Leaning Land (21 page)

“Not yet; the information from Washington came in too late. But I have an appointment with him tomorrow.”

“Up in Grand Junction?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ll let me know what he says, right?”

“Yeah. Sure thing. And—ah—thanks for calling.”

Wager was much sorer the next morning. He had felt the hurt increasing in the night when, restless, he had tossed from one ache to another, half awake from the effort of trying to breathe through his swollen nose. But when he sat up and twisted to shut off the motel’s clock radio, his breath caught and he almost groaned aloud at the wrenching pain of his ribs and shoulder. The hinges of his jaw were even tenderer, as was his tongue where the damned thing kept moving over to find that sharp tooth, and in the bathroom mirror the bruises and swelling made his face look like a third-rate boxer’s after a first-rate fight. All in all, it was the kind of start to the day that he could do without.

As he entered the empty restaurant, the waitress apparently shared his opinion. “Oh, my Lord! What happened, Officer Wager?”

“I’m beginning to think somebody doesn’t like me, Paula. How about some coffee?”

“Yessir.” Frowning, she half ran to the hot plate and, with an insulated pitcher and a rattling cup and saucer, followed him to a table. Her soft voice held a note of anxiety. “Is this because of your investigation?”

He nodded, gingerly inhaling the fragrant steam whose warmth and moisture soothed the damaged tissue in his nose. Seemed as if everyone had heard about his investigation, even people he had met as recently as last night. “Did you know Rubin Del Ponte?”

“Not too well. He was kind of a cousin, through my dad. His mom’s somebody married my dad’s somebody on the reservation a long time ago. I never did understand exactly who. Have you found out something about his death?”

More cousins. Wager figured the whole world was cousins if you went back far enough. Too bad people didn’t act like they were all related. Or maybe they did, but in a family that was held together by mutual hatreds and jealousies instead of shared love. “Not much yet, but I intend to. Did you know Mrs. Del Ponte, too?”

“Sharon? I met her a couple of times. She used to come to the Bear Dances when they were first married.”

“The what?”

“Bear Dance—that’s the big spring festival on the reservation. Every Ute tribe has its Bear Dance once a year. It tells about how the Utes and the bears are friends and celebrates the bears waking up in the spring. Depending on which reservation it’s on, it lasts three or four days. It’s a big party and all the relatives and friends of the tribe come from all over. They eat a lot and watch the dancers and horse races and play hand games and gamble. That’s where I met her.”

“Have you ever seen her here?”

“At the motel? No—why?”

“Just wondering. Verdie tells me that Rubin came by occasionally.”

She nodded, glancing at a family of travelers entering the restaurant: sleepy-looking man, two school-age boys poking and pushing each other irritably, wife trying to hush the whining of the youngest.

“Was there anyone special he met with? Anyone he seemed to be looking for?”

“Not that I recall. He was friendly with just about everybody, though.”

“Especially the week before he died, did he seem to meet with someone or wait for someone?”

“I can’t really remember … .” Her attention was drawn by the tourists, who were glancing her way, hesitant about which table to seat themselves at. “Excuse me, Mr. Wager. I got to work. If I think of something, I’ll tell you.”

He thanked her and returned to his coffee, trying to keep its scalding heat away from the splits in his lips, his raw tongue, his broken tooth.

The Montezuma County clerk and recorder’s office opened at eight; Gabe, speaking carefully around the little piece of chewing gum he used as a cap over his broken tooth, placed his call shortly after. The woman said, “Oh, yes, Officer Wager. No, I found his death records, but I don’t have any record of a will being filed for that person, so it seems he died intestate. But I didn’t find anything on the docket for probate action, either. Now if his property was in joint ownership, say, with his wife, it wouldn’t go through probate. So I’m not sure what to tell you.”

“It wouldn’t be handled up in La Sal County, would it?”

“No, they don’t have a county court. If there was probate, it would go through the court here, though the three-day notice to creditors would appear in the La Sal paper. My guess is his property was either in joint ownership, or for some reason the paperwork just hasn’t been completed yet. I’ll keep looking.”

“He owned some land on the Squaw Point Reservation. I understood that would not come under the state’s jurisdiction, is that right?”

