Leaning Land (16 page)

“It won’t cause any trouble unless it has a bearing on his death.”

The woman glanced at her husband and then through one of the glass panels to the open desert and a distant ripple of snowy mountains that peeked above the curve of the earth. “I’m not sure—I saw Jesse coming back to the store from her house a couple of times. I’d be driving by, you know. He’d be walking across the field back to the store. And they seem pretty … friendly. At least when I’ve gone in the store and they’re both there it’s sort of like they stopped talking the minute I walked in. You know that feeling?”

Both men nodded.

“But that doesn’t mean they’re, you know, doing something. I can’t say I’ve seen anything like that actually going on.”

“Where there’s smoke,” said Morris darkly. Then, to Wager, “You talked to Sheriff Spurlock about this? You know she’s his niece?”

“We’ve talked. He didn’t think she would play around, but he didn’t know for certain.”

“Well,” the deputy rubbed his bony hands along the thighs of his trousers, “you never know. You think she could’ve killed her husband?”

“Howie! That’s a terrible thing to say! Even if Sharon might be having an affair, she would never do something like that!”

“Rosie, this is police work—you got to ask questions like that.”

“Police work or not, Sharon would never do anything like that. She’s a gentle person—she loves her children, and that says a lot about a woman!”

“It doesn’t say she might not be getting it on with Herrera.”

“Well, if she is, who could blame her? Being stuck out here all alone, week after week. Her husband gone all the time!”

“Did either of you ever hear of any domestic violence between the Del Pontes?”

“No. And I never saw any evidence of it, either—no black eyes, no bruises. None of that kind of thing you men are always doing to your wives.”

“ ‘You men’! Rosie, I’ve never hit you! I can’t even remember the last time we had an argument.”

The bitterness in her voice sharpened. “That’s because between your job and the National Guard, you’re never home long enough to argue with!”

Morris, jaw sagging, stared at someone he suddenly did not recognize.

Wager asked, “Do you talk with Mrs. Herrera? Has she ever said she was suspicious of her husband?”

“Heidi? No.” The woman’s slender fingers brushed back a strand of lank, black hair as she took a deep breath. “I don’t know her that well, but she doesn’t seem to think anything like that. In fact, she seems quite happy. She seems to be real friendly with Sharon whenever I see them together.”

“Did Rubin or his wife ever say anything about some kind of allotment he had?”

Morris, still studying his wife, let her speak first. “It wasn’t an allotment—not money, not like the Indians on the reservation get. It was more a settlement. They joked about it once—he did, anyway. She wasn’t too happy about it. When Rubin’s father died, he left Rubin some land on the reservation. But it didn’t do them any good because Rubin can’t sell it and he’s not allowed to live there. Not that Sharon wanted to move out there anyway—it would be worse than Egnarville. Some of those places are so lonely … !”

“So what did Rubin do with it?”

“Nothing. Sharon told me there was nothing they could do with it. Let his brother run sheep or cattle on it, I believe.”

“Did she or Rubin say anything about some kind of deal, lately?” Wager clarified the question. “A couple of people said Rubin was excited about something big that was to happen soon. He was supposed to be working on some deal that might have involved some white men and Indians.”

“Deal?” Rosemary shook her head. “Nothing I was told about. Sharon’s certainly said nothing like that.” She looked at her husband. “You hear anything about it?”

“No.” His sarcastic tone said he was thinking more of his wife than of Rubin. “I’m not around enough to hear things like that. I’m too damn busy trying to make a living.”

Wager asked quickly, “Did Sharon help her husband with his business? Take care of the billing? That kind of thing?”

“Sure. He ran the trucking company out of his home. Or she did, anyway, when he was on the road. Which—” she glanced at Morris “—was most of the time.”

“Rosie, you know this job brings in the only cash money we can—”

Wager interrupted, “So she would know his trip schedule?”

“I’m not sure about that. I think she just took messages and let Rubin call back to arrange his schedule. In fact, I know that’s how it worked because she told me once they’d lost some jobs because she couldn’t tell the caller right then when Rubin would be available and the caller had to know for certain. She said she wished Rubin would let her draw up his schedule. But he wouldn’t. I’m not sure why. He just wanted to do that himself.”

“What about billing and tax forms? Did she handle that?”

“I don’t know. She never said anything about that.”

Wager sipped his coffee, now that it was cool enough not to blister his mouth. Beside him, he felt Morris radiating a different type of heat. “What kind of plant is that?” He pointed to a shrub that dangled clusters of fleshy-looking pink blossoms under its wide leaves.

