant was transferred and Jake went Ranger-ho to Afghanistan.
Now he had a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and an honorable discharge.
The military can be a hard life to leave. Most days are repetitive and boring, but Jake found comfort in routine. What he disliked were ambushes, unexpected explosions, and jihadist snipers. For the last two years, his motto was: Stay Alive. He had accomplished that.
While killing time in hospital, he completed an on-line course for an investigator’s license in the state of California. With the clock ticking on his new career path, he had yet to pay the fees or secure the bond money for the insurance requirement.
However, Jake was good at shoe-boxing his worries and taking life sun-up to sun-set. He’d heal on the farm and work on his red-neck tan.
“See you outside, Wal-bro.” Jake hung up. A discharge nurse checked in with a clipboard of release forms for signature. The packet contained an Army payroll check—$1,818.00. That was it—Hoo rah.
He’d wait 60 days for his wounded veteran’s benefits to kick in and he didn’t expect much. He wondered if the GI Bill would see him through two more years of college. In his heart of hearts, a new campus of acne and beer bongs did not ring his bell.
A swish nurse wrapped his thigh in a compression bandage and handed him a white sack filled with antibiotics, pain pills, gauze and wraps. He looked inside for a packet of QuickClot for the mind. Nada.
One of the wounded ward’s traditions—a $100 credit with L.L. Bean, courtesy of the Patriot Daughters of Sonoma. Jake idled half a day on the glossy, four-color pages of Maine farmer chic. The FedEx package from Bean lay on his bed.
He tore the box open and emptied the civilian cornucopia. Carefully, he slipped his injured leg into a stiff new pair of blue jeans, waist 32, length 32. He buttoned a red-checked flannel shirt, size large, over a new white V-neck T-shirt. He noticed that the T-shirt had a size stamp instead of a tag. He smiled at how life changes.
He wadded up his hospital pajamas and tossed them into a pile on the floor. His Bean box contained a stiff black leather belt with a shiny bronze buckle: “Army Strong.” He wondered where he could trade it for one that said: Eat My Grits.
With unerring accuracy, he wove the new leather through his belt loops and bent to tug tight the laces on his black, government-issue boots. His days in desert camouflage melted away.
“Is someone coming to get you?” the discharge sarge asked.
“You bet. Little brother is waiting outside.”
“An orderly will help with your duffle. That leg’ll be tender yet. Thanks for your service, Sergeant Knight. A Bronze Star is a noble thing.” The nurse saluted; Jake shrugged.
He’d enlisted while at loose ends. He hadn’t seen much of the world. He’d seen too much death and the down side of human nature. He wondered if he’d ever stop scanning rooftops for snipers
Jake limped down the hallway, followed by the orderly. His leg throbbed. The cane helped. But he was too stubborn to begin his new life as an invalid. He took a deep breath, hung the cane on the push bar of the exit door and left it behind as he walked out into the Sonoma sunshine.
Wally waited in Jerry’s beat-up ’86 Ford F-150 pick-up truck. The ‘red rust bucket,’ dusted in dents, was a year older than Jake. But the engine purred with the deep V-8 rumble of stump-pulling power. Both Wally and Jake were able mechanics. They’d spent years working with Jerry to keep the farm patched on bailing wire and duct tape.
“Hey, Jay-bro!” Wally ran around from the driver’s side and embraced him. The Knights weren’t long on expressing emotions. Wally wore his hair long, even for a civilian. He looked geeky in round glasses, as expected for a lab rat, fresh from UC Davis. “How’s it shaking?” He looked down at Jake’s leg. “Hurt?”
“Nope. I have better things to think about.”
Jake hugged him hard. His thigh ached and his eyes watered. Jake had Wally by two inches and 30 pounds of muscle, but Wally had the college degree in chemistry. Jake could take an M-16 apart and reassemble it in under a minute and knock the center hole out of a bull’s eye at 600 yards. Wally could dissect a frog and run a toxicology screen on its liver. Jake had waltzed into an Afghani ambush. Wally could dance rings around a biohazard site.
The orderly lifted Jake’s duffle into the back of the truck. Jake opened the door, mounted the bench seat and lifted his leg into the cab. Wally jumped in behind the wheel. He pointed to a paper bag on the floor. “Cold beers.”
Jake twisted the cap off an ice-cold Lagunitas IPA, splashed beer on the driveway and gave a one-finger sayonara-salute to the hospital. He handed a beer to Wally. “Do you drink and drive now?”
“No, sir. They’re all for you.” Wally grinned and shifted into gear. The bench seat of the red rust bucket brought back memories of smooth moves, make-out sessions and drive-in movies. Jake felt a dusty piece of home-coming click in.
He lifted his head, smelled death and looked across the road.