“Is he an Indian? If he’s an Indian, his will would likely be handled in federal court in Denver. Maybe that’s why there’s no record of it here.”

Wager explained about Del Ponte’s one-quarter status.

“Oh. No, then that would be state jurisdiction. All his property that wasn’t restricted to the reservation, anyway.”

“So that reservation land would stay in the tribe?”

“If he was intestate or didn’t have close relatives living there, that’s right.”

“What about a half brother living there? Would the land go to him?”

“I don’t know, Officer Wager. You’re talking reservation law there, and that gets pretty complicated because it’s a mixture of tribal and federal laws. And each tribal council has its own way of doing things.”

“Is there anyone who could tell me? A tribal lawyer, perhaps?”

“Yes—that’s a good idea! You ought to talk to Everett Snyder. He represents the Ute Mountain tribe, so it’s likely he could tell you. His office is in Cortez. Would you like his number?”

“Yes, thanks.” He dialed the tribal lawyer’s number.

A clerk’s voice answered briskly. “Snyder, Silvers and Slaby.” Wager told the young-sounding man who he was and what he wanted. A few moments later, an older male voice asked, “Officer Wager?”

He explained again.

“I see. Well, I don’t represent the Squaw Mountain tribe, so I can only answer in general terms. But the procedure is fairly uniform on all Ute reservations: absent a will or trust, the property would probably go to the closest member of the family residing on the reservation. Each tribal council has slightly different rules governing the ownership of real properties for their respective reservations. However, the principle in general on all reservations is to maintain Native-American ownership of any and all reservation lands, water rights, mineral rights, and other property titles whether entailed through individually registered members of the tribe or through collective ownership of the tribe in the corporate person of the tribal council. In this case, I assume that ownership would be transferred either to the half brother or to the tribal council as collectively owned property. Have you talked to any of the tribal council yet to see what they have ruled?”

“Not yet.”

“That’s where you should start.” The voice said the interview was over—as an officer of the court, the lawyer was bound to help the police in a case; as a lawyer, his time was too valuable for much pro bono work. And he hadn’t said anything Wager hadn’t already surmised. He thanked the voice and called Ray’s office number.

R
AY WAS OUT
. The young woman said she would leave a message for him, and Wager dialed another number. He had better luck with this one.

“Been wondering what you’ve got up to, Wager.” Sheriff Spurlock’s rumbling voice sounded as if it came from the bottom of an empty barrel. Which, given his physique, was close to true. Wager told him what Durkin had said about the C-4 explosives.

“Distributed to a local National Guard unit? He’s sure of that?”

“The chemical analysis identified it, he said. Ninety-nine percent certain—good enough for courtroom use, anyway.” The line was silent, so Wager added, “Here are some names of people who belong to the engineering battalion up in Grand Junction.” He read the list of ten names.

“Uh-huh.” The sound was noncommittal.

“You want to talk to Morris or should I?”

“Wait a minute, Wager. You ain’t saying my deputy had a damn thing to do with those bombings!”

“What I say’s not important; it’s what Durkin thinks. If Morris wasn’t your deputy, wouldn’t you want to talk to him?”

“Dammit, Wager—!”

“I’d want to talk to Nichols, Stine, Hunter, Many Coats, Cloud, and the other five, too; but I figure Morris might be the most cooperative and the one to start with.”

“Damn … !” Then, “You at that motel? In Gypsum?”

“Yes.”

“Stay there. Me and Morris will be there in about an hour.”

It was closer to forty-five minutes. Morris arrived first, looking grim and tight around the mouth, then surprised when he saw Wager’s face. “What in the world happened?”

Wager told him, then had to go through it again when the sheriff arrived about five minutes later. Spurlock studied the bruises on Wager’s face. “I take it you didn’t get a look at them or you’d have them on an APB by now.”

Wager verified that. “I think they were driving a dark, dual-axle pickup with cattle rails on the bed.”

“Fits a lot of vehicles around here,” said Spurlock. “And in every other county and over in Utah as well.” He wagged a meaty finger at Paula for a cup of coffee, sighed deeply, and leaned his elbows on the creaking table. “What’s that on your tooth?”