Rosemary stared at the plant for a long moment before answering. “A bleeding-heart plant. They do real well here.”

Morris started to make some kind of noise but Wager interrupted him to say it was a flower he remembered from his childhood—his mother had a bunch of them in a shady corner of the yard—and then he asked about a few other plants, and that’s all they talked about until he quickly finished his coffee and thanked them for their time.

Morris walked him out to his car. He gazed around the horizon as if studying it for the first time. “I always thought Rosie liked it here. I thought it was what she wanted.”

“Maybe she just wants to see a little more of you.”

His teeth nipped at a spur of dried flesh on his lower lip. He seemed to want to talk about his personal life but Wager hoped he wouldn’t; the trouble between Morris and his wife sounded painfully similar to that between Wager and his ex-wife. Lorraine had been one of those women who stifled their grievances until they finally exploded, and by then it was too late—her anger and her hatred of Wager, just and unjust, had been engraved too deeply to be overcome. There had been nothing left to reconcile in their marriage and it had ended in the failure of divorce.

Morris stood silent for a few moments. But all he finally said was, “We can’t have children.” Then he glanced at his watch. “Well, I better get rolling—got to serve and protect.”

“Got time to look at some names from Del Ponte’s appointment book?”

“Names? Sure.”

Morris’s firmer tone of voice told Wager that the deputy, too, found relief in getting back to the job; Wager showed him the page.

“Turney. That’s probably Dave Turney. Owns a little outfit over on Disappointment Creek. Hegendorf has the QT ranch. That’s a big spread near the Utah line. Archibeque manages the Flying W. It’s over near the Utah line, too—down Squaw Point Canyon, alongside the reservation.” He frowned, remembering something. “That place changed hands a couple of years ago—was owned by some Texans, and they sold out. Somebody in Denver, I think I heard. I’d say Rubin was moving cows for them.” He handed the booklet back to Wager. “It sounds like you don’t think the Constitutional Posse had anything to do with his death.”

Wager wagged his head. “I still don’t know about that. But I haven’t found any evidence tying the deaths together.”

“I doubt you will.”

“Have you seen or talked to Bradley Nichols lately?”

The man’s head wagged no. “I’ll tell you how to get to his ranch if you want to go over and see him.”

“How about Stan Litvak?”

“Nope.”

There had been a third man at that table in the restaurant yesterday morning. “What about Gregory—Louis Gregory? Is he a Posse member, too?”

“Probably. I don’t know for sure.” Morris studied Wager. “I can’t see any of those men shooting anybody. Like I told you before, Wager, I can’t see any of the Posse shooting anybody. Unless somebody shot at them first.”

“Or was some kind of threat to them?”

“What kind of threat was either of them federal workers? No way, Wager. It was probably some damn drunk Indian shot those men, and I don’t know what happened to Rubin. But there’s no evidence even that he was murdered; and I don’t care if he was an FBI informant, he didn’t have anything to inform about! I mean, Rubin was no threat to nobody, let alone the goddamn Constitutional Posse! I wish to hell Durkin would get that through his goddamn skull.”

Rubin could have been a threat to someone without knowing who. So could Holtzer and Kershaw. Just like, thought Wager, remembering last night’s telephone call, he himself was.

“Any idea who might have wanted to slash my tires?”

“Slash your tires?”

“Night before last. Somebody cut all four.”

Morris, jaw slack, stared at Wager, who went on, “Nichols and his friends happened to be at the motel restaurant the next morning. It looked like they were waiting to see what I’d do with four flat tires.”

“Well, what … ? Why … ?”

“I figure it was a warning. I figure somebody thinks I’m a threat, too.”

Morris, a worried frown pulling his thick eyebrows together, watched in silence as Wager backed the car around and pulled out onto the highway.

T
HE FEMALE VOICE
on the other end of the line asked Wager to hold on a minute, and a second or two later Ray said, “Glad you called—I talked to Ramey Many Coats. He says he’ll talk to you. Sounded like he wanted to, in fact.”

“When and where?”

“His place. Come on out and I’ll take you over there.”

The drive to Ramey’s house wasn’t as far as that to Luther Del Ponte’s. Ray took one of the three or four sandy village streets that crossed the highway; it passed a couple of old buildings made of cut sandstone and at some vague point left town and entered the desert. They followed its long, meandering curve around the base of a small butte that looked as if it were once part of the larger Dark Mesa. “I have to admit I’m kind of surprised, Gabe. Figured if he’d talk to you at all, he’d do it on Indian time. You know, ‘One of these days.’ But he said to bring you out. Said he’d be home all day today and I could bring you out any time.”