Two guys in white hazmat suits wrapped plastic around a carcass and loaded it into the back of a County truck. There were no cop cars attending. He assumed it was a hit-and-run, maybe a dead dog. He studied the face of the lead collection guy; it was familiar.
“Let’s get to the bank before we go home,” Wally said. “Okay?”
“Yep. We’ll put my discharge check in. How you holding up for money?”
It was Jake’s turn to help. Wally had come home from college one weekend to find Jerry cold in bed, long gone to the other shore. Over the Internet that weekend Jake talked Wally through the tears and gave him a check list of what to do. Jake and Wally got roaring drunk, half a world apart, with a video hook-up and laptops linked on Skype. Wally talked about Jerry’s demons; Jake’s demons already knew the song.
“I’ve got rental income from the other cottage. And I want you to meet Marco and Sandy Spencer at the bank. They’re cheese-makers. The farm board referred them. We’re talking land lease to start a sheep dairy.”
“Sheep? What do we know about fur-balls?” Jake swallowed a red pain pill, a blue antibiotic and popped the top off another IPA. “They’re hippies or flakes or what?”
“No. I checked references and read their credit report. The farm board says, ‘Do it.’ Powell says ‘Do it.’ The deposit’s ready to go. We need the frickin’ money today.”
“Who’s Powell?”
“That pot-smoking liberal lawyer with the Japanese art collection up on Sonoma Mountain. He was Dad’s friend.”
Jake wanted his next decision to be how slowly he could savor his ale. The baked-dry Sonoma heat poured through his open window. The familiar smell of death was gone.
Wally had a point: cash was king. He decided to begin to trust again, starting with Wally. “They’ll pre-pay the first year. The check’s in the glove box.” Wally waved at the dashboard.
“Money’s a good start. This sounds better than growing bud in the barn. How much?” Jake felt the new civilian wheels in his head kick into gear.
“Enough plus improvements, water pump, barn repairs. I worked up a list with Marco. It’s all there.” He waved at the dashboard again. Jake finished his beer and wiped his hands on his jeans. Wally merged onto a country road toward the bank in Santa Rosa.
“Artisan cheese is getting support in Sonoma. We have 20 cheese dairies in county now. Sheep make great cheese.” Wally began bouncing up and down on the bench seat, driving with one hand.
“The Spencers are cool. They’re big on organics, bio-diversity. They’re flat-out clean freaks. They want me to run the lab. I’ll do quality control, milk analysis, cultivate native yeasts, and harvest bacterial agents.”
Jake felt a twinge of pride in his little science-professor bro. He pulled a manila envelope from the glove compartment. He scanned the paperwork, starting with the lease agreement. It looked complete. He reviewed the checklist Powell had made. He saw where Wally and Marco had initialed each page. He saw the deposit check and whistled: $18,000.
“Frick sake, the tax man can take a hike. I’m in.”
Wally hooted and hand-tapped the dashboard. Jake kept reading. Wally’s contract specified lab-tech with a list of job functions to keep a ‘farmstead certified’ rating. Jake looked up. Wally cut him off. “Organic comes later, after seven years of paperwork and inspections.”
Jake watched the brown hills capped with green-tree fringe roll past. Jake knew cows, not sheep; milk, not cheese—but he was willing to learn.
He selected his words carefully. “Bro, this looks great. You’ve been busy. We can improve the place and you got a job. Jerry would like it.” Wally grinned at Jake’s approval.
“So will you sign as co-owner?” Jake gave his brother a moment of eye contact and nodded in agreement. Wally hooted and shook his clenched fist out the window at the sky.
“Diggity! You’ll like the Spencers. Marco knows sheep and Sandy sells at farmers markets. They work a circuit, long hours, bro.”
Jake watched Wally’s eyes shine with a new future. “We’ll move a cheese shed onto the property. All stainless steel with a 30-gallon pasteurization vat. That costs $30,000. Way chill. And an air-conditioned clean room for the cheese to age. Marco designed it. We’ll improve the barns and build sheep pens.” Wally paused to let the vision sink in.
Jake drifted behind Wally’s enthusiasm, half-listening and soaking in the sunshine.
He noticed the beers and pain pills begin to smooth the heat.
“See the last page? That’s for you, property manager, if you want it. Basic dairy duty.”
Jake turned to the job description and read through the list. He knew how to do this: install pumps and new electrical circuits, mend fences, build paddocks, feed animals and move manure. A regular $1,500 a month plus gas and materials. Minimum wage, but no commute. No resumes. No interviews. No lines. No rejections. No snipers. The tax man could go shoot someone else.
Jake opened another beer and turned to Wally, grinning. The Knight Brothers Sonoma Sheep Dairy bumped bro-fist.