“Chewing gum. Keeps my tongue off it.”

“Oh. Well, I ought to give you protection of some kind.”

“I can handle it.”

“Don’t much look like it. But then, I don’t have anybody to assign to you anyway. What about getting someone else from Denver or the CBI to come out? I’d feel a hell of a lot better knowing somebody was watching your back.”

“I’ll be all right.” He turned to Morris, who had been sipping his coffee and gazing silently through the plate glass of the restaurant window. “Did Sheriff Spurlock tell you why we’re meeting?”

“No—just said to be here.”

Wager explained about the C-4. “Who handles demolitions in the battalion?”

“We all do, one time or another. It’s part of the combat engineering training program: build things up, blow things down.”

“How easy would it be to steal some C-4 and caps from the battalion supply room?”

“I guess it could be done. God knows, other stuff gets stolen easy enough.”

Spurlock sighed and refilled his cup, draining the small pitcher. “Howie, somebody had to’ve stole it from a National Guard unit. It has the same chemical signature as the C-4 issued to the regional engineering battalions, and that includes your unit. Most likely, somebody took it and either used it themselves or handed it on to somebody else to use. You got any idea who in your battalion might have done that?”

Morris, narrow face sallow and whiskers already dark despite a morning shave, eyed the sheriff. “You think it was me?”

“No, dammit, I don’t think it was you. If I thought it was you, I wouldn’t be here drinking coffee with you, I’d have your butt in my office under oath. But I do think Wager, here, is right. It could well be one of those weekend heroes you soldier with. Now maybe it wasn’t you—and I’m not saying it was—but you do train with these people, and you been training with them for quite a few years. Do you have any idea who wanted to do it and who had the opportunity to do it?”

The deputy rubbed at his eyes with the tips of narrow fingers. “I couldn’t say for sure, Sheriff.”

“Howie, you’re my deputy and by God, I expect the truth from you. Nothing but, and nothing held back! And I tell you this: the FBI’s going to question all of you. Every name on this list is a suspect. If this thing drags out, Durkin and a flock of other agents are going to come in here and stomp around and question these people: all their relations, their employers, employees, their friends, their fellow church members, anybody who might know them and anybody who might have a grudge—they’re going to rip through this county like a goddamn tornado, turning up as much dirt on every name on this list as they can, upsetting people, causing suspicion, trying to turn neighbor against neighbor to shake out every rumor and whisper. And there’s not a thing I can do to stop them because it was a federal crime to steal the stuff and a hell of a lot worse one to use it. These are our people, Howie, our neighbors, and a lot of them’s our relatives—brothers, sisters, children, cousins, you name it. Now I think we ought to do what we can to keep an inquisition like that away from them. So now, goddamnit, I want you to tell me who of these people most likely stole that C-4!”

“I ought to quit this job.” The man set his empty cup on the saucer with a loud clatter. “Just up and quit the goddamn thing—Rosie don’t like the goddamn hours, don’t like living how she has to with me gone all the time. And now this. By God, Sheriff, it just ain’t worth it!”

“Who, Howie?”

“Move to California. Hell, there ought to be plenty of room out there by now.”

“Tell me, Howie.”

His jaw made the odd chewing motion that Wager had seen before. Then he finally spoke. “Maybe Bradley Nichols. But I don’t know for sure. He was the platoon sergeant in charge of an exercise last November—exercise in the demolition of a reinforced structure. A couple of old concrete silos somebody wanted to get rid of, and the battalion commander got the OK to blow them up in return for us hauling off the rubble. Nichols had the demolitions platoon: he set up the problem and signed for the C-4. I remember Karl Yeager—he’s the supply sergeant—joking about how much demolition Nichols requisitioned. Said he had enough to make face powder out of those silos.”

“Did he turn any back in, or did he use it all?”

“I don’t know. But we haven’t had any demo exercises since then. It’s been some bridge and road building, communications problems, equipment maintenance to get ready for the summer field exercises. And some flood-control training in case of the spring runoff.” His voice fell. “Nichols makes no secret of his feelings about the BLM, and I don’t know who else had a better opportunity. But I also don’t know if Yeager’s had any stolen from supply since then, either.”