“Any idea why he’d do that?”

Thoughtfully, the tribal policeman ran the side of his thumb along his pockmarked jaw. “There’s got to be money in it for him somewhere. I mean, he’s a Many Coats, and the only reason a Many Coats does anything is for money.” The bill of Ray’s baseball cap, with its red-and-black tribal police emblem, slowly wagged. “I don’t know if one of them would even walk across the street unless it was to pick up a dime.”

“Could that be the deal Rubin was excited about? Something he was doing with Ramey?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. It could be, I suppose. Ramey’s always working some deal or another. But Rubin didn’t have any money, I don’t think, and Ramey doesn’t have time for anybody who’s broke.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “Maybe Rubin’s truck—maybe Rubin was using his truck for collateral in some way.”

“That still doesn’t say why Ramey wants to talk with me.”

The road threaded between two massive slabs of dark rock, pieces of the mesa cap that had, some time long ago, tumbled off the lip of the butte that rose above them. As the truck passed close to them, Wager saw that they were part of the old lava flow, roughly pitted, like Ray’s skin.

Ray shook his head again. “Yeah. It doesn’t. Maybe he just heard you were talking to people on the reservation.” The tribal policeman corrected himself, “His reservation. That’s the way he thinks of it, anyway.”

Abruptly, they crossed into the butte’s shadow and Wager felt the sun-heated skin of his arm relax in the cooler air. “Do you know if any of the victims reported threats before they were killed?”

“Threats? Not that I heard. But then, Special Agent Durkin doesn’t talk to me much about his cases. You have to figure, though, if Kershaw had gotten a threat, he wouldn’t have gone out by himself—not after Holtzer was shot. And I think Luther would have told us if Rubin had said anything like that to him. Why?”

Wager told him about last night’s telephone call.

“A woman?”

“Yeah. Is that important?”

“I don’t know how important it is. It’s kind of weird, though.”

Ray shifted into high gear as the road straightened out. This one was a lot smoother than the two-rut track to Luther’s place. A road grader had scraped shallow ditches on each side to protect its surface from runoff, and gentled its occasional dips into the washes. “I bet it was a white woman.”

“Why?”

“Women on the reservation, they wouldn’t likely know if their men were threatening or planning to attack somebody. And the men wouldn’t ask them to make a call like that because then they’d have to explain what they were up to. Around here, there’s still a pretty deep division between what’s proper for men and for women, and women are supposed to take care of the home and kids and not mess in men’s business. You’ve seen our secretary? Patty? Everybody thinks that little girl is a real hell-raiser because she’s trying to organize a women’s center. Even most of the older women in town think she’s some kind of troublemaker, think she’s poking her nose into what the men are responsible for doing. All she’s trying to do is bring them into the twentieth century. Not the twenty-first, just the twentieth.” His cheeks swelled with a puff of disgust. “And if somehow one of the women did find out, why would she warn you?”

“Why would a white woman warn me?”

“Good point. So maybe it was just to scare you off.”

“I’ve thought of that, too.” He told the tribal policeman about his slashed tires.

“Welcome to friendly La Sal County! You have a weapon?”

“Pistol.”

“Well, better carry it. In case it’s more than just a scare call.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Of course, a pistol’s no match for a thirty-thirty.” Which they both knew was the recent weapon of choice for killing federal workers.

The pickup truck swung around a shoulder of talus and back into the heat of the sun. Ahead, almost against the base of the mesa’s cliff, a large stand of budding cottonwood trees looked pale green against the red-and-orange rock. Nestled among them was a small community made up of a sprawling ranch house surrounded by half a dozen outbuildings: barn with a stubby silo, several sheds, a large corral with its stables, three or four house trailers up on concrete blocks, two television dishes tilted to the sky, a scattering of trucks, cars, and motorcycles. This ranch had no fiberglass holding tank; a windmill near the corral told Wager it had the luxury of its own well water. A pair of dogs ran toward them, barking, and kept pace with the truck as they drove under the crossbar between the gate’s tall posts. A man in a white cowboy hat stepped down from the shade of a long gallery that fronted the house and waited for them; a large eagle feather rose above the hat’s deeply creased crown and stood as unmoving as the man.