At the bank, Jake shook hands with the Spencers, and excused himself to the Men’s room. He decided to ease off on being hard-charging Jake; this was Wally’s deal. He swallowed a red pain pill and slowly walked back to find his new tenants.
Wally was right. He liked them. Marco, lanky and calm-spoken, had the gentle vibe of a dairy man with a calloused grip hardened by chores. Grinning, he showed a chipped front tooth. Jake sensed Marco reserved judgment. He’d help birth a lamb at midnight and clean pieces of placenta out of the birth canal.
Sandy, not yet 30, the bubbly talker in the family, came from Sonoma. Marco, a Wisconsin native, met his younger wife in a college food-science program. They’d launched their brand a year earlier and leased commercial kitchen space.
They dreamed to turn it up a notch with a milk-sheep herd. “From grass to cutting board,” Sandy said, her pale freckled face beaming. Sun-streaked red hair framed her bright blue eyes. Jake smiled and signed the lease agreement. He and Wally banked his discharge check, the lease payment and cleared the tax liens.
They were broke again. Jake figured he’d bought himself a year and time to heal.
Wally was clearly caught up with these cheese dreamers. If the creamery worked out, he’d have found himself a career. For now he had a lab to run, applying his chemistry education. Painkiller haze was coming over Jake. Saving the farm was enough for one day. He wanted to go home.
Poverty hadn’t changed the view. Sonoma was in late dry season, earth in slow fade under a remorseless sun. Jake had missed the green grass of spring and the riot of wild yellow mustard. Now in October, the land was baked to a faded ivory dotted with brown patches. One good cloud-buster would bring renewal, but rain wasn’t likely until mid-November.
His two dairy barns on the crest of a hill grinned defiantly. Jake grinned back.
He and Wally owned it all now, free and clear: his buildings, his manure, his blades of grass. Jake was surprised his throat choked up. For five years, his home had been a billet, a bunk and duffel dumped into a locker or closet.
The pain pills made him think sideways. He might start shouting sonnets. He and Wally hadn’t been roommates for eight years. He waited for Wally to look away and he splashed beer on his small speck of mother earth.
Jake raised his sunglasses and squinted. Behind the barns, the land sloped down in a wide sweep to more pasture. A glint of emerald showed where the grass sipped at a year-round spring, fed by an aquifer with run-off from Sonoma Mountain. His dairy had more green than most. He had deep wells.
Water is life across California farmlands. Jake’s natural spring was like money in the bank. Other dairies were forced to supplement with alfalfa and grain by June. Jake would try to keep Marco’s sheep on grass almost year-round. He made a mental note to check the spring. It had to be kept cleaned out and directed to drain to feed the grass. It was his job and he’d be paid; hell, he’d do it for free.
The fences stood strong; they ran straight and true. None of the outbuildings had collapsed. The barns towered above it all, without paint, framed on thick oak beams and slatted in wide first-cut redwood planks, weather-worn dull gray and contoured to the land.
The sheet-metal roofs, once white, showed bare patches and oxidization. The squat red-brick cottages had wrap-around verandas and overhanging metal roofs in better condition. He saw Sandy’s wash hanging on a line by the upper cottage.
Wally explained that Marco and Sandy had moved in a month earlier. Wally had cleaned the other cottage, where he and Jake had grown up. He donated Jerry’s clothes to Salvation Army and upgraded to dorm deluxe with fresh paint, a coffee maker, new pots and pans, a large computer monitor and no TV.
Up valley, grape growers delighted in Sonoma’s long, dry summers. The wine makers praised the afternoon heat that pushed the sugar in the grapes. They delighted in the morning fog that chilled grapes to a flavorful acid balance. The mineral rich volcanic soil contributed more flavors. Fermentation lifted sugar into alcohol and alcohol into money.
Early morning chill preserved fruitiness before the afternoon sugar race-up. Most mornings, the fog burned off between sun rise and midday. Sonoma winters were gray and wet, with rain blowing in December through March from the Pacific Ocean 20 miles away. Yet winter’s monotony was often broken by crystal bright blue days that made Sonoma almost perfect.
He collected his beers, lifted his kit from the truck and followed Wally into their cottage. The solid wood door opened onto a large living room with a kitchen area across the back wall. Jake took the bedroom on the right, once Jerry’s room, clean and Spartan now. The new bed looked like heaven. Jake pushed it into the corner of the back wall under the window. He jumped into deep, dreamless sleep.
He woke early, before dawn, his body on military time which worked for a sheep-dairy man. He lay awake and listened to the quiet, peppered with gusts that rattled the cottage. He celebrated with a beer and a sandwich.
He tasted ocean salt in the air. The fog carried moisture to wet the grass. He smelled home and childhood, his piece of dirt. It was a civil change from an Army of snores, grunts and farts. He preferred the honest smell of dairy manure to the odor of G.I. barracks.